Viability of 5 shaman in WoTLK

[Hachoo]

Yeah and worst case is, use a tank + 4 shamans until your 4 shamans are overgeared, and then bring the 5th shaman back in - once you're all overgeared keep progressing upwards and you'll be able to annihilate almost anything

Personally I'm 99% sure they will at LEAST add new ranks to fire/earth elemental if not just make them scale altogether - I seriously doubt they'll just leave 2 class defining abilities to just go to the wayside and never be used again.

[Tidomann]

Easy solution, shamans now have the ability to wear plate!!

On a serious note, it is test realm and beta.. Things are going to get ironed out or cut completely. As every new change there is always a "OMG THIS IS OP" or "This sucks" and with the mass player complaints I find that with every new possibly exciting change, that sometimes blizzard is forced to revamp everything because of player whining.. I really only got recently excited for WOTLK.. Because the release date is official.. I find that although it's nice to get hyped up about new abilities, or realize potential nerfs early, that in the end so many things are going to get revamped it's not worth all the worry. In the end maybe our playstyle will have to slightly adjust, but it in no way means that our playstyle will completely be unplayable.

[Tidomann]

Easy solution, shamans now have the ability to wear plate!!

Welcome to 2004, original WoW Beta.

I'm pretty sure Shaman could wear plate at some point. They were the exact counterparts to Paladins. And rogues and hunters could use shields. lol

Couldn't rogues use 2h weapons, or warriors had an insane ability that literally 1 shot everything? It was a lonnnnnnng time ago.

[Gurk]

I only play 4 shaman, and they are not even 70 yet, but way back in the day I used to play an enhancement shaman as my main. There were times where I would tank some instances for my group. Back then I think shamans even had a weapon buff that increased agro, rockbiter.

Couldn't you 5 boxing shaman just specialize 1 shaman to enhancement? I seem to recall a lot of tanking type talents in that tree. Then just have the other 4 shaman do a rotation, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lesser Healing Wave on the tank. With 4 LHW on the tank it should be close to a complete heal. This is exactly what I am doing with my paladin friend. We went into blood furnace at level 58 and very under geared, so it should be a comparable level of difficulty.

With talents you can get.
+5% chance to block
+25% block amount
+3% dodge
+10% armor
+20% armor from stoneskin
+5% parry
-30% damage for 15 seconds from shamanistic rage.
Instant Chain Lightning after 5 crits from Maelstrom weapon

With a shield I see a pretty good potential for a shaman to be tanking instances if the 4 other elemental shamans can drop the NPCs fast enough. And the enchancement shaman has quite a few abilities to hold agro including chain lightning pulls and frost shock. Then instant cast nukes after 5 crits.

Also with the change to Spell Power. Elemental shamans should have just as much + healing as resto shamans, so its not like the heals will be gimped.