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Q u o t e:


Ok argueabley Druids need their CC toned way the hell down and I have said that fora very long time. Look at other hybrids lolCC. Ret what? Repentance, 6 seconds breaks on 1 point of damage. Warriors? Um fear on a 3 minute CD, breaks on dmg. DK,s no real CC.

Im loving the fact that despite the abilities you do have you ignore them as if they werent even there. You stated why bringa shaman ( for the most part ) I list abilities that are nice in a "team" atmosphere and you shoot them right down.

Yup you guys only bring bloodlust......

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Because pvp'ing with your 'crew' isn't indicative of most of the pvp that goes down in wow. I thought shaman were group friendly and not group reliant when I rolled one in vanilla. That's why alot of the shaman playerbase feels like they're underpowered.

Also, alot of a warrior's control and burstiness comes from their frequent stuns (especially prot) and the instant aoe fear is nothing to scoff at when most matches in wotlk last 20 seconds. Don't see how you can remotely act like warriors are weak atm. DKs actually are pretty weak from their lack of control, the aoe frost cc is strong, but they lose alot of their defenses as frost.

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Q u o t e:
A couple of things ...

Second,

I should ask, are there only a few dozen of you to manage the interaction with the player community? I'm having a hard time believing that. I'm sorry to be so frank, but that is honestly what I am thinking. I would imagine that there would be more folks than that actively managing the player base, asking questions, and polling for feedback continuously, and pulling together an overall message from the community into a concise and digestible report.

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The only real possibility I could come up with is that fewer CMs lower the chance of causing confusion or contradictions. For example, you have seen how far people will go to misconstrue GC's words.

Within this one thread, in which GC stated the shaman developer had an understanding of the class, there are already a legion of forum alts claiming he said "best shaman of all time." Can you imagine how that would be with 2 CMs lording over the Damage Dealing forum.

Then you would need to ask, what if two different CMs stated, or worded information in slightly different manners. The forum would chew itself apart (more so than now).

Finally, it really does not take that many CMs. GC, despite all the hate does his job of announcing a change. Furthermore, the devs do in fact read these threads when they can.

@Caohong Now that we have Arenas, and soon Group Battlegrounds wouldn't that help shamans, since high level gear is only available through those sources? I am not trying to justify every weakness, but I would begin to argue that especially by Cataclysm shamans should be in a decent position with group oriented activities.

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Q u o t e:




@Caohong Now that we have Arenas, and soon Group Battlegrounds wouldn't that help shamans, since high level gear is only available through those sources? I am not trying to justify every weakness, but I would begin to argue that especially by Cataclysm shamans should be in a decent position with group oriented activities.

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Yeah, that's the reason I'm reactivating in cataclysm lol. There will be totems around every bush.

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Q u o t e:


Yeah, that's the reason I'm reactivating in cataclysm lol. There will be totems around every bush.

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I hate to say this, but now that I think of group Bgs combined Bloodlust/Heroism. Shamans will be... a pain (in a good way that is).

PS: Getting some sleep, take care to all those contributing to this thread.

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Q u o t e:


If you want them to be auras, then you're playing the wrong class. But I'd like to know what overhaul you're thinking of.

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I think the overhaul he's talking about is primarily scaling of ToW. Personally, as an enhancement shaman, I would like to see our core melee buffing abilities stop being handed out willy nilly to other classes (deathknights). It is overwhelmingly more and more that the only reason raids want to bring a shaman isn't for totems as much as it is for heroism/bloodlust.

As far as a rehaul goes, I think Enhancement is actually in a pretty decent place in PVE standards. We have probably the best raid buff scaling in the game even if our weapon scaling is trash. We're a little squishy with fewer ways out if we happen to slip to top of threat (please please please buff the threat drop amount on wind-shear, I've seen it do from 2% to maybe 15% which is lack luster for a 6 sec cd), but overall, I'm usually in the top 3 for damage done, even on movement fights.

My only real gripe is PvP wise for survivability. I roll with a 2h in PvP just because in order to spec into the defensive talents (+stam, anticipation, -6% damage) and our ONE snare that is available to us reliably (frozen power) and the not-yet-nerfed nova totem stun, I don't have enough points to take DW. If I don't spec this way, I'm not alive long enough to do anything. I'd really like to see a buff to either the amount of stam on our PvP gear at lower rank levels or a combination of the +stam talent and the anticipation talent in the tree so that I'm able to play my class as I am intended to.

