Everything you listed are changes to Enhancement. Let's keep in mind some of those "upgrades" could be used by other trees, but we have to use points to get them and take points out of our already bloated trees.
Just because they "improve" on some points doesn't mean the overall outcome was an improvement. I know it is a game of balance but overall, shaman has slid downhill with time. The reasons for NOT giving upgrades are not due to balance either. It's because "iconic" abilities should NOT go to other classes (ie shaman shouldn't get any), yet they continually give most classes abilities to other classes.
Just as you post all the changes to AP, you forgot the "nerf" as well. 1 STR no longer gives 2 AP. It's an attempt to balance shamans (because so much mail gear had STR...) and to simplify the amount of armor they needed to put on loot tables. I'm not all doom and gloom, but the dev's are making poor decisions in general. I'm hopeful they won't destroy the class, but they really are stupid. They are making changes to talents before they even worked in the first place. They are trying to gauge shaman performance when half our spells don't work. I just don't get how they are justifying anything in the shaman class right now when it isn't even working how they wanted (of course do they even know how they wanted us to work?).
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Actually, I would argue that the changes to AP are a buff, considering the amount of AGI that is on a large portion of gear. And yes, the changes I listed are limited to enhance, as that is what I play, and what this thread is primarily about (a deep enhance talent).
Yes yes, the arguement about iconic abilities is somewhat tired and not valid, but looking at the class/spec as a whole I'm pretty pleased with the direction that it's taken. There are certainly changes I'd like to see (health on totems, unique totem names, ability to pop shammy rage while stunned a la barkskin, snare/root break on GW, and tacking on expertise to some enhance talent off the top of my head), but there is always patches and hotfixes and additional beta-to-live changes that will certainly occur. Despite the drama queen sentiments such as "I'm hopeful they won't destroy the class, but they really are stupid", I'm pretty sure that the devs are working their collective butts off to make the very best product that they can. They may not communicate as well as Stardock might, but they do appear to be generally making changes that are on the whole positive.
In any event, we play a difficult class to master since we have so many tools to use and need to monitor a ton of situations in order to decide what is the most important action at any given time. It's definitly a hard job and doesn't offer much room for mistakes, but we can do it! (I'm starting to sound like Obama now... Yes we can!)
Yes yes, the arguement about iconic abilities is somewhat tired and not valid, but looking at the class/spec as a whole I'm pretty pleased with the direction that it's taken. There are certainly changes I'd like to see (health on totems, unique totem names, ability to pop shammy rage while stunned a la barkskin, snare/root break on GW, and tacking on expertise to some enhance talent off the top of my head), but there is always patches and hotfixes and additional beta-to-live changes that will certainly occur. Despite the drama queen sentiments such as "I'm hopeful they won't destroy the class, but they really are stupid", I'm pretty sure that the devs are working their collective butts off to make the very best product that they can. They may not communicate as well as Stardock might, but they do appear to be generally making changes that are on the whole positive.
In any event, we play a difficult class to master since we have so many tools to use and need to monitor a ton of situations in order to decide what is the most important action at any given time. It's definitly a hard job and doesn't offer much room for mistakes, but we can do it! (I'm starting to sound like Obama now... Yes we can!)
TheJadeMonkey wrote:
In any event, we play a difficult class to master since we have so many tools to use and need to monitor a ton of situations in order to decide what is the most important action at any given time. It's definitly a hard job and doesn't offer much room for mistakes, but we can do it! (I'm starting to sound like Obama now... Yes we can!)
Do not bring skill into this. It has even less place in the argument than "lore" and "iconic" do.
Just to revive this -- I think Quor and I and others who did not express complete horror at this nerf are simply saying that a shaman having snare-breaking shapeshifting would be like a druid having totems. It's a bit silly. What's nerfed is nerfed, and we all seem to agree that what Blizz needs to do is buff our totems. Make them harder to destroy. It helps all specs; it makes sense in the game.
To those of us who PvP with both shaman and feral druid it's somewhat funny to see all the druid envy here. Ferals are arguably worse than even enhancers in end-game PvP. (We're not all resto!) Many is the time I wished my bear/kitty had a grounding or tremor totem. But I'm not gonna burn up the druid forum complaining that we don't get grounding and shamans do. And if Blizz had dangled out the promise of druid totems and then rudely snatched it away, I like to think I'd have the same reaction on druid side.
