First of all, let me get this out of the way. I don't like the sound of Shamans as a plural for Shaman. I much prefer Shaman, but I'm going with WoWWiki, at least for now.Secondly, I am not a Shaman. I am reporting on Shamans. I am interviewing Shaman veterans. I am provoking Shaman discussions. I am in ur forumz reading ur threadz. You will notice when reading the newspaper or Fark or whatever that these people you are reading are not presidents and soldiers and socialites. They are writing about presidents and soldiers and socialites. And I am writing about Shamans. Regardless, I've been through this before, so my fire resistant gear is equipped.
I am, however, constantly bombarded with all things Shaman because my husband is a rabid, raiding, Level 70 Tauren Shaman. As I write this, he is in Serpentshrine Cavern with his Barbie DreamShield and his cape taken from a little girl and I'm trying to get him to take some screenshots. You may already know him from this story, but right now he is Onnix, the Shammy Healbot from the guild Grim on Daggerspine.
According to Warcraft Realms, the Shaman is the least played class currently among characters played in the last 30 days above level 10. And the Alliance have not raced to make as many Blueberry Shamans as the Horde have made Belfadins. Clearly, the general WoW population considers Shamans the least fun/useful class to play at this time. So I asked Onnix why he thought that was the case. Onnix would rather have answered the question "What is fun about playing an endgame Shaman?", but I was able to put that off to a future column. Instead, he told me the top 5 things that should be changed to make the Shaman a more successful class.
[Onnix]
1. Mana Efficiency: It is the worst of all healing classes/specs. Shamans don't get any bonuses to spirit, so we must rely solely on stacking Mana Per 5 gear and Mana Potions. We also don't have any talents like the Paladin's illumination or the innate mana reduction of the Druid's Tree of Life. All of this is not to say that Shaman are bad healers, we're not. Shaman make great healers, and i think in general are very under appreciated. It just takes a higher level of gear and consumables to heal as effectively as other classes.
2. Aggro: Shamans have no aggro wipe mechanics like other healing classes and the Tranquil Air Totem is useless if grouped with tanks/melee. The Tranquil Air Totem gives a 30% threat reduction, but melee classes generally want DPS enhancing totems, like Windfury or Agility, which is the same element as the Tranquil Air Totem. Also, if grouped with your Main Tank, you don't want the tank's threat reduced at all. Another problem with it is if you're in a caster group, they want Wrath of Air to increase DPS, but again that is the same element. It is really only useful in a pure healing group, but then, honestly, I'd still go with Wrath of Air, because it increases healing as well.
3. Totems: The totem system, while providing great buffs, needs a lot of re-working in mechanics. The global cooldown between each cast is painful, especially in PVP where you don't have the luxury of prepping all your totems before you engage. The two minute duration means you spend a lot of time re-casting totems. This is woefully inadequate when compared to paladin blessings (compare blessing of wisdom to mana spring totem). The totem system is a great idea conceptually, i mean who doesnt want different buffs/defuffs for each element? The problem is with its implementation. Since they have a short 2 minute duration, you want to drop them just before battle, or as you engage to get the maximum benefit out of them, but with the global cooldown, you're spending the first 8 seconds of your fight dropping totems. Ever been killed by a mage in 8 seconds?
The second main problem with totems, is that they are stationary, you have to constantly re-drop totems whenever your teammates run out of range, which is usually more of a problem for PvE than PvP. I've heard people suggest making them mobile, or making them re-castable with one click, or affect more than just your party -- all kinds of useful ideas. I personally don't know what would be best, but a complete re-working of the totem system is definitely in order.
4. Crowd Control: We have no crowd control and we have no anti crowd control.
5. PVP: The Elemental and Enhancement specs are poor PvP specs because of a lack of survivability. Restoration is the best for PvP because of great survivability (not necessarily bad, but makes dps specs less useful).
