Do you think Shaman DPS is low because of us?

[Ellay]

Specifically Elemental. The Shaman player base happens to be the lowest % of a class played in WoW, add on top of that Elemental is the least played spec of Shamans. It just so happens that the most popular multiboxing option is stacked Shamans (us!) With that in mind Elemental Shamans around the world are crying at the DPS we put out compared to other players.

Myself I have been doing a ton of PvE with Arena being down and this last week not counting/points being reset. I've gone in with terribly geared players doing ZA and top of the line players doing BT. What I have found is that our DPS yes is definitely much lower than our counterparts and other classes. Elitist Jerks has numerous write ups on the scaling issues we have vs other class/specs at 80 and the developers have identified this issue and plan to implement more raw damage into some of our higher tier talents, no mention as of when though.

Our main synergy with the class is stronger than ever, which comes in the form of frontloaded burst damage. A guaranteed Lava Burst Crit will be hitting for 8k+ at 80 fully geared, you can throw in a Chain Lightning (can guarantee the crit on this if you want as well) and an Earthshock for good measure. Your looking at an INSANE amount of damage all at the same time. Our claim to fame still remains.
For PvE the same scenario still stands, we can brute force our way into any instance, kite or use earth ele tanks if needed.

PvP even with the changes we are still very potent. Currently on my newly rolled Alliance characters - mostly S2/S3 I am able to pick apart almost any team by adapting to different playstyles, including the crazy burst some classes are unloading. (Arcane Mage / Ret Paladin), and all you see right now in 5's in 4 dps which is our hardest team makeup. I expect this to switch back to 3 dps 2 healers at 80.

I guess through all my rabble and rumbling, do any of you feel our existence and adehsiveness to the Shaman class is influencing how the developers balance it? Are we a factor that is causing Ele Shamans to suffer in other areas?

[Lyonheart]

I think about this all the time. I'm not sure though. It would seem odd that they make design decisions based on a minority of the player base stacking a class.

[Signal7]

I think Elemental shaman should be on par with the DPS for say a Balance spec'd Drd or a Ret Pally, but given our ability to wear mail and our more than decent healing abilities I feel it would be unfair to have Elemental shaman matching up to mages, locks, or hunters who lack lesser if any healing capabilities. Don't get me wrong here, I roll a 4 Elemental Shaman team as well so I'll take any increase in DPS that Bliz wants to throw at me, but honestly this boxers feels we got it pretty good even as is at the moment. Throw in Lava Burst for DPS and Hex for CC at 80 is just icing on the cake to me.

As for Blizz Devs taking multiboxers to mind when they balance out Elemental Spec'd shaman DPS I think it's is entirely possible considering the Elemental Spec has gotten a lot more attention, as well as the shaman class itself, since this site and your videos greatly contributed to the shaman crazy of boxers in "07" and "08". That being the case though I think it would be unfair of Bliz to nerf or buff a class based on the assumption that the majority of that spec of a class are playing muliplte toons of the same spec at one time. I mean they should know that if Druids or Locks become the "flavor of the month" because 5 of them can accomplish more that shamans can most people will just reroll that class. So imo they should look at each class as it would perform from a single character perspective, and not a "what would it be like with 5 of these" kind of view. Just my thoughts. :rolleyes:

[hardcoded]

I do not believe there is any malice. From my interpretation of Ghostcrawler, they simply have no idea what they're doing with Shaman.

Elemental is not highly played, and they seemingly prioritized it as such. First they claim that damage is "fine" for a month or so, then "oh its bad but wait for newamazingtalent" and "we know its bad but we're not balancing you at 70".

It really does seem that they've "gone back to the drawing board" with shaman, and that means we'll be in limbo(in an underpowered state, unfortunately) until they figure out how our class is going to work. They certainly seemed to have repositioned themselves publicly on how they present the shaman class is supposed to work several times, and admitted major "miscalculations". It may even be by design(for scheduling purposes, not malice) that they balance the least played spec/class late, by depending on a talent is only available till after launch.

[algol]

No.

