Post
by Akos1896 » Sun Mar 24, 2024 2:42 pm
I touched this topic many times but I will do it again, because shamans are my passion project. Will be a very long post.
I think to understand the 'shaman situation' there are some fundamentals which have to be noted:
* Shamans have an extreme amount of (sometimes niche) utility
* Besides bloodlust, which TWOW Team gave them, all of these utilities are baseline with 'whatever' upgrades in the talent trees
* Most of these utilities are passive and come through totems (you don't need to keep on casting or channeling these utilities) - main exception is chain heal (bloodlust somewhat but it's insta cast on 5 min CD)
* It means that for PVE, shamans can reach their full utility, if:
1. They spam the utility which requires casting while keeping up the others. It means spamming chain heal and going to resto.
2. Going 31 into enhancement tree for bloodlust (+ somewhat better melee totems) for the full utility set. Shaman baseline is very strong while talent tree is very meh. You can easily give up 21+ talent points on resto tree for the whole utility package.
If we dream big and talk about big changes, class needs fundamental redesign, restricting utilities and putting them behind class specs. I will touch this later.
But first, I wanna point out how shamans builds currently fare.
Elemental is A+ tier in PVP, C+ in PVE. They are extremely bursty and purge is a godsend at PVP. They struggle at PVE because 1) bad mana management, 2) they can only spam nature damage, high nat rez mobs are a bane for ele 3) serious threat issues; no threat reduction talent 4) they don't bring any added utility to the table. You get the shaman package without bloodlust and without spamming chain heal. From PVE min-max perspective, it is a suboptimal package.
Enhancement DPS is around C+ for PVP and C- for PVE. Purge helps them out at PVP. Here, you get the bloodlust for the package but instead of chain heal (the castable part of the package), you will do autohits with frequent glancing blows. Enhancement tree has many problem, but the most glaring one is that they need both shock upgrades and added hit chance to function properly. Currently hit chance talent is in the middle of the resto tree while shock upgrades are in the ele tree, meaning that you, as an enhancement shaman have to choose if you want hit chance or better shocks. Other problem with them is that they are a 2H DPS class. 2H weapons are slow. So you want to cheese in extra hits as a build philosophy. You have flurry. Good. Your slow weapon is slightly less slow after a crit. You have stormstrike, which is actually a pretty neat talent. Problem is that that's almost all. You can pray for WF procs and you can bloodlust yourself but 1) wf procs are unreliable; they provide a nice melee bonus but you can't plan around them 2) with enhancement's current DPS, bloodlusting yourself in a raid is a deserved /gkick. Enhancement lacks one more melee ability, some added melee haste and a way to get back mana from melee crits.
Resto is in a very good shape. TWOW actually buffed the hell out of the spec with the added '5% mana regeneration continues while casting' items. Are you a fresh level 60 resto and you're worried about your mana management for early raids? Spam Kara Crypts dungeon, buy a boe chest, farm satyrs for a helmet and you have 15-20% mana regen while casting. Two of these items are good enough to accompany you until Naxx progression and the ES staff plus the druid buff will make sure that you still have at least 20% mana regen while casting at later phases. Nowadays, after a pug or after guild raids, whenever I check the heal log, a resto shaman is at the top. Yes, chain heal is that oppressive.
(I will not talk about shaman tanks. It's a subjective take but I think they are not a priority. Maybe one day when shaman builds are balanced for both PVE and PVP.)
Tiny changes concept
Here I wanna mention some tiny changes which seem small but help balancing a lot without solving the fundamental problems of the shaman design.
Here I won't propose new talents, just move, buff or merge existing ones.
For enhancement:
* Merge guardian totems and enhancing totems talents. Guardian totems are almost insignificant. Stoneskin is a niche. Merging these 2 frees up 2 talent points.
* Nature's guidance to the first row of enhancement tree so that ele can reach it easily, too. Shield specialization can go deeper.
* Improved lightning shield could buff all shields.
* Thunderhead allowing you and the target both to have lightning shield (only lightning shield)
* Elemental devastation to enhancement tree.
* Stormstrike buffing you instead of debuffing the target.
* Improved fire totems to enhancement tree. Really. How often does a caster DPS run into melee range to put down a totem and then nananana-Blyatman away to caster range and lose 4 seconds of casting time? Magma and Fire Nova totems are clearly designed for builds using melee range.
