Current State of Shamans in Legion

[CParker1987]

Hello everyone, so I decided to use my pre-order boost on a Shaman because I have always loved the concept of the class (moving from MW Monk). As it stands right now I'd like to continue to heal but I am completely open to DPS with the class. My question is, what is the current state of Shamans in Legion right now? From what I hear, Ele hits like a wet noodle. I haven't heard anything regarding Enh or Resto, although on paper Resto looks good. Anyhow, how are the three specs preforming? Thanks

[Kaljurei]

Hello everyone, so I decided to use my pre-order boost on a Shaman because I have always loved the concept of the class (moving from MW Monk). As it stands right now I'd like to continue to heal but I am completely open to DPS with the class. My question is, what is the current state of Shamans in Legion right now? From what I hear, Ele hits like a wet noodle. I haven't heard anything regarding Enh or Resto, although on paper Resto looks good. Anyhow, how are the three specs preforming? Thanks

Enhancement is amazing but people are split between hating the gcd locked playstyle as compared to the cooldown driven gameplay(by this I mean rotationally) currently in WoD and the new resource system as well as the great mechanics of the class. Defensively Shamans aren't in a great place, but otherwise they're amazingly fun to play, by this I mean Enhancement.

[CParker1987]

Any feedback on Ele or Resto?

[Deleted]

Mythic raiding above #1000? Dont go Ele.

[CParker1987]

well then that specifically narrows it down to Enh or Resto lol... any thoughts on Resto?

[Cynical Person]

lackluster

[Keiyra]

you may say lackluster, but its still basically guaranteed 1 spot on the healing roster for its utility and SLT alone.

[Deleted]

Hello everyone, so I decided to use my pre-order boost on a Shaman because I have always loved the concept of the class (moving from MW Monk). As it stands right now I'd like to continue to heal but I am completely open to DPS with the class. My question is, what is the current state of Shamans in Legion right now? From what I hear, Ele hits like a wet noodle. I haven't heard anything regarding Enh or Resto, although on paper Resto looks good. Anyhow, how are the three specs preforming? Thanks

Any feedback on Ele or Resto?

Hello my friend, thank you for asking, i think this is a great opportunity, for us fellow shamans to participate in knowledge sharing.

The Current Shaman for WoD:
The thing that im going to explain about shaman, is the shaman class overall.

Shaman - General speaking.

Shaman does overall have great Utilities, for all speccs, which provides the Raid with AoE-Healing Cool-Down Such as Ancestral Guidance, Which does x-amount of Healing of the X-Amount of Damage of which you do, by beeing a dps, but as a healer it does also provide an x-amount of healing, of the x-amount of healing that you do, as a healer.

Other than that, Shaman does have movement friendly abilities, such as Spiritwalkers Grace - which grants mobility, it allows you to run around, and casts spells for an x-amount of time. - However this ability seems to be gone by Legion, so the movement that the shaman always had, while casting spells, which makes the class more fun to play, would seem to be gone, for which reason i do not know, and i also do not support it, because in the past, a dps shaman, could without this ability, run around and cast lightning-bolts, and we also had this ability to support other dps-abilities such as chain lightning, and lava bursts.

Another Great utility, is the Totems!
Totems are very fun, and a very awesome game mechanic.
There Are Fire Totems, which allows you to put down a Searing totem, which casts fireballs at your main target, this is mainly for Elemental and Restoration.
Magma Totem supports a Totem which does Aoe-Fire damage, this totem is only at the moment availeble for Enhancement shamans, and are to be put down for Aoe Damage situations.
The ultimate of this totem, is Fire Elemental Totem, Which summons a Fire Elemental, that´s availeble for all of the shamans speccs, for Ele and Enhance its a Major Dps Cooldown, which are to be synergized with you´re trinket process, bloodlust/heroism, pots, etc. to maximise the damage output of the totem.

Earth Totem:
Earth Totem, allows you to summon an Earthbind-Totem which slows Enemies, or roots them in place, (this isn´t really helpfull in any of the raid-bosses in Hellfire Citadel, and is strongly advised not to use).

The ultimate of this totem, is Earth Elemental, Which is another Major Dps Cooldown, However, for maximum dps-output the Fire-Elemental is a bigger dps cooldown, and theese two toems, does sadly share same Global Cd, which means, if you use 1 of theese 2, both will recieve a 5 min CoolDown, if u havent Glyphed them).

Water Totem:
For Dps, the only water totem availeble for you is: Healing Stream Totem, which heals a few allies.
For Healer: You have both, Healing Stream Totem, and Healing Tide Totem: Healing Tide totem are a major Healing CoolDown, which Heals for a whole lot! and are advised to use, only when the entire raid are taking sustained damage, this will be arranged with ur healing team.

