[WotLK] Bloodlust/Heroism change - no more round robin

I don't think shamans teams were nerfed that badly, just not as much overpoweredness as before. A single shaman was actually buffed! Also, come WOTLK my druid in my team will suddenly add so much more synergy with nature damage buffs that he doesn't have now, so for some combinations it's a great thing. We will see more legitimate choices for MBers than just all shaman teams. I think the drama in here is because people are worried about having to make new characters to be the best, which does suck. It's not because these changes are really that bad.

Even if a guild only usually wants to bring 1 of each talent spec to the raid, right now is there really room for a lot more than that? With 25-man limits, you won't even have room for ONE of each talented class type. Two of the same build won't stack as well, but then again, at least there's a REASON to bring other classes other than that they're what you had available. Like, a moonkin won't be a liability to have around at high end raiding because that moonkin is now granting a lot more things.

ALSO, aren't they allowing free change between two different specs now? If one guy in your raid is elemental, go resto for the night with your free switch. Your spell power gear will allow this seamlessly.

Aw welcome to the every expanding universe of "World of Meleecraft". The game where Rogues will continue to stunlock casters into oblivion, warriors are able to duel wield 2 handers and the rest of us just suck.

Classes are still going to be pigeonholed into specs. Arcane, frost, or fire, one of them is going to be a better dps spec than the other two, so mages will be forced to raid as that spec. One of them will be best for pvp, so pvpers will be forced into that spec... Affliction, demo, destro, same crap. One will outshine the other. You think they'll invite an enhancement shaman if he can't out-dps a titans grip fury warrior and totems/BLust is covered by resto and maybe 1 Elemental shaman(assuming elem can keep up dpswise)?

These changes aren't being pushed to open up raid spots for different specs, they're be pushed to open up raid spots for wotlk new players and to make sure the game isn't too complicated for the beginners and casuals. Dumbing it down.

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Originally Posted by Naysayer

Dumbing it down.

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Yeah ever since 2.3 made the sparkling quest items this game has been constantly on the slope of dumbing down.

As it stands these nerfs are very depressing for both my main teams. With the lack of synergy and stacking of ferocious inspiration and totem of wrath my teams will go from something very close to matching the sum of their parts, to something seriously less powerful than 4 or 5 random classes. As it stands this sucks and I hate it. I like the optimisim of some of you guys, and I live in hope, but at the moment it doesn't look good. Maybe time to dust off some of those old 70s and see what group I can put together that actually does have some synergy now.

From the Blue post:

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[size=small]With the release of upcoming content
patch players will see a change in the way we allow buffs and debuffs
to stack exclusively in a raid.[/size]

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Are we sure that all of these changes affect 5-man groups? I'll have to hop on the beta this weekend to check as I do have 2 of my accounts on it, but I'm wondering if this means they'll be implementing different rules for 5-mans versus raids.

People tend to forget that we get Hex and thunderstorm something that i have a hard time to see nerfing my pve experience.

Hex bacisly means that i can chain cc 2 meeles while i kill the casters or chain lock them down with groundings. Bloodlust for that matter is something that i only need on bosses and i havent realy done manny instances that allows you to do 2 bosses withing 5 mins. There are some sure but not manny...

TOW and Bloodlust vs thunderstorm and HEX... hmm hard to say but who knows??

Getting a cc is actually something huge and i dont think people realise it yet.. Sure it wont be to usefull on bosses but we will still have bloodlust ready there and for Arean its always hard to say...

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Originally Posted by 'Shogun',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112540#post1 12540

Something to remember is not everyone MB's 4-5 shamis, the changes aren't aimed at MB, or a personal attack on them.

These changes are made with "normal" players and group/raid mechanics in mind. If you have to bring certain classes or specs for a raid to be viable, then you're screwing over anyone who isn't playing that class/spec. The changes aren't aimed at making all classes the same, that's never going to happen, what they're aimed at is ensuring you can build your raid around tanks/healers/dps regardless of class or spec, not "you must have 3-5 shaman, 2-3 shadow priests, no rogues, only 1 of this blahblah"

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QFT

Shaman (to a normal person) are the smallest population class in the game. They are also REQUIRED for certain sunwell fights due to how well they manage AoE healing -- and rotated between groups for heroisms.

For example, my sunwell raid yesterday contained 4 resto shaman and myself (enhancement). In a 25 man raid, that's 1/5th of the raid.

If shaman are the least represented population-wise, but the most represented raid-wise....


Now you see where they're getting at? They want to make more OPTIONS available so you aren't FORCED to bring a specific class/spec combination to round out your raid. Granted, I'm not happy with the changes as a solo shaman either (because I'm specifically a buffing class), but I expect them to tweak individual DPS to compensate, if my buffs are going to be less useful.

Remember, kids. It's still BETA. Anything can change between now and the patch -- they're still doing testing.

The problem (which may not be a big one at all) for multi-shaman teams is that the class's totem power USED to be balanced for providing only a single buff type for only 5 people. This made them generally pretty darn good buffs. When you could stack shaman in a 5-man team, you could receive a very large boost to certain attributes for those useful totems that stacked (like, say, ToW). They've changed everyone to have basically the same kind of raid buff system now, which will probably help putting together balanced raids... and will, perhaps more importantly, allow the developers to develop raid content for a wider variety of group setups.

Stacking buffs aside, the other nice MB Shaman totem advantage is layers of defense we get with Grounding Totems, Poison Cleansing Totems, Tremor Totems, Earthbind, etc etc. I think we're still going to have that.

The real bummer from a MB perspective is that the flexibility we'll gain from not having to spec into multiple buffs can't really be used super effectively in other places. If Ferocious inspiration no longer stacks, you can say "Yay, 3 more talent points for a couple of my hunters!"... but you're still going to want to take the same "top talents". If you pass on ToW on all but one shammy, it's not like you can use those extra talent points to get Thunder+NS.

It's early too, we'll see how it all sorts out.

Unfortunately I think this all represents another example of Bliz reacting to the minority of high-end arena and high-end raiding with sweeping changes that make the game suck more for the other 99% of folks out there. When you think about the breadth of their raiding changes in WOTLK you have to ask yourself, what's the point of all this?