Shaman

The dreams Resto Shamans had of a half hour healing rain have been dashed.  It now caps out at 40 seconds on the PTR with the Conductivity talent.

The time duration has been changing as well, from an additional 2 seconds per direct cast, to 3 seconds, to 4 seconds, to 6 seconds, and to a duration on the PTR seemingly affected by some mysterious Blizzard formula (mine currently says 1.57 seconds on the PTR).

The talent is definitely looking less desirable now with the 40 second cap on fights where the raid remains stacked.

Resto shamans have received a pretty nice change on the PTR, with Purification increasing the output healing rain by 100%.

This is a great change, and I can see that this change, combined with the newly redesigned Conductivity talent, will likely make conductivity be the go to talent for resto shamans in any site where the raid is primarily stacked up, or even for primarily melee heavy raids where you can easily drop healing rain on the tanks and melee and have it be there for the entire fight.

Healing rain was quite powerful for nonhealing Shaman specs, so it is nice that there is such an increase for the resto version of the spell, rather than it being nurfed.

They have also added the change that the Glyph of Healing Storm for Enhancement Shamans no longer increases healing rain.

When the round of 25M buffs came out a few months ago, resto shamans were left out. And healing rain has performed a bit poorly for resto shamans this tier because so many of the sites had a lot of movement and a lot of mechanics it required the raid to spread. Fortunately, Healing Wain will get a buff in 5.4 for shamans.

For 25-player instances, Healing Rain will heal for a reduced amount when healing more than 14 raid members. It remains the same in 10-player instances, healing for a reduced amount when healing more than 6 raid members.

This is in addition to to the previously announced buff where the radius of healing rain was increased from 10 yards to 12 yards.

One of the big complaints from Shamans this expansion is that there aren’t that many instances where groups of players are stacked up enough to get the full utility out of Healing Rain.

Previously, the radius of healing rain was 10 yards.  Blizzard has now increased the radius to 12 yards, which will help slightly with all the fights that require the raid to be spread out 8-10 yards.  The 12 yard radius change applies to all Shaman specs.

This isn’t a huge buff, however, it is nice and might help shammies get an extra player or two in their Healing Rain.  It is quite noticeable when dropping Healing Rain on the PTR though.