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yeah, blizz seems to be going to great lengths to differentiate between pvp and pve specs, even within the same trees. theyre managing to do this while also trimming down a number of talents for a number of classes.

its quite the impressive balancing act.

Depending on the mechanic, this could be exactly what Shamans need for some extra arena performance. If it's an on-cast AoE stun then I am very happy, Fire Nova has a long CD anyway so that balances. If it's an on-hit stun like Stoneclaw I couldnt really care less, that frankly sucks, nobody bothers to target Fire totems anyway.


Yes, Flametongue is supposed to increase spell damage now, a long-awaited and much-needed change. There has always been way more potential in the weapon buffs than Blizzard used, Im happy to see it is now getting some attention.


Depends if it works against Cloak of Shadows. If it does, Rogues will need to be very careful around Elemental Shamans, an instant CL crit in the face that cuts through your resistance mechanics is lethal.


It's nice against Rogues I guess, but double crits arent that common. I'd much rather see "When you are critically hit while stunned or incapacitated". A hard counter to stunlocks would give Shaman at least a fighting chance.


This is really good to be honest. 25% does suck a bit, 50% would be better, but consider that you can cast these things every 5-6 seconds. Nice, solid PvP talent.


A 20yd knockback is huuuuuge. I thought it would be like 5 or 10yds, but 20?? That's pretty extreme by anyone's standards, and for a way to interrupt the Arena pack-rape to which Shamans are subjected it's bloody nice. Combined with Astral Shift to give you the extre breathing room, This could really turn the tide for Elementals in PvP. I still think Warriors and Druids will just charge at you again, but you might be able to get a spell off before they do.

Overall I am much happier with Elemental, now I can see Shamans being able to DPS in Arena. Enhancement still has no place in Arena to be honest, it's all PvE DPS, but that's fair enough. At least we have ONE capable DPS spec now, assuming it doesnt get surpassed by the other classes. Resto though.... god that sucks. No new toos except Ancestral Awakening which is nice but hardly "OMG need Shaman" for an Arena team leader. Resto Druids still own us entirely. Oh well.

Well, considering it is a 2 point talent investment, it has to be on AOE effect, not a on-hit like stoneclaw.



I too always felt like the shaman weapon imbues had a lot of untapped potential. Consider rockbiter, no one uses it ever once they get the windfury buff. Now what if instead of an added AP effect, rockbiter gave a potential stun or knockback effect? There we go, instant PvP applicable weapon buff that would be useful for all 3 specs! What if frostshock had a chance to root when the frostband weapon buff was applied? Again, applicable to PvP and would be useful to all 3 specs.



Good point! I never considered that...a rogue possibly fearing a shaman again? Never!



Yes, the double crit requirement is stupid. What they should do is "after a shaman is critically hit, they may shift to an astral plane within 5s" or something to that effect. Then the shaman could activate the talent at will after being crit, and they could put it on a longer CD.



Yep, tough to complain about that talent really, it is decent.





I cannot see that making it past PTR...they will probably reduce the knockback distance, or put it on a 3 minute CD.



Well, let's put it this way, if those talents make it to WotLK, I think it would be sufficient to keep me playing the class, even though I am an enhancement junkie. I don't expect to be as OP as Rogues, Warlocks or DK's, but as long as we are middle of the pack with some stun resist/cc talents, I'm satisfied. Elemental has never been my favorite spec, I always thought it was pretty 1 dimensional and I much prefer the playstyle of enhancement, but I'll settle for these talents.



Edited, Jun 16th 2008 1:06am by Taurrus

That's pretty much it.

The reason Druids and Priests excel in the arena where Shaman and Paladins are failing is because of their instant heals. Druids' chain-CC paired with their ability to kite is nothing less than ridiculous impressive, and Priests' shields reduce the damage they take, but they still get stunned-locked and CC'ed like anyone else; it's the instant heals that push them over the top, keeping both themselves and their teammates alive. Holy Shock and Nature's Guardian/Earth Shield simply aren't cutting it right now, and they're not going to cut it in WotLK.

Hex is going to be great, but I'm sure it's going to be at least a 1.5-second cast, and you have to assume that it's going to be in the nature school, so interrupting it is just as good as interrupting Lesser Healing Wave. Shaman and Paladins are just too one-diminsional to be successful in PvP right now, and Shaman are looking to be more of the same in WotLK.

this remains to be seen. any comp with a DK is going to hard counter a resto druid like crazy. this is a fact based on what we've seen with the new DK stuff (which, granted, is as malleable as anything is at this point in time).

now this is mostly speculation, but it seems that resto shammies actually have a leg up on druids in terms of anti-dk power. DC totem and the new cleanse-type skill both work against what DK's are going to rely heavily on, namely diseases. i dont know if DK's have any curses, but i do know that DK's and locks (as well as mages) have a kind of natural synergy based on what ive seen from their talent sets. having a one-button counter to abilities used by those two classes is just sexy, especially since it gives shaman a way to dispel curses, putting them above druids in terms of overall utility when facing a comp with a DK in it.

