knowing full well that a topic title like this will draw in the frothing shaman haters, i’m going to do my best to remain objective.
shaman is bad right now.
you overnerfed all shaman specs.
it was justified in phase 3 because some of the things they could pull off was very broken.
that being said, we are lvl 60 now.
we’re in phase 5.
those scaling issues are starting to rear their ugly heads as good shaman players warned you would happen.
at lvl 50 this was not an issue because A: its lvl 50 and there is 0 scaling problems for anyone who isn’t a warrior at that level, and B: alongside nerfing what little scaling we did have, you decided to also continue to apply nerf after nerf after nerf.
the doomsday scenario people such as myself warned you about (IN EVERY SINGLE PTR FORUM BTW) are now unfolding.
shaman dps in pve is bad.
shaman can’t WF even a clothie to death in pvp now.
shaman literally cannot even heal right now.
pvp aura reduces all healing by what, 30%?
you absolutely gutted mental dexterity by removing the healing bonus on it entirely.
you removed the ability to maelstrom heal with healing wave and chain heal.
you flat out nerfed riptide and earth shield by 50% in a recent stealth nerf.
you removed the ability to proc powersurge for riptide and flame shock and turned it into an abominable trash spell.
can’t run overload cus i need to dedicate the rune slot to 2h specialization.
can’t run burn and mental dex at the same time.
can’t run feral spirit and S/E/F at the same time.
can’t run lightning shield runes of ANY kind and riptide at the same time.
can’t run improved ghost wolf (which is an awful rune that should have made the spell instant cast from the get-go btw) and earth shield at the same time.
so ok, how am i supposed to interpret this if not a blatant attempt at just deleting the class?
all these things combined is nothing short of total overkill, and now, in pvp, i cannot heal myself… on a class that is supposed to be a versatile hybrid… who also, up till this point, had to rely on self-sustain due to a total lack of any and all CC and defensive cooldowns to have any influence in pvp.
i have already reached rank 13, playing my shaman as enhancement in pvp, and let me tell you; it was NOT a fun experience.
my damage output as an RNG based burst spec can’t even kill an unshielded mage, let alone a tough class such as a warlock, and forget about boomkins, paladins, warriors, and bears, and this is WITH hand of ragnaros and BIS gear equipped.
my lava burst CRIT (note: CRIT - NOT “HIT”) for 900 damage on a good day.
MY BANDAGES ARE HEALING ME MORE THAN SPAM-CASTING MY HEALS BRO
can we stop deluding ourselves into believing shaman is still running around clapping armies of enemy players and make some fixes to enhancement?
few suggestions oriented at PVE:
- add 2h attack rune for glove slot
- if no 2h rune for enhancement, fix molten blast damage output and allow it to proc maelstrom stacks.
- allow enhancment to scale from agility, 1 AP per 1 Agi.
- 2h specialization rune and dual wield specialization runes baseline.
- delete static shock, let enhancement shaman use overcharged for their dps.
few suggestions oriented at PVP:
- revert earth shield and riptide nerfs.
- buff ghost wolf rune, instant cast for a start, add pvp boots speed increase on top of it. move it to a different rune slot, such as chest so i can use earth shield with it (this is assuming dw/2h specializations become baseline as well).
- give mental dexterity its healing bonus back, or at least half of it.
- increase earth shield spell pushback protection 30>60% so i can cast heals in combat.
- buff decoy totem to, in addition to its current effects, also remove active odd stuns (such as hunters frost trap, which for some reason counts as a magic stun instead of a root).
- shamanistc rage can be used while stunned, 15>20 seconds duration.
another fundamental issue with the design of the spec (enhancement btw, just a reminder) is that too many rune slots need to be dedicated just to make it function, which essentially cheats us out of having a choice at all.
you NEED to run mental dexterity (helm).
you NEED to run dw/2h specialization (chest).
these runes are non-choices, because if you don’t have these runes the spec doesn’t work.
another fundamental issue is having to activate runes such as mental dexterity to apply its benefits, and this can only be done with stormstrike.
so guess what; stormstrike gets parried or dodged?
too bad, you won’t have your scaling rune active now, for at least 6 seconds, and god forbid it happens twice in a row.
add to that (very big) problem, that our initial attack which is the most important one, going into a fight, is completely neutered damage-wise because the mental dex rune needs to be activated with a stormstrike attack to increase our damage and get it up to where it needs to be.
this means that if you proc WF before activating mental dex, that is a huge dps loss until the next ICD window.
the fact mental dexterity rune isn’t permanently active after using stormstrike just once is a spec-breaking issue.
the band-aid fixes to ele shamans using it are clearly beyond halfassed and needs to be addressed.
as does the fact that using reincarnation while having way of earth active resses the shaman up with earth shock having its full 6 second cooldown incurred, and also cheating us out of a GCD in the process.
again, design issue that is spec-breaking and just the most obnoxious thing ever - especially in a raid situation where you get combat ressed by a druid, cus the same problem happens; can’t taunt for 6 seconds + cheated out of GCD.
the fact the application of way of earth even incurs a global cooldown, and has been from the start, is actually mindblowing.
imagine if you got CR’d as a warrior, and the first thing that happens when you get up is that your shield block incurs its full cooldown and you get a GCD, like… ok.
or exaggerating about this or that.