If anything, the practice of stacking shamans in raids by more traditional players is orders of magnitude more significant to the design process.

[moog]

The Blizzard developers keep claiming that 3.0+ Elemental Shaman DPS is balanced at 80, not 70.

Bah! That is such a lame fucking stance for the developers to take... we are 70 now, there will always be some chars at 70, why shouldn't the game be "balanced" for them, too!

[entoptic]

Specifically Elemental. The Shaman player base happens to be the lowest % of a class played in WoW, add on top of that Elemental is the least played spec of Shamans. It just so happens that the most popular multiboxing option is stacked Shamans (us!) With that in mind Elemental Shamans around the world are crying at the DPS we put out compared to other players.

Myself I have been doing a ton of PvE with Arena being down and this last week not counting/points being reset. I've gone in with terribly geared players doing ZA and top of the line players doing BT. What I have found is that our DPS yes is definitely much lower than our counterparts and other classes. Elitist Jerks has numerous write ups on the scaling issues we have vs other class/specs at 80 and the developers have identified this issue and plan to implement more raw damage into some of our higher tier talents, no mention as of when though.

Our main synergy with the class is stronger than ever, which comes in the form of frontloaded burst damage. A guaranteed Lava Burst Crit will be hitting for 8k+ at 80 fully geared, you can throw in a Chain Lightning (can guarantee the crit on this if you want as well) and an Earthshock for good measure. Your looking at an INSANE amount of damage all at the same time. Our claim to fame still remains.
For PvE the same scenario still stands, we can brute force our way into any instance, kite or use earth ele tanks if needed.

PvP even with the changes we are still very potent. Currently on my newly rolled Alliance characters - mostly S2/S3 I am able to pick apart almost any team by adapting to different playstyles, including the crazy burst some classes are unloading. (Arcane Mage / Ret Paladin), and all you see right now in 5's in 4 dps which is our hardest team makeup. I expect this to switch back to 3 dps 2 healers at 80.

I guess through all my rabble and rumbling, do any of you feel our existence and adehsiveness to the Shaman class is influencing how the developers balance it? Are we a factor that is causing Ele Shamans to suffer in other areas?

No it's mainly you! :thumbsup:

[Gaffy]

One thing that I didn't see mentioned is the change to raid wide buffs. Imagine a 25-man with 15-20 shaman.
They did the same thing to Ferocious Inspiration, 3% damage increase. Pre 3.0 it stacked party wide (5 BM hunters made for insane dps) but post 3.0 you only get one FI buff for the 3% increase.

[Ellay]

No it's mainly you! :thumbsup: Heh, I may have started the the engine, but there's a whole swarm of us now :) it's not just me!!

[Lilith]

:P not rly, think using 100% crit flame shock inst lava burst.
They just have elemental a new i win button

[Hachoo]

I don't think the developers take multiboxing into consideration at all in regards to balancing the class/spec.

Even if they did I think it would be the OPPOSITE since more than 1 dev has admitted to multiboxing (and most likely 5 shamans based on the popularity ;))

Anyway, we'll see how things change in the next month or so - yes our DPS is low but as far as multiboxing is concerned I'm quite happy with where we are and plan to continue with 5 shamans (and at this point probably wont use the pally for PvE at all either - will either do 5 shamans or not run the instance).

[Dorffo]

I guess through all my rabble and rumbling, do any of you feel our existence and adehsiveness to the Shaman class is influencing how the developers balance it? Are we a factor that is causing Ele Shamans to suffer in other areas?

I have to say 'yes' at least to some extent but probably not as much as we'd like to think. I would imagine that there are balancing tests that involve stacking each class in different settings. If we've impacted the Dev cycle at all, most likely it's been to just put a bit more time into those test runs since certain class stacks are being actively played now. I think the fact that the fact that the multibox community hasn't found any groups that are hugely out-of-whack in comparison to normal group play speaks to this.

When I step back and think about it, I don't think we get any more attention than other group comps do. Take for instance the multiple balance passes that have been taken to adjust various content for stealth groups: If we all ran druid/rogue comps we'd say "hey we did that!" when its really to address a much broader issue (since 5 stealth classes can stealth to Boss_X whether they be one or five people in this example).

