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stuff that worked pre-BC didnt really work post-BC. this was intentional, as blizzard wanted to drive classes away from those kinds of playstyles. the resto shammy style of play in a raid environment is totems then chain heal spam, add mana tide as needed, NS+HW if necessary, keeping ES up on your specified target. ES needs to be refreshed every 20s or so id imagine, and totems every two minutes (at least the ones that matter), and aside from that, you spam chain heal. this might be blizzards way of injfecting more variety into the healing aspect of the class, at least to the point that youll use more than one heal.



well, first off, its 12% of BASE mana, which is the mana you have naturally, completely unbuffed from int or +mana effects. hence, getting more mana via int and mana increases reduces the relative percentage cost of the spell.

as for the efficacy of the talent, that remains to be seen. there will likely be another rank (id guess at least two more ranks, maybe three) seeing as its a lvl 60 skill at its earliest, leaving 20 levels worth of improvement to be done. it also may scale with level to a degree, and id be surprised if it didnt scale with +healing. i have no idea what the numbers may be, but you figure your "average" raid healing shammy has +1600 or so healing, and if you assume the instant cast coefficient of 43%, youre adding about 740 extra absorbtion to the spell in its level 60 incarnation. scale this up to a possible level 70 rank (lets say it gains 1000 more absorbtion) and youre talking almost 4000 damage absorbed. thats a hefty hunk, definetely helpful to keep DPS'ers up while random aoe flies around during a boss battle.

add in a level 80 rank and properly scaled +healing (+3000? +4000?) and youre looking at a lot of damage mitigation, even at a 43% coeff.

All of those healing wave and lesser healing wave procs are too unreliable to do raid healing. If you are raid healing... you'd still use Chain Heal because it will always heal 3 targets (assuming people are in range and need healing). You won't EVER be casting healing wave as your main heal in raids for raid healing because it's just too damn slow. Then you need a crit to proc the "extra" healing. I think my healing crit rate is like 12 or 13% and if it's 2.5 s to cast healing wave... lol That means you aren't really raid healing because in 2.5 s people can die or other healers heal them.

Ok, so that means we'd be raid healing with lesser healing wave (which is essentially flash of light or flash heal... but with MUCH WORSE healing coefficient and much worse mana efficiency). I actually do this sometimes because fights are spread out and I know chain heal won't jump so it's a bigger waste of time/mana. But in fights where you are bunched up, you'd still need it to proc off crits and ... it's just not reliable. Anything that procs off crits is more like an "extra yay" skill. You can't rely on crit procs to heal other people... thus leaving chain heal to still be our main heal in raids.

The only way they will ever change this is to nerf the hell out of chain heal... or increase the proc rate of the new abilities... or make LHW and HW more efficient.

The benefit I see from Soul Link (or whatever it's called) is that chain heal hits 3 targets and if the MT is the only one taking damage, then Chain healing the MT isn't going to jump. If you use SL so 2 others are taking damage... your Chain Heal is now hitting 3 targets and becomes more efficient. The problem is it would have to... ONE scale with healing (which we don't know.. and seems unlikely since it isn't a heal... it's like a weird damage transfer mechanism) and TWO have higher ranks. Not all 41 pt talents have upgrades so I'm sure that will also be true of 51 pt talents. If you go to the website, it tells you what our new spells are and upgrades to them... and I don't see a rank 2 for Soul Link.



How would this help keep dps up? DPS is fragile. If you put SL on them, that means 2 people near them take EXTRA damage. DPS should only be hit by AOE so..... That means one DPS will take less damage but two others will take extra (while taking the normal aoe damage). So save 1 DPS and kill 2?

The real use of this would be to put it on the MT to lower the damage they take and sharing that damage with dps (who aren't normally taking any damage except for aoe) or sharing with off-tanks then chain healing that damage away. But the way bosses hit ... your MT can be hit for 8k without crits on some bosses (Tidewalker in SSC... etc.). No matter how it scales... that's ONE hit from a boss. lol

Edited, Jul 15th 2008 12:19pm by Jiade

You say that like it's a bad thing. Now while I do think Spirit Link essentially sucks because of the damage redirection component, tanks being suddenly bursted down is the greatest frustration for any raider past Karazhan. Having bosses that hit like freight trains is poor design and I think Blizzard knows it (hence Crushings are on the way out), so having an ability to mitigate the greatest single threat to a raid tank isnt really a bad thing. Hand of Purity, Prayer of Mending, Earth Shield, PW:S, and now Spirit Link; all abilities specifically designed to mitigate sudden burst hits with instant reactive (or pre-emptive) healing/absorption.

If Blizzard change Spirit Link to either target hostiles (bounces 2200 damage back to the boss) instead of friendlies or make it mitigate the damage transferred by 50% or so, I will be behind it 110%. I am pig-sick of seeing our 20k tank get spanked down by an unlucky couple of hits; it doesnt happen often, but when it does I want to fecking spit.

Edited, Jul 15th 2008 11:49pm by Sinstralis