The Days of Pure Shaman DPS Are Numbered

[Lyonheart]

n/a

[Lyonheart]

I'm leveling a druid in my oddball team atm. I just want to know if a warlock or druid would be better. The druid brings more as far as utility I think, combat rez, normal rez, group buff ( motw), innervate. root ( can cc inside now ) sleep as well. The AEs that druids have now seem nice as well. SO I am leaning toward Paly-3shaman-druid. If i find out Locks make a BIG difference I will have one of those waiting at 70 as well ( before wotlk )


EDIT: How did my "reply" get put at the top of this thred?

[Flight]

To put this into context, I was originally going to make this post as a thread Necromancy reply to one of Vynds posts : http://dual-boxing.com/forums/index....&threadID=3060.


Thread Necromancy for the win \o/ Seriously, I found this an interesting post - plus there is more than one reason for bumping this.

First a shameless self hype - I was pretty early on the Pallie / Shaman synergy, in terms of the OP time line. Heres a record of my setting up my Pallie / Shaman / 'lock PvE team. in June 07. Back then Xzin ruled
the roost with his Priest / 4 Mage setup and he didnt use the co-ordinated key broadcasting; he was using broadcast mouse for most of his boxing, with a gazillion hot bars all over the screen. Like everyone else,
I've gone on to roll 5 x Shaman and multiple other teams, so I understand fully jusy how much multiple Shaman have always brought to the party.



My early 5 box blog here : My PvE 5 Box Blog




So why am I bringing this up now ? Well like Sam D, I've been boxing in Everquest since the game was launched in '99; I 6 boxed and I was
also in one of the top end game raiding guilds . So, while I'm particularly weak on a number of this sites and personnels boxing strengths - eg PvP - I understand
very well class synergy. Synergy. Thats what this post is all about.




I believe the day of pure Shaman DPS in teams is coming to an end in WotLK.




Now, woah there cowboy. I'm not saying multiple Shaman won't still be strong. What I am saying is that just Shaman for your DPS is going to
be so far from optimum, that to stick with it will be pure lazy and incompetent. While we take stick from people who don't realize what a
challenge boxing can be, one thing this community is not, is lazy or incompetent. We have not begun to see this yet, but what we have is a distorted
picture due to having lvl 51 talents available to us at. What we will have to deal with is :

i) Stat diminuation from lvl 70-80 (eg unless your stats increase your crit rate etc will actually fall as you lvl).

ii) Other classes getting their DPS increased while Shaman DPS gets relatively decreased from lvl 70-80

iii) Buff / debuffs aimed at multiple class setups coming much more to the fore.


Blizzard have said they want all classes DPS in the same ballpark. What they are moving towards in WotLK is more of an Everquest like class system, in terms of huge synergies and classes enhancing each others damage much more than in past times. Previously, lets be honest here, Shaman DPS has been overpowered. Not so in the new expansion. Shaman damage will be relatively reduced, while all other classes are getting a boost, some of them massively so. With the smallest amount of theorycrafting you can see that substituting in 2-3 other classes in a one party setup can increase the teams DPS by 40-50%. Same goes for a raid setup where if you introduce just one of a number of classes and you can prolly increase your DPS by over 60%. We will see solo players like Sam and Prepared completing the end game raids in WotLK (theres nothing of the difficulty of Sunwell etc). But only if they aren't lazy and stick with pure Shaman teams


Just as a closer, here is an indication of how much is going to change in WotLK (found this linked from FoH). Warlock Voidwalker pet can achieve stats greater than player tanks and tanking Illidan :

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/10/23...llidan-almost/

Quote of a respone to that :

atl said...
His
Voidy was week. And he missed to keep full time talented Health Funnel. He prolly missed stamina gear, for fight like this is advising lock to
get over 20K HP and use armor elixirs/pots and armor enchants in places where stamina is unavailable. Mine is 30k without Demonic
Empowerment and with all talents and armor have 84.25% Physical Damage mitigation without inspiration, ~86% with inspiration and 36K HP each
munite for 20 secs. Aggro generation with manually placed 4 torments and 1 suffering during empowerment is 5K TPS.
Tanked Brutallus with 8 healers on it (No slashes at all to raid when use pet, only 2 players dies from burn on 3 mins fight). 2 Palas used flash chains instead Holy
Light chains. Crits hurted - aka 13K after the mitigation during the stomp, but the healers managed.
GL any player tank to reach this stats.

