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This is a remake of my original thread. The purpose of it is to now collect the suggestions to the shaman class made by the regulars. Feel free to suggest them ina post and if they aren't already in the post I'll pop them in here! Be creative and have fun!!!! any other suggestions to the class will also be added on your section. O, did I mention? Every poster gets a section.


Draeneipally -

Wind portal - Much like blink, sends the shaman 20 yards ahead if there is nothing in the way. 10 second CD.

Lightning Rift - Sends the shaman ahead to a selected point, chosen with a distract like hover. Sned the shaman up to 15 yards Doing XX damage to all enemies within 5 yards of the shaman. 40 second - 1 minute CD.

Wind wall - The shaman equivilant of power word: shield. With a wind animation. No cd but places a debuff on the target so that it cannot be spammed. Only one target can be walled at once.

INSTANT GHOST WOLF UNTALENTED!!!!! =D

Wind shock - A shock spell on a seperate CD from the other shocks when used alone but on a shared CD with the shocks when another is used. Does weak XX damage and entraps the target in a cyclone for 4-5 seconds. 15 second seperate CD.

Lightning blast - Does weak XX damage and has a chance of putting a debuff on the target. See below fo debuff. Lasts 20 seconds

Electricution - A debuff placed on the target via lightning blast that does XX damage every 2 seconds to friendlies around the target.

Mud slide - A weak AoE spell doing very weak XX damage or none at all. CCs all targets surrounding the caster for 2-3 seconds. A chance to break on damage. 50 second CD.

Water bolt - The exact same spell as lightning bolt but with a water animation and less damage but a 10% chance to stun the target for 1 second.

Nature's Wrath - Sends the shaman into a dormant stage. Reducing all damage taken by 50%, all healing done by 20%. But damage done is reduced by 100%. This is a shapeshift form in the resto tree. The shaman would be transformed into a wind elemental. Dispellable.


Bamninja -

lightning totem: in a fifth set of totems that include

totem of the pack: summons a pack of wolves to fight for you and your friends

storm caller totem: periodically selects a random enemy target to hit with lightning every 3 sec

Fire shield: once all three charges have been consumed unlocks a strike that delivers 120% of the damage done to the charges. has a 10 min cooldown.

still dont have a name for, weapon: applies a debuff that, when the target is struck the one with the debuff takes an addition amount of X nature, fire, or frost damage.

Sinstralis -

Stormstrike be modified so that it stacks a 15sec debuff on the target, that reduces Resilience by 75. Stacks four times.


Jmfmb -

Gaudion -

Raglu -

Quor -

TheYardstick

Axehilt


Edited, Apr 2nd 2008 12:00pm by Draeneipally

Edited, Apr 2nd 2008 2:47pm by Draeneipally

To the OP,

Good post, but I've seen most of them on the O-boards already at some point in one form or another. The playerbase has come up with lots of new, fair and balanced ideas for shaman fixes, but as always Blizzard ignores the class. I don't even think a Dev has posted on the shaman forum for about 2 weeks now...

Only one question: do you want all classes to have the same abilities? because that's basicly what you are suggesting...

personally i think shaman doesnt really need any cc but in need of some kind of spell/ability to close the distant. i never read the shaman o-board before and the suggestion below could very well been brought up one time or another.

windshock
- instant cast spell causing XX damage (a small amount).
- surrounds the target with air and attempt to recall/teleport the target to caster.
- after recall, disorient/incapacitate/stun the target for 1 or 2 sec OR slow target's movement by 30% for 1 or 2 secs.
- share 6secs cooldown with other shocks and also on its own 20 sec cd.
- 20 sec cd can be reduced to 15secs thru talent.

this ability is like the one used by shade of aran where he recalls/ports everyone to him before he casts arcane explosion. in a way, you can also say it's the reverse of shadowstep.

this abiity will be more useful than frostshock when dealing with runners.

I think what most people are complaining about is not how to close the distance but how to increase it. That's why you hear about CC and ghost wolf removing snare effect.

The problem for any elemental and resto shammy is that they become useless as soon as you get in their face with no way to get out. Mages have CC and blink, hunter have CC, warlock can keep you at range with fear etc... all other caster class that benefits from being far away from the target have some abilities to help them keep that distance or make it happen when needed. Shaman have nothing of the sort.

I'm new to the class but not to the game. From my 70 warrior perspective... as soon I hit intercept the game is over for any shaman.

I love the idea of buffing Shaman...I really do. As an enhancement shaman, 2.4 sounds like it will give me insta-cast ghost wolf. No complaints here. But to a comparison between an equally geared hunter and a shaman:

Hunter has Concussive Shot/Wing Clip -> Shaman has Frost Shock
Hunter has Frost Traps -> Shaman has Earthbind Totem
Hunter has Freeze Trap -> Shaman has no immobilizing CC
Hunter has good dps at range -> Shaman has fantastic dps at melee/range (spec dependant)
Hunter can't heal himself/others -> Shaman can heal themself/others

See how that "balances"?

