Healer Shaman feedback since Patch

[dostivech]

Lifesteal change is fine. The bonuse for the reaching 5 stack is interesting as well as a lot of the new abilities/tactic changes. I think it would be nice for it to return to +1 on the other side and not zero.
But I do not like the instant cast vs longer cast change for building the mechanic. I found life giving / damage dealing idea of Mork and Gork more fun and sensible. I think it an interesting idea to attempt and I applaud the dev team for trying something bold. I hope they revert the change on the mechanic, but keep the 5 stack stuff in, because I don't mind that aspect of it. I think this patch nerfed shaman, which is fine. I am sure the dev's have info's an stats that showed this was needed. But I think the Mork and Gork change was one I wish gave more time to cook or test, especially because thematically it made much more sense the original way.

[georgehabadasher]

I think it's possible that large class reworks for a game that's barely surviving on nostalgia might lead to frustration and disillusionment among the playerbase.

[shoelessHN]

Go stack int or willpower to 900ish and try it then, it heals like garbage and should absolutely never be used. And if it's a "hybrid" spell why would you need to stack willpower or int exclusively to make it work (spoiler, doesn't matter what you stack).

Hi, int capped with additional magic power over the top AM here. It heals for roughly 1300 for me when you don't use divine fury, and then comes the lifetap, which means that if you hit your targets with it, it'll also heal for roughly about 200-400 more. So we're talking about 1700 healing on an int stacked character. If you also have a large amount of magic crit, 1300 will crit to 1950 healing. This is all aoe healing outside of your group mind you and is extremely powerful in fights where there might be more than one warband present.

Overall, it's much less useful for pure healing sham/AM, and is definitely more a tool for dps to be able to emergency aoe heal in a battle.

It has zero use for heal AM/sham as it is too far up the right tree to waste points on. Before you'd still have to not get some things in the left or wait until rr70+ but the sacrifice in points was paid off with a decent heal that didnt need friendly LOS.

There are just going to be a lot more heal shams/AM running the ranged knockback in the middle now. But more likely just a lot more swapping to DPS and joining the ranged dps blob meta.

[Parallels66]

Hello,

I am writing this out due to current concerns regarding the playstyle/feel/enjoyability of healer shaman from my perspective. from my entire time playing shaman i have only played healer, because it was such a fun and enjoyable experience overall, but this patch has flipped that, i dropped all the crests i had to make a dps set thats like 80% complete.

From a dps shaman perspective i dont have much to comment as i believe it overall feels very nice, smooth and fun and enjoyable to play with the new mechanic due to constantly being able to pump and dump 5 stacks and get value from them.

Where as from a healer sham perspective its the complete opposite, the current state of the mechanic/stack system as a healer feels super clunky, unintuitive and not that fun to the point i've pretty much ditched healer shaman completely.

My main point of contention is that it feels extremely like you're constantly battling against the mechanic to play effectively and effiently as a healer. DPS shaman can just tripple DoT, into shield, hot to get 5 easy stacks that doesnt negatively effective the gameplay loop. But as a healer reacting to damage, bursts of damage on people etc, it feels the opposite, a basic rotation of gorkll fix it, 2 hots, shield, into fotg/bbag/aoe heal leaves you at 1 stack. getting to 4-5 stacks as a healer shaman in warband play takes a good while as you cant just spam hots to push the mechanic to 5 without people potentially dying.

It feels extremely bad when you are at that 4-5 stack range, thats because it takes awhile to get there you have to actively use bad GCDs to keep jumping yourself from 5 to 4 stacks so you dont accidently waste your 5 stacks on something ineffective/inefficient. It also leads to situations where sometimes you dont want to top peoples health off due to not wanting to push to 5 stacks and then having to waste GCDs to lower stacks again so it leads to a gameplay loop where you just feel bad not being able to press buttons and just have to just wait till they actively take decent amounts of damage so using your 5 stacks/pressing buttons to take you to 5 stacks doesnt feel bad. it feels EXTREMELY unfun and clunky to play this effiently in the current state.

I have heard a lot of AM's saying theyre very happy with the new mechanic and when further looking into it, their new 2nd spell in the left tree, the AoE hot pheonix rejuvination, adds towards their tranquility stacks, so would add to their general gameplay smoothness as a healer due to basically using it on CD and not negatively effecting their stacks, But on the contrasting side of shaman, their new heal in the same slot, morks gift, an instant cast single target heal builds morks mechanic, which goes against the mechanic which you would build mostly from your HoTs and heals, so its a constant battle of gork n mork stacks fighting against each other and doesnt feel great from a gameplay look perspective.

I have a few ideas on how to fix this issue overall to make it a more fun, enjoyable and smooth gameplay experience as i love my shaman and dont want to put it on the shelf due to unfun gameplay look.

1) make gorkll fix it add to gork stacks instead, this would give it a similar gameplay loop of DPS shaman which feels great by instead of tripple DoTing for 3 stacks, you would triple Heal instead for 3 Stacks.

2) make ere we go give Gork stack, its a button thats pressed basically on CD every 10 seconds, giving it a gork stack builder would massively help smooth out stack battling and generation. i know this would mean you would have to add a 5 stack bonus effect on it potentially, but it could be as easy as making the ere we go damage hit AoE 20 yards or something simple.

3) Replace the new single target shaman heal, Morks gift into an AoE HoT like what the AM has as pheonix rejuv and make it build gork stacks like the Other HoTs to smooth out stuff.

4) add a new skill button that you put on your bars, that when you press it, the next spell consumes the 5 stacks, so you can play and use all spells whenever you want, but once you're at 5 stacks nothing gets consumed until you press that button first then next spell consumes them.

I genuinely hope these are considered to help make healer shaman a more smooth gameplay experience that is rewarding at the same time, as i enjoy the idea of the pump and dump stack system, but in its current state with how bad stack generation is on heal shaman overall, you dont really get to enjoy that aspect of gameplay without actively fighting against it so its not wasteful/bad GCD useage for pushing towards it.


one thing i would just like to see in general, is morks gift changed to be like a "chain heal" from wow, something like keep current heal amount and CD, but make it bounce to other nearly friendly losing like 10-15% power per bounce for 5 bounces or something, would be nice to have another on demand burst heal that feels tailored towards the aoe playstyle of shammy at the current.


Thank you all for reading.

[lafrot]

heal shaman was a good oiled fun machine but has become a rusty can.
Fodg, on which most has based, is taken out and the once floating mechanic iz crippled.
dps are happy while healers switch or stop, like me.

ur '1) make gorkll fix it add to gork stacks instead' would do a lot me fink, coz its used when 'reacting to damage'.