Totem Talk: The state of Telluric Currents and speculating for Mists
by Joe Perez 
Mar 27th 2012 at 5:00PM
Time to revisit this topic again. You're probably asking yourself why we're talking about this again. Well, to be honest, it's because it's the end of an expansion cycle. While we're prepping for the next expansion that will shake up mechanics and stats, we find ourselves at a point of speculation -- and therefore, things like Telluric Currents find themselves back in the crosshairs, so to speak.
The talent itself is something you use, or you don't use. There are some hard facts about the talent. You do not need to stack hit to make it useful, only to make sure every bolt hits. It is not mana neutral, using the talent and casting Lightning Bolt will indeed fill up your mana bar. It can be used to supplement low spirit totals for beginning healers, and can be used in certain phases on raid bosses to maintain healing mana totals. Whether it is optional or mandatory depends on a lot of factors up to and including the team you're healing with and the content you're healing through.
Now while that's the who, what, and why, the talent is a curiosity and often considered a design flaw. There are things about it that are good and things about it that are bad. So let's take them in order and talk about it a bit.
The good
The talent does have some good intentions and some decent application in the live game environment. First of all, it's a nod to active healing, something we're going to be seeing very soon from our healing-minded monk cousins, and it encourages people to do something other than stare at green bars and mash buttons and macros for several hours at a time. The same can be said about Focused Insight, as well. Make no mistake, this is a good thing. Anything that attempts to break up monotony in a game can be a good thing. While the active healing model isn't ideal for everyone (or even enjoyable by everyone), it's an attempt to evolve the class slightly from what it's been for half a decade.
The attempt at evolving the class is something we'll likely see more of, just in different ways. Since the dawn of adventuring parties in games, there's been the holy trilogy -- the tank, the DPS and the healer. Video games have been emulating that ever since the inception of the triangle. The problem is it leads to stale characters sometimes. You do the same thing day after day, month after month, year after year, and if it doesn't change, people just stop caring about it. Even if you hate the change, you still feel something about it. Seeing changes or attempts at talents like this means that the game developers still actively care about your class, your role and your participation in their game world -- and yes, that is very much a good thing.
TC accomplished quite a bit for its limited time in game this expansion. It evolved from something that was speculated to be mana-neutral into something that became a way to completely recharge your batteries. It gave you wiggle room to reforge out of spirit and pick up other throughput stats like haste and mastery, letting you push out a little more HPS than you could without it. Point is, it had some good intentions and good ideas.
The bad
The talent had its good points, but it also had some bad points as well. The first thing that happened was that people started adopting the mindset that to use TC, you had to either stack hit or neuter your other talents to pick up Elemental Precision. It also had people thinking that it had become a required talent and that any shaman who didn't have it wasn't worth taking on raids or content. This thought was similar to the one we faced in Ulduar and the whole single-target healing debates years ago.
It also highlights some potential design flaws in healers in general. The idea of tying up something that breaks the monotony of healing is a good thing, but tying it to a resource that is necessary to fulfill our primary function is a bad thing. It becomes something that potentially isn't fun to use and, as we've seen, straddles that line of necessary or optional so tightly that it can generate a great divide. In the case of flaws, it started people off in a downward spiral of analyzing restoration shaman healing in a way we haven't done since Ulduar really. Questions were asked such as what do we do to keep up with other healers? Are our heals too expensive for the healing they do? Are we as efficient as the other healers? Are we tuned correctly? There are more; I've gotten them all in email and comments on Twitter. Hell, I've gotten them in comments on the site here. The issue is when you start to see an influx of questions like that and they all have the common root, it's time to take a step back and evaluate.
The not so ugly
The good news is that's exactly what Mists offers the opportunity for the developers at Blizzard Entertainment to do. First thing is the whole normalizing healing mana. We can already see that at work with the total mana as dictated by level instead of by intellect stacking. With all the healers getting their mana nerfed, so to speak, and new options for mana regen already sort of poking up now that the Mists beta has started, we have a perfect opportunity to be balanced again.
What I'd want is to have our healing output and mana consumption just be on level with other healers. I honestly believe we can get to that point where Mana Tide Totem is used as a raid and group cooldown instead of being something you have to aggressively use for yourself to keep up with the other healers. I honestly do believe that we're not broken but just that we need to have some numbers tweaked.
I'm hopeful that we'll see this get balanced out in Mists, and with beta invites going out, I'm hoping I'll get mine soon so I can see how exactly how we compare after the expansion to where we are. I just hope we're no longer in a spot where Telluric Currents straddles that mandatory, must-have line.
There are things that indicate this may be the case, including new glyphs that we've seen and which we'll talk about more next week, that represent different ways for us to modify our toolkits and personalize our healing experience. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get in the beta soon, test these out for myself and report back to you. For now, though, I'm just going to hope that TC can become antiquated and that mana consumption will just be put in line with healing throughput.
