After losing Primordial Bond (-5% damage taken while elementals are out) and Stone Bulwark Totem..and Ancestral Guidance recently also… Shaman is back to being a glass cannon that makes it lackluster compared to other specs with better defensive options and similar or better dps IMO.
To add insult to injury we lost our knock up thunderstorm which was massively helpful to control mobs in big packs.
Our healing surge in beta heals like 5-10% of an HP bar at best per cast. Earth shield even with the talents that buff it does pitiful healing also. Chain heal for ele is also laughable and almost literally never gets touched. Healing Stream totem also barely tickles.
It feels like all of our hybrid healing is completely undertuned to the point of not even bothering picking it.
Our dps is in a pretty decent state although our talent tree pathing could use a lot of work still (especially near the ascendance nodes). But above all we need some defensive utility unpruned so we can at least be on par with other dps that have better defensives for higher damage situations.
Thank you.
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Like others have said they need to move burrow into the class tree. PvP talents need help too but that’s a different discussion.
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100% agreed, this would be amazing and flavorful
Well, in my opinion, Armor needs to be adjusted. The last couple classes that have been added, so much attention was put on Leather Armor that I feel Mail Armor has almost been forgotten.
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I think offering earth shield for enh/ele is always a poor design choice.
I think shaman could have a talent that instead made it so they have a passive “spirit link” buff they can put on an ally.
when % max hp between targets deviates by >20% the higher target receives X% of damage taken.
Could add talents where spirit link applies astral shift (reduced duration 3-5s) to both targets if they drop under X% simultaneously, but then link goes completely inactive for long period of time.
Could add talents where overhealing received by either splashes onto the other.
Could add talents where every time damage is taken by the shaman through spiritlink (so negated from their ally) the cooldown of astral shift is reduced, like the unending resolve mod for warlocks.
I don’t think it would work being usable on tanks, the negation would be too hard to balance around, but for heal/dps only.
I think its fine if shaman have a decently passive reduction profile, so their % stays near the top of a group during passive intake windows. But if they can utilize “spirit link” during this time, then with things like astral shift cooldown reduction, they can more readily use those cooldowns (and benefit from the frequency of allies cooldowns) during big singular events.
Something like this could be very powerful and very flavorful and cool.
I agree Shaman feels worst when taking lots of passive Dot damage, since our self healing is actually pitiful on Midnight beta atm.
I’d even accept buffs to healing surge, healing stream totem and chain heal if they’re actually worth the GCD and cast time to use. I actually enjoy hybrid self-healing as part of a shaman kit to be less reliant solely on the healer to stay alive in dangerous situations.
Hopefully the devs cook something nice for us soon.
Earth Elemental needs buffs. Put aside the personal tank for delves etc, ultimately this button is now a 15% HP increase for 30 seconds every 3 minutes. That is terrible. That is barely worth 2 talent points. If you don’t want to add another defensive button, this should be your main focus to buff. It needs a better effect while active, a shorter cooldown, and more.
Healing Stream totem is also terrible. It needs like a 75% buff to even be considered as a talent investment. I think Resto still has a talent that buffs it by 100%+. Nerf this talent for Resto and buff the baseline ability. It is currently useless and heals less than one healing surge over its duration.
Earth Shield is okay. The new talent that was brought to the class tree from Resto where you get a sizable instant burst heal when your shield charges get low is good. But it’s not a proper defensive either. I would rather earth shield just got tied to lightning shield and prune that button.
Healing surge. I feel like every expansion dps healing spells get random tuning. Sometimes this spell chunks, other times it tickles. Right now it seems to barely heal even with insane modifiers. 30% from class tree, 20% from Earth Shield, 25% from Farseer. And this spell still heals for very little. Needs a buff for dps shaman.
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Agreed, I also do not like how we have to choose between the 15% hp on earth ele and it’s ability to taunt now.
That taunt, while limited definitely has it uses to save wipes in M+ potentially and losing the 15% hp just for that feels pretty bad.
Also definitely agreed that our self-healing should be one of our defining qualities as a hyrbid, and it feels like an ultra afterthought right now in Midnight Beta. Hopefully they can buff the spell coefficients on some of these hybrid healing spells to make us more self-sufficient.
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Hybrid healing is always an afterthought. Legion moonkin regrowth healed for like 4% of your HP it was mega bad. Then in BFA it healed for 12-15% of your HP.