I think it is unreasonable to think that Blizzard doesn't have anyone playing the Shaman class, but it does seem like there is a weird disconnect sometimes.. For example - the latest T10 2pc bonus doesn't make sense if you play an elemental shaman. Elemental Mastery is simply too weak in its current form and the bonus itself conflicts with our 4pc bonus. The 4pc bonus is still being debated, but doesn't look promising.

Most elemental shaman posting here or on EJ or elsewhere seem to agree that Elemental Mastery isn't a terribly useful talent, and allowing us to cast it more isn't that great. Blizzard seems to think otherwise, and it would be interesting to hear the reasoning behind that.

Further, look at itemization in the game - it has been unkind to Elemental Shaman in many areas. How many Conquest Badge pieces are perfectly itemized for Elemental? None. In fact, you can argue that they aren't itemized all that well for Resto either, since MP5 isn't a very good regen stat for them at that gear level.

When you add to these things our pitiful DPS at the start of WotLK (which was ignored in the beta), and consistently mediocre DPS throughout much of this Xpac, it feels like either you guys don't understand how Elemental Shaman are played, or we are somehow playing them incorrectly.

ITT: kids with unrealistic expectations and GC telling them what the reality of the situation is.

The sole reason for a change to Reincarnation would be for the sake of homogenization with similar abilities, and even then it is unique because it requires nothing from another player.

Have your Shaman player introduce themselves to the Shamans on the Shaman forums. Oh wait that might be a bad idea.

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Q u o t e:
Have your Shaman player introduce themselves to the Shamans on the Shaman forums. Oh wait that might be a bad idea.

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This is the best I could hope for from this thread.

The irony is that a class might be less likely to receive buffs if the design team has an amazing player.

Shaman player/designer: "I'm at 2800, and pulling 8k dps in raids, tell the forumers to L2P, we don't need buffs."

Yeah, I thought about that too. What's this amazing guy doing? Or is he amazing resto or enhancement... and never plays elemental? Heck, I saw an enhancement shaman from the #2 progression guild on my server post in the past couple of days calling Wrath of Air a 20% caster haste buff. The three specs are so fundamentally different... as elemental, I'd argue this guy isn't amazing or is the most ignored person in your development meetings.

One of my mentors is a very humble guy and arguably one of the most respected where he works... he said regardless of your level of education or what you do in life, you may know something he doesn't and that we can all learn from one another.

I think that's what bugs me most about elemental design and Blizzard's handling of the class since I started playing in April 2006. Blizzard has a fan base who far outnumbers their development crew. Through their actions, Blizzard has dismissed or temporarily ignored complaints that have been substantiated with relatively consistent data. This goes beyond buffs to numbers (dps, hps, etc), including an outdated and cumbersome buffing system (this is a game, why can't you guys make one of our iconic ability interactive and fun?).

Having leveled a warlock and paladin to 80, it's upsetting to see how those classes have evolved over the years and are more fun to play than previous iterations. My shaman, on the other hand, limps forward on the hope that you'll incorporate some of the awesome ideas your player base has suggested in these forums over the past months / years.

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Q u o t e:
The irony is that a class might be less likely to receive buffs if the design team has an amazing player.

Shaman player/designer: "I'm at 2800, and pulling 8k dps in raids, tell the forumers to L2P, we don't need buffs."

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Im going to say that if it is possible to get those numbers as a shaman, then yes they DON'T need buffs, forumers DO need to l2p

and while i'm not saying shaman are fine in pvp or pve or whatever, because i honestly don't know right now, devs DO listen to concerns and try for balance.

You guys asked for an interrupt not tied to earthshock, and you got it. you asked for more survivability in arenas, and you got the stoneclaw glyph.
Maybe you felt you were ENTITLED to these buffs and you are butt hurt you aren't getting more, if so, get over yourselves, you aren't entitled to ANYTHING, blizzard can decide not to change anything at all from release if they so deemed it worth while.

Stop crying like you are the beaten step children of wow and realize there are a lot of other problems other classes have that have been gone on just as long as yours, some even longer, and be glad that all three specs are actually viable for pve and decent in pvp now, where as before they WERE NOT.

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Q u o t e:
No, I actually like some of the changes, not so much some others. But the point isn't that about what I like or not.
By understand you mean comprehend them from their tooltip description? What did you want to say?
You are problably one of those players who "understands" everything without even playing it amirite?