So, now is your chance to sound off. What do you think of Telluric Currents? How do you hope it winds up going into Mists?
Totem Talk: Restoration lends you advice on healing groups, DK tanks and heroics and mana concerns in today's endgame -- or take a break and look back at the rise of the resto shaman. Happy healing, and may your mana be plentiful!
Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Cyno01 Mar 27th 2012 5:21PM
I love that talent so much, in 5 mans if Its a good group I can usually at least beat the tank on dps, and if it's not a good group I can usually beat a dpser or two. Earth shield and rolling riptides are enough to keep a geared tank up, healing stream for the group if nobody stands in fire and then I just drop my fire ele and pop hero on every boss fight. Regen? Who needs it. Lightning bolt lightning bolt lightning bolt! *throws tennis ball*
Shammytime Mar 27th 2012 5:34PM
Me and TC have had a bit of a love hate relationship over the coarse of the expansion. At times it was a life saver, getting in a few lb's to get extra mana (Baleroc and Madness come the forefront of my mind), but other times it was annoying. Like when my guild was progressing through Warlord, I was burning through mana and was almost constantly casting and when I needed mana I sometimes didn't have time to cast a Lb or when I did someone died.
I don't like that the shaman class has to stop healing and dps in order to have roughly the same amount of mana regen as other healing classes. My guild is currently on H Spine and I' have fluctuated between haste sets and crit sets in order to up my regen, and that just keeps me realativly close but still behind my other two fellow healers in terms of mana regened.
TC can reset a shaman's mana bar, yes, but to effectively use the talent take more than just mindlessly throwing out the spell. It is an interesting mechanic that adds flavor to the spec. I would be nice if there was a better trade off for not healing in order to pew pew, but I see TC going away with Blizzs new paradigm with mana.
Firestyle Mar 27th 2012 5:46PM
Whatever they do, I hope they get it right. Because they won't be materially fixing it for the next 1.5 years or more after.
Matthew Mar 27th 2012 5:49PM
Druids as their level 90 skill get a talent that empowers their heals after casting damage spells and vice versa. (more sense for a resto to use this, as a boomkin doesn't need to heal). This is the same philosophy taken up a notch.
Mowtems Mar 27th 2012 5:56PM
Say what you will; I love me some TC.
I ran with it through T11/T12 until I gave it up for some added mobility on the Rag fight. What I didn't realize was that I was needlessly improving the talent beyond what it needed to be. (+hit, +elemental damage... that sort of thing). Once I shifted all that away, all TC cost me was 1 stupid talent point.... totally worth it.
With the introduction of the healing monk, I always assumed that a new design philosophy at Blizzard would be that all healers are expected to do SOME damage (consistent with smite priests and the increased hybridization of druids), and that TC was part of that.
Sqtsquish Mar 27th 2012 6:32PM
I hate the very idea of it, I don't like the idea of the practical implementation of needing mana to get mana back and I hate the idea of not healing someone just so I can heal someone else who might need it more 3 seconds later, hoping that the other healers will keep them up until then. It is practically a crutch and the only positives I see about it is I might be able to help beat an enrage timer with it (hardly ever is that the case though, most of the time I would be carrying a floater), and it does give me some regen at the cost of attentiveness to the raid.
greenfuse80 Mar 27th 2012 6:48PM
"The idea of tying up something that breaks the monotony of healing is a good thing, but tying it to a resource that is necessary to fulfill our primary function is a bad thing."
I don't agree with this just a general statement. It's a matter of personal preference. I love having active mana management tools available to me as a healer (vs just passive regen and long regen cds). I think it makes our role more interesting.
Looking at the Mistweaver's regen tools (the two teas) looks very interesting on paper. And if it plays out the way I hope it does, they're going to have perhaps the most active regen model among healers.
I like that TC is staying alive via glyph in MoP. I love the talent and it's part of the reason why playing on my Holy Priest is so frustrating. Standing idle and waiting on cds isn't fun to me.
VezRoth Mar 27th 2012 7:44PM
In my raid it's a paladin, a druid and myself as a resto shaman. My heals are usually either first or second (big AOE fights the Pally rips me to shreds) for heals. My over-heals are the lowest (almost always) and yet... I've never had mana problems.
Maybe it's because I really am designated as a tank heals rather than raid? I dunno, but I've never really had too many problems with my mana and heals.
Spellotape Mar 27th 2012 7:58PM
I wasn't sure at first, but like any healing decision - when to use a healing CD/mana CD/big heal vs. smaller one vs. aoe heal - using TC has become another part of mana/healing management and I love it. On progression fights I always have more mana than other healers in the raid but not at the expense of raid life; for me, DS is pretty much "the" raid for TC specs due to frequent damage lull/mana regen periods. Because I also have more mana, I heal more, and when everyone else is oom, I'm not.
