I’ve been trying to like shaman for ages now. Leveled a DID shaman from 10 - 60. Did the legion order hall for all the cool mogs. Played Enhance mostly but also dabbled in Elemental. I am by no means a pro player and this rant isn’t really about DPS or raid performance or whatever. This is about how the spec FEELS to play.
- I hate Flame shock. I really do not like it. It’s our only ranged instant cast spell and all it does is tickle enemies. I understand its main purpose is for procs. I get that. But having to dot things up is gross and unfun.
- Crash lighting. A very flashy spell that also appears to hit like a wet noodle. I press this button and amazing flashing lights appear. Great! Only it doesn’t appear to do any discernible damage. Also if you happen to be more than a milimeter away from an enemy, this spell won’t actually cast at all. But it will still go on CD which is hilariously bad.
- Stormstrike. The animation for this is bad. Just real bad. This is our actual heavy hitter and its spell effect is like a wet burp. Redesign this please.
- Sundering. Currently the defacto talent of choice. The animation and sound FX for this spell are once again, like wet noodles. Look at the giant ground affect the new Evokers get. Look how it rips up the ground when they do that flyby. This is what Sundering should look like. Not the 3cm wet noodle ground splat SFX it currently is. Please redesign this spell.
- Why are shaman so squishy? Like mage level squishy. I get that they need to have some level of squishiness since they can proc instant heals, but so can paladins and paladins are not nearly as squishy as shamans. Shaman have mail armour yet they appear to be wearing nothing at all. What gives?
- Gap closer. I get that shaman can go wolf whenever, but this just isn’t enough. Spirit walk is on a 1min CD and consonantly popping in and out of wolf form just isn’t gonna cut it. We need a baseline gap closer that is not a talent and we need it NOW.
- Do you know how bad it is to farm old content on a shaman? Obviously Elemental is out of the question since it has no instant cast ranged spells and has very poor mobility, but Enhance isn’t much better. Enhance has slightly better mobility but once again, the existence of Flame shock really screws us. Flame shocks CD means that it cannot be used to quickly tab target mobs to mow them down and the lack of decent gap closers means our slow CD melee spells are of even lesser use. It’s really painful trying to farm old content on a shaman.
Welp, that’s it folks. That’s my rant about Enhance. I may post a similar rant about Elemental and how its spells lack the level of synergy and “prociness” that classes like mage enjoy which causes great confusion to me when playing elemental and how earth shock and earthquake cannibalizing each other for procs is really stupid etc, but I’ll save that rant for another time.
Flame on!