To those of us who PvP with both shaman and feral druid it's somewhat funny to see all the druid envy here. Ferals are arguably worse than even enhancers in end-game PvP. (We're not all resto!) Many is the time I wished my bear/kitty had a grounding or tremor totem. But I'm not gonna burn up the druid forum complaining that we don't get grounding and shamans do. And if Blizz had dangled out the promise of druid totems and then rudely snatched it away, I like to think I'd have the same reaction on druid side.
what i think is best about this change is that it gives an enh shaman even more group-enhancing power. assuming the new earthbind totem ticks affect not just you but your whole group, then enh shaman just became awesome support characters. its perfect for anti-rogue measures; now you can have poison cleansing totem and earthbind up at the same time, giving a double chance to tick off crip poison, in addition to a nice aoe snare effect.
given the prevalence of rogues in arena combat, as well as the buffs theyve received in LK, id call that a pretty huge advantage.
and if earthbind doesnt work on your party members....well, then it should be changed to do so.
given the prevalence of rogues in arena combat, as well as the buffs theyve received in LK, id call that a pretty huge advantage.
and if earthbind doesnt work on your party members....well, then it should be changed to do so.
tuskerdu wrote:
Just to revive this -- I think Quor and I and others who did not express complete horror at this nerf are simply saying that a shaman having snare-breaking shapeshifting would be like a druid having totems. It's a bit silly.
So let me ask you this. The Shaman's shift is already in the game. Do you consider that silly? Is it already silly that Shaman have an ability that is within 99.99% a copy of Travel Form sufficiently silly that they should remove it from the game? Druids do not have a totem-like ability. Shaman will have Ghost Wolf whether it sucks or not.
So I ask you again, why is it fair that the Druid version is so useful but the Shaman version sucks so much? You don't seem to have a problem with the fact that Ghost Wolf exists in the first place, so at this point you can't possibly argue about "icons" or similiarity. You just reason that it should continue to suck while Travel Form continues to be useful for... what reason? Really. I'd love to hear the justification for this. If it's anything other than you having a problem with the fact that Ghost Wolf is even available to the Shaman class in the first place, then GTFO.
Quote:
To those of us who PvP with both shaman and feral druid it's somewhat funny to see all the druid envy here. Ferals are arguably worse than even enhancers in end-game PvP. (We're not all resto!) Many is the time I wished my bear/kitty had a grounding or tremor totem. But I'm not gonna burn up the druid forum complaining that we don't get grounding and shamans do. And if Blizz had dangled out the promise of druid totems and then rudely snatched it away, I like to think I'd have the same reaction on druid side.
Here is the difference between you and me (and Quor): I'm not positing that Feral Druids should continue to suck, nor am I in complete denial that they currently do so. I fully recognize and have no problem admitting Feral's problems in the arena right now. They need buffs in PvP. They deserve them. I don't go into the Druid forums and tell them all how great Feral Druids are despite the common knowledge and overwhelming statistics to the contrary. I don't say, "Well, spec X in class Y sucks, so spec A in class B should continue to suck too." I would rather see both class Y/spec X and class B/spec A succeed.
And by the way, if I did go into the Druid forums and try to justify any given nerf they had incoming to Feral, the community would react in exactly the same way that I am reacting now. This is something that Quor continually refuses to grasp: One's outlook on a class very much depends on one's emotional, time, effort, and overall investment in a class. Quor has zero investment in the Shaman class, which is why he sees absolutely no problem with their current performance, any negative change, or any lack of positive change concerning them. Compare that to someone like me who is invested almost entirely in the class (it's the only one I've played for about the past five months), and things look a little different. Your view is different still since you play both though, as I've said and you've not refuted, based on your responses I am assuming you invest yourself more in your Druid and your Shaman is something of an alt.
Quor wrote:
what i think is best about this change is that it gives an enh shaman even more group-enhancing power. assuming the new earthbind totem ticks affect not just you but your whole group, then enh shaman just became awesome support characters. its perfect for anti-rogue measures; now you can have poison cleansing totem and earthbind up at the same time, giving a double chance to tick off crip poison, in addition to a nice aoe snare effect.
given the prevalence of rogues in arena combat, as well as the buffs theyve received in LK, id call that a pretty huge advantage.
and if earthbind doesnt work on your party members....well, then it should be changed to do so.
given the prevalence of rogues in arena combat, as well as the buffs theyve received in LK, id call that a pretty huge advantage.
and if earthbind doesnt work on your party members....well, then it should be changed to do so.
