thats not as easy as you say.... i have those macro and focus frames... you can't just push the button and walla the guy is frozen... not like conterspell for a mage... you have to be facing the guy that is on your healer and you usually have to get to him to help him out and in those few seconds the healer you were on sits down to drink... get 10-20% mana back and there is your priest or healer just trying to survive.... just need something to keep their healer in combat... and when you turn your back to frost shock you sometimes lose the healer and dont know which way they went... its very very frustrating especially trying to get a stun off with your nova totem since they;re always running around.... and you're burst damage is so low compared to a DK and ret pally or rogue that they dont even worry you about being on their healer...

plus if you do start to do some insane damage to the healer the DK just deathgrips you... or the warrior just charges you multiple times.... or the rogue locks you up while the healer gets away.... and they do a ton of damage to you even with a shield out soo then instead of your priest being able to mana burn they have to heal you.... so then because my dps is so low cuz i have a shield out trying to survive their healer sits down and drinks.... and its like OMG im gunna scream.... its the same thing every game... especially against warrior druid teams.... i run oom trying to purge and frost shock and keep cycloned earth shocked and grounding totemed... and then trying to purge innervate and then my priest have to heal through MS and bladestorms... and now rocketboots don't work in arenas.... its like a freaking nightmare... and then when they do see me use Shamanistic rage they do everything they can to keep me CCed or out of combat so i can't regain the mana and then im stuck just taking the aoe fears from the warrior the cyclones and roots from the druid and nothing i can do...

My juice is warm :(

---

Q u o t e:


What survivability do you speak of? :/

---

Well regarding resto shaman in arena, I have about 700 resil and I specced for Toughness and the Nature's Guardian that heals you when you dip below 30%. Stack that with instant riptides and a few LHW here and there and I'm a very, very tough kill. I've been able to solo 2-3 people in bgs as long as they don't have any healing. I get nuked in arenas and I can usually survive it without even blowing Nature's Swiftness. But with toughness, I sacrifice longetivity.

---

Q u o t e:


Well regarding resto shaman in arena, I have about 700 resil and I specced for Toughness and the Nature's Guardian that heals you when you dip below 30%. Stack that with instant riptides and a few LHW here and there and I'm a very, very tough kill. I've been able to solo 2-3 people in bgs as long as they don't have any healing. I get nuked in arenas and I can usually survive it without even blowing Nature's Swiftness. But with toughness, I sacrifice longetivity.

---

Yeah that works for the low arenas but not in the high brackets ><

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Q u o t e:


I'll try to make sure we cover as much as possible in them. If we don't cover them all in the Q&A, I'll work on at least filling in some of the gaps where I can too afterward.

---

Thanks
/highfive

---

Q u o t e:


I have played a Shaman. It is one of my higher level characters. She's enhancement currently. I enjoy the class. It definitely has a different feel to it. I'm not going to compare it to the other classes, since each of my characters has something about it that I enjoy for the sake of the class. I'm also not going to say I have high end raid experience with her or Arena experience with her though I've PvPd before. That said, I've taken part in higher end raiding and arenas before as well as talk to others who have higher end experience and pick their brains for what they've experienced and try to learn about their style a bit whenever I can.

I'm sure some will wonder if I can fully understand what you're talking about or why you feel a certain way, but I can. Don't worry about that. I read wherever I can, talk to the rest of the team, and am picking your brains as we speak. ;)

---

Neth I have to say that I read this and was disheartened to say the least. As another Shaman wrote leveling and Enhancement Shaman TO 80 and playing one AT 80 are two very VERY different animals. I dont think that any of us will argue that leveling a Shaman to 80 is alot of fun. The problem is that everything changes at 80... PVE and PVP. Quite frankly until your Shaman IS 80 and you have experienced raiding at 80 on your Enhance shaman you CANT know what were talking about it nor can you relate to what we are talking about...

