Ok, Blizz, you’ve had your big reveal, and it didn’t include a new class.
That’s fine, but seeing as how you’ve given a new spec to Demon Hunters, I think you had the perfect opportunity to also give a new spec to a class that should have had the option a LONG time ago: Shaman Tanks.
I don’t care about the name, I don’t care about the nuances of the abilities either, but there are plenty of players that have asked over the years to complete the journey that Shaman were clearly on in the early days of WoW that got abandoned.
Shaman were off-tanks. They carry shields TO THIS DAY. There is a (mostly) untapped well of Earth abilities that can be mined (smirk) to make this happen.
With the Haranir, there’s a reason/excuse for Shaman to learn new skills, same as the Demon Hunters did from the Void.
Now’s your chance, Blizzard, let’s make this happen.
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Please just one Mail tank. I thought the 3rd evoker spec would finally be a mail tank, but look where we are now
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How do you tank in Mail?
“dances in tight leather”
Shaman tanks are such a cool idea. I feel like they had a tank spec way back? It’s definitely something I would try out on my shaman.
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Not quite. They could “kinda” tank, but it required having a special set up and it wasn’t something Blizz really put a lot of effort into.
I’ve heard this from many people, which is why I bring it up occasionally. Blizzard should definitely look into doing it; there are quite a few people, myself included, who would absolutely love to have a tanking spec.
And no, not a converted spec. A legitimate 4th spec for tanking.
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Hmm, I could see this down the line now. Every class has three specs now. Maybe they’ll do something with fourth specs for some classes? Druid does already have four.
My thought process is that Shaman should have had a 4th spec before anyone else.
There are 4 elements, there should be 4 specs. Druid only got a 4th spec because they couldn’t figure out a good way to have both Feral and Guardian and still make room for either of them to expand.
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Yeah, Shaman seems like the easiest fourth spec to me. I’d say Mage is a decent contender for one down the line too because fulgurmancy. But I can’t really see them immediately doing a spec 4 on something like Hunter, hence my comment.
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I would say a “lightning spec” would be a long shot anyway. There are so many types of magic that could be added, and with Shaman already covering lightning, I would think they would go another direction if they ever decided on a 4th spec for mages.
Can we also have Worgens to be Shamans too.
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From what I remember and see online, shamans could tank in season of discovery. They could take some of those changes as a head start to make a shaman tank spec.
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Main reason I mentioned lightning is actually because there’s old lore with lightning mages, so they could always draw from that.
But in general, yeah. Lots of types of magic.
All the more reason to give it a go.
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Total meme. They were tanks in the same way that warlocks and hunters could tank with their pet.
Only actually viable tanks in raids were druids/warriors in vanilla. You could force your way through 5 man content with almost anything, which sometimes included some shaman holding aggro with earth shock, and maybe not exploding if they were overgeared and had a semi-conpetent healer going OOM spamming heals on them.
In practice, maybe, but Blizzard clearly had the idea that Shaman might be able to tank.
They didn’t go through with it, and they should have. Now they have plenty of reasons and resources to make it happen for real.
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Dont waste a perfectly good shield class, Blizzard. Let the Earth Mother grant us strength. Let the Might of the Mountains shine. The people have spoken. And we want to (far)see Shaman tanks in 2025.
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It’s so weird because I vaguely remember playing in Wrath and could have sworn there were big blue dranei shammy tanks, but probably they were healers. They certainly looked like tanks.
You probably remember Resto Shaman. Carrying a shield is still a thing even to this day. They certainly look like tanks though.
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I wonder if adding 3 man raids, shaman tanks, and swapping aug to a tank spec would bring more tanks into the game. Maybe not xD
There is no amount of tank specs they could add, that would have a meaningful impact on that. The root problem of tank vs healer vs DPS imbalance is almost entirely centered around how wildly out of balance the “responsibility” of the group is distributed. With a modest impact from bad raid ratios in comparison to 5 man content.
The responsibility issue is the biggest problem. A lot of it is placed firmly on tanks/healers, and representation of both roles suffers for it.
DPS - do your rotation and get interrupts. Make as many mistakes as you want, and your number goes down. Or maybe you die, and blame the healer.
Healer - engage in high speed whack a mole, and look into the future to predict damage bursts so you have time to respond in a micro second, because twitch gameplay is the best they can come up with for healer engagement. One failure and the group might wipe.
Tank - learn at minimum, 8 routes every season. Interrupt. Ration self heals/mitigation tools to maybe not die, while holding aggro/doing rotation, grabbing extra adds that the DPS butt pull, and reposition them all to keep DPS from jumping into fire. Make a mistake, and the group wipes. Extra bonus credit stage, armor still takes extra durability damage from hits afaik, so you also get a nice big juicy repair bill even if successful.
Another significant problem is that raids are 2 tanks, never more than that. While 5 man content is 1-1-3. Any raid size above 10, and that ratio goes out of whack.