Shaman Class Buff - BFA

[Deleted]

I haven't seen a discussion on this yet so I thought it would be interesting to see what people think. I'm sure everyone has heard every class is getting a unique raid buff in BFA. Complete list as currently stands is shown here:

http://www.wowhead.com/news=275398/c...le-for-azeroth

Shaman is currently listed as unknown, in one of the dev interviews they said they haven't decided what it will be yet. Since shaman have historically brought very powerful buffs in the form of totems I'm hoping their lack of decision is based on them wanting to do something a bit different and more unique for shaman to reflect this history. The obvious buff missing from the current list is crit, I'm hoping we don't end up with just having that.

A thought I had was that we could get totems back which could provide any of the missing buffs there might be. So while we don't necessarily have our own unique buff, a shaman can fill in for missing classes. It would also mean if you have more than 1 shaman they can provide different buffs. I think this would be a pretty nice situation, we get something interesting and useful but it's not overpowered causing shaman to be mandatory since you can get the buffs from other classes anyway. Of course the major downside with this would be that we'd have to maintain totems again, not a big deal in a raid but would be annoying to continually drop totems in a mythic+ as your group moves.

Has anyone heard rumours or thought of other things shaman might have?

[Volitar]

Well the 3 biggest buffs Shaman historically have had was Windfury Totem, Bloodlust, and Totem of Wrath.

Bloodlust already exists and has been given out to classes and drums have been morphed into a weaker version of Bloodlust so this one is null.

Windfury seems like it would just be a mess to me, melee dps have already moved away from auto attacks doing a heavy percentage of total dps so this would probably feel underwhelming if it was reimplemented as it was. A

Totem of Wrath would be my ideal choice but seeing as how they merged spell damage with intellect and Mages already have that iconic buff so that wouldn't work. I feel like it would be a nice return of form for Shamans to become the king of buffs again doing not 1 but 2 buffs. Instead of the 5% buff that most classes got I would say 2.5% buff to Int, Str, and Agi as well as 2.5% crit. (The first version of Totem of Wrath didn't give spellpower, it was a 3% hit and 3% crit buff, the Air totem was the one giving spell damage and healing. In WOTLK it was changed to be the spellpower totem. So this is a jumble of both iterations of the spell)

[nazrakin]

I'm expecting it to just be a passive crit buff since that is the only stat no one else is providing.

[Kralljin]

Shaman is currently listed as unknown, in one of the dev interviews they said they haven't decided what it will be yet.

Mind linking that interview? Haven't found one where they talk about that.

There are basically two options, they go the boring route and choose the crit aura or they go for the controversial route and make Bloodlust Shaman only again.

While crit is currently missing, i could see them simply shift it to another Class, DK and Paladin seem rather weak in comparison to the rest, so they might shift there a bit, perhaps give Crit to DH, DK gets haste and change Paladin to a % damage reduction rather than just armor.

[Imnick]

If we're getting a buff I don't really want it to be a totem, it's the least convenient way that buffs can exist.
You also kind of don't want necessarily to be the guy that brings only the buff that a group is missing. Sure it's good for small guilds, but once you have 20 people in Mythic, chances are that you're just bringing nothing.

[Deleted]

Mind linking that interview? Haven't found one where they talk about that.

There are basically two options, they go the boring route and choose the crit aura or they go for the controversial route and make Bloodlust Shaman only again.

While crit is currently missing, i could see them simply shift it to another Class, DK and Paladin seem rather weak in comparison to the rest, so they might shift there a bit, perhaps give Crit to DH, DK gets haste and change Paladin to a % damage reduction rather than just armor.

http://www.wowhead.com/news=275766/a...and-raid-buffs

Go to around 18 minutes for shaman in particular, he's been talking about the buffs for a few mins before though. It would seem very weird to me that they are undecided what to do with shaman if all they were thinking was a simple 3% crit aura, so I'm optimistic.

If we're getting a buff I don't really want it to be a totem, it's the least convenient way that buffs can exist.
You also kind of don't want necessarily to be the guy that brings only the buff that a group is missing. Sure it's good for small guilds, but once you have 20 people in Mythic, chances are that you're just bringing nothing.

That's true, it is a negative to have to drop totems. If it's a simple % crit I don't think it would be a great idea but if it was something more unique I would be ok with it. I main elemental so I'm used to dropping the totems every 2 mins anyway, there's normally movement downtime you can take advantage of.

With respect to being the buff missing guy. What if we were the only people who could bring the crit aura, but we were also able to supply the other auras if needed? Even better would be what Volitar suggested and we could provide 2 buffs, although that wouldn't be that useful in a raid most of the time.

Part of me thinks it would be awesome to give elemental/enhancement/resto unique buffs for their respective roles, i.e. grace of air/windfury/mana tide like we used to. However it would be hard to make 3 shamans not necessary in that scenario so I doubt that could happen, we also wouldn't want to be in the position again where our dps is low to make up for the buffs we bring.

