Blizz gone tunnel visioned?

[soygalol]

You couldnt be anything you wanted to especially as a raider.Shaman tanks and pet tanks could only be used(w/o probs untill lvl 50 content or so) some paladins could tank even lvl 60 dungeons but thats all.
What I miss is tbc which in my opinion was the best period of wow

[TaciturnBob]

What i find wierd about the Rockbiter taunt is.. Its meant for saving a healer in a stressed situation (Or something likely)..
But you will have to apply rockbiter to your wep before you use Unleash Weapon, there after to reput whatever wep ench you had on before..

never thought of that one, I see what you mean. Maybe this will encourage us to chanage our enchants. Perhaps for pvp when we need the heal, we might use earthliving weapon for unleash weapon.

I don't see the point in the threat gen from rockbiter. Aside from the incredibly rare situation where we need to range tank something like a remake of the Twins from AQ or that guy in Gruul's or the three whatevers in ICC it'd be 100% useless. You'd need to blow 2-3 GCDs to use it to save a healer (he/she'd be dead in that time frame) in an instance where honestly you'd be better off just letting the healer use a threat dump like fade or simply snaring the mob so the tank can pick it back up with a taunt before it gets to the healer.

What shaman need is less gimicks and fewer nested abilities that require us to use other abilities first to make them effective. This whole tanking nonsense needs to go as well. Honestly, I'm not opposed to tanking as a shaman. I'd rather enjoy the shorter queues for randoms because there are no tanks anymore, but the redesign involved in something like that would be difficult and I think ultimately harmful to the class especially the enhancement guys that want to dps.

[Thunderbuns]

well you never know. They always tell us that these are just the beginning things, and alot is likely to change. So perhaps that will be getting changed. But they should say when they told us that we were getting a taunt, that this will not be for tanking.

[iLive]

Blizzard has already stated that they won't make Shamans (nor Warlocks) able to tank. Some spells may generate more threat (or take aggro), but that's just situationally.

[Omanley]

as it currently is, all that stands between shaman being a full fletched tank is the matching healthpool and an appropriate amount of dodge, parry and (possibly) block (as we normally dw it would be unlikely)

choose either one blizzard, we beg of you:
1.) remove all taunting/extra aggro crap, and give us what we lack
2.) add a talent that gives us extra parry, dodge and stamina, scaling from agility, to make enh a tank/melee dps hybrid tree, like feral

anything other than those options is insulting to the shaman comunity. you have the opportunity to make it right now, use it.

[evan_s]

as it currently is, all that stands between shaman being a full fletched tank is the matching healthpool and an appropriate amount of dodge, parry and (possibly) block (as we normally dw it would be unlikely)

This statement is so strange that it's almost comical. All that stands between us being a tank is actually being able to tank?

If you think all we need is more HPs and some avoidance to tank as a shaman then I have to assume you haven't actually played a tank class. We'd also need some innate way to increase threat generate like is included in something for every tank class (prot stance, righteous fury, Frost presence, Bear form). We have no viable way to grab or hold aggro on AE mobs. Chain lighting and Fire Nova have CDs to deal with and fire totem placement issues. We'd need some way to become uncrittable since there currently isn't any mail gear itemized with Defense.

So, yes. Enhancement shaman could become tanks if they basically copied most of the feral druids design for bear tanking. If anything, the recent announcement on the talent tree changes has made it clear Blizzard has a clear focus and intention for the different specs and Enhancement isn't now, and probably won't ever be, a tanking spec. Just because we currently have a few defensive talents, doesn't mean we are or should be a tanking class.

[Omanley]

we have frostshock, which adds extra threat
we get unleash weapon: rockbiter single target taunt
we have three aoe taunts ( stoneclaw totem, feral spirit´s twin howl and earth elemental )
and the extra threat we have passive on rockbiter

plus we´re able to put down stoneskin totem for extra armor, wear mail, are able to talent into extra hp, parry and dodge, and can even selfheal like a dk tank

to me, that is plenty, and not comical. it´s like you´re building a tank(yes, the military vehicle) and all that´s missing is the key and the fuel.

oh, and we already stack hit/exp till the caps. they are essentially tanking stats as well.
-stack hit/exp
-make a talent like: increases the amount of dodge gained from agility by xx% of your agility and increases your chance to parry by xx% of your haste rating
-maybe a talent that increases the threat of fire totems and all threat of your totems, totem elementals, feral spirits is always on you, as long as you have stonebiter weapon active

done.(if you were to decide making shaman a competitable tank)

[couic]

we have frostshock, which adds extra threat
we get unleash weapon: rockbiter single target taunt
we have three aoe taunts ( stoneclaw totem, feral spirit´s twin howl and earth elemental )
and the extra threat we have passive on rockbiter

Hum, first let me point something: what you mentionned as AOE threat spell, it was "Ho sh** save my ass" spell, since it doesn't give YOU the threat. When the totem/elemental/wolfies are dead or banished, poof goes the threat..... Really usefull in fights, isn't?