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No I'm not, but you made a statement, and i simply refuted your argument of "glaring evidence", because thats EXACTLY what it is about: When you are talking about "glaring evidence" and are referring to the patch notes, then you ARE talking about what you like or don't like about them, and then it IS about that.

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Q u o t e:
I have seen this flaoting around for quite some time on the shaman forums and I just wanted to hear your side of it blizz.

Do any Developers have and frequently play a Shaman in order to provide a balanced first person veiw into the class instead of skewed input from the top .01% of shaman?

If not, why do you not play a shaman?

If you do, the discontent on the shaman forums is evident of a lack of communication between dev and players, perhaps someone could facillitate a collaboration between players and devs to really discuss where the class is as a whole, and not through a vauge poll either.

Edit: Please note, this is NOT a QQ thread, I legitimately want to prove or disprove this rumor once and for all.

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GC has responded to this topic, don't let the trolls derail this thread.

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Q u o t e:


I totally agree. Although I will say this, some ( Im not saying you, so please dont take it as such ) take people not doing what they ask as a form of disrespect. You stated that there is no requirement for you to respect them and thats true and that mutual respect serves both parties well. All true, what I'm either not understanding, not seeing or misreading here is where did Blizz ever disrespect shamans? Let alone how has Blizzard treated shamans differently in responding to them versus other classes?

Blue has basically treated all classes the same when it comes to these forums. Hell if you seriously wanted to put a label on a "disrespectfull" comment ( if this is how you want to percieve it ) I would have to say the Ret paladin comment at Blizzcon was pretty disrespectfull. That said, I have yet to see something even remotely close to that from Blue in regards to shamans.

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Hi, sorry it took me so long to get back to this.

Well, I think that it's fair to say that the primary intended function of these forums is to help people. If a player is to come to the realisation that their concern isn't valid, they need help understanding why. I think the best way to do that is to say, "Well, when we designed 'x' we wanted it to work like this, and for you to use it like 'y'." - where 'y' is the situation in which 'x' should be used.

If the player then further contends that 'x' -should- be designed to work instead like 'z', maybe they'd like to know why that isn't feasible.

If all you essentially get in response to your concern that 'x' is "working as intended", you may feel as though no effort was made to understand your point of view. You reached out your hand and it was knocked back. A lot of people would perceive that as disrespecting them, when that clearly wasn't the Blue's intention.

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Q u o t e:


I didn't say we agree on everything. Far from it. We have lively debates all the time. Different points of view are critical when you have a fan base that numbers in the millions. But it's important that on a higher level everyone buys in to some basic philosophies or we're just going to be working at cross purposes. We have people who say would rather have an elegant fix that doesn't quite fix the problem or designers who would favor a more complicated fix that absolutely fixed the problem. The key is that both agree there is a problem and that we should try to fix it. If someone doesn't think the problem exists, then we need to keep discussing it until we reach a consensus or at least agree to disagree.

When we disagree though, we know how to do so in a professional manner. Being able to disagree with someone without insulting them is a pretty important skill in almost every line of work. Even if you are certain in your heart that someone is wrong, wrong, wrong, you still need to maintain respect for them if you really want to engage in a conversation. I mention it just because it is a skill so poorly mastered by many of the posts on our forums. :(

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Not sure if its clicked yet GC , but were not the high professional devs here. Were the ignorant player-base lining your pockets. Also , when you have , as you stated earlier , millions of people , youre bound to have a good % of them have very strong remarks and some very stupid ones. but so far you seem to only be acknowledging the stupid ones.

I have seen countless decent , intelligent posts. Ones thats are well thought out and , my god look like someone YOU should hire. They get plenty of simple "I agree" feedback from other <insert class here> as well. We are , again , the grunting , yelling , whining , QQing , pocket lining players who want little more than feedback. Were sorry if some people dont appreciate the feedback or complain about it. But out of millions of people , youre bound to get a few stones thrown. I would have figured you'd be used to that by now.

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Q u o t e:
The irony is that a class might be less likely to receive buffs if the design team has an amazing player.

Shaman player/designer: "I'm at 2800, and pulling 8k dps in raids, tell the forumers to L2P, we don't need buffs."

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If the designer of the class is the only person capable of playing said class to the 'best of it's abilities' (i.e. better than every other shaman in the world) than the fault rests solely on the designer of the class.

I'm sure that the devs could find a way to buff PvE shamans without affecting PvP shamans which are doing WAY more than fine.