Why are so many shaman abilities inferior copies of other classes ones?

[Deleted]

Okay hear me out before you guys go "but Shaman is awesome", many of our abilities are basically differently named abilities other classes have also. Except often times worse, less reliable, more wonky and with more hindrances.

Take Stone Bulwark for example, it's basically a copy of Ice Barrier or a PW:S shield. Except it's tied to a totem thus it could be killed, if that was even necessary. It doesn't give you the shield immediatly but slowly over time, usually doing little good because it shields for less than auto hits of both mobs and players do in damage aswell as requiring you to stay in the vicinity.

Hex, it's one of the few non spammable CC's, it also stands out because the player in question still gets to control his character thus can run behind pillars, can be countered by DPS speccs, while it doesn't heal the target that usually makes little difference and it also breaks almost immediatly, at times even from the shaman mastery itself. It's a worse version of Sheep.

Capacitor totem, my personal favorite. It's a far worse version of Shadowfury and even leg sweep is overall superior to it. It takes 5 seconds to actually come into effect, it has to be placed on the ground forcing you to stay in the vicinity unless you take another ability solely to make it a slightly less far worse shadowfury, it can actually be killed by any opponent with half a brain.


The list goes on. Large parts of the shaman kit consist of abilities other classes have aswell, except usually worse. It's as if Blizzard just copies other classes abilities, then nerfs them slightly to make them more "shamanish" and calls it a day. what gives?

[Deleted]

Pretty sure you meant Stone Bulwark for the first one. Just to clear that out.

[Bjorsen]

This gripe could work for almost any class, sorry your dps specs are currently under preforming lol. Seriously, so many mechanics in this game are similar because there are only so many things you can do.

[Deleted]

@Leivah, thanks I've been a healer for too long.

@Bjorsen, there's plenty of different abilties classes don't share with other classes. Shaman has very few of them and the problem is, all those which they share and there's a lot they somehow ended up drawing the short straw. Capacitor Totem compared to Shadowfury sums up the entire class in a nutshell and everything that is currently wrong with it.

[kary]

Honestly, totems are a bad idea and I wish useful abilities were disconnected from them. Capacitor is basically useless, Searing Totem is a worse imp with a limited duration, Earthbind is a hunter trap you an kill. Water totems shouldnt be killable at all since mana tide is gone.

They won't change any of these things tho lol.

[Putin-Chan]

This gripe could work for almost any class, sorry your dps specs are currently under preforming lol. Seriously, so many mechanics in this game are similar because there are only so many things you can do.

No other class has almost all of their mechanics being a shitty version of another one's mechanics.

If survival hunter's harpoon in 7.0 has a 2 second cast time, interruptible by taking damage and was unusable while moving, then it'd be death grip's twin who was dropped as a baby, just like how hex is polymorph's brain damaged twin, capacitor totem is shadowfury's amnesiac grandfather, and stone bulwark is power word shield's infant child, Ghost Wolf is Cat Form's paraplegic cousin, lava burst is chaos bolt's pet kitten, etc...

Edit: Forgot about Leg Sweep and the Demon Hunter's AOE stun that will do damage too.
Edit: Also forgot about frost shock, which puts your main dot on CD, and is only a slow, meanwhile concussive shot, and every mage spec's fillers (when glyphed) are practically auto-slows

[Krazzorx]

The concept of them makes sense. Earthbind, if it couldn't be killed, is very "sticky". It lasts awhile. Stone bulwark is also supposed to be a long term shield.

As for the others, while those are worse, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, shamans (barring ele) are still quite competitive in pvp and their pve weakness has nothing to do with those weaknesses.

[Deleted]

Some classes have bigger toolbox but individual tools are not that strong to compensate for the amount and vice versa. Polymorph, Shadowfury, Massroot, permanent slow, ranged low cd interrupt, Grounding Totem, mass fear break. You have so much, can't have all of them be the same powerful as other classes who has less options to use. My main is Enha shaman btw. I know what you are talking about, but as a whole picture, I don't feel weak. Always look at the whole spec.

