Cataclysm Class Preview: Shaman

[Redjuice]

I think the changes for enhancement sound interesting, looking forward to hearing more, especially how the passive talents may affect the whole Haste vs AP debate given you can choose a passive ability to give AP or Haste - If you gem / gear for haste, grats! Take the melee dmg PT. If you gem for AP, maybe the Haste PT will be better. We'll have to see if it negates the debate, or adds to it.

I am slightly confused by the following statement:

"We want to free up Enhancement global cooldowns to make the spec more dynamic to play. We're considering, for example, increasing the cooldown of Lava Lash so shaman have time to work other interesting abilities into their rotation."

-_-

...enhancement only use Lava Lash as a filler now... what's the point of increasing the cooldown on one of the lowest priority spells that is merely used as a filler once in a while when a gcd opens up with all other abilities on cd?

What actually confused me about that statement was that adding in more abilities will be tricky, as with our current "I have a button to push every GCD", these new abilities / spells will merely replace another that does less damage. I personally think if they are going to give enhancement more abilities, then they should correspondingly allow for these to be used by a) ensuring appropriate cooldowns to allow for these new abilities to be slotted into our priorities and b) adjusting the damage output of certain "Gief Lotz Dmg Nao!" abilities so that abilities that do end up being seen as "necessary fillers" (i.e. lower on the prio list) which we use when our hard-hitting abilities are on cooldown don't end up decreasing our DPS unavoidably. At the very least, using more abilities will make the class more fun and dynamic.

I really hope the changes to not only Enhancement Shammies, but to all DPS classes in general, will be to make it easier to do worse if you just mash buttons, but likewise easier to rip the DPS meters if you know how your class works.

Otherwise, I'm suitably intrigued

Rj

[Arunu]

Looks awesome,

cant wait for some of the other previews

[duffybarracuda]

I think the changes for enhancement sound interesting, looking forward to hearing more, especially how the passive talents may affect the whole Haste vs AP debate given you can choose a passive ability to give AP or Haste - If you gem / gear for haste, grats! Take the melee dmg PT. If you gem for AP, maybe the Haste PT will be better. We'll have to see if it negates the debate, or adds to it.

I am slightly confused by the following statement:

"We want to free up Enhancement global cooldowns to make the spec more dynamic to play. We're considering, for example, increasing the cooldown of Lava Lash so shaman have time to work other interesting abilities into their rotation."

-_-

...enhancement only use Lava Lash as a filler now... what's the point of increasing the cooldown on one of the lowest priority spells that is merely used as a filler once in a while when a gcd opens up with all other abilities on cd?

What actually confused me about that statement was that adding in more abilities will be tricky, as with our current "I have a button to push every GCD", these new abilities / spells will merely replace another that does less damage. I personally think if they are going to give enhancement more abilities, then they should correspondingly allow for these to be used by a) ensuring appropriate cooldowns to allow for these new abilities to be slotted into our priorities and b) adjusting the damage output of certain "Gief Lotz Dmg Nao!" abilities so that abilities that do end up being seen as "necessary fillers" (i.e. lower on the prio list) which we use when our hard-hitting abilities are on cooldown don't end up decreasing our DPS unavoidably. At the very least, using more abilities will make the class more fun and dynamic.

I really hope the changes to not only Enhancement Shammies, but to all DPS classes in general, will be to make it easier to do worse if you just mash buttons, but likewise easier to rip the DPS meters if you know how your class works.

Otherwise, I'm suitably intrigued

Rj

I don´t understand this Lava Lash thing too ^^
Whats missing is a real oh shit button and more movementspeed and i realy hope that we´ll get a better AE too....lots of things missing, im not very optimistic.

[WaitingforSWTOR]

Enhancement top mastery should be "your spirit wolves are now permanent"

[Teyrnon]

this is all really rather sexy.

looking forward to levelling as ele then switching to resto for raiding. im just trying to imagine trash as ele;

earthquake - magma totem - fire nova and thunderstorm.

the aoe is gonna be fucking huge!

the spiritwalker ability look AMAZING, it will come in damn handy i reckon; im thinking of the times on Marrowgar or Rotface where im running and need to either heal myself or the raid. in those situation it will be dripping with awesomeness.

[Deleted]

casting while walking.. seems a bit OP to me...

[Kussensloop]

casting while walking.. seems a bit OP to me...

Not rly, It seems overpowerd to otherclasses.
Imagine a mage having this.

This is a great spell to balance us resto shamans in pvp.

Ty Blizzard.

and then the rain, Quite awesome, makes us a little stronger on aoe healing again.

[Fogsworth]

spellsteal that spiritwalkers grace..........................
pwned

[ArthurEdwards]

casting while walking.. seems a bit OP to me...

Agree with you mate..

another thing is the Healing Rain of Shaman, heal a specific radius and no healing limit regardless on how many toon are near.

[Andymion]

They started off the class previews with a bang. None of the other ones have measured up to the new stuff for shamans

[Dezeray]

"Healing rain! Some stay dry and others feels the pain, healing rain!"

Brilliant. I LOL'd

[serif]

This is still a complete unmitigated disaster. The only way this could have been even good for shamans was to start with the following:

TOTEMS? GONE!

