I saw a Balance Druid on some target dummies the other day and I thought it looked cool, so I jumped over to mine and was messing around with the new talents.
Then I looked at the PVP talents and I almost threw my computer into the ocean…
Thorns PvP Talent
- 18% of base mana 40 yd range
- Instant 45 sec cooldown
- Requires Druid (Balance, Feral, Restoration)
- Requires level 35
- Sprout thorns for 12 sec on the friendly target. When victim to melee attacks, thorns deals (120% of Spell power) Nature damage back to the attacker.
- Attackers also have their movement speed reduced by 50% for 4 sec.
Insert the Noah’s Arc “What the hell is this?” meme.
Why can druids get a pretty logical, simplistic defensive talent for their ranged spec but we can’t? What’s the major difference here?
I don’t want a copy/paste of Thorns to Shaman, Druids have a lot of abilities that make Thorns a good talent (Feral Affinity’s disengage; shape shifting removing roots) so the Shaman ability should factor in some additional defenses for our weaknesses, but it’s mind blowing to me that a PVP talent can be dropped in, completely avoiding problems in the tree, and Blizzard hasn’t done it.
I’m sure my lack of gyroscopic knowledge of Shaman PVP is giving me a skewed view, but I had to vent.
Play a Druid then. Druids have had Thorns since Vanilla. I don’t see how adding it in as a PvP talent for them is the death of the Shaman class.
You don’t see it because it isn’t. That’s not what I said - at all. There is an already-in-game solution to the problem Shaman have struggled with for expansions now. Why don’t they implement this solution?
i mean, lightning shield is kind of like a thorn ability
They get 120% SP to attackers. What I’m seeing is that we get 3.6%
Lightning Shield
1.5% of base mana
Instant
Requires Shaman
Requires level 9
Surround yourself with a shield of lightning for 30 min.
Melee attackers have a 100% chance to suffer (3.6% of Spell power) Nature damage
Enhancement
and have a 50% chance to generate a stack of Maelstrom Weapon
Elemental
and have a 100% chance to generate 5 Maelstrom
Only one Elemental Shield can be active on the Shaman at a time.
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LOL.
You already have the shaman version
CST and Lightning Shield
Poor man’s thorns
Counter strike totem. If it had decent health, it would be a whole lot better
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Ha, right, this forum told me it was nerfed to hell and I shouldn’t take it.
Counterstrike Totem has an internal cooldown so it tends to work better on slow hits compared to something like a rogue; not sure how thorns compares.
Maybe if shaman’s had a baseline 1.5 minute cooldown that makes your next totem untargetable for its duration, you could force it; bonus points if the effect is just applied as an aura for the totem duration to also address mobile windfury or melee uptime via earthbind.
I get crucified for this position, but benefits attached to the totem to me remains an inherent nerf so long as anyone can “dispel” out “buffs.” They can’t be dropped during a stun, and anyone class can take them out.
Totems are thematic to shaman, so fine to keep them, but unless an ability is benefitting others, it shouldn’t be a totem (imo). The trade-off should be Powerful Group Buff-Anyone can dispel. Sadly, it’s menial buff to only you that anyone can dispel.
Thorns can be purged/ dispelled too .
Only noobs die to that.
Counterstrike Totem is group wide though. Still super annoying to watch it die in one hit as opposed to a dispel from one of 4-6 classes (depending on pets). To be fair, mages are everywhere in arena and good placement in battlegrounds usually gets good effect out of it.
Simple solution, make CST have 75% of the shamans health and have it replace Earth Shield in the talent row. Make so it only reflects damage done to the shaman.
Even with an Internal CD, people would stop targeting the shaman when it was down, and they couldn’t auto attack it.
This would fit into Blizzards theme of making our Defense actually offensive. (See lightning shield/purging waters).
This type of defensive already exists in the game in the form of WW Karma. Why can’t shamans have it too? Don’t say homogeny, shaman have had their unique utility given to multiple other classes.
Depends on what you want to use it for … it’s very good 1-1 against some melee classes like warriors and demon hunters. And of course superb in BG team fights .
I am now macroing it to HST. So I have both down one after another .