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.