Troll and Tauren Shaman Racials

[Gladeshadow]

Hi all!

Orcs have a great shaman racial that works to boost their damage - thus working very well with their Blood Fury racial ability. The troll and tauren racials, on the other hand, are rather lackluster and could use some reworking or even complete overhauls.

Starting with the trolls, their hex does this: Transforms the enemy into a frog that cannot cast, and does 60% less damage for up to 5 seconds.
What's frustrating about this is that the enemy can attack and still maintains control of their movement. Against casters it's ok, but against melee it's basically a (strong) attack debuff on a high cool down. Really not great. I suggest replacing it with the version of hex we see troll npcs use in the game. Specifically this one: https://www.wowhead.com/classic/spell=24053/hex which does this: Transforms an enemy into a frog, rendering it unable to attack or cast spells for 5 sec. The loss of control is very iconic when hexed, as I'm sure we've all experienced. It's not an overly powerful ability since it's basically a stun where the opponent randomly moves instead of standing still. You could compare it to paladins' hammer of justice, which lasts longer and has a shorter cooldown. Hex would be much more in flavor with this change and allow for more versatile use, such as fight control or providing opportunity for an escape, such as hexing and then using ghost wolf.

The tauren shaman racial does this: Link the spirits of an ally and their 3 closest allies within 15 yards together. When linked targets take damage, 15% is distributed among the other linked allies. Lasts 20 seconds. Talking with others, this seems to be the least popular shaman racial. The cooldown of 10 minutes does it no favors since that effectively prevents using it often. But going into the ability, it's an overall mixed bag. Sure, it makes your tank tankier, but at the cost of everyone else's hit points. This could work moderately well with chain heal, but it's easy enough to imagine scenarios where spirit link hurts the team. Like when a boss does aoe damage or hits someone other than the tank, the linked health may cause enough damage to players to kill them. Probably a rare scenario, but not one I'd even want the possibility of, so why risk using spirit link in the first place when things are otherwise fine?
Overall, this is a very in flavor ability but both the orc and troll racials are always good to use, unlike this ability. At the least, perhaps this could buff armor or completely reduce damage by a small amount when used, like the retail Spirit Link Totem does: reduces damage taken by all party and raid members within 10 yards by 10%. Then it would at least provide a buff to every affected party at the time.

These changes would give a larger reason to pick a specific shaman race depending on goals. Right now, orc is the only race with a nice ability. I think these proposed changes could create some equality among the racial spells - used differently, but each good and flavorful.

[Noce]

i wanted to post up the same thing myself..

just as priests get aditional spells acording to race, so should shamans.
it would be cool to see shadowy side of troll shamans (or all shamans in general, i never liked that race difference tbh).
why not get iconic things from wc3:

Big Bad Voodoo Turns all friendly units invulnerable in an area around the caster.
The caster does not turn invulnerable.

Serpent Ward Summons an immobile serpentine ward to attack the enemies.
The ward has 90/165/200 hit points and is immune to magic.

Hex - Transforms an enemy unit into a random critter, disabling special abilities.

Shoot — Shoots at an enemy, inflicting Physical damage (Throwing Double-Bladed Sword/Glaive - with random effect, stun slow..)

Shadow Shock — Instantly lashes an enemy with dark magic, inflicting Shadow damage.

Veil of Shadows — Reduces healing effects for nearby enemies by 60% for 15 sec.

Shadow Word: Pain — Utters a word of darkness, inflicting Shadow damage to an enemy every 3 sec. for 18 sec.

Stasis Trap Ward - Summons an invisible and immovable ward that stuns enemy units around it. The trap activates when an enemy unit approaches. The trap lasts 150 seconds. The stun lasts 6 (2.5) seconds.

all those are troll based abilities, and as i sed above, i never liked race specific things. all races should have same abilities. so all those spells could be part of ALL shamans arsenal. since shamans do need rework and we could get some new spells to cast. if made only troll based spells, then for ORCS keep BL+Wolves+Earthquake [Far Seer] and mbe include a Dark Seer things Shadow Strike [dot], Vacuum, Surge, Ion Shell [those mbe for potential draenei].
for TAURENS give them smtn like Shockwave, Pulverize, Endurance Aura, Reincarnation (yeah only for taurens), Spirit Link, Ethereal Form.

also it would be good to make TOTEMS last untill expire or destroyed. not to dissapear after you die. since all buffs last even the person who gave buff died. this is rly plain logic. and good one imo.

some of those could possibly be a race specific things also, no matter class :)

i did made a big post about some ideas of shaman changes earlier on forum:
viewtopic.php?p=33088#p33088
viewtopic.php?p=22301#p22301

[Kefke]

For the first, that sounds like a good change. I'd really see it less as a stun with movement, and more as a different sort of Polymorph.

For the second, though...I wonder if the problem isn't more in people using it wrong. "It makes your tank tankier." ...well, why would you ever want to use it on the tank? The tank's job is to stop other people from taking damage, not to be the last man standing. I'd prefer to cast that on a melee DPS or on a healer, as an insurance policy in the event that the tank loses aggro, or an attack does area damage. Use it to put damage the tank couldn't stop back on the tank, not to take damage off of them.

[Gantulga]

Shamans definitely do not need extra CC.

[Karrados]

Shamans need actual useful abilities that are not bound to a totem which can be farted away by someone looking at it. They could have added Alpha Abilities for Shamans just like they did for Paladins but nooo, Horde can't have nice things.

[Gantulga]

There are buffs shamans definitely do not need.
Things such as: CC, burst damage, survivability for elemental and resto builds.

There are buffs shamans do need.
Things such as: sustained PVE DPS for both enhancement and elemental, mana sustain for enhancement builds, "curse of nature" effect added to another class for PVE purposes (like rogue, that lacks utility), more tanking tools and itemization.

[Tllap]

There are buffs shamans definitely do not need.
Things such as: CC, burst damage, survivability for elemental and resto builds.

There are buffs shamans do need.
Things such as: sustained PVE DPS for both enhancement and elemental, mana sustain for enhancement builds, "curse of nature" effect added to another class for PVE purposes (like rogue, that lacks utility), more tanking tools and itemization.

Agree

[Zhilo]

I tought I could use spirit link as a damage mitigation button for tanking, so i rolled a tauren shaman (extra stamina and warstomp are also very good for this goal) and I was extremelly dissapointed at 40 when i found out you cannot self cast spirit link. So its exclusively a support spell. That, and the 2 second cast would make it undesirable for shamans thinking about using it as a tool for tanking anyway. It does have a 30 second duration on a 20 sec cooldown, so its got good uptime. Personally I'd like to have it on at least 5 mins duration like a bless so it's less of a managing burden when you may already be trying to juggle several other things at once in the middle of combat.

[Tamm]

Ork racial has very weak wolves dying to one arcane explosion.
These skills are barebone and have too long cooldowns.

[Akos1896]

There are buffs shamans definitely do not need.
Things such as: CC, burst damage, survivability for elemental and resto builds.

There are buffs shamans do need.
Things such as: sustained PVE DPS for both enhancement and elemental, mana sustain for enhancement builds, "curse of nature" effect added to another class for PVE purposes (like rogue, that lacks utility), more tanking tools and itemization.

This!

[Calli]

All classes would welcome class-race related racials and spells, not only shamans and priests. Now we have human hunters with sword & mace weaponskill and dwarven warriors with gun...