[Deleted]

Some classes have bigger toolbox but individual tools are not that strong to compensate for the amount and vice versa. Polymorph, Shadowfury, Massroot, permanent slow, ranged low cd interrupt, Grounding Totem, mass fear break. You have so much, can't have all of them be the same powerful as other classes who has less options to use. My main is Enha shaman btw. I know what you are talking about, but as a whole picture, I don't feel weak. Always look at the whole spec.

That could be the most likely explanation why blizzard thinks it's fine to make our stuff garbage. Or that they just hate our guts, dunno.

If you need to cc, you need reliability. If your target walks away into a cleave or out of your CPT, your cc fails. Another class would've pulled it off and probably secured a win in arena. Having two shitty spells doesn't make up for anything, it is a waste of space on the bars only.

If you need survivability, it doesn't help that you'll have to use SBT (destroyed), pop SR (weak unglyphed), maintain uptime for msw heals which also sacrifices damage, use HST (weak and unreliable), pop AG (weak now as well), pop wolves and potentially pop SET
....
and you still feel not very tanky. Prime example of to many cooks spoiling the broth.
Survivability needs to be reliable, like everything else. If you need 10 gcds to get your survivability to max where others push one to three buttons (deterrence=>fain death=>camoflage heal to full)

If you need burst, as with the ones before, you need a fast one. If you need to set it up with 4-5 cooldowns, people will have made preparations by the time you're ready to go. Not that our cds are that strong anymore. Our dmg cds are also unreliable. FET totem can be sniped, EM can be dispelled/spellstolen, LM is destroyed by destroying the totem, SET locks out with FET and can also be sniped, Feral Spirits can be feared and dont do much damage either. Ascendence would be decent if it still dealt worthwhile damage, but even when it still dealt good damage, a qualm I had with it was it pulling double duty with utility(able to attack on rnage when you didn't need it).

Grounding used to be not destroyed by non damaging spells. This was changed as early as vanilla=>tbc. I dont think it has to do with the size of shaman toolkit, as vanilla was a much different thing.
Also, shamans were never OP again after classic wf ownage. We had times in which we made it to the top in pvp, but we never were op. Atm enh arena can hold it's ground because of a single ability; Purge. In wotlk it was Feral Spirits/BL, in MoP it was Asc/Eb. We never were op, but we always got nerfed what made us barely viable in arena. And utility has seen an overall decline over the years as well, both through removal and nerf of abilities.

If a big toolkit is their excuse for delivering bad quality, then they should get rid of some stuff and severely buff the rest.
I'd rather have an instant CPT and not tremor than the two shitty sticks right now. I'd rather have the MoP tremor and no CPT than the shitty sticks now.
Quality beats quantity and everone beats shaman.

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The concept of them makes sense. Earthbind, if it couldn't be killed, is very "sticky". It lasts awhile. Stone bulwark is also supposed to be a long term shield.

Hunter snare trap cant be killed either, no?
And SBT blocks other earth totem during it's duration, not mentioning that the absorb is to weak to keep it around long. Hence none taking it.
If the concept made any sense at all, Earthbind would have a huge range and stronger snare, so it really is that much of an obstacle that people NEED THAT S**T DEAD!
Same for CPT. It should deal huuuge amount of aoe dmg along the stun, so that if! you get to pull it off, the result would be devastating (a stunned and heavily wounded target). The ability is so easily countered, a person needs to be severely punished for not doing it.
Or SBT: The ability blocks other earth totems, is immobile and brings its absorb over time. The absorb would have to be so strong that the shaman would be almost unkillable during it's uptime, forcing people to go for SBT.

All of these measure would BALANCE a lot of weaknesses with a great strenght. They would prompt people to go for totems because they're a threat and it would justify those drawbacks, because totems would be OP otherwhise. It would also create the importance to manage totems well through placing, timing and probably some new abilities to support totem play (a totem protect cd for example).

[Alltat]

Much of it is subjective. In some ways, Wind Shear is the best interrupt around (ranged with a short cooldown). In other ways it isn't (mediocre range, short lockout). You can't really say whether Wind Shear or Pummel or Counterspell is the better interrupt, because they're good in different situations. The same goes when comparing Hex and Polymorph - Hex has a cooldown and allows movement, but it doesn't break immediately on damage and being a curse effect means a different set of classes that can remove it (notably, most healer specs can't). Just as shamans complain about Polymorph being much better, mages complain about it just being an inferior version of Hex.