(I put a lot of things here, question is what to remove - looking at the shield talents. Those half-working tank shenaningans prevent enhancement from having a cohesive DPS talent tree. Those guys are not feral druid, they won't shapeshift for random buffs and new abilities. All those buffs and abilities have to be mentioned in the talent tree and they take up talent slots. >>Or maybe putting improved ghost wolves baseline at level 60.<<)
For elemental:
* Elemental focus should make the next spell free instead of the next two 40% cheaper. One of the causes of the ele mana problems is that their clearcasting doesn't help them reach 5sec for full spirit mana regen.
* Tidal mastery to first row, either ele or resto tree.
* Storm reach should work with shocks so that ele can stay at max range and have a variety at casting. If it breaks PVP, my suggestion is to only add the increased radius to flame shock (and maybe earth shock). Specially since half of the talent tree is about making shocks stronger.
For resto:
* Healing way should trigger from lesser healing wave, too. You rarely use healing wave at raids but you sometimes use lesser healing wave.
* Ancestral fortitude not getting triggered from chain heal. A bit of nerf to make restos think before they just press the chain heal button every time.
* Healing focus. It is a disgrace. It costs 5 talent points. Priests have the same talent with the same name and same effect if fully learnt and it costs 2 talent points. Let's free up 3 talent points here!
* Restorative totems need a buff. Manaspring totem is meh, healing stream totem is a meme.
* Shorten manatide totem's CD.
For everyone:
Weapon buffs from lvl 60 work for 15 minutes, just like the big pala buffs.
Bigger changes, if we are more radical:
I'd close up some utilities behind talent trees and make some nerfs here and there first. It weakens the shaman base and allows better buffs via the talent tree itself.
* Give a CD to purge -> huge PVP balance, allows shamans to get stronger otherwise
Now purge has two levels, both can be spammed on GCD, 2nd level removing 2 beneficial effects. I'd change 2nd purge benefit, would still remove only one beneficial effect but with a smaller CD. Let's say 1st purge has a 10 sec CD, 2nd level would have 5 sec. Both would share the same CD of course.
* Put chain heal to the bottom of the resto talent tree
* Put WF totem to the bottom of the Enhancement talent tree
* Lock up cleansing totems in the resto talent tree while keeping cure disease and cure poison available for every builds. People tend to mock me for this but these 2 totems are situational but absolutely broken. Because of two things. 1. They don't have a CD, you can spam them every GCD. 2. They cleanse the party when summoned. Forget the cleansing 1 effect from each party member every 5 seconds totem description. If they are needed, you just spam them and cleanse 1 effect from every party member every second! Compare it to abolish poison to see how broken this is.
Alternatively, would nerf cleansing totems. They can remove the poison/disease effect after every 5 sec but they wouldn't trigger immediately when summoned (5 sec is needed). In this case they could stay baseline.
* Would change how tranquil air totem works and would lock it behind the elemental talent tree.
In exchange.
Ele:
* Gets a spell damage totem at the bottom of the tree.
* Gets tranquil air totem which, instead of the -20% party threat, halves the threat generated by crits. Works differently than the pala buff and they complement eachother very well. Solves the threat spike problem coming from crits at the pumper caster groups.
* Gets mana regen after spell crits.
* Gets spell penetration to better handle high nat rez mobs.
* Gets lava burst (maybe a nerfed version, without guaranteed crit if the target has a flame shock; let's say +20% chance to crit)
Enhancement DPS (tank gets ignored in this post):
* Gets a passive melee haste ability
* Gets a weapon skill ability for 2h maces
* Bloodlust changing into a bloodlust totem, giving 20% melee haste for 10 sec for every party member in 10 yards
* Getting mana regen from melee hits
* +1 melee attack ability
* Melee crits reducing shock and stormstike CD
Resto:
* Better mana totems
* A health totem indeed feeling like a weaker hot
* A talent reducing the next healing wave's cast time by 1,5 sec or lesser healing wavwe cast time by 0,8 sec after a healing crit
* Giving a short haste bonus for targets receiving a single target crit healing from the resto
* Healing rain
* Maybe some kind of riptide
For everyone: A weapon enchancement which gives a bit of mp5.
Last edited by
Akos1896 on Sun Mar 24, 2024 4:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.
