I see a lot of people complain about druid, but no one mentions shaman, against whom you are simply not allowed to have a win condition. It’s the ultimate denial class.
- You run buffs? Transformation effects
- You run tokens? Board clears for days
- Anything related to minions on the board? Freezes, both single target and AoE
- You need specific cards to win? Let’s copy Theotar or Mutanus’ battlecry several times
I just don’t see how you play against shaman. They have answers to everything and then on top of that can easily just highroll wins with muckpool and Goldshire Gnoll. I’m not complaining about power level so much as how the class plays. Just like ramp is out of control in druid, I think shaman’s strengths have been pushed too far and it makes for a helpless experience.
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As you point out, shaman may not be the highest performing class right now, but man, it is a total drag to play against. I don’t want to get into whether fun should be taken into consideration in balancing a video game.
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I think Shaman is actually very badly designed. It feels like a very mediocre class, getting carried hard by a handful frankly broken as hell cards (Snowfall, Wildpaw, and Clownfish).
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Shaman only seems unhealthy because its the anti meta class right now. If you are playing something like wildfire mage, Shaman has barely any disruption to your deck or its wincondition other than potentially stealing the hero card.
If the meta were to shift back to something like quest hunter being back on top, shaman’s would be eaten for free wins and would start going away again.
Shaman isn’t really unhealthy, the meta is just unhealthy allowing for shaman to feed off free wins due to the combo and board buff decks.
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Idk. If your board is unable to function for four turns in a row, it may be unhealthy. How this feels also needs to be added to the equation. It feels horrible.
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Thing is, Mage is doing the exact same thing as well now.
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Yeah… the dang freeze mechanic. It’s interesting and fun to use but can be annoying being on the receiving end lol.
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But does Mage have “AVALANCHE!”?
No?
Your argument is invalid.
Might be biased due to seeing around 60% Shamans in Wild, of which at least 70% are Shudders. But this damn freezing sound coupled with that phrase, over and over, (including Shuddermacawk) made me develop misophonia.
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No, but Mage now get a bunch of inevitable face damage now thanks to the whole Skeleton thing.
Also the whole 8 damage Hero Power thing as well.
yea i think the boardfreeze elemental has been a huge mistake, it´s very similar to scales for druid, it just shuts down a wincondition for your opponent with too little effort and rids you of a weakness you should have.
the problem is really them not balancing strengths and weaknesses for classes, instead putting all of the strengths in some classes and all of the weaknesses in others.
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Shaman has always been my alternate fav class (after rogue) due to the funky builds and gameplay you can generate with it. And i agree with you, and ive heard/seen other shaman lovers echo the same. Snowfall could (and shoulve) be deleted and id support the decision.
Never eaten one. How is it prepared?
I think shaman is fine except for the insane board stall. The elemental freeze on the 6 drop should be something like, “Freeze 3 minions and gain +1/+1 for each.”
Shaman is fine, except for Snowfall Guardian. That card is an auto-win against most board decks.
How often is that happening in Standard? Don’t you find it silly to discuss the highroll as if other decks don’t have any?
You don’t have Grumble, people are not playing Zola in Standard Shaman decks, and they’re playing 40 cards.
If we’re going to point out to the Shaman highroll, then we have to to that across the board and call out all 10 classes on the basis of the potential highrolls they can play.
Let’s nerf Wildfire: Cost: 4, Costs one less every turn it’s in your hand.
Let’s nerf Priest Questline: Start of game, all 2 mana cards are shuffled at the bottom of the deck.
We can go on and on with even the garbage classes like Warrior and nerf Remornia because it can potentially be buffed like crazy and kill you in 2 turns.
Mage on the other hand runs more than twice as many Freeze effects. For them it actually isn’t a highroll.
As a rogue player I beat shaman 90% of the time… please more people play it.
maybe every game in 10 I can start with a 12/12 minion on turn 2, do I think that is healthy ? no but I still lose some games from that start …
so do I think shaman is healthy? probably not but the rest of the meta is BS too
Tbh Shaman is abit of broken right now