Some interesting developments on the shaman O-boards.Follow

Although I agree to an extent that you are getting dumped on, are you @#%^ing serious? Enough with the conspiracy theories. If that were the case, apparently Kalgan hates every class. In the past few months, I have seen a post from nearly every class, stating that Kalgan has a personal vendetta against THEIR class, and how all the other classes are getting buffed. Hell, there's a post in the pally WoW forums right now about it. When you make posts like the one in question, spreading rumors, misinformation, and direct quotes taken out of context or misread, some weaker minded people may agree with you, but to everyone else, you're a douche. This isn't really directed toward the Op, as he was informing everyone of a different thread, but still...

One thing I don't like about the shaman forums is that to some extent, it seems like many of you aren't clear WHAT the hell you want, or you are childish, mindless fools( http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/class.html?wclass=8;mid=120519794325465506;num=40;page=1 for example) I enjoy reading posts from the more intelligent posters both here and in the EJ forums, as it seems you have a grasp on the class and how things SHOULD work, but some of you just irritate me. One person states they want CC cause every other class in the game has it (pally stun and intim shout ftl :/) but then people say they don't want the MS effect cause its gay that every other class has it now.

Honestly I don't think Kalgan has it in for your class cause his friend was beaten by an elemental shaman. In fact, anyone who genuinely believes that is a complete dumbass, imo. I think WoW employees, especially designers, are a little more professional than that. Look at their posts in the forums. For the most part, they rarely respond to important posts, because they know that every single thing they say will be looked at under a microscope, and if there is any way for their response to get misconstrued or twisted around to prove someone's point(which is usually as farfetched as the conspiracy theorists), then it most likely will. So why worry about mere words, yet make class-altering changes on a whim "Just because I want to"?

I feel that maybe the designers just aren't doing their job as well as they could do it. I can't believe that instead of believing in something rational, like X person is doing poorly at their job because its actually pretty detailed and difficult, someone would instead go with "X person's friend hates locks, so he nerfs them, but a player found out and tried to tell everyone in a thread on the WoW forums. Kalgan had them killed and paid the local authorities to make the murder look like a suicide." The first example makes more sense, and why wouldn't it? I'm sure class balance is hard, especially when you try to make the abilites usable in both PVE and PVP. Hopefully they find a way to segregate the two, and make both PVE and PVP enjoyable for all.


EDITED: Grammatical errors





Edited, Mar 16th 2008 8:48am by VRTFirestarter

Totems constantly moving around with you would be like having 4 paladin auras. A form of totem mobility is nice to think of, but it's not really going to be the major fix for Shaman.



Unless you were walking around with the Earthbind Debuff Aura.

The ultimate fix for shaman, wich wouldnt be OP at all, and would make all of us really happy, would be to:

Give us NO cooldown on totems (yes, in 2.4 it will be 2 secs to lay them all down, but its still precious time that if they dont make totems somehow "follow" you, is useless).

Give us a short form of CC, the often mentioned amongst this boards hex, wich would fit in incredibly well with warcraft lore, and wouldnt be OP at all, giving us a chance to run, or start the battle again.

For the love of God/Buddha/etc, make totems get level-scaling health. How come a level 10 shaman's totems are as strong as a level 70's? How come mobs get them and we dont? I mean, 5 health is literally destroyed by ANYTHING (Except spells ofc) at level 70, wich is why hunters laugh at shaman with their totem destroy macro. I mean, say 500 hp for a totem would still be destroyed in a couple of seconds by someone who really wants to kill it, but it would avoid those annoying totem destroy macros, or simply casters wanding/meleeing them with one shot.

Its not much to ask, and I really doubt anyone else (well... considering the mentaility of most people on the Official boards... its a possibility) will complain about " Oh my god! the spells that we used to kill instantly are now instantly made, making my pet take 3 seconds longer to kill them and waste 600 of their mana!".

I also doubt they will complain about " Oh God! Nerf shamans! making me run around for 5 seconds, on a 30 second cooldown is totally OP, of course I can simply stunlockhim for 10 seconds/fear him for 20 seconds/ etc BUT ITS OP! >:(".

I dont think I even have to mention the third one.

Cmon blizzard, you gave rogues an improved ShS, along with a class-wide spell resist for 5 seconds. You gave hunters a debuff on their most used ability in PvP (Wtf is up with purge-arcane shot? O_o). You gave almost everyone else stuff they use now, while you give us... A new stormstrike icon? yeah... thanks a lot.

