Hey!
In this article I want to list some possible small changes which would, in my opinion, make resto shamans a more interesting build.
This article doesn't contain anything radical and focuses on easy-to-implement changes.
As a preface: restoration shaman got some really big indirect buffs in TWOW and people tend to overlook it. At least for the lategame. The build's main problem is mana efficiency. We have a 5% mana increase as a talent, and two mana totems, a weak one and a big CD one. No way to get back mana from crits or no other way to help mana management.
However, TWOW really likes the 5% of your mana regeneration continues while casting mechanic and they added some really cool options.
Are you a fresh lvl. 60 resto shaman? Save some money for that chest item and collect some shards for the head item and you get 2 items which can easily accompany you until late AQ40 - early Naxx. Now you get a passive 10% mana regeneration coming from items. And you have the option to go for more, if you are willing to use some otherwise weaker items (mostly looking at you, Kara Crypts drops). Also, the ES staff later.
With some effort, you can start with 10% mana regeneration when you start raiding, and you can go up to 20% with ES staff and druid buff. My mana regen gear has 35% mana regen with the buff but on paper you can go up to 45-50% if you are willing to give up stats and + healing. In other words, you have the option to have some help for early raids and have cool items or you can go to awesome mana regen and worse healing output from the get go if you want to.
Same idea should be applied at leveling. I think TWOW Team overvalues this mechanic a bit. Some early and mid-leveling dungeon drops having 5% mana regen would help a ton for leveling restos (and other builds with mana problems). Examples are adding a 5% mana regen chest to places like Shadowfang Keep, 5% mana regen + some spirit head to Uldaman, things like this.
The only thing to be mindful of is to prevent raiders having even more mana regen. So for example chest pieces with 5% mana regen, helmet, maybe weapons can easily be added to the game. But a new leg item with added mana regen might be a problem because a raider could take those additional items and go up to 60-70% mana regen by giving up a bunch of stats (not sure if it were to cause balance issues).
My first proposal is this: adding some 5% mana regen items to leveling dungeons but to equipment slots which already have 5% mana regen items at a higher level.
Second topic is healing way talent. Healing wave is barely used in raids, because it is very slow. Sometimes you cast a max level healing wave alongside with nature's swiftness, but that's all. You won't stack healing waves on a target. If you try a healing wave-based setup at a raid, most of your heals just become overheals because the others patch up the target by the time your heal arrives. In a cross-faction server where paladins and shamans raid together, healing way is a dead talent for raiding.
Healing way includig lesser healing wave would be a very good change. Lesser healing wave is actually used at raiding because it is fast and this talent could motivate restos to use it more. Nowadays it is lagging behind the 90% chain heal but this change could add some percents to it. This is my second proposal.
Ancestral healing shouldn't proc on chain heal crits I think. If it only procs on healing wave and lesser healing wave, restos are further motivated to have some kind of rotation or thought behind their button-pressing. A tank needs the ancestral healing buff? Chain heal has to be paused a bit to trigger some lesser healing wave on the target. This would slightly nerf restos but the above change and the change being proposed after this makes up for this nerf.
I just can't accept healing focus in its current form. It requires 5 talent points for the 70% spell interruption prevention. As a comparison, priests have healing focus which does the same for 2 talent points. If we want to be fair, we make it a 2 point talent with the same effect, freeing up 3 talent points.
For those 3 talent points I'd introduce a new talent in the resto tree, but it wouldn't be considered a small change so I won't advise new talents. Instead, restos would have 3 more talent points to spend elsewhere.
The small change proposals:
* Adding 5% mana regeneration items for leveling.
* Healing way being procced by lesser healing wave
* Ancestral healing not being procced by chain heal
* Healing focus only costing 2 talent points.