I am betting that the counter to Resto Druids will be steadily nerfed over time. I still dont think the WoW devteam have the emotional capability to be mean to the Druid class. Everything for the last 2 years has seen steadily increasing capability with a few controversial flip-flops (like consumables), including an entirely exclusive item stat (Feral AP) and custom-crafted gear. Compare to Shamans and Hunters basically sharing a ton of stuff, which ends up being ideal for neither class.

The Degeneration debuff has the problem that it requires you to use a weapon strike, which consumes an Unholy Rune. This unbalances the situation grossly, because Diseases can be removed (albeit not by Druids) a lot more frequently than Degen can be applied. With the current mechanic, a DK could sacrifice all of his/her Unholy runes trying to bring down a Druid or Priest, and find those debuffs removed quickly. Now if they granted some kind of 'Weakened State' to the target (eg, HoT healing reduced by 50% for 4sec) that was applied also when you got Degenned, that would be balanced.

At the minute, simply 'corrupting' a HoT and turning it into a DoT at the cost of your damage-dealing and CC capability just seems borked.

http://war-tools.darlinganime.com/index.php?t=shaman

working link for shammy talents. or at least it was as of this posting.

as for resto, yeah, it may be weaker than a resto druid is in arena, but theres nothing necessarily wrong with having a spec thats weaker in arena than other specs. as cool as the new prot stuff looks, i highly doubt ill be able to do prot in arenas. itll still be arms/fury if i want to be successful.

enh still looks pretty pvp viable to me. imp SR is hot, only leaving the shammy vulnerable to fear (countered in a fashion with tremor totem or a friendly dispeller) and the weapon spec talent adds a lot of power via resilience negation (axe) or armor penetration (fist), and mental dexterity takes some of the sting out of stacking int (1:1 ap/int ratio is pretty sweet). enh will still have the same problems warriors and pallies do, namely high gear requirements and heavy group reliance, but its still going to be beastly in the right setup with a good player at the helm.

this is what id do for an enh pvp build:

http://war-tools.darlinganime.com/index.php?t=shaman.8472&b=6232c3u32025231055013350115231251z0

76% reduction in shock cost while focus is up, hefty increase to AP from int (which in turn increases spell damage thanks to mental quickness), more crits from spell crits OR more hit while dual wielding....something like this would be very dangerous indeed when supported. drop WF totems for your allies, keep tremor or earthbind down depending on need, and just shock and strike the **** out of your enemies. need some extra pressure on your enemies? call out your wolf buddies. heres hoping theyll actually be controllable pets so you can sic them on a healer for some cast time interruption or opt to use them on your focus target for more DPS. if theyre not controllable, then that would suck, and probably warrant sticking the point elsewhere. but it says theyre "under the shamans control" so im hoping that means "including pet bar" too.

It's not "weaker" than resto druid. It's just not a comp that you can hump a pillar and faceroll your way to 2.6k.

Shaman/warrior is a total counter to pretty much every rogue/dps comp in 2s, and as we're one of the most played classes in 2v2, I'd think that'd definitely be worth something.

I mean really the only comp I know that just mows through a shaman in 2s is restokin/rogue, and that's only because the restokin is going to solo the warrior while the rogue solos the shaman.

Resto druids get gibbed pretty hard against rogue/dps comps; they're just fairly dominant versus other comps, so it's hard to beat them at 2200+, being that nearly every team that high is dps/healer.

Resto shaman is a different play style to resto druid... The middle ground of the spectrum, actually. On one end we have priests with offensive dispelling to an extreme, but with no offensive capability beyond that. Then we have resto shamans, with Purge and Windfury, where a warrior can solo a player in the span of literally 3 secs with some lucky RNG, and 15 secs if their target isn't careful. Then you have paladins, who basically are the worst healing class in 2v2 as everything they do can be dispelled by a priest, and almost everything by a shaman. Then you have resto druids, who have no offensive dispelling and very little defensive dispelling, but can heal on the move, making them the ultimate defensive healer.

So yeah, while shamans may get the short end of the stick, comparing them to resto druids is dumb. It's apple and oranges; they're both fruit, but other than that, they're completely different.

If I catch a druid in stealth or if I can get a CS on them while in caster, it's GG. My team wins. They're too squishy to be able to take a double DPS with both DPS on them; it'll draw a trinket on KS which I can then Blind them and switch to their partner and their partner is dead.

Can't do that with geared resto shamans; too much armor and resilience. You need to switch to their totems too often and they don't need to trinket a KS like a druid does, since they can just pop a NSHW, pop Buttlust and spam LWH (which are insanely hard to Kick with anything over 100ms, btw) back to full. GG, you lose.

I don't really know what the point of that was; I just get irritated that people think that resto druids are sooo overpowered when they're really not. If you can catch them in stuns with few hots on, they're incredibly easy to take down.

