The problem with balancing shamans

[Akos1896]

Hey!
I wanna write about what I think is the core design problem with shamans and why, in their current state can't be properly balanced.
For my example, I will use Bob, a level 60 orc shaman, who learnt 0 talents.
Bob, while having no talents whatsoever, by default has:
* The biggest party-wide melee DPS boost in the game.
* The best cleansing in the game.
* The best way to handle fear, charm and sleep.
* The best raid heal.
* Some situational utility which makes him sometimes MVP (like 6 sec CD interrupt or grounding totem).

Bob gets into a ZG pug. The talentless shaman appears at the gates.
Melee will immediately fight just to be in the same group as the mighty Bob. Melee wants big numbers and Bob can provide them. Bob gets into a group, the raid starts. A berserker comes and there is no real problem, because Bob has put down a tremor totem while being in the tank-melee group, everything went fine.
Spiders come and badly poison the party. No problem, Bob has the ásspul... the solution. Spamming a green-snake totem and poison is no more. The raid advances. Bob is among the HPS leaders of the raid because when he heals, he heals 3 guys. The pug reaches Hakkar and initiate the fight. It would be quite the challenge, since the raiders are not really well-geared, if not for Bob, our hero, who has the ásspul... the solution, by placing down a grounding totem, trivializing half of the fight.

I don't say that shamans are overpowered because they are not. I just say that their base package is so broken that talent trees cannot really be meaningful because it would break the class. For example imagine that TWOW buffs enhancement tree, making them a valid DPS. Bob decided to learn the enhancement tree. Bob goes to ZG again where he becomes one of the top performers.
Besides being one of the top DPS, Bob was able to:
* Interrupt the hell out of creatures which needed interruption.
* Make a melee party godlike with WF and strength totem.
* Prevented running around in fear many times.
* Cleansed the team in an instant whenever he wanted to.
* Bloodlusted a lucky guy for extreme DPS.
* MVP-d Hakkar.

Minmaxer guilds usually look for resto shamans because (besides bloodlust which was added by TWOW) the shaman trees don't have anything really special. Elemental can't give more to the party than a restoration and chain healing through a raid is better than triggering big 'resisted!' texts in the middle of the screen. Enhancement can have some slight utility especially since the inclusion of bloodlust. Since chain healing is the best thing a shaman can do during raids and restoration tree, while has some utility, doesn't have anything really important at the bottom, resto started to go deep into the enhancement tree, just to get the full utility set.

I already mentioned some really broken abilities which are given to shamans by default.
The other problem is that barely any of them has any meaningful buffs in any trees, meaning that talentless Bob is almost as good as any of the shamans for these utilities, regardless the spec.
Cleansing has no talent upgrade. Chain heal has none (some +healing and -mana cost abilities in resto tree but nothing groundbreaking and chain heal-specific), windfury has one in enhancement tree but it's weak (gives a numeric damage upgrade, it doesn't scale). Tremor is always the same. Grounding has an almost nonexistent upgrade while you can make earth shock 5 sec instead of 6 but it's not really a tie-breaker.

___________

Let's say that you wanna balance the enhancement tree! Currently enhancement shamans spend 80% of their time glancing blowing with auto-attacks, but you have the idea how to make them good. You have to convince shamans to want to melee instead of staying back and using the best raid heal in the game. If you can convince them by buffing the tree enough, you just get a melee DPS which by the way can do basically anything, if needed, including being an opressively efficient emergency healer.

A disclaimer here. People really underestimate how good cleansing totems are. They have no CD, so they are spammable. They have a reasonable mana cost and they work immediately on the whole party. Sure, their usage is situational but when poison or disease is relevant, those totems become extremely OP. Later Blizzard fused poison cleansing and disease cleansing, creating cleansing totem. Then they realized how OP it was and deleted the totem. Nowadays, in retail shamans have a very watered-down poison cleansing totem. And poison cleansing + disease cleansing are arguably better than the fused version because you can go specifically for poisons or diseases if both happen at the same time.

