When was the best expansion to be a DPS shaman?

[Lisa Frank Succubus]

Besides vanilla and wind fury shenanigans, what was the best expansion to be a dps shaman, enhance or elemental, doesn't matter. Mainly curious about pve but would like to hear about pvp too.


I just ask because I'm leveling my enhance shaman, enjoy it a lot, but it seems like I've heard forever about how bad shaman were. Have they ever been -really- good and not just kinda viable?

[Krekal]

Enhancement at the end of MoP was pretty ridiculous in PVP, from a non-shaman perspective... I can't recall when enha/shaman has been OP in either PvP or PvE as in dominating the meters like hunters/rogues/mages are known for.

[Taeldorian]

Elemental in mop was amazing. Shamans have been mechanically great before, but blizzard fucks us up during number tuning.

Legion has cleared up a lot of shit shamans had problems with in WoD (mobility, target swapping, cleave, single target), so as long as we make it through the number tuning without blizz nerfing us for no reason, we'll be good.

[Skylarking]

I believe they were best when elemental could cast lightning bolt while moving. That made them so much more smooth to play.

[Lisa Frank Succubus]

Elemental in mop was amazing. Shamans have been mechanically great before, but blizzard fucks us up during number tuning.

Legion has cleared up a lot of shit shamans had problems with in WoD (mobility, target swapping, cleave, single target), so as long as we make it through the number tuning without blizz nerfing us for no reason, we'll be good.

Is the target swapping and single target thing really true? I'd love to main a shaman for my melee class but I'm too scared single target numbers are going to be bad-ish again.

[Taeldorian]

Is the target swapping and single target thing really true? I'd love to main a shaman for my melee class but I'm too scared single target numbers are going to be bad-ish again.

Yeah. Our issue with target swapping was that flame shock was on CD, so you couldn't spread it if you needed to swap targets, but that's fixed now. So we can switch whenever we want and immediately start dpsing. Elemental has many talents to choose from for single target/aoe/cleave, which makes us pretty flexible in terms of what we can do.

[Deleted]

Is the target swapping and single target thing really true? I'd love to main a shaman for my melee class but I'm too scared single target numbers are going to be bad-ish again.

We dont know about numbers tuning. Enhancers were strong for very in WOD Beta. We were strong, not op, but good. Then they nerfed our single target dps by 20% in the last 2 weeks of beta. And surprise surprise... we endet up 40 to 50% (elemental) behind top single target dds. To be honest, we still are 20 to 30% behind the top, but at least more competitive. WOD began - extremely bad. We just had fire nova, so we were useless on single target and 2 target fights, but great at aoe. Sadly, BRF wasn't AOE friendly so enhancers were really bad through all of 7.1 progress. In 7.2, we got some buffs and had much more AOE friendly fights, so it looked good on some fights and still very bad on others. I still wonder why rogues, mages and so on have to be 20+% stronger on single target. That's why i'd never expect us to top meters.

Enhancers AOE in Legion is completely different. So we don't know how this will turn out. In the end, PVE wise, it's a numbers thing. And even PVP wise, they could tune a lot via gear premades and pvp specific talents.

I suppose, we will be 20+% behind those pures (rogues, mages, locks) - like in WOD. Don't expect us to top meters in highend raiding. I just hope they aren't screwing us like in 7.0.

[Xanda]

Enhancement was great in MoP, especially during ToT.

[phalk]

In pvp, late vanilla. (Windfury enhance)

[Deleted]

I haven't played during late cata or during mop, but afaik:
vanilla:
pvp => wf ownage (and frustrating times when it didn't proc)
pve => go resto or go home

tbc:
pvp => bad. squishy, burst was a shadow of vanilla, immobile, incredibly clunky utility
pve => good enough. enh was the buffbot and a good supporter for melee groups. also, bloodlust stacking made shamans very desirable in general

wotlk:
pvp => insanely good in beastcleave arena, easpecially early on before the nerfs. enh and bm simply recked stuff.
pve => bottom of the barrel dps with highest execution difficulty. felt very unrewarding. no aoe to speak of yet, either.

cata:
pvp => baaaaad. what made enh good in wotlk (feral spirits) got ruined. many other nerfs during that time.
pve => baaaaad. At least until firelands, where enh finally got the aoe system we have now, with LL spreading FS for FN ownage. After that, it managed to be pretty decent until the end, from what I've heard from the sidelines during that time.

mop:
pvp => with ascendence's stormblast, things disintegrated before the shaman. they nerfed stormblast fast, but then buffed elemental blast and the combo of that was just as strong. definately good time for enh. Also very good offhealing.
pve => enh could hold its ground at the top with some other specs, I believe

wod:
pvp => has it's place in arena for purge and decent damage mostly. also good healing
pve => meh. decent aoe dmg and single target. Nothing to write home about. That said, I dont see many fully geared enh nowadays. I believe aoe is somewhat of a b or b+, single target a c?

future:
pvp => atm it seems we'll be very bursty, but survivability has people holding their breaths. let's hope we're not a glass cannon like in tbc, and die before we can do anything
pve => so far it's looking good, I believe (from a non-alpha guy)

And what you said concerning people saying it's not good:
I've complained about the spec since wotlk beta, if not before. The class has been afflicted with bad and archaic design for the longest time.
In legion beta, we are getting our very first class overhaul, where other classes have had multiple before, and are getting another (because everyone gets reworked for legion). Totems by themselves were soooooo bad. Blizz has finally given up on making them work, I guess, as they have removed most of our totems.