[TheBigBB]

Blizzard does not make a priority to balance classes for anything other than the current (or soon to be) max level. They've said this repeatedly since 2 years ago, and it makes sense. With so much to balance and 99.99% of the playerbase ready and willing to buy the expansion and level to 80, the work to make sure everything at every stage is perfectly even is too great for too little reward. As of 3 days from now, there will be no such thing as raid or arena balance at 70 anymore. We really need to wait to see what happens. And no, I don't believe that beta test data is useful at all. The beta test is there to work out these issues. If 6 months from, we still think that the shaman is way behind other classes, then we can go storm Blizzard.

[Vyndree]

The ToW stacking nerf was because of us for sure though

I disagree. I think ToW got hit with the anti-stack because every other stacking ability has been nerfed to oblivion.

If anything, Shaman (in general) were nerfed because, in my experience raiding Sunwell, they were "too needed". You stacked Shamans with a vengeance in sunwell, you rotated resto shamans in and out of DPS groups to pop their heroisms and drums and gtfo. Chain heal was ridiculous, an enh shaman was needed in the melee group, totems only stacked in party (thus requiring more shaman, 1 per party)...

...and shaman are the least played class at level 70.


It was bad that shamans were being stacked to the exclusion of other healers. There were a number of reasons that happened, and many of the changes we've made in LK were to address those problems. You can't realistically stack Bloodlust anymore, and you don't need to work a shaman into every group for their totems
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12454677199&sid=1

Now think -- as a developer -- if ToW were to still stack, but totems were raid-wide..... Wouldn't that mean that elemental shaman stacking would be the new "hip" thing to do?

You see the problem here? We were dragging along several bad players simply because they were shaman, and we could make up for their badness if they brought heroisms (bloodlust) and weren't completely retarded about laying totems.


Think about it -- how many high-end multiboxers took ToW?
PvP? None.
PvE? Not many. I did Kara (pre-3.0) without ToW.


ToW's crit was only useful until you could hit ~30% with gear alone. ToW's hit was only useful until you could hit cap yourself with gear alone (and believe me, with the amount of ele mail with +hit on it, it's not hard).


Shaman (elemental) dps is regrettable, and I do hope they put their money where their mouth is with that Lava thing.


ToW impacts only a FRACTION of the multiboxing shaman community. ToW wasn't even BROUGHT to our sunwell raids. ToW wasn't specced by ANY serious pvp shaman (NS anyone?). Why? Because it's f*cking crit and hit, and we have tons of both already. Draenei elemental shaman with ToW had the highest non-gear +hit in the game.

Furthermore, you can QQ about the lack of ToW stacking all you want, but the truth of the matter was it was buffed. Dude, there is a PERCENTAGE SPELLDAMAGE INCREASE on the totem! I would've traded that for crit any day! Crit is sub-par in PvP (particularly on a 5hp totem) due to resil. Crit is "meh" in PvE -- it gives a damage increase, but not so much as straight spelldamage.

Also, did you notice that flametongue totem isn't a weapon buff anymore? Hellloooooo buffs.


No, we're not the uber special snowflake that blizz wants to nerf to the ground. 1) Not many of us specced ToW in the first place because 2) ToW in its previous form was trashy, particularly compared to NS and 3) shaman buff stacking was overpowered by RAIDERS, who took sub-par shaman over awesome healers/dps'ers simply because THEY HAD TO.

ToW STACKING got nerfed because EVERY stacking buff got nerfed. Every stacking buff got nerfed because it was a REQUIREMENT to stack buffs if you wanted raid progression. ToW itself was buffed with a spelldamage increase.


Paranoia anyone? A little self-centered about our impact on the game mechanics? Because all stacking buffs got nerfed -- not just elemental's. If they honestly wanted to nerf multiboxing, they could just remove /follow.