[End Onnix]
Admittedly, Onnix is a Restoration Shaman with fond memories of his Elemental days. So fond, that he sometimes spends his gold to respec, if only for a few hours. He is not very familiar with the current state of Enhancement and says they have a separate list of issues.
Do you agree with Onnix's list of needed changes for Shamans? Do you have a high level Shaman that you are not playing? And the burning question: which plural of Shaman do you prefer?
Are you a Shaman with interesting experiences or insightful opinions or inside knowledge that you would like to share? Please email Robin.Torres@weblogsinc.com with your Shaman's name and server for a possible interview.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
6-21-2007 @ 4:38PM
Seper said...
Nihilum says shammys are good at healing.. and i konw there totems do some cool stuff... but i've never seen a shammy do anything worthwhile.. to make me want to give up a dps, healing spot to a shammy. So can someone explain to me why i should take a shammy over any other class?
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6-21-2007 @ 4:43PM
Sylvina said...
Uhh... Buffs?
Shaman bring a heck of buffs, and if their DPS or Healing sucks, instead they're just going to make the rest of your group look good with extra crit, agility, spell power, mana regen, etc.
Trust me, as a long time Horde Player, you want shaman.
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6-21-2007 @ 4:47PM
Sylvina said...
Btw, if that's your husband in the current pic, make sure to tease him about his silly looking helmet. hehe
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6-21-2007 @ 4:50PM
Tom said...
The best thing I've seen them do in 5mans is their fear resistance totem. Makes some encounters a cakewalk when you can all be immune to fear without really worrying about focusing on it. (see: shadow labs heroic)
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6-21-2007 @ 4:52PM
Ichthus said...
I've had a friend repeatedly recommend playing a shaman, but from an outsider's perspective, the class doesn't make much sense. I know the pieces are there, but can't figure out how they go together to make a cohesive class.
Would love to hear more information about it though.
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6-21-2007 @ 5:14PM
konasmoke said...
It's an easy fix really.
1. Remove cooldowns on how often totems can be dropped.
2. Increase health/mana regen to 25/tick.
3. Make totems last for 5 minutes.
4. In addition to earthbind slowing opponents, make it remove snares on friendly party.
5. Tremor totem should pulse every tick. And it should remove all charm effects. Right now it doesnt seem to work against some bosses mind controls, etc.
That would fix the class IMO.
Thank you for listening.
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6-21-2007 @ 5:21PM
Coherent said...
They need to do one thing to Shamans to make them incredibly useful in endgame: Extend totem buffs beyond the immediate group - make totems affect everyone in the _raid_ within range.
That said, Shamans are generally weak. I kill them very easily in PVP. They definitely need some kind of edge. They need mobile totems or something like that, they have an extremely difficult time dealing with mobile battles and swift ranged opponents.
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6-21-2007 @ 5:24PM
Unbreakable said...
Shaman were an overpowered class... Once.
But after the nerfs they received and the buffs other classes ended up with... Well lets just say I won't be making any more Shaman PvP videos. I have sold my Shaman a while back and am having a lot more fun with my Warrior. I know my Shaman never scored a 3k white crit on a clothie...
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6-21-2007 @ 5:28PM
pippo said...
First of all I'm a longtime shaman player. (btw i prefer shamans as plural)
@1 nihilum is right with saying shamans are good at healing - imho shamans are the best crosshealers ingame: chainheal is one of the most underestimated spell in the game - and one of the most powerful (scales insanely well)
so i can only recommend a restoration shaman to any raid: mana tide; u can outlast priests/druids in long fights - not as good as paladins, but u can come close to it; totembuffs, awesome earthshield and quite some survivability (our pala and me were often one of the last ones standing in many bossfights)
as for pvp, restoration is great (despite some aweful bad talents in that tree, e.g. restorative totems)
overall restoration is by far the best tree endgame for a shaman imho (similar to the holy tree of a paladin)
however in pve, melee and ele specced shamans contribute a lot to a raid (would be too long to go into detail here)
all in all, shaman is a very powerful class in pve as well as pvp, though it needs a lot of redesigning - all the issues mentioned by onnix are so damn true (which is also why i froze my acc last week)
to be continued...