[Tyze]

Enhancement was great in MoP, especially during ToT.

Dat burst in mop

elemental was insanely addicted in mop aswell, could play with dummys all day

[garonne]

as others have said, the burst in mop was AMAZING for enh!!!! you had fire elemental, ascendance, ele mastery and spirit wolves. off healing was probably top 5 as well.

[Lisa Frank Succubus]

I haven't played during late cata or during mop, but afaik:
vanilla:
pvp => wf ownage (and frustrating times when it didn't proc)
pve => go resto or go home

tbc:
pvp => bad. squishy, burst was a shadow of vanilla, immobile, incredibly clunky utility
pve => good enough. enh was the buffbot and a good supporter for melee groups. also, bloodlust stacking made shamans very desirable in general

wotlk:
pvp => insanely good in beastcleave arena, easpecially early on before the nerfs. enh and bm simply recked stuff.
pve => bottom of the barrel dps with highest execution difficulty. felt very unrewarding. no aoe to speak of yet, either.

cata:
pvp => baaaaad. what made enh good in wotlk (feral spirits) got ruined. many other nerfs during that time.
pve => baaaaad. At least until firelands, where enh finally got the aoe system we have now, with LL spreading FS for FN ownage. After that, it managed to be pretty decent until the end, from what I've heard from the sidelines during that time.

mop:
pvp => with ascendence's stormblast, things disintegrated before the shaman. they nerfed stormblast fast, but then buffed elemental blast and the combo of that was just as strong. definately good time for enh. Also very good offhealing.
pve => enh could hold its ground at the top with some other specs, I believe

wod:
pvp => has it's place in arena for purge and decent damage mostly. also good healing
pve => meh. decent aoe dmg and single target. Nothing to right home about. That said, I dont see many fully geared enh nowadays. I believe aoe is somewhat of a b or b+, single target a c?

future:
pvp => atm it seems we'll be very bursty, but survivability has people holding their breaths. let's hope we're not a class come like in tbc, and die before we can do anything
pve => so far it's looking good, I believe (from a non-alpha guy)

And what you said concerning people saying it's not good:
I've complained about the spec since wotlk beta, if not before. The class has been afflicted with bad and archaic design for the longest time.
In legion beta, we are getting our very first class overhaul, where other classes have had multiple before, and are getting another (because everyone gets reworked for legion). Totems by themselves were soooooo bad. Blizz has finally given up on making them work, I guess, as they have removed most of our totems.

Man, a lot of that is depressing..especially compared to how well some other classes seem to do but I still like the class a lot. I've enjoyed what I've played in WoD and have a hard time going back to my rogue.

[Deleted]

Man, a lot of that is depressing..especially compared to how well some other classes seem to do but I still like the class a lot. I've enjoyed what I've played in WoD and have a hard time going back to my rogue.

Well, I can understand that. Mainly because I've had my nose in rogue gameplay as well, and they feel like they haven't changed much since vanilla. So they can get boring quick, imo.

[Deleted]

wotlk:
pve => bottom of the barrel dps with highest execution difficulty. felt very unrewarding. no aoe to speak of yet, either.

i was playing pve as enh shaman in whole wotlk, in bis gear from icc you were 1st in tables all the time, or, very close to bis with legendary warriors, during ulduar on aoe fights like kologarn, there was no one better then good aoe enh, builded up for fire nova(with 3sec cd andless).

[tanksin the enhance shamy]

dps shaman are strong at the end of an expansion its been that way since forever, takes them abut a year or two to finally see that they need buffs

[Niwes]

in wod brf was the best raid setup for enh shaman. they could do alot of fun and high dps in M Darmac, M Thogar, M Furnance. but asside of that wasnt that great than in parts of MoP or in the great (but boring) vanilla winfury procs windfury procs ... era.

- - - Updated - - -

dps shaman are strong at the end of an expansion its been that way since forever, takes them abut a year or two to finally see that they need buffs

mostly like.... resto shaman

- - - Updated - - -

Well, I can understand that. Mainly because I've had my nose in rogue gameplay as well, and they feel like they haven't changed much since vanilla. So they can get boring quick, imo.

blizz had just buff enh shamans ST dps with 15-20% to Maelstrom. Since MS is locked by 2 charges this had been a very scalable and easy to do fix.

but in that shit of an expansion wod was, they literally did NOTHING. there are a lot of non-broken specs mechanic wise, just sucked numbers wise. look at beastmaster, or frost mage. totally valid and fun specs. but just a dumb numbers issue. combat rogue, THAT spec is broken and not easy to fix, gameplay wise. but assasination or even survival hunters, just needed a small and so fukin easy to implement numbers fix.

its so hillarious that even a pure dos like hunter could only literally play 1 spec. 90% of all hunters were 80% of wod just MM. thats soooo paltry by blizzard. really paltry.

[Nyoken]

T12 for ele shamans, by far. Nothing comes close to it.

[LTCrystallite]

Yea mists was the greatest for Enhance.

Elemental Blast actually hurt.
Stormblast was scary.

Even though they had bloat, they had some reliable burst damage and amazing heals. Warlords pretty much made half the toolkit underwhelming, and we ended up being AoE bots.

[Futhark]

I was in 40 mam HM guild during WotLK as Ele, and me and another Ele shaman did okay. Then I quit raiding after Cho'gall and I read that's when Ele got REALLY good.

- - - Updated - - -

T12 for ele shamans, by far. Nothing comes close to it.

Lol, see! I should have stuck it out for one more tier!