There is no "best" thing about this change. Shaman are already overflowing with group utility. Lord knows you come in here and harp on that enough. And they're still not getting any better. So how is giving them even more group utility (questionable though it is, a +0.1 increase is still an increase) supposed to make them better? Shaman need what they have always needed in order to improve: self-sufficiency. Right now any given spec of Shaman has 0 intrinsic value when compared to another class that could take its place. All they offer is group buffs like Please-Dispel-Me-I-Am-Bloodlusted/Heroismed. At some point classes have to be able to do something by themselves or they fail.
In any case... Yes, it will affect party members, but requires that they be within the radius of the totem's effect, which is 12 yards with improvement talents. It also requires you to give up the use of your Tremor Totem, so... give up fear immunity for a redundant snare removal? Not to mention the Rogue can just destroy the totem and it's gone for ten seconds. Let's consider an alternative, Warriors. You now have to choose, "Well, do I want to be completely immobilized by Spamstring or feared for eight seconds?" Consider, again, they changed it from "movement impairing" to "snare". Imp. Spamstring will still lock you in place even if you choose to lay Earthbind.
Campaign all you want, Quor. I'm sure you will and I'd expect nothing less of you, but only one with extreme mental deficiencies or a complete lack of game knowledge would consider this a positive change in any capacity whatsoever.
Edited, Sep 15th 2008 6:23pm by Gaudion
Yes, I have always thought GW was silly. And I never thought it was the same as travel form since it didn't break snares. I figured they wanted to give shamans and enhanced run speed and came up with this. They flirted with taking it the next step and changing it into a copy of travel form for enhancers and then decided to try something different. I'm half disappointed, because it would have made my shammy a beast, and half relieved, because the buff always rubbed me the wrong way.
And fyi, I have a 70 shaman; just switched him from enhance to resto this weekend. My feral's arena partner is a resto shaman, so I am very, very, very, very intimately acquainted with the shortcomings of the class. I have a big interest in shamans being buffed and am not here to troll. And I agree with your idea for dispel resistance in totems -- in fact, slap that on the new earthbind and I think it'd all be good. (As it stands now, if you drop it a rogue's partner will autoattack it and the rogue will cripple away during the CD, or mage will icelance and then nova, etc.) I'm just hoping to shift the conversation away from "but druids can do it..." because that seems counterproductive.
Edit: Oh, and in case it isn't clear enough from what I wrote above, my problem with the change is that druid shapeshifts are supposed to break snares. That is the definition of their class. If it turns out that Blizz comes up with some way to buff us in GW that isn't a direct copy of another class I won't be complaining. My issue isn't with the existence of GW. It's with unimaginative design.
Edited, Sep 15th 2008 6:23pm by tuskerdu
And fyi, I have a 70 shaman; just switched him from enhance to resto this weekend. My feral's arena partner is a resto shaman, so I am very, very, very, very intimately acquainted with the shortcomings of the class. I have a big interest in shamans being buffed and am not here to troll. And I agree with your idea for dispel resistance in totems -- in fact, slap that on the new earthbind and I think it'd all be good. (As it stands now, if you drop it a rogue's partner will autoattack it and the rogue will cripple away during the CD, or mage will icelance and then nova, etc.) I'm just hoping to shift the conversation away from "but druids can do it..." because that seems counterproductive.
Edit: Oh, and in case it isn't clear enough from what I wrote above, my problem with the change is that druid shapeshifts are supposed to break snares. That is the definition of their class. If it turns out that Blizz comes up with some way to buff us in GW that isn't a direct copy of another class I won't be complaining. My issue isn't with the existence of GW. It's with unimaginative design.
Edited, Sep 15th 2008 6:23pm by tuskerdu
tuskerdu wrote:
And I never thought it was the same as travel form since it didn't break snares.
Edit: Oh, and in case it isn't clear enough from what I wrote above, my problem with the change is that druid shapeshifts are supposed to break snares. That is the definition of their class. If it turns out that Blizz comes up with some way to buff us in GW that isn't a direct copy of another class I won't be complaining. My issue isn't with the existence of GW. It's with unimaginative design.
Edit: Oh, and in case it isn't clear enough from what I wrote above, my problem with the change is that druid shapeshifts are supposed to break snares. That is the definition of their class. If it turns out that Blizz comes up with some way to buff us in GW that isn't a direct copy of another class I won't be complaining. My issue isn't with the existence of GW. It's with unimaginative design.