No other class has almost all of their mechanics being a shitty version of another one's mechanics.

Most do, if you're willing to push your definitions enough. Are Grounding Totem and Spell Reflect close enough to be considered the same thing? Are Frost Shock and Concussive Shot the same thing? It's debatable, and it's debatable which is better. For every type of ability (AoE stun, interrupt, etc.) one class is always going to have the best one and everyone else will be stuck with an inferior "copy". Considering how many classes there are, no one is going to have more than one or two abilities that are actually the best at what they do.

[Deleted]

Some classes have bigger toolbox but individual tools are not that strong to compensate for the amount and vice versa. Polymorph, Shadowfury, Massroot, permanent slow, ranged low cd interrupt, Grounding Totem, mass fear break. You have so much, can't have all of them be the same powerful as other classes who has less options to use. My main is Enha shaman btw. I know what you are talking about, but as a whole picture, I don't feel weak. Always look at the whole spec.

That's great, doesn't change that you are fairly weak, ele is bottom and resto shaman is effectively a glass cannon any halfway competent melee team is going to train into the ground in short order. Also it feels like you haven't played other classes a whole lot, otherwise you would realize that shamans tool box isn't even all that big compared to them and the uselessness of many abilities alongside their inferiority negates it in it's entirety. You name Windshear and claim it has a short CD, with nowadays 12 sec that really isn't the case anymore at all and it's lockout is also considerably shorter than many other interrupts.

Compared to kick that has a 15 sec CD it's lockout is close to only half of that. Going through the abilities puts the entire specc into perspective and explains why we're overall and especially PvP wise in such a bad spot for most shaman speccs.

Hex has a cooldown and allows movement, but it doesn't break immediately on damage

Yes it does, at times it's even broken by a tiny pebble of the shamans mastery as soon as it's applied. Acting as if you could DPS on a frog is, ridiculous. Also unlike us mages get an option to "proof" their sheep, removing any dots existing on it when applied.

Just as shamans complain about Polymorph being much better, mages complain about it just being an inferior version of Hex.

Where? Please show me. I'd like to see that. Hex is all around worse, especially since it takes a different type of dispell thus doesn't conflict with other CC removal and can be removed by two classes in their entirety namely mage and druid who are extremly popular aswell as shamans. Leaving the DPS themselves to remove this without taking the healers ability away to dispell something else.

Anyone who argues that sheep is worse than hex is someone who finds it hard to break 1500 in Arena or breath to anything but their mouth.

Most do, if you're willing to push your definitions enough. Are Grounding Totem and Spell Reflect close enough to be considered the same thing? Are Frost Shock and Concussive Shot the same thing? It's debatable, and it's debatable which is better. For every type of ability (AoE stun, interrupt, etc.) one class is always going to have the best one and everyone else will be stuck with an inferior "copy". Considering how many classes there are, no one is going to have more than one or two abilities that are actually the best at what they do.

No, it's not debatable which is better. You brought up spell reflec yourself, an ability that was ALTERED TO IGNORE pet attacks and such. Grounding totem still very much is affected by them. Also if one wants grounding totem to reflect the spell rather than absord it which spell reflec does baseline it adds a hefty ammount of time atop the CD and spell reflec can be changed to be group wide if one would so desire.

The issue isn't abilities being similar, it's Shaman coming up way worse in comparison pretty much every single last time. Just take a look at capacitor totem to put the whole thing into context.

[Putin-Chan]

Much of it is subjective. In some ways, Wind Shear is the best interrupt around (ranged with a short cooldown). In other ways it isn't (mediocre range, short lockout). You can't really say whether Wind Shear or Pummel or Counterspell is the better interrupt, because they're good in different situations. The same goes when comparing Hex and Polymorph - Hex has a cooldown and allows movement, but it doesn't break immediately on damage and being a curse effect means a different set of classes that can remove it (notably, most healer specs can't). Just as shamans complain about Polymorph being much better, mages complain about it just being an inferior version of Hex.


