Before I begin explaining I would like to first assure you that I did indeed read the post concerning the automatic dismissal of any posts relating to either shaman tanks and or shaman 2-hand dps. Admitting to having read this may make me eligible to being banned, and if that is the consequence to posting this specific topic than I can’t really say I didn’t deserve it. Yet I still think that my ideas are if not fresh and innovative, at the very least a compilation of the different Tank suggestions so that this post can be used as referral to all those who wish to post their ideas on the subject matter.
That aside I want to share a bit of my personal history with both shaman and tanking to show that I have at the very least a rudimentary knowledge of the class and the role, and a connection to each. My very first high level character was a troll enhancement shaman I started back in vanilla. This in itself isn’t much of an achievement but it reflects that my first experience with world of warcraft, and mmos in general, was as a shaman. I reached about level 35 before I took a long break until the arrival of burning crusade. What I remember most fondly of that shaman was the feeling of whacking my enemies in the face with a huge axe and the shocking them to death with frost, fire, and lightning. In fact my low level experience in the game so far has been when on my level 26 or 28 shaman I managed to kill the elite panther mob in Thousand needles with a combination of frost shock, earthbind totem, searing totem, a shield, and some heals. To me that was when I decided I wanted to play my shaman as a tank. Years later during wrath I decided to roll a death knight and fell in love with tanking. I have since then leveled as a tank to max level no less than 5 separate blood DK’s on different servers and sadly on different accounts, 3 warriors, one paladin, and I am currently leveling one druid.
From what I have gathered so far the tools every tank needs boil down to few basic debuffs, cooldowns, and abilities.
These are :
- A stance, presence, form, buff, that allows for increased threat generation
- An armor modifier
- A reliable 10 second CD interrupt (Shield bash(now pummel), Mind Freeze, Rebuke, and Skullbash)
- A low (35s-1m) CD with a relatively weak effect (Shield block, Bone shield/Vampiric blood, Divine Protection, and Bark skin)
- A long (2m) CD with ≈ 50% damage reduction ( Shield wall, Icebound Fortitude, Guardian of the Ancient Kings, Survival instincts)
- A melee damage percent wise reduction and a attack speed reduction ( Demoralizing shout/Thunderclap, Icy touch/ Plague strike, Judgement / Crusader strike/Hammer of Righteousness, Demoralizing Roar/ Infected wounds)
- And while not available to all tanks 3 out of 4 can also Stun (Concussion Blow, Hammer of Justice, Bash)
- While I am not sure it is even necessary to add this as well, all tanks have taunts, some have AoE ones, some have ones that only effect a party members mobs, and some have essentially useless ones (Army of the Dead)
In addition to this skill set that can easily be added to the enhancement shamans spell list all tanks deal with the damage the receive in two ways. They either mitigate it via armor, block, and damage reduction abilities. Or they avoid it by either dodging or parrying the attack.
For the sake of comparison let us look at the abilities
already available to shamans
- We have wind shear a 6 second CD ranged interrupt
- We have Shamanistic Rage a 1 minute CD 20% damage reduction ability
- We can use a shield though I am not sure if that allows for blocking
- We also have a single target taunt via Unleash Rockbiter, and an AoE taunt with rock elemental
What we currently lack is
- A long (2m) CD with ≈ 50% damage reduction
- A melee damage percent wise reduction and a attack speed reduction
- A thread modifier
- A armor modifier
- A possible 1 minute CD stun
Only these elements considered (no pun intended) what we lack can be tied into either 1 or 2 new abilities and some of the current ones.
For example:
Elemental Ascension
The shaman infuses his body with the protective essences of the elements gaining a bonus in armor (fixed amount) health (percentage based) and threat (also percent wise). This ability can only be used of the shamans main hand weapon is enchanted with Rockbiter Weapon, while this ability is active Rockbiter Weapons duration is prolonged indefinitely. While affected by elemental Ascension some of the shamans spells will change effect.
