Out of all the classes, the most useless one throughtout the history of hearthstone has undoubtably been Shaman. Naturally there have been times when the class was strong and had ladder viable decks, but on average it’s been the bottom tier class - ignored, forgotten and left to rot.
Recently, Nebula Shaman briefly got the class WR closer to 50% but that didn’t last very long. Even with Hex and Shudderblock existing, the class just can’t compete in the meta. What horrors await this class after Shudder rotates I can scarcely even begin to imagine.
Every expansion they keep printing utter garbage, trying to force half-arsed archetypes with cards that wind up never seeing any play (except for maybe in arena). This new expansion seems to be much the same, save for one decent card.
The result is that there is one less class in the game, which makes me wonder why they bothered introducing new classes.
They dont hate shaman at all… the player base just hates fast decks and shaman is one of the better fast deck classes in the game.
Theres been a few OTK time periods with bio/flash of lightning but the playerbase hates those decks too so the developers shy away from that even though shaman usually gets a ton of burn cards.
Shaman isn’t very good at building slow decks which seems to be the favorite kind of deck for the player base… the one exception was probably reno shaman which wasn’t even the best reno deck… and nebula shaman had to die because murmur was a bad idea.
There was definitely a time period in the early years where shaman was ‘shaman tier’… mostly due to the overload mechanic being awfully implemented… but since they’ve started to shy away from overload the class has improved loads and the class is probably the most flexible class in the game today.
JacktR summizes it pretty well. But there have been periods in Hearthstones history where it was just Shaman-stone for a bit.
Noway, it should be mage at bottom, say the mage player.
It actually is paladin, paladin is so bad, say the paladin player.
From my point of view, since the last december, shaman always have a deck or two to competitively play at highest level. Terran shaman was insane popular, with both aggro and control playstyle. While there 're some ppl still competitively playing nebula shaman in top 100 right now, after numerous nerf to the deck. So i think it’s hard to say shaman is at bottom tier overall.
It’s literally bottom tier, as in at the bottom in terms of winrate.
Shaman has had its spot in the limelight multiple times n will likely have it again in the future. Calm down.
Where are all the trusty hall monitors?
When I made a thread about devs not liking mage, I had mine taken down and I got a two day vacation.
There be some bias up in here.
I remember when Shaman had the Grand Totem Ey’Sore. That was a fun deck. And somewhat competitive, too.
But, no. The devs don’t “hate” any class. Some classes are strong at times and some times those same classes are weak. Try not to be married to a single class. That’s a recipe for disappointment.
Shaman has had some good decks in the past. I will say though that the random totem HP is by far the worst one in the game.
Shamans not good at slow decks? Are we talking about the same class that can repeatedly nuke your hand/deck while also filling their side of the board because of a single legendary not being nerfed like the rest of cards with similar issues?
Don’t worry, so far shaman is getting the strongest fabled card in the next set.
The class just had some bad sets.
I know we say this about every class but “they’re either broken SSS or unplayable F” is shamans bread and butter.
Its a weird class to design but it is pretty cool that its becoming a long ranged combo deck instead of the terran slop identity it briefly had. Also shaman as aggro is the biggest menace if it gets cards via expansion.
Shaman is the sleeping giant, give it time it always comes back
Because when shaman is strong it’s too strong. When they nerf it they can never find a way to balance what a shaman is. Shaman ends up being relatively weak.
After a few years of that Rollercoaster blizzard kinda gave up on trying to make shaman a viable class, it seems.
I feel like Shaman has been not at the bottom very often since they introduced the Core Set 4 years ago. Before that it was one of the classes that relied on expansion cards the most, but that’s not really the case anymore, at least when comparing to other classes.
I am old enough to remember back in the day when Shaman had asteroid, Terran and swarm/aggro on ladder at the same time. Shamanstone or bust.
I’ve found myself actually liking a few of the Shaman cards the class gets. But anytime I try to play the class (in standard) its card drawing options are just lackluster, it brings the class down bad.
Part of shamans versatility and competitiveness right now is how much tutor they have. Theres like 4 different shaman cards that can tutor pretty much any spell you want alongside the various neutral options.
Minions are little harder but theres about 2 or so shaman cards / that hunter card and the various neutral tutors.
If you really want to deck cycle you can with paraglide.
Shaman is arguably one of the three strongest classes if you look through the history of HS. I’d honestly say between Warlock, Shaman and Druid, each of those classes have broken HS on their own more than the other classes combined. Shaman might be in a lull at the moment, but historically speaking it’s been a very powerful class.
Not even close. Warlock and Druid, maybe in the top 3 (Paladin and Warrior also contenders for 2nd and 3rd spots), but at the absolute top of the list is Rogue. Its not even debatable.
I played mostly Nebula Shaman recently and climbed from ~1300 to ~600 of legend.
Swarm Shaman (~1 year ago) and Terran Shaman (StarCraft miniset times) were not just viable. They were OP at high ranks.
Different versions of Nature Shaman varied from OP (pre-nerfs) to decent. But you had to be someone like Norwis or Pockettrain to pilot them well.
I personally could not pilot them well.
But I remember how it was almost impossible to play without two copies of Speaker Stomper in every deck for months due to the Nature Shaman’s existence.
Shaman is probably like a light version of Rogue. Rogue often has a low winrate at low ranks, but it’s performance at high ranks makes people saying that