"We used to be considered the "Anti-mage" we put down grounding totem and they could either instant fireblast (with a 6s cooldown?) or cast and we could cockblock with an earthshock, through a rotation of either we were pretty good at holding our own against a mage. Now we get frostnova'd and icelanced to death with a counterspell at your first motion to start healing yourself.
We used to be excelent kiters! Now it's all like.. A ROGUE.. ok, here we go! FROST SHOCK... *PvP Trinket*
Shaman: Ok, we can still do this.. Earthbind till frostshock is up again
Rogue: *Cloak of Shadows*
Shaman:What the hell man.. he just ran right through it. Alright, it's down! FROST SHOCK
Rogue:*Deadly Throw*
Shaman: WHY AM I KITING, I'LL NEVER GET ENOUGH RANGE TO ACTUALLY CAST A SPELL.
((FOR ROGUES))
I personally think that rogues are amazing, they have so many ways to control, disable, or just plain make shamans cry. (Think 3x 3k lightning bolt crits and the rogue cheats death and recieves several full heals after a slacking healer realizes his job is really easy). My idea was to make weapon choice more associated with how rogues perform, linking cheat death, shiv, and cloak of shadows to certain types of weapons that rogues can wield. As it stands now, you could be brain dead.. shiv for combo points and still kill some of the best players. Any rogue that played before the expansion came out would agree that rogues got a lot of buffs, some nessecary to counteract or balance other class changes, some just completely unnessecary. While there's no reason for a rogue to complain about such changes, and I don't expect the such, I'm sure some would at least agree with me.
((BACK TO SHAMANS))
Secondly.. we used to be able to heal (With a spell damage build) and bring ourselves up in hp, although our effectiveness of that has decreased signifigantly prior to TBC coming out, with wounding poison, "Mortal-Shot" and all other types of mechanics to either prevent us from healing or prevent healing effectiveness.
Purging as an Elemental Shaman: Useful before you're about to blow someone up.. but when the target has pain suppression, or a druid has 8 hots on him in addition to passive buffs that stack whenever he gets hit on top of team buffs you find yourself asking yourself a question;
Am I mana efficient?
No.
Should I waste half of my mana doing this?
No.
Do I have time to purge inbetween casting?
Not really, until my purge deals damage, I'm going to cast something that's going to kill the other player or save me. Add a passive dispel or dispel ability to lightning bolt or shocks when a self buff is active.
(YEAH I went there..) Hunters are the only class in the game that can dispel magic WHILE dealing damage, not sure why they got this luxury, but I don't understand why we can't have it, we'd run out of mana fast enough where people wouldn't realize it even happened anyways if you ask me. If we stopped to cast purge as a priest put up power word shield or prayer of mending the break in dps would give the other team enough time to react and heal the target up or give the healer a chance to run around the ever so famous Arena Poles.
INSTANTS!
Burning Crusade brought along a whole new generation of button mashers with Mages getting icelance, Druids getting swiftmend or whatever crazy hots they have now, and Priests getting prayer of mending and pain suppression.
Why is this good?
If you're one of these classes you aren't suceptable to inturrupts! EZ mode to continue healing without any problems. Also with instant heals you don't need to stand in place, you can run in and out of line of sight to cast your instant heal and not get attacked, instantly re-appearing on the other side of a pole and saving the day with more instant heals!
Why does this make shamans terrible?
Well, it's mostly because we don't have them, and you gave hunters the ability to dispel our "kind of" instant heal (Earth Shield). and with the global cooldown on purge, and it's fiesty mana cost from way back when you implimented that base mana cost for dispels ordeal you'd short yourself on mana or time better spent healing. Compared to a paladin who brings Blessing of Protection and Blessing of Freedom to the table the only reason you'd bring a shaman over a paladin in most situations is windfury totem! Yeah, that's right.. us arena teams like to use the shamans JUST for the totems. The other downside is we CANNOT heal our teamates without standing (in the open, for all to inturrupt) with our outdated CAST-TIME heals. This makes us more suceptable to inturrupts and an easier target to deal with, whether it's charging or whatnot. It also limits us to where we can go inbetween heals, there's no time for fancy footwork when we have to stand in place to heal. Overall.. I, personally think that the resto talents with earth shield (if it were harder or, undispellable) and the kick-in mechanic to instant-heal self when low on health is pretty balanced. What is not, is our inability to deal with dispelling of a 41pt talent or compete with other classes ability to run around carelessly as we need to stand in place to heal.
Our mono-school of damage or healing constricts us when we get inturrupted which makes us the biggest joke in arena. I constantly find myself with curse of tongues, and a warrior just pummels me +pushbacks and I never have a chance to cast. I feel like the retarded kid that nobody really wants, but takes to the arena because they'd feel bad otherwise. I'm more or less a burden on all but a few makups +5v5. I get inturrupted.. (Can't heal or deal damage) and I'm slowly beaten down or my healer runs out of mana healing >>ME<< the person who wasted all of his time getting a full S1 arena set before figuring out that gear really doesn't fix our current problem of not being able to cast.
Finally,
TOTEMS!
What I'd like to address is how useless elemental totems are in pvp. You drop rock totem and.. whoops someone feared it and they destroy the stationary totem part. But you drop your fire elemental totem and they fear it.. (wait.. we have a totem to get rid of fear!) -- TREMOR TOTEM! *Fire totem continues to run around as you get senseleslly beaten down* I think you should install an error message when you drop tremor totem and fire elemental is feared saying "Your totem is useless -- reroll now!"
Totem practicality has gone down the hole.. I understand the 2mins and the effect being balanced to the time scale, but when we don't last longer than 20-30 seconds, certain totems like Windwall or Stoneskin don't ever see the light of day, actually if it weren't for tremor and earthbind I'd probably leave Earth Totem in the bank.
I understand reducing the duration and increasing the windwall and stoneskin effect to something like -250 damage taken for 20 seconds on a 30s cooldown. You would HAVE to attack the totem if you wanted to be effective at all. As it stands now you can blatently ignore most of the totems and win anyways. It would give the shamans a chance to not be focused and react or a chance for poison cleansing to take effect. It wouldn't see practicality on all totems because of raiding, and the global cooldown.. but make the totems a little more worthwhile, and try to keep it with the times, preventing the damage dealt now, not a year ago.
If you gave us some sort of BIG RED ONE -- like the hunters get, where "The shaman becomes uninturruptable for 20 seconds and cannot be ensnared or slowed. This effect removes any current stuns, ensnares and whatever else the hunter thing does" It would address our casting problem, but the --OH HERE IT COMES!
*Priest or Druid runs behind a pole*
Shaman: Oh, great.. I was just about to blow you up, without any inturrupts and this happens.. I'm going to have to call my therapst before I hurt myself over this. (It's so goddamn frustrating.) -- It wouldn't be so bad if they had to cast or we had some way to counter.
The elemental shaman has to stop moving to kill something. If the something refuses to stop with me, and circles the line of sight pole of doom, my cast does not go off.. even with frostshock, you can continue walking along the pole and I cannot attack you while you INSTANT HEAL yourself without having to stop or slow down.
I'm sure other people have already addressed other problems with resto and enhancement. Take what you can get, and try to make a real class out of shamans again.
I always tell people that shamans are the funnest class in the game -- They have windfury (Which is awesome!) And the burst they can do with elemental (is DEVISTATING) but in pvp, you get counteracted in almost any and every way possible which makes it the worst class to play, whether you want to melee dps, or spell damage dps, there are much easier and more enjoyable classes."
Edited, Mar 10th 2008 9:04pm by Draeneipally