But alas still doesn't realize the totem mechanic is completely ineffective. Maybe they could have at least made buff totems 100 yards.

totems = shaman; shaman = totems

shaman without totems = practically a druid

you're a weirdo and completely ridiculous

[Miranger]

So no word on keeping wolfs out for longer than a few seconds and no word on making them a permanent part of our dps while getting nerfed? im more interested in having that heal coming in all the time while my wolfs are out than the dps they actually do... Why can DK's have a leech effect and we cant....

Someone mentioned this a few pages before

"why not make wolfs permanent in the deep enh tree"
I couldnt agree more WTF is this nature buff yet we melee... will our weapons do nature dmg now? i doubt that...
Still broken nice job blizz.....

[Willis]

They are either equally or less effective as buffs other classes give except other classes have two glaring advantages, either the buff is centered on the buffing player and has a 100(ie: Icy talons) or is an actual buff given to the player(ie: blessing of wisdom). The only thing that shamans have that makes them useful is bloodlust/heroism.

Ok, mind you in the classic game and burning crusade expansion you would have been laughed at for saying that. It's only in wrath expansion that other classes have been seen carrying the buff load because blizzard wants it that way. That being said your still a fool because I'll take shamans in my group any day of the week. I love going into dungeons and raids and being a diversified buff tool for whatever the is uncommon or unavailable. (though I admit, I miss being a bigger influence)

So no word on keeping wolfs out for longer than a few seconds and no word on making them a permanent part of our dps while getting nerfed? im more interested in having that heal coming in all the time while my wolfs are out than the dps they actually do... Why can DK's have a leech effect and we cant....

Someone mentioned this a few pages before

"why not make wolfs permanent in the deep enh tree"
I couldnt agree more WTF is this nature buff yet we melee... will our weapons do nature dmg now? i doubt that...
Still broken nice job blizz.....

Sure, but you gotta nerf them or make them loose an ability. Haha in a way I'm not joking I hate those dogs with a passion in PvP.

[Arthas]

wow... new lvl 3 spell

[whetherman]

Run and gun casting for shamans? 'Splode' reroll please! So basically i can cast chain lightning WHILE im *wailing on someone and heal myself WHILE *wailing on someone, or hex somebody about to pyroblast me WHILE *wailing on someone.

*interchangeable with "running from"

[Kussensloop]

Run and gun casting for shamans? 'Splode' reroll please! So basically i can cast chain lightning WHILE im *wailing on someone and heal myself WHILE *wailing on someone, or hex somebody about to pyroblast me WHILE *wailing on someone.

*interchangeable with "running from"

This is probably less usefull for a elle shaman, then for a resto.
You'll get interupted anyways.

I dont think this is overpowered at all, Druids can heal themselfs all the time while r unning.
We can only do it for 10 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.

[whetherman]

This is probably less usefull for a elle shaman, then for a resto.
You'll get interupted anyways.

I dont think this is overpowered at all, Druids can heal themselfs all the time while r unning.
We can only do it for 10 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.

oh i never for a second doubted that it wasn't OP, in fact, i think they should bracket in not being able to be spell interrupted for the duration, it is just 10 seconds after all.

[Krushi]

This is not what we always wannted. I mean, oh I can walk while casting every 2 minutes. In PvE maybe helpful if we need to run out of an AoE and someone drops low in this time. But it doesn't change the gameplay, because no raid boss does its AE only every 2min. Afterall we still need to stand still while casting. And "Healing Rain" is a spell that depends on other palyers movement - again (chainheal has the same problem).
Unleash Weapon - same problem as there is for riptide. I don't use a GCD to buff the "real" spell. It's not effektiv and drops your hps. If its not on GCD it will be clearly nice.
Spirit-Link will be nice if there is a holy pala who easily heals two targets. But for a shamy it's harder to heal two targets than only one. (but if it breaks CC, as it does on wotlk beta, i will love it )

In my view:
Shamans are no class with big movement. We are more like "the man in the middle". Our totems and shocks have a short range, and we have to stay near the enemy. And that's ok - if we have the right tools for this.
in my opinion we need more felxible totems (range drop, with a green circle, if you know what i mean), or maybe a shild of little totems surrounding us and negates dmg. Or a ele/resto talent/mastery bonus that buffs our haste if we stand still for a few seconds. Or a channeling spell that increases the hps done by healing stream totem by a few hundred percent for 5 seconds, like a raid wide "Tranquility" with CD.

There were so many suggestions made, and most of them are better and more shaman-like than this preview.

at long last - sorry for my english ;>

[Deleted]

As elemental with resto offspec i am SUPER STOKED for these proposed changed.
Spirit link, spirit walk, unleash flametongue, improved lightning overload. (mastery + changed overload talent for maximum pew) and earthquake.

Im reserving judgment on earthquake. It may yet prove to be copy of rain of fire or something, only with nature damage and different animation. That would be a disaster. Sure, ROF is a good aoe spell but it would be TERRIBLY boring if we just got a mirror of that spell.

Earthquake needs to be spectacular. Maybe do a slow, knockdown or siege damage as a cool secondary effect. Can you imagine the borefest if it was just a targeted chanelled aoe?