I’ve been playing a shaman for a good while(took a break in WoD and Legion but came back to it in BFA) I enjoy playing resto I enjoy the utility I can bring and being able to help out in ways other classes can’t. But I’ve noticed a pattern over the years, it always seems like Shamans are always getting little to no changes to how they function. Let me explain my meaning other classes/specs have had there entire identity overhauled the past few expansions(Demo locks in legion and now SP in SL for starters) we almost got something new in Elemental but they reverted that. I remember back in vanilla being told that Shamans the Horde counterpart to Paladins on Alliance and I cant think of a single expansion where paladins were in a similar position. It feels like sense then they have gotten less and less development and change to try to make them palatable in certain settings. Raids yeah there fine if not performing as one might expect Mythic+ your mileage may vary and I have been told multiple times that the reason I was rejected is because resto shaman was and I quote “a bad healing spec”. PVP…need I say more(not saying there aren’t shamans that excel in organized pvp but there typically the exception and not the rule). Looking at SL I see alot of interesting and fun new things to try(riptide lego train for example looks fun once its set up) but the overall perception from the community and the ‘influencers’ is either negative or bad and I guess the question I have is why? Do they just not know where to go with the class, is the class lead just bad as his job? I love my shaman but its really difficult to continue seeing so many classes getting such love and attention to making them competitive and shaman just getting(now after the elemental changes) not a whole lot in change or improvement(old abilities comeing back not withstanding). Help me shaman community is there any hope?
As an elemental shaman, this is the most excited I’ve been for the spec in a long time. We’ve had some major improvements. Directly and indirectly.
It is disheartening to see my favorite class/spec/lore being around 1% of top keys and it’s totally solveable. Our first row talents are frustrating, Echo is simply too good to pass up and even with changes that have been made introducing Surge of earth I suspect most people will still choose echo.
I posted about fixing Surge of Earth here, feel free to like/comment/share it! : What's the point of Surge of Earth? - #11 by anon23006195
I know we’re talking about restoration, but they need to up our damage potential. Even if we equal the HPS of other healing classes in M+ we generally lack the DPS because our healing is very cast intensive. Seems silly to worry about it as a healer but in higher keys you need all the DPS you can get. For shamans the first way we can fix this is by allowing chain lightning to hit 4 targets. Then we have to go back to that first talent set and either take the 2 charges for Lava burst off the Echo talent and make it baseline or add some kind of dps boost to all 3 talents. Right now echo is not only the biggest healing boost, but it has a dmg boost that is not comparable to anything else on that row. Undulation could cause every third lightning bolt or chain lightning to do increased damage, and Surge of earth could empower Earth elementals giving them an earth quake ability that hits ~ 6 targets every 10-12 seconds. All these ideas play well with Shaman lore/flavor and the current talents on that row.
Simple ideas, and not that hard to tune … I’d love to see them considered so we’re a little more attractive to groups and more interesting to play.
Our 2 dps specs are dead last…
Which can only mean the first hotfix will be nerfs.
Dead last in what? Terrible clickbait “tier lists” that have no ground to stand on?
Currently has Enhance at 15/24 and Elemental at 22/24 but with several caveats, including still waiting on a tuning pass
shamans always seem to be in the same position of little to no defensives and issues with survivability (mainly in pvp)
These charts and sims mean almost nothing to a majority of players and will still be able to do high end content with the specs. These sims and rankings are all based of perfectly playing and top 1% of players.
The only ones that could see a tuning phase is SP, Aff locks and for sure Sub Rogues since those ones are actually ridiculous in damage, specially Sub Rogues which are already over tuned.
I can see Enhance going lower on that list cause most likely they’ll get an unwanted nerf after that “buff” we got a few days ago.
I am glad to see Resto shamans doing well though, that’s the only healing class I can actually stand healing on.
Although I have been playing for a long time, I’m a casual player. So my opinions are likely not as “on point” as others but here’s my two cents:
Totems:
Totems should be a much bigger part of what Shamans are. They should give border line OP buffs since they have to be dropped every time and since they can be destroyed rather easily.
