Welcome to part 3! Looks like Shamans are heading into the expansion in the best form since their Ulduar buffs! Let’s take a look at their offerings.
Shaman talents
Level 15: Affects movement of enemies. Nothing healing her but would most likely take Earthgrab Totem.
Level 30: Stone Bulwark totem seems about right. But nothing that screams healing for me here.
Level 45: Tranquil Mind totem seems quite awesome for PvP. Windwalk is another option but the usage of both would be heavily dependant on boss encounters and so forth. I’ll pick Tranquil Mind for the ability to ignore spellcast interrupts.
Level 60: Yet another raid healing cooldown for Shaman since SLT might not be enough going into Mists. Healing Tide totem looks to be the Tranquility look-alike. Don’t discount Fortifying Waters either as 10% reduced magic damage will come in handy (I just don’t know when).
Level 75: Ugh, torn between Nature’s Swiftness and Echo of the Elements. Probably the echo. Would be nice having duplicate shaman spells shooting around.
Level 90: Totemic Projection. Being able to tactically place your defensive totems would be a big asset. Elemental Harmony would be a situational talent in case you need to overload an area with water totems.
It does seem that Shaman are going to go into this expansion with a massive boost to their capabilities. With the additional healing buffs and utility talents, they have become that much more competitive. There are 5 talents here that help with healing (or at least, can be considered defensive minded).
Skills
Some of the former Resto tree talents are now merged into the skills that players can receive as they work their way up in levels. Resurgence, Ancestral Awakening and Tidal Waves are the ones I can see. New 85+ skills have not been released yet. I’m not sure if any information on what it could be has been released yet. Hoping to see an Air Elemental totem though. Not sure what it would do. It could just stand there and look pretty while calling down bolts of healing from the sky healing nearby players and shocking nearby enemies. Probably too overpowered. I’m thinking the Shaman tree is just about as complete as you can get for any healing class.
What say the rest of you?
I am really looking forward to shaman healing in 4.3 with the Dragon Soul raid and beyond. For 5.0, I’m glad to not worry about which totems to drop based on group composition. Also, gaining some actively-useful totems is exciting.
Though Echo of Elements seems like a nifty talent to have, giving up Natures Swiftness AND the 5% haste buff from the talent, seems to be a little to much. EoE will have some RNG factors to it and though it seems interesting to play around with, NS + 5%haste is a constant that can be relied on, as well as a necessary instant large heal capability we currently use every boss encounter.
These talents will be interesting to see how they work out and I’m dying to play around with them, but the choices are tough and not ideal.
Having played a resto shaman since vanilla, I don’t know what it would take to be more let down by the talents Blizzard’s offering us at this point. Out of everything, there really aren’t more than 5 or so talents that are truly healing minded, and many of them are doubled up. For me, of the ones that matter in my mind, I’d take Nature’s Swiftness, Healing Tide and Elemental Harmony. Having had NS +HW/GHW as my emergency button for 4 expansions is something I’m not willing to give up. Healing Tide will be a nice addition to solid water totems. Last, I like Elemental Harmony for being able to drop multiple water totems primarily, but possibly multiple earth totems as well, depending on what we still have as totems.
Repulsion might be better for raiding if its an encounter with aot of adds rooting them next to you means they still hurt and pushback heals.
Echo of elements looks more capable of over healing id go with swiftness.
You miss interpreted totem projection.. says active location so if u move away from them you can.move them to you… possibily useful if on totems that have low range.
Multiple water totems might be better I duno.