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Comment by 40551

This talent is a little oddly placed in the Restoration tree. Some healers, those with a PvE focus in particular, will skip this entirely. However, many Elemental and Enhancement Shamans opt to put points in Restoration.

For a dual-wielding Shaman who also has Dual Wield Specialization, this brings your bonus to hit up to 9% while dual wielding, making a noticeable difference. It also helps your shocks hit more often, which is important in particular for Frost Shock, especially in PvP. Some PvP-focused Enhancement Shamans will forsake Shamanistic Rage for Nature's Swiftness, and in such a case this talent is an obvious choice.

Most Elemental Shamans will spec 40/0/21 (for PvP usually) or 41/0/20 (for raiding, mostly), and will almost always get this talent. By the way, the specs I link are a bit rough, but should give a general idea of the overall build.

Anyway, I highly recommend you take this talent. While you're putting the 13 points in Restoration for this, be sure to drop a 14th in Totemic Mastery, which is valuable for any Shaman. The only Shamans I'd imagine who would skip Nature's Guidance are pure healers (who would be better off maximizing their healing power) and Elemental Shamans who maxed out Elemental Precision and have Totem of Wrath (though that much +hit is only needed in raids).

Also, I should mention that a 3% bonus to melee and spell hit should be all you'd ever need in PvP against same-level targets, so this is a nice hybrid talent to pick up for PvPers. Additionally, if you are planning to put points in Restoration while leveling, be sure to put them here, as it will allow you to fight higher level mobs with much greater ease (you'll see much less misses and resists against orange and even red targets). This lets you take on tougher quests sooner.

I didn't mean to be so long-winded! To put it most succinctly, this is a great talent for almost any Shaman. Don't hesitate to put points here!

Comment by 1350

Comparing this talent to a paladin's Illumination talent(60% mana refund on crit) results in the following statistics:

At level 70 your Water Shield orbs give you 204 mana each.
At level 70 with 3/3 Improved Shields(+15%) your Water Shield orbs give you 234 mana each.

Rank 12 Healing Wave(with 5/5 Tidal Focus) costs 684 mana. A mana refund from a crit would give you either 30% mana back(204) or 34% mana back(234).

Rank 7 Healing Wave(with 5/5 Tidal Focus) costs 323 mana. A mana refund from a crit would give you either 63% mana back(204) or 72% mana back(234).

Rank 7 Lesser Healing Wave(with 5/5 Tidal Focus) costs 418 mana*. A mana refund from a crit would give you either 49% mana back(204) or 56% mana back(234).

*Rank 8 Healing Wave produces the same statistics as Rank 7 Lesser Healing Wave since they have the same mana cost with 5/5 Tidal Focus.

Compare all of these percentages to the 60% that paladin's get back and this talent is amazing for Resto Shamans especially considering all the talents that are aimed at crit healing as a Shaman.

Comment by dinnerbone

I'm not sure I like this new (Well, replacement) talent. A crit specced shammy healer (And remember, all the new talents seem to love crit) would have to replace their water shield every 20 seconds or so. If this increased the amount of charges the water shield had, however...

Comment by 13930

Well, this spell is getting changed in Wrath of the Lich King into Improved Water Shield, so seeing comments about mana refund shouldn't confuse any players looking for the TBC talent Nature's Guidance.

It did confuse me though :)

Edit after 3.0.2: now nature's guidance is gone... for the curious, it gave melee and spell hit chance (with lightning bolt only). It was a required talent for enhancement specs.

Comment by 201439

Since water shield costs no mana to cast, I like this talent overall. Renewing WS isnt really a bigger deal than renewing earth shield to me. Although I think I'll want a mod that gives me an audio warning to renew it now.

Comment by 75077

When this ability triggers, you can make out an orc shadow or ghost just above the head of your own character.

Comment by 55483

Does this talent trigger the "Only one globe will activate every few seconds" cooldown?

Comment by 152566

i think this spell needs to get a boost as a raiding shammy i find it rare when i use lesser healing wave or riptide i prty much use chain heal because it is the only effect thing to use, it help on people like patchwork so i can heal all the tanks at once but i runn out off mana so fast and with all the things that other heals have to keep mana i find us shammys go oom fast(i have druids in the guild with like 1330 mp5 unbuff). i think they should put chain heal as part of this because it would rly make up for all the mana u lose from chain heal. i think blizz does not want us getting a triple(sometimes quad) crit and getting massive mana back in a flash and then just put mana shield back on and get more mana back. sigh blizz cant u give shammys some love

Comment by deveraux

Spoken here as a PvE oriented Resto-Shaman:
It is a pain in the ass to recast WS all the time and I actually took it out of my template. But then I had the feeling that without it I would be go out of mana very fast (in 10-Naxxramas) but that had gotten alot better with a friend playing a Shadow Priest (which is of course just luck to have) and eventually with my shaman gotten better gear with alot more Mana Regeneration on it. I feel "competitive" to the other healer classes again and I do totally alright in Heroic Mode Dungeons and Naxxramas (without the Shadow Priest) as a healer. So it is not a must have talent for Shaman healers with Patch 3.0.3 as long as you go for Mana Regeneration (what you should do anyway).