___________

What I'm saying is that shamans can be a utility class without having these extremely good utilities with the current effect by default. I know that it is a big deviation from Vanilla+ experience but if you want to have interesting and balanced elemental tree and enhancement tree, some of these utilities have to be locked behind a talent tree (resto is feeling fine, they just spam windfury totem and chain heal at the moment).

For example: while allowing cure poison and cure disease for each spec, locking cleansing totem deep into the resto tree is a huge step forward. Nerfing the base form of windfury and putting the OP windfury deep into enhancement tree is another one. Making chain heal meh by default (or removing it) and giving the OP chain heal at the bottom of the resto tree is another step forward.
Shamans would still have a bunch of utility by default (resistances, tremor, mana totem, stoneskin, strength, grace of air, curing poisons and diseases etc) but Bob, the talentless orc wouldn't be a superhero at a raid just because of the base talents.
And if we do these nerfs, there is a room to buff the specs individually, without making the end product necessarily broken.
An elemental shaman with bad WF, without chain heal and without mass cleansing is ready for a spellpower totem and for lava burst. Current iteration with these additions would break the class.
Same for the other specs.

Let's say that we do the nerfs I mentioned earlier and we invite talentless Bob again to ZG.
Bob could still be somewhat useful. He would be put into a melee group for a weaker WF buff and he would mostly spam lesser healing wave in the raids. Fear is handled as before. If mass-poison happens, Bob clicks on the names on the decursive list one-by-one. His healing output is bad. Hakkar comes and he helps with grounding the same way as before.
Utility is still there but now the naked Bob is really motivated to get a talent tree to actually become useful. Talent trees would start to mean more and would allow to buff the shaman more since we took away so much from the default package.

[Thefnom]

+1

This makes so much sense to me.

Druid is a great example of how a hybrid class is practically worthless in its other states but the one that has been specced into, apart from perhaps emergency healing in oomkin form.

Make Bob the basic bi*** weaker. Make specs stronger.

[Ninjerk]

+1

Every time I've thought about how to improve the shaman class, I usually end up feeling like their base abilities were too strong and that something would have to give in order to move them forward as a class. I also think they need some decluttering, personally, but I'll save any specific arguments in that regard to when I decide (if ever) to finish leveling my shaman alt.

[Burunduk]

I don't see any reason in nerfing shamans, because Classic + server should have buffed classes.

On the contrary, shamans should have even more totems, like it was in TBC.

[Bamrab]

Shamans are the worst and least played class. Let's solve that by nerfing the only good thing about them.

[Zvyrhol]

Shamans are the worst and least played class. Let's solve that by nerfing the only good thing about them.

The worst? Shamans rock in PVP. Isn't the Warlock least played class on Turtle WoW btw?

[Akos1896]

Shamans are the worst and least played class. Let's solve that by nerfing the only good thing about them.

Have you even read it? The post was about how to make them stronger without later balance problems. I main a shaman.

[Bamrab]

Yes I read your post. You want to nerf shaman utility and force them to deep spec to make it good(read: default) again. Just like retail. Maybe you should go play retail instead of bringing it here?
I have never heard anyone complain about the cleansing totems. Oh man cleansing totem is so overpowered. 1 poison/disease every 5 seconds? 5 people max? OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Shove it into deep resto so the non-resto shamans (they don't exist btw) don't have access to this godlike power.

If you main a shaman then you'd already know enhancement buffs totems and makes them better than what resto or ele can drop. Your idea would kill the class completely. Go play retail if you want to be a spec and not a class.

[Zvyrhol]

I guess you replied to wrong person haha

[Akos1896]

I guess you replied to wrong person haha

Oh! Sry man

[Akos1896]

Yes I read your post. You want to nerf shaman utility and force them to deep spec to make it good(read: default) again. Just like retail. Maybe you should go play retail instead of bringing it here?
I have never heard anyone complain about the cleansing totems. Oh man cleansing totem is so overpowered. 1 poison/disease every 5 seconds? 5 people max? OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Shove it into deep resto so the non-resto shamans (they don't exist btw) don't have access to this godlike power.

