Totem Talk: Prelude to restoration's new talents
by Joe Perez 
May 11th 2010 at 6:00PM
Back at the beginning of April, we were treated to the Cataclysm preview for all of the classes. Many people were excited, some were disappointed, but everyone had news to digest. This past week has seen the Cataclysm friends and family alpha start and since then, we have seen a plethora of leaks: everything from images of the changes to old zones and new instances up to some data-mined information about female worgen. Needless to say, it has been a pretty busy week.
This last week has also seen a lot of discussion about the leaked talent trees as they are in the alpha now. I thought now would be a good time to take a break from boss talks to talk about what we know so far about the shaman talent trees and maybe find out your opinions on them as well.
The information in the link above is leaked and is in no way official. If you are waiting for an official release or don't want to see any potential spoilers, don't click the link. Otherwise let us take a look at some of the potential changes.
When I first looked at the leaked restoration talent tree, I was a bit surprised. I had expected more restructuring and more changes than we we currently see. As with everything though, this will be subject to change. This is leaked information, it may not be 100% accurate and even if it is, we are still in an alpha phase. Things will change, and until Blizzard says that things are final and presents them to us, it is best to keep an open mind when looking at the information.
What we know so far
- Some of the talents have been moved around.
- Tidal Mastery has been removed.
- Thundering Strikes has been removed.
- Cleanse Spirit has been removed as a talent. The talent is now Improved Cleanse Spirit and allows for the removal of magic effects from friendly targets.
- Ancestral Knowledge has been changed. Instead of increasing intellect by 10% at max rank, it now increases maximum mana by 15%.
An interesting replacement for what used to be 5% crit rating. A few people have commented to me that they think this is purely a PvP talent. Looking at it though, I can't help but see the potential for PvE. As it stands now, Riptide increases the healing effectiveness of Chain Heal by 25% when it is cast on the a player with Riptide on them. One would assume that these could potentially stack, allowing for even larger chain heals, but also this can be used for larger Healing Waves and, in Cataclysm, larger Greater Healing Wave. I can also see this talent playing very nicely with Tidal Force, and even Shamanistic Focus could begin finding its way into talent specs. The other part of it that really interests me is the mana reduction component. While it is true that in order to activate the talent you have to cast a shock of some kind, it could still potentially be useful. Think of some of the fights now like Festergut where you can find yourself placing a Flame Shock on the boss as you run in. This can help you recover some of the mana spent placing the DoT on the target. It also was not so long ago when we had boss fights in which we had to interrupt abilities with shocks as well, and that may see a comeback. Keep in mind, Blizzard has stated they wanted to make mana more of a commodity, and something like this can go a long way to help in fights where you are forced to do something else and could potentially have an impact on 5-man content for us as well.Focused Insight
Rank 5/5
Requires 15 points in Restoration talents
After casting any shock spell, your next heal's mana cost is reduced by 75% of the cost of the shock spell, and its healing effectiveness is increased by 25%
Another new addition to the restoration toolbox is Ancestral Resolve.
People have told me that this one feels like a purely PvP talent as well, but again, I can see the potential for PvE here. There are a lot of fights where there is a ton of environmental damage going around in both raids and heroics. Reducing the damage we take can be quite helpful for a few reasons. Taking damage forces us to focus on our own health as much as the group we are healing. While it should not be the case, diverting our attention from our healing targets even momentarily can sometimes result in their deaths. A lot of healers also suffer from tunnel vision. Sometimes we become so focused on the fight or our healing targets that we do not pay enough attention to our own health. Giving us a few more seconds to keep healing our targets or to realize we are dangerously close to killing ourselves can go a long way. Think of how useful this would be in a fight like Sindragosa, where you may find yourself standing in harm's way to heal tanks. We already have Healing Focus to help reduce pushback from damage; having another ability that passively helps us heal while taking damage could be quite helpful.Ancestral Resolve
Rank 2/2
Requires 25 points in Restoration talents
Reduces damage taken while casting spells by 10%
So far, we have not seen any mention of talents that help augment the newly renamed Greater Healing Wave or Healing Rains. There has also been no mention of Spirit Link in the talents. Blizzard had previously mentioned a desire to bring Spirit Link back, but has not yet specified in what capacity they were going to try it.
