Shaman tanks

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
726

Suuuuuuuure.

Ignoring that level of EH means risking instant death, like you did according to your own logs here:

https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/6Xq4hv79RKMVfyNn#fight=22&type=deaths&death=2

And this spike death wasn’t even a max swing from MS or a max critical strike melee, so your 540 overkill wasn’t even the worst of it.

According to this log you did 454.6 TPS.

  • 180.2 TPS from autos
  • 213.0 TPS from ES
  • 61.5 TPS from RB

So not only did you fail to even hit 500 TPS, but you resorted to Magmadar, a fight that hits more weakly than Broodlord even when you only had Curse of Recklessness up and no Demoralizing Shout/Roar.

Bwahahahahaha

Meanwhile when I barely Tanked Broodlord last week:

https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/HmTr3KcNyBZGdf2t#fight=12&type=damage-done&source=1

I did 446.67 TPS and that’s with doing nothing for nearly 20 seconds of the 1:27 kill. Trim the downtime and 580 TPS with minimal Rage and no consumables or MCP usage…

/giggle

I thought you had a spreadsheet? Why are you “ballparking” anything?

14% Parry isn’t a “little less” in the slightest. Your miss rate from behind was above your character sheet average, meaning you landed more hits than you should have. Again… you supposedly have a spreadsheet… why are you guessing?

You… don’t have a very good spreadsheet at all then if you think 19k is your top-end. Also you have zero understanding of what you need to Tank if you think 19k is sufficient for fights like the Drakes (which you haven’t done) and Broodlord (who has killed you).

You conflate mistakes of healing, such as my Healers letting me die after an MS+2 Melees+Blast Wave, and mistakes of Tank choice/gear, such as you exploding to 0.0s of all your health.

The former is on the Healers.
The latter is on the Tank.

TLDR - You failed your test. Tsk tsk. Post your alleged spreadsheet and stop being a coward.

727

Our guild enh shaman can tank any dungeon perfectly fine, rarely loses aggro unless a mage gets AoE trigger-happy.

728

Shaman are actually well suited for doing dungeons once everyone is in Raid gear because their threat isn’t dependent upon taking damage for Rage. Warriors still outpace them when they ditch the Shield but things in 5-mans have such low health that CL holds the group long enough before threat drop is a problem.

Plus a Mage can probably solo half the packs in 5mans anyway so… :stuck_out_tongue:

729

Thanks! I’ll put it to the test for sure. I might not max out the shadow in favor of more damage but I’ll certainly try to gear up for the largest option pool to test.

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730

500+ TPS when you only have other Warlocks, Mages, and maybe Shadow Priests/Balance Druids/Elemental Shaman on your target should be plenty, even with the freshly respec’d Fire Mages.

The Vek’lor (the caster brother), blasts you for 4,000-5,000 Shadow Bolts nonstop. Resistance scales exponentially in value up to the 315 cap, which is to say that going from 300 to 301 is more valuable than going from 50 to 51. At cap you’d be averaging an upfront reduction of 75%. Combine that with Soul Link onto a Fel Hunter who is also nearly capped themselves thanks to 5pc Nemesis and you’re 17.5% of the incoming damage on average, or 875 from a worst case Shadow Bolt.

Honestly the Warlocks have the easy job. The Warriors and Druids getting smashed by Vek’nilash have a rougher incoming damage profile if memory serves.

731

40man shaman only Molten Core completed last week. Countless shaman tanking full ZG runs bi-weekly. and about a month ago a shaman main tanked a full BWL, not to mention countless others getting tanking opportunities on various other bosses in BWL with their guilds. It’s a good time to be a shaman tank!

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732

It’s not exponential, the dependence goes like 1/(1-x) since mitigation is linear in resistance value and geometrically scales your EHP. But yes, each point in resistance provides more value than the previous until the cap, just not on an exponential curve.

733

Congrats on 40-manning a 15-man content instance with two raids worth of gear beyond the raid itself…? I mean it is a fun endeavor but Shaman aren’t Tanks.

Outside of the MS bosses, they don’t hit much harder than a 5man.

That “MT” spent a lot of time face-down dead while Warriors and Druids did his job for him, notably on Drakes, on a 4+ hour clear. The video was actually hilariously instructive of everything I’ve said about using Shaman as “tanks” for content like BWL, much like your own logs were instructive. It is too bad the guild that slogged through a Shaman dying as MT is Russian with no logs to look at, would be hilarious to pick through how badly he was flattened.

Potato, potato

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734

Well a 40man raid of Shamans did clear MC so I suppose Shaman tanking could be a thing

735

It is and has been a thing for a long time. Many people are still learning the ropes and learning though, so not everyone is perfect.

