Gonna be playing this character again after a pretty long time. Are they fine in ‘high-end’ content? I know just about every other class/spec is okay normal~heroic. The only other spec I’d play is restro if ele doesn’t work out. But, I get healing anxiety lol. It seems now that people are mentioning shamans alongside shadow priests. Soooo I’m just wondering…Still going to play her since I love shaman lore and aesthetics, but it would be a shame if they’re really the ‘worst class’. :<
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enhancement is getting a complete over haul in sl and ele is changed a bit to and i dont think they touched resto to much.
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nope. You can still do perfectly fine in mythic raiding and keys 1-20. After that you dont see much shams (25+)
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I don’t care for Ele myself but Enh and Resto are awesome imo and way better than the community perception leads you to believe.
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If you ain’t pushing to be at the peak of any content where spec manner a lot more, just play what fun for you and if you good at your class, you will go far in your wow career
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No they aren’t as bad as the community perception for resto is even in content that’s extremely high like M+22 and higher. Pugging this content will probably be impossible, but with a group just look at Luka_wow on youtube and see what the best resto shaman in the world can do.
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I think it depends on how competitively you want to play and what kind of content you want to do. Shaman can do all types of content, but I feel like you need to really enjoy playing the class/specs, otherwise it’s not a great choice. Resto can be good in raids, but isn’t desirable in high-end M+. Afaik neither of the Shaman dps specs are desirable in M+, either. The Shadowlands changes (to dps specs specifically) look promising, but obviously need to be tested more. Resto is looking to be about the same as BfA so far, probably a little worse for wear without essences and stuff.
I tried maining resto again this expansion and just couldn’t do it lol. Even if resto is technically “capable”, it feels awful to play to me compared to something like rDruid, especially in M+. If you really like the class, I think you can push it to an extent, but it’s going to be more difficult than other classes.
So, I think if you have your heart set on playing Shaman, and you aren’t super concerned with pushing content, maybe you should keep playing it. I personally have never loved the Shaman playstyle enough to stick with it when I find other classes/specs to be easier, more enjoyable, and more rewarding.
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You have to have a mentality to be a Shaman main. Its a mix between masochistic, strong willed, optimistic, and cynical all wrapped into one.
Try it, if you like it, get better at it. Balancing is always changing (relatively speaking here and for reference xpac to xpac 
) so really its about enjoying the class.
Performance goes a long way if there is a negative stigma. People will want to bring you because you are not what they expected if you can perform.
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Basically you work twice as hard as other classes, for the exact same result. If that appeals to you, then enjoy. It really starts to turn into a big bucket of suck after a while though and you become resentful.
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Where can I read enh changes
Wowhead. Its pretty easy to find all the sl changes from the main page.
wow head,mmo champion wow.
I mostly play elemental, but I also enjoy healing as restoration. I’m optimistic about the changes and the refocus on Lava Burst again.
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Shamans are far from the worst class. It’s just very gear dependent. In pvp as any spec, if you don’t have vers you aren’t gonna have fun. If you don’t have a lot of crit, strikethrough, natural harmony as an ele sham in pve, your damage is balls, etcetc
Comparatively if you’re a DH or something, you dont need much to pull off high damage.
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They are getting changed in shadowlands, but both enhancement and elemental are viable in high-end content. Personally I have an enhance alt and he blasts in damage. Even with the worst class you can probably still do better than most people in heroic raid or mythic raid pugs. Or mythic+, my brother plays a ww monk and he often does top dps in his heroic raids.
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You have to have a mentality to be a Shaman main. Its a mix between masochistic, strong willed, optimistic, and cynical all wrapped into one.
I love playing shaman, this is my main since MoP, but what Meadamemmon said is the uggly truth. You have to really love shaman to play well, and work 10 times as much as other classes just to do the same thing, sometimes even with all the effort you’ll underperform.
I love playing Elemental, I played Enhance in Legion but I just didn’t like melee too much so I put it aside, have played Elemental and Resto since then. Sometimes I wonder if Blizzard hates shammys, they gave BL to mages and even hunters, other unique spells are not unique anymore and so on… In the end of the day, other classes replaces us with ease. DHs are better than enhance; mages, hunters, locks and spriests (god!!) are more desirable than elemental and so on. Resto will always have a place when raiding imho though.
My really, really, reaaaally honest advice to you is: “If you don’t have much time and/or you will not try to do high-end content then be my guest and play any shaman by all means. But if you want to get that cutting edge when raiding or high-end PvP content and be invited always, not because you play well but because they need you, then many many other classes are more desirable and you’ll loose your spot”.
I suffer for hours to get a m+ pug (even when doing simple +15 keys, my IO is above 2k and I don’t suck so my class is the problem when I say this), getting declined over and over again. If I was a rogue, hunter, mage or lock I know for a fact that I would do content so much more smoothly and much faster. My guildmates are trying mythic nzoth now, but I can’t raid with them due to the underperformance of dps/shamans at that specific fight… so, high-end content are tough for us, but it’s a really fun class to play overall.
Cheers!
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So I just leveled a shaman to 120. My experience was so bad I had to tell someone. I have one or sometimes more of each class, most of them low level. All of these lower level characters, thanks partially to the increased leveling speed, have utter garbage gear mixed with outdated heirlooms. You would think that they’d be equally under performing, right?
Not so.
Out of all the classes I’ve tried so far, the shaman (elemental) has done the worst. It’s not about the damage that they deal. They seem to have good burst potential. Maybe. If I bothered to gear it up. I’m not going to waste my time, though, because it has the constitution of an alka-seltzer in water.
Mob hits me like two times and I’m almost at 75% health. Even stretching out the amount of times it takes for something to reach me with frost shock kiting is not enough. I pick up a winter’s kiss flower and the ice damage chunks my down quite a bit!! No other class I’ve picked those on have a noticeable change in health.
With that low health trying to kill rares or quest ‘boss’ mobs is virtually impossible unless heroism and your elementals are up. My guess is that they wanted shamans to be dependent on these abilities, but I don’t see that making sense since I can kill the same mobs on other classes without long cool downs? Marksman hunter (/w no pet) just kite it around. I’ve killed plenty of mobs easily with the hunter that the shaman struggled on. Both have equally terrible gear, but the hunter can take a bigger beating (if anything ever makes it to them), and they can at least feign death to escape.
Previously, the shaman was enhancement spec, and that was even worse! Same deal super, super, super squishy but now you have to be in melee range the whole time. I have not tried restoration so perhaps that one does better, or maybe the class is far more gear dependent than the others. I don’t know. It was by far the most frustrating class I’ve leveled.
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Oh. So my experience was not unusual then. That’s really disappointing.
I see. Thanks guys. Guess I’ll just find a really good guild to do content with lol. Really looking forward to SL just for the class changes. 
Shamans are very fun, the main problem is that they have low survivability relative to other classes. In fact they have quite possibly the lowest survivability in the game, and are known for being squishier in effect than cloth classes. The SL changes look interesting, but the main issue still is that the changes are ultimately just changing the way they deal damage. There’s not really any changes to their defensives or survivability, outside of Healing Stream totem (which isn’t much, but it is something I suppose).
Shamans can and probably still will be very enjoyable to play. But if you also play other classes and know what it’s like to have more mobility, and/or powerful defensives that give you actual immunity and the ability to avoid mechanics (“oh sh*t” buttons), you may feel what’s missing.
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