The simple reason is that you have no frame of reference for it. Speaking to other shaman about what its like for raiding for them is not raiding and really your only going to get the "Best of" from doing that... Meaning that anyone you speak to is NOT going to say, "Yup... well really I just ride my guilds coat-tails... Heck as Enhancement Im amazed I survive most encounters let alone rate high on the meters..." Living vicariously through other Shaman is NOT experiencing the class. What they wont tell you is the hours they spend simming gear setups to try and arrive AT competitive DPS. Or the amount of gold that they had to spend gemming and regemming to maintain Hit cap... or hit the Expertise cap... Or that they had to grind Arena matchs to get the BiS Relic so they can perform at their best in PVE (I boggle at this). Or that their currently Elemental because of the changes to Flametongue (sry for all those Enh that had Webbed Death OH).

Enough of my ranting... Let me ask you this.

As you have a "high level" Shaman why is he/she NOT 80? If its as much fun as you say it is than the road from 70 to 80 is remarkably short and can be done in a couple of weeks of casual play at most (with a decent guild supporting you a few days if you wanted) Btw its inferred from your comments surrounding your Shaman that your other characters ARE 80 and you do have extensive raiding and pvp experience with them. So Im curious. Is it just lack of time? or lack of will? or the realization that even if you GOT her to 80 the competition for a DPS spot in a raid would make you shudder? :)

---

Q u o t e:
Everyone keeps saying that Shaman DPS is too low. Guys, you need to be specific. Elemental is too low in PvE. Enhance is very well off in PvE. Elemental is OK in pvp, and Enhance DPS and "burst" is terrible in PvP. BE SPECIFIC.

---

^^This and fixed it a bit.

I don't want to go into details on every specs but I must comment on the enhancement spec in PVE. I usually play resto and its my job to keep those enhancement shaman alive but they die way too fast.

They have very little life unbuffed, no armor to speak of, no way to lose threat, no AoE mitigation, very little mobility and "oh S?$#" button. This is simply too much.

What I like about enhancement shaman is their use of totems. They are the Shaman class with the best use with some real buffs, some nice damage with their fire totems (since they can use it without removing their buff and they are close to the action), grounding and cleansing are usefull because they can react more easily to bosses abilities.

Finally, I know it's stupid but I miss all the axes for enchancement shamans. I don't even have the bonus since I'm Alliance, but IMO shamans should dual-wield axes.

I will keep it short and sweet but i will go into detail on a few.

PvE


* Solo

o Elemental - Fine
o Enhancement - Fine
o Resto - Get 1k gold and Duel spec a DPS spec or else re-roll.

* Raid

o Elemental - Good Hybrid DPS and can compete on some fights
o Enhancement - Again good Hybrid DPS that brings nice buffs and also competes in DPS
o Resto - This is one i will go into detail on because i just found myself in this situation. Resto Shaman healing is not fine at all. Raid healing is done MUCH MUCH better and more efficiently by 2 classes (Holy priest and Druids). And single target healing is done much better by Paladins. Our efficiency is no longer there and our HPS caps out at around 65% of priests and Druids in hard modes. I have nearly every single BIS item for resto and have tried spec'ing,Glyphing and even trying different roles in raids and i get out done hands down. It is not even really close, and the only reason to bring a resto shaman atm is for.... wait... there really is no reason because Mana Tide doesnt warrant a spot nor do totems due to other classes providing all of totems in the form of buffs.



PVP


* Battlegrounds (battlegrounds are only a way to get gear to do arenas so in that aspect they are all fine)

o Elemental - Fine
o Enhancement - Fine
o Resto - Fine

* Arena - Gunna go into detail on all 3 from my XP in season 5-6

o Elemental - Good dmg, maybe a little too bursty if you are ALLOWED to cast. Little to no burst dmg if getting focused and Earthbind root is decent at peeling melee for a GCD or 2. Survivability is good due to Astral Shift. This talent is life saving and should be lower in the tree to allow all shamans to get it. This single ability would improved the class in all 3 spec's TREMENDOUSLY. It should be either baseline Shaman, or Tier 1 or 2 talent.
o Enhancement - Terrible dmg. Terrible Survivability. Earth Power is good, but it should also make us immune to roots as well. I gem and enchant all my gear with 100% stamina ( i am a JC as well and chanter) and have barely 23k hp..... While warriors and DK's have nearly 28-30k and mostly socket for DPS. This is not balanced what-so-ever. This tree can also be saved if Astral Shift was either Baseline Shaman ability or lower in the elemental tree.
o Resto - This is my bread and butter. Even though i am the least desired healing class in arena's i still push. Our healing is the worst. Our regen is the worst. Our utility is the worst. Our burst assist dmg is the worst due to efficiency of our heals limiting the ability to DPS. Our CC is the weakest in the game and its range is laughable. Resto shaman is so hard to play only because you are forced to ENDURE more than any other healing class atm. There was a blue who once said that all healing was based on how the shaman class is. If that is true, why are we so terrible compared to other healers and why has this gone on for so long?

