Shamans in the real world interact with spirits good or evil in a trance like state. (paraphrased wiki) in the case of WoW Shamans have no trance like state, but call upon the Spirits to aid them, spirits are usually elemental or animal.
Blizzard has taken the battle-mage template and added elements and animals via incorporeal form, their ideas are often wonderous and magnificent but I think it is safe to say that their implementation has always been their downfall.
I would implement Shamans, not using anything terribly original, just what we have in a sort of manner like this.
Five elements, Fire, Wind, Water, and Earth plus the fifth element I’ll call Spirit via Animals. At this point, I think it’s okay to have animal cross over from Druids and Hunters because Ardeanweald. I’m not trying to be too nifty with my titles, I just want my point to get across, that Shaman is without a doubt has been one of the most unique crafted but strangely implemented ideas in all of MMOs.
In my mind; Fire is Burst, Wind is DPS, Water is Healing, and Earth is damage reduction/tanking and Animals are utility. To keep up with the current theme. I think it would be best for Shamans to have this implementation and if there was a fourth spec I think Shamans would be even better balanced.
I think that Elemental Strikes, Shocks, Weapon Imbues, Shields are amazing and have always been some of my favourite parts of Shaman, when I look at current talent trees and PTR talent trees through, I see columns and rows that are unorganized, it seems to be clashing with the fact that one of the best things about SL is it separates core class from its specialization.
Core Shaman:
I’ve always thought Blizzard has done well in core Shaman over the years creating spells and abilities. Some of the things I would do differently would Core Shaman being a little more coherent before branching out into it’s specializations.
Thematically at this point, I find some things a bit redundant. Enhancement Shaman as a name does not make sense to me as not only does Shaman as a whole enhance a party, but so does borrowed power and to a much larger degree.
Some things in core Shaman toolkit both as a theme and as a skill do not make sense. One being not enough spirit related abilities, we have Astral Shift…
(“relating to a supposed nonphysical realm of existence to which various psychic and paranormal phenomena are ascribed, and in which the physical human body is said to have a counterpart.”)
I think the Astral Theme would do well with Druids, rather than Shamans traditionally my Druidic Ancestors did a lot of stargazing while my Shamanic ancestors had animal totems… I think Animal Spirits are a more appropriate crossover then Star Stuff.
What I would rename it with is something related to an animal spirit keeping the spirit theme, a Bear, a Wolf, or a Boar would make a better Shamanic theme.
Older skills that are no longer with us like Shamanistic Rage, never made thematic sense to me either, but its utility is sorely missed. I would bring this back as well and name it Animalistic incarnation, I like the animal spirit theme with Shaman.
Reincarnation, I am very grateful for this ability, it’s not a defensive though and it’s missing a critical component to even count this as a defensive, it needs a buff called Revenant.
(NOUN
1. a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead.
“he was three hundred years old, a terrible living revenant”)
There’s a really easy way to do this, let us come back as an Elemental Revenant of our respected spec, with X amount of health and damage boost for X amount of time before we turn into our regular forms again.
I think that Spirit would be mostly baseline for all three and hypothetical fourth spec, (keep in mind, I think Shaman would be easier to balance thematically create things for if the four elements were covered)
Shields: Lightning Shield, Flame Shield, Earth Shield and Water Shield.
All specs should be able to rotate through shields, the only difference is I’d make Lightning DPS and a constant stream of damage and Flame shield soak up a big portion of damage and return it via burst & retaliation type skill.
This post is a work in progress, but I just wanted to have a good convo without giving Blizzard crap. I just want to explore the idea of how I would implement their ideas and themes they created, expand upon them and flush them out.
And hear from y’all too.