Shhhh… let us have our dreams.
Just personal preference, Im sure. I could do without any energy/mana/etc bars and just have everything on CD instead.
Some specs like two mages really dont even use their mana enough to even have need of the bar, lol. It pretty much never goes down enough to think about it. Arcane, but…
Id like to see it all on CD’s only with some kind of GCD ,but less restrictive than it is now…not for my sake, Im actually ok with how it is now, but it seems to really irritate a lot of players and thats no good for anyone, lol
As long as people remember its just a dream!
Gonna have people complaining that they “never listen to feeedback” and the “devs dont like us” because they didn’t give shammies a 4th spec.
If they ever DID give us a tanking spec though, I would be angry if they just converted Enhance to tanking. I would ABSOLUTELY want it to be a separate spec.
And I would TOTALLY play it.
Restoring Enhancement to their former glory would give you almost what you are looking for. In the days where people actually formed their own groups, Enhancement was very capable of tanking at least the lower level dungeons.
Even though we queued as dps in LFR, picking up a decent amount of adds, with minimal outside heals was easy. You would mainly acting as crowd control and your main ‘enemy’ were taunts by the real tanks. Breaking out the big boulder elemental was not even necessary.
The ‘catch’ is you would do this because you wanted to tank or help, not reduce your wait time. You would queue as DPS for LFR, and group for dungeons in person & w/o a non-existent group finder, the people had to be willing to accept you
Regardless, this topic keeps coming up again and again due to a supposed shortage of tanks. Many current tanks get tired of putting up with abuse from strangers they run with so they stick with friends or guilds that are willing to work as a team. If you wish to end this (and reduce your wait time - the typical underlying reason) then roll a tank.
Personally, the only way I could see adding new tanks would be if blizzard could find a way to make gear that is 100% spec specific, and totally useless in all other specs. It could perhaps be to the point of not being able to equip it so it could not even be armor. If there was some type of mage tank, you would only get drops for that spec in a dungeon run, and could only equip that gear for raid/quest rewards. This would mean you were tanking because you wanted to do so, and not so you could quickly gear up your preferred (dps) spec. Given that this would as much as triple the total sets of gear players might need, there would be some resistance from other players though. And yes, even mages, your ice, fire & arcane gear would be spec-specific.
Wouldn’t be necessary.
Druid tanks do just fine in “general gear”. They have abilities that make them viable as tanks.
Shaman already have a shield. With a few well designed abilities based around Earth moves, we could easily be on par with other tanks with the gear we already use.
There’s room for a lot of the classes to explore a new spec.
The issue is being clever enough to make them feel unique.
1 Like
Which happens today. If you are choosing not to form your own group, its because you are choosing to only do trivial content.
Mostly because the dungeons were overly simplistic.
1 Like
This would be the first and there’s a clear demand. So bring on the Earthwarden Shamans! I’d totally level one!
1 Like
If you think shaman would be the class they give the benefit of being the first ever spec that gets a 4th spec added.
Then you don’t know the history of the class, and the devs clearly ignoring it (at best) for most of its life.
So a Shaman tank that throws rocks at ppl to taunt
An Active mitigation like Gara from naruto with 100% dodge from Sand
And a WTF button that cover them with stone .
Could be fun 
All I hear is “bah-humbug this is so unprecedented!”
Who cares? You’re a goblin shaman. Goblins do nothing but pollute the elements, so Blizz came up with the reasoning that they make some kinds of deals. A Shaman being empowered by earth to fortify themselves isn’t a stretch.
1 Like
You missed my point. I’m not saying it would be applicable for new specs, the split would be across the board for all specs in every class. It is the only way to ensure that tanking/dpsing or healing is what you wanted to do. Basically imagine how our weapons in Legion were handled being applied to all other gear.
Not only is it not a stretch, it’s a leap I’m surprised they didn’t already make.
1 Like
Seems like there’s enough there to include a fourth spec for most “pure” classes to perform an “essential” role (using the parlance of the hour).
I didn’t say it wasn’t plausible from a lore perspective. Other than having no examples of it actually happening in lore.
Only that it won’t happen from a design standpoint.
The Elements dont really care about pollution.
1 Like
Or… they could do it the way the do with Druids, who switch between Agility and Intellect when they want to Tank/DPS(melee) or Heal/DPS(ranged)
You still don’t need “special” gear to accomplish that.
Don’t let Captain Planet hear you say that!
There’s nothing from a design standpoint preventing this from happening. Blizz are the designers. They can give any class any role they want. Earthwarden Shamans are just something that has support, so we’d like to see it happen.
Also the elements are emotional beings. They get mad over anything. Of course they care about their waters being polluted, air being smogged, and earth being drilled. But Blizz figured goblin shamans are cool, so they do it because that’s what they wanted.
I kept waiting to be able to summon him during Legion.
We had to unite the elementals of Earth, Fire, Air, Water. In an area called the HEART of Azeroth.
“We want classes to have 3 specs” is something from a design standpoint that can prevent it from happening.
The oceans of Azeroth are not the Element’s waters. They are not even from Azeroth, from their own elemental plane. They fight against each other. The shaman is there to mediate it, and quell the elemental fighting.
Ragnaros was known for filling the air with ash to fight the Air Lord, or boiling the seas.
Goblins already practiced a primitive form of shamanism. Lore 101.