/sighs and kneeds the bridge of his nose
So... again... let me get this straight. You never thought Ghost Wolf was the same as Travel Form? Like... at all? Really? Just because it didn't break snares? So... the Druids' shapeshifting abilities are "iconic" not because they shift into the forms of various beasts, but because they break snares upon the act of shifting? I'm sorry, really, I'm not trying to be an *** about this, but I am just having an extremely difficult time following your logic.
I'm hoping you can see why I'm having trouble accepting your argument as valid instead of pro-Druid (or anti-Shaman) trolling. If I follow your logic, then any ability which removes movement-impairing effects infringes upon Druids' uniqueness, and therefore we must change them. In fact, if it's the fact that the shifts break movement impairing effects that makes them iconic, then no other class can be allowed to break snares or movement impairing effects in any manner whatsoever.
Do you see my problem with this? You are trying way too hard and going very far out of your way to make a Druid/Shaman distinction here where I don't even see the need for there to be one in the first place because the abilities are already 99.99% identicle. The only difference is that one has utility as such that it warrents using and one doesn't. So, again... you're saying Druids get to be unique because their abilities deserve to have utility where Shamans' don't.
How am I supposed to swallow that?
Edited, Sep 15th 2008 6:42pm by Gaudion
Well, I don't think we're getting very far with this so I'll take one more try and let you have the last word.
I never saw GW as vaguely like travel form when I rolled my druid and my shaman last year. Then they made GW insta-cast. Hey, now it's more like travel form. But it doesn't break snares. Then Blizz says they're gonna make GW break snares. Now it's really like travel form. But that's weird. Druids break snares by shifting; Shaman buff themselves via totems. Wouldn't it make more sense to give Shamans their out via totem than shapeshift?
Apparently this is not just some bizarre concept in my mind. The people who design the game came to the same conclusion. They didn't do it right -- no, I'm not satisfied with the new EB, though I do like that it has a group buffing benefit. But they did it and I'm not entirely baffled at their logic.
Now, I do not believe that druids are the only class that should have outs. But if improved sprint meant you changed into a firefly and removed all movement-impairing effects, or hunters got aspect of the druid allowing them to shift into a cheetah to help kite, I'd be a little skeptical. The other class' outs all make sense to me and are original. This one was not. A free action totem would make sense. They gave us one, hurray. It, like all other totems, can be killed by an autoattack or a pet. Boo. And it has a CD. Boo. Those are my complaints, not that we're no longer like druids.
I never saw GW as vaguely like travel form when I rolled my druid and my shaman last year. Then they made GW insta-cast. Hey, now it's more like travel form. But it doesn't break snares. Then Blizz says they're gonna make GW break snares. Now it's really like travel form. But that's weird. Druids break snares by shifting; Shaman buff themselves via totems. Wouldn't it make more sense to give Shamans their out via totem than shapeshift?
Apparently this is not just some bizarre concept in my mind. The people who design the game came to the same conclusion. They didn't do it right -- no, I'm not satisfied with the new EB, though I do like that it has a group buffing benefit. But they did it and I'm not entirely baffled at their logic.
Now, I do not believe that druids are the only class that should have outs. But if improved sprint meant you changed into a firefly and removed all movement-impairing effects, or hunters got aspect of the druid allowing them to shift into a cheetah to help kite, I'd be a little skeptical. The other class' outs all make sense to me and are original. This one was not. A free action totem would make sense. They gave us one, hurray. It, like all other totems, can be killed by an autoattack or a pet. Boo. And it has a CD. Boo. Those are my complaints, not that we're no longer like druids.
tuskerdu wrote:
Now, I do not believe that druids are the only class that should have outs. But if improved sprint meant you changed into a firefly and removed all movement-impairing effects, or hunters got aspect of the druid allowing them to shift into a cheetah to help kite, I'd be a little skeptical. The other class' outs all make sense to me and are original.
But yet you still have no problem with Intercept being copy/pasted into the Feral tree, or all three Druid trees adopting Paladins' auras in their forms, or any number of other Druid abilities that come straight out of other class' books. You can try to justify it until your keyboard breaks, but you are still imposing a double-standard in favor of the Druid.
As far as Travel Form and Ghost Wolf... well, I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree. I dunno... I'm honestly baffled by your views on the subject. You're the first person I have ever talked to that has not drawn an immediate correlation from Ghost Wolf to Travel Form.
