No Agi for Sham on level up?

[Shammylover67]

Why is shaman the only class that does not receive +1 agi per level up?

They are 60 agility behind every class in the game. Is there any explanation for this?

[Blondboombox]

It's the most important stat for a melee shaman too, wild.

[Xudo]

Actually I doubt that agility is important for leveling shamans.
You get only crit and dodge from agility. It does not add attack power like in retail.

You should gear up with strength, which adds 2 ap per each point. So it directly increase your damage output.

[Jstansberry]

Actually I doubt that agility is important for leveling shamans.
You get only crit and dodge from agility. It does not add attack power like in retail.

You should gear up with strength, which adds 2 ap per each point. So it directly increase your damage output.

Agility is more important than strength when prioritzing stats, even at level 60. This is because WF attacks have a very big AP bonus so AP is devalued while crit chance is more valued. Critting consistently also means keeping Flurry up. Because of this, agility generally provides more DPS than strength until you get to around ~44% crit chance (which I've never seen a shaman obtain without mongoose elixir and world buffs). Losing out on the ~60 agi that could potentially be given to shamans from level 1-60 is very detrimental to enhancement.

[Hctwowfan]

How did you come to the conclusion that a shaman never gets any agility via level up? I'm not saying they do, it's just that you get stat points in all random ass stats all over the place. Do you happen to have a breakdown of all stats gained per level for all classes? Cause I'd be interested in seeing that. Or did you go from your last level up and saw that you didn't gain agility?

I'm fairly certain that a priest gains the occasional +1 strength from a level up. Stat gains are not intended for min maxing.

[Blondboombox]

Agility gives more crits which proc the ele talent that reduces mana cost of 2 offensive spells by 40%. So it provides mana cost reduction on spells, dodge chance (highly important for shaman tanks), crits for flurry and increases your armor. It is the most valuable stat for Enh (more so for shaman tanks).

Well looking at my base stats on my lvl 41 shaman my AGI is the lowest stat by a good margin. If you need more proof than that someone else will have to provide it.

[Jammyxx]

They do, just not every level. You probably haven't noticed

[Hctwowfan]

What I thought.

So your base agility is higher than at level 1. I'm not sure I understand what you're asking for.

If you gained more agility from level ups overall you'd be gaining less of a different stat. An elemental shaman may have a different point of view if you make shamans gain more agility and take away intellect.

[Jstansberry]

A shaman's highest base stat, no matter the race, is by far going to be spirit. Spirit is practically, useless even for resto (unless you stack % mana regen in combat items, which is suboptimal to say the least). Take away some spirit gain per level and put it into agility. My (orc) shaman only has 52 base agility. That is almost half of what a warrior would have and less than half of a rogue or hunter's base agility. Considering how important agility is for enhancement shamans, this would be a simple yet effective buff without disrupting the resto or ele.

[Hctwowfan]

Well, it is what it is. Spirit on a feral druid with 0.09 hp reg/spirit (compared to 0.8 hp reg/spirit for warriors), strength on a hunter, occasional int on a warrior, every class gets ffed here and there when it comes to level up stats. I don't see how shamans are special in that regard.

Back in D2 you could allocate your 5 stat points with every level up, a concept that was abandoned in D3. Vanilla wow was produced for the masses of players that never played an rpg before and thus wanted to make things less complicated. You level up, your stat points are allocated for you. Some are good, some are suboptimal. In a perfect world you'd be allocating your stats yourself when you level up, which then would lead to more min maxing and the necessity to balance niche cases. If it was perfectly balanced, you'd come to more or less the same results we already have.

You shouldn't compare your agility with a hunter anyway. Hunters get more agility because they gain +2 ranged ap from it. To compensate this, a hunter needs a whooping 53 agility to gain 1% crit. Whereas everyone else but rogues gains 1% crit at (idk) 20 agility. Your 60 baseline agility already net 3% crit where a hunter would need 159 agility for the same crit%

[Jstansberry]

You shouldn't compare your agility with a hunter anyway. Hunters get more agility because they gain +2 ranged ap from it. To compensate this, a hunter needs a whooping 53 agility to gain 1% crit. Whereas everyone else but rogues gains 1% crit at (idk) 20 agility. Your 60 baseline agility already net 3% crit where a hunter would need 159 agility for the same crit%

Shamans get no AP from agility - just the crit, dodge, and armor. With that 159 agility hunters would betting 318 ranged attack power on top of the crit, dodge, and armor. Rogues get more dodge rating from agility than any other class and they receive AP from agility. While hunters are not the best DPS class, they are in a far better place than enhancement shamans who have a serious stat budgeting issue on top of a lacking kit. Despite getting no AP from agility enhancement shamans, like rogues or hunters, have agility as their primary DPS stat because of how important crit is to them and how well it scales with WF compared to the raw AP from strength. Enhancement shamans have the lowest base agility of any physical damage/weapon attack class in the game despite this.

Basically, my argument is that other classes/specs get the primary stats they want in their base stats, so why not move some of the excessive amounts of nearly useless spirit shamans get into agility?

[Hctwowfan]

I agree with everything you said. But that's a different argument. So you basically want to buff shamans via giving them more baseline agility and thus free crit% in exchange for a less favorable stat. The game is balanced (neither good nor bad just as a status quo) the way it is. If you wanted to keep the balance you'd then have to nerf flurry to mitigate the impact of increased crit%. Or not do it and not keep the current balance.

I understand that it may be frustrating for a shaman to have arbitrarily lower agility than other classes. That's why you have utility. A pure dps class will always be way ahead in dps in comparison. The utility you provide to a raid comes at a cost.

[Jstansberry]

Enhancement brings no further utilty to a raid over an elemental or restoration shaman. The talents that increase the effects of totems are incredibly marginal increases so having a resto that can raid heal better than any other healing class with Chain Heal spam or an ele shaman that can do double the DPS of an enhancement is always going to be better.
Enhancement specifically is severely lacking, I don't think preservation of the current balance is a priority seeing as this is a vanilla+ server that has already made significant changes to almost every class and spec.
Trading excess spirit on level ups in exchange for agility is only a marginal buff for resto/ele by providing some dodge chance, while possibly being a notable buff to what is arguably the worst spec in the game.

[Blondboombox]

If I wanted the "balance of the status quo" I could just play classic.
This isn't classic so I don't understand why you think preserving the status quo is important? Besides that Paladins absolutely are not the status quo from classic (and arguably the other hybrids too)

As many have stated the status quo leaves Enhancement at the bottom, with lower DPS than tanks, and about the same utility as ele and resto who can do more DPS or heal very well.