Quote:
lbattousai wrote:
A CC ability would make shaman incredibly powerful in PvP...
No, that would make Shaman competative in PvP.
Thats pretty much where its at. Granted, while I don't mind that if they actually did give us a CC, ideas like "hex" do seem "cookie cutter" to me, and from my point of view, doesn't seem very "shaman" like. I've rolled a few ideas of my own in my head, but I'll get back to them later.
The 2 obvious downsides to shaman PvP is mobility and control. Solving either of these issues would make us competitive in PvP. A class like Hunter has both control (traps, shots, clips, etc) AND mobility (Beast rage)...so its no surprise its a powerful PvP class. This being said, a LOT of classes have some sort of CC move...but not many have ultimate mobility move, beast rage and Death wish are the only others that come to mind atm. For the sake of uniqueness so to speak, Im more partial so see Shaman's get a ultimate mobility move, instead of a CC or at least something "different".
Now, something that has been rolling in my head lately to kinda solve this problem while keeping in theme to the shaman playstyle has been, a "improved" ghost wolf. Huh!? Don't we have something like that?! Yes...and it kinda sucks :P Thus I thought up a revision.
#1- Usable indoors
#2- By adding 1 talent, while in Ghost wolf, 50% immune to fears, snares, and immobilizing effects, casting time reduced by 2 seconds and +10% increase to movement.
#3- By adding another talent, while in Ghost wolf 100% immune to fears, snares and immobilizing effects, Ghost wolf is instant cast and another +10% increase to movement.
#4- If 2 talents are spent in Imp GW, then "agressive bite" is opens to talent (possible 3 talent max). Aggressive Bite allows 40%/60%/80% of melee strikes while in Ghost wolf form to have a 2 second knock back effect against humanoid, elemental and beast targets.
Now, what do my suggestions do. Well, it fixes the mobility issue first of all and that was a key topic. This will help tactically with a enh sham in PvP due to the fact that they can now "blitz" a target unimpeded, and help with elem's since they can knock a close target down "sprint" away and gain more distance to do what they need to do.
Assuming that Imp GW doesn't move on or from the Enh the talent tree, its not "deep" enough that elem or resto can't get to it. It also does give a degree of CC, and a type of Crowd control that hasn't been seen in this game to date. Now as we know, our weapon buffs don't work while in GW, which acts as a sort of OP balancer so to speak, since (at least from a Enh point of view, its a good amount of our total dps is directly related to our weapon buffs), not to mention as a elem you can't cast without breaking GW anyhow. So this is "sorta" like a stunlock, but the knock back effect now forces "you" to play pinball with your target in order to keep them "locked", and even at that its a % "lock". But @ 70% proc rate, that "should" be constant enough to take at least one target/mob out of mix, assuming the shaman has enough skill to move with the target when knocking them back...AND enough skill NOT to knock their target into further groups, which would obviously bring more mobs. This is a "Active" CC, not a "fire and forget" CC, like all other CC's. I kinda thing the effect will look like a police dog sic'd on someone, knocking them down, tossing them around, until help arrives.
Downside for PvE is that it not only takes one target out of the picture, but it takes YOU out of the picture too since you have to occupy the target to CC them. On the plus side, you are doing "some" dmg, which is similar to a stun lock or a fearlock w/ dots on.
While it "could" cheese someone 1 on 1, to death in PvP (its not like rogues and locks can't do that to ppl anyhow atm :P), its still dispelable/purgable so it "can" be broken, not to mention its still a % of a knock back...so a window "could" open for someone to counter. Not to mention in BG's its all about "group" fights, so its not likely that a lone shaman is gonna be given that much time alone to chew someone to death like that :P. Arena (especially 2v2) might be more interesting, since your targets options against you is to either kill you before you get to them (which will happen faster then they want it to) or get you out of GW!
Edited, Jan 16th 2008 6:04am by gpyfb