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6-21-2007 @ 5:28PM
Baluki said...
@4: Shamans don't have a fear resistance totem. It doesn't make you immune either. What it does is remove existing fear effects. So you have to be feared already for it to affect you. And you have to be within a certain radius of it (which is sometimes difficult because you'll often not be in range when you're running away). And it only "pulses" the fear-removal once every few seconds, so you often have plenty of time to go running away from it.
I've gotta say, focusing on the Restoration tree isn't very helpful when asking "what's wrong with shamans", because it's the best tree we have. Elemental and Enhancement shamans are in much worse shape. At least Resto has a way to improve its mana recovery with Restorative Totems and, of course, the mighty Mana Tide Totem. The only way Elementals can recover mana (besides passive abilities and stats) is with a mana potion.
Also, saying that shamans have no anti-CC isn't strictly accurate. We have ways to avoid CC, but no way to break it. Grounding Totem and Tremor Totem help us to a certain extent, and we've got a talent that helps us resist silence and interrupt (again, in the Resto tree).
Elemental and Enhancement are pretty poor for PvP (especially Enhance) but they're also pretty lousy for PvE. Both are even worse with aggro than Resto.
I've been playing my shaman since the beta, and am extremely disappointed in the state of the class. We got the least useful changes/additions in BC (besides Bloodlust and Earth Shield) of all the classes, and Blizzard just doesn't seem to have any desire to make us useful. I've taken a break from the game, and won't be back until I've seen some positive shaman changes, or until the next expansion comes out.
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6-21-2007 @ 5:28PM
Auriea said...
I currently raid with a 70 elemental shaman. I feel I have the same issues that Onnix does.
I go OOM on long fights.
I have to stop dpsing because my aggro is too high.
Totems, CC, and PVP I need to say nothing about because Onnix already did.
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6-21-2007 @ 5:35PM
watkins said...
From my experience the alliance don't know what to do with a shaman and that's why there isn't a large population of them. Since re-rolling to one I've seen group after group and guild after guild under-utilize the abilities shaman can provide to a raid.
@1
A well geared elemental shaman will keep up decent DPS and buff the casters by a huge margin. Enhancement shaman have been known to top many damage meters given the opportunity to play to their full extent. I'd rather a shaman over an extra rogue or mage anytime, add in the extra damage the shaman caused to be done by group members as their own and they'd easily top any meter.
As for healing, shaman are a niche healer and people need to realize that. We shine at group healing. All those pretty lights zipping around in high-end kill videos? Yeah, that's what shaman do. The CMs and GMs have said it time and time again "Chain Heal is overpowered." Add in we're the only class with a REACTIVE heal (Earth Shield) and we're fantastic to bring along.
I do agree however that totems need to be reworked. The time and high mana cost of constantly having to rebuff is a huge hinderance to the class right now. 6-8 seconds of being completely out of the fight every 2 minutes is a bit much and it adds up on long fights when those few seconds can really count.
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6-21-2007 @ 5:37PM
Furiosa said...
I play primarily an Elemental Shaman (plural is Shaman, not Shamans!) and for me the biggest setback is a complete lack of Anti-CC and no secondary nuke. Firing lightning bolts is great, but getting counter-spelled is not so great, and nature immune mobs (see earth/air elementals / hydross) are an absolute bitch to fight. Sure you can slam them with your 41 dps mace, but that gets you nowhere.
Also, just after getting 2ND in damage on Magtheridon, I'm now almost forced to spec Resto so I can raid with the guild in SSC. Hydross, the first boss, is nature immune, meaning any night I go in there I either have to blow 100g, or slam him wiht my mace. Fun fun.
