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Totem Talk: The problem with tier 3 talents for Mists resto shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. I'm sure that you've been busy preparing for Mists of Pandaria, logging into the beta and testing things out for yourself. Maybe you haven't gotten into the beta yet but have been testing things out on the PTR. Either way, with the announcement of the release date for Mists, things have been kicking into high gear. More beta invites are going out, and now more than ever, player feedback is incredibly important. Over the last two weeks, I've been thinking about a recent change restoration shaman have had to their level 45, or tier 3, talents. I've had a few discussions about it on Twitter with fellow shaman in the community, and after much deliberation, I've decided that it would in fact be the major topic for this week's article.
Totem Talk: Restoration update and preparing for Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. Did you miss me? I know I missed you! I know you were all super excited about the update to restoration shaman on the beta a couple of weeks ago. I was. We got some good information to mull over. Clarification on one of our new talents along with some numbers for estimated proc rate was a good starting point, and we even got our first glimpse of the tier 14 raid set bonuses. I still believe that the four-piece bonus needs to be revisited, because I think that it will wind up wasted on us for the most part. I'm holding out hope that we'll get an update sometime soonish. That said, we haven't had a whole lot in the way of updates the last few weeks for restoration shaman. Things are starting to slow down, at least for right now. I'm guessing that will change as soon as more raid data gets parsed and verified. We'll see some tweaks, whether it's to spell coefficients or mana regeneration. While it's been slow, there has been at least some news and some blue responses to the current restoration position.
Totem Talk: Mists beta updates for restoration shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. Two weeks ago, I was gushing about how much fun I was having in Mists. I still am having a blast, and I truly enjoy healing through the new dungeons. I haven't had a chance to test out shaman healing in one of the new raid encounters yet due to the times they've been scheduled, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a time that lines up with my being home so I can bust in some raid skulls. Over the course of the last two weeks, however, there have been a number of updates to the beta client, as well as statements and replies from the developers at Blizzard Entertainment in regards specifically to a shaman talent in the expansion. One of the updates also contains the first glimpse of our tier 14 bonuses for both two-piece and four-piece sets. Keep in mind that all of this information is based on the latest Mists of Pandaria beta build and is subject to change at any time.
Totem Talk: What resto shaman will miss in Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. Mists of Pandaria is proving to be fairly cool so far for many reasons. I've been absolutely enamored with the visuals of the new expansion. The lush zones even at this stage of the beta are absolutely wonderful, and for some reason, I just really feel at home in the setting. The new talents are interesting and involve some strategy when picking depending on what you're doing, and the new spell effects are pretty neat as well. For all of the good that's coming, though, there are still some things that I am going to miss about being a restoration shaman when moving from Cataclysm into the brave new world. It's the classic inevitability -- in order to gain something new and move into the direction of progress, something must be sacrificed in exchange.
Totem Talk: Resto shaman looking good at level 90
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. The big news this week is that the level cap on the Mists of Pandaria beta has been raised to 90. You can go and explore Dread Wastes and Vale of Eternal Blossoms, but there isn't any raid content or Pet Battles, and some of the scenarios and Battlegrounds are not yet available. At the time of writing this, the premade template characters were not available yet for level 90, so you'll have to climb the level ladders the old-fashioned way right now. I'm sure you're thinking that it took long enough, but to be honest, this is a bit sooner than I anticipated. While we've seen the talents, we haven't have the chance to work with them quite yet. Now, we finally get to dive in and play with them, experimenting for what will be our best choices in any given situation. It's like unwrapping a brand new toy for the first time, and I'm pretty excited.
Ghostcrawler weighs in on shaman feedback
The beta has been under way now for some time, as have the feedback posts on the official forums. Shaman have had a few major changes to their repertoire, as well as a few more minor ones, but the general feeling from reading the posts made in the forums is that these changes don't go far enough. Shaman, it appears, don't feel like they're getting what they need to be viable, let alone competitive, and the unique nature of a lot of their abilities seems to continue to be as much a hindrance as it is a help. But arriving like the white knight in medieval-styled dramas, just as the situation feels dire and unsalvageable, is Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street. The shaman feedback post has finally had the equivalent of a Blizzard seal of approval, in the form of a blue post from the bluest of blues. So what did the big GC address in his post, and what still remains outstanding for beta shaman? One big complaint that many shaman brought up was glyphs. I recently tweeted fellow WoW Insider writer Joe Perez about this very matter, namely, that shaman glyphs were a mess. They felt either very lackluster or very penalty-heavy. A few patches ago, before the recent changes, I was playing my shaman with two empty glyph slots, because none of the glyphs felt worth using. This is a Bad Thing. A recent patch went some way to repairing this, but with it, a host of new problems appeared, some of which GC addresses after the break.
Totem Talk: New look for Chain Heal, new features for resto shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how So with all the excitement over the release of Diablo III, Mists hasn't been one to sit idly by and just be completely quiet. There have been a number of changes to shaman in general over the last few builds. I figured if you could tear yourself away from the eternal struggle of the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, then we could take a look at some of those changes. One of the most underrated aspects of the new expansion, in my opinion, is the glyphs themselves. There's a lot to be said about the importance of the glyphs in the new expansion. I personally feel that they will become much more useful as tools to help define our healing kits for the fights, much more so than talents currently do.
