[Shaman] How would you feel about a total class overhaul next expansion? (poll)

[Kenai]

I think Shaman could definitely stand an overhaul. Speaking from a former Resto PoV, and looking back on it from my MW and Druid/Pally ults, it's clear that several important parts of the class either conflict with each other, the kits of other classes, or the content (repeatedly).

For example, I find the Shaman Mastery to be a relic of the Cataclysm beta when Blizzard was so sure that people would stay at lower levels of health for extended periods of time. That quickly faded away in PvE, yet it remains strong in PvP to the point that Blizzard seems actively afraid of offering Resto any meaningful PvE buffs despite their current state of being dead last in just about every fight of the ToT tier, even in their "stack healing niche". It needs to be revamped so it isn't so polarizing, restricting one at the expense of the other to this degree is not ok.

Speaking of which, their niche absolutely fails to manifest itself in-game. Shaman despite (usually) being functional in stack healing encounters, never "shine" on them: some other class is always competitive/beating them in those situations. Considering how heavily they drop off in movement/spreading encounters, I find this a penalty, not a niche. No other healer suffers so much for such common raid mechanics. It doesn't help that Resto had almost the exact same problem an expansion ago...what was all that MoP development time for, exactly? New CDs to blow during CD time are nice, but is that really the best they could do? I don't think so. The spec is tied to Healing Rain so thoroughly now it's little better than the Chain Heal spamfest of WotLK, and thanks to the content/functionality with other healers and HRain's weaknesses, it ends up largely being overheal. So they just seem to gem spirit so that the other healers can do their job better with MTT and the occasional CD. Progress?

And even though this isn't exclusive to Shaman, I find their talent/glyph selection atrocious. Shaman were the last class to receive their talent tree data, but you can't tell where the extra dev time went. Same with major (and especially minor) Glyphs, i've seen more thought put into the graphics of a Stormwind City bench than the art/effects accompanying those Minor glyphs put together.

TL;DR: Shaman don't necessarily need a complete overhaul so much as they just need actual Developer time and a clear direction that actually matters/is apparent in-game. Their kit feels like an expansion behind the times, and Resto (seriously) got more "tweaks" the last couple of bandaids than they did for most of the MoP beta. It's showing in their performance, and Blizzard's work on addressing the spec have, quite frankly, been embarrassing. They deserve a lot more crap about it than they are getting.

[derekgrant3]

I really think we are in need of a revamp, and this is coming from a Ele shaman. If you look at the state of casters in game, every caster has had a re-design to include some interesting mechanics. Shadow priests got shadow orbs, warlocks got completely redesigned, balance druids get to actually balance between 2 spell schools, mages have interesting mana management mechanics... I feel left out and would like to have some interesting thing to draw me back to the game.

[Aleksej89]

I thought this thread was dead, buried a long time ago.

Wish lists for shammy:

Good AoE for our DPS specs, no ramp-up time and not limited to CL spam on 5 targets with EQ/Magma being horrible.
Fire totems to either do something useful or to be removed - right now they do no notable dps, and are a "buff stick" for Enha.
DPS specs to be viable in more areas of PvP, other than 3v3 arena.
Being able to use Swords OR being able to use 2handed Agility - ANYTHING to remedy the fact that most of the craftable epic weapons are NOT usable by Enha.
A good CC that is not on a huge cooldown - hex is not only the worst form of CC (enemies can freely move and hide or chase you), but it also has the longest cooldown of any 8+second CC.
Better UI integration for Maelstrom and Fulmination - a bar displaying the status of these effects (like Holy Power or Balance) would be great.
I feel that Elemental and Enha has the worst off-healing "on demand", meaning that our HTT can be killed and our Ancestral requires us to hit stuff which is easily countered by a CC/disarm/silence. Also our regular Healing Surges heal for a pitiful amount and cost a lot of mana.

OFC most of these issues got resolved by rolling a Feral/Balance druid xD

[derekgrant3]

Funny that you mention your last part, considering the fact that I came to this forum post because I was playing a Balance Druid and realised that I was actually managing something other than cool downs.

[Chaosturn]

I want a two handed weapon on my enhancement shaman.

[Eliot123]

They can start with changing some of our talents. Some of them are really ''one-size-doesn't-fit-anyone'' style.