Example:
Earth totem- reduces damage taken by 5, 10, or 20% chosen randomly. Persists until totem is destroyed.
Air totem- increase haste by 5, 10, 20%. Chosen randomly. Persists until totem is destroyed.
Wolves (Enhance):
Should be baseline. Should heal like they did before. This will help with survivability.
Stormstrike:
Needs a slight buff and should drop a totem of your choice when used. Will not drop a second totem while still in range of the first totem.
IDK. Just a thought.
I’d be happy if they just brought back WoD enhance and Resto shammy, TBH. I know everyone has different opinions but that was the last time I hit 2K healing on my shammy (healing a warlock friend) and enhance was good and a blast to play. Sure they were still squishy, but the damage was great, off healing was amazing, and you felt like you contributed, instead of feeling like a crutch…
Before the latest updates. Cool.
Instantly negating them.
Its also specifically for a form of raiding 99.999999% of the wow population doesn’t do.
They even specifically say " This change combined with some substantial buffs to a few key spells has given them the potential to maybe move up a tier, but as these are brand new huge changes, more testing is needed to confirm"
What could we possibly be dead last in? Id link, but Im not alowed for some reason. DPS of course… Wasa going off wowmeta
WoWMeta is not a respectable website. Its wrong, its not something you should link to or reference.
No one should take it seriously.
easiest way to fix this is searing and magma totem for Restoration. GG.
Shaman is the “you can do anything” class.
Which results in being the “you do nothing well” class.
Do elemental shamans really enjoy earthquake and earthstrike over casting more lightning spells?
Do enhancement shamans really enjoy lava lash/icefury/earth shock/lightning bolt fillers over being a passive auto attack 1 button stormstrike damage bot?
Do resto shamans really need a 6th water-styled healing spell? Don’t forget earth sheild! they’re shamans after all, make them cast flame shock and lighting bolt as fillers to fufill their class thematic.
Blizzard have designed specs to not be homogeneous. Fire mages don’t use Frost mage spells because… they’re mages? They study all schools of magic but specialize in one because that makes sense?
What do shamans do? They do everything. They even resurrect themselves and come back to life. So what do their specs do? They do one of everything because blizzard said so.
Sure.
But what would changing the aesthetic of EQ and Earthshock do to improve the spec?
It wouldn’t do anything.
But how much more room for balancing would they have if they didn’t need to give shamans 4 mandatory spells to fit the earth,water,fire,wind theme?
A ret paladin may have 5 holy spells, but balancing determines that they should only need 4. Remove 1 and what happens to the class? Nothing, it just becomes more balanced. Why? because they still have 4 holy spells and they’re cutting the fat.
You can’t remove earth spells from a shaman. Why? Because shamans use earth spells. What about fire spells? No, they need those too. Why? because shamans use fire spells. Frost/Ice? Mandatory. Why? Because shaman. Wind? oh yeah you can remove gust of wind and windwalk totem, wind is kind of invisible anyway, we can pretend lightning is wind. Why? Because other classes do those things shamans don’t need wind spells they have lightning bolt.
So you are saying that trying to give elemental shaman varied spell graphics is hurting their ability to balance the class because it makes taking away abilities and simplifying the spec harder?
I guess I have to disagree here. I don’t think them saying “elemental shaman need to have at least 4 spells” is hurting class design.
No i’m trying to say that blizzards compulsion to having every shaman spec have one of every thematic element is creating circular reasoning for why they continue to have those spells receive minimal or no changes every expansion despite being unable to balance them because the reason those spells were introduced was for reasons that have been taken out of the game.
Why does earthquake exist? AoE damage, non-cooldown dependent, castable from ranged, resource dump, earth graphic.
Why does Maelstrom exist? So you can validate pressing earthquake and lightning bolt.
But why does earthquake exist? Because they didn’t want to add a button that spreads Flame Shock or dump the AoE damage into chain lightning which has a cooldown or Firenova totem which is hard-locked to being a melee range ability.
Other classes get the luxury of saying “hey blizz, our one ability sucks, change it” and it can be changed/removed/merged.
If you change one ability for shamans, you have to change 3 other things so that everything still has a reason for existing and plays well with each other.