Hey Shaman Community, I have been playing a shaman since MoP. I have played WoW since Wrath and never thought I would have enjoyed playing a shaman until MoP. Anyways, I know I may not have much shaman experience as those who started in Vanilla however, I think I have some ideas which to me would make the class so much more fun.
To give some perspective I don’t do end-game raiding or even PvP. It’s not that I cannot because I can. I just choose not to because that is my playstyle. Everyone is free to do what they want in their game. Anyways, So I have been doing a bit of research into the Warcraft D&D tabletop game, as well as several other sources. Here is just my theory of some ideas that Blizard could think about going into this next expansion. Whether someone from Blizzard reads this or not it doesn’t matter. I would like to hear from the community.
Shamans overall:
Problem areas: to start off here are the problem areas that I am aware of
- Gear: shamans have always had this issue where at the start of the expansion we are always weak on gear until we get good gear. A problem that may be the higher level shamans who do the high-end raiding, mythic dungeons, or PVP does not always experience what the average shaman does.
- Survivability: another area in which the shaman has always had a problem. let’s face it for elemental and enhancement our little 1,000 plus heal spell doesn’t really do much for us. Sure we can do some gear tricks, or have the earth shield that helps boost our healing for a bit, or the surprise opportunity where we get a healing crit helps. Nonetheless, survivability has always been a weak point for us. Especially when we find ourselves severely outnumbered or outmatched.
- Viability of specs: what I mean by that is our competitiveness with other classes and specs, especially in PVP or in mythic or raids. Currently, we sort of don’t have this problem as shamans are holding their own. Yet in the past, we have had this problem. I know for myself I have spent countless hours of rejections in trying to get into normal raiding or even mythic 0-3 dungeons. I don’t know about anyone else yet posts on the forums have indicated that this is a problem.
- The specs and class sometimes just are unappealing: what I mean by this is sometimes the way Blizzard has worked for our class and spec it just doesn’t seem very practical. You have some spells that should be on Enhancement on Elemental and visa versa. Resto rarely has any problems (though yes I am aware you Resto shamans have your problems as well just that out of all the specs you shine the most) yet elemental and enhancement the spells seem to be lackluster, the rotation seems clunky, and just overall unimpressive. One of my guildmates who is helping his daughter play a shaman even commented “the class is difficult to understand with so many buttons to push that doesn’t seem to do much as far as damage or even animation was goes.”
Theory crafting ideas:
Spell wise: Shamans should focus on the elements and have in their tool kit spells that reflect those elements Earth, Fire, Air, Water, and lightning (which I always thought was something that came from fire but I guess is its own element, yet not exactly how)
Shocks should be part of our basic tool kit:
Flame shock: keep as it is
Frost Shock:(which I assume is the water shock) same keep as it is
Add
Earth Shock: which causes massive damage or even for a brief time causes the mob to lose armor
Lightning shock: knocks back and shocks the target
Water shock: takes away a buff or causes water damage
shields: another thing that should be part of the overall shaman tool kit
Earth shield: keep as it is
Water shield: Helps regenerate health and resources faster
Air: make like windfury totems add extra attack
Fire: causes extra damage
lightning: knockback and protection with damage
Totems:
still keep all the totems we have except depending on the spec:
Elemental and Resto have totems be a single target or single-player buffs within a certain area.
Enhancement: Have AOE buffs or targets.
All specs should have access to all totems overall but choose the totems they want to use depending on the fight.
we currently have the following: Capacitor, Earthbound, healing stream, tremor, windfury, static, sky fury, liquid magma, manatide, earthen wall, ancestral protection, cloud burst, earthquake.
I would think of adding the following:
Water totem: Now this could be a water cannon totem or one that targets players and increases healing or something.
Statis Totem (later I referred to this a statis trap totem works just as well) This would trap the mob for like 10 seconds just long enough for the shaman to heal or to just finish off the mob.
Serpent Totem: Yes exactly like it sounds a totem that brings forth snakes to poison our enemy.
Elemental Totem: This one would bring forth small elementals to fight beside us for a 30-second period.
Elementals:
This is one where I think each spec should have its own elemental companion as it was always supposed to be. Say at level 20 every shaman gets to choose an elemental from Earth, Fire, Air, Water (yes let’s bring the water elemental back to shamans why mages have it is beyond me. Let them have an arcane familiar instead.) Once you choose an elemental companion all other elementals are rotational summon companions that fight for a brief time. You can also for a small fee change your companion.