Totem Talk: A restoration shaman hands-on with Ascendance
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how This week, we're going to talk about our level 87 ability, Ascendance. That video above is not mine, but it is pretty darn cool, so I figured I would link brandonk99ing's video here since it did such a nice job. It shows our brand new ability for Mists, which we get to play with at level 87. Each flavor of shaman gets a different version of the ability. Elemental and enchancement get some nice damage increases, while resto gets to walk around like a giant water elemental, throwing out crazy healing numbers. Basically, while in the Water Ascendant form, all of our healing done is duplicated and distributed evenly among nearby allies. I've commented that it looks just like the ability Essence of Dreams from the Ultraxion encounter -- and to be honest, that's exactly how it feels. I figured I would share with you my impressions of the ability, now that I've gotten my hands on it.
Totem Talk: Mists talents for restoration shaman, tier by tier
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how The talent systems for Mists of Pandaria is one that's received quite a bit of attention since it was first announced, and with good reason. It's a complete revamp of the current system, a reduction of the total number of talents by a considerable amount and an attempt to make the talents something more fun and less mandatory. We've talked about them since they were announced at BlizzCon 2011, but talking and speculating about them is much different than actually sitting down and getting to test them out for yourself. Today, I'm going to talk about my own personal experience with these talents, and I'm going to offer up my own opinions, just like the last article. The talent system now doles out talents every 15 levels, presenting a clear tier structure to anyone looking at them, and that's exactly how we'll tackle them.
Totem Talk: First impressions of restoration shaman in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how Well, I finally got my hands on some beta access for Mists of Pandaria, and the first thing I did was make sure good old Lodur got copied over for some healing experimentation. I mean, after all, that's what I live for. Before doing any healing, though, it was time to poke around and see how things have changed. And boy, have they! Even though I expected it, it was quite jarring to log in to Mists and see that Lodur had a measly 100,000 mana to work with. Any of you out there would probably notice that this is almost half of what we're sporting on our final run-through of Dragon Soul. While it is daunting, it's something that we have to keep in mind will be compensated with mana regen and increasing the mana pool as we level up to 90.
Totem Talk: The state of Telluric Currents and speculating for Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how Time to revisit this topic again. You're probably asking yourself why we're talking about this again. Well, to be honest, it's because it's the end of an expansion cycle. While we're prepping for the next expansion that will shake up mechanics and stats, we find ourselves at a point of speculation -- and therefore, things like Telluric Currents find themselves back in the crosshairs, so to speak. The talent itself is something you use, or you don't use. There are some hard facts about the talent. You do not need to stack hit to make it useful, only to make sure every bolt hits. It is not mana neutral, using the talent and casting Lightning Bolt will indeed fill up your mana bar. It can be used to supplement low spirit totals for beginning healers, and can be used in certain phases on raid bosses to maintain healing mana totals. Whether it is optional or mandatory depends on a lot of factors up to and including the team you're healing with and the content you're healing through.
Totem Talk: Getting resurrected restoration shaman back to speed, and level 90 talents
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how The Scroll of Resurrection revamp has been a topic of hot debate recently. Whether you love it or hate it, the feature's still an opportunity for our healing brethren to come back after a long break. To be honest, one of my friends has done just that. But being away from the game for any period of time, whether it is an entire expansion or just a content patch, can be jarring. So when my friend reactivated, I asked him what his most pressing concerns were coming back to Cataclysm. What did he want to know the most to get back up to speed? I thought that were probably quite a few number of folks coming back to the game who might have the same questions, so I figured now would be the perfect time to talk about that, as well as some news regarding the new level 90 talents that we just received. Oh, and the video has nothing to do with today's post ... I just had that song stuck in my head.
Totem Talk: Restoration shaman buffs and debuffs in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how Every time there is a new update whenever we're waiting for an expansion, it's super hard not to be excited. We'll be getting a flood of information about the expansion soon -- I can feel that in my bones -- but in the meantime, we have had a steady trickle of information, ranging from the talent calculator updates to the recently discovered and discussed list of buffs and debuffs in Mists. Thursday, though, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street made a blog post about consolidating buffs and debuffs in Mists of Pandaria. The first thing any shaman will notice is that buff totems have gone the way of Sentry Totem. This shouldn't be that surprising, really, since at BlizzCon 2011, Blizzard stated that this was going to happen. However, it means that raid buffs will be mobile and travel with you at all times -- a great thing for PvP and for PvE utility, but a bad thing for anyone who cares about the flavor of totems.
Totem Talk: Possible talents for restoration shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how It's been a number of weeks since the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator was updated. It was pretty exciting, with everything that got shifted around. I mean, our level 90 talents basically got shifted around to a lower level, leaving a bit of a gaping hole with the ever classic "coming soon" from Blizzard. I don't know about you, but since then I've been wondering what could possibly be good enough to be our level 90 talents but not be so good that there was no way to have us be balanced. I posed the question at the end of next week, inviting you to speculate with me as to what our level 90 talents could be, what we would like to see if it were up to us to pick our level 90 talents.