[spelle]

yes for enhancement for sure, i hate the aoe rotation. Some sort of elemental power resource would be cool

[BlissfulBlithe]

The amount of times I've re-written the class and its mechanics is outstanding... they all made sense and fit the class quite nicely without being overpowered. I'll have to find my other ones but for now, here's my Elemental rotation.

• Lava Burst: You hurl molten lava at the target, dealing 1382 to 1775 (+125% of SpellPower) Fire damage. Lava Burst will always deal a critical strike and its damage is increased by your critical strike rating. If your Flame Shock is on the target, Lava Burst will deal 50% additional damage. 8 sec cooldown.

• Lava Surge (Passive): Your Flame Shock periodic damage ticks have a (10% + Critical%) chance to reset the cooldown of Lava Burst and make it instant cast. Lasts 8 seconds.

• Lava Flows (Passive): If your Flame Shock is dispelled it will cause (465 ( +35% of SpellPower) * 10) damage to the dispeller over 6 seconds.

• Storm Surge: Surge the target with lightning, dealing 2031 to 2198 (+250% of SpellPower) Nature damage. Storm Surge will always deal a critical strike and its damage is increased by your critical strike rating. 12 sec cooldown.

• Earthen Power (Passive): Your Earth Shock ability has a (30% + Critical%) chance of making your next Storm Surge have no resource cost, reset its cooldown and make it instant cast. Lasts 8 seconds.

• Rolling Thunder (Passive): When you deal damage with Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning while your Lightning Shield ability is active, you have a 60% chance to recover 2% of your mana and to generate an additional Lightning Shield charge, up to a maximum of 10 charges.

• Conduction: Consume all active Lightning Shield charges to instantly heal you for (#ofCharges + 3% of maximum health) and increase your Nature damage by (#ofCharges + 2%) for 15 seconds. This ability is off the global cooldown.

• Discharge: Your next Lightning Bolt or Healing Surge ability will deal damage to or heal all targets within 15 yards of the target but only be 50% as effective. This ability is off the global cooldown. 15 sec cooldown.

An example rotation, or priority system how it would be better known as would be:

Single-target:
1. Flame Shock, 6 sec cooldown, 30 sec. damage over time, activates Lava Surge.
2. Lava Burst, 2 sec. cast. 8 sec cooldown. Reset and made instant by Lava Surge.
3. Earth Shock, 6 sec cooldown, activates Earthen Power.
4. Storm Surge, 3 sec. cast. 12 sec cooldown. Reset and made instant by Earthen Power.
5. Lightning Bolt (filler), 1.5 sec. cast. Can be cast while moving.

Area-of-effect:
1. Conduction: Lightning Bolt, 15 sec. cooldown.
2. Chain Lightning, 1.5 sec. cast.

Thoughts?

[Deleted]

I wouldnt mind it, especially for PvE healing i feel like my priest just does it so so so much better

[Raiju]

The totem change was pretty big.

Moving a passive buff from X always up source to Y always up source is pretty damn small.

[Teriz]

I wouldnt mind it, especially for PvE healing i feel like my priest just does it so so so much better

I feel that way about my Monk as well. I'd like to definitely see an overhaul of Resto. Get a bit deeper with the water element.

[thetom]

I don't wanna sound like the "QQ my class sucks guy". But after playing resto shaman as main spec and ele has off spec in 10 man for the entire duration of this expansion ( so far), i'm 100% sure that i will change mains to something else for the next expansion if blizzard doesn't rework us. Dropping totems and healing rain is not a fun way to heal, the fact the we have very few OP tools instead of many useful tools makes the spec really boring to play. Not the mention that we have been neglected as far as balance goes since 5.0.

Maybe i'll try enh/ele but resto as it is right now is just not an appealing class/spec.

[Deleted]

I personally wish we'd get more function out of Unleash Weapon outside of some passive effect like just the damage/healing increase. That's just boring. What I propose is to let UW actually 'enhance' certain spells, kind of like a mini-tree of life like druids and maybe let it have charges and varying costs like as Destro Locks have.

