From the beginning, Shaman tanks had issues that the community worked around. Early on, it was clear keeping threat over melee DPS shamans was a tall order and we couldn’t spam spells for threat because of mana issues. To address that, the second half of P1 and all of P2 shaman tanks dual-wielded with double Rockbiter which guaranteed high threat and used downranked spells to save mana. The key thing here is that the problem was never actually fixed. The community found a workaround.
Devs made changes that affected all of the workarounds. Way of Earth (WoE) needing a shield was to stop use by DPS shamans in pvp. That plus the Rockbiter nerf killed the DW tank workaround and inspired “Spellhance” tank, a 21/20 build that was used at the beginning of P3 to make up for the damage nerf. After the Mental Dexterity change, many Shamans needed Stormstrike again and are now simply using DW Rockbiter with Shamanistic Rage. Again, the issues that have persisted since Phase 1 are still there:
WoE should not be tied to Rockbiter. Right now Shamans are the only one with a tank buff timer that’s 5 minutes. Righteous Fury is a toggle. Meta/Bear is a transformation. Please just make it a toggled skill.
Threat generation: The RB nerf affected overall dmg and threat. Earth Shock is the main damage spell but yet it not only generates threat but is also the taunt. WoE could give RB back its original AP amount which would help the damage. Molten Blast is also still too weak to be usable. Separating threat and taunt into two separate spells and making a new skill/spell that can be spammed/stacked to build threat would help a lot.
Mana Efficiency: Molten Blast is still too expensive and weak of a spell. Shield Mastery gives too little mana on single-target encounters. Change Shield Mastery into a skill requiring a shield that returns mana, much like how Crusader Strike does for Paladins. Make Molten Blast cheaper and do additional damage against the targeted/first enemy. Any additional stuff, like making attacks against enemies affected by Frost Shock give mana back (requiring WoE) would help too.
Survivability: There’s no emergency button. Shield Mastery stacks take too long to stack and give us the damage reduction devs originally planned. Put the extra armor into WoE or fold it into the Overcharged Rune, having WoE active and required to have the armor bonus. An extra button strategically used for survival is a critical element to endgame tanking.
If Shamans should tank, please lean more into making it enjoyable and mechanically sound. Right now, it’s living off of scraps and is a casualty of nerfs that affect other specs.
I don’t get how they can’t make it work. Then again, they can’t even give Rogues tanks an AOE threat builder. Kinda sad.
SoD has holes in the elegance. Like they made the base tanks elegant but the roles they introduced are clunky lolol. I dunno whether to laugh or feel bad.
Thank you for a great example. You’re describing another workaround that doesn’t covers up the core issues. It’s another example of how we’re looking for ways to achieve something that should be more effectively implemented by the devs.
The Burn rune buff was aimed at elemental shamans, not shaman tanks. We shouldn’t be getting solutions from mechanics made for other specs, because (as mentioned before) when those are tweaked and changed, it affects tanking in ways it wasn’t intended to.
-EDIT: To be honest, I’m not sure how Burn deals with anything. The SP on the rune doesn’t apply to tanking. Are you referring to the increased Flame Shock damage?
Burn, 5 targets with flame shock, resets procs on molten blast, with power surge on belt every flame shock tick has a chance to give u a proc that restores a lot of mana, you can use them with way of earth and shield mastery, all the mana regen and all the useage of abilities while making aoe tanking easier as
I think his point primarily goes into single target tanking and the clunkiness of the spec overall.
For tanking groups, burn w/ flame shock → power surge → spam chain lightning works well. Fire nova rune works well for same purpose, but is too mana intensive unless mob density is high and you are the sole tank.
For single target, burn isn’t taken, power surge proc rate isn’t high enough, and you would use lava burst or molten blast. Molten blast, the AoE threat spell, has no interaction with power surge and is bad as OP said.
Possible improvement would be to make Rockbiter a shield imbue, design tank shamans to use WF or FT on MH weap. Another would be to buff threat on overcharge rune, reduce damage, and reduce ICD back to what it was. Adding a spamable shield attack that gets shield mastery stacks up and helps with mana regen would be an improvement. Making Shamanistic Rage a spell book ability so the tank has a DR CD and improved mana management would fix many issues. Adding windshear as a Taunt / Interrupt separate from earthshock would be and option (and put earthshock back on shock CD/ make it able to be used for normal threat rotation on taunt mechanic bosses). Improve Molten Blast threat while reducing mana cost.
Burn is useless as a tank vs 1 mob (also requires flametounge to grt the mileage from the rune). Only good for tanking when there are 5+. Same with powersurge… 5% is a joke and unreliable.
Shoot i have 23% block and SM stacks drop often resulting in poor mana and lower damage reduction (armor from shield stacks) Tank shams need a on use reliable defensive ability.
Tank sham dont have mana issues when AOE tanking 3+. Only boss encounters show the glaring gaps within the tank kit.
Molten blast should refresh flame shock duration for example. In its current form it is lackluster and is a costly spell with no intrinsic value to 99.9% of boss encounters.
OP provides alot of legit and accurate accounts on the former and current state of tank shaman. Person above me has some high hopes the would arguably make tank sham and all sham ridiculous haha.
Yeah, I totally agree about it. When off-tanking, mana is an issue, be cause you can generate mana with Shield Mastery rune. I often use skill downgraders like Flame Shock or Earth Shock when MT or OT because otherwise my mana becomes problematic, even if I use a mana potion.
To be honest, I play the tank with the enhancement talent tree with Stormstrike, and I believe that strength, agility, and stamina stats remain important for a viable tank.
I like this. Simple but achieves the true goal instead of overcorrecting without proper testing.
Yes, you can use the Burn rune, but are you using a R4 Flame Shock? If so, spamming that will make you run out of mana soon. Molten Blast does less damage per mob than its mana cost. Are you going to spam it and run out of mana in roughly 4-5 casts while you’re using other spells too? Some quick math would show that Power Surge doesn’t return enough mana over the course of a boss encounter to do the things you’ve listed without running out of mana in less than 2 minutes especially if you’re using its proc on a spell like Chain Lightning (assuming you’re putting MB on your hands) which would definitely spend far more mana than it’s worth.
You’re talking about situations I’m not talking about. Everyone knows AoE tanking is fine. I am not talking about AoE tanking. I’m talking about boss encounters. We’re about to hit P4 and we’re already seeing problems with handling tankbusters and other sources of damage spikes. Encounters that require consistent damage mitigation, resource management, a way to handle mechanics like threat resets or long gaps that cause Shield Mastery to fade, and simply contingencies for when the unexpected happens. Things that all tanks need and most have.
I believe the confusion is around what I am trying to highlight. I’m highlighting issues with the role’s mechanics. I specifically highlighted that workarounds that the community makes do not make up for the fact that the mechanics are not sufficient. You are free to provide solutions to situations I am not addressing, but even those are relying on runes and spell interactions that–and I stress this–were not designed for the tanking role.
The only situation that all of this works in is an AoE pull when you’re relying on Shield Mastery mana returns, not a single-target encounter where those returns are small. If you’re happy with the state of tanking that’s okay. But it’s nowhere close to a state that makes for a reliable main tank for the upcoming phase and beyond.
Shaman tank is a failed experiment. Can’t give a class with such a broken toolkit any tankiness. They’ll unfortunately have to settle for being the best class in the game only.