If you have a taunt with unleash weapon, it's in case where your healer may be in grave danger, like, why not with adds that reset aggro frequently. And don't give me the 3cd, if you are in a situation when it can happen if you have a hunter he may take the first taunt but he can only taunt so much (if you can you kitt it for the 6 sec of the spell, and FD if necessary, difficult to do it twice), so YOU may have to taunt to save the healer. And please, don't tell me that saving a healer in a raid is not more important than dps a little bit more (little bit since with one healer down you are sure to come down not long after).

If you really want to tank, then as said before go rerol a warior/pala/DK/drood (you may even like it with cata and discovery of the new azeroth). Shaman are already polivalent, since they can be caster, melee or healer. Don't try to squease a fourth one, all it would do is make one of the spec (let's say, enhancement) completly cranky, blizzard as already enough problems with ferals (and THEY have two diferents forms, nott shamans). And it would be even more difficult with the new creamed spec they are working on.

So please, learn to use the good class for role you wan to play, not try to force a role (that really, realllly few people want) onto a class.

[Vargarii]

as it currently is, all that stands between shaman being a full fletched tank is the matching healthpool and an appropriate amount of dodge, parry and (possibly) block (as we normally dw it would be unlikely)

choose either one blizzard, we beg of you:
1.) remove all taunting/extra aggro crap, and give us what we lack
2.) add a talent that gives us extra parry, dodge and stamina, scaling from agility, to make enh a tank/melee dps hybrid tree, like feral

anything other than those options is insulting to the shaman comunity. you have the opportunity to make it right now, use it.

You left out the immunity to crits.

[Omanley]

Hum, first let me point something: what you mentionned as AOE threat spell, it was "Ho sh** save my ass" spell, since it doesn't give YOU the threat. When the totem/elemental/wolfies are dead or banished, poof goes the threat..... Really usefull in fights, isn't?

If you have a taunt with unleash weapon, it's in case where your healer may be in grave danger, like, why not with adds that reset aggro frequently. And don't give me the 3cd, if you are in a situation when it can happen if you have a hunter he may take the first taunt but he can only taunt so much (if you can you kitt it for the 6 sec of the spell, and FD if necessary, difficult to do it twice), so YOU may have to taunt to save the healer. And please, don't tell me that saving a healer in a raid is not more important than dps a little bit more (little bit since with one healer down you are sure to come down not long after).

If you really want to tank, then as said before go rerol a warior/pala/DK/drood (you may even like it with cata and discovery of the new azeroth). Shaman are already polivalent, since they can be caster, melee or healer. Don't try to squease a fourth one, all it would do is make one of the spec (let's say, enhancement) completly cranky, blizzard as already enough problems with ferals (and THEY have two diferents forms, nott shamans). And it would be even more difficult with the new creamed spec they are working on.

So please, learn to use the good class for role you wan to play, not try to force a role (that really, realllly few people want) onto a class.

aoe threat: fire nova and magma totem. tweak their aggro while using rockbiter like i suggested above: fixed.

and i also suggested above that while using rockbiter, the threat of companions/totems should be directly pointed at you.

so you say ignore 3 cd´s on if only being what? 24 sec? (stoneclaw) why? why not ignore all cd´s altogether? you´re comming up with scenarios here...

and that "if you really want to tank blablabla..." you should ( like some others here ) sometimes take your time reading a post and not jump to concclusions. in more than one of my posts here i said: either remove tanking completely, or give us tanks.

tanking as an additional option would be nice, but i could life without it. i merely pointed out that we have a big arsenal of tanking oriented abilities so we should either go the rest of the way to full tank, or blizz should follow their own words and remove all threat generater/taunts if they are so opposed to us tanking.

and the "do not force another role on shaman" is not my doing, but blizzards. it´s amazing me how me critizising blizzard doing exactly what you impute me doing is a bad thing while you do the exactly same(confusing sentence? )

and you´re right vaargarii, totally forgot about 6% crit reduction ( not that it cant be added trought talents though )

[evan_s]

we have frostshock, which adds extra threat

A single move with a 6 second CD that does additional aggro doesn't cut it. Actual tanks have a Threat modifier built into their appropriate stance/presence/form/buff. This is on top of attacks that generate more base threat so they get High threat ability + 35% more aggro to hold aggro off dps that have normal aggro abilities and -threat abilities and they still need ToT/misdirect to scale well on threat. A shaman just frostshocking isn't going to cut it for aggro, especially when we need to take our aggro reduction talent to get parry.

