HPS is soooo far from the entire picture it's mind boggling you would even say that. Shamans are lagging behind in heal potential to the other classes quite significantly. Most shamans do not want the class or mechanics changed by adding utility, we just want to be able to heal. Clerics and druids heal just fine in completely offensive DPS specs and autoattack gear sets yet those same people often whine about having to cure and press heal buttons cos "it interrupts their deeps", this still hasn't changed despite people saying they wanted it to. Shamans are expected to do more with less now and the mindset of those we heal with hasn't altered in many cases. Lifting the CB penalty on wards wouldn't even come close to making them OP and put healing back at where it was pre ToV. But if that's not going to happen then I guess saves and HEAL utility is a trade off that could be considered to get some kind of semblance to heal parity with other heal classes. They stil don't, healing on an Inq or druid now is just the same as before. The only classes that are hurting right now are shamans partly because of gear (we don't get a choice since we cannot use the autoattack sets since it has no potency) and partly because our wards just don't last long enough for us to perform our other roles like debuffing and casting temps which essentially reduces healing output by reducing incoming damage. Clerics and druids don't even come close to having the number of debuffs shamans do and now HAVE TO cast, they just maintain a few reactives/hots and dps - it's 3 button childsplay for them just like it was pre ToV. And yes I am speaking from experience on all 3 archetypes.
And herein lies the problem you fail to fathom, again because you are not speaking from personal experience from having played a shaman. Leaving wards like they are makes all the healers utility again when grouped with a shaman because the shaman is so busy spamming heals, debuffs and temps things like curing go out the window. Those of you that are happy with shamans having been dealt the poop card and claiming you never liked being a cure bot or whatever have just brought exactly that back on yourselves again 5 fold. I can't afford to interrupt ward/group heal casting to cure when there's another healer in the group that can do it no stress and twice as often. You want me to debuff and poorly prevent spike damage, that's exactly what I'll do.
I see. So you want heal potential that doesn't change your maximum HPS but doesn't come in the form of utility or emergencies that doesn't require you be in heal stance or have any bearing whatsoever on other healers, or vice versa. That is impossible. Historically, HPS has been a flawed measurement because damage inflictions weren't consistent. A warden, for example, would never get to cast heals unless both wards and reactives had been breached. One might look at the heal parse and say "Well gosh golly, that warden's done nuthin' but sit 'round and look purdy!" That is no longer the case. Damage inflictions are fairly consistent, wards are penetrated on almost every hit, and reactives rarely cover the remainder. Even if you were running a 3 healer group, you'd still see SOMETHING out of the warden. Since they are actively required to heal now, instead of being crutched by shaman, the abilities these classes were given to make up for an inability to do anything WHILE wards were maintained have become extremely powerful. Especially since many of them operate independent of the damage dealt (Percentage based, complete heals, stoneskins, etc). Shaman only have one ability (Soulward) that has scaled well. With that said though, contributing to the prevention of oneshots is still a strength that only Shaman and Channelers have. I don't see any reason you absolutely must discard all the numbers to prove that shaman are incapable. I have seen shaman do amazing DPS while putting out more heals than the other healers in the group. I've seen shaman solo heal some of the hardest hitting mobs in the game, without the help of another healer. I've seen shaman work amazingly in tandem with other healers of ANY type. Does that mean Shaman are fine? No. But it means you're overreacting. And you have bad healers in your guild who are making the situation seem much worse than it is. Stacking residual damage reductions on wards would more than make up for the discrepancies brought about by them being instantly consumed. And since you "just want to be able to heal", there's no need for utility or DPS, right? Or don't you know what you want or need, and you're just flailing your arms around because you're not overpowered anymore (And you WERE overpowered.) There's no need for removing the crit bonus penalty on wards. The purpose isn't to make Shaman REQUIRED for content, that's the whole point in raising the HP pools. Shaman are supposed to be just as powerful if not less powerful than the other healers, because their wards and damage prevention in general are much more functional and synergistic. If you disagree, you've clearly never played a druid or cleric, where your heals are wasted when a tank (or another healer) uses a save, when swarm adds instantly waste all your reactive triggers, or when your group or tank gets 1-shotted and you don't even have time to heal. Are these things less pervasive now? Sure. Are they gone completely? Certainly not. In those situations, a shaman will continue to shine, as proven repeatedly by GOOD SHAMAN, whether they are happy with their current power or not.
