This is why shamans are angry. p2.

#0 - Feb. 6, 2008, 8:38 p.m.

This is an sum up i' ve made not only of shaman nerfs, but also our complications we have had with some of our Cm's and further. Hopefully this will make some ppl understand why we are so angry with our situation. Ive probably missed alot, but you get the picture. (Some of this content and information has been taken from other posts.)

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 1.2.0 (2004-12-21)
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Shaman
- Earthbind Totem: Added a 15-second cooldown.

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 1.4.0 (2005-04-19)
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- Windfury - Fixed a bug that caused an additional attack beyond what
was intended. In addition, fixed a bug that caused the next normal
melee attack to happen sooner than intended.

- Frost Shock - Now subject to diminishing returns in PvP. This is
considered a slowing effect.

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 1.10.0 (2006-03-28)
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- Shaman will no longer stop falling when they use a Sentry Totem.

(lol)

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.0.1 (2006-12-05)
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- Rockbiter's weapon functionality has been changed. It is now a damage proc
instead of a flat attack power bonus.

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.1.0 (2007-05-22)
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- Elemental Focus: This talent now reduces the cost of the next
damage spell by 60%

- Windfury Weapon: Mixing two different ranks of Windfury Weapon
while dual-wielding will no longer increase the number of Windfury
Weapon procs.

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.1.2 (2007-06-19)
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- Focused Mind: This ability has been changed to reduce the duration of
silence and interrupt effects, rather than increase resistance to
them.

- Earthbind Totem: This totem will no longer break Rogue stealth.

Chapter 2.

Phase 1 -

Shaman review was supposed to be in patch 1.9 - however the completely gimp state of paladins got through to the devs and they got their patch in that cycle instead. Since paladins at that point in the game had been nerfed into 3rd rate tanks, lowest dps in the game and crappy healers all anyone wanted them for was blessings and cleanse. So this was reasonable. Shamans were told - wait for 1.10

1.10 patch cycle - Paladin buffs make priests cry - Priests get reviewed instead of Shaman. Shaman told to wait for 1.11, mages told they will be in 1.12

1.11 - Mages throw a conniption about the delay - Mage and shaman reviews are combined into the same review cycle. Eyonix is sent to the Shaman forum to start a suggestions and feedback thread and one of the other Devs does the same for Mages.

Phase 2 -

Eyonix goes to E3 - misses about 5 days of work, then at the end of e3 has a gout? flareup and is out sick for several weeks.

Tseric and Caydiem come into the Shaman forums and say they will be gathering feedback in Eyo's place. "search for 'bite sized' to see some of the threads spawned by these posts"

Review period comes to a close - 1.11 patch hits PTR - it contains Mage buffs, Druid buffs and a wide variety of shaman nerfs. There is exactly 1 non resto shaman buff - the craptastic t6 enhance talent is taken out and replaced with +10% melee damage.
Druids get innervate for free ( Edit : that was their last , top tier talent in the resto tree , ie 30 talent points required to get to it !) . Mages get Evocation for free ( Edit : that used to be tier 5 talent powerhouse in arcane treee, ie 21st talent point ! ). Shaman still have to spec 31 resto for mana-tide (despite Mana tide being trainable, bloodlust and hex being the three most common requests during the review period)

Euro forums have a mild eruption - Euro CM looks into the problem and posts there that the Shaman feedback was apparently never submitted to the developers, and it is too late to do so - the patch is going live as is, and shaman have had thier review.

Cross posted to the US shaman forums - general disbelief and outrage occurs.

Phase 3 -

Eyonix gets back from sick leave and pops into the Shaman forum long enough to say "How do you like your review?"

Pure Hatred explodes (including death threats and the "get hit by a bus" statement.

Forum mods spend the next 48hours deleting threads and banning people. Eyonix posts that he will not do anything to help the players because they are not treating him with respect (this seriously happened, search for the blue post archives).

Quote by Vili on the shaman forums:

The problem was, and remains, that we have had "0" feedback/interaction. None. Zip. Nada. Nein. Long before the 0.5 shaman patch came along, shaman were the epitome of professionalism and restraint. We didn't complain because other classes had it worse. Still, we offered suggestions, ways to improve things. We did calculations, gave rational arguments, and were the most mature of any forum.

After many times of having shaman pushed back to a later patch, we finally had our patch coming. We eagerly provided many good arguments on the problems inherent in the shaman class, how they could be reasonably fixed, new suggestions, etc.