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6-21-2007 @ 5:49PM
Karnage said...
i play a 70 tauren shaman resto specced.
2000+arena teams in all categories, and working on kael'thas.
karnagex is the name.
heres my honest thoughts on some simple buffs.
1) give us some sort of CC, anything at all really. nothing extremely overpowered (cyclone lol)
2) TOTEMS WITH MORE HEALTH. totems are the only thing that makes a shaman stand out. in pvp our defensive totems are a total joke.
i'll put it like this: i drop a tremor totem, i get feared, clever warlcok wands the totem right after (it has a huge red tag with a healthbar on it that says "tremor totem take me out plz i have 1hp).
thus, the fear lasts forever.
simple solution would be give it at least 3000 hit points so theyd actually have to put SOME effort into killing it.
as far as PVE goes, i dont really think we need any buffs, maybe give us a pet bar for our fucking useless totem pets, but thats about it really.
at the end of the day, the only difference from a 60 shaman to a 70 shaman is bloodlust, thats the only thing Blizzand deemed fair to give us (dont even get me started on the uselessness of the earth/fire elementals).
o and water sheild...get the fuck outta here with that shit..
either way, shamans really need some work, its very hard to play an underpowered class.
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6-21-2007 @ 5:49PM
pippo said...
2nd part:
with TBC almost every class have their cc - except shamans (but that's because it's supposed to be like that - shamans should be an anticc class, but i'd like to know what anticc we do have - tremor totem is such a joke: in most cases i don't even notice it if it's up - so which other anticc do we have? erm, the only one i can think of is grounding totem, though it's not exactly anticc, but more of an absorb totem which is probably the best totem for pvp we have (besides maybe earthbind), but it's only one absorb and on a 15sec CD - still better than nothing, right?)
another aspect is itemization - shamans have ridiculously little stamina - thats a big issue for melee shamans - mostly cause of the hunter gear (which is supposed to be little on stamina)
The fact that totems are stationary aint a problem (for me) - with this variety of buffs and flexibility u have to have some sort of disadvantage to it - also compared to a paladin u can use 4 (or let's say effective 3) buffs at the same time, whereas only one blessing can be active at a time; BUT they should maybe increase the range to 40yds by default and 50 by talent as well as for the whole raid (though that could be easily too overpowered) - 2mins for totems is ok imho (3mins would be ok too though^^)
I don't see too much trouble any more with mana efficiency as many stated above - that was more of a topic before TBC - still i wish we could maybe get sth out of spirit as well, but that's only wishful thinking
last but not least the "aggro-problem", to be honest this only really affects enhancement shamans, while elemental shamans have the range going for them as well es restoration (plus they have very low aggro in healing in the first place unlike druids), but as melee shaman u really have nothing, it's either u hold back or u get aggro and die - that's just frustrating (as well as the wf-nerf, but that's another story)
yeah shamans were seen overpowered in the past (i say they were the only balanced class at that time) and were gradually and constantly nerfed down to where we are now - no wonder many shaman players rerolled or quit
just my 2 cents...
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6-21-2007 @ 5:51PM
Meno said...
The problem with Shaman isn't with Shaman. It's with BC.
Every class got a new from of CC or Anti-CC and we got jack. Sure, Bloodlust is *great*. It's probably the only reason we're in arena teams. I roll enhancement and it isn't that our class is *broken*, it's that we're pathetic 1 vs 1. I use "Shock Troop" tactics in group PVP. I find a fight in progess and hopefully roll a 2h windfury crit on a clothie. I know I am going to die. I just want to take as many clothies as/if possible. But once i'm CC'ed or snared, it's over. Free HK.
As for PVE, we're the *best* buffers in the game. with spec, +98 str, +88 agility, 10% Melee AP on crit for 10 seconds (we'll crit again before 10 seconds), and a 6 second (5 if specced) cooldown on interrupts. And "oh shit" heals if needed. Throw us with melee classes and everyone's DPS will jump through the roof. Best cross-buffing melee group: Feral druid, Warrior, Holy Pally, Ret Pally, and Enh Shaman.
