+5 weapon skill is probably the single biggest benefit you can recieve as a melee.
First, it counts as 3% hit, as you effectively count as being 1 level higher, and the miss chance from level+2 to level+3 (which bosses count as) is roughly 3%
The BIGGER contribution though, is the reduction in glancing blows. Glancing blows vs level+3 are quite a hefty % of damage reduction, but vs level+2 i believe its far less significant, cant remember the exact numbers
Theres also a very minor reduction to dodge/parry%, but thats barely significant.
The devs however DID say that they wanted to reduce the significance of weapon skill as a racial by opening it up through more options, so I fully expect some kind of option to give people +5 weapon skill via enchantments or something.
No, paladin is stronger in every bracket. They just have better abilities and always have in vanilla. It would require giving shamans a horde unique bloodlust or something to even get close to balancing it out with the current design of totems and other abilites.
I assure you noobs knew nothing about friendly quest hubs, etc. Alliance is more appealing because of elves and cuter races. Horde has the ugly races. In SoD, Alliance popularity is due to paladins.
That, as well as the Ice Deflector(absorbs 600 frost damage, reducing damage potential from mages and shaman), Discombobulator Ray(Transforms the target into a Leper Gnome, reducing its melee and spell damage by 40 and its movement rate by 20% for 12 sec.), and Portable Bronze Mortar(Inflicts 85 to 115 Fire damage and stuns targets in a 5 yard radius for 2 sec.)
Then next phase they’ll have access to the Goblin Bomb Dispenser, Gnomish Battle Chicken, Rose Colored Goggles, High Explosive Bombs(another stun), The Big One(another stun), Gnomish Mind Control Cap, Gnomish Death Ray, and the Sniper Scope(+7 damage to guns and bows).
But sure, that’s totally equal to picking flowers.
You know all engineering bombs share a cooldown and most of them stun right? Doing a tickle more damage on the bomb is not a gamechanger
Discombob ray is nice, sure, but its main benefit is dismounting people, which is irrelevant this phase, since the ashenvale mount breaks after any damage at all. Ice deflector would have been better if any mages were frost spec, but they only use frost for control right now, all their damage comes from other stuff now
For me I main a shaman and I am still salty they druids get windfury before I ever get it. Bubble is still op which is fine shaman can do… well lava burst but that gets either resisted or silance or just ran away from. Now I am sure the game will balance its self out as we get higher lvls with all the spell and new runes but as long as they have shaman horde only and pally allanice only theres going to have issues with it.
I am going to counter with later on shamans get super stronge with ele and even sometimes as a enchment shaman. I played both classes and at times both were weak af and others I was able to 1 shot other players. for Pve both were ok at heals but I enjoyed pally more cause I never ran out of mana lol.
There is no barrens chat anymore, there’s some banter in durotar but due to the social contract people mostly get banned out if chat if they try to tell edgy jokes.
Alliance has that more classic fantasy feel imo. Durotar is a hostile wasteland and so is the Barrens. The alliance zones are just easier to quest and level in. The undead zones are pretty good though