Shaman Tank?

[Florida Man]

No, there are already too many tank classes, and demon hunter's just making it worse in legion. I've always thought warlock was more likely anyway - shaman already can play another role with resto.

Saying there are too many tank classes is like saying there are too many DPS classes. How in the world can there be too much? Because of balance? With separate PVP talents, balancing SHOULD be a helluva lot easier than ever. More options are GOOD. I don't play shaman, I just don't think there can be a such thing as too many tank, healer, or DPS options.

[Raugnaut]

And they quickly shat on them immediately because they were never intended to tank. It was the shamans imbues and talents that were utterly braindead, which fueled people's believe that shamans should be able to tank, because they had a few dmg reduction talents and could wield a shield.
Just like people wanted rogue tanks to happen, because they had a very high dodge at some point and could cap it for a certain amount of bosses, and dont get me started on demo warlocks.

Umm? Shamans were about as good a tank as Paladins back in Vanilla. In Vanilla, you had 1 tank, and 1 tank only for raids, Warriors. Anything else took anywhere from 1.3-2x as much as damage as Warriors, except for Warlocks on magic fights. Druids were the second runner up, but they were a FAR cry from warriors. Shaman tanking fell out of favor during the later portion of BC. Also note that for early BC, you DID have rogues/ferals off-tanking some mobs - You could essentially become unhittable with the right gear setup, so if you had a mob the raid didn't need to kill, you could let the rogues/ferals tank it and pretty much not even have to spare a healer.

So, really, the only reason Shamans aren't a tank now is because of a design choice that happened fairly close to WotLK.

Of course, here is a post i need to copy/paste on my idea for shaman tanking, since this is a Shaman Tank thread -
Shaman- Warden. (Possible other names, Contractor, Spirit Binder)
This is both a tanking spec AND a pet-spec. These Shamans get a powerful passive that both A) makes their Elemental's permanent, controllable pets that no longer require a Totem to summon, and have no CD, and B) Causes their health and healing recieved to split with the summoned Elemental, akin to pre-5.4 Soul Link. The Earth Elemental would have higher health and cause a small amount of damage to be absorbed, the Fire elemental would increase the damage and self-healing of the shaman, and the Storm elemental would give increased utility and cause the shaman to generate an amount of healing from damage, as well as increasing haste and multistrike. Essentially, each Elemental would be a stance, as you could only have one elemental out at a time. Earth Elemental, increased EH, Fire Elemental, increased damage and healing, and Storm Elemental would be a combination and generally the default elemental should you choose it, given that you would have to give up the other 2 talents, which would be just as good.

The resource/active mitigation model for the Warden shaman would be cooldown instead of resource driven. Primal Strike would morph into a different form depending on which active pet you had out. Earth Elemental would cause it to deal physical damage and make the shaman take reduced damage, say 20% for 4 seconds, Fire Elemental would cause it to deal more damage and increase both self-healing and damage by 30% for 10 seconds, and Storm Elemental would cause it to do Nature damage and heal for 100% of damage dealt, as well as increasing haste by 50% for 4 seconds.

Lightning Bolt becomes Lightning Strike, which is a filler ability that has a chance to randomly restore the cooldown of one ability. Lighting Strike, unlike all other abilities in the game, can go all the way down to a .5 second GCD.

Earth Shock causes the shocked target to deal less damage to the shaman (20%) for 12 seconds, Flame Shock is a powerful single-target DoT that generates a stream of healing for the shaman, but only lasts for 15 seconds, and Frost Shock becomes a high-threat AoE ability.

Rockbiter Weapon makes its return as the tanking weapon available to this spec at level 10- it increases threat generated by 900%, causes the shaman to take X less damage, and prevents critical strikes. In addition, it has a random proc that increases armor contributation from items by 100% for 5 seconds, with about a 40% uptime.
Unleash Element will increase the block chance of the shaman by 30% for 8 seconds.
For the longer, “tanking” cooldowns, Shamanistic Rage will be available for the shaman tank, and the shaman will have Warden's Oath, which gives an effect depending on the active Elemental. Earth Elemental will increase health by 30%, Fire Elemental will increase all healing by 100% and damage by 20%, and Storm Elemental will increase haste by 30% and cause all healing to also heal all nearby party members for 10% of the healing.

. Ascendence will be that of an Earth Elemental Ascendant, and will increase all secondary stats by an additive 30% for 15 seconds. +30% haste, CDR, multistrike, mastery, crit chance, and block chance.



As for stats, multistrike will cause the duration of any debuff or buff to be increased 50% per multistrike. If, say, Earth Shock multistriked, the duration would be increase 50%, and an extra 50% if it multistriked again. Lighting Strike multistrikes would have a chance to make more abilities instantly come off CD, with each multistrike having its own individual chance to make an ability come off CD. (For instance, if a Lightning Strike multistriked 2 times, for a total of 3 hits, you could have a chance for 3 abilities to come off CD, or even for none to come off CD).
Mastery will increase the effect of the various buffs by X%. Flame Shock does more damage and heals for more, Earth Shock causes the target to deal even less damage to the Shaman, Rockbiter grants more armor contributation, Primal Strike would have its various buffs increased, ect.

Critical Strikes will reduce the CD of all abilities by .5 seconds per critical strike, or perhaps just have the Riposte effect of the plate tanks, increasing dodge/parry rating.
Healing Rain would not be available to Warden Shamans.