736

People have wanted it to be a thing, but it isn’t a thing. Shaman only Tank with the support of gear well beyond the content they are doing or with actual Tanks doing the heavy lifting.

737

We tanked XD
I was one of those shamans during september/october noob days
lots of my groups were like 1 shaman healer 1 shaman tank 1 shaman dps
not sure where they all went though ? shaman is now one of the lower classes played.
If I had to guess I say they rerolled warrior because people trust warrior tanks more, even if the dude is crap, people get all funny about a shaman tanking even though with a mail + shield + stoneskin its pretty much plate.

738

Not really true, there is a shaman guild and a shaman main tank who does ragnaros / bwl and thats current content, they dont have ahn’qiraj gear to stomp out your point you made.

739

Shaman would be great for rag if you think about it, earth shock acts as a taunt when his threat drops, fire resistance totem, can heal himself if he gets low.
Only problem is the dps have to wait for the shaman to get 4 or 5 earth shocks off, which we all know is impossible in a PUG . dps dont wait

740

If by “pretty much” you mean substantially lower, then sure.

Plate is dramatically stronger defensively than Mail.
Warriors and Paladins both get substantially more out of Block than Shaman due to their respective talents and skills.
Warriors specifically get another 10% reduction on top of everything with Defensive Stance.

You have to think of Stoneskin Totem like Blessing of Sanctuary, which is just the equivalent of some extra block value. Nice on really weak and light hitting mobs, but essentially nothing on anything that hits remotely hard, like a raid boss.

The 40man Shaman MC included quite a bit of gear that is well beyond MC, both in terms of being BWL/ZG equipment, as well as being simply stronger stats than what MC was ever tuned to be.

The Shaman “MT” BWL video is simply a joke. The Drakes explode him handily and he’s having to use an inordinate amount of consumables to simply rise up to a lazy and casual Warrior or Druid who is also undergeared for the content. Watching him get chunked on Nef as if it were a permanent Warrior-class-call was sad… as were the numerous Soul Stones and Reincarnations used to keep going.

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741

It can be done though, and that means they are tanks, a mage cant do this can they?
they have threat generation , defensives , sustain ,
Yes warrior and druids are better, but shamans can tank too, and I cant count the amount of times crap hits the fan and my ele shaman can tank for a good 20-30 seconds because I have a shield on.

742

If your threshold for success is ONLY that the boss dies, then literally anything can “tank” provided enough other people do their jobs and then some to compensate for whatever is lacking. To put it another way, this isn’t a metric for tanking at all.

So you ask if Mages can get hit by a Drake, die, and then have a friend Druid and Warrior do the rest of the fight (which is how the BWL clear went)? Then yes. Mages can “tank” by this metric.

It isn’t just Warriors and Druids, but Paladins and Warlocks and possibly even Shadow Priests and Hunters.

Mail gear with no real defensive modifiers places Shaman in a terrible position.

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743

Well it sounds like youve never actually played ele or enh shaman in vanilla because they do perfectly fine healing themselves and tanking , you forget to mention that warrior and druids cant spot heal themselves very quickly with a 1.5 second cast and 50-60% armor on.

744

Why on Earth would you eliminate all your avoidance to spam heal yourself? Paladins can do that so much better and even they don’t do that to Tank. Also what are you doing self-healing in a raid where people who are spec’d to heal and are geared to heal are doing it for you?

They… never should because they’re too busy pumping out more damage and threat while a real healer keeps them alive.

If you want to argue the strengths and weaknesses of classes based on PvP or solo type content, I’ll not argue that Shaman are notably powerful for that purpose, but that’s not what Tanking is about in the slightest and only tells me you haven’t actually Tanked anything outside of a 5man.

745

if you scroll through you’ll find that this thread is mostly one guy moving the goal post on shaman players who actually know what they’re doing, and he’s not even horde. pretty much says it all, however I don’t recommend you healing yourself while being wailed on by a boss, more for when you haven’t received any healing in 10-15 seconds on trash xD. Having a shaman tank does cap your grp dps, but tbh it’s not that big a deal because 99% of guilds are casual and some of us are pushing 600-800 tps in broodlord mitigation gear which is not too shabby. I’ve been tanking in a pug community of 600+ players for a few months now, always a different set of players each raid. Play a shaman tank, it’s flashy, it’s new(ish), for the most part there is a niche for you.

On a different note I do have a legit question for Fascia: Do you know if the fiery blaze enchantment works for druid while in bear/cat form? I can’t find any info on it all.