</endrant>

[pinotnoir]

I dont think its us.. The stuff I have read shows our gear doesnt scale up like others. Also they really need to rethink some of the bs they give us on the talent sheet. Its full of useless stuff compared to others sheets. eg.. storm fire earth 5 points of bullshit to reduce a cooldown on cl.

[Vyndree]

Heroism was nerfed (back to back popping) because Sunwell raids required it.

By your own post - nobody used ToW that raided. Nobody. The only people in WoW that really used the damn thing is us multiboxers. The only people that stacked it was us multiboxers.

Grouding still stacks
Healing Stream still stacks
Mana spring NOW stacks in parties (hello OP?)

By your reasoning of "nobody used it" there was no need to make it not stack - because nobody used it (but us). Anyway, just throwing in my side.

Yes, I like the new version better. Yes, overall it wasn't really a nerf, and the fact that my team can go almost forever without mana issues is awesome.

But a fresh 70 team that was NOT gear really benefited from the ToW stacking. Its when you start getting geared where its really not needed (or in PvP where NS was a better choice)

I never said ToW was nerfed BECAUSE raids used it -- I said STACKING was nerfed because raids overused, if not REQUIRED it.

I'll repeat -- ToW stacking was nerfed because ALL raidwide stacking buffs were nerfed. You see? Cause and effect.

ToW as it was (stacking crit) made for a cruddy 41-pointer. ToW NOW is worth having. Now imagine ToW NOW stacking. Completely OP.

They couldn't leave it as a 5-man stacking buff because that would mean (for the spelldamage PERCENTAGE increase) you'd have to have 1 ele shaman in every caster group, which is exactly what they're trying to avoid. NOW, ToW is worth it. THEN, ToW wasn't useful and we only had a 41-point ele shammy in our raids when our resto shaman was already specced ele over the weekend and didn't feel like respeccing for trash.


ToW stacking in its old form USED to only really affect a FEW shaman multiboxers.
ToW in its CURRENT state is buffed, therefore stacking it raid-wide would be OP.
ToW in its CURRENT state is buffed, therefore having it stacking in a party would mean you'd need 1 ele shammy per caster group. This is counterproductive to the "Bring skill, not specific classes" that wrath is going for.


Make sense?

Grounding totem "Stacks" because even if it DIDN'T stack, it would stack. Confusing, I know, but even if you only had 1 grounding totem buff up at a time, you kill that grounding, the next buff goes up. There was no need to nerf it because pre and post-nerf it would have identical behavior.

Healing stream always stacked, but in the party. It was also largely never used compared to mana spring.

Mana spring stacking is along the lines of the replenishment buffs they've given other classes. If 3 classes can provide replenishment, stacking mana spring doesn't seem so OP.
Furthermore -- imagine if Mana Spring stacked raid-wide. Imagine if Mana Spring STACKED raid-wide.

I consider Mana Spring buffed to offset the terribad downranking nerf. Shamans WERE mana efficient when spamming chain heal (rank 4). Spamming max rank means they, well, can't spam. At least those 5 points in Restorative Totems is coming in handy.
Healing stream ticks for a miniscule amount for ele shammies, and a lesser miniscule amount for resto shammies. Given the downranking nerfs I mentioned above, I still don't think anyone's going to be laying it.

Mana Spring buff offsets downranking nerf. So does Replenishment on 3 classes.
Even with Mana Spring / Healing Stream stacking, I wouldn't tailor my raid around stacking shaman.
If Mana Spring stacked RAID-wide, I'd consider stacking ele shaman.
If ToW stacked (in its current form), I would stack ele shaman.

That is the key difference. -- the buff of Mana spring is not enough to rationalize overstacking shammies. The buff to the current ToW, if it stacked, would. ToW is a SCALING dps buff. Mana spring is a flat mana/5, and unless the fight is some sort of endurance thing, that's not going to make/break your raid.