Breakfast Topic: Do you enjoy strategic healing?
I found this picture on Reddit's /r/wow subreddit the other day, and it reminded me of the original promise of Cataclysm. "No more spamming heals! Triage is king!" Blizzard said -- and it actually stayed that way ... for a while. Unfortunately, strategic healing took a left somewhere around Majordomo Staghelm and hasn't been heard from since. As mana regen spiraled out of control (again), the encounter designers went to the usual place -- heavy AoE raid damage that required massive throughput, with thoughtful deliberation out the window. This has not made many people happy. A recent thread in the Healing forum showcases this, with many healers reporting general dissatisfaction following tier 11's raid content. So what's your opinion? Do you prefer to act with a surgeon's efficiency, using the right-sized heals at the right times? Would you rather JUST HEAL ALL THE THINGS? Or do you think "monks will fix it?"
Totem Talk: While my Chain Heal gently weeps
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how Last week was a massive update to the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator for shaman in general but especially for restoration shaman. There were quite a number of surprises, a fair amount of tweaks and the implementation of a brand new mystery in our yet-to-be-named level 90 talents. Among all those changes was one that I didn't bring up. Instead, I wanted to wait until this week because I felt the topic required a bit of time all to itself. That is the change to Riptide in the new talent calculator. No longer will it be consumed by Chain Heal whenever we cast it on someone with Riptide as our primary target. This is certainly a cause for celebration, and as I imagined it in my head, Chain Heal gently wept with happiness at the news. While we're at it, be sure to enjoy the ukulele stylings of Jake Shimabukuro, who is a genius on the uke.
Totem Talk: Mists of Pandaria resto talent calculator update
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how The last few updates to the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator has seen some updates for the other healer types in WoW, but restoration shaman were left untouched from what we saw at BlizzCon 2011. That fact alone was starting to concern many of us, as we eagerly wait to see what we'll get for new spells and what we'll see our talents morph into. Well, this time around, the latest update to the talent calculator certainly has some things for the restoration-minded shaman to enjoy. Talents have been moved around -- some removed and others just reorganized -- and we get our first glimpse at a new spell.
Totem Talk: 5 ways to look like a bad restoration shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. Sometimes knowing how to do well at something relies on knowing what not to do. Over time, we can accumulate some pretty bad habits, and if we're not careful, they can make us look like a terrible healer or a complete and total noob. There's nothing worse than that feeling of being the cause of a wipe or looking like you don't know what you're doing. That's sometimes the hardest thing a new restoration shaman faces when starting out healing groups in instances and the Raid Finder. It's OK, though -- just because you're a beginner doesn't mean you have to look like the world's worst healer. I've compiled a list of things you can and should avoid doing.
Looking back on healing in Cataclysm
Now, this is a forum post that I think merits a little more attention. We all know that developers weren't happy with the spamfest that healing often was in Wrath of the Lich King and that they looked to make it a far more cerebral activity in Cataclysm. Now that we're approaching the end of the expansion, Practical, one of the Blizzard forum MVPs, recently started a thread examining how healing turned out and what can be improved. Most of the people in the thread generally agree that healing started out pretty fun in tier 11 but declined afterwards. Reasons given range from boring boss mechanics to fights with random elements that made healers feel useless when they couldn't control or prevent player deaths. Practical observes that a lot of the later problems with healing in Cataclysm might actually be the result of a surfeit of raid fights that required constant stacking, and the inevitable effect they had on certain healing spells' being too powerful. Having recently looked at healer numbers in Dragon Soul, I'd also venture that AoE healing spells that aren't numbers-restricted (for example, Circle of Healing versus Holy Radiance) on top of that raid stacking are making healer balance look worse than it actually is. So what are your thoughts, healers? How did healing work out for you this expansion, and are you looking forward to the Cataclysm changes? And are the problems we're seeing really the result of healer mechanics or raid design?
Totem Talk: A restoration shaman wish list for Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. Leading up to any expansion, especially before any beta access has gone out, is a great time to start your wish lists -- things you want to see, things you don't want to see and changes that you just might not want to consider as a possibility. We've already have received a sneak peek at the new talents that will grace our classes when the expansion goes live, as well as some changes to the way spells are being distributed. The fact is, though, that what we've seen so far has raised quite a few questions that have yet to have an answer. One of those big questions is what will happen to our beloved Telluric Currents? We're at a point where most restoration shaman can't live without the talent. It's a huge source of our mana regeneration, especially now in Dragon Soul. Also, before we get any further: This week's image is supplied by an up-and-coming artist by the name of Jeanette Dulzo, daughter of one of my raiding priests Galdrea. She hasn't set up a website, but I'm hoping this young artist will keep at it and set one up soon. The full picture of her concept of a female shaman can be seen after the break.