Edited, Sep 15th 2008 10:24pm by Gaudion
Quote:
I never saw GW as vaguely like travel form when I rolled my druid and my shaman last year. Then they made GW insta-cast. Hey, now it's more like travel form. But it doesn't break snares. Then Blizz says they're gonna make GW break snares. Now it's really like travel form. But that's weird. Druids break snares by shifting; Shaman buff themselves via totems. Wouldn't it make more sense to give Shamans their out via totem than shapeshift?
Correct me by all means but I thought that GW was a) Dispellable b) Only form change for shaman. Druid has possibility to use feral cat form instead of travel form and in this form they can travel faster than normal movement speed if talented.
Once again, correct me if I'm wrong since I don't play druid in pvp.
It's just plain ridiculous that shamans have been venturing in that world for long time and still they can't do better than those weak twigs? Is it too much to ask that our totems would be at least personalized(?) so that it would take 1s longer to focus on them before shooting them down?
I can truely see why so many think that shamans should get their buffs from totems and not from other classes. How ever this can't mean that shamans remain sucking in quite big part of game. When it comes to classes every class almost has speccs that they cant use in pvp/arena. Mages have 1 specc they are forced to use, locks have 2 good ones as far as I know. Druids has 1 spess that is wanted for every arena team ( meaning 2vs2 3vs3 5vs5 ).
Just to point once more, druids have no cd on their snare break, it can't be dispelled, it can't be icelanced and you can't send pet with macro to destroy druids snare breaker. And it's not, like you said, about what druids get and we don't. Not one here has asked hot's or stealth for shaman, nor the ability to tank in GW.
That nerf took away something what every shaman has been asking for a long time. And just to add that "in ur face" totem"buff" that now we are using our totems to get that same buff. It does not work, it does not do the same what spectral wolf was supposed to do, it just plain sucks compared to how it should work.
Edited, Sep 16th 2008 11:18am by Causa
This is starting to turn into one of those comedy shows where the other cops think the main guy is a cop, but he keeps making lots of mistakes because he's really a pizza boy who went in the wrong door or something.
At the end of the show the pizza boy usually ends up running out of the building too, which is also amusingly represented here.
Now, I want to make something totally clear; I actually agree with Tusk on this one and only point:
I wholeheartedly agree that a Shaman anti-snare makes more sense if it's a totem. It makes more sense, logically, and to rational people I think. Shaman = totems, totems should do stuff. Fine, I'm with you, please stop hammering on that particular railroad spike. But in the same breath, totems ought therefore to be able to withstand just a tiny bit more punishment than a lvl1 Hunter with a bow can dish out. Every character in WoW, every single one from lvl1 to lvl80, can dispel totems with a simple macro command. That does not make and never has made any sense whatsoever. It is comparable to Druid shapeshifting being cancelled by Shadow damage or something equally arbitrary so Corruption knocks you back into Caster form; an iconic class-defining ability should not be so easily countered. The Paladin iconic ability, Divine Shield, requires a Priest to pop a gigantic magical whirlwhind with heavy mana cost and a significant cooldown, only available at high level. A totem requires a lvl1 Rogue to take his grey dagger... *poit* gone!
If the totem system made sense I would actually be arguing for a solid snare-breaking totem, because Id much prefer a stronger and more reliable totem system than a band-aid fix with Spectral which does begin to resemble a Druid in playstyle, but since Blizzard are (seemingly as a point of long-standing pig-headedness) refuse to offer totems survivabilty (except for lol-claw) the mechanic for this, iconic or not, is inadequate to the purpose your lore-gland seems to crave.
In the absence of a genuine solution that makes sense with the class design, band-aid fixes are all Shamans can hope for. Begrudging them that because it makes your alt feel more like your main doesnt seem realistic, to be honest. As Gaudion said, willing a spec to continue to fail even when talented for what amounts to a lorefap cosmetic reason.
Now I personally dont anticipate there being a problem if Feral Spirits retain their snarebreak and runspeed buff, but requiring a 51pt investment just to counter one single mechanic is seriously unpleasant balancing (and yes, I feel the same way about Bersek, stupid PvP fixes are fail).
At the end of the show the pizza boy usually ends up running out of the building too, which is also amusingly represented here.
Now, I want to make something totally clear; I actually agree with Tusk on this one and only point:
Quote:
Druids break snares by shifting; Shaman buff themselves via totems. Wouldn't it make more sense to give Shamans their out via totem than shapeshift?
