Forgive me for not being clearer, but for me it's all about raiding. Heroics, not so much... I mean I was in a Pickclaw PUG on my illy that did a floor without a healer at all. The goal was to make it so other healer archetypes could reach more of their potential and that can only happen when shaman wards are down. If a good shaman keeps wards up, it follows that they will spam them.
Perspective is an interesting thing. Who is saying what? Many of the Shamans in the two guilds at the top of US-based progression rankings, have expressed concerns with the adjusted mechanics since ToV beta. I can not speak for the Russian Shamans, as I do not read Russian, or visit their forums. If I had to make a judgement call, I would say that Ainaree is far more qualified to make an accurate call regarding the state of Shamans, than anyone in Fatality. You have made more than one comment similar to "Good Shaman are fine". An interesting opinion, from someone who is not a healer main. If you are correct, one must go several steps down the progression rankings, before "good shaman" are found. While it is a possibility that Fatality has the best Shamans in the world, odds are much higher that Equilibrium and Revelations have better. Perhaps the state of your guild gives a skewed perspective, the very state that inspired several applicants from Equilibrium to promptly turn right back around? If you only place approx 10% of the responsibility of your survival upon healers, do you raid with just 1 healer in the MTG? Or do you raid with a pair of healers, reducing it to approx 5% responsibility per healer? And do these healers know how little regard you have for their healing output?
Wards are not fine, good shamans do manage yes, we don't need to spam wards any longer to keep tanks alive - not entirely true, tanks are responsible for alot of their own survivabiility sure, wards no longer stop one shots yes but shamans heal through wards, we cast them, they disappear, we reapply them, if not, we're not healing and might as well be standing at the raid zone entrance, only using secondary heals to patch up damage already dealt, or find another healer to do the job more than capably with their primary heals because they can and are "allowed to" according to your logic. As Wookin pointed out, if a good shaman keeps wards up, it follows that they will spam them. All other heal archetypes maintain their primary hots/reactives on their groups at all times, telling a shaman they cannot or should not be able to do the same thing with wards is telling them that they're only allowed to perform their role part-time, this is imbalanced. Which is why good shamans do not use this gear yet clerics, druids and channelers everywhere do and can - this is imbalanced (but a side issue). Sure, good shamans can do our job, especially because we are usually paired with another healer which (provided that healer likes to press heal buttons which is not always the case) allows us short breathetimes to debuff etc. It doesn't change the fact that we're working 3 times as hard as the other healer archetypes for the same outcome and that managing the incoming damage is alot harder for us while busily maintaining debuffs to make the lives of all healers (infact the entire raid) alot easier, the classes are imbalanced, this is obvious. The 2 mystics I were referring to were not solo healing Derrig, regardless good mystics will strive to heal and dps and should be able to do both nearly all of the time. Autoattacking doesn't qualify as "dpsing" in my book, it's part of our job and it's how we do most of our damage, "dpsing" is finding times to mash spells/CA's which is what other classes find alot more time to do more of. Your claim we have to choose to either do one or the other and that shamans are disadvantaged when undergeared is aknowledging there is a problem with class balance. We have to spec far more heal centric for sure and far less towards dps but in my role as a healer that's what I do, I can still muster good dps while being defensively specced, however other heal classes can push out more numbers far more easily because they can spec and gear in a far more offensive dps oriented manner while still being able to solo heal groups without breaking a sweat, this is imbalanced. Is it more of a challenge to heal? Yes, but I am enjoying the challenges the new mechanics have brought for healing. I don't want "easy" however it doesn't change my viewpoint that wards and debuffs need to be addressed to bring parity between heal classes. 6 debuffs that are duplicates of themselves, but stack is far too many, especially when other classes are lucky to even hit one of theirs much less invest aa points in them. Wards have been discussed to death. Has gear made healing easier? Yes of course it has but it's made it easier for ALL healers you say shamans are at a disadvantage when undergeared - this just gets worse with more gear as other classes get more crit bonus and we still only see part of the benefit from the same value with ours. Exactly.
So what change to how the shaman heals would give them the breathing room in your opinion? If you've given clear awnsers in the past , im sorry , I must have missed them ... at best Ive been confused over your direction with this. Not that you owe me an awnser ... im just curious.
The thing to me is how far down my heal parse my single target ward is both in hps and max heal. We are not killing anything in ToV yet but at least have AS clear. DPS is still there even with a crappy two hander I have. Standard off tank heal set up (although he main tanks most of the time) myself and an inquisitor. Potency and CB in raids is not amazing around 525 on both. Now that dkp rush is over I am getting some energized stuff but no red gems yet as they are still out of my dkp range so I am in potent still. That being said Single target ward is maxing at around 125k, Group ward around 200k. Just no real power increase as gear has improved. Single target ward was 7th on my zone wide heal parse and 8th on highest heal. Oberon for me is peaking at about 200k max. Spirit tap is dominating my heal parse. For zonewide I was third on hp behind mage group healer and inquisitor in my group. I do see more of the cleric and druid healing potential getting utilized which is good, but where do we get to feel "strongeer". With all that background, doing ok, but fundamentally, I would think primary and group wards should be a larger contributor. I am not asking to soak multiple hits with one ward but when stuff hits for say 800k it would be nice to see a single target ward eat more of that damage then it does as well as see our primary heals higher on our heal parse.
We are working a lot harder, but I haven't had an issue managing incoming damage so far. You can't manage one-shots due to lack of hit-points/gear; which was one of the early pain points, and still is for some. Shaman aren't made to solo heal, but they can. Comparing a Shaman to a solo healing fury, for example, doesn't make sense. The core issue is our viability for the job we are intended to do (on raid), and the success with which we are able to do it. I didn't say we have to choose. I said current mechanics are set up to make us choose one or the other. Basic gear progression is part of the expansion. All classes are at a disadvantage when under-geared. Some more than others. You make a good point, and here is where the rub lies with what needs to be adjusted with Shaman: We can heal and compete. We are putting in more effort to do it. We have to be set up to get decent numbers out of wards and handle the damage. Wards take a hit when offensively geared and they can't afford much of a hit. They are still a little weak. We need them as strong as they can possibly be. We are already having to work to ward, making the gap that much higher if we want to get the full capacity from our class. If Shaman want to maximize things like dps, it is at a greater loss than other healers are reflecting from current itemization. Mystics need help with their Prestige crit bonus conversion after the changes to dps itemization. Wards overall could probably use a little top end love or better critical bonus for balance. Dumbing down debuffs won't help the bottom line much.
