Shamans are truly second class citizens =(

So I got an alt shaman for pvp so I can hit 1800 on it for mogs every season. This leads me to stumbling upon this thread.

First off class discords are known to be trash. For example back when paladin (holy) got its rework I predicted that it would evolve into the current playstyle and nobody would like it. The mods constantly were telling me how wrong I was, how fun casting in melee is, and now look where Hpal is and nobody likes it.

But avihs statistics and his interpretations of them seem fine to me. I don’t think the interpretations of them are wrong. I think the people attacking avihs character are wrong and are not thinking critically based on the data that has been posted, nor have they posted their own data to refute the point which he has made.

Yes I understand that shaman is my alt and I have only played arena to 1800 and therefore my opinions are completely invalid /s

But all I see in this thread is 1 person being calm and the rest of yall being unreasonable jerks who rather than address the arguments attack the person

Edit: and no I haven’t even taken this character into a mythic plus this tier since Hpal is down bad. This tier.

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Both can be fine but both can also be devoid of anything meaningful.

Okay, give me something meaningful then or you really can’t say anything

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And yet hpal (the worst healer) is 3800 and resto druid (the best healer) is 3900. Get a clue.

The hell kind of response is that but sure: A spec having lower representation between seasons is not inherently a bad thing unless it’s actually a significant difference that can be determined to be due to a novel change between seasons. Determining that significant difference is not best made by comparing it ONLY to the clearest outlier at a level of play that less than 1% population of this player base interacts at while ignoring historical trends.

Didn’t say it couldn’t? So I mean feel free to insult and whatever, but we can all see the Hpal community in shambles. I never said it couldn’t push the content lmao. You are unhinged my dude

Edit: even ellesmere the premier Hpal hates Hpal rn and I think he rerolled off of it.

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Okay, but when there is such drastic changes in spec representation percentages trends that indicates something no?

Maybe I’m part of the problem but when I was doing keys I don’t think I ever took an enhance because they offered nothing that wasn’t already by any other class while offering less utility to the group. They may have the ability to do the content but what do they bring that sets them apart? If I bring a ret I know I have BoP, LoH, etc. bring a mage and I have lust and just as much if not more dmg from range. There just isn’t a reason to bring enhance no?

Don’t get me wrong I think enhance has such cool spec abilities and visuals. But that overall doesn’t matter if you’re trying to get in and out of a key or an arena. Enh needs help outside of raids. This was an edit^

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But it wasn’t. It was also compared to every other melee spec.

What I can’t seem to understand is why you and others keep attacking Avih for posting factual data and coming to basically the exact same conclusion as everyone attacking him: That enhance needs better defensives and tuning. What am I missing?

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Its always the people hiding behind a forum alt that want to sling the most mud. But that’s ok- if trolling people on the forums is the highlight of your day I forgive you. I hope whatver is going on in your life gets better.

If you had actually read the thread you would see that I returned to the game after years away in the middle of season three. This toon was a freshly leveled and I am still learning everything. Those parses you want to bash were likely my first or second time seeing the content.

That is irrelevant to the discussion, though. I have been playing RPGs since I was a kid and various MMOs for many years. This also isn’t my only character in WoW. It doesn’t take an Einstein to look at content and look at a class kit and see the weaknesses. It also isn’t hard to look at two classes and wonder how the devs possibly consider them to be balanced.

My whole point of being here is that I want to play shaman, but the way content is currently designed it can get difficult to justify (and the statistics show that I’m not the only one that feels that way). I can hop on class X and ignore a mechanic, but on the shaman I’ll get one shotted. Dealing with another mechanic on the shaman is a pita, but on class Y its simple.

Look at bursting as its this week’s affix. Oh no! My bursting stacks are getting kinda high- what should I do?

On class A- I just clear them.
On class B- start rolling cooldowns
On class C- pop a cooldown and use the instant free heal, maybe use another CD if needed
On a shaman- run far enough away from the group that the stacks won’t get any higher and spam heal myself. I could hope for a dispel, but why should one class need a sitter when the others don’t?