People lol'ed at a full ele shammy dps raid. 1 moonkin, 4 ele shams per dps group. Did you see it being required for raiding sunwell? Nah, crit was fun and all but not necessary. In fact, boomkins and shammies had their own issues pulling sub-par DPS compared to rogues, hunters, locks. So the buff of ToW was fine, given that pure DPS classes could still out-dps them without ToW in the party.
If ToW stacked, this entire forum would be alive with theorycraft on Prepared and Sam multiboxing raids with massive pewpew. Normal raids would demand multiple elemental shaman and throw in the spare boomkin (for nature debuff) and lock (for CoE). ToW cannot stack, because, in its current state, it would unbalance the "neutrality" of raid compositions that wrath is trying to achieve.

[valkry]

I believe when fully buffed to the max, all dps classes/specs should be equal and it being up to the skill of the players to determine dps ranks in the raid (assuming equal gear). Not matter what buffs they bring to the table. This has been the excuse for high rogue dps, that they bring no buffs so they were given high dps, which just makes them hated. But blizz is working on the "invite them for the player, not for the class" motto.

They are trying, so I'll forgive them. I'm sure it's not easy to try to balance everyone.

[Suvega]

No offense ellay, but to all the people thinking this:

You have to be the most short sighted elitist individuals I have ever seen.

ALL RAID STACKING WAS NERFED. Not just shaman.... Oh. Em. Gee.

Honestly, even if JUST ELEMENTAL SHAMAN were nerfed, do you HONESTLY THINK that ANY OF YOU HAVE DONE ANYTHING OF IMPORTANCE TO WARRANT A NERF?
No one, I repeat NO ONE has abused totem of wrath to any measure in this entire community. Do you think the devs give two shits about your "rediculous" crit in kara epics and season 2 gear topping BG leader boards?
Hows that arena rating? How's that top progression. God you're so OP. /sigh.

The only one who could even hint at that with a straight face would be Ellay, and the funny part is, HE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TOTEM OF WRATH. The only thing he abused was what, Grounding (still here), Heroisms (which was nerfed for raids, not arenas), lightning bolt spam (which was nerfed because of the RAID BUFF FOR CoE), and NS Elem Mast CL (Still here).

So that leaves... Nothing. Let me be the one to pull your head out of the clouds and back down to earth, jesus christ.

Heh... Oh god the multiboxing community of what, 15k people at most, has been the sole cause of devs nerfing 1 million people, and of course removing ALL raid stacking? LOL.... bullshit.

[Dorffo]

No offense ellay, but to all the people thinking this: ...

^ is what I was trying to say - but that was much less vague! :thumbup:

[puppychow]

I think its more a case of the squeeky wheel gets the grease. Hardly anyone plays ele shaman, it was kind of the joke DPS class pre 3.0. I have run a premade 80 shaman (as ele and resto) and a premade 80 hunter on beta in heroics and naxx. Hands down elemental shaman is the worst DPS out of all the DPS classes at 80 right now, hunters are far and away the best (this was about a week ago though, I would guess they are internally tweaking it). Maybe with the lava tweaks it'll get better.

Its fine hopefully for multiboxing PVE, I really doubt 4 ele shamans will be competitive in arenas anymore though (imo DKs "pull" and all the class knockbacks are going to hurt badly). I'm leveling a pally+mage+3 shamans to 80 first, then I'll see if I want to level a second team or not. Who knows, classes get tweaked so much they may suddenly turn out to be super OP after a few weeks.

[Los]

Its naive to think that there will be no devver what so ever, that runs around thinking that they shouldn't make 'this' spell or that spell to OP in case somebody would multibox the class. They get loads of drama about it, why shouldnt they keep us in mind somewhere.

ot; Rofol @ suvega and vyndree, stop the dramatics PLEASE its ANNOYING to read

[bodefeld]

I did use ToWx5 a lot -- but I don't find using my characters' abilities (I spent talent points for) an "abuse". Analogously, one could argue that using 3 sheeps in a group with 3 mages is "abusing" a "stacking" CC -- here too, all party members benefit from the "stacking" effect. But this is not the type of discussion I would like to have here. I simply don't like being accused of abusing something that is perfectly within the game mechanics and well-known to the devs.
ToW appealed to me because it served two important purposes in PvE: Firstly, it got my characters spell-hit-capped in PvP gear, and secondly, 51% crit total helped save mana and thus compensate for the lack of mp5 on PvP gear.

