Return of Reckoning

Hello,

I am writing this out due to current concerns regarding the playstyle/feel/enjoyability of healer shaman from my perspective. from my entire time playing shaman i have only played healer, because it was such a fun and enjoyable experience overall, but this patch has flipped that, i dropped all the crests i had to make a dps set thats like 80% complete.

From a dps shaman perspective i dont have much to comment as i believe it overall feels very nice, smooth and fun and enjoyable to play with the new mechanic due to constantly being able to pump and dump 5 stacks and get value from them.

Where as from a healer sham perspective its the complete opposite, the current state of the mechanic/stack system as a healer feels super clunky, unintuitive and not that fun to the point i've pretty much ditched healer shaman completely.

My main point of contention is that it feels extremely like you're constantly battling against the mechanic to play effectively and effiently as a healer. DPS shaman can just tripple DoT, into shield, hot to get 5 easy stacks that doesnt negatively effective the gameplay loop. But as a healer reacting to damage, bursts of damage on people etc, it feels the opposite, a basic rotation of gorkll fix it, 2 hots, shield, into fotg/bbag/aoe heal leaves you at 1 stack. getting to 4-5 stacks as a healer shaman in warband play takes a good while as you cant just spam hots to push the mechanic to 5 without people potentially dying.

It feels extremely bad when you are at that 4-5 stack range, thats because it takes awhile to get there you have to actively use bad GCDs to keep jumping yourself from 5 to 4 stacks so you dont accidently waste your 5 stacks on something ineffective/inefficient. It also leads to situations where sometimes you dont want to top peoples health off due to not wanting to push to 5 stacks and then having to waste GCDs to lower stacks again so it leads to a gameplay loop where you just feel bad not being able to press buttons and just have to just wait till they actively take decent amounts of damage so using your 5 stacks/pressing buttons to take you to 5 stacks doesnt feel bad. it feels EXTREMELY unfun and clunky to play this effiently in the current state.

I have heard a lot of AM's saying theyre very happy with the new mechanic and when further looking into it, their new 2nd spell in the left tree, the AoE hot pheonix rejuvination, adds towards their tranquility stacks, so would add to their general gameplay smoothness as a healer due to basically using it on CD and not negatively effecting their stacks, But on the contrasting side of shaman, their new heal in the same slot, morks gift, an instant cast single target heal builds morks mechanic, which goes against the mechanic which you would build mostly from your HoTs and heals, so its a constant battle of gork n mork stacks fighting against each other and doesnt feel great from a gameplay look perspective.

I have a few ideas on how to fix this issue overall to make it a more fun, enjoyable and smooth gameplay experience as i love my shaman and dont want to put it on the shelf due to unfun gameplay look.

1) make gorkll fix it add to gork stacks instead, this would give it a similar gameplay loop of DPS shaman which feels great by instead of tripple DoTing for 3 stacks, you would triple Heal instead for 3 Stacks.

2) make ere we go give Gork stack, its a button thats pressed basically on CD every 10 seconds, giving it a gork stack builder would massively help smooth out stack battling and generation. i know this would mean you would have to add a 5 stack bonus effect on it potentially, but it could be as easy as making the ere we go damage hit AoE 20 yards or something simple.

3) Replace the new single target shaman heal, Morks gift into an AoE HoT like what the AM has as pheonix rejuv and make it build gork stacks like the Other HoTs to smooth out stuff.

4) add a new skill button that you put on your bars, that when you press it, the next spell consumes the 5 stacks, so you can play and use all spells whenever you want, but once you're at 5 stacks nothing gets consumed until you press that button first then next spell consumes them.

I genuinely hope these are considered to help make healer shaman a more smooth gameplay experience that is rewarding at the same time, as i enjoy the idea of the pump and dump stack system, but in its current state with how bad stack generation is on heal shaman overall, you dont really get to enjoy that aspect of gameplay without actively fighting against it so its not wasteful/bad GCD useage for pushing towards it.

Thank you all for reading.

over-time/dd as the mechanic instead of how the game was designed as heal/damage is bad.

The 5pt mechanic instant dumping is bad.

The FoTG and EoV changes were absurd. Both spells are 100% useless now whether you stack int or willpower.