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Well the 3 biggest buffs Shaman historically have had was Windfury Totem, Bloodlust, and Totem of Wrath.

Bloodlust already exists and has been given out to classes and drums have been morphed into a weaker version of Bloodlust so this one is null.

Windfury seems like it would just be a mess to me, melee dps have already moved away from auto attacks doing a heavy percentage of total dps so this would probably feel underwhelming if it was reimplemented as it was. A

Totem of Wrath would be my ideal choice but seeing as how they merged spell damage with intellect and Mages already have that iconic buff so that wouldn't work. I feel like it would be a nice return of form for Shamans to become the king of buffs again doing not 1 but 2 buffs. Instead of the 5% buff that most classes got I would say 2.5% buff to Int, Str, and Agi as well as 2.5% crit. (The first version of Totem of Wrath didn't give spellpower, it was a 3% hit and 3% crit buff, the Air totem was the one giving spell damage and healing. In WOTLK it was changed to be the spellpower totem. So this is a jumble of both iterations of the spell)

Yes very true about windfury, however they could implement a different version of it to buff melee dps and retain the name for nostalgia purposes.

I agree, it would be nice to be really valuable again. I feel dps shaman in general have had a hard time for a decent amount of this expansion since when our totems were taken away we were just a squishy dps. Having said that I don't particularly want to go back to doing uncompetitive dps to account for the fact everyone else does a lot more damage with us around.

[Powell]

I hope they give some unique utility back.

There is absolutely no reason to ever choose an enhancement shaman to fill a group spot over any other class.
In mythic+, you are Elemental or you don't do M+. They bring nothing an Elemental doesn't already bring and can't compete against Earthquake and Ele AoE in general.

They don't bring an battle rez (self rez is too limited), they have no group defensive cooldowns, they have no soak abilities (cloak of shadows, bubble, anti-magic shell), they are squishie as fuck even for a melee, no Wind Walk Totem, no Ancestral Guidance.

Bloodlust and Stun totem are default shaman abilities and very common utility among other classes.
Windwalk Totem should be atleast unique to enhancement, and Ancestral Guidance should replace Rainfall again.

[woopytywoop]

they could bring back some stormlash/windfury alike totem.

Either with a small cd or just 3-5% chance to overload/multistrike all the time.

[mkultra55]

I'd love to see Lust become a Shammy exclusive again like we had in TBC.

I find it a little unfair that Mages get an Immunity AND Lust which marginalizes Elemental (as one example).

[Volitar]

I hope they give some unique utility back.

There is absolutely no reason to ever choose an enhancement shaman to fill a group spot over any other class.
In mythic+, you are Elemental or you don't do M+. They bring nothing an Elemental doesn't already bring and can't compete against Earthquake and Ele AoE in general.

They don't bring an battle rez (self rez is too limited), they have no group defensive cooldowns, they have no soak abilities (cloak of shadows, bubble, anti-magic shell), they are squishie as fuck even for a melee, no Wind Walk Totem, no Ancestral Guidance.

Bloodlust and Stun totem are default shaman abilities and very common utility among other classes.
Windwalk Totem should be atleast unique to enhancement, and Ancestral Guidance should replace Rainfall again.

Hurts especially bad since Enh was an AOE dungeon monster in WOD. Staple in every CM carry/sale group. Now we just have noodle cleave.

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I'd love to see Lust become a Shammy exclusive again like we had in TBC.

I find it a little unfair that Mages get an Immunity AND Lust which marginalizes Elemental (as one example).

It was fitting, seeing as almost every prominent Ele Shaman rerolled to Mage long ago..jajaja.

[Deleted]

I have an idea for shaman class buff:

'becomes more than a meme spec in progression raiding'

there you go, no need for anything more.

[Angrie]

I haven't seen a discussion on this yet so I thought it would be interesting to see what people think. I'm sure everyone has heard every class is getting a unique raid buff in BFA. Complete list as currently stands is shown here:

http://www.wowhead.com/news=275398/c...le-for-azeroth

Shaman is currently listed as unknown, in one of the dev interviews they said they haven't decided what it will be yet. Since shaman have historically brought very powerful buffs in the form of totems I'm hoping their lack of decision is based on them wanting to do something a bit different and more unique for shaman to reflect this history. The obvious buff missing from the current list is crit, I'm hoping we don't end up with just having that.

A thought I had was that we could get totems back which could provide any of the missing buffs there might be. So while we don't necessarily have our own unique buff, a shaman can fill in for missing classes. It would also mean if you have more than 1 shaman they can provide different buffs. I think this would be a pretty nice situation, we get something interesting and useful but it's not overpowered causing shaman to be mandatory since you can get the buffs from other classes anyway. Of course the major downside with this would be that we'd have to maintain totems again, not a big deal in a raid but would be annoying to continually drop totems in a mythic+ as your group moves.

Has anyone heard rumours or thought of other things shaman might have?