Fire elementals: will do the most damage and do an AOE effect
Earth Elementals: does protection and slight damage (as they currently do)
Water Elementals: Do healing and resource regeneration with slight damage
Air Elementals: does moderate damage and provides extra attacks.
All our other overall shaman abilities like hexes, ancestral spirit, astral recall, astral shift, chain heal, chain lightning, far sight, water walking, ghost form (which we should have more options with) healing surge, heroism, and water-breathing (yes let’s steal that back from warlocks) all should still be with our tool kit. Also, allow every shaman to have healing rain as it not only helps the shaman with survivability but also other players.
Windshear should still stay
Air Walking: this could be the shaman’s ability to fly without mounts like the monk’s nimbus cloud.
Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty of each spec:
Elementals:
Keep these as the Masters of the Elements, they should be dual weapons handlers, ok maybe we add two-handers as part of their talent tree. They are casters though that use the elements to fight on their behalf. They do long-range AEO damage
Spells:
I know many of these are already in the Elemental shaman tool kit currently
Earthquake: Earth damage
Thunderstorm: Lightning damage
Crash lightning: Keep like it currently is
Deluge: which does moderate water damage and drowns all mobs
Volcano: ( lack of a better name) which does like massive fire damage to a wide area
Mudslide (again for lack of a better name): which softens and slows mobs down
Quicksand: which is another slowing mobs down
Whirlwind: Which brings forth a huge tornado to do massive wind damage.
The elemental shaman should also have a spell that allows them to spawn mini elementals to fight for like a minute.
Enhancement:
This is where it gets fun currently enhancement shamans are called the warrior shaman that isn’t afraid of facing down their enemies. Instead, I say we make enhancement shamans live up to the name enhancement by changing the tool kit. Make enhancement shamans two-handed weapon uses only maybe with a dual weapon talent in the talent tree for those who still want to have dual weapons. Still make enhancement shamans melee. except we add these
Elemental Boons:
Which like warriors’ shouts or pally auras add enhancements or debuffs to those around the shaman.
Abyssal Maw (water): increases player or groups healing and resource regeneration
Deepholm (earth): increases armor and defensive abilities
Firelands (fire): increases attack power
Skywall (Air): like all wind powers adds extra attacks or heals for healers
Shocks:
as stated above shocks for enhancement shamans should be AOE effects that can strick up to 6 mobs at once and should be able to spread to other mobs without having to click on each mob one by one.
Weapon Imbuements and Strikes:
This should be the bread and butter of the enhancement shaman. Not only should the enhancement shaman be able to imbue their own weapon but other players at the same time. I am including both imbuements along with strikes because you can’t really have one without the other:
Windfury: extra attack and armor damage
Flametongue: Flame damage
Rockbiter (yes let’s bring this back please): Earth damage and could add a taught to
Water fury: lowers mobs’ defenses
Stormstrike: Lightning damage with a knockback
Primal Strike: All elemental strike
Lava Lash: massive damage which strikes at the mobs weapon breaking it
Thundercharge: which can stun mobs
Armor Imbuements and Shields:
Let’s talk shields for a second currently, when a shaman casts a shield it’s only one elemental shield at a time which is neither here nor there I would like to be able to have more than one elemental shield up. However please let’s change the elemental shields from applying to only one player at a time and being taken off the shaman and open it up to where the shaman can apply the shield not just to the shaman but also to other players. Especially tanks seriously I put on an earth shield but I can not give put an earth shield on a tank that needs it as well.
I would also add these imbuements and shields:
Fire Armor: adds flames around the player that when struck will cause the enemy to burst into flames and take massive damage.
Earthen armor: added earth elemental armor around the player and prevents x amount of damage
Water armor: Adds water elemental armor to the player that increases health and resources regeneration for the player
Air Armor: adds air elemental which increases attack power, but attack speed like having heroism without popping heroism.
Iron Armor: which would add straight armor protection to the shaman-like ironbark does for druids
Fire shield: does fire damage and weakens mobs’ armor and weapons
Water shield: helps with survivability by increasing the shamans healing regeneration and resources regeneration
Air Shield: increases attack power and weapon damage
earth shield: increases armor and defensive abilities
Other spells which would work well in the enhancement toolbox are:
Obscuring mist: which causes players to be untargetable for a period of time.
Fog Cloud: mobs are unable to see for a short period of time
Gaseous fog: mobs take poison damage
Acid Fog: a fog that eats away at the enemy armor and weapons making them vulnerable to increase damage.