They almost never tune hybrid dps healing and it’s a shock when they do. They just tuned feral and moonkin regrowth so there is hope for Dps shaman.
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Yeah, I agree.
I definitely think we should at least be in line with the rest of the dps defensively just with our own shaman flavor.
Hopium for eventual defensive buffs for sure.
I definitely agree. Armor rating doesn’t seem to matter very much unless you’re playing a tank. My mage feels tankier than my shaman.
Non-healer healing seems to be about on par with passive Leech. It’s not much, and you don’t notice it, but it’s there. Only in rare circumstances is DPS healing truly noticeable (Lay on Hands).
The “passive, cast and forget” version of Earth Shield that all Shamans will be gaining access to will likely amount to roughly the same amount of healing as passive Leech, but the Shaman can have it on themselves and one other character at the same time, if talented.
While I agree in Principle, I did a 14 Windrunner Spire with the perma earth shield on me and the healer, and it still did about half of what my passive leech did, with about ~4% leech.
I was using healing stream totem fairly regularly and healing surge when needed and my hps still amounted to about ~2.8k.
For reference, I was playing with a mage and a hunter and their HPS from defensive utility (barriers/heals etc) was 6.5k and 4.3k. This isn’t counting them having things like Ice Cold/Turtle etc.
I agree with you in theory, I just think our self-healing/defensives are just pretty undertuned RN comparatively to other classes and shaman is gonna be notoriously squishy again like in Dragonflight unless we get some number buffs on it.
(Or just give us Stone Bulwark back at least 
)
h ttps://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/1Rncq8XQZBG4jfyP?fight=10&type=healing
(log for reference just take the space out after the h since I can’t directly link)
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A few things that I think would benefit shaman defensives in a huge way without changing much,
- I could probably be gaslighting myself, but I swear I could have sworn you could use Astral shift while stunned, but I guess you can’t. Make it usable while stunned. I can’t tell you how many times it would be useful if it could have done that and like reduce the damage ive taken by like a third compared to using it after the stun. Just that change alone would be amazing.
- The wolf passive, the one where when you go ghost wolf you slowly (very slowly) get a 20% damage reduction wall as you remain in wolf form. Reduce it to 10% but make it instant the moment you switch to ghost wolf. This would be huge, I can’t tell you how many times I shift to ghost wolf the moment the burst happens and im stunned but in ghost form but the burst is finished by the time that it reaches its full wall. Damage is too fast for it to build up that slow. Shoot it takes like 2 seconds for it to start at 5%
- Nature’s Guardian. Change it from a heal to a shield/absorb. When dampening happens it effects all healing including that. Which means when you in a long arena match, that heal isn’t going to do much overtime. Making it an absorb would be massive.
I feel like these changes alone would be more than enough for shaman. At least in arenas for me lol
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I’m just going to say it, losing Thunderstorm knock up was good… losing the ability altogether is the problem.
I loved having my knock back in prior expansions, really felt like I could adjust a pull, and it was a skill expression to know how to knock back (to interrupt if needed) without sending the mobs to Timbuktu. Knock up has been required as of late, maybe not as much as I think it is but certainly is a more “stable” control option compared to a knock back. I dislike losing functionality too, I am just more of the opinion that the knock back was more “thematic” and now we are in a weird CC limbo.
The whole “micro CC” thing going on (for both PvE and PvP) has made me dislike WoW more, and honestly put many of my WoW friends off as well. That said, losing the ability to knock back as well is such a gross change.
Dislike losing Bulwark totem too, it is just criminal though for Thunderstorm to be thrown in the bin.
I don’t really follow betas, but this is also a big ???. From what I hear it feels like we are just being stripped down and given back half of cloths and told to go away.
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It was very odd that they specifically noted that shaman needed better defense and added bulwark totem for TWW and then backtracked on that. Why? Just to prune?
Earth elemental is a garbage defensive so that could use some big buffs and then also…
The massive elephant in the room for the shaman defensive kit - Reincarnation. Iconic ability, terrible ability. Can this pseudo self battle res be changed into a PROPER defensive / cheat death mechanic? 5-6 min CD, whatever. Change it so that instead of dying, we go immune to everything for 5 seconds. We lay down for 2-3 seconds and then can get up and move.