Its been said before but do i really need 46 buttons and a gamer mouse to play one class with this many keybinds? Who can keep up with 7 totems utility buttons, 8 cast modifier buttons, 3 maincast buttons, tabbing thru mobs or player to put on yet more modifiers… This is singularly the worst experience i have ever had with a class. 46 Keybinds… GCD on nearly everything… sry but this class may be op in some regards but it is a stupid nightmare to get thru
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Luckily I’ve been playing it for years so it’s all muscle memory.
I have only 2 action bars fully key bound. I find most other things I can just click on.
Personally I’m with you in the button bloat so I try to avoid builds that force me into 100 buttons to push. I prefer picking talents that are passive or enhance my existing key binds.
Ultimately it comes down to muscle memory for me. I can’t play other classes bc I find my self going for one of my Ele spells and it’s just not there. Flip side when I play another class it takes me a while to adjust back to my shaman.
Sometimes I can’t even tell you which button casts which spell but when I have the key board and mouse in hand it just happens.
I hear DH has like 3 or 4 buttons to press.
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Uhhhh you know you don’t have to use those buttons like basically ever? From what I’ve seen ele actual rotation is like 5-6 buttons and mainly just one button spam most of the time
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I agree that shamans with all the totems has been a problem for me. I kind of tend to just not pick any totem in the class tree.
I play totemless. Shame on me I know.
Maybe they could remove all totems from global CD so i could bind my totems in macro with other spells
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Literally just based around generating as many Lb procs as you can. Keep flame shock up, earth shock promo wave fire ele that’s about it… it’s pretty easy
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i pvp, missing a single totem drop causes problems, moving and casting in the los of healer is also vital… in pve i just spam stormkeeper and chain lightning using the starter build… i just think that the GCD’s of 44 of 46 buttons is utterly impossible to handle and do well as i am not a 19yo with functioning memory and reflexes… so i play warlock and bm hunter a lot 
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What form of PvP are you playing? I feel much tankier on my Ele shaman than my DK. I’ll often play stupid because I almost never get to the point I’m going to die.
Stormkeeper is useless in PvP btw so I’m also wondering what build you run
It’s a lot. Especially if you add in PvP talents, arena 123 macros, focus macros, etc. I like to KB everything, and use a lot of macros… so I have about 80 KB right now.
It’s fun though. Like it this way.
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I use a few consolidation macros. A small example is combining shields and a few others. I am fine with it.
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You can just play the lightning build and only need like 3 buttons. What do you mean bloat?
I don’t disagree with you on the button bloat. In fact, a couple days ago I decided to level a shammy up to 60 (got there today) and noticed how many abilities they have as well. I have 4 skill bars completely full currently 
Most of it is situational stuff…and tbh, as cool as it would be to become a master of laying every totem at the right time, or maybe using every niche ability, I’m just focusing on mainly DPS/staying alive, with occasionally jumping in to throw out a chain heal if a healer can’t keep up.
half the bloat is from class tree so many utility
For Elemental Shaman, in PvP you’re going to be using all of your shocks and Wind Shear.
That’s 5 buttons in addition to CL, L, and Lava Burst.
Than there are handful of buffs on Cooldown (Ascendant, Stormkeeper, Nature’s Swiftness, Astral, Nature’Guidance). You can certainly one button macro defensive buffs.
Ghost wolf should always have a keybind.
Healing wave (to survive, usually with NS).
Hex
Lightning Lasso.
Burrow.
A ton of totems, Earthbind, Counterstrike, Volcano One, the one that shields you).
I know I missed a ton.
If you’re in PvE and given the floor to do your rotations free from any interferance, than I guess it can be simple. But it’s simply not 3 abilities.
I agree. Take moving while casting. We have two abilities for this. Why? Why not just give multiple charges to one, for example, and eliminate the other one? Compared it to frost mage which has just one ability with 3 charges.
One of the issues is that Shaman is a Hybrid Spec, with a theme of being masters of the elements. So, all of the Elements must be strongly represented.
The second issue is that Totem Mechanics have always sucked until cataclysm, when they where taken of GCD, and then it was decided to make them suck again.
Unfortunately, we get this Captain Planet dump of abilities as a result.
Ice Mage is Ice, Fire is Fire, Arcane is Arcane.
But Shaman is Earth, Wind, and Fire.
In classic this wasn’t a big deal, with lightning being our bread and butter only, with CL on a short CD. But then they started feeling the need to cram more and more abilities unique to each element.
I love the Shaman theme and how it started as the original Horde Special Class, so I will always play it at some level.
But, I used my lvl 70 boost on Mage, and an old 60 boost on Warrior, because the truth is they will never get left behind. The few times they suffered from unfair balancing, there were always over corrections in their favor. I get it, we should expect with all of the holy trinity classes
Bottom line, you either play the holy trinity, or the community favorite that cries the most (originally hunters, now seems to be moving to DH because their just not good enough…). Safest move, is convert to Warrior, Mage, or Priest.
And spare me the OH but Feral Druids make the best tanks in the game, or DK this crap.
Warrior, Mage, or Priest are you insurance policies.
never play aion , i remember having 7 bar full of 12 keybinds on each bar and still i wasnt able to properly keybind my potions … WoW feels okay to me but i do have a mmo gaming mouse.
There is no such thing as button bloat in this game, You should look into games that are more suitable for your playstyle like ESO or GW2 or maybe FFonline but that one prolly has to many for you aswell
Cool story there and thank you for your opinion.