Shamans Dieing out?

[Pitkanen]

Number tweeking for Elemental won't be as happy and fun as most hope it will. Keep in mind that GC's comment on Ele was something like "There just isn't a fight where they shine". I guess they mean there isn't a fight where 5 mobs stand in a row, exactly at chain lightning bounce range but it is impossible for any radial AoE to hit them all. Instead the fights are mostly, exactly just out of CL bounce range, but in range of radial AoE abilities (from DK's and locks at least).

Amber shaper is a fight with a damage debuffed target. The fact that Ele is higher than usual is a strong indication that we don't have the tools to deal with DPSing the un-debuffed oozes.

[gwenners]

Resto's holding its own as well.

Resto is clownshoes compared to everyone else, especially on 10 mans. Not only does it perform poorly, but so much of resto's healing has been moved to totems it's not even fun to play anymore.

[Raiju]

Ignoring the flamebait in this thread..

Shamans have always had a low count. Going slightly lower is hardly a big shock, happens now and then.

[Tziva]

Resto is clownshoes compared to everyone else, especially on 10 mans. Not only does it perform poorly, but so much of resto's healing has been moved to totems it's not even fun to play anymore.

Resto shaman are certainly not the strongest healers this tier in 10man (although are supposedly strong in 25man) but there is a large grey area between "not the best" and "poor." I'd argue no healing specs are actually doing poorly; even the weakest of them is still not that far behind the specs above it. Really, this is more about disc and holy paladins excelling so much rather than the other specs being bad.

And the latter point is totally subjective. I can't say I prefer 20-30% of my healing being through passive totems but the spec is still interactive enough for me to enjoy playing it.

[shammypie]

I sure hope that Shamy is not dead. I have benched our hpal and am actively recruiting a resto Sham as our main tank healer. All that wonderful mastery. Mass utility. I can't believe this game has Shamy niched into raid healer.

shamans are usually horrible tank healers because they provide no mitigration at all. They can only react and have no cds to give a tank. It's one of the same reason that druids are on the bottom, heals are only good if they have things to heal. Druid hots tend to overheal so much because everyone gets topped off. Shaman healing spells tend to be weak because you start healing a tank or raid member before mastery really becomes beneficial. Shaman healing is basically a more direct and upfront version of a druids with a lot of crossover. However they do have their niches and are very good in PVP.

The reason why everyone complains too much is because the other two shamans specs are almost completely overlooked. They don't shine at all in PVP or PVE.

ELementals are extremely angry right now because of, well because of this and it makes me a sad panda

http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overa...10100000000000

overall dps for 10N. If you go to the top parses shamans fair a little better showing that some rediculous players can pull what others think impossible, but past that its bad.

[iadamson]

I stopped playing my Shaman, and pretty much caring for the class altogether once cata hit. I just feel like Shaman's had a lot of potential for creative abilities and they kinda just got some things I didn't like or see fit well. (This is just my opinion, and not fact of course).

I didn't like ascendance, thought it was awesome Shaman's got something cool but then... I just felt like it dismantled the class and what it stood for, not big on becoming the elements.

Druids got all the awesome wind element spells, mages got all the cool frost and some fire spells. IDK Shaman's got kinda shafted felt empty to me, a shell of its former self.

[Belphrala]

Shamans are very over looked, sure our Ascendance spell is great but after those 15secs we fall behind, Enh dps falls to movement fights while ele is subar dps. Resto's mastery isnt effective seeing as most of the raid is top'd off and what damage they do heal turns into overheal thanks to mastery. Our totem design was probably the worst, most utility totems we have left barerly work, if at all, and the "totems will scale with haste" got broke awhile ago and still seems to not be fixed.

[Deleted]

and the "totems will scale with haste" got broke awhile ago and still seems to not be fixed.

What do you mean with that? Both HST and HTT scales with haste atm.

[Scrotie]

The less shamans out there the more buffs they would get. Gotta make the class worth playing right?

[Deleted]

What do you mean with that? Both HST and HTT scales with haste atm.

He means that the scaling of the totems aren't working correctly.

There are pure breakpoints, but because of how the spell is constructed things like how much ping you have matters while calculating your cap, which ofcourse shouldn't happend.

[Deleted]

There are pure breakpoints, but because of how the spell is constructed things like how much ping you have matters while calculating your cap, which ofcourse shouldn't happend.

Ah fair enough, yes that is indeed very annoying when you are trying to reach for the higher caps, basically makes it not worth it since you don't really know which exact value you need to be at and the latency varies a lot.

[Krekko]

Shamans dying? No.

Lack of posts does not mean lack of life.

