Why did you roll a shaman?Follow

Because shamans will always have a special place in my heart next to paladins I post anything here that works out on the paladin boards.

Also, I rolled a shaman because I liked the idea of being sort of like a warmage. Someone who could exist in melee combat similar to a paladin but with nukes and spells like a mage.

The only reason my shaman isnt my main is because of... wait I didn't notice any problems until I went to this board. In fact I would have never thought of my shaman not being my main until I read all of the complaints here. Oh my God the only reason I stopped playing a shaman was because of someone else's opinion.

I'm kidding. =)

I played FFxi before this, and I played a redmage, when I switched to WoW, Shaman just seemed to be perfect, both clsses had heals, nukes, and buffs.

One of the main reasons I want shaman was it also had the weapon enchants, which redmage also had, but, shaman had much more potential in all areas then redmage, all shaman lacks from redmage is what I disliked most about the redmage class which where debuff.

Don't get me wrong I like to make my enemies my gimps by debuffing the crap out of them, rdm started off so strong with all types of spells, but by endgame all we where used for where our ability to debuff and our ability to regen party members mana.

In WoW I could wear heavier armor in comparison, use 2 handed weapons, and I felt a bit more diverse (pre BC at least)

level 60 shaman could pull off healing as enh in raids and 5 mans,, or be a dps or tank in 5 mans, in pvp we destroyed most enemies pretty well.

Looking back I think though with my natural joy for hybrids, I probably would have liked Druid better, as they can dps, heal, or tank depending on spec, shaman could tank pre bc, but at lower levels or if they heavily out geared an instance at higher levels, now we just dps or heal, but I am ok with that I love shaman still.

1- Love hybrids, and already played all the others
2- Wanted a draenei

I was getting bored with my hunter, and wanted something more melee oriented.

Of course, all I do now is heal and occasionally chain lightning stuff, but that's how it started out... (Don't worry, I have much more fun this way.)

Oh, and my bf claimed shamans were OP. Lulz.

Edited, Mar 31st 2008 11:17am by isyris

Edited, Mar 31st 2008 11:18am by isyris

I always hated shaman as a warlock because I would always get one-shotted by them in AV...then BC came out so I made one. Then they got nerfed in pvp. Luckily I love the class and hate pvp (i'm not good at it). Hit 70 in 8 days /played and now have six epics from Kara. I'm saving up badges for the new loots, the chest piece is on par with tier six, so I'm excited for that.

Totems, healing, self-rez, ghost wolf, and FROST SHOCK!

It just seemed like a good class to run with my warrior friend.

Nadeshock, yet another Draenei Shaman Jewelcrafter

After BC, since I'm Alliance, I actually got to witness a Shaman in action and was completely blown away. A Rogue and I(Pally) were in Searing Gorge doing a quest. I thought we were doing good killing these guys but then a solo Shammy came up and just started tearing everything up in Half the time it was taking the Rogue and I. I was awe struck. I did a quick inspect and made some mental notes of gear to determine what spec he might be. I had no knowledge of shaman talents at that time. Found out he was "Enhancment" and what all that meant. Next day I rolled a Dreanei Shammy and started working my way up the Enhancment tree and modestly twinking her the whole way. At lvl 64 I'm very pleased with Shaman, the outland quest rewards are good and Boss drops are making it better everyday. My guild will never ask me to change spec's so I can go this way as long as I want. Best class choice I've ever made, I still love my Pally but for different reasons. Shaman is just awesome!!!

I pick my classes in WoW the same way I pick any characeter in any other game on the console or PC: by concept. I couldn't care less where they place on the tier list in any given situation.

Shaman, as an offensive, nature-based hybrid, appealed to my aesthetic sense.

Peer preasure

...all the cool kids we're doing it.

Edited, Apr 4th 2008 5:26am by gpyfb

My first toon in WOW was a Draenei Shaman and got him up to 39 and stopped playing due to work and school. Got back into it 2 years ago and rolled a hunter who is now 70 and a warlock that is now 42. I missed the shaman so I rolled a draenei female shaman this time and she is now 18 and can rip through 22's like cake, now I remember why I rolled a shammy the first place, plus the Draenei girls are hot which is a plus:-)

Shaman are the least played class due to our history and game mechanics after you hit 60.

History

pre TBC

When a shaman got to 60 and started raiding the only real role that could be done was to heal. For raiding pre TBC shaman could do melee dps but not well, caster dps but not well and healing but not well with the exception of chain heal which was a niche heal. Before TBC came out gear was poorly itemized and so shaman ended up wearing cloth or leather mostly.

A lot of shaman rerolled at this point as healing was not how they spent the last 59 levels and its not what they wanted.


New Talents
Prior to TBC came out everyone got new talents and this breathed some life back into the shaman class. Dual wield was great and so much fun and with earth shield you could main heal some of the harder instances, element got some respect on raids not so much because of what they could do but because of how they could boost the other casters. All the shamans came out of the closet then it seemed like every other toon was a shaman.

TBC
Once everyone started leveling again it became apparent that shaman would soon be lagging behind again. Don't get me wrong we got some good stuff but it was not enough to keep us even with everyone else. It was enough that we started getting included in PVE for what we could help others accomplish with our other 2 talent(elm and enh) trees. If you did not heal you could still get a spot in instances once all the DPS/CC spots got filled, unless they could find 3 DPS/CC.

@70
PVE
So now everyone starts playing with builds and talents mim-maxxing for DPS or PVP or heals and it becomes clear we are only good(for the most part) if we can help others as our spells and talents left us behind or even as dps(but we had no CC) and heals. There are areas were we excel but for the most part everyone else>shaman after 60.

Chain heal - we can top the healing charts on certain fights and it becomes much easier on the other raid healers in general.
Stormstrike - if you have boomkins or elemantal shaman, Unleashed rage and windfury totem for all the melee
Totem of Wrath - if your casters are under-geared or if they have the gear to beef up spell damage at the cost of spell hit and crit. Wrath of air and manaspring/manatide
Bloodlust - no explanation needed, 10 minute cooldown wtf!

Notice that all of these buff everyone else, thats why we work in pve.

PVP
we have a number of issues in PVP.

Mail does not offer enough protection to make up for the fact we can't control the fight in any meaningful way.

We have no stuns or incapacitates period. This is what WOW PVP is built around.

We have snares but they are the same value as everyone else's so they can just beat on you in slow motion.

We have an interrupts usable every 6 seconds that disrupts one school for 2 seconds leaving them 4 seconds to cast what they please. It also has a very short range and high mana cost so you have to get close to them and can't do it endlessly.

We have few talents or spells for emergency escape and only a couple to try and live thru attacks, even then those are talented (natures swiftness, improved ghost wolf and natures guardian, improved guardian totems).

Almost all our spells are nature based so if you get counter-spelled, spell-locked or kicked you have several seconds of hitting with sticks before you can heal/snare/cast/drop totem.

We have nothing to break or keep us from being stunned/blinded(now that is, loved poison cleansing if it stayed up)
our means of breaking fear is unreliable
We can only remove poison and disease. Poison is handy for rogues if your not stun locked but there are no spells or skills that an opposing player could use that would be disease based.


We do however scale well with gear if you can get it. I would venture to say that good gear will help us do what we do well better then any other class even if what we do well is still limited.