Raid Rx: What druid and shaman cooldowns would you like to see?
by Matt Low 
Feb 18th 2011 at 2:00PM
No beating around the bush today. There were some upcoming healer changes that were announced earlier in the week. I can tell you as of right now, I'm worried about the Power Word: Shield change -- not because I think discipline priests will remain overpowered, but because holy might go the route. I'll explain that later on in the post.
The main focus of today's post is defensive cooldowns for shaman and druids. I'm sure a number of players don't believe there's a need for the two classes to get defensive cooldowns, but in order to compete for utility, I think druids and shaman would benefit greatly from having those spells available. The argument here is that since the four healers are approximately the same across the board (from a throughput perspective), the edge might be given to paladins and priests because of the additional cooldowns they have to offer. Shaman and druids might end up being even more attractive in 10-player raids.
The case for cooldowns
When I'm referring to healing cooldowns, I don't mean spells like Innervate or Mana Tide totem. Those are great utility spells. Instead, I'm referring to defensive cooldowns that can be used to keep tanks or other players alive. There are three main mechanics that come to mind:
- damage absorption
- damage reduction (Pain Suppression)
- healing increase (Guardian Spirit)
NethaeraWe agree with the sentiment among some players that Restoration druids and Restoration shaman are lacking in the healing cooldown department. The shaman buff and Power Word: Shield adjustment above should bring all healers reasonably close in terms of throughput. The decision on who to bring then might end up being dictated by the strong cooldowns offered by paladins or priests. This isn't the kind of thing we can address via a hotix, but it is something we are looking at for the next major content patch.
I know as a raid leader that my decision to bring one healer over another in the past has been dictated by the additional utility that some classes have to offer. By offering utility capabilities to shamans and druids, the decision would be that much more interesting. Would that mean additional homogenization? Yes and no -- yes in the sense that this would mean all classes have the capability to assist the tank through really hard phases, but no because they can save players through other means than damage absorption, damage reduction, or increased healing.
But yeah, it is high time for druids and shamans to get something else. Each healing class should have the tools to accomplish certain objectives, like AoE healing, tank healing, fast healing, and so forth. Player saving shouldn't be any different. I hope that new designs wouldn't resort to being Pain Suppression clones, but I wouldn't be entirely opposed to it even as a temporary measure.
This is where we can innovate and think of some other ways to accomplish this goal that's in line with individual class philosophy.
Ideas for druids
Let's use Barkskin as an example. Barkskin cuts down incoming damage by 20% to the druid. It has a 1-minute cooldown and can be used in all forms. That is one spell I wouldn't mind seeing castable on others. I know I'm not the only one who feels the same. But the 1-minute cooldown timer and the fact that the spell is usable in any form means it becomes a touch overpowered.
How about modifying the Barkskin glyph? Increase the cooldown timer to 3 minutes. Increase the damage reduction to 40%. Make it usable only in humanoid form, and allow it to be used on other targets. Clearly, that needs some further balance modifications. I confess, I'm not as well versed with restoration talents, but glyphs are another avenue to explore. A major glyph slot, perhaps?
Actually, it might just be easier to add another spell or talent specifically in the talent tree instead. Another spell might be the more simple solution instead of modifying another spell.
Ideas for shaman
When asked about the a cooldown wish, all that WoW Insider resto shaman specialist Joe Perez had to say was:
Joe's got some interesting ideas for cool resto shaman cooldowns. One idea he suggested that I liked is Aegis of the Tempest. Essentially, it increases the dodge rate and reduces incoming damage. I had the wacky idea of a water elemental totem. What would said elemental do? I have no idea. Perhaps the elemental could absorb a percentage of incoming damage within a certain radius before it dissolves or something.Make Riptide a baseline spell or a resto specialization. Replace the talent slot with the new defensive cooldown.
A note about priests
For priests, the Power Word: Shield cost reduction benefits from the Body and Soul talent absolutely terrify me. Once holy priests go down that tree, they can still invest points in the following talents:
I think Power Word: Shield is too powerful for holy. Cheaper shields from Body and Soul and Mental Agility? Stronger shields from Improved Power Word Shield? I just have a bad feeling about that.
But hey, hopefully I'm really wrong about that.
I can't wait for 4.1.0. No idea when that will come out, but it's another patch to look forward to for healers. With luck, we'll get a sneak preview of what they have in store. A variety of different solutions are available. Talents, spells or glyphs can be used to make adjustments.
What ideas would you suggest for druids and shaman so that they have similar capabilities to priests and paladins?
Need advice on working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered. Send your questions about raid healing to mattl@wowinsider.com. For less healer-centric raiding advice, visit Ready Check for advanced tactics and advice for the endgame raider.Filed under: Druid, Priest, Shaman, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
Nobayoth Feb 18th 2011 2:08PM
Why not make a talent in resto that makes barkskin castsable on friendly targets and increases damage reduction depending on how many HoTs you have on the target?
johnny86 Feb 18th 2011 2:54PM
Unfortunately, Blizzard has to take PVP into account for all of these great ideas.