Resto is nice. It just takes 2 hours to kill anything while soloing. Best spec even though we're the "offensive hybrids."
Never played elemental, but I know mana efficiency is their major flaw.
So here's the problems I see with enhancement:
Enh tree has much useless crap. 5% mana? shield spec? Talent point for dual wield and 2h'ers? Does anyone actually use our 41 point talent? instead of 21/40/0 "suicide spec" or 0/40/21 "oh shit healz" spec?
totems. no ui. stationary. too much mana.
Warriors have charge; rogues have stealth. Our major problem is getting to our target. I can beat fire mages, but I can't ever hit a frost mage twice. I'll never get close to him again. Forget about hunters. Warlocks aren't as bad with the Insignia changes.
That being said, I *love* playing an enhancement shaman. Most fun class i've ever played (solo). And since we've been underpowered since BC, we're only learning the finer points of playing our class to compete. Which, if they do make us on par with other classes, we'll roll over them and get nerfed again.
BTW, I heard CalTech, MIT, and UC Berkley are all offering advanced math degrees to anyone who can actually explain how to maximize Windfury DPS with flurry, weapon speed, the 3 sec cooldown, and haste. Because it's that complicated.
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6-21-2007 @ 5:53PM
kaoskongo said...
While i've been playing a shaman for awhile, i've never really been as hardcore as i should be (want to be?) and thus, reading this post, what i've always felt but could never quite put into description/recommendation is now finally out in the air :)
This is a great post btw. I'm elemental specc'ed, and i agree with some of the commentors in saying that most of my dungeon runs i have to slow down my dps because i draw too much aggro. Shamans have great dps in the elemental tree, but really do need a threat reducing something. If the mobs are nature resist, just like Furiosa, i'm reducing the mace spamming. Not fun. Though i have a great time in pvp. When i start raiding and if i'm required to respec to resto, i certainly don't mind :)
Imo, Shamans are a great class, but this post is great in pointing out the shortcomings of what would otherwise be one of the most wanted raiding classes (i think?)
Correct me if i'm wrong also, but is this the first weekly column for us shamans? :D Glad to see we're not forgotten ;) Though i think the priests and mages are still tapping their feet for their 5 minutes of fame ;)
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6-21-2007 @ 6:49PM
Baluki said...
@13: No, the plural is definitely "shamans". I checked several encyclopedias, and they all confirm it. Here's one: http://www.reference.com/search?q=Shaman
--
As experienced as I am with Resto and Elem, I've never specced Enhance (except when levelling, and that was a LONG time ago and I didn't know what I was doing). So could someone explain to me why you WOULDN'T get Shamanistic Rage? It looks awesome to me. Maybe it's not very good for PvP (just like the tree it's in).
--
Another problem with Elemental is that it doesn't offer anything to a group that an Enhance or Resto shaman doesn't, except for Totem of Wrath. Which, in my opinion, is crap; slightly good for raiding, and that's all. Yes, Elem can do some very good damage, but why not just get a Mage with CC? My back-up healing is lousy, and I feel like each heal I cast decreases the short amount of time I can cast lightning bolts by about 5%.
Blizzard really has a lot of work ahead of them. No wonder they haven't bothered.
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6-21-2007 @ 6:50PM
Wudamonkey said...
I agree with what Onnix said except one thing. He said elemental is weak in pvp. Thats a bold face lie. Elemental is the most common (speciicaly 40 ele / 21 resto)shamy spec in top 20 5v5 teams.
Every week it has consitantly been getting numbers between 55%-60% of top 20 5v5 shamy spec representation. So as far as top players go a elemental shamy is better than a resto in 5v5.
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6-21-2007 @ 6:51PM
Robin Torres said...
Mages and priests are getting their own columns, too! We promise!
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