Air Totem:
Atm, Air Totem is availeble to only Resto shaman, which will grant you Spirit-link totem. This is also a healing CD to the resto shaman, and when put down, it scales peopls Hp inside of the totem, together, and makes all to have Equal Hp.

Another special thing about shamans, are their Shocks!
Back in the past, during Vanilla WoW, i made a Video called Froooooostshooooockkk! - I basically changed from beeing a paladin which was only availeble to alliance, and shaman to Horde, i deleted my max level 60 paladin at that time, and made my shaman, and i have never regretted that!

So for the current WoD - Shocks Share the same GCD - Which makes the shaman (dps) nerfed to the ground, because for elemental: Your flameshock gets empowered with the class trinket from archimonde, and with your talents, you specc into getting x2 stacks of unleash elements, so that with each lava burst you do, you gain a + 20% dmg increas on your next fire ability, which stacks up to two times, and after you got your 2 stacks, you then unleash flame, to get another buff to the flameshock, then you cast your flameshock and recieve a 5-6 second global cd on all shocks.

This is really annoying at some times, because while doing your dps rotation, you build up stacks on your lightning-shield, and once the stacks are to 15 (with 4 set) then you need to cast your Earth-Shock to loose the stacks, and build up again, new stacks, to do another big Dps Output.

However The Global Cd from The Shocks has been Removed in Legion, so i´m looking forward to see when its going live, to see the shamans role, and their dps. atleast for elemental.

The same thing is about enhancement shamans, keep flameshock up, and use Frostshock when u have nothing to cast in ur normal rotation.

Resto shaman don´t really share this issue, as they just keep Flame Shock up, to also dps the bosses, while nothing to heal/keeping the DoT up.

Ankh/Ressurrect:
This is really cool! every 60 mins, you can ankh, which means you have a personal combat ress, which does not count for combat resses used, in raid combat!
However, it would be more cool, to change this, to 10 or 15 mins, down from 60.

I do think that i Covered most of the awesome things, of why to play a shaman, allthough that we are always nerfed, unless you´re a healer


P.S.
Shaman Currently: Resto + Enhance are really strong.
Shaman Legion: Enhance and Resto are also Strong.

Elemental: No, its fun and stuff like that, but isnt competetively as an enhance. For legion? atm, enhance is stronger than Ele for dps, as always, im loosing hope for elemental, blizzard makes only mages, locks, strong every time, and i dont think they realise that shaman has become gimped.

anyways, if there are more that you wish to know, then please send me a whisper here on mmo-champion, i´m here to help, and i´m going to use this site way more, than i used to, (was a lot active on other sites) - but mmo is gonna be my main site from now on

[trm90]

Resto will definitely be fine in Legion. It's looking pretty good and packs tons of utility. Their new talent tree is interesting as well.

It still remains to be seen if Elemental and Enhancement will keep up though. My theory is that Windrush Totem could keep them relevant - now that the 40 yard Stampeding Roar is only available on Guardian Druids - if the DPS adds up. Otherwise, Mages/Locks and Rogues/DHs/DKs will still bring more to the table for now.

[Deleted]

Elemental is at the same state as enhancement as for Legion, with Enhancement being slighlty better, however both of them are going to get tuned and most likely be below pure dps classes as always. At the moment, its one of the best.

[Deleted]

"one of the best"

[CParker1987]

well I watched a video this morning on Enhancement and it looks pretty good aesthetics wise which of course peaked my interest in it... just hope it performs well for my raid group.

[Mesoforte]

Resto will definitely be fine in Legion. It's looking pretty good and packs tons of utility. Their new talent tree is interesting as well.

It still remains to be seen if Elemental and Enhancement will keep up though. My theory is that Windrush Totem could keep them relevant - now that the 40 yard Stampeding Roar is only available on Guardian Druids - if the DPS adds up. Otherwise, Mages/Locks and Rogues/DHs/DKs will still bring more to the table for now.

I hope it does, because I really want to keep my 1 min spiritwalker's grace as Resto. D:

[Nihilanth]

Are we losing Grounding totem in Legion?

/sadface

[Northy]

Are we losing Grounding totem in Legion?

/sadface

And Ele is losing all other worthwhile defensive capabilities. Be prepared to die, a lot. Especially in PvP.