PvP

Resto
Good to have chain heal on your side

Elemental
Can devastate if left alone too long. Reasonable considering terrible survivability and weak CC.

Enhancement
Too many procs to wait for. Windfury should proc automatically from stormstrike. Damage could be ajusted accordingly to balance out DPS.

Arena

Resto
Brought in mainly for heroism. High survivability but lacks enough defensive abilities that allow healing the teammate.

Elemental
VERY weak agianst tunnel vision unless partnered with certain classes. Does too much burst damage imo.

Enhancement
Weak. Just weak. Lacking health. Lack of controlled burst which could be fixed using the method mentioned above. Too weak against stuns. Lack survivability. Hunters have more up close survivability and they do their damage from a distance.

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Q u o t e:


I'll try to make sure we cover as much as possible in them. If we don't cover them all in the Q&A, I'll work on at least filling in some of the gaps where I can too afterward.

---

Thanks for spending some quality time with us today. Have a nice holiday weekend.

Raid

* Enhancement - I think we could use a dps boost. Even though I'm usually 3rd behind the rogues in Ulduar, they both blow me out of the water by hundreds of DPS. I'm not claiming to be a world-class Shaman, but I don't think the rogues are light years ahead of me either. We have comparable gear and skill. I'm sure that when the DKs and Mages usually below me gear up more, they will easily start passing me. I know pures are supposed to out-dps hybrids, but were all things equal I doubt I would even come close to them. Which brings up the question: what is the point of hybrid dps?

Bottom Line: I think the Windfury Glyph and Flurry nerfs are now unreasonable as a lot of testing and meters show Enh Shaman as one of the lowest overall DPS in Ulduar.

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Q u o t e:

Just out of curiosity, for the sake of discussion, where is it you think you should be?
We'll take it further and break it down more.
PvE

• Solo
  
  
  
  • Elemental
    
  • Enhancement
    
  • Resto
    
  
  

  ---

Solo gameplay is generally irrelevant. If anything, Elemental and Enhance should be able to kills mobs with relatively little effort beyond 10sec or so (elemental can kill 12k hp in 5-10sec easy). Enhance kills a bit slow, but has a bit easier time killing elites due to cooldowns.
Resto is a bit slower, being a healing spec, but has the offensive power to solo pretty much anything short of some 5man outdoor mobs and even then it's practically 2mannable as Resto.

---

Q u o t e:

Raid

• Elemental
  
• Enhancement
  
• Resto
  

---

Elemental and Enhance should be in the "within 5-10% of pure dps" like it was promised.

Enhance is definitely doing fine, although they are very oddly itemized as a melee dps that uses spells... If anything the design of the tree and the design of their dps model needs to be rethought a bit... Lava Lash is a very underwhelming ability to be honest.

Elemental has scaling problems. My elemental set is superior to our Enhancement shaman's set and yet he's pulling over 5k dps at times when I'm barely topping 4k... Melee scales far better with weapons and buffs (our enhance shaman doesn't have Calamity's Grasp and is in mostly T7, while my elemental set is T7.5 and I'm using Guiding Star from Uld25 as my weapon)...
I think Elemental doesn't have the right lanes to scale through. Right now, Spellpower remains the strongest scaling stat for Elemental- even Crit% and Haste don't keep up (600 haste is a sweet spot, but more than that and it's cutting too much spellpower)...
I believe this to be partly Lava Burst's problem (it's a short cast and auto crits from Flame Shock, so crit% is useless to this spell) and partly to blame on talents. A lot of our talents don't scale through any other stat than spellpower, and even those talents are few. Mages and Locks have talents to buff stats, Magma Armor scales with spirit, and LifeTap scales with spirit...
Only thing Elemental shaman scale with besides spellpower is Intellect- and it's not a damage scaling, it's a mana regen scaling which we really don't need.
Also- our 51pt. talent is not a very strong one, mediocre for pvp and weak for pve.