we get unleash weapon: rockbiter single target taunt
we have three aoe taunts ( stoneclaw totem, feral spirit´s twin howl and earth elemental )

None of those are a viable ae taunt. As has been mentioned they all generate aggro for something else that is temporary and don't transfer it to you. So after anything even moderately threatening kills any of them off in a hit or 2 the situation is back to where it was. Even beyond that you still lack any reasonable way to hold ae aggro which all tanks currently do have.

and the extra threat we have passive on rockbiter

plus we´re able to put down stoneskin totem for extra armor, wear mail, are able to talent into extra hp, parry and dodge, and can even selfheal like a dk tank

Stone skin is a very minor amount of extra armor and buffs a real tank just the same as it buffs you. Mail armor doesn't have anywhere near enough AC to make it acceptable. Even talenting into Toughness it is less of a bonus than other tanking classes get and Mail armor has less stamina itemization on it because of the points spent on Int and Attack power in addition to sta/agi as base stats before things like hit/crit/haste. A Dk's self healing is rather minor and has nothing to do with why blood is currently the preferred raid tanking spec (Blood has be best Effective Health and best CD of DK tanking trees)

We are also missing any innate damage reduction like DKs get from frost presence, warriors get from defensive stance, etc.

to me, that is plenty, and not comical. it´s like you´re building a tank(yes, the military vehicle) and all that´s missing is the key and the fuel.

oh, and we already stack hit/exp till the caps. they are essentially tanking stats as well.
-stack hit/exp

Hit and expertise are good for pretty much every melee dps class up to the appropriate caps. This is nothing unique to shaman and current raid tanks don't really bother to stack hit/expertise anyway. They stack stamina and stamina because EH is the most critical tanking stat.

-make a talent like: increases the amount of dodge gained from agility by xx% of your agility and increases your chance to parry by xx% of your haste rating
-maybe a talent that increases the threat of fire totems and all threat of your totems, totem elementals, feral spirits is always on you, as long as you have stonebiter weapon active

done.(if you were to decide making shaman a competitable tank)

Increasing the threat of the totems doesn't help as it doesn't transfer that threat to us. Drop a fire totem next to something and the mob will first kill the totem, because it is what has generated aggro and not us.

Also the %chance to dodge and parry do nothing to help a shaman's EH. Dodging and parrying are great but since you can't rely on them you have to plan your heal assuming that the tank won't ever dodge or parry an attack. Even DK's, who do have a talent to boots their parry based on their str, don't stack avoidance anymore. Avoidance works great if it takes long enough for something to kill you. If it can kill you in 2 hits, you have to be healed up to full after every hit or you will die every time random has you not avoiding 2 hits in a row. In that situation avoidance just translates into more overhealing for the healers since you avoided the damage they were expecting to heal. Avoidance may be more viable in Cataclysm, if you actually have time to react to the damage the tank takes rather than just spamming heals on them.

Clearly, you don't understand even the basics of tanking in WOW at this point.

---------- Post added 2010-07-12 at 10:26 PM ----------

i merely pointed out that we have a big arsenal of tanking oriented abilities so we should either go the rest of the way to full tank, or blizz should follow their own words and remove all threat generater/taunts if they are so opposed to us tanking.

Having some survival talents or even taunts does not = tanking abilities. I'm pretty sure all classes have at least one survival talent at this point and most probably have several. As has also been mentioned there are other dps classes that have taunts or high aggro abilities too and they aren't any closer to being tanks than shaman are. The majority of those have uses in PvP or even PvE and removing them whole scale would cause problems for shaman in PvP. The only one that really seems pointless is the rockbitter effect but I'm happy to just ignore it.

[Omanley]

A single move with a 6 second CD that does additional aggro doesn't cut it. Actual tanks have a Threat modifier built into their appropriate stance/presence/form/buff.

for shaman, that would be rockbiter

A shaman just frostshocking isn't going to cut it for aggro, especially when we need to take our aggro reduction talent to get parry.

make parry baseline and pute the aggro reduction on static shock. so hard to do?

None of those are a viable ae taunt. As has been mentioned they all generate aggro for something else that is temporary and don't transfer it to you. So after anything even moderately threatening kills any of them off in a hit or 2 the situation is back to where it was. Even beyond that you still lack any reasonable way to hold ae aggro which all tanks currently do have.

aoe threat: fire nova and magma totem. tweak their aggro while using rockbiter like i suggested above: fixed.

and i also suggested above that while using rockbiter, the threat of companions/totems should be directly pointed at you.

sigh, reading is hard...

Stone skin is a very minor amount of extra armor and buffs a real tank just the same as it buffs you. Mail armor doesn't have anywhere near enough AC to make it acceptable.

