Well, I had a draft post about the new Shaman talent specs, but recently Blizzard has announced that they are cutting the talent trees down greatly, which is going to render that entire post moot. If you’re curious, here’s what I was thinking about using for a raiding spec based on the last beta talents. Although the trees are going to be drastically different, I’d guess that most of the “interesting” talents will remain. That means we’ll probably no longer see talents that just add to our healing or crit rating, and instead those buffs will be incorporated into our base abilities.
If it remains, you’ll probably still need to decide whether Focused Insight is a PvE healing talent. Fully talented, Focused Insight reduces the mana cost of your next healing spell by 75% of the cost of the shock spell and increases its healing by 25% after you cast a shock spell. As an example, if you cast a Flame Shock and then a Healing Wave, your Healing Wave will cost less mana and do more healing. In my opinion, this is going to shake out as a PvP talent, for a few reasons.
The biggest reason is that in a stressful healing moment, using a GCD on a DPS spell is just not going to be worth it. Let’s consider that the tank is about to take a large, predictable damage spike (something like Fusion Punch from back in Ulduar). Your first option is to fire a Flame Shock on the boss and then wind up a Greater Healing Wave on the tank. The Flame Shock costs 17% of your base mana, and the Greater Healing Wave normally costs 30%. With 5/5 Focused Insight, you should save 12.75% (75% of the Flame Shock cost) on the GHW, meaning it costs only 18.25% of your base mana.
That’s not a bad savings on the GHW, but let’s look at what you’ve really done here. You’ve used the first global cooldown to cast a DPS spell, which in effect did zero healing and cost 4.25% of your base mana (taking the Focused Insight effect into account). You then cast a GHW that was 25% more effective. That’s great in a PvP environment where the DPS can be useful, but I’m not yet convinced the net mana loss will be worthwhile when we need to be doing max healing in a PvE raid.
The other alternative would have been to cast a Riptide followed by a GHW. Riptide costs 20% of your base mana, but of course will of course do its own healing and put a HoT on the tank. Not only that, it will proc Tidal Waves, allowing you to cast your GHW 30% faster. GHW is going to be our big nuke heal, so let’s assume that it has something like a 3.0 second cast time for the sake of argument. Tidal Waves would shave almost a second off that cast time, allowing you to possibly get a third healing spell in the same amount of time, perhaps a Lesser Healing Wave.
We know that the healing landscape is going to change in Cataclysm. We’re supposed to see larger health pools, a greater focus on mana efficiency, and more time with raid members not being topped off. This is all speculation, and the folks at Elitist Jerks will figure out the actual numbers for these situations. But, at least initially, I just don’t see Focused Insight as a great PvE talent. Now, if Wind Shear for some reason is considered a shock spell, this whole analysis changes, but I don’t see that happening. If it did, I’d macro /cast Wind Shear into all my healing spells (since it is off the GCD) and completely exploit this talent without using a GCD on a shock spell.
I’m going to hold off discussing other beta info for the time being, because, well, they keep changing things on me. 
On a non-shaman note, it has been interesting to watch Blizzard completely fail on their announcement that forum posts will use the RealID feature in the future. There are so many reasons this is a bad idea. The one thing that most people seem to agree on is that this will reduce the number of trolls, since there will be much less anonymity. On the other hand, you have (1) not wanting your boss to know about your WoW activities, (2) not wanting to get harassed in real life for your in-game actions (if you don’t think that’s a valid concern, use your imagination), and (3) not wanting to get stalked (especially if female, one would assume), to name a few of the downsides.
Frankly, I don’t visit the forums now, and this change ensures that I never will in the future. Obviously, with the current change, you can just opt out of having your real name used, if you avoid RealID and the forums. I’m sure there are many others who are having the same reaction, so I don’t see how this is a good change for Blizzard. It seems they are looking for ways to insert our real names into our gaming lives, in an effort to become more like Facebook. They don’t seem to understand that many people are uncomfortable with the extent to which applications like Facebook have become invasive in their personal lives. If I had to sign up again for Facebook again today, I might just pass, but I stick it out because I have friends that I can keep in touch with there. I grudgingly use the service, despite the privacy concerns, but it wouldn’t take much to make me stop. Facebook is old news (though it will linger for a long time), and eventually a new social networking site will become popular because it can more easily be made private.
So, should that really be the model for your privacy policy in a successful MMO? Invade privacy just enough so that people are ready to quit? Slowly chip away at anonymity until the only people you have left are those who don’t mind mixing their gaming, professional and personal lives? That’s a pretty small market. It’s closer to the small, hardcore, mostly male gaming market that WoW started with, and farther from the broad, mature player-base that currently makes WoW so great. There are successful lawyers, doctors and businesspeople who play WoW. I’m guessing that many would stop if they thought their careers could be negatively impacted by being “outed” as a serious WoW player. People with families may be wary of having their real name connected to their WoW character when that hunter you’ve been ganking decides it would be a good idea to get some revenge by showing up at your door. Women who currently feel safe playing WoW despite the legions of creepy dudes out there would probably rethink their decision.
Frankly, integrating RealID with the forums is a total disaster move for life on the forums. If it goes much further and associating your real name with your WoW character ever becomes unavoidable, look forward to a mass exodus. I could be wrong, and maybe a younger generation won’t mind this level of sharing between the various aspects of their lives, but I doubt that many of the more experienced gamers will have that reaction.
Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.
Absolutely with you on RealID. I find it appallingly presumptuous of Blizzard to start inserting our real names into the game like this. My worry, like you, is that Blizzard is using the tactic of slowly walking back our privacy to get us used to it bit by bit, and therefore that RealID at some point in the future will stop being a voluntary, opt-in service.
I am one of those more experienced gamers. My personal information is important to me, and I will quit over this if I have to use it.
I find it bizarre how badly Blizzard have dropped the ball on the RealID thing. Their main motive (to reduce the bile, and remove the use of “forum alts”) is a good one, and will hopefully make their forums the sort of place they should be rather than what they are now. We’re kind of used to how the Blizzard forums are, but when you think that they ought to be a primary source of information to new players it’s kind of a scary thought.
I don’t mind having all my characters linked to a single gaming persona. I really don’t want them linked to my real name. And I work in an industry where it’s wierd if you don’t play WoW
At least Blizzard have backed down now over the real ID thing and we won’t be seeing it on forums.
Is there going to be a level 69-70 resto levelling guide, I’m levelling my shaman up with the ultimate intention to be a tank healer for our 10man guild (other healers are a disc priest and druid), I’ve never played a healer before and I find your levelling guides brilliant.
I would love a guide that distinguishes the differences in healing in heroics, 10man and 25man, tank and raid healing, I can work some of it out but I’m going to be dropped in at the deep end as we are on sydragosa at the moment.
I can’t say how great your guides are enough, they cover and in depth look at the strategy in a way that anyone can understand and take something away from.
[...] A Maybe Not So Relevant Look At Resto [...]
[...] Flow talks about healing with the changes to [...]