Just reading the first 2 sentences of that paragraph is proof in itself you have not healed on an Inquisitor this expansion. Stop comparing your alts that do heroic zones at most to healing actual raid content. Guess what? My reactives don't work on half of the damage there is to heal. To imply Inquisitors are a 3 button healing class is absurd, and very laughable. Just like all of your whining and crying.
Maergoth, you're coming from the point of view of the number 1 raid guild in the game, who was basically given a free pass on gear in this expansion. Yes, you guys worked your collective butts off to take out the hardest content in the game in COE, but your healers started this expansion in T2 heroic equivalent gear and have not had to try and heal heroic content in level appropriate gear. Some of your own Shaman have complained that a quest level geared Warden can out-heal them with ease. Wards are not effective.. Wards are a shamans PRIMARY form of healing. If another healer is in a group with a shaman and the shaman is destroying them on the heal parse THAT is working as intended. Wards do not just prevent one-shots. If they get blown away by basic damage, there's nothing left to protect that one-shot unless you have absolutely PERFECT timing. If there was a mechanic like that of the channeler where they only prevent damage over 30% or 50% of a tanks health I would agree with you. Every healer SHOULD be able to solo-heal all the T1 zones, and most of the T2 zones. I can tell you from personal experience, Shaman (Specifically Defilers) have a VERY hard time doing that, where other classes can do it with relative ease, in equivalent or lesser gear. When you can't stop spamming heals to even get your ONE group cure off you might as well just pack it in, and you can forget about debuffing in a lot of cases.
Let's try to focus less on Healer vs Healer and more on Healer vs Content. I know that I, personally as a Mystic, find that I don't have enough tools to solo heal a group through the harder heroic instances. We can speak of dual healing, but the trend of late is for groups to ask for solo healers, so dual healer setups are moot at this point. I find that my death save is completely useless in current content, even if I maxed the Dragon AA for it. Mobs just hit too hard for a ~60k ward on "save" to make a difference. If I can't keep the tank alive with my 100k wards, what's a 60k ward going to do? Wards are useful, but ineffective at preventing damage at this point. Their low value versus incoming damage creates a situation where actually using a ward is less useful than just spamming our direct heals. Our secondary effect on our single target heals is laughable, at best. An additional 500 hitpoints? That's not even a drop in the bucket for glass cannon DPS, let alone tanks. Perhaps a low percent (2%?) damage reduction for a few seconds after using a single target heal. This would give us some help for getting our wards back up. Some consolidation (and duration increasing) to our debuffs would not be unwelcome. There's no reason for a healing class (any class, not just Shamans) to have to cast 6+ separate debuffs, some with durations as short as 24 seconds. I would love to see an increase to the chance for Umbral Warding/Barrier to reset the cooldown on Ancestral Channeling. 6% is extremely low.
Not everyone raids Jezes most of the people expressing concern on this thread are talking about heroic content so get off your high horse, they are as much entitled to solo heal that content as any Inq and druid and many claim they cannot. Also your very own shaman guildies have been very active on this topic so unless they're whining and crying too then how's about you play nice?
How about you don't make such blanket statements about classes you don't actively play. It just shows your blatant ignorance and will never accomplish the point of this thread. I'm playing perfectly nice, you just keep posting ridiculous things about other priest classes and don't expect anyone to call you out on it. Which I will continue to do unless you actually stick to the TOPIC of your thread.
I wasn't referring to healers in my own guild, I was referring to all the healers I get the pleasure to group with while socializing and farming etymas in this wonderful place called Norrath. But I am sure you'd like to think that. You like to try to put words in people's mouths. I never said I don't want to be in heal stance.
