Ok, let me try and make one constructive feedback post on Shaman Tanks before I go back to dooming.
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Molten Blast is a bad spell. It hits for way too little damage and costs way too much mana. It hitting 10 mobs instead of 4 is irrelevant. We don’t use it for AoE tanking anyway, we have Overcharged and Fire Nova Rune for that.
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Shield Mastery is a bad rune. We don’t have nearly enough block chance to make it proc and stack reliably on Single Target. You can check P3 logs, we do not run with 5 stacks while being the only tank. It’s only going to get worse if we have tank swaps, because it’s backloaded. We take full damage when we taunt, and by the time we have some stacks, it’s probably going to be time for the other tank to taunt it back.
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We don’t have a helmet rune. We can either run Mental Dexterity (which just got a nerf) and being forced into the Stormstrike (which hits for no damage when you’re using a single one handed weapon - think back on Classic how many Enh Shamans actually picked that talent), or into half of Burn (because we can’t use Flametongue Weapon for the SP buff).
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Rockbiter weapon does nothing after the AP nerf. If we had the choice between using it and a mana oil, we’d use the mana oil. It’s literally just a tax we have to pay so we have taunt. It does nothing else.
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Earth Shock is our taunt, our interrupt, our hardest hitting CD and it has a huge mana cost, all rolled into a spell. To the point where if we’re actively tanking, we don’t have a taunt, because we can’t hold it for interrupts. If we hold it, someone is pulling threat.
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We got a defensive CD on this phase, in Shamanistic Rage. Too bad we can’t hold it to use it defensively, because we need that mana. I guess there’s the new blue totem coming, but solving base class problems in Totems and Tier Bonuses is just bad design. What’s going to happen once new items come? What if you have bad luck? Is it cool to gate a whole spec behind a drop?
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Ring runes feel terrible. It’s also very crowded. Splitting it by spell school is very weird, but just for reference, shaman tanks use weapon skill, fire magic and nature magic. There’s also Defense, but that brings me to my next point.
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Shaman tanks have no buttons to press. Stormstrike deals no damage, we can’t sustain Molten Blast (and it deals no damage either). So we have Earth Shock and Flame Shock. That’s not enough to build threat, so in P3 we found out we have to hardcast spells. Yes, really. We stand in front of the boss, and we cast Lava Burst and Ligthning Bolts. While the boss is hitting us. Just eating the pushback because there’s nothing else to press anyway. Needless to say, that makes all defensive stats but flat HP and armor very bad. We can’t dodge, block or parry while we’re casting.
Literally, the only P4 change of consequence to shaman tanks is the 15% increased threat on Way of Earth. And that’s not a fun change. It has literally zero impact in actual gameplay. It’s a bit like Overcharged back in p3: a passive that worked, but no fun at all.
That’s the feedback on the actual gameplay.
I also want to give some feedback on how it feels to be a Shaman Tank on SOD.
The actual tanking was busted on P1 and P2. We used none of the tanking runes or gear other than Way of the Earth. We were Dual Wield tanking, basically being an Extra DPS in front of the boss. You guys turned that off. It’s also the reason most of the Shaman Tank feedback gets A LOT of flak from the community.
I get you guys turning off the Dual Wielding. It didn’t fit your vision for the class and role (that’s my guess, there was actually zero communicating about it, no Dev opinion on the Patch Notes). But we got nothing back. We spent the whole of P3 waiting for changes that actually addressed the issues. The only changes to actual tanking was a (deserved) nerf to Overcharged.
Now PTR is coming on week 3, and we’re still very much on the same spot. There is a total of 4 changes coming to Shaman Tanking specifically, and they’re very minor or irrelevant. We got no buttons to press, no synergies to use, the jankyness of hardcasting in front of the boss persists.
As for suggestions to actually improve that, it’s hard. They can range for the very hopeful and complex (you can’t get into Shaman Discord and not see people asking for a Shield Bash or imbues on shield sort of suggestion), to the very simple. There are a bunch of topics on this very forum that have very good suggestions.
I’ll leave these, just so it’s not just a ranting post. They also don’t seem to me like very complex, but I’m not a coder, so what do I now:
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Make Molten Blast usable. Increase it’s single target damage. Reduce it’s mana cost to trivial (like Lava Lash is). Max rank shocks already cost enough, and it feels VERY bad to be a Shaman tank with no mana. We literally just cast Rank 1 Earth Shocks and hope.
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Give us a way to force Shield Mastery stacks. Put it it on Molten Blast or something. That way Shaman Tanks actually get to use the extra armor. We’d also get to stack it up while not tanking before the taunt.
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Give us another button to press. One of the ways I can think that would be simpler to do is give us the same treatment you gave to 2h DPS: Make Maelstrom Weapon stack for Shaman tanks. We need more buttons, maybe they can be Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightining.
EDIT to include one last point:
Testwerk is a terrible boss profile to test Shaman Tanking. It hit’s way faster than most every other boss in the game, so it skews Shield Mastery procs. It also makes an already bad thing MUCH MUCH worst: pushbacks on hardcasts. I get that you need some sort of standardized test and it cannot be perfected for every class, but most if not all shaman tank testing there is very close to meaningless.
Ok, now I’m going back to my normal mode of dooming and being very negative and not hopeful for changes to come.