Cataclysm Beta: Restoration shaman talents and specialization
by Joe Perez 
Jul 15th 2010 at 6:00PM
The Cataclysm beta has been going on for a little bit now, and while everyone has been frantically refreshing their emails and Battle.net pages, a new build has been released on the beta test servers. We heard that there was going to be some moving and shaking as far as talents were concerned, and this latest build has brought us that very shakedown of the talent trees.
Specializations at level 10 are now implemented in the game. When you reach level 10, before you can put your first talent point in any tree, you first have to select which tree you are going to specialize in. Behind that choice are the all-new, lean and mean 31-point talent trees. When you pick your specialization, you are locked into your chosen tree until 31 points have been spent in your talent tree. After that, the other two trees become available to you to spend your remaining talent points. Don't think you can cheat the system and hit respec and shuffle points as you want; I tried this last night on the PTR, and you reset the specialization choice as well when you respec, starting you right back at zero.
The new system is not without its benefits, though. By choosing a tree, you gain access to mastery specializations, as well as having some talents now become baseline abilities. The masteries replace some of the baked-in talents that we have been used to taking and instead gives them to us just for choosing to specialize in that tree.
Let's take a look after the break and see what has changed.
Specializations at level 10 are now implemented in the game. When you reach level 10, before you can put your first talent point in any tree, you first have to select which tree you are going to specialize in. Behind that choice are the all-new, lean and mean 31-point talent trees. When you pick your specialization, you are locked into your chosen tree until 31 points have been spent in your talent tree. After that, the other two trees become available to you to spend your remaining talent points. Don't think you can cheat the system and hit respec and shuffle points as you want; I tried this last night on the PTR, and you reset the specialization choice as well when you respec, starting you right back at zero.
The new system is not without its benefits, though. By choosing a tree, you gain access to mastery specializations, as well as having some talents now become baseline abilities. The masteries replace some of the baked-in talents that we have been used to taking and instead gives them to us just for choosing to specialize in that tree.
Let's take a look after the break and see what has changed.
Well, quite a few things have been removed from the talent trees, and much of everything else has been moved around.
Earth Shield has been removed as a talent; subsequently, Improved Earth Shield has also been removed. Instead of choosing restoration as your specialization at level 10, you gain access to this spell. The spell itself already comes with nine charges built into it, making it right on par with where we left it. Gaining access to it at level 10 is a big deal as it will make leveling easier as restoration, and since it was a talent every restoration shaman took, it just made sense to make it a base spell.
Healing Focus is also missing in action from the talent trees. Instead it has been moved to one of the masteries and will increase as you stack the mastery stat.
Purification has also been moved from being a stand-alone talent; it has joined Healing Focus as a mastery. Really it merely renames the mastery they already had in place that formerly increased healing based on the amount of points spent in the restoration tree before moving it to a flat percentage.
Improved Reincarnation is just flat-out gone. That makes a certain amount of sense, as I don't know too many people who actually utilized that talent. I mean after all, we're shaman -- we should never plan on dying!
Tidal Mastery has been removed as well. This removes 5% crit from our healing, and it does not give it back in any shape or form.
Tidal Force is also gone. While this was a 3-minute cooldown, it was one of the abilities we have had that was used in a regular rotation. It really is nowhere to be found. When I logged in, I checked the trainers, but it really is gone. This was sort of a shotgun for resto shaman, and I can tell you already I miss it when healing in instances.
Focused Mind did not make the cut and has been removed. Not terribly shocked at this one; it was not something you saw regularly taken, even in PvP.
Healing Way has gone the way of the dodo bird here, taken into extinction, nowhere to be found. I expected this to get cut, honestly. With all the other passive bonuses built into the tree, this would have been a bit of overkill. Also take into consideration the fact that a lot of end-game raiding resto shaman will usually be carrying enough haste to push Healing Wave close to a one-second cast time, and it this talent that becomes dangerous to balancing heals in Cataclysm. It also falls in line with the design focus Blizzard has for healing by making it a bit harder. Empowered Healing is also removed, likely for the same reasons Healing Way was taken away.
Quite a bit of trimming there, don't you think?
What has changed?
Well, just because things stayed in the tree does not mean they were left unaltered. Let us take a look at what made the cut but what has changed.
