Why shaman use shield if they are not tank spec?
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To protect their beards
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Makes sense.
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I’m not totally up on it because Pandaren don’t have access to the class, but don’t Holy Paladins have shields too? They’re not tank-spec.
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To increase their non-existant survivability.
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If I were to take a wild guess from a technical stand-point… itemization balance. Shamans are only one of three classes in the whole game that can equip shields. They only compete against Paladins and Prot Warriors. Where as if you try to go for a staff or off-hand, you’re now competing against: Mage, Warlock, Druid, Priest, Monk, and Evoker.
Could also be that maybe there was a plan to have Shamans be able to tank back in the very early days, but that idea got scrapped and being able to use shields is just a leftover from that.
They can. But unlike a Shaman, a Paladin can swap to a tank-spec when needed and the shield will switch from INT to STR. Also, Paladins can’t use staves, but Shamans can. It’s a weird setup if you ask me.
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Always figured its kinda like: “quit smacking me mr kobold i’m tryin’ to send this heal”
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at one point shaman had a few agro grabbing moves, the shield seemed to suit when pulling agro.
things like flametounge weapon and windfurry and the earth one seemed to work well for a shaman in conjunction with a few scarce melee casts we had at the time, and the shield gave us a LARGE chunk of our armor.
all of this was when I was leveling a elemental/restoration shaman through burning crusade.
things change so much.
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Why shaman use shield if they are not tank spec?
There’s some physical damage that isn’t melee attacks that shields can mitigate thanks to the huge Armor.
Easy…because Devs designed their shaman lore around using X specific weapons and Y off-hands, including shields, it doesn’t mean that’s related to tanking. If you notice most shields that provide intelect have a small desing compared to the usual big shields for tanks.
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In vanilla wow, shamans were off-tanks. They failed MISERABLY. One of their OG skills rockbiter or something had aggro attached to it. Devs decided to abandon the idea entirely so they made them(enhancement tree) a melee DPS insread, removed aggro from rockbiter, and that was it. The shield is a remnant of their horrid tanking days. The shield also adds + small bonuses to your elemental summons.
Actually its what I typed above.
https://vanilla-wow-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Rockbiter_Weapon
- Imbue the Shaman’s weapon, increasing melee attack power by X, and allowing melee attacks to cause additional threat when using that weapon. Lasts 5 minutes.
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This really isn’t the case anymore ever since they made gear swap primary stats when swapping specs. It might’ve been the case before that, but looking at all the shields from most of the newer raids and dungeons, shields are just designed to fit the theme. Like, all the shields in both Vault and Aberrus are big, chunky, full shields. No bucklers or small shields.
If not friend, why friend shaped?
Shaman gotta use shield. Its tradition.
Both shaman and paladin were melee casters. Was better to smack things with windfury as restoration than learn higher ranks of LB, spend 8% of your mana to miss or do 15% of mob HP. And paladin of course was always in some level melee oriented.
Enhancement shammies used to be able to offtank. It wasn’t great, but it existed. Similarly, warlocks could do something similar with a glyph in MoP
Why DK use tank spec if they are not use shield?
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Because my shaman thinks it’s cool to carry the Alliance “Smiley Lion” ™ shield around.
So there.
why hpals use a shield and not in prot spec ?