For instance if you would use a empowered chain heal the beam would split into two beams. Earth Shield would provide the lowest 3 targets near the target a charge of it.
Give riptide a chance to create a splash that heals nearby targets with 2 ticks of it. Healing Rain would be a bit tricky, but I'd say only let it gain Earth Living when enhanced or something more powerful, but consuming a lot of stacks. Note that I don't take balancing in consideration as that can be re-tuned, but it would be important that EVERY spell is worth using it in enhanced form. Might as well have UW's CD lowered to 10 seconds or something.

This might be fun to integrate with the other specs as well.

[Desimiss]

I've been thinking about an overhaul for some time now, since I think the class feels.... incomplete.. at some points. :l

AoE is a bit unimaginative for Elemental.. Earthquake is never used, and Magma Totem deals pathetic damage.. Only Chain Lightning works.
For Enhancement, AoE feels very clunky and it feels as if the entire AoE system needs to be revisited.

Ascendance also feels very unimaginative imo.. Pop it + spam a single button = do sick damage.. For Enhancement it just comes down to the 2 Stormblasts you get to use. You'd always want to be in close melee range no matter what (Lava Lash), so the added range from Ascendance is irrelevant.
Restoration just gets double healing (the extra healing is shared by the group/raid), but Shamans can already get such a CD from Talents (Ancestral Guidance). So I'd say that Ascendance needs some work.

I've always seen Enhancement Shamans as an Elemental Warrior, enhancing his attacks with the elements, but I just don't think they feel as such.
Having the option of choosing between dual wield and 2H weapons would also be a big plus in my book. As I said.. Elemental WARRIOR.. not an Elemental Rogue... Windwalker and Enhancement Shaman just feels too similar (imo.. don't shoot me, please).

I've had this idea for a few months now, and I'd love to see it implemented in some way...
Considering that Earthquake is used so little, and Capacitor Totem receives so many complaints, I was thinking about merging the two...

Earthquake:
45 sec CD
Instant
Stuns for 3 seconds on impact, and has a 15% chance per tick, to stun for an additional 3 seconds. Lasts for 10 seconds.

This would give us a much more reliable stun first of all, and it would give Shamans a fun mechanic for PvP. EQ + Root... It's like a Solar Beam + Vortex, but "Shamanized". x)

Making it stun for 3 seconds initially, would compensate the increased chance to hit a target.
Compared to the 5 second stun from Capacitor Totem that seldom hit a target, a 3 second stun that hits "every time" would be of more benefit.. At least in my opinion.

It would also give us a much needed "Oh Snap!" ability against melees made of glue.

I'm not saying everyone should agree with me here, but this is just what I would like to see.

(I'm talking purely from a PvP point of view, since PvE is of no interest to me - Also, I haven't had a good nights sleep in a long while, so typos/grammar mistakes may occur)

[LTCrystallite]

I've always thought of elemental as the caster with various elements and Enhancement as the 'spirit and earth' melee. While I love the dmg that ascendance puts out, I feel like it's nothing more than a crutch that might stop future changes due to how strong it is.

Elemental's AoE is screwed, as you all have said already. Magma Totem and EQ just aren't reliable in terms of setup and damage. Chain Lightning spam is cool lookin', but the fact that the two other AoE's are not even shadows of CL says something.

Enhancement just needs a niche. It's good at group/on demand healing, but other than that, it's really only good for burst windows. It has skills/talents/spells that other classes have, but worse. Capacitor is hilariously easy to counter without both glyphing it and using Totem Projection, hex is decently reliable, but outside of that, they have poor defensive capabilities and CC in general. They're good at group support with Grounding/Tremor/Windwalk (if chosen, but most choose frozen power because lack of CC) and maelstrom healing+Ancestral guidance, but that's really it.

I think this is more of a general thing, but Blizzard should consider consolidating more skills for all classes and try to reinforce a better niche per spec or class. Now, it just seems like an arms race rather than a complicated chess game. Everyone has CC, everyone has slows, everyone has interrupts, and it's just about who's got a better overall toolkit.

I think the homogenization for buffs was a good idea because it directly affects raid performance per class (bring the player not the class), but to homogenize the uniqueness of the uncommon raid skills and let everyone have everything was just stupid.

[Barky]

the one that needs the biggest 'overhaul' would be resto, there's a lot they need fixing, their AoE is too close range and stacking, they dont bring any absorb shield at all, they have one HoT that's worth any time at all and doesn't have a RNG proc, not to mention Earth shield being overall pretty useless if it wasn't for the 20% more healing done on that target.