(I was hoping that the visual effect of this could be changing the shamans skin texture to alternate between the four different Ascendant skin textures and maybe some small lightning effects
(To prevent shaman tanks from doing as much damage as normal enhancement shamans Elemental Ascension would reduce both the base damage and scaling of several all our base abilities while buffing others to be stronger than they are now so that the maximum dps/tps rotation/priority system is less complex than the current enhance dps rotation)
Tectonic plating (Shamanistic rage during Elemental Ascension)
1 minute Cool down
The shaman covers himself with protective plating that reduce all damage taken by 20% for X seconds and causes melee hits against the caster a chance to knockdown opponents.
(Knockdown cannot occur more than once every 4 seconds per attacker. Knockdown does not affect anything that a stun wouldn’t)
Ancestors Boon (Feral spirits during Elemental Ascension)
The shamans ancestors enhance the defensive capabilities of his protection causing him to take 50% less damage for Y seconds.
Stormstrike (Elemental Ascension)
In addition to its normal effect stormstrikes’ debuff reduces enemy attack speed by 20%
Firenova (Elemental Ascension)
Firenova is decoupled form flameshock and instead emanates from the shaman. All targets hit by the Firenova will be effected by the Molten Defenses debuff reducing melee damage by 10%
Laval lash (Elemental Ascension)
Targets hit by lava lash will be effected by the Molten Defenses debuff reducing melee damage by 10%. (also in attempt to help burst threat no stacks of searing totem should be needed to gain full damage potential. The last thing a tank needs is burst that is not at the beginning of a fight because the rest is pretty much taken care of by vengeance scaling)
Currently we have as weapon options for tanks: 2 sword and board tanks, one 2-hand tank, and one face tank. The only weapon styles not represented by this demographic are 1-hand plus offhand users and dual wielders.
Seeing as how one of the spec bonuses of the enhancement talent tree already is the ability to dual wield I think they could make us dual wield tanks with our Elemental Ascension specific mastery granting us elemental shielding which would give us a chance on hit to generate the buff Aether shield stacking up to five times. Aether Shield would have a chance equal to block rating to reduce the incoming damage of the next attack based block by 30% with an increase in mastery increasing our block chance. This would effectively avoid the problems Death Knights currently face with their mastery being retroactive and not factoring into the CTCT and making it different from Savage Defender.
The next issue that would have to be resolved would be our mobility. As has been discussed to death on these forums already our mobility is tied to the range of our totems buff and attack range. Many suggested making totems auras instead which while a good Idea in and of itself would still take away from the feeling of the shaman class and would be a step out of all current shamans comfort zones. My proposal would be that if not all the time, then at least during Ascension all totems currently on the shamans call of flame totem bar that are static 5 minute duration buffs become auras, and that only the utility/damage totems would remain unchanged.
Moreover there also exists the issue of avoidance stats. Since tanking shamans and melee dps shamans, and thus by extensions hunters as well, would be sharing the same gear pool there needs to be a way to derive dodge and parry rating from dps stats. My suggestion would be to automatically expertise cap shamans in Ascension form and Cause expertise and haste to convert one to one to parry and dodge. The specifics of this conversion such as the stats involved and the ratio are completely up for debate.
To prevent the enhancement talent tree form swelling out of proportions and preventing a tank build that encompasses the entirety of the dps talents I think it would be best to mix the tanking talents into the PvP and non DPS increase talents aswell as a few of the dps talents with the constant condition being that for these new effects to apply Elemental Ascension would be necessary.
As a final bonus I would like to suggest that blizzard does something to help with the itemization problem shamans currently have. GIVE US SWORDS. Thrall had one, so why can’t we? If a Rogue can be stealthy and cunning while either bludgeoning their opponents to death with maces like a paladin, or axes like a crazed Canadian lumberjack (not the type that hang around bars dressed in women’s clothing).Why can’t we be all spiritual and attuned to the natural world with swords? We can already use daggers so it would literally and figuratively not be that big of a stretch to give us swords.
As a final note, I wrote all of this between 02:00 and 04:00 in the morning. If I at points fail to make sense, be it grammatical, logical, or me switching to German, feel free to point this out.
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Originally Posted by zylya
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