The number one issues shamans have had for years is our complete lack of defensives. We get focused down hard in pvp and now with the band aid and borrowed powers being removed we need this addressed ASAP.
The Azerite Pack Spirit play was the one way to stay competitive in pvp without a personal healer, I actually enjoyed the playstyle of turtling up in Ghost Wolf form. We can’t do anything else in Ghost Wolf other then kite and it’s not like we’re a druid and have all sorts of advantages through shapeshifting and a whole range of abilities to play with.
Perhaps you can expand on the Ghost Wolf turtling style in Shadowlands? Blizzard you we’re definitely on to something with this.
There are other ideas that are thrown around a lot, like bringing back Shamanistic Rage. I don’t see why this can’t be a PVP talent in place of things like Ethereal Form which frankly is more of a liability.
There’s also class design flaws, Enhancement has to choose between spending MSW procs on healing or damage, the spec is fighting itself especially when you look at other self healing melee specs.
The healing outside of MSW is attrocious even with Swelling Waves. Then there’s the matter of going OOM after four casts, it’s probably more efficent to just try and LoS and stay in Ghost Wolf for the Spectral Recovery heal and that’s if you can actually go LoS!
Our mobility has been dwarfed by old classes and new, Monks and Demon Hunters run rings around us. Mobility is a huge issue for trying to survive and Ghost Wolf’s ability to kite has be diminished over the years of boosts to other classes. Even with Spirit Wolf talent you’ll find yourself hard pressed to get away from classes that can train on you hard.
What I’d like to see is improvemenets to our healing, make it so we can properly heal ourselves. You gave us a hybrid tax when pure classes like Fury Warrior can out heal a Enhancement Shaman if both go toe-to-toe, it’s ridiculous.
Give us the means to shift in to a defensive playstyle, buffing Ghost Wolf and improving the style of play you created in BFA so we don’t get deleted. Allow us to Astral Shift whilst stunned and perhaps giving us a few passive abilities that react when we’re crowd controlled as ability bloat is a thing again.
Increase our mobility through new abilities or improving on the old. Shamans are glass cannons that can’t do much to stop the damage and can neither run away from it. Frankly we feel like a classic car, back in the day we we’re agile and quick, but now even the more common cars have passed us by.
When Shadowlands comes out I don’t want to be applying bandaid fixes to the class that has core baseline problems. I’m looking at conduits, I want to mess with with all of the new interesting ones and not constantly looking for ways to make me tougher because you haven’t addressed this number one issue.
If you feel that shamans need more protection in PVP, please reply and show your support. You may not like my ideas on Ghost Wolf turtling, but the main issue here is trying to get Blizzard to improve our survivability. Share your thoughts below and I’m eager to see what ideas you all have also.
#FixShamans