They don’t reply to anything, we get no interaction with any blue posts, I feel we’re just wasting our time. DPS shamans are a complete joke in pvp, when reincarnation is deemed a defensive and is supported by conduits buffing it, what can we do?
This is probably against the TOS to post a topic subject like this, but I’m beyond fed up. Every week I’m looking to see if they’ve addressed this glaring issue and every week it’s ignored. Not just that but when they do make their class posts, there’s nothing about shamans survivability being mentioned.
Just poor customer service, doesn’t surprise me its just rude, unprofessional and damn right disrespectful to the player base. Rewind back to 2004 and im sure we would of had more replies.
Its actually strange how blizzard operates on feedback. They just let people yell into the forums and unless you are a famous streamer they ignore anything you have to say. Its like that episode of the oblongs where the father always put his suggestions in the suggestion box and found out it actually leads to the furnace. Then he gets told by his boss his suggestions have been single handedly keeping the building warm for years.
To me I feel like the shaman class design team is just unpaid interns that don’t get access to any of the tools and are just trying to impress by changing names and making changes so they can say they did something. I main heals so I don’t look at dps much, but without spirit link and ank totem resto shaman is in the exact same place as both dps specs.
Earthen Wall totem is by far and away the best ability that Restoration shaman have, and I would kill for that type of utility on Enh or Elemental. Proof being we once had the single target version (stone bulwark) and they deemed it too strong and took it away from us and gave it to the resto spec as a group cd.
Its a group defensive, with good cooldown timer vs reward, fits the thematic of what totems should feel like, and is useful in both PvE and PvP.
Bubblies, my Earthen Wall Totem comrade. I don’t think they’ll share it across but I really wish they would.
Re: feedback, my perspective is that I assume they read far more than they let on, but they just don’t agree. I hearken from the days where you wouldn’t dream of being able to communicate with a developer, so the fact that they might read anything I say is enough to satisfy me.
It’s important to realize just because someone doesn’t agree doesn’t mean they didn’t listen or that they don’t understand. It’s just possible they think the vocal minority isn’t representative of the experience, and let’s face it, this class forum sees a LOT of the same names repeat posting.
I’m just glad they decided to change course on Enh rotational design.
It’s pretty much that given this statement form Ion where they consider Reincarnation as a “defensive” ability. (Note, this Tweet from the official World of Warcraft twitter contains video footage of Ion Talking about Shaman Defensives, this was back in 2017)
I personally disagree with Ion entirely. I don’t see Reincarnate as a “Defensive” as Defensive Cool-downs usually help you to NOT die and reincarnate is something that only really comes into effect after you have already died.
Even accepting it as a Defensive there was another thread (Long Read) that pointed out just how bad Reincarnate is comparably to Soul Stone from Warlocks though it in general discusses defensives.
Personally, I know everyone is going on about active Defensives but I also feel that Enhancement’s passive defensive capabilities are lacking. For me, I find it very noticeable when doing just normal world content. The Elites in the 8.3 Assaults, for example, feel like they tear through my Shaman in general much faster than my other Melee classes. That I feel that much more reliant to use my CD’s compared to other Melee where they feel like situational “Oh Crud!” buttons.
I can’t defend their decision to consider Reincarnation a defensive. It’s trash, and unless they create a PvP talent around enabling it in the arena, it’s just further proof to me that they have a near zero focus on PvP.
Still, my point stands that they listen, just have their own opinions. We can disagree with them all day, but what we can’t just repeat over and over is that they aren’t listening.
I have been in and out of the forums since Vanilla and it really does seem Blizz only takes into account players who are: Popular Youtube celebrities, players exploiting mechanics on youtube, or players being so good at PvP they nerf part of that classes spec, seen that over and over again. They punish the entire spec because one player is so good with it.
The development team does read forums, just because they don’t respond to ours doesn’t mean they aren’t reading.
Reincarnation, I’ll admit, is not a defensive until it’s usable in all content… AKA, PvP. If it was usable in PvP, it would be considered a defensive. As a Game Designer myself, I understand their reasoning for doing things, however, it has been poorly executed in my opinion, and shamans could benefit from an additional utility based defensive.
Earthen wall totem, making earth elemental receive % of damage taken, etc.
Reading and not doing anything about it, well they might as well not be reading. This isn’t a short term problem shamans have faced in pvp, we’re talking years and years now. Even back in 2017 Ion stated he was happy with our defensives.
I understand that it’d be impossible to respond to all the feedback given on the forums, but lets face it, apart from a couple of paragraphs tossed out through alpha and beta, the only interaction we -really- get is from high profile wow streamers.
So what sort hope do we have? Ion clearly has a warped view on shamans defensives. It’s never been addressed through the whole of alpha and beta, either directly from blizzard or to them by interviewers.
You’ll see no shamans competing in any esport driven events either, be it M+ or arena. There is a major reason for this and Blizzard are ignoring it.
The neverending focus on ion’s 2017 comment on reincarnation illustrates blizzard’s stated reason for why they don’t post more. Because people run wild with everything they say so they are hesitant to say anything.
The irony is that people run wild with every little thing they say because they say so little. If there was regular dialogue with the developers on the forums, a comment from 2017 wouldn’t be allowed to fester and be blown out of proportion the way it does when it’s the only thing players have to grasp onto.