In my opinion, ToW stacking was removed, because:
a) most major buffs were made raid-wide, and
b) stacking ToW (as well as many others) would have been OP

I do not think it is likely that Blizz changed the buff system because of a few multiboxers.
It's more of a necessity that came along with all the other changes to classes and the raid- and buff system altogether.

Sad thing is, Blizzard's efforts to balance dps classes seems to be restricted to:
a) level 80 (atm) and
b) raids (where CoE etc. is assumed to be up).

[Multibocks]

I think it was more of a one stone- two birds thing. They were going to nerf stacking anyways, but the bonus side effect was to limit MBers favorite class.

[Xar]

Doubt it's because of multiboxers. Definitely seems because of the homogenizing of the classes and making buffs raid wide. Some classes win big and some not so much until they get a chance to fix things. It definitely means we'll eventually get a dps boost later if the damage doesn't pan out at 80.

[TheBigBB]

Its naive to think that there will be no devver what so ever, that runs around thinking that they shouldn't make 'this' spell or that spell to OP in case somebody would multibox the class. They get loads of drama about it, why shouldnt they keep us in mind somewhere.

ot; Rofol @ suvega and vyndree, stop the dramatics PLEASE its ANNOYING to readAll a dev would have to worry about is how things stack up in general. Multibox stacking is no different from solobox stacking. If a multiboxer can use something to great success, a group of soloboxers can do it even more substantially with a well-disciplined team of people. The changes to the game take into effect how skills work together on a character basis. Blue posts constantly use this as their justification for multiboxing in general: they design the game around characters, not number of people behind the characters. If there is a dev who somehow sees a difference between stacking as a multiboxer and stacking as a soloboxer, that dev needs to resign. I don't believe such a dev exists.

[Vyndree]

If a multiboxer can use something to great success, a group of soloboxers can do it even more substantially with a well-disciplined team of people

Which is exactly what happened to resto shammies in raids, particularly sunwell.

I'd argue that sunwell raiders (pre-nerf) were some of the most disciplined and well coordinated PvE players in the game, and who exploited class stacking to its fullest. They would also have the most to gain (gear-wise) from such an exploit.

All we multiboxers gain from abusing class stacking is making it easier to get as close as we possibly can to that well-disciplined team.

ToW stacking was nerfed, in part, because the totem was buffed and raid stacking in total nerfed. Regardless of how many players spec elemental (since shaman, in general, are the least played class in the game) -- they have to create a 41-point talent tree for it. Which means they have to think of the needs of normal run-of-the-mill shaman players.

I leveled elemental, despite how weak it was solo and pre-60. I raided elemental occasionally. We have a guild shaman who considers himself elemental, even though he is forced to respec resto for resto shaman stacking in sunwell. To say that multiboxers are the majority of the elemental shaman spec is ridiculous -- it's a popular choice for our community, yes. But even then I doubt we so much as dent the normal populace.

FYI -- solo ele shamans were popular in PvP arenas. They'd blow their NS+CL, heroism, and fall over but they were still popular for just that. Multiboxers weren't the only ones who enjoyed ele burst.



ot; Rofol @ suvega and vyndree, stop the dramatics PLEASE its ANNOYING to read

At least my dramatic opinion is fact-based and logical.

I could argue the same about fancy strikeouts and font styles. You don't have to like the writing. The fact that nobody has directly refuted the actual argument (only the execution of it) is another sign that the argument itself is sound. If you want to have a discussion, discuss. But I have every right to be as snarky as you are. ;)

[Tsunami]

there are several handicaps that shaman have in general.

1. roles and style of play- shaman are one of two classes that have 3 completely different roles and styles of play. shaman are ranged dps, melee dps and healers. the druid is ranged dps, tank/melee dps, and hearler. most other classes have 1-2 different roles and styles. e.g. the warrior is either a tank (prot spec) or melee dps (arms or fury or both). so the warrior has 2 trees to choose from if you want to do dps. thats 58 talents to choose from. mages basically have only one role. ranged dps and the 3 specs are for either pvp or pve. shaman have been good healers because there are few choices for that role, they are much better melee dps with the new talents, but still suffer in elemental.

