Shaman Tanking, what does it need?

WoW: Forever World of Warcraft: Forever General Discussion
1

Playing a Shaman up to 20, I primarily find myself tanking in dungeons simply because that’s the role most are unwilling to perform (in beta, at least).

Low level tanking is one thing, but it lacks options to properly dedicate into the role as Shaman progresses through the game.

What does it need in order to path toward “end-game viable”?

EDIT (TLDR from comments, so far):

  1. A hard taunt
  2. A defensive cooldown
  3. Itemization support (no real options for mail at present)
  4. Long-term mana sustainability for longer fights
  5. Better passive mitigation (vs crits, crushing blows, more Defense stat, etc)
  6. More people supporting the notion

EDIT 2 (additional thoughts and comments from responses):

  • Rockbiter Core - Requiring Rockbiter to be active in order to gain additional tanking benefits helps to prevent non-tanking Shamans from being too tanky.
  • Shield Reliant - Requiring Shaman tanking mechanics to rely on a shield helps to prevent tanking shamans from dealing too much damage (via a 2-hander).
  • Mechanically Heavy Earth Shock - Attaching a taunt to Earth Shock ties up the shaman’s interrupt and runs into issues with nature-immune mobs.
  • Stoneclaw Totem’s Role - When Rockbiter is active, Stoneclaw Totem should transfer all threat to the shaman when it expires or is destroyed.
  • Odd “Dagger Tank” Fantasy - Rockbiter’s DPS normalization causes fast weapons to be ideal for tanking, causing daggers to be optimal and creating a bit of a weird feeling for class fantasy. Hefty 1-handed axes and hammers are more on-theme.
  • Designed as a Dungeon-Only tank? - Blizzard improved shaman’s tools for tanking in small group content, but intentionally omitted tools necessary for easily tanking in large group content. But why? One of WoW: Forever’s philosophies is to preserve the class and spec flaws which enrich the social experience as a whole. No one is supposed to be capable of doing everything all on their own.
  • Problematic Baseline - Avoiding role homogenization is particularly challening for the tank role because their job really doesn’t have a ton of room for compromise. WoW: Forever’s changes brought Bear Druids and Prot Paladins up to Prot Warrior’s standards when it comes to tanking performance, but druids and paladins didn’t lose any of their utility in the process. Did Warrior suddenly gain a ton of utility to help keep it competitive with its new rivals? Shamans would be no different, if not more problematic. What disadvantages would a “raid-viable” shaman tank really have?
19 Likes
Shaman Feedback - MEGAPOST
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I really want to see shaman tanks. Would be so cool to have a mail-wearing class be a tank. We have 3 leather-wearing tanks in retail (monk, druid, demon hunter)

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a hard taunt
a defensive CD of some variety
gear support for higher avoidability / mitigation / defense - crush and crit cap are a problem in end game

9 Likes
4

More people like you saying you enjoy it and feel like it should be added.

I have my hopes up for Shammie Tanks, as well as the Demo Warlock Tanks of SoD… and hopefully Survival Hunter Tanks.

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5

I haven’t played shaman yet in beta. Is earth elemental a thing in forever? Would be an interesting concept to summon the earth elemental and merge with it for a “tanky form”

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No, but Water Shield was added – makes sense for an Rocky Shield (and, who knows, a Fire Shield?) to complete the totemic quartet.

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It will need some source of mana regen, either a passive water shield type of deployment or mana back on block/dodge talent/spell. It will need earth shock to taunt when Rockbiter is equipped. It will need stoneclaw to transfer threat to you when Rockbiter is equipped.

Basically look at how TWoW did it with keeping Vanilla as the core and still somehow viable. Do not look at how SoD did it cause that was bonkers, but really fun.

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8

Mainly needs a Taunt (You could rework Stoneclaw totem to not only just Taunt a target but transfer the taunted threat to the Shaman when it is killed or expires ) and then something like Earth Shield that is reworked not to be a healing shield but a defensive shield (think old bone shield on Blood DKS) of some sort.

