Why is Shaman so squishy?

Classes Shaman
1

Im giving shaman a go in midnight, not sure if main or alt but Ive already noticed a big difference from other “hybrid” classes.

  • The self healing on the DPS specs is pretty mediocre/bad.
  • The defensives are so so
  • Mail doesn’t seem to be as tanky as you would think it would be?
    • I feel like this has been off for a while even on hunters

So am I missing something?

From a class fantasy, it doesn’t make much sense either. Wielding the power of earth should allow for a lot of durability. That plus the self healing should honestly make shamans one of the most survivable classes around.

Just my 2 copper, but they could just a survivability buff.

4 Likes
2

Same as its always been.

4 Likes
3

Because Shaman devs are honestly or at least seemingly afraid of giving Shaman too much. Other devs are less afraid, some are just as afraid.

A good example is Burrow not being in the class tree, that should’ve been done in Dragonflight as soon as class trees became a thing but we still don’t have access to that in PvE, which also causes PvPers to either spend an honor talent slot on a very good defensive (which feels terrible) and lose damage/utility or give up such a big defensive to gain damage/utility which feels even worse and is what most of us do.

If Shamans are squishy because they think reincarnation is too good then I’d ask they change it to a cheat death or add a class tree talent that lets us do that. Ankh isn’t a defensive to begin with, there is no such thing as a defensive that is only useable once you already died. And it’s every 30min lol. It’s utility at most.

It’s also that the prune was not done evenly. Some classes lost absolutely no utility or defensives (ret paladins have all of their utility still and defensives, hunters have all of their defensives still) meanwhile Shaman lost Stone Bulwark Totem and 5% damage reduction when you have an elemental out. Then Enh heals got gutted, 20% nerf to Healing Surge and 50% nerf to Raging Maelstrom. That alone should show you how afraid they are of Shaman being “OP”, so they swing the hammer.

6 Likes
4

Rsham got gutted as well.

Literally all the fun buttons are gone. Our two big cooldowns are now a choice node with eachother, one can be targeted and destroyed in a single hit.

Reincarnation shouldn’t count as a defensive if it cannot be used in arena.

Even if they buff our throughput, we are just a holy priest at this point.

Can someone tell me what Rsham has to offer other than a kick? (that is nerfed in pvp, the lockout is slightly longer than a global cooldown)

I would rather have utility than throughput, but they pruned all that. Many people spoke up in beta, blizz just doesn’t listen. Ill likely cancel my sub after a month unless a rework is done.

1 Like
5

Yeah I really do not like the direction shaman is going. Especially enhance. IIRC we’re supposed to be a brawler class? But the reworks have turned into us into a assassin class where you just burst and run away instead of engaging because we’re so squishy. I wish we could stand and bang more.

3 Likes
6

Blizzard hate us since TBC

3 Likes
7

Yeah that is exactly what Enhance is right now at least in PvP. If you watch Bigdam play (prob the best enh shaman out there atm, you’ll have to catch him on other peoples streams as he doesnt stream himself) he plays it like an assassin class. Hes in and out constantly, kiting and LoSing more than any melee class I’ve seen.

Enh is supposed to be disruptive as well and by losing Totemic Recall we lost a lot of our disruption. Can’t reset Static Totem or Tremor Totem or Grounding Totem anymore, and Static/Tremor did not get any CD reductions to make up for that. Wind Rush didn’t get a CD reduction either, and neither did Poison Cleansing Totem. Poison Cleanse should be a 1 min CD, Wind Rush should be a 1.5 min CD baseline, Tremor Should be a 40 sec CD baseline, Static Field Totem should be a 1 min CD. That should have been done after the loss of Totemic Recall, that way we don’t lose too much of our utility since we would be able to use Totems more often overall but wouldn’t be able to get a second use right away anymore.

I also think they should make Ascendance a 2 min CD baseline, and we can reduce it to a 1 min with Thorims. They no longer want big burst CDs in PvP hence why Ascendance and Thorims got a sizeable nerf in PvP a few weeks ago so if thats the case then it should just be a 1 min CD so we can have more constant pressure as opposed to burst. They can nerf it a bit more if they want to so it isn’t too strong as a 1 min but it might actually be fine as is not sure.

Earth Ele is better in PvE now but worse in PvP since we got more value out of having Earth Ele up for 1 minute giving us 5% DR and 15% max hp. Now it only gives 15% max hp for 30 seconds but can be used a little more often which is worse for us since we got a lot of value out of having it out for a minute. We have to talent Burrow in Honor talents which feels horrible, no class has to spend a point on such an insanely strong defensive aside from Shaman. Either we take it and lose utility/damage or we dont take it and lose a massive defensive. And then to top it all off, Enhance healing was gutted because it was too good in PvE. Raging Maelstrom nerfed by 50% and Healing Surge nerfed by 20% feels awful, clearly didn’t take into account PvP has Dampening and MS effects.

I dont mind having small passive defensive options in honor talents, but not a major 2min CD pseudo immunity. The recent defensive buffs were nice, but they benefit Ele a lot more because Ele has access to Farseer which improves Natures Guardian even further, and Ele uses a shield which gives them more Armor than Enhance, meaning Ele is just tankier. Enhance brings nothing to differentiate itself from Ele, it has a similar bursty damage profile and has to run just as much. **It gets countered by literally anything and everything during its CDs ie roots/slows, CC, etc whereas most specs have a way to remove one of those counters during a major CD, which is why we should have an honor talent for Doom Winds that pulls all enemies towards you within 15-20 yards, slows any enemy hit by Doom winds by 40 or 50% and makes us immune to roots and slows for its duration.
**
Its really annoying to watch Shaman lose so much of its disruptive capability via losing utility, watching it lose survivability, gaining basically no mobility, having our CC nerfed via Lasso going to honor talents making it so much harder to take and having no spec specific honor talents for Enhance despite there being multiple things they could do for Enhance honor talents meanwhile other classes like Ret didn’t get any utility pruned while still having good CC (rep got pruned but Searing Galre/HoJ are still very good), Hunters lost no defensives at all despite having a bunch to rotate through (they lost knock and root+scatter but still have amazing CC with Binding Shot/Intim/Trap), Warlocks gained instant CC via Howl now being taken alongside Mortal Coil and they gained mobility via double gate, MM hunter and Priest got new honor talents as well, Priest now has another way to avoid CC via honor talents and MM hunter got a concussive shot honor talent making it an 80% snare and you stun people with it if you use steady shot/cobra shot on them 3 times in a row. Its just unreal.

2 Likes