What is the shaman? (gameplay)

Community General Discussion
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Good morning everyone, I started playing again at the end of Dragon to enjoy this expansion a little and prepare for the next one, but getting straight to the topic.

My main class has been a shaman since the time of the Cataclysm until the middle of BFA when I stopped playing WOW, now returning to Dragon the feeling I have is that the class is completely out of character.

They removed the support totems unless you are Restoration, which still kept some, they even removed the totems that helped with damage, you can still summon elementals, but their cooldown is so long that it becomes punishing for you to choose the tree that benefits they. Elemental shaman became a Lava Burst machine gun, and that’s it.

It seems that over time they abandoned all the symbols of the class, reduced the time he could spend conjuring, then removed the importance of summoning elementals, and finally removed the totems. Shaman was the only class with earth-type skills, at least they had this tiny difference, today Dragons have more earth skills and it’s funny that the effects are prettier, more elaborate and have better control than the Earthquake of the shaman.

While Warlocks even gain the option to customize their demons, Shamans are receiving less and less class fantasy, losing their usefulness, and becoming more and more an erased class. Paladin gained a Revive in Battle, and why didn’t Shaman who is linked to spirits also win? for example.

“But placing the totems is boring”, you can comment. Nothing that puts the summoning of totems becomes passive within the shaman’s skills, in place of ascension for example you could summon a lava totem while you were using Lava Burst, put in the elemental shaman’s skill tree a path actually turned and focused on using the elementals as the main point for the fight, tanking or hitting together and you and the elemental fight together, and another path going to the elemental bond. Or simply make the shaman really make good use of the variety of the 4 elements.

The feeling is that the class is losing its identity and becoming flooded with each expansion.

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The totems are/were important but always felt like a chore to me personally. I do enjoy the utility they could bring as it felt like you could handle any situation, slow, stun, fear removal, speed etc. it’s just a button bloat I guess but that’s just me.

What I enjoy out of the class is an elemental force of nature that I felt in BC. I desperately miss 2h windfury, blasts of earth shock, chasing down your foes in ghostwolf and bringing the hammer down. Walking on water is always a treat. Ultimately I just really miss when windfury meant something before flame or lava lash was introduced.

I haven’t played in along time, more so on my shaman I just like browsing forums time to time but I guess my answer would be a more straight forward elemental melee as opposed to the glut of buttons/attacks needed now. If we could have a gnarly windfury tied with the thunder aoe, maybe totems that go off with passives or a talent tree to “boost” our preferred totem types, that’d be cool.

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Certainly they aren’t the reason I enjoy Shaman.

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You still get Magma, Earthgrab/bind, Wind Rush, Capacitor, Tremor, Healing Stream, and I think Stonewall? Totems as non-Resto. They’re all in the Class tree, not the spec trees.

Elementals used to be totems as well, they just changed that so they’re not rooted to a location anymore. The functionality of them hasn’t changed though.

Enhance also has Windfury Totem - though that’s being wrapped into Skyfury for all specs in a couple weeks.

Elemental Cooldowns have always been long, and it’s also worth noting that you can reduce the Fire Ele cooldown. It has basically 100% uptime in AoE situations right now. Granted its part of the lava burst machine gun build you don’t like (don’t worry, it’s also going away in TWW, lots of talent changes, and theyre making the lava surge chance change dynamically based on how many targets there are, more targets = lower chance).

Shamans do need Ghost Wolf customization, but that’s about it as far as stuff your post has mentioned goes. Slap the Glyphs into the barber like Warlock Demons. Delete Inscription in general tbh, it’s such a dead profession most of the time.

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You cast your fire ele regularly. And elementals will play an even larger role in TWW.

The farseer gameplay will be extremely similar to current gameplay. It will be heavily based on casting LvB

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I dunno anything about ele or resto but enhancement is the worst shape its ever been. It feels awful to play.

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