I wholeheartedly agree that a Shaman anti-snare makes more sense if it's a totem. It makes more sense, logically, and to rational people I think. Shaman = totems, totems should do stuff. Fine, I'm with you, please stop hammering on that particular railroad spike. But in the same breath, totems ought therefore to be able to withstand just a tiny bit more punishment than a lvl1 Hunter with a bow can dish out. Every character in WoW, every single one from lvl1 to lvl80, can dispel totems with a simple macro command. That does not make and never has made any sense whatsoever. It is comparable to Druid shapeshifting being cancelled by Shadow damage or something equally arbitrary so Corruption knocks you back into Caster form; an iconic class-defining ability should not be so easily countered. The Paladin iconic ability, Divine Shield, requires a Priest to pop a gigantic magical whirlwhind with heavy mana cost and a significant cooldown, only available at high level. A totem requires a lvl1 Rogue to take his grey dagger... *poit* gone!
If the totem system made sense I would actually be arguing for a solid snare-breaking totem, because Id much prefer a stronger and more reliable totem system than a band-aid fix with Spectral which does begin to resemble a Druid in playstyle, but since Blizzard are (seemingly as a point of long-standing pig-headedness) refuse to offer totems survivabilty (except for lol-claw) the mechanic for this, iconic or not, is inadequate to the purpose your lore-gland seems to crave.
In the absence of a genuine solution that makes sense with the class design, band-aid fixes are all Shamans can hope for. Begrudging them that because it makes your alt feel more like your main doesnt seem realistic, to be honest. As Gaudion said, willing a spec to continue to fail even when talented for what amounts to a lorefap cosmetic reason.
Now I personally dont anticipate there being a problem if Feral Spirits retain their snarebreak and runspeed buff, but requiring a 51pt investment just to counter one single mechanic is seriously unpleasant balancing (and yes, I feel the same way about Bersek, stupid PvP fixes are fail).
Sinstralis wrote:
I wholeheartedly agree that a Shaman anti-snare makes more sense if it's a totem. It makes more sense, logically, and to rational people I think. Shaman = totems, totems should do stuff. Fine, I'm with you, please stop hammering on that particular railroad spike.
I feel somewhat obligated to clarify this as well.
I don't have a problem with utility being based on our totems as far as "iconic" or, as Sinstralis likes to put it, lore-fappage goes. If you sat me down and asked me, at random, what I think should be done give the Shaman class X ability, I would pull up something already existing in the class. A Shock or a totem, etc.
Relying or favoring a class' iconic mechanic is one thing. Restricting them to it exclusively, however, is another thing entirely. Can Shaman be allowed to grow in no area other than what their totems allow? Then we shouldn't be getting Hex or Lava Burst, we should get a totem that hexes or a totem that lava bursts, etc. I'm hoping this is fairly straightforward and easy to comprehend.
At some point you have to allow yourself to step outside the parameters you've defined for yourself, especially if the parameters you've defined are insufficient for the intended purpose. And I don't think anyone (other than maybe Quor or Theo) would suggest that totems are sufficient. Despite this, Blizzard continues to harp on the totem mechanic for Shaman without even addressing the fundamental problem. It's as if you were remodeling a century-old house so you could sell it and the interior woodwork was rotten from moisture and termites, but all you did was re-paint the outside and put on a new roof. Problem fixed, right? Someone will want to buy this. That's more or less Blizzard's entire stance on Shaman. "Well, we changed something. People will want to play it now."
Furthermore, Shaman are iconically linked to totems, but they're not just totems. They have Shocks. They have lightning nukes. They have weapon imbues. These things are all inherently Shamanistic in nature, and are no way diminished by the totems' presense. You know what else Shaman have? They have Ghost Wolf. It's part of the Shaman library, it always has been, and it always will be, and just because totems (or Travel Form for Druids) happen to exist is no reason to single out and persecute this one particular spell. Why shouldn't it be useful?
Now, if Blizzard had created the Ghost Wolf spell from scratch for Shaman in WotLK, giving it all the properties of Travel Form, then yes, even I would have a problem with it. But they didn't. All they did was take an already existing spell, one that is currently, as tuskerdu so aptly put it, "throw-away", and made it useful. For one spec. After four talent points.