Totems are one-shot at level 10 and they're one-shot at level 70. What you're asking for isn't "scaling", it's for totems to become more powerful as you level.

While no GCD would indeed be nice I think they can improve us in other ways that would be a bit more interesting. It seems sorta problematic to let us plunk down an entire set of totems instantly, and it really ceases to solve the root problem, which is our limited influence on combat where CC is concerned. I'm not against most amounts of GCD reduction - but taking us to 0 GCD on totems is probably overkill.

Rather than give us CC and make us like every other class, I'd very much like to see us be better at CC avoidance/mitigation. And of course there's a bunch of retooling that could be done to improve the design of totems (like the "Guardian Totem" redesign I suggested a while back which was basically Stoneskin+Windwall in one totem, with an addition of 1% damage reduction per enemy within 40 yards of the totem; to a max of 5% reduction.) Combined with other creative solutions (such as a talent that causes a debuff to go on the target for each totem they kill; the debuff could even be "For 2 seconds your attacks and spells deal zero damage to totems") we can easily be viable in competitive PVP without having CC ourselves.

Other ideas which could be either talents or base traits of the class include:
-"When your totems are killed you gain Elemental Empathy, which reduces the cost and GCD of your totems by 10%. Lasts 10 seconds and stacks up to 4 times."
-"When your totems are killed you gain Elemental Empathy, which reduces the duration of CC effects on you by 10%. Last 20 seconds and stacks up to 3 times."
-"Party members near Windwall totem are immune to [one CC type] and 5% of hostile spell damage is reflected back at the caster."

Clearly the numbers on these ideas are totally placeholder and would need testing, but the base ideas are what matters.

Edited, Mar 17th 2008 3:26pm by Axehilt

Ever heard of the GCD?



And if they didn't have lifebloom they would be dead w/o their HoTs. I know AS has a "chance" to dispspell a buff. But when A hunter arcane shots me, it always takes off my earthshield. In my pvp build i have near 100% chance to resist spell knock back. Bascially I'm spamming LHW on myself so my team mates can get the hunter off of me or until I can go into melee with him. But w/o that ES I'm screwed. Maybe some people think it's OP, maybe some think it isn't. I respect that. But I believe it is substantially OP and that it was a change that did not need to happen.

Maybe if every dissatisfied shammy in wow repeatedly opens GM tickets and questions the GMs on why shammies are so ****** up, eventually blizz will take notice and do something about it? just a thought, but no doubt it would work should everyone start trying.

yeah, the arcane shot dispel was total BS. theres no way a main damage move used by every member of a class should have a dispel tacked on to it. i can see the dead zone removal and even the aimed shot change, but the dispel was not warranted. go ahead and give hunters a dispel shot, but make it casted and no damage so people with fast reactions can do something about it.

i dont know whats worse really; that arcane shot dispels in addition to dealing damage, or that it does so without any break in the hunters auto shot timer.

Perhaps a much more feasible idea for Bliz to give shamans regarding mobile totems would be a new skill that, for 10% of the cost of the mana cost to place the totems, moves your totems to your present location and refreshes their duration. This could have a 20-30 second cooldown as to not allow a shaman to keep Earthbind up indefinitely (or it could act as if you had just placed that totem down, imposing the internal cooldown again), but it would certainly help out a lot.

Edited, Mar 22nd 2008 6:55pm by soggymaster

Tremor Totem will pulse more frequently now in 2.4, but I've started to think that they should change the mechanic. Instead of breaking fear on all party members within 20 yards of the totem, perhaps it should work like how the weapon totems do, by putting a Fear Ward buff on all party members within 20 yards of the totem, that lasts for 5 seconds, and then having it be refreshed (or restored if used up) every 5 seconds (therefore undoing that change in 2.4). The result would be that rather than getting feared for <4 seconds and then breaking free to respond, the fear would not work at all, and if a warlock wanted to fear you bad, he'd have to cast it twice in a row, and hope that the refreshing fear ward pulse didn't happen inbetween the first fear's fail and the second fear's start to cast.

I suggested this in both these forums and the official wow site a while back I think it would help quite a bit since most warlocks just use macros to kill the totem with there pet, at least this would still give us the fear ward buff, altho if changed like this I assume it would have to be nerfed so that it either renews the fear ward buff every 10 seconds, or a cooldown was added to the totem much like earth bind and grounding totem.

this change would really help us a bunch against warlocks and would be a great boost in pve situations where enemies don't chain fear ever.