Spark of Life is a new first-tier talent in the restoration tree. It comes with three ranks and at maximum investment gives us the following:
I'll be honest; this one has me scratching my head just a little bit. The designers did say they wanted to get rid of talents that give percentages, but here is one that does just that. It gives all of our healing a boost, but at the same time, it increases the healing we receive. At this time it does affect Earth Shield, Healing Stream Totem and all of our other heals. I found it very useful while questing and even in the first instances. It helped keep me up a little bit by buffing my passive healing and made it a little easier to focus on the group by taking a little stress off healing myself. I can also see this talent being useful for heal-tanking, which I still endeavor to make an Olympic sport.Spark of Life
Rank 3/3
Increases your healing done by 6% and your healing received by 15%
Improved Water Shield now only carries two ranks. The effect remains the same with max ranks, though, so not much change there. I am intrigued to see that Greater Healing Wave is not included on list of triggers for Improved Water Shield. This could be a tooltip error, and I will have to investigate this further.
Tidal Focus is now a tier 1 talent as well and has an increased effect with fewer talent points needing to be spent. It is changing from 5/5 talent points needed for maximum effect to 3/3. It has also gained a 1% improvement, netting us a total of 6% mana reduction in the cost of our healing spells over the 5% we originally received. Not a big change yet, but 1% could wind up counting for quite a bit in the end game.
Ancestral Awakening has undergone just a little bit of a change here. First of all, we can pick it up much sooner than before. This is a good thing, especially early in a restoration shaman's career as a healer. Now while the effect stays the same, the wording on the talent has changed. Instead of specifying Lesser Healing Wave, Healing Wave and Riptide, it now says "when you critically heal with a single-target direct heal." While this seems like a minor thing, it may become important later on. It seems that this is a distinction that is being made more and more in the beta, so one has to wonder what they may have planned for it and spells like it.
Restorative Totems has also been tweaked just a bit. The effect is the same, but instead of being a three-point choice, it now only requires two talent points to receive the full effect.
Tidal Waves gets a facelift as well. Currently on the live servers, at maximum rank it has the following effect:
Compare that to what it is on the current beta build:Tidal Waves Rank 5
When you cast Chain Heal or Riptide, you have a 100% chance to lower the cast time of your Healing Wave spell by 30% and increase the critical effect chance of the Lesser Healing Wave spell by 25%, until two such spells have been cast. In addition, your Healing Wave gains an additional 20% of your bonus healing effects and your Lesser Healing Wave gains an additional 10% of your bonus healing effects.
So we have a smaller investment of talent points, coming in at only three, to gain max rank and a slight tweak to the talent's performance. HW and GHW both gain the 30% reduction in cast time, but the critical effect it grants LHW is less than half of what it was before. If you also notice, there is no longer an additional bonus to the healing effects of the spells when this talent is triggered. This can wind up being a huge deal, as the decrease in critical and the loss of bonus healing will start to add up.Tidal Waves Rank 3
When you cast Chain heal or Riptide, you gain the Tidal Waves effect, which reduces your cast time of your Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave spells by 30% and increases the critical effect chance of your Lesser Healing Wave spell by 12%. 2 charges.
Nature's Blessing has also transformed a bit. On the live server, it increases healing done by 15% of your intellect. In the current beta build, it increases the effectiveness of your direct heals on Earth Shield targets by 15%. Pretty big change and helps make up for some of the lost spellpower boost, at least when tank healing or single-target healing, as long as they have Earth Shield. This is similar to how Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave affects LHW on Earth Shield targets.
There are also some non-restoration tree changes to look forward too as well.
Elemental Weapons is now a tier 1 talent in the enhancement tree and only requires two talent points to achieve the full effect. This can be easily picked up if desired after spending your 31 points in restoration to unlock the other talent trees.
Ancestral Knowledge was actually buffed. In the prior build, it was only offering and additional 9% maximum mana at maximum rank. In this build it has been upped to 15%. This still only requires a maximum investment of three talent points and remains a tier 1 talent.
Ancestral Swiftness has also been tweaked a little bit. Not only does it increase your basic run speed by 15% but it makes Ghost Wolf instant-cast. It also has been reduced from a three-point talent to a two-point talent. This may be a good pickup for some extra mobility, as now it is usable indoors. I can think of a few fights where I wish I could have popped this for a little extra speed. It also replaces the need for boot enchants that increase movement speed, which have become standard requirements for most end-game raiding, and may open up the slot to more beneficial foot enchants in the future. It will be a judgment call on this one for everyone, though.