In PvP up to this point, if you let me close to you long enough, you die. The only chance you have at surviving is to lock me down or keep me at a distance. Let me lock *you* down and close the gap and I'd be OP in the extreme, easily matching or beating Rogues and Warriors for melee dps output.

Edited, Mar 10th 2008 12:06pm by AureliusSir

blizzard really just needs to pull some sort of ability or buff out there behind to make shaman more viable in pvp.

i can think of a few ideas that could help the shaman class for higher level pvp...

everyone wants a wind shock well here is my idea on a wind shock, wind shock deals x damage and makes shaman move 50% faster for 6 seconds, this would help shamans close gap or make distance regardless of spec.

Wind Shield would be another way to fix one of our problems, instead of dealing damage or something like that why not make it help shaman resist stuns CC and snare affects. With 3 charges you would have a 75% chance of resisting these abilities, whenever you lose a charge you would lose 25%, and you only lose a charge whenever you actually resist a CC ability. this would not be perfect but it would definitely help us out.

this would be 2 very simple and not too over powered spells that would help us a bit in pvp.

I would also like to see the cool down removed from our shock spells already is this just me? make it so 60+ shocks don't share a cool down, give us an option of dps for ele shamans while on move or while being stun locked, they can keep the 6 second cool down, i just don't see wht would make them so OP if they didn't share cool downs =P (I can dream right?)

Well, You're going to start having pvp troubles at70, just trust me. I thought CC would be way OP myself until I hit 70 and got my *** kicked every time I set foot in a BG. Before that I owned EVERYONE.

When I dinged 70 I had full S1 for elemental, vindicator's and all. Stilgot my *** handed to me by rogues and warriors.

"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

Well, yes and no. It's decently dependent on what, exactly, you're fighting. A Warrior or Rogue without Dispel support can have serious issues with Priests and Resto Shaman; the ability to spam Purge your target is highly underrated.

With that said, they still need more ways to guarantee mobility... either in closing with a target or escaping from one. Probably the best variant I've heard is the Windshock (or whatever), similar in design to Repentance. The problem is that Shocks are built into a pretty dedicated system already, and a five or six second cooldown on even just a second or two of Gouge is not kosher (there's a reason that Earth Shock's interrupt is only two seconds long, and a full stop - even one that broke on damage - would by nature probably require a shorter duration).

You'd have to extend the cooldown on it, which counteracts with the Shock... well, design. Other possibilities, like Earthgrab or Cyclone Totem or some variant thereof seem on the weak side; either too strong or too weak, and in any event very vulnerable to disruption.

Personally, I'm a fan of upping the mana cost on Ghost Wolf but making it give you root/snare immunity innately. Leave it dispellable and it's still vulnerable to disruption (albeit different kinds of disruption) and a valid option even if you don't spec into it, although vastly superior if you do. It'd also give Elemental Shaman a bit of a choice to make between 40/0/21, i.e. "Kaboom" spec, or something with more mobility but something less like PoM Pyro.

You're right; they don't balance...if all you want to do is charge in and kill. Shaman is a hybrid class, and if you read between the lines, they have tricks and tools that other classes don't. Rather than draw this out, I'll keep it to the point:

There is a skill factor involved in playing any class. If you aren't up to par with the skill factor and QQ to have class abilities added to offset your struggles as a player, you're barking up the wrong tree. Again...you want CC? What are you prepared to give up in order to get it? The only other class in the game that wears mail as their highest defense option in terms of armor is a Hunter, and Shaman have Hunters beat for dps potential in spades. They can also heal, and they can also buff their group members in a myriad of ways that Hunters can only dream of. Are you prepared to sacrifice some of those abilities to have more CC? If you're not, then do you think maybe you're being a bit unrealistic?

My Shaman is level 66, and we're not talking about arena specifically, we're talking about PvP in general where it's not uncommon for me to trounce someone 3 levels above me in a BG, but very common for me to get trounced repeatedly while guarding a node when I watch the three teammates standing around me do nothing while a Rogue stunlocks me to oblivion. When I'm fortunate enough to get a competant PUG for a BG, I heal when the opportunity presents itself, I use totems as best I can to buff party members, and I score respectably in the KB/HK department. I'm very much interested to see how I'll stack up when I hit level 69 and focus my attention on grinding honor/marks for some welfare epics to have waiting for me when I roll over to 70.



Hasn't Blizzard already said that PvP is balanced around 5v5? Enhancement Shaman are scheduled for some nice buffs with 2.4. Elemental Shaman have no more CC than any other Shaman spec.



Using Earth Shock as a spell interrupt as opposed to using Shocks as they come off cooldown is already a sacrifice of sorts. I can Earth Shock more often than a Hunter can Scatter Shot, and Earth Shock is instant and targeted, unlike a trap. It depends on the environment you play in...there are a couple of classes/specs that shine in PvP no matter what you're doing, whether it's world PvP, BGs, or Arena. Shaman play group support roles, not just "omfg killz lulz"...if you want to do nothing but kill, roll a Rogue or a Warlock. The larger the group a Shaman finds themselves in, the more they bring to the table.