Everything Sinstralis said, and...


This is exactly the kind of misinformation that comes with not actually playing the class in the situations you're theorycrafting in.

Shaman/Warrior doesn't steamroll DPSx2 comps. DPSx2 comps are exactly why Resto Shaman struggle so much in the arena compared to Resto Druids and Priests, who yes, are stronger healers in the arena. If you can maintain at least a 50% win/loss ratio against double DPS teams in 2v2 then you are one of the better Shaman/Warrior pairs.

Armor and resilliance are not a solution. They are a delay, and as per the definition of the word, a delay is not indefinite. Not just two, but any one DPS will kill a Resto Shaman eventually, it's just a matter of how long they take to do it--meaning whether or not they do it before the Shaman's pet Warrior gibs one of them. Adding a second DPS just makes it that much quicker. In this, Rogues do not struggle. They excel. Control the Shaman and gib the Warrior or control the Warrior and gib the Shaman. Both are viable are equally easy to pull off.

Resto Shaman are completely incapable of maintaining themselves. They can't escape, they can't stop incoming damage, a lot of the time they can't even get a single heal off without help because they don't have the tools to do it. They require constant babysitting from their partner--usually a Warrior--to keep them alive against a single DPS.

keep in mind that, technically, bladestorm and berserk cost more than SR+imp SR; its a 51 point talent invesstment vs a 43-point investment. now, TBW is 41 vs 43, but hunters are hunters, and you apparently the MO there is to dumb the class down enough so Joe Q. Facedrooler can actually succeed despite his inability to separate his head from his ***.

as for sham/war, ive had mixed experience vs them. some resto shaman are ridiculously hard to kill, while others arent too tough. the key thing that sets them apart is the resto shammys that are tough to kill heal early and heal often, and as soon as they dip below 70% they hit bloodlust and spam lesser healing wave until theyre full. even without support from a warrior this is enough to keep them going against a lot of pressure.

plus resto shammys have the unique attribute of being very hard to kill as they get lower, thanks to natures guardian.

not to say they dont have problems, just to say that my experience tends to mirror more that of theos in this instance.

I've played with both a feral druid and another rogue at 1800-1900.

Feral isn't good at all in arena, so I won't talk about that, but rogue/rogue gets countered hard by warrior/shaman.

I've played restokin/rogue against warrior/shaman, and honestly, it came down to RNG. We split DPS on the warrior and shaman, with my druid on the warrior and me on the shaman. I couldn't kick every LHW when Buttlust was up, but I got damn near every one. Unfortunately the warrior got a couple lucky mace stuns and a couple WF procs, effectively soloing my druid, which ended one of the games, and in another the shaman ended up trinketing my KS as he got more panicky so I dropped a Blind on him and jumped to the warrior and gave him a nice little train DPS.

So yeah, it's possible that you can win as DPS/rogue, but it's certainly a LOT harder than resto druid teams. It really comes down to whether you can solo the warrior before the warrior solos you, and in some cases the answer is no, some yes.

Mage/rogue is a fairly hard counter to shaman/warrior, but you won't find that comp at 2200+ very often as anything with a priest or lock rapes the crap out of that comp.

I'm gonna chime in here and controversially state that while SR requiring 3 points is a bit annoying, it's not exactly a crime against humanity, I'm with Quor on this one. Recall that it also restores mana and reduces incoming damage by 30% at the same time, something I consider to be a big bonus personally; I think even a 41pt talent that makes you CC immune, restores mana and gives you free undispellable Shield Wall every 2mins would be a bit OP for one point. TBW just nerfs your mana cost (a tiny bit) and gives you a minor damage increase, and frankly isnt much use in Arena for the same reason old SR wasnt; it's still really easy to burst down a Hunter (/Shaman) even if he is immune to CC. I welcome the SR change for Battlegrounds (no more getting stuck in a frost trap and wandering around slooowly looking like, quite literally, a lost cow) and the 3/3 doesnt bother me so much. That said, I'd prefer the CC immunity to be native, and have to spec into the mana regernation part of it instead for the Improved talent. Then it'd be available for people who need it, ie raiders, who can spend all the points in the universe if it helps sustain their DPS.


I agree, and I'm sort of ok with it. My major gripe was that there was zero viable DPS potential in Arena for Shamans, now there is with the changes to Elemental. As long as a whole class isnt being made to choose between which raiding spec to bring to Arena and find out what Arena floor tastes like every match, I'm happy. That 20yd knockback on Thunder is just... wow. Even with the 45sec cd, the ability to essentially toss people off towers or disrupt LoS in Arena at will just kicks ***. The other piece of good news is, you can now spec an Elemental build that will perform in Arena and do decent DPS in raids; not as good as a pure DPS build, but enough so you dont have to respec every five minutes to hit BT.

Edited, Jun 19th 2008 10:17am by Sinstralis