Shaman Alphas: History Doomed To Repeat Itself

Classes Shaman
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To anyone who wants to read this I need to get this off my chest. I am completely and utterly disappointed in the lack of communication we have had regarding the entire shaman class. Not just for the upcoming expansion but for multiple expansions. I keep getting my hopes up that MAYBE we will finally see some light, that our lord and savior Thrall, THE SHAMAN! will bring some clarity to those who control our destinies but instead we get multiple reviews and updates for classes that frankly… don’t need them. If any devs or community managers read this I will try to fully articulate the frustration and anger the shaman community has right now.

  1. PTSD. Shamans have been neglected now for 4 expansions worth of alphas.

Battle For Azeroth Alpha Shaman were told that the dev team didn’t get to us and that we would have to wait till 8.1 for us to to see changes that should have rolled out at the beginning of the expansion. This put a bitter taste in the community’s mouth in an expansion that already had issues.

Shadowlands Alpha Elemental shaman had a series of updates regarding maelstrom to fulmination to a combo of the two and ultimately months later ended up with… maelstrom. Not a bad mechanic but other issues were eclipsed that will be mentioned later. There was loads of feedback regarding covenant abilities for shaman that weren’t addressed (Night Fae target cap etc) while other classes get reworked completely.

Dragonflight Alpha Class tree is one of the first to launch. Shamans rejoice as we think we might actually be seen. High praise is given on of how utility is thoughtfully spread. Good initial feedback but iteration is still needed… SILENCE. Virtually no feedback or iteration happened, concerns for pathing still exist today.

The War Within Alpha Here we are today May 30th 2024. In less than a week we move into beta and here we are with a timeline of:
Dec 18th 2023: Chronowarden, Mountain Thane, San’layn, Lightsmith talents released.
March 15th: Farseer tree released (to date initial blue thread has 557 comments with no blue feedback regarding feedback concerns)

April 15th: Alpha officially goes live. (All trees available EXCEPT 2 SHAMAN, 2 ROGUE, 1 PRIEST (who got told they were getting an Oracle rework at this point))
April 18th: Druid, Evoker, Monk, Paladin, Warrior blue feedback reworks feedback roll in.
April 22nd: The “Oh crap we forgot about shamans” Blue post saying that Totemic and Stormbringer are in the works.

May 9th: Stormbringer releases for testing. This is phase 3 of the alpha at this point (Hallowfall week) and the first time we even get to see the talents let alone use them. NO CHANCE for feedback to even be given.
May 14th: Totemic releases with 2/3 of the talents not yet implemented. This is the fist time we even get to see the talents let alone use them and now we have 2 weeks until beta launch.
May 28th: Totemic talents finally work. 1 week before beta launches we finally get our talent tree to test.
June 25th: Blizzard finally announces that Shaman will recieve their update package in next weeks build. 6 months after initial testing begins, 57 days till launch leaving little time for feedback/iteration.
Major Shamans Changes to Arrive in Next Week’s Beta Build - Wowhead News

TLDR for the history lesson: Hero talents started getting released in December, we didn’t get to see ours till March, cant fully test our class till this week. Meanwhile Mages, Warlocks, Priests, Death Knights, Monks, Paladins are getting feedback, reworks, overhauls and addressing their concerns.

  1. Shaman have core issues.

  • We bring nothing special. We have beaten this dead horse. Mages, Evokers, Hunters all bring our ORIGINAL utility of bloodlust. Enhancement has windfury totem which is something but only for raids. We have a tool for every problem but encounters don’t allow us to utilize that utility. Why bring an Elemental or Enhancement if you got a Fire Mage who can do everything we can do but better?

  • We are squishy AF. Ghost wolf is not a defensive. Ankh is not a defensive (though I love this ability) Astral shift is an answer on a very long cooldown. Again mages have Ice block (x2), alter time, barrier, cauterize, mirror image.

  • Elemental is pigeon holed into whatever our tier set decides this season. Are we going to be fire or we going to be lightning (which has its own issues with hero talents that we can’t get feedback on because we are shouting into the void)

  • We are target capped HARD. Both enhance and elemental are very hard capped and require MANY GCDs often to even start getting to decent damage vs. other classes who can explode things with very high or no target caps and no ramp.

  • Tauren shaman still have the same totems from vanilla (yes I want a damn visual update, the damn space goats got one before a core shaman from vanilla)

If you have made it to the end of this TED talk, I thank you. I am angry, upset and have tried to remain positive (see the Farseer thread I posted on the first page) but we have had ZERO feed back. Not even a “lightning bolt is getting increased by 5%”. It has been COMPLETE silence. While I hate to say that we deserve anything as a class I do think that it shows a lack of empathy or disrespect for us core lovers of a class who have enjoyed being the lovers of lightning, the enjoyers of the elements, those who rejoice in restoration. Blizzard, please for the love of Green Jesus reach out to us. Our community is small but we are passionate. Thank you.

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Posted this on another forum and wanted to share some of my recent thoughts on Elemental Shaman gameplay here.