2. talents- elemental shaman have only 24 talents to spend there points on, most other classes have 28. shaman talents are more expensive than other classes, if we had 4 more talents than shaman would see an improvement.

3. totems are ineffective- pre BC shaman were a powerful hybrid class. one reason was the buffs and damage that totems provided. at this time half the totems are useless. e.g. sentinel and resistance totems. seering totem at lvl 60 did max 50 damage. post BC most armor and health doubled, but the damage increase to seering totem only went up 20%, max of 60 damage. that 10 extra damage increase means nothing when fighting a warrior with 6k more health and 7k+ additional armor. other totems suffer the same.

4. scalability- shaman don't scale the way other caster classes do. so as gear gets better shaman don't improve at the same rate as locks, hunters, rogues, mages or druids.

5. lack of clear party or raid purpose- elemental shaman are not the best in any role. there are better ranged dps and our buffs can be duplicated by other classes. so why bring a shaman now. we have become filler. need one more to fill the group, " ok, i guess we can bring the elemental shaman, better that than not go at all".

6. burst dps- the shaman can create some good burst damage but they suffer from a good rotation. with the cooldowns, shaman dps actually goes down with if you add too much haste to your gear. you either do nothing while waiting for one of the cooldown to expire, or you cast a lesser damage spell and push back your high damage spell. our cooldowns don't line up very well.

7. shaman were horde only for a long time. shaman were OP pre BC but got nerfed post BC. with the problem listed in 5, it was not the draw that pally was for horde players. so pally numbers went up while shaman numbers went down (as a percentage of class specs)

these are my observations of the numerous shaman handicaps. I think it is a fun class to play, easy to solo, but with most end game content, elemental shaman are the red headed step child.

[Multibocks]

FYI -- solo ele shamans were popular in PvP arenas. They'd blow their NS+CL, heroism, and fall over but they were still popular for just that. Multiboxers weren't the only ones who enjoyed ele burst.




One shaman doing NS/CL doesnt mean much, 5 different people doing NS/CL is better, 1 person doing 5 NS/CL is best. Focus fire is where it's at and if you don't even have to spend time telling your teammates, "FF warrior," "No wait, switch to priest!" This I think is where the rub comes in, gibbing one person a MBer is best. Taking out a whole team, eh not so much. To the average QQer on the forums, "eh that dude just NS/CLd me and I still won lol" to "WTF I just died in .1 secs, that's not fair!" Yes I know there are blue posts on this and yes it's ok... for now. They have changed their stances on big issues before, I just figure I will enjoy it while I can.

[Vyndree]

One shaman doing NS/CL doesnt mean much, 5 different people doing NS/CL is better

I never insinuated otherwise. But several arguers are claiming that the normal elemental population is so low that multiboxers are the ones the developers are nerfing/designing around. I simply pointed out a small case where elemental shaman solo-boxers were prevalent. Because of their burst, they made for better PvPers than raiders, though that's not saying much since survivability of soloboxing shamans in general is relatively poor.

I didn't just roll multiboxed shaman because I saw others doing it (at the time, everyone was locks anyway). I rolled 4 shamans because my main (the 5th) was already 70, and rolled a tank (paladin) to go with them. I never specced enhancement until bt/hyjal/sunwell, and leveled elemental and raided Kara-SSC/TK resto. So I would say my first perspective of shaman would be that of a solo-boxer. Prior to multiboxing, I was Dualist in S1 and quit PvPing to focus on leveling after. My primary perspective, however, was raiding -- and I won't claim to know much about arena'ing anyway since I haven't really kept up with it or made it any sort of primary focus.

I'm horrible with composition names, but several comps included an elemental shaman to just blow their quick burst, throw heroism and as many offensive purges/earthshocks as they can, and then drop dead since they have little survivability. Of course, this was likely because enhancement completely failed at PvP, so elemental was more desirable due to ranged burst.

