Hey, I’m having a hard time grasping the weapon situation for my Elemental. It is an Intellect-user that somehow prefers Mace/Dagger + Shield, but can dual-weald one-hand weapons and use staffs.
From a traditional/lore perspective, what is the ‘proper’ weapon setup for Elemental?
1h int weapon weapon (Mace / Axe / Dagger) and a shield.
Yeah, shamans are intellect users with a shield that they never use and never have a single ability related to shields. And all Draenor shamans were using staffs only, never ever they had a mail armor or a shield. In fact shield is the reason I don’t want to play shaman, cuz I love staffs and shield makes no sense for shamans.
The book that describes how legion targeted and manipulated orcs, it says that, “Shamans were using their staffs to concentrate the power of the elements that would listen to their call. But one of the shamans was exceptionally good with directing the lighting elements, and his name was Ner’zhul.”
Yeah Gul’dan and Ner’zhul were both shamans before becoming warlocks (a lot of people think they were always warlocks because Dreanor lore is 1. retconned 2. has an alternative universe in the game too) and Gul’dan was his student before it was retconned. And on Warlords of Draenor loading screen you can see Ner’zhul with a staff while he is still a shaman. There was never even 1 single mention of shamans having shields in books.
But, if you are a minmaxer or just care about your stats, a shield is just too good to be not used cuz of a passive damage reduction.
TLDR, in terms of lore 0 sense. In terms of gameplay, not bad.
Most people will still use a staff if it’s a dps upgrade and they come across one. Just typically int shields are easier to get because less people also want them.
Shields also give you slightly more survivability and while it might not be a huge increase it can make a difference.
The interesting thing is that the specialisation-tab doesn’t list staves as preferred weapon for any of the specs, not even resto. Really makes one think that Shaman ranged attacks are tuned to be weak and one will get enemies up in the face, making a shield’s defensive stats a good thing to have.
Warlocks are traditionally staff-users (unless you want to be a Shadow Mage), so it makes sense that the predecessor caster Shamans also uses staff, as opposed to the more melee-offensive Enhancement.
I’m no meta slave and prefers what feels ‘right’ for the spec. Although I don’t mind the Shield, I will see how a Staff looks on a mail-wearing Tauren.
This is not actually the case, it’s more that shaman has less tools to effectively control / keep enemies at a distance without fear or polymorph.
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