This to me seems less of a Q&A than stating the obvious. You give this chronological list of events, storytelling. We know, we've been there.

As I was afraid of, too much 'we think', 'we feel', 'we plan to' and not enough concrete answers. By your own admittance some of these issues have existed for so long, and I'm finally giving it a deadline. 3.2 = Shaman fixed, or I quit. If you cant make the deadline it's your fault, not mine. I don't set ridiculously high standards, you developed an entire new class in the same timeframe.

You've also greatly understated and underestimated some of the Shaman's issues. That leaves me feeling that if you do address the issues, the fixes wont be near adequate.

Sincerely, Arcadus.

Hi,

I'm a strictly PvE player with several alts.

My shaman is my 2nd favourite and the 2nd I've played. I usually play restoration.

I generally prefer raid-healing to any other role in a raid. I play a druid, shaman healers.

I generally stack my gear with Intel and MP5 as the gear usually scales sufficiently with Spell Power, but I have issues with mana regeneration as do many other shamans I have played with. Too many people see Spell Power as the "only" stat. On my druid, I regularly out-heal other players with substantially more spell power due to my mana endurance.

I really appreciate the riptide spell - a quick heal was long overdue for us - and the hex spell.


The following is just my wishlist to changes from a PvE Healer perspective:

* I would like to see some sort of a new chain-heal spell share the same cooldown as riptide and also be an instant cast spell that works similar to "Wild Growth" where it targets the closest party members to your target. Even if the chain-heal mechanic became this, I think it would be good. I think the mechanic for the druid works on - x number closest to druid - the shaman heal could work on x number of targets closest to target - This would be most beneficial in PvE for fights for example like Malygos (first phase) when you're flying around taking damage.

* For PvE raid versatility - An idea for totems would be "targeted" totems. Ie - you target a party member, drop a totem and his/her party is affected by the totem in the raid. This would make a heckuva difference in raids.

* or - in particular Regarding Cleansing Totems - pretty happy with these. Wishful thinking - but, I suppose requesting that anyone in RAID in range (up to a maximum limit of say... 3 or 4 players) affected by a curse,disease or poison may be cleansed instead of the party-wide cleanse.

* Bloodlust - not particularly happy with this change - wish it were back to 5 minutes CD / 5 minutes sated, but not game-breaking for me.

* Mana Regeneration is my main complaint and what I am most unhappy about and why I play my druid more - I would like to see water-shield perhaps give quite a bit more MP5. I am not sure regarding the math, but I assume 150~200 more may help and return my shaman to the healing glory of Zul'Aman days. I am level 80 and I have similar mp5 to the days of lvl 70 and yet my spells cost more. As a raid-healer, I seldom run out of mana, but as a tank healer, I am usually dry long before the other classes of healers.

That's my 5c

KryHavoc / Cryosphere / Cryogenix / Cryotropic

I think that giving us the ability to summon 4 totems with 1 GCD wont give us less buttons to press
What you will do is add another one, because if 1-2 totems are destroyed you still need the buttons to re-apply them alone or else you're just mana burning yourself (or should i say they are burning you for merely destroying them)
And because we mostly use Grounding and Earthbind totems which are applied at crucial moments we will need to use single totems again to put back the buffs
I think the only thing it will change is at the start of battle and wont really have any effect during combat, which is where it hurts the most

devs need to make sure they don't make us OP ... but it seems that some OP things sometimes slip their rigorous filtering - see paladins..dk ... etc ;)

looking again at the answers it's like ... like reading an old story as it's commin out of a new "pencil" .. it's the same as the old one, anly the author is making some changes to it, he just makes it look more "in line" with the times we live ...

i dare the "blues" to make a complilation of blue posts from the first year of TBC - I can bet it will look just like the story we got now ;)

it's nice they are considering some changes ... it will make shamans more easy to play ( maybe ) but it will not stop the "QQ-WHINE-QQ" on the forums ... hell... even OP classes have whiners on the forums...

@ all those who think shamans are hopeless - reroll, GC said it already - if you dislike a class so much and you wish it was something totally different maybe you should play another class .

@ all those who think shamans still have a chance - stick around, shamans won't die so ez ... well.. they will, but they got Reincarnation ... OP ability ... ya... try to use it in arena...

I wish they went into more detail on the weapon itemisation.....

More slow OHs are the way forward, how difficult is it to see?