All previous theorycrafting goes out of the window with WotLK. You heard it here first - SYNERGY !!

[shaeman]

What I am saying is that just Shaman for your DPS is going to
be so far from optimum, that to stick with it will be pure lazy and incompetent.

I don't agree with this statement at all. Teams are a personal choice - because you don't happen to have the current Flavour of the month team makes you neither lazy or incompetent.

For me a successful team meets the following criteria - can you achieve what you want to achieve with the team you have and do you enjoy playing it.

Of course having 5 of one class leaves you very vulnerable to being hit by the nerf bat (resulting in an unplayable team). I've taken precautions by having multiple 70's of different classes, and a fair amount of 60's of another class should this happen.

[Kulzor]

I believe you're right. As far as caster dps goes, having a Boomkin, Shaman, and Mage together give more synergy.

The boomkin will give +5% spell damage, and +3% spell haste.
The shaman gives spell power, mana regen, and spell haste, plus elemental oath for increased crit for all casters on occasion.
The mage buffs the shaman with +3% spell crit, which in turn helps on the elemental oath.

A pally tank adds great synergy with mana regen, and gaining from the spell damage buffs, as would most healer classes (perhaps a pally healer the most due to the crit buffs?).

I'm close to this with my group, but I love my hunter too much to drop her, and like the rolling hots on the druid as well, though this one is less important for the way I spam spells.

[wizofid]

Well I sure hate to hear this since I am new to multi-boxing and my first team (1 pally + 4 shaman) hit 54 last night. I suppose my crisis will be when my team hits 62 (thats when i could swap in my 62 mage that has been idling for years) and at again at 70 because at that point i could swap out any of the shammies with some of my other 70's (druid, lock, priest). I will say from the esthetic I would be very unhappy to lose the identical look of the team members, and their near identical names. Not to mention that the complexities of all those classes would be pretty overwhelming. I suppose if you had a "debuff target" key for each, and a "ranged attack" key and an "instant attack" key you could set each class to contribute its own stuff to the mix.

I am really hoping that the 30-40 percent hit was an exageration.

[Flight]

I believe you're right. As far as caster dps goes, having a Boomkin, Shaman, and Mage together give more synergy.

The boomkin will give +5% spell damage, and +3% spell haste.
The shaman gives spell power, mana regen, and spell haste, plus elemental oath for increased crit for all casters on occasion.
The mage buffs the shaman with +3% spell crit, which in turn helps on the elemental oath.

A pally tank adds great synergy with mana regen, and gaining from the spell damage buffs, as would most healer classes (perhaps a pally healer the most due to the crit buffs?).

I'm close to this with my group, but I love my hunter too much to drop her, and like the rolling hots on the druid as well, though this one is less important for the way I spam spells.

Good post and great points. But they are actually some of the lesser buffs, although they all stack and are significant.. I did some math with various set ups last night. Don't have it to hand, but off the top of my head heres just three significant abilities :


Druid : Not only the 5% and 3% buff you define from Moonkin Form Aura, but a massive 15% damage increase to Arcane, Frost, Fire, Nature and Shadow Damage the target takes from Earth and Moon

Warlock : Curse of Elements, huge resist all debuff (don't underestimate resist debuffs, this is HUGELY significant) and increase all magic damage the target takes by 10%

DK : Increases all Magic Damage taken by 13% from Ebon Plaguebringer

(ps DK is, and will remain, OP; this is Blizzs new baby class)



Those are just 3 off the top of my head; there are a number of others. Of course, as they stack, the damage increase rises exponentially. You better believe that the game is designed and balanced with this taken into consideration.