I can see them moving buffs around before launch. Shamans getting a "crit" buff isn't likely.

I see Shamans getting Stormlash. Just a raid wide buff via totem. Damage dealers deal random proc-based damage, healers do random proc-based healing.

Shaman's history dictates that we won't get a raid spot through a crit buff or any buff for that matter. Way to good to be true. Unless they go the way of BC and we're the only hero/lust.

[Kralljin]

It was fitting, seeing as almost every prominent Ele Shaman rerolled to Mage long ago..jajaja.

Luckily they already said there are too many immunities CD's in the game currently.

perhaps Ice Block becomes Frost only once again, one can hope at least.

Shaman's history dictates that we won't get a raid spot through a crit buff or any buff for that matter. Way to good to be true. Unless they go the way of BC and we're the only hero/lust.

If Shaman gets a unique buff, and Elemental / Enhance turn out as bad as they were in early Legion, most people will just pick Resto.

Having at least one Resto Shaman was rarely a bad thing, due their massive amount of cd's.

[Khrux]

I think the OPs suggestion is really good, I mean it seems obvious somebody should have crit unless for some reason blizzard are concerned about this impacting scaling of crit % over the course of an Xpac.

So either DK are losing the undesirable leech and getting crit, or shaman are most likely getting crit but potentially in the form of a selectable buff with a choice of haste/mastery/crit so they can play the "fill in the gap" role and cover whats missing from your comp.

[Xanda]

Now I wouldn't mind being the only one with BL tbh

[faithbane]

Based on what is missing from the list, most likely it will be a flat critical buff. otherwise it could be a combination of secondaries like avoidance + speed buff or something.

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I think the OPs suggestion is really good, I mean it seems obvious somebody should have crit unless for some reason blizzard are concerned about this impacting scaling of crit % over the course of an Xpac.

So either DK are losing the undesirable leech and getting crit, or shaman are most likely getting crit but potentially in the form of a selectable buff with a choice of haste/mastery/crit so they can play the "fill in the gap" role and cover whats missing from your comp.

5% flat leech is significant.I doubt anyone would consider it undesired after seeing its impact in a group/raid. Its like having 1 hot rolling on everyone all the time.

[Swalload]

I'd love to see Lust become a Shammy exclusive again like we had in TBC.

I find it a little unfair that Mages get an Immunity AND Lust which marginalizes Elemental (as one example).

Won't happen, the game is basically balanced around having lust every raid boss, it needs to be more common than on only one class.

I'm sure shaman will get crit, maybe something funky like 2% crit and 3% healing done. Dps get a 5% dmg increase along with everything else that healers also get but there's no healing specific bonus anywhere.

[Kralljin]

Won't happen, the game is basically balanced around having lust every raid boss, it needs to be more common than on only one class.

Don't really see that as an argument at this point.

Do you think someone would pass on 5% Int / Str / Agi? Yet that would happen if you cut a Warrior / Mage.

Bloodlust was given to mage / Bm Hunter in Cata because up until WoD, various buffs were shared across multiple classes / specs, whereas Bl was Shaman only in Wotlk.

The BfA system is closer to the Vanilla / BC version, don't have Class X? Well, no Buff Y for you.

[Swalload]

Don't really see that as an argument at this point.

Do you think someone would pass on 5% Int / Str / Agi? Yet that would happen if you cut a Warrior / Mage.

Bloodlust was given to mage / Bm Hunter in Cata because up until WoD, various buffs were shared across multiple classes / specs, whereas Bl was Shaman only in Wotlk.

The BfA system is closer to the Vanilla / BC version, don't have Class X? Well, no Buff Y for you.

Yeah but the concept of sharing buffs in the first place was exactly to try to fix that problem, make it easier to have every buff in a smaller group.

[shammypie]

I have an idea for shaman class buff:

'becomes more than a meme spec in progression raiding'

there you go, no need for anything more.

haha this. This is the one expansion I didn't play my shaman and went monk/tank for a change. It was so refreshing having 0 issues finding a guild willing to gear when you come back behind. I never got that on my shaman. The best was raiding in a mythic guild with a giant dkp ratio and using my better gear to carry the other healers.

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Won't happen, the game is basically balanced around having lust every raid boss, it needs to be more common than on only one class.

I'm sure shaman will get crit, maybe something funky like 2% crit and 3% healing done. Dps get a 5% dmg increase along with everything else that healers also get but there's no healing specific bonus anywhere.

Somehow I don't think they will put in a healing buff. any class that gets that one will complain about dps/questing specs being gimped with the only useless buff for them. If crit is the last one left than it's a pretty good chance shamans will get it. It has the benefit of screwing over non ascendance elementals, buffing resto massively, and making enhancement even more sporadic in giant damage spikes. It's everything Blizzard loves to do to shamans.

My money though is something off the MOP raid buff list when they did this sort of thing before. But they gave 2 different kinds of Haste buffs (hint hint), 1 mastery buff, and 1 spell power buff.