So tuskerdu has a problem with the similiarity. Well, that's also fine up to a point. But hypocrisy drives me crazy, and his argument (as well as the Druid argument as a whole and the Blizzard argument by and large) is overflowing with it. Shaman can't have a spell that resembles Travel Form even though Druids get Intercept, auras, and countless other buffs and abilities directly copy/pasted from other classes. I am never going to be satisfied with this argument as long as a double-standard continues to persist.
Edited, Sep 16th 2008 4:15pm by Gaudion
1 post
alot of negativity about EBT instead of ST and not suprisingly. but imo ST was a bit of a simple solution and too in line with drood. however, this change does not seen satisfactory in its' initial form.
the changes i would like to see tested are :
1. instead of a pulse a single dismisser of snare(+root!!! must!) to pulse a buff- 'immune to snare+root'.
akin to the manner in which WF currently works this buff would last 3 secs and rebuff if totem is still in range.
2. well, this is more a balancing act with regard to feral spirit. i suggest that the removal of the activated abillity (dunno name) of root+snare immunity and give shaman ST abillity for duration of feral spirits. kind of a pack mentality buff that has a natural reason to fit there i think.
another big advantage to this would be to lighten the load on the pet bar.
i feel that EBT might be alright. its not the simple answer to all probs but if ST was limited to the above, (30 (plz 40) secs) i think it would be seen to have it's substitute use well implemented.
range- possibly increase, but not huge i think. but it is now both 'friendly' and 'hostile' so maybe it applies to the thirty yard increase.
and, ffs. new EBT cannot be a 2 talent point at tier 8. cmon!?
off the EBT subject heres 1 of those ability notions that come every now and again.
totemic voodoo:
instant cast. no mana cost. 10 min cd. last 30secs.
once activated shaman sacrifices 3 totems from 3 differing elements that have been cast or the next that are cast. all totem casting from the sacrificed schools are locked for the duration of TV. the totems of remaining elemental school are now imbued with voodoo magic.
effect: all totem from the remaining element with CD of 30secs or less have no CD. in addition this element can now be used for the placement of all 4 totems. these voodoo totems last no more than 30 secs. once the last voodoo totem has been destroyed normal totem casting resumes.
this a bit of a whirl but aint this the great thing about the shaman class<it can a bit more inventive than the norm>!!
this ability should replace BL imo because of its versatility> raid four x WF> pvp caster four x GT> pvp mellee four x EB fire nova>
its not that mad is it??!
ty
ps, have 70 enhance sham in transfer atm but admitti\edly am pve kara lev. this being so would like to here any feedback from arena heads. lookin forward to wotlk
the changes i would like to see tested are :
1. instead of a pulse a single dismisser of snare(+root!!! must!) to pulse a buff- 'immune to snare+root'.
akin to the manner in which WF currently works this buff would last 3 secs and rebuff if totem is still in range.
2. well, this is more a balancing act with regard to feral spirit. i suggest that the removal of the activated abillity (dunno name) of root+snare immunity and give shaman ST abillity for duration of feral spirits. kind of a pack mentality buff that has a natural reason to fit there i think.
another big advantage to this would be to lighten the load on the pet bar.
i feel that EBT might be alright. its not the simple answer to all probs but if ST was limited to the above, (30 (plz 40) secs) i think it would be seen to have it's substitute use well implemented.
range- possibly increase, but not huge i think. but it is now both 'friendly' and 'hostile' so maybe it applies to the thirty yard increase.
and, ffs. new EBT cannot be a 2 talent point at tier 8. cmon!?
off the EBT subject heres 1 of those ability notions that come every now and again.
totemic voodoo:
instant cast. no mana cost. 10 min cd. last 30secs.
once activated shaman sacrifices 3 totems from 3 differing elements that have been cast or the next that are cast. all totem casting from the sacrificed schools are locked for the duration of TV. the totems of remaining elemental school are now imbued with voodoo magic.
effect: all totem from the remaining element with CD of 30secs or less have no CD. in addition this element can now be used for the placement of all 4 totems. these voodoo totems last no more than 30 secs. once the last voodoo totem has been destroyed normal totem casting resumes.
this a bit of a whirl but aint this the great thing about the shaman class<it can a bit more inventive than the norm>!!
this ability should replace BL imo because of its versatility> raid four x WF> pvp caster four x GT> pvp mellee four x EB fire nova>
its not that mad is it??!
ty
ps, have 70 enhance sham in transfer atm but admitti\edly am pve kara lev. this being so would like to here any feedback from arena heads. lookin forward to wotlk
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