Resto is my primary spec and I'm very passionate about it. I'm not in danger of losing a raid spot any time soon, but it's already showing that I'm falling behind.
I perform reasonably in an offtank healing capacity, but when the aoe starts hitting the fan, I'm left in the dust by Druids and Priests.
I'm limited in the total targets I can touch and limited by the jump reduction on my only AoE heal...
While Druids can have numerous HoTs rolling and Wild Growth affects 6 targets.
Priests can have shields, Prayer of Mending, and Renew all over the raid and then Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing the entire raid, 5 targets for PoH and 6 for CoH.
---- When the raid is spread out and requires movement, Chain Heal doesn't cut it.
>>> Also notice how the Hodir fight perfectly demonstrates this: Without the moonkin's moonbeam buff, Chain Heal is rather low of HPS, then when you get into a moonbeam, your HPs skyrockets. Problem is, so does the Holy Priest's HPS from Prayer of Healing...

Resto needs some long overdue changes to both it's outdated base mechanics, but also to it's bloated tree.

---

Q u o t e:
PVP

• Battlegrounds
  
  
  
  • Elemental
    
  • Enhancement
    
  • Resto
    
  
  
• Arena
  
  
  
  • Elemental
    
  • Enhancement
    
  • Resto
    
  
  

---

In BGs, Shaman aren't terrible, but we can't run a flag like a druid and we can't hold our own in combat like a DK, Rogue, Hunter, Mage, Warrior, Warlock, etc. We don't have the escape tools as a caster and we don't have the sheer survivability and brute strength of the melee... As a healer we are easily shut down and aren't as mobile as a druid. We are maybe about equal to a priest in terms of BG healing because we both suffer from lack of escapes...

In Arenas, Priests begin to shine because they're not so much getting zerged by 10 people but only 1-3 people... They have defensive cooldowns and burst healing with damage absorbs that don't overwrite their mana regen.
Druids remain mobile and in tree-form are tough.
Paladins are naturally tough and have defensive cooldowns to save them... The current Prot-Healing build is outright insane in the amount of healing it can put out while being almost as tough as a Tank.

Shaman don't gain the survivability like a Paladin, we don't have the cooldowns like a priest, and we don't have the mobility of a druid.
We have a single reactive heal that overwrites our main source of mana regen when being focused... Our burst healing is all casting based and can easily be locked out.

hey neth, thanks for bein here

I wanted to ask about lava lash.

To me it feels like an extremely underwhelming ability - with all of our other abilities we hardly have the GCD time to use it in pve, and almost literally dont in pvp. could it be possible to make it stronger/more useful/do aoe damage in order to make it into more of a desirable ability?

I know its not always right to compare across classes, but i kinda felt cheated when paladins got divine storm (hits multiple targets, does more than 100% melee damage (as holy?), heals people, and has additional bonus effects - 10s cooldown) and i got lava lash (does 125%of offhand damage as fire, 6s cooldown). I'd much rather see lava lash be a powerful ability with a longer cooldown and maybe some bonus effects - here's an example of a change i would like to see

Lava Lash: Charges your offhand weapon with lava, instantly dealing 200% offhand weapon damage to your target as fire damage and adds a charge to your maelstrom weapon counter (if specced into maelstrom weapon). Does 25% bonus damage to all targets within 5 yards of your target if your offhand weapon is enchanted with flametongue weapon, instant cast, 12s cooldown, 30yrd range.

I like this idea because it makes the ability more desirable, while not actually improving the overall dps it does (technically, it lowers it by a little but i think its worth it). It gives us aoe damage and range, both of which are useful for pve and pvp, the strike also becomes more deadly in pvp, instead of being a useless talent most pvp specs skip over because we just dont have the GCDs for it. The guaranteed maelstrom counter means we have to be careful about when we use it, but it doesnt really give us any more maelstroms that it does now, it just makes it less random

edit: Fixt one retarded thing... there could be more

PvE

• Solo
  
  
  
  • Elemental: Awesome and Fun, more so when you finally get lava burst.
    
  • Enhancement: Awesome and Fun, if you accidentally pull 20 things, fire elemental totem, spirit wolves, and blood lust saves the day. Zero downtime.
    