I’d like to see it be a 5-8 charges - X% damage reduced at the cost of a charge, occurring once every 2 or 3 sec and when it expires deals a light amount of damage but high threat AOE around the Shaman. Then you are getting some medium damage red. + aoe threat to combine with your fire nova to maintain on multi-target.

I think those 2 situations solve most of anything Shaman would need to tank dungeons. Agaisnt Raid Bosses would depend on how much DR you gave them to help out since Mail has lower base AV.

2 Likes
9

I don’t think Mana Regen is needed with current talents. You want to spec into Resto anyway for +5% to hit, so you pick up Water Shield, but the important part is that the mana regen talent gives you Stormstrikes on Dodges and Parries too!

2 Likes
10

give them 5/5 20 def talent… roll it into toughness. and a taunt. thats it.

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Low level tanking is not at all like end game raid tanking. There is never a tank shortage for raid teams. In fact it is a very hard spot to get if you are not a GM or officer in the guild, or alternatively willing to organize and run your own raids. Good enough doesn’t cut it in WoW, you need to play the tank(s) considered S tier to have a good time. A lot of people find these raid tanking realities out the hard way.

Dungeon tanking is where the game needs tanks. Shaman would probably be a decent dungeon tank with some changes. At lower levels if you can keep mobs off your party and stay alive, you are already pretty much tanking.

I am not a Shaman player so won’t get into anything specific. A totem or spell of some kind that hits four targets with some amount of threat, a Taunt in some form, and a higher threat single target ability is about all it takes.

1 Like
12

As it stands, the minimum viable product for enhancement shaman tanking needs three things:

  1. A taunt. This isn’t debatable, without a hard taunt raid tanking will never happen. My suggestion: wind shock: taunt the target to attack you and reduce its attack speed by 10% for 10 seconds. 6 second cooldown shared with other shocks.
  2. Damage mitigation equivalent to plate armor. This comes from a multiplier in bear form for druids, and from plate in other tanking classes. For shaman, I’d like to see the stamina from toughness baked into anticipation, then make toughness a 3 point talent that increases your armor contribution from items by 10% / 20% / 30%, double that if rockbiter weapon is active. Plate armor tends to have about 75% more armor value than mail at equal item level, this would give us a 60% bonus when tanking.
  3. A way to reach the uncrushable/uncrittable cap (102.4% total avoidance). There are two options here imo: earth shield added and reworked to increase your block chance by 45%, 3 charges, one charge consumed every 3 seconds by incoming attacks. This mirrors protection paladin’s holy shield. The other option: wind shield increases your chance to dodge attacks by 30%, 3 charges, one charge consumed every time you dodge an attack at a max of one per 3 seconds. This is less overall avoidance than earth shield would be, but has much better interplay with improved stormstrike. Problem is it could be too powerful in pvp.
1 Like
13

Shammies have 2/3, they just need the Taunt.

Sounds to me like one of those things Forever should fix.

14

Why not just give warriors totems and a heal button while your at it?

2 Likes
15

Reality is the gear and talents dont actually exist for it to really be practical.

You need both to be practical, and this is not saying it cannot be done, but I am saying the bulk of the shama tank prospects need these served up in an intutive way so that they can make it work.

Should shaman tank do “burst” LOL NOPE.

Should shaman tank be a DPS tree also, LOL NOPE..

Solution..

Delete elemental talents and replace with shaman tank tree.

Deep down around the 30 point range enable Plate armor as a talent, this way Pala / Warrior prot offset can be used. Also some tier tokens that play for this.

Before you think I am crazy, this should not happen.

16

Dunno, why don’t you give Warriors Shapeshifting and Seals too? It’s their own class with their own identity.

Itemization can be done much easier nowadays. I don’t think this is necessary.

There’s no one advocating to remove spell plate because it only benefits Holy Paladins either.

17

Shaman tank right now just needs two things.. an actual taunt and mitigation

We’ll be able to tank leveling dungeons no problem without the taunt because rockbiter/fire nova/earth shock does crazy aggro and I don’t see this stopping any time soon. For end game, you need a dedicated actual taunt, not just high aggro.

The lack of mitigation will catch up to us before long. There’s currently no talents that buffs using a shield.