Lissanna Feb 18th 2011 5:08PM
because they can't give cats & moonkin a tank damage reduction cooldown or you could just bring a boomkin/cat instead of a resto druid.
Nobayoth Feb 18th 2011 5:16PM
What if for balancing it for PvP it came at the cost of being dispellable again?
Twill Feb 18th 2011 6:03PM
@ Lis.
If its a resto talent.... your point is mute.
Lissanna Feb 18th 2011 11:11PM
It's been a long day. >.>
I have objections to the many versions of "we'll give up barkskin for our new toy" concessions that people are doing. If blizzard wants to give us a NEW ability, we shouldn't have to trade something for it, we should get it in addition to what we have. Tieing a damage reduction to something like Nature's Swiftness would be an improvement, whereas having to give up the current version of barkskin to get a weaker version we could put on other people makes me /sadface (because it would never be able to go live as strong as it is and on as short of a cooldown if it could be used on other people).
Nobayoth Feb 19th 2011 12:41AM
I think that's the beauty of making it provide more damage reduction depending on the number of HoT's on the target. For maximum effect you'd have to use a lot of mana over the duration of the spell to provide any heavy sort damage reduction. Rujuv, LB, Regrowth, and WG all added up are a significant chunk of mana. Essentially what it would do is let you bring a tanks health up from a low level without the fear of him dying before your HoT's can really ramp up.
Kravos Feb 18th 2011 2:09PM
Make Spiritwalker's Grace talent into additional healing abilities - something like free, instant, no-CD Riptides while it's active, along the lines of Tree of Life. Maybe a big personal haste or spellpower buff. Name of the talent? MAKE IT RAIN!
If it's a Greater Water Elemental, maybe IT would run around casting Riptides or a couple stacks of a non-unique Earth Shield on friendly targets.
DBNM Feb 18th 2011 3:30PM
Although I am not a resto shaman (I spec ele) it seems that shamans have a great deal of difficulty in movement based fights that 15 seconds of "cast on the move" doesn't seem to solve and thus creates even more difficulties for healers that don't have Oh S**t buttons. Perhaps Blizz could alter Spirit Walkers Grace (through a resto talent or glyph) that treats it like Blade Flurry for combat rogues and allows shamans to toggle it on and off with a CD and a penalty of some sort such as increasing the mana cost, spells no longer benefit from haste, etc.
This would:
1) give shamans a unique mechanic and play style with no real duplication from other healing classes
2) substitute for a traditional cooldown (or it could be considered a throughput increase since there would be less interruptions to casting)
3) allow Blizz to tweak an already existing spell rather than create a new one
I really like spirit walkers grace and I wish that changes could be made to make it more viable as an actual CD. Or they could just give us back Spirit Link lol
Shadowwind Feb 18th 2011 4:26PM
I like your idea of modifications to Spiritwalker's Grace, but I don't think it comes under the heading of defense cooldowns that the article's talking about. (Unless we're talking about giving shamans a unique niche INSTEAD of these cooldowns. Which is actually an interesting thought, but unlikely to happen given that Bliz is currently working towards 'bring the player, not the class'.)
How about a complete redo of Spirit Link? Instead of linking the person to one or more other people which was apparently too hard to balance (/sigh), a spirit wolf/ancestor/water-elemental would appear and the person would be Spirit Linked to THAT instead. As long as the spirit creature was there, maybe 10 seconds or so, the person would take reduced damage. A slight variation on this would be that the person is actually SHIFTED INTO the spirit world briefly, reducing damage taken in the physical world.
Another possibility is the ultimate ability that the Shadow Hunter Rokhan used in WCIII. From what I remember, he could surround himself with a large buzzing cloud of spirits that would drain life from nearby enemies and transfer it to Rokhan. Perhaps shaman could use a reworked version of Voodoo Spirits: putting it on (for example) the tank, and instead of the tank taking reduced damage for 10 seconds, he would be actively healed by the spirits buzzing around him.
taben42 Feb 18th 2011 8:44PM
Why not just make Spiritwalkers Grace an ability that is a toggle. You have the toggle on and if you move while casting, then it uses it up, turns the toggle off and you have to wait until the cooldown is up to toggle it back on. This makes the ability less like a trinket and more like an cool ability.
razion Feb 18th 2011 2:12PM
Druids already have Swiftmend, Nature's Swiftness, Tranquility, and Tree of Life as cool-downs to use, though. Do they really need more spells?
I thought at the beginning of Cataclysm the reason they (Resto Druids) didn't get any new spells was because the developers thought they already HAD a big-enough toolbox/repertoire , but lacked a cool-down, which was why they changed Tree of Life?
Well, anyway, I think that if Resto Druids got anything at this point, they would need something like Power Word Shield/Barrier to ABSORB incoming damage and negate it rather than replenish what was already lost.
As for Shamans, I would like to give them something like Tranquility. Maybe make Healing Stream Totem into a plain Healing Stream spell that floes out of your totems to replenish everyone around it for a large amount over a short duration?
