WOLK and shaman team future (totems)

[Draz]

LOL?!?!? or your defending your girlfriend or the arguement was correct. Which is it?! See what I did there?! LEss QQ more PEWPEW!!!~ONE!!!!

LOL!??

OR its because you wear mail, have Lightning CL NS Lightning + shock and can instagib?
or 4 heroisms
Or you can heal
or ????

This is a very shortsighted argument

[Vyndree]

defending your girlfriend

I wasn't aware I needed defending.

All of my arguments are based on facts and numbers -- not baseless personal attacks. Attacking a personal's personal life for lack of a logical counter-argument is more of a general forum troll tactic.



Suvega is allowed his personal opinions just as I am allowed mine. I don't lead him around like a pet, nor does he do to me. Take a look at the bear tanking thread -- he has a very differing opinion from mine, and we still get along just fine.

If you want to disagree with his opinion, then do so. But don't call him (for lack of a better phrase) p*ssy whipped. It's an insulting to me as it is to him, and doesn't make you seem like a very nice person either. Disagree with his opinion, argue with facts, and leave the personal attacks to the WoW forums.

[Stabface]

There's no other class that can Heal, DPS, and provide as much utility all rolled up into one package like the Shaman. Paladin is pretty close but not as good for boxing since it's melee DPS. Boomkin is pretty good, and might be as good or better in WotLK... hard to say as nothing is nailed down. Priest is pretty good too but just doesn't have the survivability and utility, or the facemelt burst capability.

[Vyndree]

Boomkin is pretty good, and might be as good or better in WotLK...

I'd say Boomkins never became as popular as shaman due to their lack of cross-synergy with other boomkins and the fact that the anti-druid ability IS fear -- which also happens to be a big anti-multiboxer ability.

That being said I think we'll see a few more mix/match boomkin+shaman groups since they buff each other so well (particularly with the new boomkin nature debuff and haste-on-crit aura).

[mlwhitt]

Lets look at the alternatives here when we talk about a 5box team of the same class.

What classes are able to heal, DPS and have ranged attacks (pretty much the stable abilities needed for any 5 box team consisting of just one class)?

By this excluding melee classes and classes that can only heal themselves or their pets you just have: Shaman, Druids and Priest.

Now then we all know that Priest do not have survivability of Shaman with shields / mail gear nor Moonkin Druids. So we are down to just two classes that can sucessfully run instances based on class abilities and the ability to DPS quick enough to avoid need for a tank.

As much as I love my Moonkin they just don't match up to the abilities of Elemental Shaman when it comes to being able to 5 man a same level instance without a tank. At least until 80 Moonkin can't OOC Rez, so that is one ding against them. They don't have any way to offtank bosses like Shaman can with Earth Elementals. Until Wrath they can't CC in instances other than Cyclone (very limited) unlike Shaman can with Stoneclaw. They can't kite as effectively either since until Wrath roots only work outdoors, vs. Shaman being able to drop Earthbind.

While Moonkin get the nice Armor boost, they can't wear shields. Shields + Mail gear > than Moonkin Armor boost.

Also the ability to Ankh also tips the favor towards Shaman.

As you notice for the most part the items that have been brought up as being possible nerfs to Shaman haven't even been mentioned in this. Even without ToW, TT and GTs Shaman still would be the best of the best when it comes to the ability to run an instance with 5 of the same class.

[HTeam]

A 5 man group of shaman with 5 grounding totems means between 5 and 25 spell immunities. I think they're looking at it and deciding that they really didn't intend to offer so much possibility.

We've seen them do similar things like the debuffs to blessing of protection, ice block and the priest shield. Chaining/stacking immunities is something they've tried to balance against.

Also, it's fairly obvious that stacking shaman is by far the most popular class to stack in a group. Go ahead and tell me this isn't because they are the most powerful.

The other issue here is that the "dispel" mechanism for totems is awkward at best.

[mlwhitt]

Well they are certainly powerful. Personally even if we couldn't have a single totem to drop I still feel that Shaman would be one of the best choices from a 5 box team of the same class. Shaman just have so many useful tools at their disposal even outside what totems bring. Ankhs, water breathing, water walking, astral recall, chain healing, chain lightning, ghost wolf, ability to wear shields and mail gear. All of these things are huge pluses for the class as a whole.

So I think we have to keep all of those in mind when we think about any totem nerfs we may forsee coming this way. Even without a single totem Shaman would still likely be a top pick for boxing, in my opinion.

[Naysayer]

I'm not sure if I understand how a grounding totem could change. Groundings don't stack. They each absorb one spell and then go away. You couldn't take away its ability to "stack" since it doesn't exist.

Anyway, I think a shaman team's draw for me was more about them being pretty good at everything and being able to rez, heal, wear a shield, and ranged DPS. So as long as they can still do that, they'll always be a great boxing team.

Well, all they have to do is add some form of cooldown before totems can reapply to your character or something of that nature. I have no idea though how they plan to change it (or even tremor). I hope they don't either so that they don't bother and we can keep our groundings.

Tremor totem is getting changed for sure, they don't want anymore stacking of totems, grounding totems will likely get changed as well. I'm only hoping that shamnx5 can still do the future heroics, that's the whole reason I rolled them as I don't care to multiclass with my pally, mage, lock, priest, 70's... I don't enjoy multiclass boxing because I don't like to play each of them at half-ass to get the job done.

[accretion]

Remember one thing, folks: Shamans are still the least-played class in WoW. Devs want to make them MORE attractive, not less. Of course, this doesn't mean that they will improve them in a way that will primarily benefit multiboxers, but I think it's safe to expect on overall improvement in Shaman power relative to most classes. At least that's my best guess.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Without me doing a ton of research, lets say someone had 4 ele shaman and could pick anything for the 5th.

What would you pick if your ONLY concern was to be safe from fear by oppenents in pvp, for the whole group.