Shaman - (WotLK) Resto spirit link

[Naysayer]

I'm quite surprised at how little talk there is about this 51 point talent, which is possibly the most amazing 51 point talent of all classes so far. Shaman will be the best healer in WotLK imo. Those slaves in Zangaramarsh are extremely weak, yet when the activate spirit link they gain amazing survivability. Now imagine if they could heal, had earth shield 2.0, totems galore, and chain healing. Wow.

I'm going to reroll my level 17 priest to a shaman before it's too late. Especially since they are planning to also change windfury totem to a 20% haste buff that will work with my pets. I've always hated shaman and their mechanics. Highest I've ever taken one is level 11. I have solo leveled 6 classes to 70 before I began multiboxing (non 70's =druid 28, warrior 19, shaman 11). These shaman changes intrigue me. I had planned to run priest Circle of healing to keep my guys up, but not anymore. I hope chain healing is decent enough to cover for the loss of circle of healing.

Anyways, shaman are looking like the wotlk healing champs, which is good i guess. :)

[Ðeceased]

To me it looks like an imba pre heroic spell.. in normal dungeons you don't tend to find many mobs that hit for more then say 5% of someone's hp.. but in raids against hard/slow hitting heroic mobs i can see this spell breaking a lot :S

also in PvP unless your whole team is highly armoured and has a hp, then a big hitter again will break it all the time :S mage POMPyro comes to mind :S unless ofc our hp pool goes up like mad ^^ then it will be amazing :)

linking my pally tank like this might be worth switching one of my shams to resto ^^

[Manaburner]

Chain Heal=/= circle of healing.

I could never run without anything but a priest with my 4 warlocks for this simple reason. COH is instant cast.
Chain heal takes FOREVER to cast in PVP (2.5). Don't get me wrong, Shaman healing will be very good and spirit link looks overpowered, but the majority of Shaman heals have to be cast while standing still. That makes them difficult to multibox as a main healer when on the run.

[Ðeceased]

Chain Heal=/= circle of healing.

I could never run without anything but a priest with my 4 warlocks for this simple reason. COH is instant cast.
Chain heal takes FOREVER to cast in PVP (2.5). Don't get me wrong, Shaman healing will be very good and spirit link looks overpowered, but the majority of Shaman heals have to be cast while standing still. That makes them difficult to multibox as a main healer when on the run.

qft.. i always imagined mobility as the main advantage of a warlock/priest team.. would be a shame to remove half of that..

[Naysayer]

Chain Heal=/= circle of healing.

I could never run without anything but a priest with my 4 warlocks for this simple reason. COH is instant cast.
Chain heal takes FOREVER to cast in PVP (2.5). Don't get me wrong, Shaman healing will be very good and spirit link looks overpowered, but the majority of Shaman heals have to be cast while standing still. That makes them difficult to multibox as a main healer when on the run.Well, they are supposedly adding a cooldown to CoH and lowering it's coefficient :(, but making it raidwide which doesn't help us 5ers at all. Think that will hurt it's pvp usefulness or is there something else I'm missing?

[Ðeceased]

oo they changed it since i last looked..

They had this condition in that it would break when the damage exceeded 20% of the targets hp (no longer in tooltip)

plus if I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing... Water shield ('http://youtube.com/watch?v=2Y_HkiTMnHI') procs off it ^^

[Vyndree]

but the majority of Shaman heals have to be cast while standing still.

This is correct. Elemental shamans are cohesive with a resto shaman healer because both are intended to hunker down in a totem farm and cast away.

Priests are great with warlocks because both are intended to be at least partially mobile -- dots and hots cast on the run, large heals and channeled drains/casts for occasionally periods when you're standing still.

[kadaan]

It's an awesome 5-man instance or PvP spell, but it's actually pretty lame for raiding. With a tank at 20k hp, 30% is only 6k. Most raid bosses can hit for well over that, breaking the link early.

It also links with two people close to the caster and not the target. This means the two people it links to will likely be out of range for chain heal, and you'll have to run in close to the tank to try and get it to link to melee instead of ranged people.

[Anozireth]

Just a note on CoH, there's a link on mmo-champion today to a blue post saying that the next beta build is going to remove the cooldown on it.