My DPS sham/AM are largely unaffected by the change.

I have a feeling whoever balanced the shaman/AM never played AM/Sham or wasn't very good at it.

Bump.
A good analysis.

I think you are overvalueing the 5 stack, most of the time it's only worth 1-3 of the 1-4 stack bonuses while consuming 5 vs 1. So often avoiding 5 stack is the better value.

Take FoDG 1.5s (+25%) or instant, the HPS is the same thanks to 1.5s GCD, obviously instant is better but doesn't always matter.
You'd be 2.5 secs better off saving 0.5s x 5 vs 1 instant.
Or 15s HOT is 1x 45% or 7.5% per cast (6)
vs 5x15% =75% or 7.5% per cast (10)


My issue with the new mechanic is that it's more complicated while somehow less deep.

Not only is the value of using the mechanic down 50-75%, but there's very (with some exceptions) little difference between completely ignoring it and actively using it.

The old mechanic had 5 (pre)stack combo mode, but after 5 casts you had to constantly swap for 100% bonus. That to me was a fun and hard thing to manage in combat.
And the bonus was simple for all spells (either speed or strength), now I'm just worried about wasting my 5 stack on something like Undefendable TF.


My solutions:
Reset to 1 -> more depth + better feel

Or/and

Max stack to 3 -> now max stack bonus is actually better than 1-2 stack (this will also remove pre-stacking for combos)

shoelessHN wrote: ↑Mon Mar 24, 2025 5:40 am
The FoTG and EoV changes were absurd. Both spells are 100% useless now whether you stack int or willpower.

Full int spec EoV should heal about the same as standard healer before, maybe more if AoE heal debuffs are active, maybe less if heal bonuses are more prevalent (since now there's a lifesteal portion that before was counted to the base heal).

That does ignore the much worse mechanic though.

Go stack int or willpower to 900ish and try it then, it heals like garbage and should absolutely never be used. And if it's a "hybrid" spell why would you need to stack willpower or int exclusively to make it work (spoiler, doesn't matter what you stack).

shoelessHN wrote: ↑Wed Mar 26, 2025 6:49 pm Go stack int or willpower to 900ish and try it then, it heals like garbage and should absolutely never be used. And if it's a "hybrid" spell why would you need to stack willpower or int exclusively to make it work (spoiler, doesn't matter what you stack).

Hi, int capped with additional magic power over the top AM here. It heals for roughly 1300 for me when you don't use divine fury, and then comes the lifetap, which means that if you hit your targets with it, it'll also heal for roughly about 200-400 more. So we're talking about 1700 healing on an int stacked character. If you also have a large amount of magic crit, 1300 will crit to 1950 healing. This is all aoe healing outside of your group mind you and is extremely powerful in fights where there might be more than one warband present.

Overall, it's much less useful for pure healing sham/AM, and is definitely more a tool for dps to be able to emergency aoe heal in a battle.

I'm sitting at 870 int unbuffed with ~150 magic power coming from 7p warlord, victorious chests and genesis ring. EoV heals for around 1170 for me, ~940 with tactic, so comparable to what was before, even tad better. I guess the damage got nerfed, so the lifesteal part might be smaller. On the other hand it takes offensive crit now for base heal, so should be critting more often.

But it's a dead skill for healing spec. Small crit, small base heal, tranquility bonus is reduced and you're not that easly stacking it just for EoV. That's why i won;t be coming to healing AM any time soon. I loved the class, cause it offered good out of party healing, with AoE on Lambent aura and EoV, right now it;s becomming more like WP, which honestly i rather finally level up instead of playing AM.

new am/sham mechanic just bad

some additional notes of feedback:

the new tactic mork favours me! the 50% less heal reduction should be removed imo, especially as its a tactic slot.

also im still unsure why morks gift gives mork waagh when

Gorkll fix it ---> morks waaagh
morks gift ---> morks waaagh

shouldnt logically morks gift give gorks waagh?

Congrats devs, you managed to make a healing class so unfun to heal with that most shammies (yes, even more than before, go figure) just run DPS now or simply stopped playing the class altogether.

That's a less than stellar way to get people to actually play their healing classes as healers.