When I signed up to be a shaman, I signed up to be a witchdoctor. Not the elemental mage that elemental shamans are now.
There is not enough focus on totems, especially with healing shamans. There is not enough focus on spiritism, and there is not enough focus on the original source material for shamans.
Changes I think would help with shaman flavour (at least resto shamans)
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Healing stream totem’s duration should match its cooldown. Whether that is a 30 second duration or a 15 second duration is up to blizzard, but we need to have 100% uptime on that totem.
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We need a larger aoe on healing rain, and it needs to be called rain dance. If it could be placed on us with a 30 yard range to give an even larger passive healing buff, that would be great.
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We need to be using purge far more often. When an ally near us takes more than 15% of their health in damage in under 1 second, they should gain a buff that reduces further damage, and an unfriendly spirit that comes to attack the shaman should spawn. Purging this spirit will immediately kill it. This could (and probably should) be integrated into a totem that is tied to a talent.
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Totem mastery should be off GCD to make macroing it into other spells easier.
That’s all I got. If you feel shamans are missing out on spiritism, animism, and other things to the detriment of being some sort of water/air/earth/fire bender, post here 
2 Likes
TM does not need to be dumbed down. It is the highest dps option for its need to be micromanaged. There are dumbed down DPS options in that tier. select one micromanage better
2 Likes
I mean to me shamans overall have been purely involving in just spiritualism for healing and elemental planes for damage/assistance. I look at witch doctor in D3 and draw no comparisons to a WoW shaman.
None of the changes you put forth address lore but seem more so like tiny buffs for restoration shaman. Great, but not much in terms of flavor. The spirit attacking idea would be interesting but all I can think of with that is those fear adds in Kings Rest chasing a healer around lol
2 Likes
Just making more glyphs that change existing shaman spells to have more of a witch doctor flavor would be nice. One that changes chain heal back to its old animation would be great.
A big thing shamans need for the witch doctor theme is mog options. The tiki mask needs a mail version.
2 Likes
same here as a troll shaman… love da voodoo mon!
I like chain heal as water, but a glyph option for the old one I support
1 Like
Storm, earth, fire. Heed my call. - Orc Shaman Wc3
4 Likes
Supposedly were getting totems back in Shadowlands. Not that i’ve experienced them myself anyways.
Not all shaman are witch doctors though. That’s a troll thing, at most a Horde splice of priest/shaman.
On a different note I really dislike those lv. 30 talents honestly. I hope they make them a bit more interesting eventually.
I can see your point though I feel they each have their place and are really good options.
TM is the best dps because of the need for micromanagement of both range and time. The downside side is in PVP and some M+ you can feel as if you are constantly spamming it or not fully utilizing it.
AS is a great second choice for less upkeep and when paired with 1 TT the runs can sometimes be crazy good. Spamming instant CL into EQs. In PVP it is also nice running a heavy Crit/vers build with BotE major and you are spamming 4-5 ES at 75% crit.
TM is amazing for aoe grinding/farming and leveling. Paired with EA you can pool and drop 4-6 EQs with ease.
So while they are different they all serve a role.
Witch doctor is a troll thing it is irrelevant to Orc/tauren/goblin/pandarian
The comical image of me dropping four totems as i ran around rng spamming one button made me laugh ngl.
I think Shamans in general should have more expanded upon regarding what they call the 5th element, Spirit.
Spirit Walker archetype could really use more work, Shadowlands was the perfect opportunity however there’s nothing Orc or tribal related there this time around.
2 Likes
Did they remove the glyph for the old one?
Point number 3 reminds me of Nefarian’s spamming out corrupted totems.
There are so many ridiculous things for shaman if they decide to iterate out the curse/kiss mechanics of corruption to be specifically class based. Popping out evil totems or being run down by crazed spirits…
I’m hoping that with Torghast (sp), they include buffs and class abilities. I still really would love to see a player version of Big Bad Voodoo (from WC3 the hero is vulnerable, but all allies are invulnerable as the ability is channeled) and I feel like that environment would be a great way to introduce it.
Just came to say that there is an NPC in Zul’Gurub that channels Big Bad Voodoo, complete with the dancing emote.
I think so checked AH and didn’t see the glyph
Check out ToT, and ZG/ZA for some troll/tiki looks.