Everyone is funneled into playing boring WotLK Shamans while WotLK still exists. Season of Discovering what exactly?
2H is worse than Frost Mages. Actually think about that for a second. DW is top 3 specs in the game, just under Fire Mages and SV hunters. Changing from DW to a 2H weapon brings you from top 3 to dead last and elevates Ele, Aff, Destro, Shadow, Arms, Fury, Balance, Sin, Combat, Sub, Arcane, Feral, Ret, BM, and Frost above you. That’s how far down the ladder you fall. And this includes swapping from green questing 1 handers to the epic Blood Moon 2H. Really goes to show we’re being hard carried by a single rune, and absolute garbage without DW Spec.
Meanwhile Blizzard put time/ money and effort into 2H 2-3 times already since Phase 2 launched and it’s still that bad. I’m worried they are just going to give up. And for Shaman haters/ faction jealousy controlled opinions; 2H isn’t just not as good - it’s actually garbage and not fun at all. If you don’t play Shaman, it’s like what you would imagine what would happen to an Arms Warrior’s DPS after swapping to a Shield and D stance, with 85/200 1H weapon skill, minus the survivability, and Mortal Strike is greyed out.
Lava Lash needs to be 85-100% Weapon damage down from 150% OH damage. And DW Spec needs to allow for Lava Lash to hit with both weapons as it does for Storm Strike. Lava Lash was added when Blizzard decided to discontinue support for 2H, so you can’t add both Lava Lash and 2H support in the game at the same time unless you gave 2H a completely new active ability which isn’t necessary.
Additionally, the 2H-Mastery needs to be buffed. Originally, I thought increasing the effectiveness of Imbues by 100% would balance it with DW. But the whole point of 2H is WF and there’s already a talent for imbue effectiveness and it only buffs the AP bonus of WF not the proc rate. It would either need to be modified in a more beneficial way or try something different like giving Stormstrike a Judgement like effect based on your current imbue, but that sounds like it’s own rune. My proposed idea for a 2H-Mastery rework is as follows:
You gain 30% increased attack speed, 3% melee critical strike rating, 8% increased hit with all spells and attacks, and Stormstrike grants two extra attacks when a two-handed weapon is equipped. Additionally, if your main hand weapon is imbued with Windfury, each attack increases your attack power by (level*3) and stacks up to 5 times. This extra attack power is lost when Windfury triggers or when your Weapon is no longer imbued with Windfury.
I would also add a 15-20% increased chance to proc Maelstrom Weapon if you have a two-handed weapon equipped.
Tanks do 0 damage. Before I lose you, logs aren’t showing tanks; they are showing DW DPS Shamans deciding to no longer mitigate their threat. If you want Tanks to use Shield Mastery or use the new Eng shield, you have to give SOME of the damage back. Here are some proposed changes.
Reduce the Mana cost of Molten Blast and increase it’s AP scaling. I could have 1000 AP with a Shield and barley rise above it’s tooltip damage.
Shield Mastery rune could add: Each block increases the critical strike chance of your next Earth Shock by 20% stacking up to 5 times.
Spirit of the Alpha reworked to an active ability: 2 min CD.
You enter Ghost Wolf and your attack power is increased by 35% of your total armor value. During this duration you deal 40% more threat and are immune to slows and crowd control effects. Your party and raid members gain Loyal Beta and have 25% reduced threat. Abilities can’t be used in this form. Lasts 12 seconds.
I think something like this would mitigate it being a strong DPS CD for DPS Shamans as the tank would be incentivized to build full Shield Mastery stacks before using it. For DPS it would be like 500 AP but they would be unable to Stormstrike, Lava Lash, or even proc Windfury. Tanks would gain about 2,200 AP which I’m sure is a DPS increase when not using those active abilities.
Also, Restro is the worst healer in the game. Healing Rain is way too weak for a rune and wouldn’t even be used often if it were baseline. It’s cast time should be reduced to 1.5 seconds, increased the healing by 30% and work with Maelstrom. Earth Shield should also increase the Shaman’s healing done to that target by 20% like it did in MoP.
No one likes swapping to Shamanistic Rage every 60 seconds on the clock for the rest of their life. Shamanistic Rage either needs to be baseline and buffed by the rune or every single leg rune needs to increase Mana regen while not casting by 40%.
I know SoD is tied with Era so somethings can’t be changed easily, but some Restro talents are just so garbage, like you need to put 5 talent points into Restorative Totems in order to get Mana Tide. Restorative Totems increases your the healing of your Healing Stream Totem by 20%. Healing Stream heals for 10. Tanks have 3200-4k HP. In BGs, PvP geared players have 4000-6000 HP, the number 10 shouldn’t be on the screen in any context. Priests can click a rune and pop 950-1700 healing done on their entire party every 6 seconds, instant cast, 40yd range… Shamans need to hard cast for 2 seconds, to trickle 35 healing done in a 15yd radius, with a 10 sec CD. One feels like a rune, the other feels more like an abandoned after thought. Crazy how the spell’s visual effect was buffed 3 times, but no one uses it anyways. When it comes to DPS, people (esp Warriors), are always qqing about this or that class doing 3% better than them. But have you looked at healing percentiles? Restro is capping at 9% percentile right now. The WORST healing mage and WORST Rdruid who’s EVER walked into Gnomer has done better than the WORLD’S BEST Restro Shaman. And HPal is right down there with them.
I’m getting news push notifications to my phone that SoD is having a healer shortage and it’s not a wonder why. You can’t abandon an entire role for a phase. At this point, even if you fix these glaring issues everyone is already geared for spriest, ele, prot/ret lol. I don’t know how Blizzard is going to fix this without over buffing heals now and either toning down their gear in phase 3 to compensate or flat out nerf them again. You’re not bringing the role back with reasonable changes right now.
Please give Shamans a second pass, 2H and Restro are so far behind the pack. And Shield tanks don’t exist.