We heard nothing.

Some people started getting concerned. Shaman still acted maturely and continued with their suggestions.

We heard nothing.

Suddenly shaman got a post sayin "Here's what your talent review is going to consist of" (sorry about the preposition).

That was it. No "we'll consider your recommendations', or 'what are your suggestions', or 'what input do you have'.

We got told what we were getting. And it addressed NOTHING of any substance. The lack of ANY interaction by a CM or ANY blue at ANY time before, during, or AFTER the talent review, combined with the blindside of a talent 'fix' which IGNORED the problems in the shaman class, made the shaman community very hostile.

So someone makes a juvenile 'bus shock' comment about Eyonix, and THEN he responds. The FIRST and ONLY response by him. To a stupid post. Meanwhile he's not doing his job and completely ignores the VAST majority of substantial shaman suggestions.

So what do shaman want? They want a mature CM who actually interacts with the community. Through that interaction, we would be assured that, yes, they actually do read forum posts. Instead, we get complete and total silence. Maybe once in a while some other CM will pop in and ask for comments and never be heard from again (note: Tseric).

But we have no CM. Haven't for a long number of months now. Long before this stupid 'bus shock' incident. Eyonix is like the guy you hire to do work, and he tells you he's doing work, but you never actually see examples of his work, or proof that he's actually doing work and not sleeping in the back room.

Shaman want interaction. That's it. It could be the worst news in the world, but if a CM explained it, worked with the community, shaman would most likely accept it.

I mean, their frickin' job is to read internet messages and play a frickin' video game! How hard can it be? I don't see them out there delineating wetlands, conducting listed species surveys, or writing environmental impact studies. I don't see any real work being done. Their job is to manage frickin' video game message boards.

And we don't even get that.

That is why we are so very often angry. And justifiably so.

Chapter 3

Eyonix:
Right now the class team is heavily focused on the expansion. We will be announcing details of what's in store for each class in the weeks to come. There are a number of improvements we're considering for Shamans in expansion, such as improved totem UI and functionality. I've also been studying the development of new talents and abilities for each class, and so far I'm fairly excited at what I've seen for the Shaman. [Despite the belief that no one reads the Shaman boards (ironically, our loudest forum), we're fully aware of the feedback that's been expressed here, and will do what we can to address it.] Much of the improvement players are demanding will have to wait until the Burning Crusade launches, which isn't too far off.

Tharfor

#116 - Feb. 8, 2008, 2:31 p.m.

So you've posted a thread which compiles all the negative changes from all the patch notes, but conveniently omits all other changes (either neutral or good) - I've seen this in other class forums already so I'm not particularly impressed by it.

You then go on to talk about the CMs and how when they get ill it's clearly a conspiracy just to avoid shaman concerns, and how a little bit of mis-communication during a very busy period is a blatant attempt to nerf or deride the shaman class.

You post no links to threads of any the comments you are referring to, most likely because they are blown way out or proportion or taken out of context, and you put a negative spin on any blue presence that you have been given (I personally remember participating in a very constructive thread on this forum).

Your dissection of each talent tree is fair enough, though again it's completely negatively written and only picks up on what is wrong with each build. I'd like to see a bit more about why you think these abilities are a problem and not so much about "QQ, this is a problem for us."

Although this kind of micro-level discussion is what these forums are for, it has been said that we are not aiming for game balance at specific talent spec levels. As long as each class is able to be reasonably involved in every aspect of the game then things are going pretty well.

I understand that you are upset and have valid concerns over the class that you like or want to play, but this post is showing one side of one part of a very long story about a much bigger picture.

...and as for the sticky requests: when have we ever made a sticky out of a post which basically says "You fail, Blizzard."?

There is a potential here in this thread, I can see that. I can't say I'm surprised that it's the ones who are left after me banning so many in the dot spam this week who can formulate potentially decent threads, but I think you need to take a breath and get some perspective.

I know, I'm asking for patience and constructive input. This is where you tell me that you've been doing that for years and you're sick of being patient. I hear that, I understand.

However, saying something more than once does not make it any less true or relevant.

Tharfor

#150 - Feb. 8, 2008, 3:50 p.m.

I'm not going to respond to every point raised in this thread, because I'm going on vacation in about 10 minutes and at the moment it feels like everyone is talking at me at once. :)

So let's see:

The forums exist for our game subscribers to discuss various aspects of the game. I don't believe that they were ever designed to only be a place for players to give feedback to developers via the community managers, but that seems to be what people expect.