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Ele shaman is the most unlikely meta spec in the game. A lot of the specs were used for raid and meta has always changed. But Ele shaman hasn’t been meta for over a decade except for a single season in BfA.
Is this really a coincidence? I disagree. The ele shaman was able to get better enough with the influence of the new system. But each time, patches were done on the PTR or Beta that intentionally lowered the performance of the ele shaman to a level where it was not used, and eventually it was not used. Even better specifications just come over without any patch, but the ele shaman is subject to such strict criteria that it eventually results in useless and unused specifications.
Do you still think this is a coincidence?

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Just wait until they copy the Windfury aura for Druids over from SoM.

To add to the gripes about Shaman as a class, their lore has also been in shambles since SL. Farseer, while consistent for Shaman lore, just adds to the confusion on how Shaman fits with the rest of the pieces of the puzzle. The Covenants of the Shadowlands are just okay with these people popping on over to the mortal plane to kill some people? Do they have to wait for the Kyrians to pick them up or are they just hanging around invisible for the entire next expansion?

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I don’t think Blizzard knows what they’re doing with afterlife lore at this point.

Draenei spirits seem to just hang out as seen in the Draenei heritage quest. They’re still around 40+ years since their deaths. They’re even able to travel from Outland to Azeroth for a holiday.

Ancestral spirits lore is just in absolute shambles because the writers for Shadowlands had no respect for existing lore.

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Ancestors lore never really made any sense, shadowlands didn’t change much.

The Tauren don’t even have a consistent view of spirits, because their dead are supposed to simultaneously become one with the Earth Mother and Sky Father and also still somehow walk freely wherever and be available for consultation. Likewise, the Wildhammer are supposed to be eternally bound to the sky in death in some sort of Valhalla, not hanging out helping with earthly stuff.

The Orcs already had an afterlife they were supposed to go to, established in BC, so orc ancestors have always been yanked out of heaven to answer questions or help with things. Also how were they constantly relying on ancestors after moving to another planet on the other side of the universe and when some of their ancestors are fel-tainted?

The Draenei were only supposed to have picked up shamanism recently (from Nobundo, who learned it just before the Draenei fled Outland), so how is their ancestor gimmick even working? The ancestors they would be calling on are priests and paladins who worshipped the Light, with no shamanistic inclinations or knowledge of the spirits, most of whom probably lived on Argus 30,000 years ago. Even if SL didn’t happen, who are these magic draenei shaman ancestors wielding the elements?

Death and spirit lore has always been a contradictory mess with no cohesion and arbitrary rules that change every time it’s brought up. SL wasn’t anything new.

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Pin this post at the top. All very well said and laid out

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joke is old elsewhere but I enjoy bringing up the appropriately named shaman tier set for tww s1:
Waves of the Forgotten Reservoir

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Mmm mmmm shaman lookin bad yet again.

No streamlining of clunky mechanics.
No fleshing out and fixing degenerate one button spam builds like lava shaman, to be made more interesting.
No fixing of our hard cap situation.
No remedying how absolutely garbage it is as ele to maintain and spread flameshocks in the year 2024 our savior.

On a side note, I have really been enjoying destruction in M+. It’s half of the keys and double the damage, and the reworks gave us REALLY cool new mechanics with soul fire and shadow burn to add in now. Got to love a class with several pass throughs and lots of catering , crazy how it turns into a better spec after attention.

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I agree with everything you have pointed out here. I played Shaman in Wrath and the only reason why were even good was due to our high damage output in PvP. They have always lacked defensives and as Resto Shaman now in DF we struggle bus with quick/instant heals and nothing to really defensively help our team. SLT takes a second to even activate so people will die before it even spreads the health.

The target cap really hurts and for Enhance having Frost Shock in the rotation just feels clunky and like I went to the arcade to play whack a mole.

I stopped playing a Hunter to come to Shaman now to only see the same issues. Does Blizzard have something against Mail users?

Edited: Grammar

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I wouldn’t use PTSD to describe anything in a video game, but beyond that OP has made an excellent post. Well done.

Is that really what its called? Hahaha.

Foooooreshadowiiiiiing /jazzhands

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Completely agree with the OP. Feeling kinda angry because elem shaman has been my fav spec since shaman came to the Alliance, and right now the class feels stagnant, uninspired, clunky and old. This spec could be amazing, but I think in truth Blizzard does not have any talented devs working on shaman; they seem occupied with other classes.

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Thank you!

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w tak brother

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Great post! I love this! Where are the Devs? Where are our “Community Leaders” for the Shaman class? We have been left behind for so long Blizzard doesn’t even have scraps for us anymore. If Blizzard ever does a Q&A we should ask them why they have failed the class for 4 expansions.

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sadly this spec has a better flameshock spread mechanic in a classic seasonal server then it does on a live version of the game.

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I honestly didn’t realize that stormbringer still wasn’t fully implemented. That makes for a really big “yikes” that we are heading into beta where it’s more about tuning than reworking.

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Even thrall rerolled to warrior.

For me, I’m a diehard shaman main and well…. I’m so sick of the lack of attention so I think I’m gonna try to use this as an excuse to quit wow.

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Nailed it. Im not interested rerolling a new character every season/expansion, if blizzard cant be bothered to fix even some of resto’s growing list problems then im not interested in buying the expansion, and if this is their start to a trilogy I can only imagine how poorly the rest of its gonna go.

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Well I had hoped that we would have had at least something moving into beta but alas we do not… Hold on to your butts.

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