Reincarnate IS part of our defensive toolkit. Obviously it’s a very limited type of defensive on a long CD with significant repercusions (death, loss of buffs) and can’t be used in certain environments at all (rated pvp) and I don’t think Ion meant that because we have reincarnate that’s why we are otherwise weak on defensives. To any reasonable mind, it’s a small defensive perk, not a central component of moment to moment survivability. I don’t think Ion meant it as anything more than that.
I think the reason we have historically been on the weaker end of the defensive kits is because our class fantasy is to a more offensive minded ranged/melee hybrid in contrast to pally which is melee/defensive focused. Our ability to use some of our kit at range is part of our survivability.
That said, we still need enough defensives and or enough mobility/escape tools/ranged power to survive in pvp. The problem there is that legion stripped most of our defensive kit away in favor of instant spammable heals and a 40% HOT from astral shift and more burst damage (doom winds and the old lightning talents) and ranged damage (poweful overcharge casts, ranged weapon imbue attacks). Fast forward to 8.1 and the lightning talents were gutted, doomwinds and the 40% hot are gone, and heals (and mana regen) have been nerfed into irrelevance.
Beta currently restores the power of heals but takes away the ability to spam them. Is it enough? Probably not. Is it better than live? Yes, at least currently. Heals feel really meaningful right now, at least when you have alot of MSW stacks.
We will have to see how stamina vs spell power scales over the course of the xpac to see how powerful healing remains as a defensive. Hopefully it remains powerful, but just able to be used less frequently, so it feels meaningful for the GCDs and resources you sacrifice to use it. So far I’m encouraged on that front as there seems to be much more of a focus on your actual class kit doing your damage as opposed to gaining massive damage from systems like azerite and corruption. And stats don’t seem to be scaling that dramatically with gear.
I also suspect that the current addition of mana costs to our dps kit is intended to help balance heals remaining strong by limiting how often you can use them. The mana costs may be too high right now, but that can be iterated on to get to the right feel for how fast they allow our mana to regen in combat.
Alternatively, as has been mentioned, shaman could get back some kind of ability to regen mana in combat. If so, I would prefer an active CD based ability since a passive could just be handled by lowering the mana costs themselves. Doesn’t need to be a new ability either. For example - for enhance, feral spirits could generate mana AND MSW charges. Would help make feral spirits feel like a really meaningful CD again.
In terms of defensives, earth shield should be allowed to stack with lightning shield and astral shift should be useable while stunned. Particulary now that rogues can have a 7 second stun (6 combo point talent) and you don’t even get a CC break unless you equip a pvp trinket so watch out questing in warmode.
Beyond that, a revisit of our pvp talents is in order.
Ride the lightning should either be reworked to always hit your primary target and not break CC on secondary targets or just eliminate it so it doesn’t feel like a mandatory choice for pad damage and just make sure our pve damage kits carries over well enough to pvp to not need pvp damage talents so we can focus on defensive/utility talents in pvp.
Then revisit some of our defensive talents. Like redo ethereal form to instead just lower the CD on astral shift to 1 min and make it useable while stunned (if that isn’t baked in baseline). There’s hope on the Pvp talent front yet since blizzard hasn’t seemed to have really gotten to those yet for the most part.
I’m still hopeful that enhance survivability is still on the table as an issue to be addressed but that it may be part of the finishing touches that are addressed once it’s clear how the spec functions from a dps/healing perspective once the redesign of the kit settles. Time will tell…
Just to pick up on two things, It’s not our fault that Ion said the things he said. We’re just going on the loose scraps they feed us and when something as bizarre as this came out then, well, what do you expect? If they’re going to use the backlash of his comments as a reason for not speaking to the playerbase more, then shame on them. They should expect criticism when it deserves it, this deserved it. Frankly I’m bored of them bullrushing their ideas through, ignoring the the playerbase that knows it’s foolhardy. Just look at the Azerite system, they knew better. To me this reeks of the same sort of bravado, they think they know Shamans better then we do.
If Blizzard -really- counts Reincarnate as part of our defensive toolkit then god help us. To me? It’s more of a group utility spell for dungeons and raids or for solo play if you mess up.
Whatever they count it as, it was important enough for them to count it as one of our three defensive conduits. (Also to note, we can’t use this in arena if it’s such an important defensive.)
Astral Protection
Reincarnation’s cooldown is reduced by 3.0-10.0 min, and reincarnating instantly grants you Astral Shift.
Astral Protection, should be Abysmal Protection. I really don’t understand their class design choices when it comes to Shamans.
Which further adds to my point, reincarnate is more of a group utility spell that can be used if you mess up in solo content rather then apart of our defensive toolkit.
This would be siiiiiiiiick. 100% agree. But yeah I dont blame them for not wanting to even remotely engage with forums. Ion may have changed his mind about the reincarnation statement many moons ago. But I’m sure even if he did, lord knows he’d be crucified for it like usual for one reason or another if he said so. So they stick to only announcements.
Whether the influencers or top players they talk to help or hinder, most of those interviews dont involve them calling the devs names and telling them theyre aweful at their jobs. Such is the nature of forums.