#0 - April 24, 2007, 7:22 p.m.
I think the shaman class is somewhat Iconic of blizzard itself, particularly in that blizzard is perhaps best known for creating wonderful games that are easy to learn but hard to master, that sentiment fits the shaman class well as can be easily played with they user friendly shocks and weapon buffs such as windfury, but hard to master with the large array of totems and due to the myriad of ways in which they can be played. With that being said it is sad where the shaman sits now, underpar and generally unwanted.
Early on the shaman was somewhat unique in that it could be a quasi-mage-warrior-priest all at the same time, WOW! For the most part I thought it to be a well balanced class, perhaps the best designed class in the game. While some other classes needed some adjustment. Now from the beginning some of the nerfs were certainly warranted, like the grounding totem nerf and that initial windfury nerf.
As time went on however more nerfs crept along, nerfs that made it impossible for the shaman to retain his ability to be a mediocre caster and a mediocre meleer at the same time. Mainly this came from the nerfs of windfury and in addition, the less well known overall weapon nerf which made it so a weapon with spell casting stats could not retain the damage of a melee weapon of the same level. In addition because of item design by blizzard hybrid gear has the same amount of stats as pure class gear does, why is this bad? Because hybrids depend on more gear that gives them bonuses to all of their stats,, pure classes don’t need this because they only draw from a couple stats, for example you will never see a warrior needing intellect or a mage needing strength. These problems forced the shaman to be only a damage caster, a meleer, or a healer. This actually is perhaps one of the main reasons why the shaman class has many holes in it, simply because the original design of the shaman class was to be all those things at once. Now many people may think what I am saying is that shamans need earth shield! DW! And OMG BOLTS! All at the same time omgwtfbbqpwn! But no I see what has been changed with the class and I am alright with that.
There are now three distinct roles that a shaman can fill, but more changes need to be done so to complete each role. For example, as an elemental shaman if you are counterspelled you neutralized until it wears off simply because all of his useful spells are of the same school, this was ok back when shamans still retained some of their melee capabilities while being elemental, but now as they are near nonexistent the elemental shaman needs more in his arsenal than just nature spells, for such things as counterspell and in addition PvE fights in which monsters are nature immune.
Another example is as an enhancement shaman you cannot escape slowing or immobilize effects, which is devastating when you must rely on your melee capabilities. A while ago this would be ok because shocks were more powerful overall and frostshock did not have diminishing returns, and because healing was more reliable. Though as the game has progressed shocks have become less and less effective in terms of the relative damage they do, of gear selection he cannot properly heal himself unless he wants to severely hinder his offensive capabilities. Now like other melee classes the enhancement shaman needs some more survivability and in addition some way to keep from being kited.
All in all nothing quite fits well anymore with the shaman,
A Short sum up would be to say that originally shamans were designed as a “jack of all trades” being able to be multiple things at once but not comparably to a pure class. However as the game developed the shaman were torn in three different directions as the devs saw it necessary to make them focus on being just one thing at a time, healer, damage caster, or meleer. But by doing this they have made a broken class, sure, at each particular role the shaman class is more effective than it was before, but at the same time they have to almost give up the other two roles.
Now a way to fix this could be to simply overhaul the complete item database making the gear for hybrids more suitable, while at the same time overhauling the whole shaman class and accounting for the overcompensations created by the lack of sufficient gear, as well as overhauling other hybrids and performing the same task. This would be best fix for the problem yet at the same time it would require a ton of man hours. It would pay off in the long run though, I wouldn’t see blizzard doing this though. So a patch up would be easiest, though its not as good as an overhaul a patch up would suffice if blizzard actually took the players concerns into account. In that case each spec of the shaman class needs some kind of buff.
Some might say that shamans don’t need a buff because they are not pure classes anyways and so they are not meant to do any substantial damage or healing. In response you must remember that when a shaman chooses a spec, he makes it so his abilities in the other two abilities become severely under par. For example if a shaman chooses enhancement by doing so he knowingly chooses that he will not be able to heal or cast damage spells effectively, but at the same time he must still perform his job well enough to compete with class at DPS, else he becomes useless to the raid. Another argument I have seen been thrown out there is that because a shaman should not be able to heal as well as a priest. Do not forget though that priests have shadow spec as well, so priests are not pure healers as well, they can be damage dealers as well as shamans.
I would like people to keep in mind that I shaman doesn’t need to be topping the damage or healing charts as long as the damage they are personally responsible for + the extra their groupmates received from their totem buffs approximates the damage of a competitor.
For example:
Shaman deals damage equal to 10% of a mobs health while his groupmates all did 14% however the shamans totems accounted for 1% of each groupmates damage, so the shaman was responsible for 10% +4*1% = 14% damage while each groupmate did 14%-1%=13% damage on his own. A shaman doesn’t have to top charts to still be a main contributor of damage.
Restoration – a lot of people would say that this is a good spec but they cannot deny that it remains the worst healer out of them all, due to their lack of mana efficiency and lack of any variety of heals, in particular a instant castable heal even if it’s a HoT besides NS would be nice.
-Requires a tad more mana efficiency
-Some new healing arsenal
-Slightly more damage as to make farming not such a pita, perhaps some of weapon buff that provides more damage than flametounge. Perhaps a dot. Just something to make farming not so painful but also not make a significant difference in pvp or raids.
Enhancement- This is in most people’s eye the worst of the shaman specs. In addition with the new offhand WF nerf, it will become even more undesirable. What this spec needs is two things, more survivability and some way of reaching its opponents.
-I had been thinking of something that could work. Because enhancement has really not much healing power anyways there could be a talent point that puts a 1 minute cooldown on all their heals but at the same time whenever they cast a heal it would be instant. This would provide the spec with some survivability, while not being overpowered, it could also help by providing a quick decent heal in instances without interrupting their damage too much.
- if you don’t like that perhaps some form of damage reduction would do.
-some form of charge or a slowing/immobilization removal ability.
Elemental- I think this is the most decent out of all the shaman specs, but it needs more variety in its damage casting abilities. Perhaps it will need more damage now with the clearcasting nerf.
-Some sort of damage spell like lightning bolt but of the fire or frost school of magic, this is rather necessary as the nature line makes nature immune fights impossible and in addition a counterspell eliminates nearly all the casting a shaman can do.
- Some moderate AoE spell besides magma totem would be nice especially if this class is supposed to play the role of a damage caster in raids. If an elemental shaman is going to be filling the spot of warlock or mage he should be able to AoE as that is an important function of damage casters.
-In fact a Euro Shaman, Iwoodoo, brought to my attention that a skill was created before but was taken away for unknown reasons, this spell known as Molten blast was of the fire line of spells, of moderate cast time and of moderate damage, to simply reinstate this spell would do wonderful things for the shaman class.
-aggro reduction is an issue that could use some tweaking as well
-As of now the spelldamage curses provided by warlocks affect every school except nature, this somewhat hinders the druid and especially the shaman class, if a nature debuff could simply be added to curse of elements that would help dramactically. Probs to Kifimbo for mentioning this.
-Enchants and potions that affect nature damage
There are also many talent problems that have existed for a long time, mostly talents that are weak or just not very useful. I am borrowing some of these from another post I saw so Kudos to Mungwise for his thoughts.
They are as follows below.