I mentioned stone skin totem as one of many tanking abilities shaman has to prove my point us being designed to tank (although blizz doesn´t want us to :O) Also make a passive enhancement talent to increase the effect 10fold for the shaman using it => solved. also shaman have lots of agility, which increases armor as well.

Even talenting into Toughness it is less of a bonus than other tanking classes get and Mail armor has less stamina itemization on it because of the points spent on Int and Attack power in addition to sta/agi as base stats

start reading blue posts. int will vanish from our gear come cataclysm and together with pure attackpower will flow into agility and stamina, decreasing the hp-gap between enh, hunters and other melees.

We are also missing any innate damage reduction like DKs get from frost presence, warriors get from defensive stance, etc.

no we dont. elemental warding reduces all damage taken by a flat amount.

Hit and expertise are good for pretty much every melee dps class up to the appropriate caps. This is nothing unique to shaman and current raid tanks don't really bother to stack hit/expertise anyway. They stack stamina and stamina because EH is the most critical tanking stat.

and your point being? all i did was point out that we already have "tanky" stats on gear. one thing less to worry about. you cant stack stamina trough gear, because it´s on every piece anyway. that´s not the case for hit/exp. i didn´t say anything about gemming, did i? and i did never claim us stacking hit/exp to the caps would be something either.

Increasing the threat of the totems doesn't help as it doesn't transfer that threat to us. Drop a fire totem next to something and the mob will first kill the totem, because it is what has generated aggro and not us.

answered that above. threat and taunts directed to the shaman trough having rockbiter active.

Also the %chance to dodge and parry do nothing to help a shaman's EH. Dodging and parrying are great but since you can't rely on them you have to plan your heal assuming that the tank won't ever dodge or parry an attack.

that´s the same with every other tank though. doesn´t change anything about the fact that parry/dodge/block are essential for tanking. wether it´s one of those, more health, more armor/dmg absorb or crit reduction, everything could be easily added.

Clearly, you don't understand even the basics of tanking in WOW at this point.

that´s a little mean, dont you think? especially as you bypassed big chunks of my post.
the basic frame of a tank is already there. al that misses is some tweaking with threat amounts, scaling tank stat talents and things like rockbiter transfering your companion/pets threat/taunt at you.

i think i understand the basics of tanking well enough, even though im not one myself.

[evan_s]

I give up.

We need mechanics changes. Talents completely reworked to allow us to take them as tanking talents. New talents added to cover gaps and a huge list of things but we are basically tanks so Blizzard should just do all that and make us tanks.

[Deleted]

They re goin to get back the Smite Priest, but just for lvling purpose.

[evan_s]

sigh, reading is hard...

If you'd look at the timestamps. I was writing my reply when you posted it so it wasn't there for me to read when I wrote it.

[Omanley]

I give up.

We need mechanics changes. Talents completely reworked to allow us to take them as tanking talents. New talents added to cover gaps and a huge list of things but we are basically tanks so Blizzard should just do all that and make us tanks.

yup. blizzard intends to rework the talent trees anyway, lol. if they were to add three or four tanky ones...

anyway, yes make us tanks or completely remove all those taunts and stop those blue posts talking crap about saving healers and stuff. im all about removing that wishywashy half way stuff.

[Raylu]

Back in vanilla, it was a lot harder to be "whatever you wanted", back then, you couldnt redo your talents, very early on in the origonal(spelling?) game. If you misplaced too many talents: You rerolled. Nowadays people who play the game are too soft to do that. Raiding used to be hardcore. Two groups of 40 people, all online at once, to race through MC, for a 100 gold split to all 40 people for whoever won? !!! That was huge! 100 gold used to be a bunch too! in WOTLK, I get tipped 100 gold for smelting titansteel(lol). The point is, anyone couldn't be anything. But with Wrath, you can. Look at my armory in my signature. I have gone in full Retribution spec, Full Ret gear, and in Seal of Light, and Que'd up as a tank for every heroic, even H HoR. and Done them all, in less than 30 minutes. I'm hopping in my seat waiting for Cataclysm. When the new stat comes back into the game, we've missed it since Sunwell. crit, haste, SP, and Skill. Finally. Skill is needed again.

[allforone]

I really love how no one on page 1 of this thread(as far as I read) remembers that frost shock has a taunt effect built in alongside the slowing effect. Rockbiter weapon just cancels out the threat reduction talents in the two dmg specs.

[kivipää]

Tanks need to have high armor and clothies don't have that...

And about the shaman tank idea; it sounds cool, but then they need some kind of buff to generate more threat...

leather wearers don't have high armour either. Druid tank anyone? And a buff to generate more threat? Newsflash! All tanking specs have some sort of talent/skill/whatever that makes them generate way more threat than usual.

Heck, it'd be awesome, awesome to the head to see a frost mage tank!

[Soranis]

people should stop wanting everything for everything.