If you main a shaman then you'd already know enhancement buffs totems and makes them better than what resto or ele can drop. Your idea would kill the class completely. Go play retail if you want to be a spec and not a class.

Cleansing is broken, Blizzard removed it some expansions later for a reason (mostly the lack of CD).
Imagine it this way: you go to ES, half of the groups gets a shaman and for half of the groups the raid is trivialized. Mobs spamming aoe poison? One button and half of the raid is clean (you can spam cleansing totems and they cleanse when summonned so you can do a party cleanse every GCD). Same with some AQ bosses. Cure poison/disease is a fine base ability - my goal is not to hide all utility behind specs, my goal is to reduce the number of utilities shamans have by default. After that, real buffs can happen.
But if we f.ex. make ele a fire mage rn, it would be way too OP. A fire mage making every melee team 2x better and trivializing boss mechanics sometimes. Also comes with fear-tool and can start spamming the best raid heal in the game anytime if needed. Would be way too oppressive.
The other option is to make them weaker DPS for all this utility. This is kinda what's happening and shamans don't like it. You get the wf+bloodlust bot archetype auto-attacking with a Nightfall.

[Burunduk]

Blizzard removed totems and turned shaman into "just some class"
Later expansions don't equal good game.

[Noce]

+
i have also suggested similar things for shamans so many times. make each spec unique, specific and wanted individualy and we have playable shaman.
make chain heal as ultimate in resto tree and resto is fixed. similar can be done with other specs. can rearange talents and still not break the class. but doing soo, make space for spec specific things.

[Ataika]

> locking cleansing totem deep into the resto tree is a huge step forward

another cringe suggestion that does not cover all aspects of the game due to author being narrow minded

[Slashignore]

just give the shaman to be able to choose to dualwield and nothing else.

[Calli]

Just delete all talent trees make all classes like shamans

[Hungry9]

Hey!
I wanna write about what I think is the core design problem with shamans and why, in their current state can't be properly balanced.
For my example, I will use Bob, a level 60 orc shaman, who learnt 0 talents.
Bob, while having no talents whatsoever, by default has:
* The biggest party-wide melee DPS boost in the game.
* The best cleansing in the game.
* The best way to handle fear, charm and sleep.
* The best raid heal.
* Some situational utility which makes him sometimes MVP (like 6 sec CD interrupt or grounding totem).

Bob gets into a ZG pug. The talentless shaman appears at the gates.
Melee will immediately fight just to be in the same group as the mighty Bob. Melee wants big numbers and Bob can provide them. Bob gets into a group, the raid starts. A berserker comes and there is no real problem, because Bob has put down a tremor totem while being in the tank-melee group, everything went fine.
Spiders come and badly poison the party. No problem, Bob has the ásspul... the solution. Spamming a green-snake totem and poison is no more. The raid advances. Bob is among the HPS leaders of the raid because when he heals, he heals 3 guys. The pug reaches Hakkar and initiate the fight. It would be quite the challenge, since the raiders are not really well-geared, if not for Bob, our hero, who has the ásspul... the solution, by placing down a grounding totem, trivializing half of the fight.

I don't say that shamans are overpowered because they are not. I just say that their base package is so broken that talent trees cannot really be meaningful because it would break the class. For example imagine that TWOW buffs enhancement tree, making them a valid DPS. Bob decided to learn the enhancement tree. Bob goes to ZG again where he becomes one of the top performers.
Besides being one of the top DPS, Bob was able to:
* Interrupt the hell out of creatures which needed interruption.
* Make a melee party godlike with WF and strength totem.
* Prevented running around in fear many times.
* Cleansed the team in an instant whenever he wanted to.
* Bloodlusted a lucky guy for extreme DPS.
* MVP-d Hakkar.

Minmaxer guilds usually look for resto shamans because (besides bloodlust which was added by TWOW) the shaman trees don't have anything really special. Elemental can't give more to the party than a restoration and chain healing through a raid is better than triggering big 'resisted!' texts in the middle of the screen. Enhancement can have some slight utility especially since the inclusion of bloodlust. Since chain healing is the best thing a shaman can do during raids and restoration tree, while has some utility, doesn't have anything really important at the bottom, resto started to go deep into the enhancement tree, just to get the full utility set.