There could be small tidal-waves EVERYWHERE!
razion Feb 18th 2011 2:15PM
... And on the subject of Resto Druids & Shaman, why do they both have an ability called Nature's Swiftness? Seems a bit repetitive... But that's a rant for another day (Other classes already share a couple spell names anywho, and no one else seems to mind...).
Bith Feb 18th 2011 2:24PM
The key argument here for giving resto druids a defensive cooldown is that we do not have ANY abilities, talents, glyphs, etc. that can reduce the damage a target is taking. E.g. Inspiration and its Resto Shaman equivalent.
Resto druids have their burst heal Swiftmend, which is comparable to Holy Word: Serenity and Riptide/Holy Shock (if the cooldown was scaled up, the healing would be as well). We also have Tree of Life, but that does nothing to reduce damage or reduce our mana consumption (it in fact murders our mana; if you take the route of LB spam and Regrowth on OoC, it doesn't increase your healing).
So yes, resto druids would benefit from having a defensive cooldown that reduces damage; I personally hope that it won't change barkskin as that is an important spell for us but I would take the trade-off.
Saeadame Feb 18th 2011 2:39PM
I agree that resto druid has plenty of throughput cooldowns, but I would like to see a mitigation talent at the very least, like after casting x spell the target takes y% less damage for z seconds. I've really liked the barkskin idea, and the relatively pointless Living Seed talent could be replaced with a talent to do this. Either that, or the Living Seed talent could be changed to a shield instead of an on-hit heal, which would be more useful.
I would also personally like to see both Shaman and Druid Nature's Swiftness spells changed to be more like the Disc Inner Focus (mostly the increased crit chance). That way, with a Living Seed talent that makes a shield on crit, you could almost choose when to place the shield with NS.
tiramisoup Feb 18th 2011 3:03PM
Druids don't need more healing spells, what we could really use is something like Pain Suppression or Hand of Sacrifice -- survival cooldowns that we can use for other people. ToL is a good CD, but paladins and priests have similar CDs to increase their healing output, whereas druids have no comparable external damage mitigation CDs. All the plus-healing cooldowns in the world won't help if your tank takes damage faster than you can heal through it.
Plus all that stuff about "druids have too many spells" always seemed kind of silly to me. My tree has hotkeys to spare, but my priest can barely find enough click combinations to bind all her healing spells.
Lissanna Feb 18th 2011 4:49PM
Things like Tree, tranquility, & swiftmend (most druids don't take nature's swiftness talent anymore) end up counting on meters in terms of the throughput effectiveness. If throughput of the healers is equated, then those healing-output cooldowns are already accounted for in the balance across classes in terms of their overall throughput numbers that Blizzard is happy with.
However, an ability that reduces the amount of damage a tank takes is a significantly different type of ability, which is not captured in healing-done meters and is currently not balanced across healing specs. If everyone has equal healing output captured by meters, then the differences become these unmeasured bonuses that some get and others don't. Druids' combat res used to be this type of ability - however, with the limit on # of reses (and the fact that feral & balance druids & warlocks & shaman self-res all share that same counter) makes it such that resto druids are easily replaceable for reses. Having to use innervate on themselves takes that away.
So, the type of cooldown Blizzard is looking at most likely falls under the second category of damage reduction tank cooldowns.
Twill Feb 18th 2011 6:17PM
Beat ranks... get ready!
Wait. beat ranks? Seriously. That typo... its worth keeping.
Attempt 2:
Bear Tanks!! GET READY!!!
DON'T CHANGE MY TANKING COOLDOWN (Barkskin)! I Only have two! (Against at least double that for other tanks).
How about Blizz does this:
-Returns the old Regrowth to how it was in WotLK
-Gives us Healing Surge because we do want a fast/expensive/large heal.
-Gvies us a separate heal that has the same HPS/HPM as Nourish, but leaves a buff on the target that is exactly like the Shaman/Priest ability that reduces damage someone takes.
-Or just make that heal work like a Disc priests Grace ability. This would be nice but I would really prefer the damage reduction ability. Blizz just seems to have an easier time randomly giving us buffs that are cool yet don't fix actual problems ^.^
Snuzzle Feb 18th 2011 8:36PM
All I want is for Swiftmend to be unlinked from Effloresence. Seriously. It's pretty crap that two of my "oh poop" buttons are linked and have to be used together.
So if the tank takes a big hit at the same time as we're stacking AOE floor heals on top of each other, I have to make a choice. The choice is usually to SM the tank, but then the AOE heals suffer.
It also makes it tougher to aim my Efflo. There's been times where I went to Efflo someone who also needed a chunky heal only to have them move at the last second and no longer be clumped in the Healing Rain, causing them to look more like a Venn Diagram than two neatly laid circles.
Keep them linked in the talent tree, but make Efflo an independent spell like Healing Rain that I can aim wherever I want. Please.
boonaboo Feb 18th 2011 2:27PM
you can't be serious. druids have bres and shamans have hero and totems, and you want more utility? I smell bias. flame me all you want but the raidwide benefits of those classes certainly outweigh a cooldown that only buffs my next 5 heals