One of these things is not like the others.

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See but now you have admitted to not playing the character for 37 years and therefore have an invalid opinion /s

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It very much does.

The people arguing against the statistics are correct in that the absolute representation of any given class is irrelevant. Some tropes are just more popular than others. An unarmed martial artist is never going to be very popular in a high fantasy game (unless its ridiculously OP) and thus monk population numbers will never be huge. On the flip side the holy knight theme will always be popular, and thus paladin will be played no matter how bad it is.

However, population shifts and trends are very much important information. They usually indicate a problem in the context of a video game.

If 10% of your playerbase plays the Hodor class, then that is your baseline. It doesn’t matter what that number actually is, but it is your baseline for that class. If the Hodor class is decently balanced then we should then expect to see the Hodor class represent roughly 10% of the population in any given content.

If the numbers instead show that the Hodor class makes up 20% of the pvp participation and only 2% of the pve participation (while being 10% of the overall population), then we have a problem. Hodor is too strong in pvp and too weak in pve. It needs an adjustment.

It is also important to watch trends over time. If the Hodor class has a 15% representation in season G but drops to 3% in season H, then its important to know why.

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Because he presents himself like an idiot, drawing insane conclusions from the wrong data. Sure, enh needs better defensives (and atm is tuned just fine), but the ā€œdataā€ he keeps dropping does, in no way, represent that. Data scientist btw.

That and his, that I STILL get a laugh out of, insane take on key parses.

nah thunderfist at least understands what’s being talked about and adds to it meaningfully

regardless of his parses which I also latched on bc I had originally thought it was another avih with a loose sense of the game white knighting cause he saw me flaming him.

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This is literally what avih has been saying like multiple times I’m so confused. Yes he also compared to other classes which is less relevant and only affects the top end who fomo rolls, but he also compares enh shaman representation through the 3 seasons so far.

Parses don’t mean like anything tho…

I think what Ahiv has said is still better than 90% of this thread

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I don’t recall disagreeing with Avih. Maybe you are mixing me up with someone else, or maybe you are agreeing with me and I am missing it.

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I replied to the other guy but quoted you, I hoped it would ping him not you even though I quoted you because I clicked reply to him ;(

If you haven’t figured out by now, these forums are very cliquey. If you are having a discussion with one of them, and there is a disagreement with one, you have a disagreement with all of them. Quite often you’ll see they (not these people in particular) will actually take the topic off track so hard and turn it into an insult fest so the topic gets closed.

You could present all the data you want, but if you say its about 2 dozen but the actual number is 25, you’ll be dragged across hot coals.

Now, on topic. Yes ret is and always has been more popular, no one is arguing against that. The argument is that it seems to be, and data backs it up, that Enhancement is extra unpopular at the moment. Why is that? What can be done to fix it? And what can we expect in TWW and hero trees?

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The enhance and elemental trees need reasons for them to both be brought in content. I would hope for a raid buff or maybe they can have an empowered lust? IDK

I do realize windfury is a reason enh is brought to raid. but that may or may not be needed depending on comp.

resto sham at least has spirit link which can be a reason it is picked depending on the fight. It also can just go for absurd damage if healing is not needed. Unless the hero talents make them gods amongst men in terms of damage IDK what they could do.

See, I don’t like the idea of bringing someone based purely on 1 of their tools in their kit. I like the idea of ā€œbring the player not the classā€. I understand however that it is extremely hard to design around that philosophy without total homogenisation of all classes.

That’s always such a tough one. On one hand nobody like homogenization, but on the other hand nobody wants half (or likely more) of their raid doing 5% less damage than they should be because your group doesn’t have a demon hunter.

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Which is why they started spreading out certain buffs to other classes. Hero/lust for instance now belongs to like 3 other classes now.