Well as much as i'm honored and glad they actually made such a long Q&A.. I just feel like they hired a politician to answer these questions.. There are alot of things i am very dissapointed in.
I myself play resto so please excuse me, but thats where my focus will be.

Its fun how they dont see the problems at all.. They say that resto is fine, which to some extent they are.. They say that CH is usefull, especially with set bonusses.. I've tested it myself with 780 haste (in gear, without use of potion and stuff), and in RAW heal output i'm pretty decent.. But the cast time totally wrecks the heal compaired to druids/priests.. So if your first target gets a CoH tick before CH lands, your getting 50% less output from your CH.. Basically you need to rework the spell so it heals evenly, thats the least that has to be done - as the overall heal output is still lower than PoH..

So as well as the Q&A is right, saying that on about 50% of the fights in ulduar, shamans can win healing meters (with LHW/riptide, not CH), but the rest we get devalued.. basically if we didn't have mana tide, the 1 raid spot that good resto shamans can get in hardcore guilds, wouldn't be there.
And they are true, that with setbonus and heavy haste stacking CH is a viable healing method (getting CH to 1.6 sec cast), but if CH (in its current form) gets viable, because enough haste gear exists or mana becomes less of a problem, we will go back to 100% chain heal spamming (perhaps with some riptides in between) which isn't the goal, and which i would hate..
So basically they need to do something to make CH pretty viable but not a 95% of overall healing spell..

So the lack of depth explanation in the Q&A (because of its politician'ish setup) we're basically not getting any info that would address the resto tree's current problems..

The few things that we did get a distinct answer on was decent enough - but VERY small changes from pve aspect..
2 changes that affect pve was basically directly mentioned - higher base hp, to match other classes. and 4 totems in 1 gcd, which will without doubt be a nice change, but still very small looking at our actual problems..

About the roles of the shaman class - i found it ridicules.. I mean they said that the class is meant to be different by weapon enchants (i remember rogues having poisons, so from an enh pov they're not special) and shields (where i remember mages having self-armors, and priests got one as well adding spell dmg and armor, and even has stacks like ours) .. From a visual point and lore of view, those make us unique, from a game play point of view, theres nothing special about it. And then basically rest is just lol'ish talk about hybrids that should be competitive in all specs..
That part (which was the start) already made me cry abit, as there was no in depth discussion about what roles the individual specs was supposed to have in a raiding/pvp enviroment - just from a lore/spec overall point of view..

And please those saying they were actually happy with the Q&A, i find it very funny, as most of the changes have been mentioned from GMs concerning the class several times.. so most of it i'm afraid wont happen.

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Q u o t e:
In PvP, we want to make sure we end the use of “totem stomping macros” where a pet class essentially programs their pet to automatically kill any totem they see. It’s perfectly acceptable for pets to kill totems, but the player should at least have to make a decision and spend some of their attention to do so.

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Give the totems some K of health, then no1 cares if a pet is on the totem hitting it for some time. Aswell as it stops the damn annoying players(Priests?!) running to your totem 1hit it with white !*#% dmg and then fear your ass away.

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Q u o t e:
Teams have learned to kill the shamans first, because if they don’t, the shaman healing output is good, especially in larger teams. In fact, shamans generally are more powerful on the larger teams because of the nature of their powerful buffs affecting more people.

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hehehehe...made me giggle :). If i dont get locked down, my healing is good kk.
That would qualify priest and druid healing output as "splendidly excellent" right?
Ah well...we will see what the future brings.

I dont understand the posts about effort in terms of writing a couple of pages of philosophical text, its not hard when you have a communications person polishing the text. I dont really care about getting behind the minds of people paid to deliver me entertainment for money I just want them to give value for money. Blizzard has the resources to do this on a more regular basis if they choose too.

Maybee its a cultural thing that I find the Q&A pointless as the US forum seems to respond a whole lot better to the wall of text. If you look at the posts in Europe against those in the US we dont seem to be the same at all, thank god.

hehe, nice amount of replies - gj PR team !!

@ PR department of Blizzard = you ppl should realllllllyyy L 2 do your job !!!


reading the 6 pages of posts above me I can only conclude one thing - you ppl suck really bad at doing your job -


well i'm off to work, and looking forward to the next expansion.. maybe i'll take my shaman for a spin in you indeed "fix" it --- by fixing it i mean : Make it "mage/lock/SP/hunter/dk/rogue/warr/retpala/boomkin/feral/etc" easy to kill an enemy in PvP, make it dps like "mage/lock/SP/hunter/dk/rogue/warr/retpala/boomkin/feral/etc" .