I think that Elemental does need to be worked on to be given a unique identity and feel and have mechanics worked out, but overall the class isn't in shambles. It's not like they are leaving it where it falls and moving on.

I've played a Shaman along with my Paladin since release and I can easily say the Shaman community has ALWAYS been more quiet and reserved over most other classes.

[thebdc]

Number tweeking for Elemental won't be as happy and fun as most hope it will. Keep in mind that GC's comment on Ele was something like "There just isn't a fight where they shine". I guess they mean there isn't a fight where 5 mobs stand in a row, exactly at chain lightning bounce range but it is impossible for any radial AoE to hit them all.

Plus all mobs share their hp pool and are vulnerable to nature spells and vulnerable to fire for 15 seconds every 3 minutes.

I always found that "explanation" rather funny. Especially in a 16 boss tier. Seriously, if a class doesn't shine in any fight, but others shine in pretty much every one of them, maybe it's not boss design but class design.

[Deleted]

I've played a Shaman along with my Paladin since release and I can easily say the Shaman community has ALWAYS been more quiet and reserved over most other classes.

Dotshock/bus shock? Patch 1.11? I think that might have been at the same time.

[Slappyjoe]

I've become increasingly bored with my Elemental Shaman. Ascendance is nice, but that being the only real change to the feel of how it plays is pretty disappointing. Elemental Blast is neat, but it doesn't really add anything more than one extra button to push and doesn't make the rotation any more interesting than it's been since Lava Burst was added back in Wrath. I think the only dps spec that's less interesting to raid with currently is Arcane.

[Viperk8b]

I remember last expansion that blizz gave rogues a legendary to help boost numbers on that class, now I'm not saying give us a legendary but some tweeks to the class or even a buff to either dps or survivability or I pray a tank spec would be nice.

Looking at the numbers here we are the 2nd lowest played class in the game atm only class lower is monks and thats since they are so new. and as you can see since monks are so new they get buffs yet we still sit at the mediocre mark.
http://wow.realmpop.com/us.html
this is not a see all end all 100% accurate numbers but are the closest tool we have atm.

[JoeShmo]

Dotshock/bus shock? Patch 1.11? I think that might have been at the same time.

And the almighty middle finger ASCII spam-a-thon that happened back in wrath (I believe it was then).
I had never seen so much anger and hate on the wow forums until that time (which is a hard thing to say lol). The shaman community was livid over how their class was handled.

On a related note, I personally believe the shaman class started regressing when they revamped the enhance tree and took away the 2hand viability that everyone enjoyed shamans for. I did like how the tree progressed (minus the tanky talents going away) in a fundamental way, but they could have easily done with enhance what they did with frost for dks; give them both a dual wield AND 2handed viable way of playing. And they still can. Even warriors get to use 1h and 2h for fury dw now. (2handed fury sure was fun in vanilla though).

Back on topic,
I think the "quiet" forums doesnt really explain much. There could be many reasons for it (class forums always go up and down with time in regards to activeness), but mainly its probably because there isnt an outright appalling problem that the shaman players need to complain about (rightfully or not). The class has its issues, but its not so big as to cause a furnace of forum posts ad nauseam.

[bigrichard]

Everyone knows that Blizzard hates Shamans. It's just something that we've learned to live with and accept.


[User was infracted for this post]

[Tinsoul]

I remember last expansion that blizz gave rogues a legendary to help boost numbers on that class, now I'm not saying give us a legendary but some tweeks to the class or even a buff to either dps or survivability or I pray a tank spec would be nice.

Looking at the numbers here we are the 2nd lowest played class in the game atm only class lower is monks and thats since they are so new. and as you can see since monks are so new they get buffs yet we still sit at the mediocre mark.
http://wow.realmpop.com/us.html
this is not a see all end all 100% accurate numbers but are the closest tool we have atm.

That's not the closest tool atm. Not remotely. All those numbers vaguely say is that shaman alts are less popular then some other classes.

One of the better tools is raidbots. You can see the total number of parses by spec. In 10N (most populous format) elemental is #7 out of 23 dps specs w/r to # of samples.

The Cataclysm warlock was in a bad place. Shaman are absolutely fine.

[GKLeatherCraft]

You can't go on Forums views/posts as an indicator, if you did it would be a positive thing though, people come here to whine, less people moaning about Shamans= Must be doing good
But really, Elemental is fine, My Ele shammy was destroying meters in 5mans, and in raids i was always in top 5, normaly 2-3rd, and my gear isn't great at all lol, They're doing good i reckon, The only thing i don't enjoy is the new Totem stuff, but really that's just adjusting to change, as we still get the buffs from the totems that were removed anyway^^