I already mentioned some really broken abilities which are given to shamans by default.
The other problem is that barely any of them has any meaningful buffs in any trees, meaning that talentless Bob is almost as good as any of the shamans for these utilities, regardless the spec.
Cleansing has no talent upgrade. Chain heal has none (some +healing and -mana cost abilities in resto tree but nothing groundbreaking and chain heal-specific), windfury has one in enhancement tree but it's weak (gives a numeric damage upgrade, it doesn't scale). Tremor is always the same. Grounding has an almost nonexistent upgrade while you can make earth shock 5 sec instead of 6 but it's not really a tie-breaker.

___________

Let's say that you wanna balance the enhancement tree! Currently enhancement shamans spend 80% of their time glancing blowing with auto-attacks, but you have the idea how to make them good. You have to convince shamans to want to melee instead of staying back and using the best raid heal in the game. If you can convince them by buffing the tree enough, you just get a melee DPS which by the way can do basically anything, if needed, including being an opressively efficient emergency healer.

A disclaimer here. People really underestimate how good cleansing totems are. They have no CD, so they are spammable. They have a reasonable mana cost and they work immediately on the whole party. Sure, their usage is situational but when poison or disease is relevant, those totems become extremely OP. Later Blizzard fused poison cleansing and disease cleansing, creating cleansing totem. Then they realized how OP it was and deleted the totem. Nowadays, in retail shamans have a very watered-down poison cleansing totem. And poison cleansing + disease cleansing are arguably better than the fused version because you can go specifically for poisons or diseases if both happen at the same time.

___________

What I'm saying is that shamans can be a utility class without having these extremely good utilities with the current effect by default. I know that it is a big deviation from Vanilla+ experience but if you want to have interesting and balanced elemental tree and enhancement tree, some of these utilities have to be locked behind a talent tree (resto is feeling fine, they just spam windfury totem and chain heal at the moment).

For example: while allowing cure poison and cure disease for each spec, locking cleansing totem deep into the resto tree is a huge step forward. Nerfing the base form of windfury and putting the OP windfury deep into enhancement tree is another one. Making chain heal meh by default (or removing it) and giving the OP chain heal at the bottom of the resto tree is another step forward.
Shamans would still have a bunch of utility by default (resistances, tremor, mana totem, stoneskin, strength, grace of air, curing poisons and diseases etc) but Bob, the talentless orc wouldn't be a superhero at a raid just because of the base talents.
And if we do these nerfs, there is a room to buff the specs individually, without making the end product necessarily broken.
An elemental shaman with bad WF, without chain heal and without mass cleansing is ready for a spellpower totem and for lava burst. Current iteration with these additions would break the class.
Same for the other specs.

Let's say that we do the nerfs I mentioned earlier and we invite talentless Bob again to ZG.
Bob could still be somewhat useful. He would be put into a melee group for a weaker WF buff and he would mostly spam lesser healing wave in the raids. Fear is handled as before. If mass-poison happens, Bob clicks on the names on the decursive list one-by-one. His healing output is bad. Hakkar comes and he helps with grounding the same way as before.
Utility is still there but now the naked Bob is really motivated to get a talent tree to actually become useful. Talent trees would start to mean more and would allow to buff the shaman more since we took away so much from the default package.

They have already killed the enhanced shaman

[Hyrag]

yeah and no.

the baseline shaman spells are pure supportive.

shaman specs should give a focused buff to the baseline suport spells + a buff in DPS/tank/healer capabilities
example:
enhan tree focus in melee: Buffing WF totem + Storm strike + bloodlust.

Reworks examples: Stormstrike deals Nature damage (shaman tank oriented buff)
Dual wield enhancement talent: only for main-hand and off-hand weapons cant use one-hand weapons.as a new build option just like spell damage feral druid build( haste + elemental proc effects).