Bloodlust / Heroism Drums?

We’re considering it. There are two big considerations at play here. One is we’re unsure the buff is as mandatory as some players think it is. It certainly feels like a big boost when it happens, but part of that is because so many groups use the Bloodlust / Heroism moment as the time to blow all their cooldowns and go all out. While it is unarguably a buff (though for some specs more than others), it’s role as “blow everything!” is significant too. Secondly, while we ultimately wouldn’t mind having a weaker consumable available (like Kings and Fortitude) for groups, we’re not crazy about the idea of every character running around leveling, using Bloodlust for every kill quest. At that point, it just feels like a mandatory consumable and anything designed to make it feel less mandatory (like an expensive cost) feels bad.

Q u o t e:
For sure. If the argument is that we need heroism in order to be brought to raids, the argument isn't really for heroism, but for our personal utility. But a lot of people (wasn't trying to pick on you in particular, just a lot of people the way the thread is going) are sounding the death bell for shamans if heroism was made not our own unique buff - and my argument is that we don't want to be making that argument. :)

Really, shamans shouldn't be seen as a "support class". If blizzard is still internally treating us as one, they really need to stop. I'd like to believe they're not, but it's hard to say what goes on behind closed doors.

Shaman aren't a support class. They have some very nice buffs, but those aren't the same thing. The older design of the shaman was that you bring them in order to make the rest of the group really shine. That's not really where we see the class now. You should want one in your raid, but you should be okay if you don't have one. Put another way, we don't want to to make stacking one class too appealing, but we want you to have flexibility, especially in 10-player raids.

We don't want anyone being brought to a raid just because they have a super special buff that the group considers mandatory. Some people consider Bloodlust mandatory and some don't. At the very least it is brought by all 3 trees of shaman, versus say something like the Scorch +crit debuff only really belonging to Fire mages (and there are multiple ways to get that one now too).

Now it's also possible to homogenize buffs too much. If it's trivially easy to get everything you need then we might as well just cast a "you're better" aura on you anytime you're in a raid. Don't let the fact that we're moving away from the "you have to have me" model to mean the opposite extreme is where we want to end up.

We're not sure we'll make Bloodlust drums for the reasons we stated above. But we're not worried about the concern that shaman will never get invited again. You shouldn't be getting invited because of your buff today. You should get invited because you're not annoying and because you contribute to progress.