Current Decline of the Shaman Class in SoD - Result of overnerfs or something else?

Oh I know. These folks are that are on the “nerf sham” bandwagon are always talking about Ele or Tank/Ele hybrids with WoE. There’s no way they’re playing DW Enh shamans, because they are utter garbage at the moment, that have been severely over-nerfed. We’re not asking for a big damage buff, but give us some survivability back.

“But ziqo…” dude doesn’t play straight up enhance, he plays Tank/Ele, not the same thing. If you’re telling me that dual-wield enhance is strong right now and that I’m just a bad player, you’re delusional and I bet you haven’t even touched DW Enhance, but just watched some streamer that plays a completely different spec with different runes.

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It just seems we agree. They need to eliminate the use of tanking/healing runes (if you are dps) in PvP to buff less good dps speccs like enh. my solution would be to link tanking runes to each other and to specific tanking tree talents to be enabled - forcing you to use all tanking runes to function while having a pure tank specc. same with healing runes. By doing this we get rid of broken hybrid speccs and would make it easier to nerf/buff speccs imo. it would take away the fun of trying combinations of runes but seems most of us are exhausted by SoD balance at this point.

Ironically they have done this too a lot of of tank Shaman’s runes (not druid… yet)

Burn SP has to have flametongue on MH to get the bonus.
Way of Earth requires Rockbiter on MH and a shield in OH and changes every distance spell you have (except frost or flame shock) to essentially melee range.
Have to take Stormstrike to get mental dexterity to work which means you can’t get high critical damage in ele tree. You also can’t use burn if you’re using mental dexterity.
Powersurge separates 5% procs from flameshock and riptide now, so harder to get your minimal chain heal off.
Wolves are a great placebo effect though. The terror of something auto attacking for less than a lvl 50 mob.

The literal only way the ele tank horror can get ANY spellpower is from gear or from shield mastery rune (which means you can’t use overload).

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Pure enhance is a shell of a spec right now, you do basically no damage, can’t heal at all and have minimal survivability. It’s in a very bad spot in pvp….

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this is true.

pure enhance is in a horrible horrible state.

I will note that my ele shaman doesn’t feel as powerful in PVE right now. The one change I enjoy though is that I have 0 mana issues, but it’s easy to see boomkins, felguard warlocks, spriests waaaaaaaay ahead of the meters on a lot of boss fights. I felt like it was a good time to just try resto shaman this phase (even though they could use a boost too).

One of the changes I’d really want to see with elemental shamans is the ability to have a further range unlocked on your shocks. It’s so freaking annoying to have to run in closer to all the mobs before you can start your rotation while the rest of the dps is already casting (hunters with their trap range also is in the same boat).

if they did make the range further im afraid it would make ele op as heck in pvp.

one of the things that balances ele is the range being a factor.

if you took that away , the results would be silly .

Elemental is suffering from a couple things:

  1. Flame Shock should have a longer range as it is core to the mechanics of the class spec.
  2. Lava Burst has worst scaling than almost everyone elses runes. Example is my Shaman in .5 gear can crit in AB for about 1.8k after a 2s cast. A Ret Paladin hit me with a seal release for over 2k crit. So a seal is out scaling my hard casting crit.
  3. Bonuses are not scaling Elemental Shamans in PvE at all and not being able to have FS dots crit hurts the class as well, yet everyone else has their dots crit but Shamans.
  4. GCD on Shocks being shared has been a stupid mechanic since classic and is that way in every version of the game. Imagine if you could add some burst to fights by removing Earth Shock from the global CD of shocks This Way you can use it with the rune that stacks your lightning shield without taking up a Shock in case you have to flame shock again to keep the dot going or want to increase your burst by adding a frost shock.

Imagine hitting anything for 1.8k with a crit. Warrior hits for like 600 crits

hehe wait till you get crit by a boomie for over 4k on a less than 2 second cast at 36 yard range.

I had an arcane mage crit me for that much, it cost his entire mana pool.

it doesnt cost the moonkin that much mana at all .

funny how busted they are lol.

Mhm, the mage jump scared me. Slapped me for 4k and 2.8k back to back crits, I’d been mid fight about to kill a guy to proc victory rush and he ruined me.

Had me looking at the combat log in confusion.

hehe mages being scary reminds me of better times honestly.

Mages being bad for once makes me very happy actually. When I smash a mage in bgs I almost feel bad because of how easy it is, and then I remember the literal years of mages hard countering warriors with 0 effort and… eh, I don’t feel that bad anymore.

you feel it too?

of my friends every time i say that they are like “dont feel bad they are mages”.

i honestly feel bad for them how squishy they are.

like 1 spell and they are less than half health lol.

It’s deserved, they’ve been the kings of PvP for like 20 years. They can live with a seasonal server where they suck.

i dont like punishing or even over buffing classes because of “past sins” .

while i feel like its good that shaman got love in 1 version of the game i dont think over buffing them like they did in p2-p3 but ya.

and being on the low end (i know how this feels as a person that played shaman on and off for many years in retail) sucks.

like not being able to even be breathed on or you die is a bad bad feeling .

i dont wish that on anyone honestly.

PvP mages existence has always been a sin. Like I said, they can be bad for once, to let everyone else enjoy PvP without having to sit in perma root/slow.

While I can feel you, Warriors have been the Mage to Shaman PvP with the introduction of your meathook aka Deathgrip. A Warrior has 100% up time and has all the survival that it always has. I have been killed by a Warrior that crit me with a Shield Slam for 2.3k in BG. If that was outside of the BG, that crit would of hit me for 4k.

But the issue right now for PvP is they can code into the game everyone has 40% DR from Player Abilities. They can do that as they did it for BGs. They wont. So they have to fix each classes issues.

To be honest, the best way to fix their problem is literally doing a rework of runes.

Since I am a Shaman Main I can share examples:

  1. Greater Ghost Wolf: In addition to what it does now (can use GW indoors + 10% DR) reduces the cast time by 1 second to make it instant cast with the 2/2 talents Shamans have to do to reduce the cd to 1 second.
  2. Healing Rain: In addition to what it does now, remove the 2 sec cast and make it an instant cast spell.
  3. Fire Nova: Is replaced with Elemental Shock: Removes the Shared GCD of your shock spells and increases their range from 20 yards to 36 yards.
  4. 2H Mastery: In addition to what it does, Changes Lava Lash into Wind Blast that deals 50% weapon damage as Nature Damage and if it is imbued with WindFury, will proc Windfury.
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