Not a Single Shaman on HRag Kill ???

And not a single ele in top guild 1st kill....

working as intended blizzard?

It's so incredibly anecdotal there isn't even a proper frame of reference for having this debate.

Yes, it's working as intended that the first guild in the world to kill Heroic Ragnaros was allowed to bring whatever players/classes they were confident would help get the job done.

There's 25 slots in a raid.

There's 30 specs in the game.

Do the math, there's always going to be someone left out.

What are the odds that all 3 Shaman specs would be part of the 5 that didn't make it?

It doesn't matter at all unless you can verify and prove that Heroic Ragnaros is impossible, or way more difficult to kill, when a specific class or specialization is represented in the raid.

You're forcing together a couple of incredibly fragmented pieces of data -- and the sample size of that tested data is 25 players in the whole world fighting one boss in the entire game -- to extrapolate an entire thesis on class balance.

No one is going to benefit from trying to make an argument out of this.

And why do you think the world first guilds continue to not bring any Shamans. Is it because they're in such a good place right now they didn't want people to complain that they were class stacking Shamans because of how amazing they are?

This is the 3rd world first end boss kill in the past 3 patches where there was not ONE DPS Shaman in the raid makeup (And only one Resto Shaman in the past 3 world first end boss kills). You can keep saying EVERY new patch that they can bring what they want and that there is nothing that you can do, but you should really look at why they aren't bringing one class every single time.

That's a pretty ineffective way to consider class balance. It's as though you're suggesting the answer to perceived shaman woes is for us to buff them until the top guilds in the world must bring them to their raids for world first kills. That's a vacuum in which class balance should never work.

One thing you're certainly not doing is counting all of the kills of each of the Heroic bosses which followed the world firsts. Shaman have certainly been present for Heroic boss kills in Cataclysm, but that data doesn't support your argument. You want to focus on, what, four total boss kills over the last eight months? Out of tens of thousands of Heroic boss kills which have occurred globally since Cataclysm, do you really think you're presenting a fair case?

So keep using your typical and cookie cutter responses and laugh it off again for the 3rd patch in a row that we're over reacting. We all just need to learn how to play our class and our specs because you did such a perfect job creating them.

I'm not interested in having a conversation where you reinterpret everything I say to justify your preconceived feelings about the topic. You can either read what I've written and consider the statements on their own merits, or you can see what you want to see.

Speaking of typical and cookie cutter though, here's one for the record books: "Class X is clearly not good enough because guild Y didn't use it the very first time they killed your current hardest boss."

If you want to continue debating this in this thread, that's fine. I'll just reiterate that you're not going to be selling us on any points of perceived class imbalance based on one raid composition for killing one boss once.

There's a pattern here Blizzard, it's not random, it's not a coincidence. Continue to leave the specs as they are, and continue for DPS Shamans to not show up. All of those top players could have leveled a Shaman and brought them while pushing for a world first. There's a reason they don't bring them.

Yes, there's certainly a pattern here. But no matter how hard you try, you can't accurately draw such broad conclusions from this pattern, because the data has virtually no frame of reference in the grand scheme of World of Warcraft class balance and gameplay.

07/19/2011 05:16 PMPosted by Galadeon

So you are saying, yes, it is fine that there were no Shamans at all in the raid;

Yes.

07/19/2011 05:16 PMPosted by Galadeon

and that it is fine that other classes do DPS/Heals better then any shaman can.

No, because I didn't say that. You did.

07/19/2011 05:16 PMPosted by Galadeon

Ok, just wanted to be sure.

You shouldn't be so sure. You asked a rhetorical question based on a false premise, and then accepted an answer to the question I never gave.

Yes, there's certainly a pattern here. But no matter how hard you try, you can't accurately draw such broad conclusions from this pattern, because the data has virtually no frame of reference in the grand scheme of World of Warcraft class balance and gameplay.

Fair points all around Zarhym. One cannot argue balance on a choice of a single (or even a handful) of guilds on a single (or a handful) of fights.

However the "pattern" my overly concerned shaman brothers and sisters are pointing out is merely manifested through the choices of the few (arguably the best theorycrafters this community has to offer). Like those you are critisizing you are also focusing on the argument verbatim instead of answering the underlying question.

Combatlogs are incomplete, but they are the best indicators we have available. Third party statistical analysis tools exist and aggregate thousands of kills, across thousands of players, across entire tiers, and those tools have consistently indicated Shaman are underperfoming in basically every fight (with a couple of notable exceptions).

Ghostcrawler made a comment that Resto Druids "win" the healing meters because Tranquility shows up as healing, and that is also a fair point but much like in your case it ignores the greater issue here...Resto Druids "win" at healing because a grand majority of their heals are position agnostic (no one has to collapse to a silly circle in order to benefit) and raids can keep doing what they need to.

There are voices of reason within the screams of trolls, I just hope you guys can read them...

I just want you to know we do read them and I appreciate your manner of posting. ;)