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Dual wielding and a focus on dodging and parrying instead of just picking up a shield and being another flavor of Protection

1 Like
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Agreed. And that’s not even a thing in Retail, which is so bizarre to me.

Agreed, on all counts. Threat generation isn’t an issue for Shamans, it’s a hard taunt and end-game mitigation.

Same. Forever is now our best bet at ever getting one.

Potentially, though I personally envision Shamans as “working with elemental spirits” rather than “commanding” or “combining” with them.

Completing “elemental quartets” of everything can bloat hotbars fast. Weapon enhancements, caster projectiles, elemental shields, totems… it goes on and on. This can be further bloated by shaman’s “spiritual” (not strictly elemental-based) portion of their class fantasy as well. The most “classic-like” approach would probably be to provide options (via talents or otherwise) to repurpose existing abilities. For example “Lightning Shield” would be more likely to recycle into an “also gives defensives” functionality rather than inventing a new “Earth Shield”.

Would low-level ranks of Earth Shock work just as well for a taunt purpose? Would a 6-second taunt be more or less powerful than what other tanks have access to? This is where recycling existing abilities to fulfill necessary tank functions starts to get dicey, and is likely one of the reasons Blizzard has struggled to offer a proper “shaman tank” spec till this day.

If Water Shield heals for enough at max level, maybe. But as of right now at level 20 doing dungeons… it’s almost not worth the global cooldown to press. It needs high Int to be valuable, which isn’t exactly the most desirable “defensive” stat for a “tanking” enhancement shaman.

An “incremental” approach might actually be the best way to go. It doesn’t take much, see how it does, and measure whether or not any other changes are actually needed.

I’ve seen videos of Shaman Tanks in classic (not SoD, classic). It CAN work… but these players seem to present the effort as though you need to FIRST have BiS gear before you can really entertain the notion (at which point… what’s the point?). The general theming is that threat is actually easier for Shaman tanks to generate in classic than other traditional tanks (warriors, bears to an extent), but the mitigation is much more of an issue.

This actually brings up a much more valid point than people catch. If, theoretically, Shaman tanks are going to be given all of the “tank warrior’s tools” in order to achieve a level of “proper tanking”, then why would anyone pick a warrior tank over a shaman tank? How much “homogenization” to fulfill a “common role” is tolerable before hybrid classes ultimately outshine non-hybrid classes?

As an example, a tanking paladin is already going to cause a LOT of problems for warrior main-tanks simply because a paladin tank will: A) Do the job of tanking just as well as a warrior, and B) Have a boatload of other utilities that they come with to boot. I certainly don’t want a “shaman tank overhaul” to do this either.

While I’m confident this would never happen, it does bring up an interesting point. Druid can get away with having “melee DPS” and “tank” inside of the same talent tree simply because the Druid physically cannot perform both roles simultaneously (they’re separated by druid forms with exclusive access to their own benefits and abilities).

A shaman tank/melee DPS on the other hand? At most it would be a weapon-swap away. Not feasible from a balance perspective. Shamans could have “stances” or “forms” like Warriors or Druids (Earth = tank, water = healer, air/lightning = caster, fire = melee dps) to trigger a separation of concerns, but then what would be done with totems? How far of a chance would be needed to make “shaman tank” work? Would it even feel like a “classic” shaman at that point? Paladin gets away with this largely through a “click to activate bonus threat buff” mechanic, which would probably be a similar direction that Shaman would have to take (in the form of, “Is Rockbiter the active weapon enchant or not?” Some Forever enhancement talents already tease in this direction).

Shields have a lot of armor, and Shamans can already wear them. It’d be strange to move away from shields in order to embrace a tanking fantasy.

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In addition to those things I would probably add AoE threat which would maybe be as easy as adding chain lightning to maelstrom weapon.

It’s possible mana sustainability is already fixed by stormstrike + shamanistic focus.

You could probably deal with crushing blows by adding a bunch of block chance to spirit weapons or some other talent on top of the parry and dodge they get. Or if they wanted to get more creative, give them dual wield and add armor and parry/dodge to rockbiter so DWing rockbiter gives you enough avoidance and armor to tank.