Control Lava: which increases groups damage abilities
control water: this increases groups’ healing and defensive abilities
control air: which increases groups’ attack power and speed
control earth: which increases defensive and offensive abilities
Control Weather: this one would be difficult but it could add things like acid rain, a blizzard, something where it would hinder the mob for a short period.
incendiary cloud: which does chocking fire damage to all mobs within the area
whirlwind: which does wind damage and could look like one massive tornado
Elemental swarm: This could be added to elemental but it would be like a stampede for hunters where the shaman just calls all the elementals to come roll over the mob.
Electrocution: This would be like a fun one in PVP or even in a raid all-party members within x distance from the shaman will become electrified increasing all stats by 40% for like 10 seconds. which could turn the tide in any PVP match or even raid.
Elementals: like all shamans they get their primary but also the enhancement shaman’s elementals get something extra
Fire: They cause fire AOE damage and add fire armor to all players
earth: does a taunt only if no tank is present or down, does Earth AOE damage, and adds earth armor to all players
wind: does moderate AOE damage and adds wind armor to all players
Water: does water AOE damage and adds water armor to all players
Sorry I spent so long on Enhancement as they are my favorite shamans and I think should live up to their name of enhancement
Resto: I have to apologize I don’t play Resto shaman I tried I really did however the last time I attempted to play resto I went to target the tank and ended up targeting another player who jumped in front of the tank and they got the heal before the tank and the tank died which caused the whole group to wipe. So, I just can’t do the healing. not my thing. Also from what I hear Shaman Restoration healers are some of the best in the game and in many of the high-end raiding guilds that is one of the primary healers. So, I don’t think much needs to be changed with Resto shamans from what I understand. Yeah, Restos.
what I would add is these let’s give restos :
Magic Stones: like warlock candy, these could act like shamans candy for healing in raids and dungeons. except they won’t disappear after you log out.
Statis Traps: This would be more a statis totem that will hold a mob for like 15 seconds or so.
Wind Wall, Earth Wall, FireWall, Water Wall: which can slow or prevents players from going a certain way. these could be fun in PVP.
Fire, earth, wind, water seeds: each seed would do something different but they would act in either a defensive way or offensive way.
Resist energy: Lack of a better name: this could be a debuff that resto shamans can put on mobs to lower the mob’s resistance to an element or even lower armor or weapon damage.
Elementals: like all shamans, they would get an elemental companion and all other elementals would be summonable temporarily.
Anyways, These are some of my ideas I do not firmly believe Blizzard would ever create a 4th spec for Shamans because if they haven’t done so by now they probably will never do that. Although the tools are currently all in our kits for Blizzard to do that. Which I will talk about here
So if Blizzard would do a 4th spec it would have to break down to something like this
Elemental: Fire spells only dual weapons fire elemental.
Enhancement: Wind spells dual weapons wind elemental which would include all lightning-based attacks which would mean that we would nothing but thunderstorm beasts
Earth Warden: Earth spells two-hander earth elemental yes this would be a tank class but I think would be like Pallys in Vanilla WoW we can tank but Blizzard wouldn’t grant us the rank or respect of the tanks.
Restoration: Water spells one-hander and shields water elemental
Ok, last things ghost ferals: Someone suggested that we take those and either have a glyph or a talent something that grants us the ability to choose for ourselves which elemental feral spirits we use. I like that idea so I am including it on this Class Theory page. I would also like to add that we also get more options for this as well. I would love to run around and call my spirit ferals out that are two turtles or elk or even since we are doing dragons in the next expansion dragons (maybe more welps) Anyways, This is cool idea regarding those.
Ok, I apologize for this being a long post and all. Lots of information. I just think that Blizzard in the upcoming expansion has a real opportunity to either actually decide to give us Shaman the fabled 4th Earth Warden spec and allow us shaman to tank, or Blizzard completely reworks our class specs to be actually what they should be Elementals: Masters of the Elements and controlling elementals, Enhancements: That not are just the Warrior-Shamans who face down their enemies but also Enhances their weapons and armor as well as those around them, and Restos well to continue being the badass healers that they are.
Last thing I would also take shaman off the mealstorm (or however you spell it) resource and put us back on mana resources it just really makes more sense doing that. Because I get mana stuff all the time and I usually throw it away or sell it because it doesn’t help me. (though I am sure other enhancement and elemental shamans are the same way.)
I hope you enjoy this post again this is just a theory-crafting thread nothing more, and a good discussion thread if you would like.