Speculation
While it is true that this is still early information at best, I suspect we are going to see a few things happen from here. First, I think that there will be actual consolidation within the tree. Currently, many of the talents we have already come to know and love are still there. They have stated that they want to add more fun, flavorful talents to the tree and fewer must-have talents, but as it stands right now, I am still seeing a lot of must-haves. With the importance of mana conservation, I am also wondering if we will see more talents changed to include some form of mana conservation or reduction in mana cost for spells.
I find the removal of 10% crit from talents falls in line with what Blizzard has said about reducing the overall healing numbers. They want it to feel more interesting and hectic in some ways. Reducing the amount of crit available to us from talents will play into this by reducing our overall healing output. This also affects any of our talents such as Ancestral Healing and Ancestral Awakening that directly benefit from a higher crit rating. Later in the expansion we may see this loss of crit compensated for with gear, but that is yet to be addressed.
So what do you think so far? What type of talents would you like to see Blizzard add to the restoration tree? What talents would you like to see them remove or consolidate? As more information becomes available, we will keep you posted and up to date. Remember to check back often.
Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk. Whether you read Mike Sacco's elemental edition, Joe Perez's coverage of restoration or Rich Maloy's enhancement edition, we have you covered.Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Jason May 11th 2010 6:11PM
I'm gonna have to start reading this column...I'm hoping to start a Goblin Shaman in Cataclysm. :)
Eternauta May 11th 2010 9:03PM
^ This.
Zuckerdachs May 12th 2010 11:51AM
No, trust me, you're better off not reading this.
Ginny May 12th 2010 1:53PM
@Zuckerdachs
Good constructive criticism you got there.
Wugan May 11th 2010 6:12PM
I had visions of using Wind Shock to exploit the crap out of the Focused Insight talent, since it is off the GCD, but then I realized it's called Wind Shear, and thus isn't a shock spell anymore.
jrizutko May 12th 2010 9:45AM
Yeah Joe's comment is misleading. I can only assume he's speculating on Wind Shear being changed back to a shock spell, but there's nothing to indicate that's in play.
Zuckerdachs May 12th 2010 11:58AM
And it's not going to, because it was changed to a non-shock in order to allow people to cast it on a different timer than the shocks.
There's a REASON why it's not a shock, so the speculation that it might be one again is simply nonsensical.
Dardy May 11th 2010 6:35PM
The shock talent really strikes me as taking a page from the holy paladin book.
My main is a holy paladin (leveling a shaman healer now) and one of the basics of our rotation is a desire to keep our Judgments up on the boss in order to proc Judgment of the Pure which gives spell haste as well as to add healing to the melee raiders and (if we are in melee range ourselves) to restore mana. This shock talent strikes me as a way to add another synergistic item into the healing rotation as well as another mini cool-down of sorts for tight situations.
Very interesting in my opinion.
Oznak May 11th 2010 6:44PM
As someone who plays both holy pally and resto shaman, I don't really like the thought of using this in PVE. Judgements of the Light encourages pallies to do something they really should do anyway: keep up JoL. In that sense, it's a once-a-minute button that is for healing, through and through.
The shaman version, though, if you want to call it that, isn't nearly as relevant. It's more focused on the dps it provides as opposed to the wider results, and unlike the paladin talent, it seems like something you spam as much as you can, from the description. Now, if Wind Shear procs it, I can see that redeeming it somewhat. The other way it could make a better use of our time is that for the altered healing environment in cata, you're not slapping your keyboard to get heals off as fast as possible. That could turn it into something you do when you have a free gcd, and in that sense borrowing from the pally mechanic could work out well for resto shaman.
Cyanea May 11th 2010 7:34PM
Not to mention that mana conservation is supposed to be playing a much bigger role in the healer game, so the thought of throwing out a shock every six seconds for minimal amounts of damage with a very low chance to hit (cause we don't stack it) seems...counterintuitive.
I know it'll reduce the mana cost of our next heal, but I'd much rather just save the mana (and the GCD!) and not cast the shock to begin with.
Hagu May 12th 2010 4:46PM
Blizzard seems to be trying to make all classes blandly similar, if mages get heroism and pally can raid heal, then shamans need the pally Illumination talent.
alpha5099 May 11th 2010 6:35PM
Hard to say what the deal with Focused Insight will be. It definitely feels like a PvP talent, but I agree that I could definitely see it being at least situationally useful in PvE, particularly if Wind Shear triggers the effect.