  • Resto: Soloing resto (doing dailies and whatnot) is mean spirited and unkind. Possible yes, just takes 5 times longer to do anything.
    
  
  
• Raid
  
  
  
  • Elemental: I'd like a better rotation, make it beneficial for me to toss in more shocks (I thought booming echos was an effort towards this, but it seams to have not made a difference and we're back to firing off more lightning bolts.) The ToW glyph is better then the lavaburst glyph and this is a travesty. Itemisation is broken, best in slot armor includes far to much cloth and leather. Best in slot weapons are all swords which we can't use. Give us a mace/fist with caster sword stats please.
    
  • Enhancement: WTB Main hand axe that is slow. Hit cap is particularly strange, but overall it's fairly frenetic and fun to play. Itemization needs work. The slow/slow, fast/slow, slow/fast weapons should all be viable but aren't. We have to keep magma totem up 100%, why?
    
  • Resto: Absolutely broken right now. Riptide is a lousy talent (costs lots, heals for little upfront, small hot, cooldown), Ulduar fights make it so we can't Chain heal very much. BiS totem for ulduar is from PvP. No damage mitigation ability. Lowest healers, with lowest mana regen. Mana tide is broken. Ehps is ultra low. http://www.wowmeteronline.com/rank/clazz/ehps/all/7/0/3 sez it all. 9/320 are shamans. The only reason we do well on the meters is because riptide->lhw->lhw is great for sniping other people's heals. Healing stream totem is best suited in tank party, mana tide totem is best suited to caster party (gone are the days of moving ppl into different groups mid fight) healing stream is too much of our heals (sorry but I want to participate in my heals not just drop a totem that does it for me).
    
  
  

PVP

• Battlegrounds
  
  
  
  • Elemental: Super Fun when nobody notices us. Thunderstorm doesn't actually knock back if there is the slightest terrain difference on an incline. (Try using it in WSG). Can't get out when snared/stunned. New earthbind is awesome, fire nova too slow to explode. Strand of the ancients ridding shotgun: Awesome.
    
  • Enhancement: Fun when you have spirit wolves up, awful when not up. Constantly switching between offhand and shield in order to survive better. Spawn->spirit wolves->maybe kill someone!->die/hide for 3 mins->repeat.
    
  • Resto: Lowest survivability of all healers. Can't get out of snares/stuns. Fun when you have friends watching your back, really bad in most pugs cuz yer on yer own.
    
  
  
• Arena
  
  
  
  • Elemental: Broken. Guaranteed to be targeted first without question. Thunderstorm needs a daze to be useful. New Earthbind is decent, but doesn't pulse and long cooldown (long when you are being focused). Stoneclaw doesn't Shield for near enough. Rogues/Ret Pallies/Warriors/DKs eat us for breakfast. Windshocking and dps'ing sucks.
    
  • Enhancement: Broken. Spirit Wolves, Stoneclaw, bloodlust, go go! If you haven't killed anyone when bloodlust is over you lost. Guaranteed to be targeted first. Windshocking and dps'ing sucks, but not as much as suck as elemental because at least we have stormstrike and lava lash.
    
  • Resto : So Very Broken. Easiest to kill of all healers. Lowest mana regen of all healers. Earthshield is dispell/purge-able. No damage mitigation. Totem stomping is pure cheating. Totem base health is ridiculous (priest/warlock melee's yer tremor totem once, then fears, GG) Totem range is silly. Can't drop totems when stunned. To many useless buffs to purge off, purge costs waaay to much mana. Mana tide is terrible compared to what other healers have for self regen. Hex is the worst CC in the game (cast time + long cooldown + crap range + can still control char + can be decursed) Healing a mortal strike target is nearly impossible (and if you do it you'll be OOM). Riptide has to be used every 6 seconds to have any prayer (costs to much, doesn't stack, small upfront heal, small hot). 4 peice bonus on pvp resto gear is lousy (I'd rather have 2 piece ele + 3 pieces resto for double 2 peice bonus of 50 resil). I do not have a high ranking pvp teams, so I could be absolutely wrong on this but, spamming grounding totem is usually NOT the best strategy (as the 4 piece would imply). Watching what is being cast and casting grounding totem on certain abilities seams to be what the better teams do (tho spamming grounding totem has it's place for certain class combos). I'm sure I could use a dose or two (or 3) of L2P, but we have by FAR the lowest representation of high level team healers.
    
