Just curious, is there a tanking niche that shaman would fill? we already have tanks with sustain (drain tank) - BDK and VDH, we have stagger in BrW, we have high utility in Prot pally, we have shield in prot warr, and we have an HP sponge in bear.
I’m all for shaman tanks, I’d pick that shiz up in a heartbeat with the pug hell i’ve been in this season, but I can’t see a niche in there
Does it need a niche? Maybe it’d just be nice to have a different flavor of the same thing.
In all likelihood, of what you’ve listed, prolly fall in same category as prot pally. And thats fine. Not everything needs to be a brand new thing.
I guess not necessarily, but it’d make it more attractive as an option for non-shaman players to shuffle over to imo
Here’s what I’m thinking: I looked at the crafted shields - they’re either Str or Int… no Agi. I would find it odd that they’d add a third Str/Shield tank… Blizz would likely try to make something a bit different so it would probably be a caster tank of sorts - this is kinda how things are shaping up on SoD as well. If this were the case, then a tank would suddenly have access to caster trinkets - that could turn into something wild, maybe. I’d also bet that they’d put the tank spec between Resto and Ele and basically redo the Farseer hero tree so that it’s Resto/Tank - that would then mean Ele would have access to Tank/Stormbringer. Going back to the SoD mechanics, Shamans kinda become tankier the more they block - there’s a stacking dmg reduction; maybe the retail niche would be that it’s more durable based on the number of targets present? Or, maybe Earth Elemental would play a big role?
I mean I think theres space for it for sure, and to be fair there is a tank shortage in the game so maybe introducing another tank spec soon would be nice. Not necessarily another new class, but a new spec would be good.
And it would also be really cool to have a spec based heavily around earthy/rock/nature type of spells since thats kind of what we’re missing. Ele focuses mostly on lava/lightning with a bit of frost and earth, enh is mostly wind/lightning with a bit of frost, resto is primarily water.
All 3 specs utilize earth/nature to some degree, but it is not at the forefront of any of the specs. Ele gets it the most with earthquake and earth shock, but thats about it and thats also completely fine. However due to that, there is certainly space for an earth/nature based tank spec, maybe it can be the first tank spec that uses a 2h+shield as well, that’d be kinda cool. Or just a 2h, thats fine too.
Well, well, well…