In the last month there has been numerous amounts of these type threads. We have been asking for over 10 years to get a tank spec. Blizzard themselves say they refuse to give any other classes extra specs other than druids.
We are not going to get a tank I am sorry to say it. I want us to have a 4th tanking spec but it will not happen unless the game director is no longer there and they decide to go back on that policy. I want many things for shamans. I want us to get a glide and a double jump but wont happen. Even though we can justify the glide as us manipulating wind to slow our fall. And same with a double jump that we manipulate the wind to give us an extra burst of height when jumping it will never happen.
The difference is that they never added a spec to Druid. Druid always had 4 âspecsâ just that 2 of them shared a talent tree. When they moved away from that version of class design, they decided to make druid have 4 defined specs rather than throwing one of them out.
While I do agree that Shaman Tank is probably a pipe dream, there is no official statement that mentions a refusal to add new specs to existing classes. In an interview with Graham Berger on whether theyâre open to adding in additional support classes in the game, this was his response:
"Yeah. So I think in terms of adding additional support specializations to the game, or support playstyles, because it is still a damage dealer role, community perception and reaction to Augmentation is going to really inform that. But also, Augmentation as we said earlier, was this confluence of a bunch of things coming together. I think we would need that as well. Itâs like adding more specs to existing classes. Does that fit with the story weâre trying to tell? Does that match with where weâre going in future expansions and how Azaroth is evolving? So a pretty high bar in general.
But if we were to, I imagine weâd be more likely to add new specializations rather than change existing ones. If youâre playing enhancement shaman today, which in the past has had some of that support playstyle, you play it today because you like lighting your weapons on the fire and doing a ton of damage, and changing that out from under players is a pretty big ask, I think. So unlikely to do that, I think weâd be more likely to add new ones."
So yeah, a Shaman Tank first has to fit the story⊠which it does - this is probably the closest expansion weâve ever had; Demon Hunters were, by far, the most requested addition to the game following the release of BC and it took Blizzard nine years to put them in because it had to fit the story.
SoD is a playground where Blizz can experiment - itâs no secret that things like Shaman Tank and Mage Healer are essentially a 4th spec for a few classes. To not see this as Blizzard experimenting with these ideas would be completely asinine - Shaman Tank has been a massive success in SoD.
So, I mean, if youâre trying to make a blanket statement just for the sake of making a blanket statement, itâs simply not true. Thereâs no problem with people voicing their wants for this game and itâs very much in the realm of possibility.
No druids in vanilla were just like shamans had partial tanking abilities in the feral tree and blizzard decided to take the tank aspects and make it a 4th spec where as Shamans had our tanking abilities removed.
The game Director Ion said they will not be adding a 4th spec to other classes only druids.
Didnât say I disagreed with people voicing what they want I am just saying it will not happen. We asked for tanking for almost a decade and blizzard just seems to want to ignore us in retail. They add shaman tanking to sod. And the follower dungeons I have been in the shaman is a tank but we do not get to have it. Its frustrating I would love to have a tanking on my shaman. I would also like the old SS ES combo where SS would build a debuff on our targets that increase nature damage done and you would hit it with ES for inc damage it was like a Shaman execute. I would also like us to have a glide and double jump which we could do but alas it will not happen.
I challenge you to find an interview or article where that is explicitly stated that is recent. You will find in multiple interviews, dating between now and dragonflight, that they have no plans to change an existing spec to a support spec. The most recent article that I was able to find on this was back in BFA:
I looked and your right there is nothing saying they will not add 4th specs just that they will not add support specs to other classes. Still its a valid talking point that blizzard will not add 4th specs or they would have done it by now. Only class that got a 4th spec was druid even though Shamans had tankiness build in to us in vanilla like druids they remove it from Shamans and turned it into a 4th spec for druids.
Just because some things havenât happened yet doesnât mean they wonât happen at all. The community thought that we could only get one new class every other expansion - thatâs no longer consistent. The community thought that weâd never get a spec released in the middle of an expansion - it eventually happened. The community thought that weâd never get classic servers - thatâs no longer valid. The community thought weâd never get player housing - well, that happened too. So, donât rule it out.
We have been asking for over a decade pretty sure this isnât going to happen. unless they make a major shift in class design which they wont do because they are bringing out new classes. I have just accepted that it will not happen blizzard refuses to let it happen.
Ohh I do agree but tell that to the game director. Personally there are a few classes I would love to see get 4th specs imo I would love paladins to get a dw spec or a caster dps spec, I would love to see dh get a ranged dps spec. I would love to see Shamans and maybe hunter get a tank spec.
I usually just read these posts and see what people think but I really want a shaman tank spec so I am also gonna comment to help. It would be kinda cool if both natureish classes had 4 specs
I agree with you but again we been asking for a decade. And they only put it in sod and at least my follower dungeons have Shaman as a tank. So take it for what you will Blizzard is just refusing to do this out of malice now. They showed us they could do this but just refuse.
They are using SoD to test what works and doesnât work for Shaman Tank. Itâs not a complete refusal. If you read the interviews with Ion, theyâre currently toying Shaman Tank to add to retail.
I know there were some people looking at things being done in Season of Discovery and getting excited at the notion of specs getting a little weird. I play shaman, so my guildâs been saying, âShaman tanksâ or âTotemic shaman could be a support class!â but it sounds like thatâs a little outside the scope of what youâre doing here.
Hazzikostas: Thereâs a couple of pieces there. We want to keep exploring those ideas, and weirdly, which is funny thinking about how Classic started five years ago with #nochanges, we need to be more conservative than the Classic team can be in some ways, both because Season of Discovery, it is a time limited season. They donât need to worry about, well, how are these new specs going to continue to scale and progress for years and years to come? But also, frankly, because theyâre building upon a much simpler foundation. You can take a level 40, level 50 classic vanilla-era class that may really only have a handful of abilities in their rotation, if that, and much more easily layer in more things, than you can into a world today where most specializations donât have spare GCDs and have very full action bars. We want to offer something that is cool, that shakes things up, but if it comes at the expense of the gameplay remaining approachable and being something people can wrap their heads around actually doing day in day out in Azeroth, then we need to pull back.
[World of Warcraft: The War Within Game Director Answers All Our Burning Questions - IGN](htt ps://w ww.ig n. co m/a rticles/world-of-warcraft-the-war-within-game-director-answers-all-our-burning-questions)
^ youâre going to have to remove some spaces in that
So, theyâre testing things out in SoD and toying with the idea of bringing it to retail but not if itâs too difficult to implement.