Most do, if you're willing to push your definitions enough. Are Grounding Totem and Spell Reflect close enough to be considered the same thing? Are Frost Shock and Concussive Shot the same thing? It's debatable, and it's debatable which is better. For every type of ability (AoE stun, interrupt, etc.) one class is always going to have the best one and everyone else will be stuck with an inferior "copy". Considering how many classes there are, no one is going to have more than one or two abilities that are actually the best at what they do.

Grounding totem is a killable totem and requires a glyph to reflect, Frost Shock has a cooldown shared with two other abilities, hex is non-arguably the worst cc spell in the game with it having a cast time, the ability to be broken, and barely incapacitating your foe, compared to common instant 6 second stuns with 30 second cds.

[Deleted]

I just repeat what you just said OP:
Shamans having (inferior) copies of the abilities of all the other classes ...


... while the other classes have, well, their own abilties, probably giving shaman the biggest toolkit of all that shiny utility out there.

[Niwes]

you are totally right op. but thats true for all classes today. because blizzard switched to an "overall the same mechanics" concept for easier balancing. thats called homogenization. and thats way that much people cry for lost calss diversity. thats why blizz try to change that in legion.

what i dont get, is why you assume that shaman is a copy of xyz ? xyz is also a copy of shaman. and abc is a copy of xyz, or xyz is a copy of abc. what has this to do with shamans in particular ? i really don get it. maybe you have played too less classes in wow look at the others and you will see they are a copy of each others as well.

[Golden]

Okay hear me out before you guys go "but Shaman is awesome", many of our abilities are basically differently named abilities other classes have also. Except often times worse, less reliable, more wonky and with more hindrances.

If you have one class with 10 abilities that has the potential of X, and then you have another class with 40 abilities that has the same potential of X; the class with more abilities has weaker individual abilities. That's why I look forward to the "prune." I just hope they leave the core rotation intact. There are plenty of extra cooldowns to prune/consolidate first.

[Socialhealer]

long story short, totems are outdated and need to be removed.

they do what other classes do but worse, totems only come with a downside, there's no plus.

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I just repeat what you just said OP:
Shamans having (inferior) copies of the abilities of all the other classes ...


... while the other classes have, well, their own abilties, probably giving shaman the biggest toolkit of all that shiny utility out there.

shamans have zero utility they're a joke in pve, you can bench shamans at anytime because they're not needed for anything in HFC.

[mrinvisable2]

simple answer many of abilities shamans got was good when they got them but next exp after they get them they give them to everyone and better versions but shaman base abilities stay inferior, that how its been for 10 years and that is how it will continue

[Feril]

I think most (if not all) totems should just have some kind of "dispel protection".

- Capacitor Totem stuns whoever destroys it (maybe a harder stun than the area stun).
- Earthbind Totem roots whoever destroys it.
- Healing Tide Totem and Healing Stream Totem heal instantly the caster shaman if they're destroyed.
- Spirit Link Totem siphons life from whoever destroys it to the shaman.
- Tremor Totem fears whoever destroys it.
- ...

I don't know, things like that. You destroy totems to negate their AREA benefit, but you must take the bullet for your team.

Of course, if the totem doesn't have any cooldown, it doesn't really need this.

[Cheze]

Or, are other class' abilities copies of shamans'?

mindblown.gif

(it's almost as though most classes have pretty similar abilities)

I agree that totems are kinda needlessly clunky though

[Alltat]

shamans have zero utility they're a joke in pve, you can bench shamans at anytime because they're not needed for anything in HFC.

We've got lots of PvE utility. Spells like Capacitor Totem, Wind Shear, Earthbind Totem, talented Frost Shock, and Hex may not be the best at what they do, but they're still very useful on certain fights. Add Thunderstorm to the list for elemental. We have a rather versatile toolkit when it comes to controlling adds.

Resto is also the only healing spec in the game with a ranged interrupt and can use it without losing any HPS, which comes in handy very often. In the current tier it notably makes Iskar considerably easier (people can throw the eye to you at the start of every add phase), but it's also really useful on Hellfire Assault (moving warlocks), Socrethar (moving casters) and Xhul'horac (imps). So if you want an area where shamans are indisputably the best, resto's Wind Shear is so much better than what any other healing spec has that it's almost humiliating.