Are we gonna be in a good state?
From a meta point of view, my opinion is that “Big” Shaman is never going to happen this next expansion. Prescience needs a certain type of deck, and the tools aren’t there to support it. They’ve also printed a 10 mana swarm card which, at present, is pretty useless. It’s Shaman. It plays for tempo. It’s not keeping cards in hand for a big play.
The DR stuff is a little better, but I don’t think a DR exclusive deck will work. What’s more likely is that Shaman runs the standard Renethal/Sire/Murloc core with some DR and undead for early game. It’s possible Muck Pools is dropped for this. It’ll be a little boring, because it’ll play like the current “Control” Shaman (a misnomer), but I think it’ll be okay.
I believe at some point, they’ll nerf both Sire and Renethal, and a tighter, faster deck will be possible. Big stuff needs more control tools.
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rotgill looks amazing for murloc shaman
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My most hated deck name of all time 
In my opinion, from a power level standpoint, it doesn’t look good. It looks like a blank set for the current meta, as far as class cards are concerned.
Rotgill might slot into Murloc Shaman but I don’t know if it will be a meta contender. The “Big Shaman” package is a meme (Blightblood Berserker is a nice Rogue card though) and the DR package doesn’t look good enough in a Renathal meta.
For the neutrals, Bonelord Frostwhisper might allow Shaman to do some shenanigans such as 0 mana Al’Akir + Rockbiter Weapon + Criminal Lineup, or 0 mana Denathrius into double Macaw (or Brann + Macaw). I don’t know how good these will be.
Overall, as cointerm said, it will be a boring expansion launch for Shaman unless somehow someone makes an Aggro DR build work.
Guess murloc deck might still be the way to go
Rotgill ties together basically all of Shaman’s aggro/token strategies. It makes totems kinda threatening, it has obviously synergies with undead and murlocs. So I think aggro’s got legs. The undead 1/3 is just a generally good card. 1 mana 1/3s with upsides are good, lots of ways to give it deathrattles. Gonna be strong.
Drakuru seems really, really fun. And could maybe be good enough to carry some more mid-range shaman strategies. Big shaman seems like a possibility just because of how much stuff they’re pushing for that deck. And big fat taunts that summon more fat taunts have pretty much always been good. But I’m much more dubious about that than I am about aggro.
If shaman turns out to be good, look for it to be nerfed within the first week of the expansion. If shaman turns out to be bad, look for it to remain bad for years to come.
That’s pretty much the history of shaman over the games development.
Token shaman with bloodlust may be a thing with all the rattles. Big shaman looks like an unsupported pile of random cards with no chance of lining up properly.
I think aggro shaman has a serious chance. The 1 drop followed by the new 2 cost spell gives you a 3/2 3/2 3/2 3/2 board on 2… and rotgill will really fuel the fire
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And you get to tutor rotgill with rager and cost reduce it with clownfish. Yeah this guy is going to be coming down on curve alot.
I dont think big shaman is strong enough to beat the favored classes next expansion. If you really want to win with shaman you should probably just play wild even shaman and try to slot in some newer cards in that deck.
So shamans its been a few weeks now. How we looking?
Beginning of expansion had other classes taking most of everyone’s attention (oh the DR rogues, druid still being druid, DKs weren’t as good at release, etc)
Most people also flocked to play with DKs, even though as said they weren’t as meta. Shiny new toy is new and shiny.
This means for me personally at least I haven’t seen many shamans at all to tell.
That said from the stats evolve shaman seemed to have be decent, hitting tier 2 according to to vs reports 249
My gut feeling is that shamans are gonna be around tier 2 if they can find a deck that remains decent. They may survive with a deck that’s ok all around just not super OP tier 1, or maybe they’ll find a deck that excels in preying on certain other decks (e.g focus on being anti-aggro or anti-control, get more wins against some decks and accept they’ll lose more to the other)
Again I haven’t seen enough shamans to say for sure, but I think they have potential to work well with astalor + macaw/bolner (+brann, but everybody can run brann), which should be able to fit in a lot of different decks.
Evolve Shaman is fun and strong