The
3.2 PTR patch notes contain some interesting items. I'd like to point out a few of particular interest to us shaman healers.
Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.
This is a nice buff for shamans. I think I can safely say at this point that shaman healers rely on (while casting) Mp5 more than any other class. This should help out with some mana issues, but I doubt 25% is going to be enough to resolve them. Many shamans have become quite good at their own mana efficiency tricks. I'd bet those who have will simply start replacing Mp5 stats for something else (haste or crit).
Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target's maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).
So we're not a replenishment class, so why do we care? One of the things we rely on for mana regen is the replenishment other classes provide. Currently, replenishment will return 1.25% of our maximum mana per 5 seconds. This change will reduce that to 1% per 5 seconds. This is a bit of a nerf, but .25% per 5 seconds probably isn't going to be that noticeable. If anything, we might see less importance being placed on intellect, but I don't see this being a big game-changer.
A customizable totem bar will now be available for shamans allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.
There's been some grumbling about this in the community, that this doesn't go far enough to fix the issues with totems. I'm not one of those that is going to grumble. Dropping 4 totems in a single cooldown will be huge. No more standing idle in an encounter for 5 seconds every time totems need to go down.
Chain Heal: Jump distance increased by 25% to 12.5 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%.
Another big one. In the original change, Chain Heal was increased from 8 yards to 10 yards. Some people wiser than I am did some testing and found Chain Heal was already 10 yards, which meant that there was no real change. Conspiracy theorists (including myself) think this was already known by Blizzard, and it was simply added to the patch notes so it would be an "official" change rather than a bug. I think there's been enough outcry that they went ahead and gave it the range boost it should have received in the first place. The healing reduction by 40% each jump is another improvement to Chain Heal. Chain Heal is going to be looking pretty attractive once again.
Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.
Not sure what to make of this. It's a change, but to what effect, exactly? It's likely not going to be a huge benefit to plate tanks, I'm thinking more along the lines of cloth-wearing classes. A "mage tank", for example, is going to get more benefit from the straight damage reduction than they would from an armor increase.
Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman's Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.
Two problems with healing wave: It's expensive (mana), it's slow. While it's good for healing big hits on a tank, it's a situational heal that's not used all that often. Currently the healing way talent provides no benefit to the first healing wave cast, only to subsequent casts. This means that this talent had no effect on healing wave cast as an emergency, one-time heal. At best, you'd see a 16% increase to healing wave. In most cases, you would see no increase at all. This change will give you a 25% increase to healing wave every time it's cast. So healing wave will be more attractive, but certainly not enough to make it preferred for every case. It will still be a situational heal, albeit more reliable.
Nature's Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
After hitting Nature's Swiftness, your next heal becomes instant-cast. It is one of those talents used in emergency situations where you might need a big heal now. With a reduced cooldown, you'll be able to respond more often to those emergencies.
There is another use, though. I use a macro that casts Nature's Swiftness with every heal, on every cooldown. What this means is, I get out more heals over a period of time, because several of them are going to be instant cast. With cooldown of two minutes, even more heals will be instant cast. It's a great boost to raid healing and healing throughput.
Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.
On paper, tidal waves looks great the way it is. The issue is that lesser healing wave, along with haste you just pick up on gear, is a fast heal by itself. Adding a 30% cast time benefit is almost useless, since you'll be hitting a wall on the global cooldown. The change here will add crit to lesser healing wave, making those fast heals bigger, and triggering the crit talents more often.
Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.
Another item on the shaman wishlist. Currently, improved watershield does not trigger with chain heal, and orbs are consumed when triggered. Again, with this change, they are making chain heal more attractive. Not having to refresh water shield so often will allow for more time to heal.
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