I would suggest that for an optimum 5 man boxed PvE team now, it would be negligent to not include a Druid and a 'lock. For the guys who are boxing more than a team this really is a no brainer.


I honestly don't think this will become apparent until lvl 80 and heroic instances. Looking ahead I'm going to do some tests with Pallie (prot), 'lock, Boomkin, Shammy (resto) and Mage. I'm going to go on at end game and test a DK tank and Priest in place of Shaman. Theres another huge strength of the multi-class team I am suggesting - cc.

Note I am not saying the days of all Shaman teams are over. What I am saying is they will not rule the roost in DPS any more. We should at least theory craft through multiple class set ups. And, of course, we need to take into account stacking issues and which of the buffs work on base dmg output and which will work on gross output.


To underline again, I'm not saying Shaman DPS is dead - I am saying it won't rule the roost any more and I'd really appreciate input from folks on class synergies. I'm particularly looking at PvE. This ISN'T a bash the Shammy thread, afterall I am running a Shammy setup myself. This is a lets look ahead and see what we can do now with a multi class setup thread.

[merujo]

Just want to add:

- im yet to see how will 5 shamans work at lvl80
- nice theory and all, but theres also PvP, and in PvP, im sorry, shamans are the true victorinox. i might roll another team for heroics, but theres hex and lava burst to be analized first...dunno...
- voids tanking while getting healed by 9 healers ? 10 ? btw, u just need a pet with enough HP pool, i dont know how warlock and hunter talents affect that, since i never played any of both past lvl 30, my guess is that this patch, along with new talents made this possible. how long can a pet survive at lvl80 against wtv boss ? don't forget this: in this patch not only the boss's lost 30% hp, they also deal less physical dmg (-30%?)

anyways, only time will tell @80 how it will be

[Flight]

Just want to add:

- im yet to see how will 5 shamans work at lvl80
- nice theory and all, but theres also PvP, and in PvP, im sorry, shamans are the true victorinox. i might roll another team for heroics, but theres hex and lava burst to be analized first...dunno...
- voids tanking while getting healed by 9 healers ? 10 ? btw, u just need a pet with enough HP pool, i dont know how warlock and hunter talents affect that, since i never played any of both past lvl 30, my guess is that this patch, along with new talents made this possible. how long can a pet survive at lvl80 against wtv boss ? don't forget this: in this patch not only the boss's lost 30% hp, they also deal less physical dmg (-30%?)

anyways, only time will tell @80 how it will be

Good post. To be clear again, I am useless and inexperienced at PvP. This is pure PvE I am examining.


On the pet tanking thing, I'm not including that as any kind of strength of this team. What I have done is hold it up as an example of how much things are changing and how much we need to do our theorycrafting all over from a fresh whiteboard. As an aside, I'm a huge fan of 'lock crowd control using the Succubus. It is extremely reliable, if you have it set up properly. Much stronger and brings more benefit than either the DPS pet or the Void IMO.


You do have to think, though, what could possibly stand against 36 of those Voidwalkers in the hands of Sam or prep 8o


/asideOff

[Schwarz]

Saying that Pure Shaman DPS is dead or numbered is pure speculation. I would like to speculate that it isn't dead.



edit: I don't think i could have said it better

Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Elemental tree pre-75
Chill out. Nobody said Elemental was useless until 75. All I said was that your damage wasn't quite as high as other ranged dps at 70. Your ability to level, do instances or even raid at 70 aren't really compromised. (Source)

I am convinced shaman are a trash killing machines. Staggering thunderstorms makes melee easy. Grounding totems makes casters simple. If/when they try to buff our AOE damage things will get even easier. I would say the only way Shaman groups are dead in the water is if they start making a huge ammount of nature immune mobs. Until that point I think they are going to be fine. Another thing I would like to raise is that if shaman are doing 1/2 the damage of the druids/mages/warlocks they will certainly get buffed at some point.