Midnight Season 1 OverviewRestoration Shaman Guide
The Healing Rain Problem
Restoration Shaman has a complicated history with Healing Rain, at least since hero talents were introduced. Farseer is currently our best hero tree and it is looking at dropping the spell entirely. One of the big selling points of Totemic is how much easier it makes managing Healing Rain by replacing it with Surging Totem. This doesn't have a cast time, lasts longer, and can be moved around with Totemic Projection. Having one hero tree offer all these benefits for the spell means when you are playing the other tree the ability feels bad to use, in big part because you have access to a much more comfortable version of it and can compare it side to side. This spell has been a big part of the our kit for a long time and it has a very important spot on the talent tree, so having one hero tree that has to consider dropping it entirely every season is a bit problematic.
To make the situation even worse, as Surging Totem has a longer cooldown than Healing Rain, Totemic also has a hidden passive that increases all the effects that are tied to casting Healing Rain. In theory this was a band-aid to make things like Overflowing Shores, Tidewaters, and Downpour still good when you are only getting half the uses of them, but going into Midnight the cooldown and duration of the base Healing Rain was increased to 18 seconds and this passive was not adjusted to match.
The current state leaves Farseer in a very uncomfortable place. Healing Rain is a very iconic spell and it is on the second row of the talent tree, but it feels clunky to use because of the cast time and not being able to move it for a long time. The duration increase was a response to feedback saying that casting the spell every 10 seconds didn't felt very good, but it created another set of problems. Now you have to commit to the place you put the rain on for much longer and lose a lot of value on the talents related to it. Even though it has already been buffed by around 80% during alpha and beta it still doesn't do enough for Farseer to always pick the talent. The filler spells are very strong and you could be casting more of those instead and not have the risk of people moving out of your rain and making you waste it.
What Could Be Done About It
On the short term we have the advantage of Totemic currently being decently far behind Farseer, which means Healing Rain could be buffed without disrupting things too much. If the goal is to have all Restoration Shaman specs use Healing Rain all the time some of these would help:
The spell could do more healing, despite constant buffs it is still on a weird spot. On paper it is worth the cast if you can guarantee five targets will stand inside of it for the whole duration, but in practice it is a little bit of trickle healing over a long time that doesn't feel very impactful unless you are looking at a log. The spell is very high up in the talent tree and supposed to be a core part of the kit, which should mean that it is strong enough that you would never even consider not picking it but currently this isn't the case.
The cooldown should be brought back down to 10 seconds while keeping the 18 seconds duration. You would still only be able to one have rain active at a time of course, but the ability to move it early in case your group gets out of it would help make it feel better. The talents tied to casting the spell are still weaker for Farseer so having around half the cooldown wouldn't make them overpowered.
Some of the quality of life on the spell could be increased a little bit. Soothing Rain already reduces the cast time to match the global cooldown so there is not a lot of extra room for improvement in there, but Overflowing Shores which increases the area it covers would be a good place to look at. The spell is target-capped anyway so covering more ground would not increase the healing in any way, but it would give players much more margin of error when positioning it during intense moments.
Have you felt the absence of Healing Rain in Midnight? What other core abilities or talents for your class aren't viable heading into Season 1?