  
  
  
  

PVE:
Elem: ToW is mitigating the shaman dps, not allowing searing to be up.
Resto: Overall satisfactory, CH bump range could be increased as it s hard in ulduar on certain spread fights.

BG:
Any class have their success in BG any spec too.

Arenas:
Resto: Too subject to Stun. We have no mitigation under a stun effect. Both other trees have an ability they can use under a stun effect. Every healers have something they can use under a stun effect (Glyphed or not) Shaman with Paladin are the weakest healers for arena today.

---

Q u o t e:
Everyone keeps saying that Shaman DPS is too low. Guys, you need to be specific. Elemental is too low in PvE. Enhance is very well off in PvE. Elemental is OK in pvp, and Enhance is terrible in PvP. BE SPECIFIC.

---

People have been specific in their concerns about the Shaman class for years now. I've been playing my shaman almost since launch, and I still love it, but I'm not getting my hopes up. This is the same old song. I've seen brilliant analysis and suggestions for every tree and every possible point allocation strategy for PvP and PvE. I've presented my own requests, suggestions and arguments. It all falls on deaf ears.

It's not that Blizzard doesn't care, it's that the game as it is today, simply can't support the kind of changes we, and every other class, have discussed over the years. That's why the Blues keep mentioning 'certain realities that the players don't understand.' Changes made today are just more patches and cludges on top of a huge code base that can only support so much before it cries 'uncle.' So, the solutions are nerfs, buffs, small tweaks, a free respec, buffing something that was nerfed before, nerfing something that got a buff, and the occasional new icon.

Now, our poor itemization doesn't help matters, and this is an area where I'm pretty sure Blizz could make huge improvements, if they want to. The ball's in your court, here, guys.

Short of ripping out class mechanics and starting over again, we'll never see any dramatic changes to this class. We can either accept that, or move on to another game.

---

Q u o t e:
I wonder if any developer has played a ELM shamy in a 25 man ulduar clear?

Did they notice the lack of gear?
Did they notice the huge amount of hit and spirit gear?
Did they notice that we have a hard time to consistently do high DPS
Why is our best piece of tier 8.5 the rest helm?

Just a thought

---

Yes they noticed the lack of gear.

They know they didn't put in a lot of class C i.e. caster mail.

You know how Healadins want the mail belt that drops off of Razorscale?

That's the reason .... they don't want Healadins to get to much gear with that kind of stats. If Healadins got too much of that, they would be OP and would need to be nerfed. This is why Healadin gear has Mp5, and other regen stats on it. They are nerfed by itemization as a round about.


So quick answer .... we have no Elemental shaman gear because it is to good for Healadins.

I think people are missing something in neth's post:

---

Q u o t e:

for the sake of discussion, where is it you think you should be?

---

As in, where we should be, not where we are?(or perhaps both?)

ANYWAYS
PvE

• Solo
  
  
  
  • Elemental - Pretty good i would say( about the same as other casters, so it feels right)
    
  • Enhancement - Excellent(as every melee class capable of healing is, so it seems to fit)
    
  • Resto - Fairly bad, i've grinded out a couple of things as resto(hell my epic flying in BC), but as far as healers go, its actually right where it should be.
    
  
  
• Raid
  
  
  
  • Elemental - Need non melee form AOE(something like making magma totem "throw" able, otherwise, they look to be fine
    
  • Enhancement - Doing pretty well, as they should
    
  • Resto - Doing fine UNTILL you have to maximize your raid's HPS(hardmodes), We SHOULD be demanded because of our HPS(unless we aren't ment to be top notch AOE Healers), we currently are being sat out of raids for priests/druids on hardmodes(when there are more available). Simply stated, with all things equal(skill/gear), the shaman class does not put out enough Healing compared to Priests and druids. With our buffs being thrown away we bring literally NOTHING else to the table besides our healing which is ages behind others. I've had the same Pure Mojo flask ticking on me for the last week and a half, i've been online for every-raid, just not needed. PLEASE FIX MY SPEC FFS
    
  
  

PVP
Wont comment on PVP at all, i gave it up after s5 started, and im never looking back.