[Deleted]

yeah, tons of utility/survivability losses for shaman.
enh survivability in wod: Healing Stream Totem, tier 1 talents, tier 5 talents, Shamanistic Rage, Maelstrom Healing, Glyph of Lightning Shield, Glyph of Flame Shock, Feral Spirits

enh survivability in legion: Maelstrom Healing, Astral Shift (across the board less than half the mitigation as Shamanistic Rage), a talent for AS which basically makes it a suicide button against anyone with just a little bit of magical damage sources, oh, and a okay-ish hot via artifact trait.



enh utility in wod: snare(root with talent) on melee-high range, a bad stun that requires lots of glyphs/talents to be decent, spammable offensive dispell, Grounding Totem, aoe snare, tanking minion/pet, bloodlust, 1m cd sprint, hex, decurse, aoe fear dispell (though admittedly in a ruined state)

enh utility in legion: snare on 10y range (no root), bad stun still bad (glyph finally baseline,but not throwable anymore), purge probably not spammable anymore, grounding gone, earthbind gone, Earth Ele gone, bloodlust, 1m cd sprint (but duration lowered from 15 to 8s), hex, decurse, no tremor.
What we gain is
an aoe sprint (at the expanse of our only shot at a proper gap closer, on the premise of them assuming we'll take it anyway leading to nerfed SW duration)
an aoe heal (exclusive with the above and having a gap closer for once)
a gap closer (se the above)
...
is there anything else?

[BlackGoldShooter]

Elemental: No, its fun and stuff like that, but isnt competetively as an enhance. For legion? atm, enhance is stronger than Ele for dps, as always, im loosing hope for elemental, blizzard makes only mages, locks, strong every time, and i dont think they realise that shaman has become gimped.

You must run into bad elemental shamans or I run into bad enhancement shamans. I typically hover around enhancement shamans that I've raided with; with a heroic weapon as opposed to their mythic.

I haven't gotten to 110 on the beta with an else shaman yet, Ive been avoiding it until character copy, I have one only at 102. Ive topped single target fights against all classes. Primal Fire Elemental is currently "broken;" encompassing nearly 25-30% of total damage on a fight. Once I get the trait to shred its CD, I feel like it will make us a lot more enticing.

AoE is another story, Earthquake totem at my level is sad. Since it lost its mastery scaling and ability to Multistrike. I can only see it potentially being good if you get the Legendary that causes your Earth Shocks to boost its damage by 100% based on a chance dictated by how much MalPwr you spent on the shock maxing at 50%. I find casting CL and manually spreading Flame Shock to be doing more than using the MalPwr on quakes, FS is actually doing more damage than CL in most cases. One way to remedy our AoE, in my opinion, would be to allow Lightning Rod to not just only apply to your initial target of CL. As of current, you have to hope Lightning Rod applies (30% chance) then swap to another enemy and attempt to apply another one within 10sec.
As for against Enhancement shaman I've been group with; the above statements hold, in my experiences.

Defensively, we're in a rut. We only have Astral Shift and Earth Elemental (30% group dmg reduct.) I also find our healing to be lackluster. Roughly 25% of our mana to tickle our HP bar.

[Deleted]

You must run into bad elemental shamans or I run into bad enhancement shamans. I typically hover around enhancement shamans that I've raided with; with a heroic weapon as opposed to their mythic.

I haven't gotten to 110 on the beta with an else shaman yet, Ive been avoiding it until character copy, I have one only at 102. Ive topped single target fights against all classes. Primal Fire Elemental is currently "broken;" encompassing nearly 25-30% of total damage on a fight. Once I get the trait to shred its CD, I feel like it will make us a lot more enticing.

AoE is another story, Earthquake totem at my level is sad. Since it lost its mastery scaling and ability to Multistrike. I can only see it potentially being good if you get the Legendary that causes your Earth Shocks to boost its damage by 100% based on a chance dictated by how much MalPwr you spent on the shock maxing at 50%. I find casting CL and manually spreading Flame Shock to be doing more than using the MalPwr on quakes, FS is actually doing more damage than CL in most cases. One way to remedy our AoE, in my opinion, would be to allow Lightning Rod to not just only apply to your initial target of CL. As of current, you have to hope Lightning Rod applies (30% chance) then swap to another enemy and attempt to apply another one within 10sec.
As for against Enhancement shaman I've been group with; the above statements hold, in my experiences.

Defensively, we're in a rut. We only have Astral Shift and Earth Elemental (30% group dmg reduct.) I also find our healing to be lackluster. Roughly 25% of our mana to tickle our HP bar.

Thx for the post, will get back to ya soon

[Deleted]

Defensively, we're in a rut. We only have Astral Shift and Earth Elemental (30% group dmg reduct.) I also find our healing to be lackluster. Roughly 25% of our mana to tickle our HP bar.

Earth Elemental does nothing like this since 10 builds or so, nor it ever decreased groups dmg taken. Currently its the same old EE we have on live.

[leobear]

Shamans have been dealt a bad deal... Elemental Shamans hit like kittens and are super squishy. Enhancement isn't much better. I solo better as a RestoShammy than either of the other two. Shamans are way underpowered and really suck at the moment. Warlocks are like immortal gods now though.