You're complaining that other classes heal just fine in dps specs. You're telling me that doesn't include a stance change? That's called splitting hairs. The point you were making is that other classes can be DPS spec'd and still heal. How exactly does that have ANYTHING to do with a shaman that "just want to be able to heal", per your OWN words. I won't even entertain a discussion on heroic content. If you're going to invalidate my opinion based on class, gear, guild, or whatever.. then why post on the forums? Why not just look in a mirror and have a nice conversation about YOUR shortcomings with YOURself. You can't balance the game around the lowest quality players in the easiest content. You have to balance around potential. You're not seeing anything CLOSE to potential in heroic pick up groups. If you're saying that is where the problem lies, and not in raids, then you are hugely mistaken. I can practically solo heal the group zones. There is a problem, and it's not found in any heroic zone. It's found in raids. When a ward is completely eaten instantly, there is no residual. All other healers have residual, or at least the ability to react to a NECESSITY for follow-up healing. Shaman do not. In terms of raw HPS, shaman are still very capable. There are tons of quality shaman who are feeling the backlash of the changes. It's hard not to be a REQUIRED class after being that way for so long. That doesn't make them incapable or wrong. I'm not denying anyone's right to complain. Hell, I'm not even denying anyone's right to a fix. I am, however, denying the fact that shaman are bad and need a major fix to be viable. If that means I'm disagreeing with shaman in my own guild, so be it. They're still keeping me alive every week, and I wouldn't trade them for anything but a channeler (maybe). Finding a solution without making them even more powerful on their own is important. You provide a way for them to further synergize with a second healer. Either a damage reduction for a couple seconds, an increase to heals for a few seconds on the target, more saves.. halve the base cast time of wards.. something. Until then, find better pubs.
We're saying the same thing, but you're ignoring the fact that this is not limited to just raids. It doesn't exist in Heroics in raid quality gear, but it does exist in heroics in heroic quality gear. The problem exists across the whole spectrum of the expansion. Shaman should not have to out-gear content, dump every last AA into boosting heals/wards, and spam all their heals and wards to do the same as other priests (Which I play) in lesser specs, lesser gear, and lesser skill.
That depends entirely on which zone you're doing and what classes you're bringing a long. A shaman will have no problem doing any zone with a zerker or paladin, for example. Tanks should be providing 50% of their own survivability OR MORE. Tell your tank to press buttons better. Keep in mind, the ToV zones aren't mean to be done until after you have the stuff from the lesser zones. Dominion isn't meant to be done unless you have easymode raid gear or ALL of the heroic gear. I have not had any shaman friends complaining about heroic content in the way you are. And they aren't all raid geared, either.
You have totally misunderstood and misquoted/represented nearly everything I have said on this thread again twisting what I said into something you wanted to hear. Re read them this time with your eyes and mind open. I was referring to gear and specs and sets shamans cannot equip (use unless they plan not to heal). Yes that's correct I made that comment in respose to yours about adding utility, most shamans on this thread do not want utility, they don't want the playstyle of the class changed they just want to do their job which is heal. What's wrong with that? Remove the crit bonus penalty that exists on wards (which would also help other classes I might add) and allow us to do our jobs. Unless we're supposed to just sit here and take the opinion of a paladin on how we shamans would like to have our class changed? If that's the case I most definitely will continue to compare shamans to other heal classes of which I have experience on. Oh and go look in the mirror yourself, Mr High and Mighty "I won't entertain conversation on heroic content". I am more interested in the high end raiding too but that doesn't make me arrogant enough to dismiss the population of players that don't raid and claim to be strugging to heal said content. Heroic content geared players have wards proportionate to their gear, just as raiders have wards proportionate to theirs, therefore dismissing players saying that the only issue with shamans arises in raid settings is just plain ignorant when the size and magnitude of their healing is exactly proprortionate to the content they are running and the gear they have. Maybe they need to farm more, maybe they need to run more zones to get better gear and faster but not everyone plays 10hrs a day and has the luxury of running zones with a tank that can pretty much solo the content.