Comment by 152148

Don't know if it's intentional, but the mana increase for water shield doesn't increase the mana gained from improved water shield procs.

Comment by Usada

As of patch 3.0.8, the tooltip for Improved Water Shield has been changed to the following:

"You have a 33% chance to instantly consume a Water Shield Orb when you gain a critical effect from your Healing Wave or Riptide spells, and a 20% chance when you gain a critical effect from your Lesser Healing Wave spell."

Per talent point invested, you gain up to a 100% chance for Healing Wave and Riptide, and 60% chance for your Lesser Healing Wave.

A nerf that won't let you spam LHW as much anymore. I used to spam LHW on the my target with Earth Shield, coupled with Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave. Unfortunately this nerf won't allow me to sustain LHW spam as much.

As a serious PVPer and casual PVE'er, I won't be investing 3 talent points into this anymore. Granted if you are a fan of Healing Wave Spam then by all means this has no effect on you. I relied on having a high crit chance while spamming LHW in BGs to sustain a large refund of mana.

Comment by 392736

This talent will also proc off Chain Heal crits in patch 3.2. I don't know the chance to proc on a crit yet.
This will no longer consume the Water Shield orbs, but will instead restore mana as if it HAD consumed an orb.

That's what they're planning so far, let's see if they keep it that way, a lot of things can still happen before patch is released.

Comment by 371420

From newest PTR -

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.

Co no CH crits needed for this. Chain Heal is mostly main spell at raids, and we don't see any *also* word in description, so from what I understand, HW or Riptide crits will no longer proc consuming orb, which was helpful at Heroics.
This may be a typo in description though, because when they completely change talent, there's something like This talent has been redesigned. in patch notes ;)

One certain thing - you won't have to spam Water Shield to keep it up though.

Comment by 206160

the wording confuse me.

it says AS IF... AS IF I consume...
does it also expect that I have Water Shield on?

anyone tested if this also proc if I have different shield on?

yes I'm aware of the name. just curious.

Comment by Toppers

The proc is not limited to one proc pr. cast, so you can end up with getting more mana back then you used.
I have seen 3 procs from one CH in my combatlog, but haven't seen 4 yet. But I'm sure if 3 is possible, 4 is aswell - but just extremely rare.

With ~40% critchance on CH - any hit will have a 40% x 30% = 12% chance to proc an orb.

Chance for 4 procs = 0,02%
Chance for 3 procs = 0,61%
Chance for 2 procs = 6,69%
Chance for 1 procs = 32,71%
Chance for 0 procs = 59,97%

Assuming the CH hits 4 targets.

Comment by tomgc

I realise that this may be downranked but I have a question. Does this talent work if my heal was 100% overheal?

Comment by 317286

Fun fact: If you land a critical healing spell without Water Shield active and cast Water Shield immediately after the spell lands (won't work with Riptide or Nature's Swiftness due to GCD) you will gain mana as if you landed a crit with the shield active.

Links

Improved Water Shield

Improved Water Shield

Talent

You have a 100% chance to instantly gain mana as if you consumed a Water Shield Orb when you gain a critical effect from your Healing Wave or Riptide spells, a 60% chance when you gain a critical effect from your Lesser Healing Wave spell, and a 30% chance when you gain a critical effect from your Chain Heal spell.

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Physical

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

n/a

Cost

None

Range

0 yards (Self)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

0 seconds

Aura proc chance

100%

Effect

Apply Aura: Dummy
Value: 100
PVP Multiplier: 1
Server-side script
Affected Spells:

Healing Wave	Healing Wave	Healing Wave
Healing Wave	Healing Wave	Healing Wave
Healing Wave	Healing Wave	Healing Wave
Healing Wave	Healing Wave	Healing Wave
Healing Wave	Healing Wave

Flags

Is Ability
Passive spell
Aura is hidden
Cast time is hidden

Improved Water Shield

Buff

Spell Details

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