Healing Surge has its healing buffed 100% when used on self, making it an ability to use for emergency healing.

Thus, this creates an extremely fast-paced whack-a-mole tank, with you prioritizing abilities based on what you need at the time. You will, at times, have numerous abilities ready to be used, and would thus need to decide on which abilities to use a priority order. Preferably, you would want to swap between elementals throughout a fight in order to get the various buffs, mostly between Fire and Earth/Storm elementals. (Attempt to get a 20 second Fire strike, and then go to Earth or Storm for the other strikes for 20 seconds.)
Now, as to the various buffs (Primal Strikes, Unleashed Elements, Rockbiter), it may be a tad bit OP if it was to operate like the current tanking active mitigation, where the remaining timer is added to the new timer. (Shuffle, Savage Defense, SotR, ect), as you could easily get a buff to last an entire fight with enough MS. (For instance, if you get a 100% extended Earth/Flame Shock, you could simply not use the shock, and thus Lightning Strike would refresh either Primal Strike or Unleash Elements. With 200% MS, Flame Shock/Earth Shock would have the maximum duration on the first use of each, and Lightning Strike would have a very good chance at resetting the CD of Primal Strike/Unleash Elements, which would also always have a doubled duration. Within 10 seconds, you could easily have 2 minutes uptime of either of the buffs). Thus, if this was implemented, I would put a cap on the amount of time the buffs could be to 30 seconds max.

[Deleted]

Re-reading my tank shaman creation,made me feel I made the spec really confusing but hell,its a start!
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ycraft-Fanmade

[Raugnaut]

I don't know how much these shaman tank threads have been emerged like every once in a while. Maybe you guys could make a petition to blizz dev team (I don't know if there's one already or no) rather than posting same old ideas.

Personally, I'd rather have they fix the existing specs first, than developing a new spec for us. Why does everyone keep asking for this splitting element representation of shaman specs? Is it because of the ascendance?

Its mainly because of Shaman Tanking all the way back in Vanilla? Also, google Shaman Tank Anub'Arak.

Also, blizzard has obviously decided to toss balancing out the window. With the new Elemental, Enhance, Demo, Survival, Boomkin, DK specs, MW, Disc, Shadow, Blizzard is essentially introducing 11 NEW fucking specs. No, rather then keeping previous, working designs, and making entirely new designs to co-exist with the old designs, blizzard decides to go "Eh, fuck it, lets change this damn game" and replace 30% of the current specs with an entirely new spec! Well, its closer to 9 as Blood/Frost DK isn't recieving any changes, and Unholy isn't recieving major changes, but still, wtf blizzard, what you smoking?

[Northy]

Saying there are too many tank classes is like saying there are too many DPS classes. How in the world can there be too much? Because of balance? With separate PVP talents, balancing SHOULD be a helluva lot easier than ever. More options are GOOD. I don't play shaman, I just don't think there can be a such thing as too many tank, healer, or DPS options.

How many tanks does a raid need? How many dps does it need? Of course there can be too many tanks. What a silly thing to say.

[Deleted]

I remember seeing some Vanilla vids of some shaman with the Invulnerable Mail (if memory serves) chestpiece and some odd defense/parry pieces tanking a number of raidbosses, it's actually pretty neat. That said, aggro generation and survivability was sketchy, and although there were damage reduction talents, I don't think shamans ever were designed to be full-blown tanks. Once they were alright as offtanks, but it kind of ended there.

As fun as it could be to wield the power of earth and stone to perform the tanking role, Blizzard doesn't seem to be wanting that anymore than they want Enh shammies to bash stuff with 2-handers. In a sense Resto shammies have a tank-deciding role, throwing out Earth Shield - which provides a disturbingly small bonus in throughput/defense.

If anything it would be awesome if Legion brought some added synergy with ES, or a skill that allows us to empower the ES on the current target for a set amount of time, say 3-8 sec. It could block a set of meele attacks over the duration, or provide either a flat or percentage-based damage reduction, increase the chance of the target to be critically healed over the duration... The possibilities are infinite. Rshammies already bring a bunch of strong healing cooldowns, though. It's just a tad lame that one of our (at least originally) iconic healing spells, the Earth Shield, fills such a small and passive role as it currently does.

Sorry for digressing, carry on.

[kosajk]

ES is incresing healing on its target by 20% that is its main reason to use, healing charges are something extra to it i supose

[Alltat]

They've already said they won't add any new specs in Legion, and there's no way they're going to add tanking to an existing DPS spec. It might happen in the next expansion after Legion, but no sooner.

ES is incresing healing on its target by 20% that is its main reason to use, healing charges are something extra to it i supose

Only because they've undertuned the potato healing lately. It used to be the other way around, and Earth Shield was quite strong.

[Deleted]

How many tanks does a raid need? How many dps does it need? Of course there can be too many tanks. What a silly thing to say.

I think you misunderstood him, he was talking about options for tank specs, not the physical number of tanks a raid needs. Having more classes with a tank spec opens up more options for both players, guilds and raid designers, if it didn't then they wouldn't have given a tank spec to Demon Hunters.

The problem isn't really the number of classes that have a tank spec (they all have options to dps or heal if needed), it's the limiting factor of only having two tanking positions for raid encounters. Adding more tank specs to the game isn't going to fix this issue, but it would if it was combined with a shift in encounter design to alter how many tanks you need for each individual boss.

EDIT: Oh, and they've already specifically said we wouldn't be getting Warlock or Shaman tanks this xpac.