not only that but purge (which costs lots of mana and can oom you easily) , only gets 1 buff dispelled per cast.
ever try to dispel the pallys freedom buff and have to dispell mark /fort/ai/each pally buff and then finally get that freedom with 2 seconds left on it and have no mana left to shock?
its fun!
Just give me windwalk totem and I’m good for it
ive got a better idea.
make shaman windfury totem give windfury that is better in terms of ap and extra attacks or proc rate by a good margin and its ok 
.
Well, considering Shamans do not even have their air totem to drop Grace of Air at this level, yeah that’s probably true for now.
Won’t be true at 60. They’re equivalents.
In pve? Strength and agi totem. Windfury is still a thing if you have no druid. Healing stream is still very good in sod because it forces prayer of mending to move constantly.
In pvp its always been a meme. It will never stop being meme. Even at its best in retail it was just an enabler for warriors in arenas.
Nah. I’ll call it good with windwalk.
It is amusing watching the mental gymnastics one must go through to try and make shamans even comparable to paladins. Its not even close in phase 1, paladins are miles ahead and their buffs will continue to be miles ahead unless shaman are given the same god like status Blizz bestowed up paladins in phase 2.
Overall phase 1 overtly favored the alliance, especially when looking at shaman v paladin. Hopefully Blizz can work to ensure that shaman are in a better spot in phase 2 and, hopefully, make them superior to their counter part. After all its just one phase and would go a long way to make up for the glaring imbalance in phase 1.
Just given what we know today this will not be even close to true. Paladin buffs have always been better in every way than shaman totems. Windfury was the only thing the horde had and that was grossly inferior to salvation or BoK let alone the two combined.
I have characters on both and I strongly prefer Horde raids.
Alliance only has 1 leather caster, which leads to a lot of wasted gear. Horde has 2.
Warriors get free reign on two-handers on Horde.
Shaman tanks have the best interrupt in the game (actually relevant in BFD - Shaman tank can solo the Shadow Chains on Kelris)
Paladins are just worse Warriors. Shamans are unique.
Subjective but I also prefer horde.
This isn’t really true since there is no mail caster gear paladins fill the leather caster role on Alliance side. This will be true in phase 2 as well so paladins will be rolling on mail caster gear making the two sides essentially even in this regard.
My melee hunter says hello. One could also point to the fact that rogues and warriors have to compete against an additional class for most 1h weapons.
A warrior or rogue and solo kick chains as well. I will concede that shaman tanks are very good in most situations.
Shamans are unique, but inferior to paladins in every way. That’s the point of this thread btw.
Paladins aren’t healing right now. They’re tanking and doing damage. And they’re doing it worse than Warriors while sucking up the same gear that Warriors want. Aside from the buffs: they are a drain on their raids.
Warriors are not dual wielding, and if the balance with these runes continue, likely will not be dual wielding for the entirety of SoD. Shamans use weapons that Rogues can’t use at all (axes) or don’t really want (i.e. a spell damage dagger is the best Shaman one-handed weapon from BFD)
Weapon distribution is objectively better on Horde.
No, they’re not. That’s the point of my post btw.
Warcraft logs begs to differ. Looks like, on average, 50% of alliance raids have a holy paladin. Also looks like alliance raids are averaging 3 (2.8) paladins per raid. Also paladins are WAY ahead of either shaman dps spec, again the purpose of this thread.
Nope. Again looking at logs your statement about no warriors dual wielding is patently false. Also daggers and fist weapons are desirable for both shaman and rogues.
Lets see, paladins have twice the representations in raid, much higher population, better buffs, glyphs, survivability, and dps. Your instance on ignoring the obvious seems to mean our are being willfully obtuse on the topic.
Again, this is phase 1 I’m not sweating this. Paladins have always been superior to shaman in Classic. Blizz’s inability to balance the classes was the primary reason they were included in both factions. There is nothing wrong with players wanting shamans to be on par with paladins.
You have never pugged a raid in your life if you think 50% of Alliance raids have a Paladin who is healing
People do it… but only because they’re bad. Or maybe they just haven’t had a two-hander drop. Two hand is better in open world, PvP, soloing, and almost all of raiding (dual wield only wins out on ONE BOSS in particular, Ghamoo-Ra, because he has unique mechanics that limit rage gen… only tryhards are getting one handers for this one boss)
I haven’t played Alliance in SoD but do pug on my alt mage. Numbers don’t lie though.
Yep. They do it a lot more then what you seem willing to admit though. Looking more closely at the logs it looks like a lot of warriors tank/ot using dual wield. Which is outside the scope of this thread but still interesting.
Again, they’re either bad, or they had bad luck with weapons. Two hand is just flat out better in every situation in the game EXCEPT Ghamoo-Ra specifically because of his unique mechanics.
I don’t play warrior so I’ll concede to you on this point. I was merely pointing out how many are using dual wield that’s all.
heh they arent equal in the buffs they give at 25 (shaman dont have the mana spring or tide this level whereas pallies do have wisdom and before you say it both of them have mana return talents for the party aside from buffs/totems) and they arent equal in just numbers alone on most of the buffs at 60 either.
let me pull up a comparision to further illustrate my point.
made that post a while back. maybe ill update to include 60 vs 60 as well but the trend actually continues.
Rage rune is basically a free mana pot for your party too
pallies have a rune that does the same thing so i equaled them out.
i was talking base buffs.
and pally is leading that in pretty much everything and thats not even mentioning the fact that pally blessings are functionally better in terms of mechanics alone much less the numbers they buff for individually.
Enhancement needs stormstrike. Rn there’s no reason to not go tank or ele over enhancement.
Top paladin on my server is ranked 25th overall for dps. Top enhance is 490. If palis suck enhance shaman are literally the worst of the worst.
Look up your ret enhance difference. Ret much higher damage and much higher survivability. And the disparity between these two specs is driving desparity in wsg and realm balance.