Concerns with crit
In the end, the changes aren't terribly surprising, but the lack of crit is a bit concerning. A lot of our abilities rely on crit to proc, and the current shaman models relies heavily on our passive crit to trigger Improved Water Shield and to help keep mana regeneration up. I plan on testing this to see exactly how these changes affect mana consumption and healer longevity, but at a glance, it seems like it is going to be a bit tougher to keep the mana flowing. It will also depend on how helpful Meditation is in recovering that lost mana regeneration. The level cap has been raised to 83, so we're one step closer to that elusive level cap of 85, which is where I think the vast majority of these changes will see a shaking out, so to speak. There is still no word on Spirit Link, but I will keep hoping it shows up at some point.
Keep in mind this is still a beta, and all of this information is subject to change. As always, we will keep you up to date with all the breaking news and changes here at WoW.com. What do you think of the new updated talent tree?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Docseuzz Jul 15th 2010 6:30PM
I'm surprised no discussion regarding telleric (sp?) currents or the shock -> heal boost one... With all the discussion re: mana being a tight commodity - seems like we got a lot of ways to stretch our blue bar out...
Joe Perez Jul 15th 2010 6:34PM
Those will be discussed later on, but this one I just wanted to highlight the changes. Ancestral Resolve and current have been there. I plan on giving both a thorough testing to see exactly what they do for mana conservation. It is in the works.
Docseuzz Jul 15th 2010 7:06PM
Looking forward to it... if the numbers hold relatively consistent, you could keep healing rains up indefinately... awesome, but probably not what they had in mind....
breaklance Jul 16th 2010 11:18AM
Neither of those talents should exist so why talk about them?
I'll induldge you. Shock talent - lets you charge your next heal. Sounds great except it will never save you mana and take up atleast 3 seconds to do (2 gcds) not including cast time or haste. In that time you could probably cast a spell twice and do 200% healing instead of 120% and some damage
Telluric Currents is worthless to everyone except the leveling shaman. If mana is as tight as blizz wants it no pvp or pve player will waste the mana. And anyone who has been playing for a decent amount of time has a dual spec and it certainly can be a dps one.
Some interesting changes. Ancestral Awakening off of Chain heal? Yes please.
Tidal Force wasn't a great talent. If you used it in a rotation you shouldn't be healing...cause you used the R-word. Some people macro'd it into nature's swiftness+healing wave+ TF which is a bad idea. Why? Cause it takes 3 gcd's for an instant heal.
Improved Reincarnate is useful! I use it, mostly cause I'm still doing hm's in icc. Several of which fights would be instant death if I stood up with 2000 hp, and in some wonderful cases or RNG-WIN standing up with 12k still isn't enough. Its a great talent to invest in and drop some points currently out of Tidal Focus(at 5 talent points it was saving me on average 2k mana on fights I cast a lot). Which also brings me to why I think Tidal Focus is a terrible talents.
Talents that need to go NOW: Restorative Totems. Its a talent that buffs a buff. Blizz said they wanted them gone, and so should we. Totemic Focus. No self respecting shaman has used this talent in years and should never ever use it. Complete waste of space.
Docseuzz Jul 16th 2010 12:18PM
actually telleric currents returns much more mana than lb costs, and with the change away from spamming heals, a small mana regeneration ability that also does some damage Could be very helpful even to the raiding shammy, imho...
Foxxygrandpa Jul 18th 2010 8:21PM
@Breaklance: That macro actually does work. Why? Because NS and TF are both off the GCD.
The shock talent is actually viable. Why? Because haste lowers the GCD, and it would only be 200% the amount healed if you were casting LHW. If you had Tidal Waves up and cast Flame Shock on the boss, then immediately cast GHW on the tank, then if you take into account the ~30-40% cast speed increase from raid-level haste rating, it would take all of ~2.2 seconds for a 130% GHW (and the FS+GHW, i might add, takes 24.5% of base mana due to the -75% mana cost of the heal, as opposed to the 30% that GHW takes alone, making it so you DO save mana) and a DoT on the boss, versus a couple of LHWs in 2 seconds. Granted, if it crits, most of it would probably overheal and be rendered useless, but it would work if your tank gets spiked hard and you need a pseudo-Lay On Hands.
Telluric Currents is also not a waste of mana, unless it somehow does less than 6% of your base mana in damage. It says it restores mana equal to 40% of damage done. This means if you do 3000 damage with a lightning bolt, you get 1200 mana in return for 6% of your base mana pool. So if you go OOM, which might actually happen now that we dont have near-infinite mana, if you work in a lightning bolt every couple of GCDs you in fact gain mana and thus increase the longevity of your healing over the course of a fight. As stated by Kuro down there, healadins that go oom just melee the boss to get JoW procs and so regenerate mana. this is basically the same idea, except we get to do it from range. ^_^
Para Jul 18th 2010 9:38PM
"Focused Mind did not make the cut and has been removed. Not terribly shocked at this one; it was not something you saw regularly taken, even in PvP. "
Im sorry but WHAT....EVERY PVP RSHAMAN TAKES THIS! Clearly you dont pvp much..this is a huge nerf
Docseuzz Jul 18th 2010 9:39PM
What's also good is that it improves significantly with gear. The mana cost of LB stays the same, but the damage, and therefore the mana return increases. ..