[Ellay]

Ele Shaman was the core damage dealer for a 2345 / 23456 which reign supreme for almost 3 seasons.
They were non existent though in 2's and 3's.

[Tsunami]

for 1v1 elemental shaman has above avg. survivability. as a solo player elemental shaman dps is where it should be.

where the class suffers is in groups, where shaman buffs help other party members more than their buffs help the elemental. in boss fights, the shaman's spell rotation is not as fluid as other classes that is why ele shaman lose the dps race. And if the elemental throws in a heal or two than it goes down even more.

with the changes in other ranged dps classes there is even less reason to include ele shaman.

multiboxers do better in bg's than arenas. the chaos in BG's and the target ratio is multibox nirvana.

a well grouped and organized arena team should beat a multiboxer 4-5 times.

[Suvega]

ot; Rofol @ suvega and vyndree, stop the dramatics PLEASE its ANNOYING to read

Dramatics? I'm not the one claiming that a class / tactic was nerfed because .05% of the population used it. Where .05% never did anything of note with it, and even the most noteable wasn't even affected.

[EvilSqueegee]

Ele Shaman was the core damage dealer for a 2345 / 23456 which reign supreme for almost 3 seasons.
They were non existent though in 2's and 3's.Correct me if I'm wrong, Ellay - I didn't get into arenas seriously until season 3 (I picked up Rival during season 2 with feral druid tanking/holy paladin healing and bored people to death) - but didn't blizzard buff Hunters because they were poorly represented in 2's and 3's? While I agree the shaman is a core DPS in the 2345/2346, I honestly can't think of very many other comps that revolve around the shaman. At least not top-end comps that actually manage to get places and titles, not counting boxxed shaman teams.

In the end I'd have to agree with Vyn and Suv. Multiboxing, while having gotten a lot of spotlight and attention recently, is far too much of a minority to matter in the dev's eyes as far as balancing classes damage output goes. I guarentee that for ever multiboxer out there playing elemental shamans, there are 10, 20, 30 or even 100 singleboxed elemental shamans. And that's being really, really conservative. Would it be smart to nurf 10,000 players' characters because of the 100 or so who play groups of toons simultaneously?

That's not even touching the fact that blizzard's stance is that anyone who can multibox for the class-stack isn't doing anything that 5 seperate players could do with that same class-stack. The dev's shouldn't even be paying boxers any heed when managing this kind of thing, aside from avoiding situations where everyone's slamming 25-man raids of shamans down because the stacking is too rediculous in and of itself.

[Moxy]

What is kind of interesting to me about all this... is that I don't really see how ele shamans were nerfed.

In running multiple raids (guild and pug) with my boomkin/shaman team (entirely in pvp gear and gems, and usually, spec) or sometimes just my shamans, it was rare that I was not topping damage meters. Only ppl that would give me a run for my money were T6 warriors or occasionally mages (if there was a ton of aoe). Now, I could just be w/ scrubs that don't know how to dps, but i kinda doubt it. I sure don't have the theorycrafting ability of ppl on the elitist jerks forums. So, I probably don't know wtf I'm talking about except.. I don't really see the nerf. *shrug*

We'll see what happens at 80. I guess the only real 'nerf' I've felt is the heroism change. And that is only on the level of my crew as a whole being able to pop back to back heroisms or not have some scrub in AV pop and give me the debuff. Heroism affecting the raid would be OP if the debuff didn't apply.

[Bettysue]

I know the thread is about shamans being buffed/nerfed as a result of multiboxing but something in relation to my question was mentioned, can someone please PM me what all this 2345 2346 nonsense means I have been wondering it for near a year now and can't find an explanation anywhere.

[Dorffo]

I've been offline for the past few months, but I believe that the 2345 refer to specific class makeups or comps. { Warrior, Mage, Elemental Shaman, Priest, Paladin }

The numbers refer to keybinds for insta-gibbing your focus target (I think?).