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Q u o t e:

@ all those who think shamans still have a chance - stick around, shamans won't die so ez ... well.. they will, but they got Reincarnation ... OP ability ... ya... try to use it in arena...

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Sorry to kill your totem , Reincarnation is on cooldown for this patch , we used in TBC at the start of BT, cooldown will finish in next expansion. I hope you glyphed for it or at least have one more regent.

Awesome Q&A. Read it on US forums last night, since EU had maintiance :P
I think it gives a great insight on the design layout and what might come in the future (totems for example) and gives some relief that caster shamans do indeed need help in PvP.
I especially like the fact that Blizzard seems much aware that some classes/specs are just a lot harder to perform well with than others.


So yeah, very cool Q&A, tons of information and insight. In comparison to the last sneak peak before 3.1 then it's just a lot more information and mainly design information, and not so much actual nerf/buff information, which is cool. Yet I think it will not change the fact that most people will look through the entire Q&A for a line that says they'll buff chain heal, and when not finding it they'll qq.

Anyway, totally impressed about the length of this. If that's the standard and you intend to do that for all 9 classes then /respect. That's a lot of work from the developers side that their job description probably don't require them to do, but it's much appreciated, so much <3

It would be nice to see loot @ all in ulduar. If you look at resto/elemental items that can drop.
Razorscale holds like 3/4 drops on one boss. the rest drops well, nothing much really or its ~to tier 7 or worse and if there is one good item(like a ring) every other caster class will need it aswell up until where tier items are dropping again.

Loot tables are retarded. period And enhancement shamans are even worse off with no weapons to pick

Ive only read through once, so i might get easily corrected on this, but i didnt see Blizzard directly addressing or mentioning a strong suggest for shaman PVP survivability. They mentioned our low HP and bringing this up, which would esentially be irrelivant meaning that we only take slightly longer to stun and nuke down.

Mobility was also addressed with idea of dropping 4 totems at once, which on the face of it sounds like a good idea if implemented and protected properly, but as i just mentioned would be irrelevant if survivability isnt solved.

As a whole it looks like Blizzard know about Shaman problems, but dont really know what to do about them in terms of PVP...

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Q u o t e:

One longer-term change we are considering is removing the buff totems (replacing them with normal spells) and making all of the totems do something more active, like the current damage or healing totems.

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This.















Do this please.
















No really, i'm begging you, do that.



















DEAR GOD, MAN JUST SHUT UP AND DO IT!

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Q u o t e:
As I was afraid of, too much 'we think', 'we feel', 'we plan to' and not enough concrete answers.

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Unfortunately, they have to talk like this given the nature of some of the more unpleasant people on the forums. Even with them not giving definites, there will still be people screaming about "broken promises" if they say they are working on something and they can't get it out for the next patch.

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Q u o t e:
By your own admittance some of these issues have existed for so long, and I'm finally giving it a deadline. 3.2 = Shaman fixed, or I quit. If you cant make the deadline it's your fault, not mine. I don't set ridiculously high standards, you developed an entire new class in the same timeframe.

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I think 3.2 is going to be coming out before two years have passed.
Just out of curiosity, what sort of effect do you expect a deadline from a single player, with a threat that they may or may not carry out is going to have on the Dev team? :-)

they keep saying sentry totem is the only totem that we don't use it anymore BUT is wrong,searing totem is the HUGE mistake blizzard make.
Give searing more single target dps than magma,and allow shaman to control it to not waste the dps on a trash like ignis.
Remake our base stat,i don't know every shaman are so blind and didn't notice it,but we keep have STR>AGI,and SPR>INT..seriously!
REMOVE interrupt on EARTH SHOCK ,pve enhanc screw rotation EVERY TIME,at vesax i see whipe for this.JUST simply put wind shock out of shock CD.
Give sentry totem ability to see stealthed people AND invisible,allowing us to not die in 1 sec for feral druid or rogues.
Give Resto a tank safe ability like all other classes.
Give resto a party only heal like prayer of healing=50% instant heal and 50% hot this will solve the role of shaman healing tank grp and melee grp since is a 5 man healing instead of 4.
Give Totemic call retain 75% mana instead of 25%,totem cost is too skyhigh.
give totem More radius to not allow us reput it everytime a boss get kited .
And there are more thingh i am forgetting...i hope other player will exploit it for me..

half the "questions" you answered were vague,pointless and just stating the obvious.

