Originally Posted by
ns263759
Let me start out by saying that I haven't posted on a forum in almost eight years. I am not one of these guys the think Blizzard can do no right. I have been playing their game for twelve years, obviously I think they are doing something right. that being said I feel compelled to post something about the current state of my main class, shaman,and specifically the dismal place that elemental has been in for the last 6-7 years.
To start, I do keep logs but I do not theory craft or sim craft or any other type of craft, I just want to do the best I can, and most importantly pull my own weight dos wise, and maybe a little more utility wise while raiding. That being said I have been benched form my guilds mythic team yet again. Not due to my handling of mechanics or understanding of the game itself, but solely due to my inability to pull my own weight on the dps meters. On pull I am able to burst fine and usually find myself in the top five easy, once those cd’s go away though I begin the decline and before there up again I find myself competing with the tanks on the meters (and sometimes losing). We are not even two months into the expansion and we already find ourselves in a super niche role of mythic +6 earthquake spam, and to add insult to injury, this time its not even the damage people want but an rng stun we have no control over.
Which leads me to our survivability. I always thought it was weird that although we are the only dps caster class that wears mail and has a shield that we are by far the weakest class/spec. No mobility, fine, can usually be solved with a firm understanding of mechanics and a little planning. but why are we carrying a shield around if obviously does no good for us. Never made sense to me why warriors should have a spell reflect and not shaman, class fantasy wide would it make more sense for a mystical shaman to be able to reflect spells back. That led me to think about the aegis of aggrammar ability in HoV. If ele is always going to be at the bottom of the meters why not give us some raid wide defensive cds, why not give us an astral aegis that reduces damage taken of everyone standing behind by 40% for six seconds, I wouldn't even mind not being able to cast while channeling, its not like the raid will miss our dps. I am not saying turn into a tank, but Ive been told by blizz that we are the masters of utility, a true hybrid class. In my experience not only are we not Jack of all trades masters of none, we’re basically just jack shit, not able to do anything that well, and certainly not better than any other class/spec combo.
The other thing in this expansion that has been bothering me is our artifacts. I don't want this to turn into a debate about why it makes all the sense in the world that ele should have got the doomhammer, obviously Blizz didn't want to remake the fist weapon animation which is why all the classes that got fist don't really use them i.e. wind walker monks, feral druids, and ele shaman, so enhance got the doomhammer and ele got the fist. I get it blizz, your a business, financial decision, I’m fine with it. What really chaps my ass about the artifacts is the all three of our hidden skins are random drops form mobs. Really? Now I get to sit back watch all these other classes do a bunch weird stuff, throw back content, new scenarios, hidden bosses, and we get al three of ours from doing shit we’re going to be doing anyway. All three put in as an after thought, which pretty much sums up the elemental shaman, an after thought.
To sum up, the absents of any blue posts about all the thousands of posts concerning ele shaman make me think one of two things. First, that blizz does have plans for an ele revamp and they are either still working on it, or want it to be something of a surprise (I find this very unlikely as the last big change we have received was the addition on lava burst back in wrath). Secondly (which I find myself believing despite my best and most optimistic efforts), is that Blizz knows that the shaman community is a very loyal one and that even if our spec sucks and they never pay any attention to us we still wont uninstall or reroll. Thats all I have to say, basically just things I’ve thinking about while sitting in Dal listening to the rest of my guild down mythic bosses without me.
I will add though that if your one of these guys saying that ele is fine and your doing great on the meters and what not, you need to find your self some better players to surround yourself with.