Jackwraith Mar 27th 2012 10:27PM
Never used it. In fact, for much of Cat, I didn't use Focused Insight, either, because when it was first designed, it was so inefficient as to be pointless. Only when they later added the 30% boost to the next heal did it become viable, IMO. Also, the only reason it's viable is the fact that Shocks are instant cast. I don't want to spend time casting LBs. That's time that I could be casting Waves and Chains.
We still have the longest average casting time of any healer. All healers benefit from haste. We NEED it (in direct contrast to my main spec: Enhancement.) Since we only have one real instant heal (the excellent Riptide, plus the largely irrelevant Unleash Earthliving), our heals have to hit hard when they get past the casting bar. Thus, Focused Insight serves the purpose of really only costing the GCD plus the cost of the Shock, which is bearable. But I usually don't want or can't spend the time to make use of TC.
I just don't think it was a good idea to begin with. I'm all about adding to my role as a healer. I'm frequently in the thick of things on my paladin, swinging away with Crusader Strike to generate Holy Power (and because I have the breathing room created by Beacon.) I'm constantly using Moonfire on my Druid, trying to get Omen of Clarity to proc (and because I have the time allowed by instant-cast HoTs.) I'm an Atonement Disc Priest, which means I attack to heal (even if the system still needs some tweaking.) All of those are roles which I'm glad to engage in because they're either generating extra bonuses or resources or contributing directly to my healing. It's not attacking for the central resource which enables me to heal in the first place. That's the flaw of TC and that's why I've never used it.
Snuzzle Mar 27th 2012 11:54PM
The problem is, just like we've seen every time something like this is added in, if you make it an option, you become balanced around the assumption that you're making as much use of it as you can, and are balanced around it.
Oh you can spam LB to gain mana back now? Congratulations, you're balanced around the assumption that you're doing just that. Enjoy.
As much fun as TC is, and as cool as it is, it just can't work. Balance us around using it as often as possible, we get this. don't do that, and the shamans who can manage to do so get endless mana. Neither option is very palatable.
Sally Bowls Mar 28th 2012 2:15AM
I played a Healadin and a lock in TBC. I can absolutely, positively assure you that not all changes are good.
I was wary of TC but have warmed to it considerably. But I think Snuzzle makes a good point; how can you balance an encounter without assuming it is mandatory unless the spell is worthless?
Dardoleon Mar 28th 2012 4:51AM
TC is the reason I leveled my shaman. Most healers benefit from idling, while for a Resto Shaman, there is always something to do, which makes all the difference in how you heal.
I'm also using (and loving) Focused Insight. great filler when you have to move and the healing gap from not being able to (let's face it) chain heal is filled by buffing the very first one you throw when you stop moving or even just to buff that next Healing Rain.
It's true that Shaman healing can be a bit hard compared to the others, but I don't feel I'm healing less effectively than other classes (mind you I switched to resto in december, only had limited experience with it before DS).
marla Mar 28th 2012 9:33AM
Welcome to the resto ranks, but most of us will tell you that DS is probably the most "fair" to us (as in, playing to our strengths not our weaknesses) out of all the Cata raiding content, so you're probably not getting a good impression of where we've been :-) I went through a class crisis mid-point in FL where I felt pretty much like I was working twice as hard as other healing classes to get close to their output.
marla Mar 28th 2012 9:28AM
I started Cata with a negative impression of TC, mainly for the reasons presented above -- "I'm a healer, why should I be throwing lightning bolts?" "Why should I spend mana to get mana back?"
Now, I am a complete convert and don't hesitate to tell up and coming restos that they should, if at all possible, talent for TC. For me, TC harkens back to the days of BC when I rotated mana cooldowns/potions to maintain my mana for a steady output of healing. Although I largely only use it on progression/current tier fights, I find myself constantly watching for that lull in healing where I can LB a bit to get back some mana. It almost feels like a groove on fights I know well -- Zon'ozz, for example, I know I'll be blowing most of my mana bar away in the longest bounce/black phase, but then I'll have an opportunity to LB a bit as well prepare for the next bounce phase.
Are we balanced around it? At this point, yes, without a doubt. Should we be balanced around it? That's complicated. Many other healing classes have similar mechanics (do this to get mana back) to maintain mana -- like making sure to get rapture procs regularly on my disc priest or keeping judgement up on my pally (and ye olde days when we judged on CD). I would have no theoretical problem with being balanced around it but- yet, if we do become permanently balanced around TC, it should be a baseline talent, not an option or a glyph.