I’ve been playing a shaman for a while and I realized that in the name of faction buff parity so much of the defining utility spells in the Shaman kit have been passed around to other classes in so much better forms, to elaborate:
Tremor totem → Inspiration Exemplar: straight upgrade over tremor if you don’t consider charm effects for the 2 or 3 relevant situation in the entire game. And it ticks every two seconds unlike tremor every four and you can’t destroy it with a wand in pvp.
Strength of Earth and Grace of wind totems → Horn of Lordaeron, now this one is just silly, combines two totems into one buff. Shamans don’t get their agi totem till 42, so even next phase Shamans won’t have something that Paladins had since lvl 15?
Windfury totem → Wild Strikes, this one is better in every single way, it has built in scaling(the shaman version provides a fixed AP value) and you don’t get to waste GCDs on it as the druid has to just exist. And this is available one entire phase sooner as well.
So I wonder, I thought everyone agreed after classic that the Alliance was stronger, because of paladins. Who thought it was a good idea to pile every single advantage that horde had over the Alliance already strong kit?
If you don’t want to tank as a shaman you either play as a middling healer or a poor dps, watching others play with your toys, only better than yours, even when you eventually get them. And the shaman tank is good right now, who knows how much it will fall off later due to immunities or other classes scaling much better.
Shaman gets said totems for free eventually, while said classes need to spend a rune for those effects.
That’s not a small drawback as far as SoD goes.
For example Paladin that brings exemplar - can’t interrupt or use Avenger’s Shield or loses an extra attack via Exorcism. And while Exorcism is whatever, as far as PvP goes - you bet Rebuke and Avenger’s Shield are simply better picks.
Where are the shaman rune tradeoffs that give this class iconic powerful spells from other classes?
If the goal was to bring buff parity to the factions, after everyone agreed the Alliance had it better because of paladins, then how is it fair for Shamans and not Paladins to pass their kit around.
Blessing of protection, salvation(don’t bother comparing the joke that is tranquil air totem to salv), freedom - one class had these and still only one class has these while you can find pieces of shamans everywhere while shamans don’t even have said things.
I agree with the OP the totems need some love next patch.
People used to love having shamn in party while raiding, now i just sit in the caster group.
I don’t have any caster buff at this level
Few groups want shamns that are not tanking, im fine with tanking now and than but sometimes you just want to chill and zug zug.
Shamans need some twiks next patch.
How can you even kite melee? warriors will have like 3 types of charge effects, currently one, and fear immunity, rogues have imp. sprint, vanish, blind, gouge, paladin have freedom and slow now, stuns. If someone utilizes these it will be very hard to kite them for anyone except mage, which is classically the bane of melee classes(with maybe the exception of rogues where skill, experience and gear will decide most of the fight).
The potential is still there and it happens often, even if they remove it with the ways you mentioned, you are again gonna get FS for 8 seconds on a 6s CD. So you only have somany outofjailfreecards.
Ranged classes don’t have anything to remove the FS slow, especially hunters, but by then their pet killed you.
Hunter is strong as it is. Thank God if shamans beat them but /doubt.
Shamans are one of the classes that can beat warlock also if not going full dummy mode. I wouldnt mind them being strong though. I’m pretty sure frost shock has diminishing effects like fear does tho.
Also to the people complaining that raids dont want shamans; I had 4 today, with our healer being such a dummy that he stood right in the middle of akumais breath and dying to the shadow murlocs twice after I thoroughly explained the mechanics and still ninjaing rakkamars. Should have just master looterd it, but im no scumbag.
The sad truth is most people that are decent at the game, use meta builds and dont experiment. Only the real bad players and the real good players use anything else. So this is a big gamble you have to take each time you take any non meta build like a shaman healer.
So it was fine and balanced for other classes to get shaman utilities but not the other way around?
I played a priest during Season of Mastery to the endgame and trying a priest now in Season of Discovery you barely play the same. Spells like Penance and Prayer of Mending have transformed the class, you feel so much more mobile and effective.
And the priest example is just one, paladins feel so cool to play as well compared to vanilla.
They could have given Shamans Hex or Riptide or Spirit Wolves or anything but the boring kit we ended up right now. It is boring and weak to be honest. You have to play tank everywhere if you want to get a taste of what other classes have received.
Do you want to pvp → tank rune, do you want to pve and not feel like a meme → tank rune.
My hopes for phase 2 is that there will be a rune that trades your totems (cant use them anymore) for a permanent stat boost (20% more to all stats or something similar) or a rune that converts your totems in to buffs instead that affects you and your party members and maybe adds that you can now use 2 of each type of totem as buffs instead of only 1 of each type.
Utility isn’t the problem and more of it won’t get DPS shamans invited to raids. The difference in DPS is so vast that it’s still better to just bring another of the good DPS classes than to bring a shaman, as the increase in damage from totems etc will not be enough to make up for the shaman’s subpar personal dps.
