I’m leaning more and more towards Shaman, but I feel like it’s inferior in every way to priest. I’ll be worse at PvP than a SPriest, and I’ll be worse at healing than a Holy Priest in PvP or PvE. But I just love the utility of the class and the lore. I just never played a priest in vanilla so I have no frame of reference.
Maybe in a duel.
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As a healer? Superior IMO. Mana resource is not an issue, great raid-wide heal potential (not just limited to party), better utility that is flexable (totems warrior party vs caster party) and more gear potential since you can wear cloth and leather.
Also Shammy T3 is amazing. Like, you look like Sauron from LoTR had a baby with Ragnaros.
Chain heal and totems are insane. The ideal horde raid comps will have more shaman than priests. Priests are still needed though since they are the only defensive magic dispeller on horde.
Priest is the gold standard of healing and is the all-around best healer. That’s not the same as saying that they are the best at each specific task.
In fact, priest is usually the second-best at any given healing task. The part that is relevant to shaman is that shaman is the strongest AoE raid healer in the game.
In terms of PVP healing, a priest will generally put out better raw healing numbers, but a shaman will always provide offensive support that a priest can’t. No matter how good the priest is or how much healing they put out, they’re still never going to have Windfury Totem, Grounding Totem, or a ranged 5-second cooldown interrupt (which can either be cast at rank 1 for basically free or at max rank for a burst of damage along with it). They’ll never have an AoE slow or an AoE fear dispel. All that sort of thing is what a shaman can provide that a priest can’t.
A shadow priest will probably out-duel a shaman at 60, regardless of the shaman’s spec. It’s not a 100% loss case, but if you’re putting money on it, bet on the priest. So what? You’re going to be doing a lot of PVP that isn’t ‘1v1ing shadow priests’. In general, as a support class, you shouldn’t be worrying too much about your 1v1 matchups either way. Both shaman DPS specs have superior burst damage to shadow priest, and better team-support utility.
What race should I go for in a Shaman? If I don’t want to heal, would I be any viable to DPS or would I just be a token pocket totem creator?
Shamans in vanilla are one of the least mana efficient.
Race choice depends on what you want to do, but all options are good and it mostly comes down to very minor optimizations/preferred flavor. I’d just pick whichever one you think is coolest.
Hardcore elitist guilds will probably take at most one DPS shaman (enhancement, swinging Nightfall). However, the vast majority of people shouldn’t care what those guilds think. Shaman are completely viable as DPS in dungeons and PVP. In raids, it depends what you’re comparing to and why, but you will always be better than an empty slot; if you show up reliably, are prepared, and use your whole kit (totems as well as DPS), your contribution to the raid will certainly justify your spot.
How hard is getting shaman gear in raids
No harder than anyone else. Gearing in Classic is much slower than in BFA. The answers you’re getting in the other thread are reasonably accurate, and as they’re saying, a full tier set isn’t necessary to progress. Think of having a full tier set as an achievement; it looks pretty but it’s hardly necessary.
It really depends on the type of playstyle you like. All healers are perfectly viable in 5-mans and raids. It doesn’t matter if a priest or a paladin can outheal you on meters… meters mean nothing to healing. The goal of healing, especially in Vanilla, is not who can put up the biggest numbers, but who is doing their job most efficiently.
I personally happen to really enjoy the chain heal spam playstyle. Being an MT healer is much more stressful than being a raid healer and Shaman will be exclusively on raid heals 9 times out of 10.
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Shamans are rare, so if your guild has trouble finding them, tier gear will be easy for you. However, some guilds like enough Shamans for every or almost every group. If that’s the case then you’ll be competing with many other shaman.
I… can’t imagine how that could be true with mana spring and mana tide totems existing.
Shaman has one and only one flaw… Horde
/gameover
Group buffs generally aren’t considered as part of a class’s efficiency metric, since in a raid, most (if not all) healers will have them provided for them.
In WPvP as well. Elemental shines in BGs, but even then if you’re queueing solo and not with a group it’s largely wasted as the people you’re supporting are idiots 90% of the time.
There was a reddit poll about 10 days ago that placed shaman on par with warriors for the most picked class to be their main. Warrior had 16%, while shaman had 8%, which is roughly 16% due to faction exclusivity. This is by no means indicative of actual Classic, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
If you’re in the healer group, you will be using mana tide on (probably) one of the priests’ requests. Mana spring is better than nothing, but it’s a small amount of 6 mp5.
That’s true. i suppose i didn’t consider the fact that the priest will also be receiving it in raids.
And I’ll bet 90% of them are Unbreakables that think selective clips of one shotting backpedalers with a WF proc will be the norm. Most will quit once they find out that’s not the case.