And I dont even play resto Main spec and these are just problems from the top of my head, a long time resto player could list so many more problems it boggles the mind!

[Futhark]

Elemental:
1) Have Fulmination work with Earthquake
2) More 2H spell-hammers

Enh:
1) Make Earthquake baseline -> Maelstrom works on Earthquake naturally

[Biggety]

Elemental needs a more compelling secondary resource than lightning shield charges. Ditto enhance with MW. Resto could do with a secondary resource system, possibly tied to AoE healing like chi for Mistweavers.

Enhance dps rotation is clunky with too many cooldown rotational abilities and a filler ability with no cast time to not screw up auto-attacks. Elemental's PvE rotation is boring, but that could be remedied by the addition of a better secondary resource. Both specs need reworked AoE/cleave abilities.

Resto's single target healing toolkit isn't bad, but the AoE heals are just bad compared to every other class. Resto also has very poor healing on the move due to a lack of spammable instacast spells. Resto also has the worst dps of all healers and the least damage utility.

1) Remove cooldowns on shocks and rework the shocks. Earthshock already does miserable damage without fulmination charges. Spamming it would be a dps loss unless you are on the move and as a cheap filler for enhance. You can remove lightning bolt while casting with this change as well. Flameshock has no DD component and just applies a dot, but allows us to multidot easier and makes dispelling the ability in pvp a futile thing. Remove all damage from Frostshock and put a cooldown on the root talent.

2) Hex causes loss of control of the character. I don't care if it becomes a carbon copy of polymorph. I have lost so many arena games because Hex does not let you get a positional advantage like every other CC in the game.

3) Make unleash earthliving convert healing wave or chain heal into an instacast with some extra healing power. Shaman burst heals in pvp are pretty silly. Talented unleash into surge easily tops 350k on a crit heal. Tone it down while adding some more mobility and interrupt protection to heals.

[Wombus]

Although adding complication to the game - I could see a great secondary resource interaction with elemental blast happening for both ele and enh shamans.

Make EB baseline, however in order to cast it you need to generate sufficient secondary resources of some sort of fire/ice/lightning orbs. These resources are generated by casting fire/lightning/frost spells. Once you have say more than two of each EB becomes available and you cast consuming 2 of each of these resources. The side 'buff' of EB could be made into the talent part if so desired or removed completely (tbh I think it's pretty bad and something better should be put in). You would by default be able to generate 3/3/3 of each of the orbs (to allow some sort of flexibility in rotation and allow for surge procs etc) and perhaps a talent could make it 4/4/4 or make an orb a 'prismatic' orb or something. In compensation for making the rotation a bit more complicated, make EB extend the duration of FS by 9 seconds or whatever is appropriate.

This obviously requires a more compelling frost ability, but heck frost shock is only of any use in PvP so a revamp/rework of this clunky mechanic is a must! it would make the rotation a bit more interesting and finally make shamans a master of all elements rather than fire/lightning.

Unleash Elements also needs some sort of more compelling mechanic - right now it's incredibly niche (certainly for ele/resto). Basically a good idea that has been lost - you could easily tone down the bonuses and make them last longer, or give them a one off large bonus and a lasting buff component. (Perhaps something like elemental damage/direct healing now causes a DOT/HOT for 10%/20% of damage/healing done stacking like ignite).

Linked CDs of shocks have gotta go - certainly for Ele, probably for Enh too - the spells just aren't strong like they used to be in terms of damage done.... they might hit for 60k now (PvE), who cares if someone chains ES with FrS and FS....

Something needs to be done about Resto shaman's ability to heal a spread raid - in 10man if the raid isn't stacked chain heal and healing rain just don't even become options. The t15 bonuses for resto acknowledge the need for spread healing help - but there's no follow up actual buffs/tweaks so far in 5.4, it's a joke. The old argument 'oh we don't want shaman to be one button spammers like they used to with CH' is garbage! CH costs so much more now and scales much worse than it used to. They could make CH jump 3 times as far and not reduce healing with each jump and the only time shammies would be spamming it is when a spread raid is taking damage!

Personally I'd be all for Resto shammies losing some of their utility so they could get the focus and attention they need on their core issues!