They should be used for people to discuss their class and if feedback can be taken from those discussion and used by the developers then fine; it's not really the same thing.

I mentioned that all classes should be able to participate in all aspects of the game and I was not surprised to see the link to sk-gaming appear shortly afterwards.

From that list of statistics I can see that shaman are probably the closest to being at the balancing point that the devs have talked about because you are represented in 5v5 and not so much in 2v2.

The stats don't show a lack of popularity for shaman, they just show a ridiculous popularity for other classes. It takes a negative mind to assume that other peoples popularity is a reflection of your own unpopularity, if that makes sense.

The rest of the posts are either praising my bravery for posting here, or trying to burn me down for not posting what people want to hear so I'll just stop here and wish you all a great weekend.

Thundgot

#431 - Feb. 13, 2008, 11:21 a.m.

Guys, please don't get too stuck on a single line of text now. (Well, too late for that, but I can make an effort, right? :-p) You are way more interesting points discussed between Shamans than harping on that one.

I'm not gonna call up Tharfor during his vacation, but may - just maybe - try to read it like "The stats don't show a lack of popularity for shaman, they just show a ridiculous popularity for certain other classes." (e.g. Warriors and Druids when looking at the "all players" SK list).

Thundgot

#436 - Feb. 13, 2008, 11:53 a.m.

Q u o t e:
"we balance classes, not speccs"

Just wanted to point out the full wording of that particular point (only directly relevant part of the post quoted):

Q u o t e:
While trying to get each spec to be arena viable in the different formats is a noble goal, the reality is that it isn't an immediate goal for every spec to be optimized for every aspect of the game (arenas, battlegrounds, solo-ing, raiding, heroics, etc).

In the case of arenas, it seems to me that getting each class reasonably represented in highly rated teams is a more important goal

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=96961585&postId=959288344&sid=1#3

Thundgot

#445 - Feb. 13, 2008, 1:27 p.m.

Q u o t e:
still, you gotta admit that "the quote" is quite funny the way it was written. I'm pretty sure a lot of us got the meaning, but the wording is funny enough to be immortalized.

Can't say I disagree. ;-)

And Morkatog, thanks for re-posting your input here. As I posted in the other thread, it's a good read. :)

Thundgot

#465 - Feb. 13, 2008, 4:13 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Huh? I don't really understand this sentence, do you mean "There are..."? Not nagging, just asking for clarification :)

Must have been a strange mind twitch when deciding between "There are" and "You are forgetting" or something like that. Consider it "There are..." :-)

Good point on the more differing play-style of the specs, compared to Warrior and I guess other more specialised classes like Mage and Rogue. It's something I figure is natural when it comes to classes with a more complex role combination (i.e. hybrids). Druids and Paladins can probably make the same point.

Thundgot

#482 - Feb. 14, 2008, 7:25 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Wait what? I have been following this thread for a while and the blue responses have just really astounded me, but I feel that after reading this beauty I just have to respond. Maybe I am interpreting this wrong, but are you only NOW realising how different the play styles of specs are for hybrid classes? This just shows how little knowledge you guys actually have of your own game!

I think you're jumping to conclusions here. I was merely pointing out that it was good (key) point of the Shaman concerns, and adding that it was something I figured was a distinction between hybrids and specialist classes in general. I'm sorry if my present tense of "figure" led you to believe that this was a new revelation to me. ;-)

Thundgot

#485 - Feb. 14, 2008, 8:31 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Thundgot, I would just like to thank you for being active in this thread and wondering whether you could answer some questions:

1) i) Do you have any contact with the delvelopers?
ii) If so will/have you spoken to them about our situation?
iii) Are they aware of our views?

2) Will there be any chance of you informing us on any change or have the developer (if not very busy) to speak to us?

Simple questions hopefully... Hoping that you can answer them. Again thank you.

Another quick morning reply before I have to work on other things...
1.
i) Yes (for clarity, that is "we do", not just "I do")
ii) Yes (see clarification above)
iii Yes, and I can assure you that's not a new thing brought on by e.g. this thread ;-)

2. Not sure what information you're thinking of. All changes should be announced - if not earlier, then in the patch notes (and pre-PTR "leaks") at least. However, I doubt we will be throwing out ideas and speculation getting people worked up over ideas things that might not happen for reasons we wouldn't be able to share all details on (e.g. code limitations). That'd just be asking for trouble.