You just seemed to ignore all the main issues with shaman (from a resto pov cant speak for other specs) in both pve and pvp and just gave us some info on something you "might" do to totems down the line and maybe some mobility in pvp, which still wont help with mana issues, survivabilty issues against melee, vulnerabilty to just about every cc and many more issues...gee thanks a lot, was expecting a lot more from pve point of view..like whats our job ment to be ? and why is it any job we choose to do every other healer class does it better.

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Q u o t e:
Unfortunately, they have to talk like this given the nature of some of the more unpleasant people on the forums. Even with them not giving definites, there will still be people screaming about "broken promises" if they say they are working on something and they can't get it out for the next patch.

I think 3.2 is going to be coming out before two years have passed.
Just out of curiosity, what sort of effect do you expect a deadline from a single player, with a threat that they may or may not carry out is going to have on the Dev team? :-)

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The timeframe is over 3 years since TBC. I don't expect to have any effect as a sole player. I'm just Joe Average as far as they are concerned. However, I'll gladly invest the time I've invested in WoW into the growing unpopularity of the game, to demonstrate exactly how Blizzard works as a business.

As long as their answers are going to be vague and distant, so should be the subscriber's payments. Discount us for as long as "we feel", "we think", "we plan" takes to turn into "we felt", "we thought", "WE HAVE ACCOMPLISHED".

We all thought the Questions and Answers was going to contain, you know, answers. You can still be philosophical if you so choose, but outline the direction shamans need to go in and indicate when it is going to happen. If a company says to its investors "we're gonna expand sometime within the next 5 years or so since we feel it would be the right thing to do", the investors are like "lolwut?" /withdraw.

i smell blue...


"Looking at the next one, which is for Mages, it is of similar length. "

I wouldn't make the mistake to "think too much" of myself .. or the "dev team" ... ppl are here to flame... and you just fed them fuel ;)


commenting on the only post that has something positive in it ... man you ppl are bad at PR ... but what do we know.... your spreadsheets say ele dps in ok... :))

don't read the posts and think we don't appreciate the effort .... but.. wtf.. we are still a "hard to master" class ... we cannot be given some imba skill.... because those who manage to somehow master the class will be OP .... but y, give the paladin buble and 8 second stun... y...that's ok... nobody will master the paladin at such high lvl that he will actually kill a player in those 8 seconds ...

now would seem high time to reroll to my lvl 71 rogue,,,and im not even playing atm coz of studies.

to those in the forum that thought this was a good Q&A post. please no offense but wake up and smell the coffee. there was no definite, 'we will do this' 'we will buff that' other than the stam.

our overall healing in a raid,is well, pathetic to say least from what i have heard. they havent truely addressed surviveability in earnest(for all speccs). yes hp boost is cool. but will it truely help?

they also havent mentioned the ghost wolf as a trained skill for all speccs and instant. or the idea of a propper cc with no cooldown or a decreased cd to equal that of the duration of the cc. they said they are trying to find a way to improve our arena performance....but dont mention how.

they are actually nerfing us with allowing rogues and dks to use items that are our main weps but not allowing us to get swords.

common blizz...ive been wanting to reroll for awhile now but i am always drawn back to my shaman coz of all the effort i have put into it, and i rly do enjoy playing it, when rendered almost useless from the dk that gives a buff that is just as good as out str/agi totem and not limited to radius. or steamrolled in world pvp from almost any class that has the opener.

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Q u o t e:
Looking at the next one, which is for Mages, it is of similar length.

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And of 53 posts of comments you chose this one to reply at?

Lawl.

Cla.

i think the blue above is talking about the question section of mages. shamans are the only class to have a reply so far. that makes me almost feel like either blizz thinks this class is easy to 'fix' or that they have shown the least interest in it and put in the least amount of effort.

any just my thought, might just be wrong....im hoping so.

I'am honetly very disappointed by this q&a phrase. I love my shaman but it's not competetive compared to priest/druid(hardmode).

At first i believed it was due to game mechanics(bursty AOE damage) but priest and druid outshine us at any given encounter. I certainly agrees that Ch spam isn't the solution but i want it to be powerfull when i have to use it. Even tough riptide+LH is a nice combo it's litterary just a druid spamming nourish.

.... very disappointed.... hmmm... Really can't understand why blizz can't see it. beyond my imagination.