Gman Jul 15th 2010 6:36PM
No comment on Telluric Currents? This is the most confusing talent for me. Is it supposed to be a way for us to regen mana? Useful for soloing only? If it was in the first two tiers, I could see it being useful as a subspec talent or for leveling. But this far down, I just don't get it.
Otherwise, the Restoration tree looks pretty solid IMO. I think Spark of Life and Ancestral Resolve in the first tier are really cool talents. They're useful for subspecs too, so there's a reason to go down into the restoration tree as enhancement or elemental.
My main criticisms with the Restoration tree:
- Tidal Focus feels expensive and lousy next to Spark of Life. Comparing it to Convection/Concussion, it is overpriced. Also, I doubt anyone would pick this talent as an subspec.
- Totemic Focus would be great to move up to the first tier so that it is easier to pick for subspecs (maybe switch tiers w/ Tidal Focus).
- Nature's Blessing feels like an expensive talent at 3/3 points.
- No Spirit Link?!?
Kuro Jul 15th 2010 7:03PM
"No comment on Telluric Currents? This is the most confusing talent for me. Is it supposed to be a way for us to regen mana? "
If you're a holy paladin and you need mana, you walk over to the boss and you melee him for a few swings. Because most holy paladins stack int you get lots of mana back from a few Seal of Wisdom hits. Now, you can't do it with every boss, i.e. Gormok, but it's a very good regen mechanic.
GC stated that they liked this mechanic rather than just using passive abilities (totem, plea, innervate, etc..) and they decided to apply it to other healing classes. Y'all become more op and get to do it from range. :P
Vogie Jul 15th 2010 6:36PM
I see this as kinda interesting... Since our Mastery stat is (unless changed) Deep healing, I could see a new style of shaman playing. Since Tidal Waves also effects GHW, I could see Shaman tank-healers stacking crit over haste with a RT, (G)HW, (G)HW, CH, Repeat scenario, while Raid healers would prefer haste to keep the Chain & lesser heals soaring over the raid for triage purposes
Joe Perez Jul 15th 2010 6:42PM
Yeah Deep Healing was renamed Purification. Otherwise it remains the same.
Bismuth Jul 15th 2010 6:43PM
Healing Focus and Purification won't be scaling as you stack Mastery. Blizz has said that these initial bonuses will be flat, and the only think that Mastery will help is the Mastery ability you can get from a trainer at 75.
Joe Perez Jul 15th 2010 6:51PM
Thanks for the catch on that one. Fixed.
CDave Jul 15th 2010 7:31PM
Though no one ever took (except maybe for leveling) I'm surprised they took out Improved Reincarnation; I figured it would've been one of the "fun" talents Blizzard likes mentioning. I personally would've liked to be able to pick it up with some spare talent points.
wdm+hall Jul 15th 2010 8:32PM
No mention of the new Focused Insight and Telluric Currents? These look mighty fun for my resto-pvp spec!
alpha5099 Jul 15th 2010 10:03PM
"If you also notice, there is no longer an additional bonus to the healing effects of the spells when this talent is triggered."
Maybe you just phrased it strangely, but it sounds like you're under the impression that the coefficient buffs we get from Tidal Waves is only in effect when the buff is active. When you spend 5 points in Tidal Waves, you always get that 20% buff to HW and 10% buff to LHW.
Cetha Jul 15th 2010 10:30PM
We'll be able to use Ghost Wolf inside now !?!?!?! this is a huge quality of life improvement that I have wanted for years. Yay!
Cyno01 Jul 15th 2010 11:46PM
"Tidal Mastery has been removed as well. This removes 5% crit from our healing, and it does not give it back in any shape or form."
BUT, with the gear reset, any spellpower is becoming Int, and Int gives us crit.
Boobah Jul 16th 2010 3:05AM
Not all spellpower is becoming intellect; looking at some ICC weapons at cata.wowhead.com, it appears that caster weapons are losing what intellect they have, some more of their physical DPS (oh noes!), and getting more spellpower.
Apparently the devs decided they didn't want the mana pools you'd get if caster weapons still added similar amounts of damage by way of intellect.