I had an idea for defilers. What if they were to reduce or remove the number of spells required to cast between single target wards for Empowered Barrier to go off, so that it will land more often. This way if we cast Death Cries on the tank then Ancient Shroud on somebody else, then Empowered Barrier will land on both (albeit at the lowest increment, but at least it will be additional protection). They could also slightly increase the increments of Empowered Barrier, and shorten the number of casts to reach max potential, so that there will be less casting between wards to get a nice barrier. Also Ward's Bane could include Death Cries/Deathward and Empowered Barrier. On a side note, I'm not entirely sure why you two are arguing (Maergoth and Kiry); it seems to me that you both are, for the most part, saying the same thing. I can see stacking residual damage reduction to the end of a ward working, and would be a good idea; however, the problem I see with it, is that it would not do anything to fix Ward's Bane, which is a significant part of a defiler's dps (Which of course, I would just spec out of if it ceased to have any usefulness). I actually think this would be a good idea, especially if it were coupled with my idea about Ward's Bane working with other wards. xD Also, I think it would be easier for the devs to implement, than Niel's damage seepage idea (which I still like a lot too). And, as far as HPS goes, I was pulled into Accursed Sanctum the other day, and even though I wasn't in the main tank group, I did amazingly well at HPS (second place to the main tanks Mystic). So yeah Kiry, Maergoth is right about the residual healing; however, it is found in heroics too, as Ainaree pointed out in the previous threads pertaining to this issue.
Keep in mind that T1 heroics should be doable in Quested armor - Druids/Clerics have very few to no problems here - Shaman struggle Keep in mind that T2 heroics should be doable in T1 armor - As above Dominion, shouldn't be done until you are geared from T2's I agree there.
Clerics/druids certainly do have trouble in there. And so do Shaman. And then some don't, for any class. It depends on the player, the group setup, and the specific zone/fight... and it should. You're just picking out the fights where shaman have difficulties without considering that other classes have their own struggles. That's the point of having different classes in the game.
My main is a warden, my husband's is a mystic. We're often in groups together (both in heroic and raid content.) I can tell from watching him play, the parse and hearing is comments when he's soloing that things have gotten tough for shaman. We used to solo equally well.. now names that I take easily totally destroy him. Wards are blown off instantly and the shaman direct heals can't keep up.
Honestly, some of the stuff that is coming from this thread is straight ********. Just like the other 300 threads before it. Wards are not supposed to last 15 seconds like they did last xpac. You do not get to pop them on and go LOLERSKATE in general chat. I just don't understand all these cleric comments considering our reactive is gone with 1 point of dmg taken, so when swarm adds come through, group just topples over. No, there might not be a need for a shaman in every single group but, we STILL use a defiler on some of the fights in ToV. Just because some fights have pulse damage doesn't mean that the content is not "tuned" for shamans. The content is "tuned" for 2 healers to be working together. I remember reading the whole "oh inquis just pops DG and boom, save for 30 seconds". Sorry but, no. Dmg coming in on Sont for example doesn't even trigger reactives. The majority of the content is this way. If you want to make points regarding the CB being uncapped, fine. I might agree with you. But comparing shamans to clerics + druids is just ********. I could argue and say that my group reactive ( which btw is supposed to be my primary heal amirite?) isin't doing much with its triggers and getting eaten as SOON as adds come out and facebang the tank. I solo heal the mage group and there are many times where I want to punch my screen because of the dmg coming in. Sorry but, shamans are not in a "crappier" place than any other class. Everyone keeps posting about how "its not about the HPS parse" but when in fact, that is EXACTLY what you are talking about. Wardens have been OP as hell for what, 3 expacs now?. and now, when classes are abit more balanced than before, every shaman has a problem with the druids. Maybe they should make your debuffs cast a bit faster. Maybe they should condense some of them. But, they should NOT give you the same ward amounts you had the last expac. 95% of the tanks heals is NOT what the devs intended to do. If anything, i'm sure they meant debuffs/utility/a bit of DR with their phrasing of "We aren't happy with healer balance" not "we will give you wards equivalent to the tanks HP, do not fret my shamans". Not one person here is talking about Soulward hitting for 3mil+.
