On my way home from work last night, Suvega and I had a little chat about the sudden influx of shaman, or shaman + paladin groups.

Musing about my own situation when I stumbled across dual-boxing.com, the world was flooded with 1x priest 4x warlock groups. There basically WAS no other group makeup due to the ability for aoe healing, pet tanking, and mobile dps that was warlock/priest.

All of a sudden, it looks like everyone and their mom is rolling shaman. Now, since I like to consider myself a beautiful and unique snowflake, this got me searching...

This is my observation about the current trend:

Jun 08 - the use of tanking classes as an option isn't really even seen in this example. If you look at the results (as of today):
  • 4 Warlock 1 Priest 35%
    5 Shaman 26%
    4 Mages 1 Priest 13%

You can see the 4 lock/mage + 1 priest setups solidly on the board, most likely Xzin-spawned.
Of course, I have no idea who voted recently on this, so we may have a skewed view since it's not a perfect snapshot, but by the list 4x shaman 1x paladin wasn't even considered a viable/popular group makeup. 5x Shaman look like they're just starting to bud into a viable class makeup.
At the end of the post, you can see myself blow up on the viability of shaman as a healing class, whereas everyone else seems to be pro-priest. Nothing wrong with priests, I just like reading old posts of me being my stubborn pro-shaman self.

Jul 9 - A link comes out of nowhere to Æbox's 5 shaman videos

Sep 1 - Tequilale's shammy multiboxing video (pve)

Sep 12 - Vyndree's RFK video showing 4 shaman + warrior tank

Sep 24 - Another link to Æbox's 5 shaman videos

Sep 26 - Vyndree's SM video, again 4x shaman 1x warrior tank

Nov 9 - Ellay releases 4x shaman arena PvP video. The world explodes.

Nov 28 - empeha posts 5x shaman strat run

Dec 3 - Paladins as tanks start to join the list
But, not with shaman... However, 5x shaman begins to emerge:
  • 5x Shamans! 41%
    Priest 4 Warlocks 19%
    Priest, 4 Mages 12%

Again, who knows from which dates people were voting. They could still be voting to this day and skewing all of my data. So take this as you will.

Dec 9 - Ellay-lovers everywhere wonder what they should roll with their 4x shaman

Dec 10 - Class selection FAQ released
Most common setups:
Tank/Priest/Some-Mix-of-Locks-and/or-Mages
Tank/Priestx4 (holy-nuke or shadow)

Paladin is the most common tank. Shaman subbing in for priest is also fairly common.
Shaman, sadly, do not make the "most common" cut in either 4/5x shaman, or shaman + tank.

Dec 11 - 5x shaman PvE viability is questioned

Dec 11 - Vyndree's video of 4x shaman, this time with 1x paladin tank in RFD

Dec 11 - Vyndree's ZF video, again with 4x shaman 1x paladin

Dec 19 - Remote's 5x shaman Heroic SP vid

Dec 20 - Remote's 5x shaman Heroic Sethekk vid

Dec 29 - Remote's 4x shaman arena PvP

Jan 1 - Los submits to the dark side of the force, and abandons his hunters for shaman. More videos from Los.
i changed from my current group to a pally and 4 shammies . Think that in the end run the group its self would run a lot better.
Jan 4 - Ellay's 4x shaman EoTS

Jan 6 - Vyndree's 4x shaman 1x paladin world pvp


It seems, now, that every other new multiboxer is rolling some form of 4-5x shaman, or 4x shaman 1x prot paladin. Which brings me to...

My Hypothesis:
People roll what they think is exciting. What gets people excited? Videos.

Prior to Ellay/Xbox/Vyndree/Remote/Los posting this multitude of shaman videos, the only videos I could find were primarily 4x lock, 1x priest (i.e. Bradster: RFK, BFD, ZF, PvP and more -- not to mention Ughmahedhurtz and others). I believe the sudden influx of shaman videos is the cause for this massive Shaman/Shaman+Pally influenza that's sweeping over the forum.

Now that I've proven that you're all lemmings and under our frapsing and video-editing powers, I'd like to say that resistance is futile. You will all be assimilated.


P.S. STOP PMing ME PEOPLE! I AM NOT THE LIBRARY ON SHAMAN MULTIBOXING. Make another forum thread of the billion shaman threads already out there and there are many other people who can tell you what you already would have known if you had done a search.

Kthxbai.