Ancestral Resolve definitely looks very solid to me, and at least with the talent tree as it stands now, I have to put at least one point into it to get down the tree. Unless some amazingly compelling talents emerge during the beta, I expect it'll become part of my spec in Cata.
I'm also pretty enticed by Ancestral Swiftness in the Enh tree. It's not particularly difficult to get to either, we're already putting our off-spec points into that tree now, and Ele doesn't seem very enticing. Enhancing Totems is still in the tree, which is something Blizzard explicitly said was getting the axe. I wouldn't mind it sticking around though, as I like SoE being better than HoW, and a stronger Flametongue Totem wouldn't hurt. Have to wait and see what they replace ET with if it does get axed, it might not be helpful to Resto at all, but that extra run speed would be awesome to get.
I'm also intrigued by the much lower position of Dual Wield in the Enh tree. With the trees as they are now (in their admittedly work-in-progress state), getting 21 points into the Enh tree does not require any real sacrifices to my Resto spec. This one really comes down to whether Blizzard wants us to think that way. They made all spell weapons MH a while back, mainly to get Enh to stop DW them, but it also put an end to any silly Ele or Resto fringe specs that tried to DW. If our weapons stay MH-only, there'd really be no point to DW. I like using shields, and using a second spell weapon would be tricky to balance, so I doubt we'd see them make any changes, but it'd be interesting if they did.
Titusx May 11th 2010 7:06PM
The resto side is the one with the fewest changes overall with enhancement coming on top with more changes then the other two. Spirit link is MiA so far but there will be plenty of room after some of the "click here to heal more" talents are removed and/or reworked.
Enhancing Totems is, as stated by blizzard, going to be nixed any way. It would be really really good for Elemental Weapons to move to the 2nd tier where Enhancing totems seats right now and then open up those 3 talent points on the enhancement tree for more fun stuff.
So far so good In my opinion... but there still are plenty of things to be exited about. Cant wait for spirit link... even though resto is just an off spec for me.
Roy Inverse May 11th 2010 7:18PM
I like that if we want to get Elemental weapons we can go for Imp Ghost wolf, instead of always go for Thundering Strikes, i always wanted to have it(IGW) on my main spec, its that or Enhacing Totems.
Orumghad May 11th 2010 7:20PM
OK theres nothing official about this info, but coming from a resto perspective I'm a little underwhelmed. As mentioned the crit talents are gone, but i thought the plan was to do away with dull talents like healing way, purification and improved chain heal to make way for more fun stuff.
Also, despite the optimism in the article, I cant seriously see how this talent shake-up would remotely change how resto plays now. With Wrath, tidal waves and riptide at least gave reason to take the drinking bird away from the chain heal key.
Playing around with this talent calc, after taking the obvious talents, and going down enh to pick up elemental weps, I end up with 9 points left to spend on talents I would never use as a resto shaman.
Heres hoping all this will be a moot point.
Morane May 11th 2010 8:03PM
As usual, Joe Perez has a very superficial look at things. Instead of just spamming info, you might want to do a real analysis of these new talents. Your "opinion" on pve / pvp is not very constructive. It's so tiring I don't know where to start. WOW.com please can you enlist a real shaman to talk about all this? can you instead speculate on healing rotation, mana costs, ect...?
i'm sad to see how poor the quality of the shaman threads have gone.
jrizutko May 12th 2010 9:48AM
Not sure why Morane is downrated. That's been a continual complaint since Joe took over the segment.
Ginny May 12th 2010 1:47PM
@jrizutko
Not really. You guys whine and complain about everything no matter who the writer is.
Mozzz May 12th 2010 3:52PM
And Ginny, you blindly cheerlead for Joe no matter how questionable or simply misleading the advice is. (Earth Shield on Rotface slime tanks, bouncing Chain Heal off a tank with a stacking MS debuff, I could go on).
For the record, this article was nothing to complain about.
jrizutko May 13th 2010 4:13PM
@ginny
That's simply not true. Joe is the only writer I am critical of, in comparison to 4 or 5 whom I enjoy greatly and support.