It's not funny not to survive those stinking poizon clouds from grobbulus if you are not at full healeth when you get them....
It's not fun not to survive the first 10 seconds of an arena match - while a blue PvE gear "mage/lock/SP/hunter/dk/rogue/warr/retpala/boomkin/feral/etc" is getting 1500 rating in one evening .
It's not fun to not be able to get into a PUG if you are not healer - yes, it's true, that old TBC problem is starting to make it's way back into the game --- PPL ARE BEGINNING TO NOTICE WE ARE WEAK -- and even if you are "epic" they will prefere a blue geared "class of the month" dps ;)

have fun

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Q u o t e:
Maybee its a cultural thing that I find the Q&A pointless as the US forum seems to respond a whole lot better to the wall of text. If you look at the posts in Europe against those in the US we dont seem to be the same at all, thank god.

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This will not sound nice but Americans tend to be a bit gullible. They're the kind of people who blindly buy into a promotional or election speech .

I've read the (now) 21 pages of comments there and it's generally about them drawing their conclusions from the vague remarks and rolling with it, then the next person assumes that the previous person's comment is the written truth and goes along with it. There's a lot of posts about the totem change and how it will function and be used, completely ignoring the fact that those details haven't been given, not to mention the last line of "And of course, this is still in the planning stage, and so subject to change."

Will the totems system be changed? Yes
Will it work the way the community wants? Maybe
Will it it be implemented soon? Maybe
Will it be the best solution? No (that would cost too much time and money)
Will it improve shamans? Probably
Will it improve shamans enough? Maybe

That's all we know at this point. Any further speculation is fun but pointless

Will the totems system be changed? Yes...in the distant future
Will it work the way the community wants? Maybe (to a certain niche)
Will it it be implemented soon? Maybe/Maybe not
Will it be the best solution? No (that would cost too much time and money) (agreed)
Will it improve shamans? Probably (again to a niche)
Will it improve shamans enough? Doubt it.

That's all we know at this point. Any further speculation is fun but pointless

While it is kinda fun that most of the QQers in this thread have made up their minds about GC and the developers not giving a crap about shamans _before_ this thread or the questions thread came, could you just please shut up for a while? Do you enjoy whining endlessly or did actually think Blizzard would buff shamans to something they will be at lvl 90 in the next expansion?

If they had promised us every single thing we asked for we would be facerolling in Arena 5v5 teams alone against the other five. Of course they didn't give a time limit, politicians do (and fail miserably most of the time). They promised to make changes to our class in 3.2, but not all of them at the same time, which is fine in my opinion. They didn't say they'd stop doing them after that, they will propably be seen in later patches (3.2.1, 3.2.2 etc.).

The one thing I'm a bit disappointed about though, although I understand GC's comment about it, is our Ulduar gearing. It feels like there's little to no elemental shaman gear dropping from there besides T8.

P.S. Resto shamans do need help though :|

i dont spose you have thought that maybe they have only addressed about a 5th of the questions that were asked (im talking about the sensible questions) and that most of what they say is vague and runs around in circles.

if they had spoken less about the philosophy of shamans and filled that up with more of the questions we have asked more of us would be happy. one of the blues on the us forums said they were planning to run more Q&A series in the future, how much longer....look how long it has taken to get to this point.

i know im being a pesimist at the moment, but its because blizzard needs to shape up.

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Q u o t e:
The one thing I'm a bit disappointed about though, although I understand GC's comment about it, is our Ulduar gearing. It feels like there's little to no elemental shaman gear dropping from there besides T8.

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Try finding a slow offhand for enhancement... :S

That aside, I'm very pleased by this Q&A overall. Nice to have acknowledgement of the low health pool, redundant totems and PvP mobility issues, as well as an overview of the vision for the class (and maybe it will finally silence the "dual weild or 2H???" threads) :D

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Q u o t e:
i know im being a pesimist at the moment, but its because blizzard needs to shape up.

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Surely this is the beginning of shaping up? Don't be angry because this Q&A isn't all-encompassing and quantitative - be happy because it admits to problems where we have them, and gives some hints as to what to expect in an un-set future :)

Well done.

/respect for the continuous effort to listen and interact with the community. Even more so, since WoW keeps on being such a succes.

Now to the post itself. When asked which is the most defining aspect of the shaman, your reply is "Totems, Totems, Totems". So it's on now. You know from the really massive amount of input you received on Totems that this aspect of the shaman class feels gimped for a good chunk of the shaman player base. If you stress this again as being the defining aspect, you know you have to deliver now right?

Oracus.

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Q u o t e:
Surely this is the beginning of shaping up? Don't be angry because this Q&A isn't all-encompassing and quantitative - be happy because it admits to problems where we have them, and gives some hints as to what to expect in an un-set future :)

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Many people believe the beginning should have been at least a year ago when many of the current problems were already being noticed.

Shamans are simply tired of waiting for that 'beginning' to start. And the current post did nothing to give hope

Only the hp pool and obsolete totems will be addressed in a concrete timetable: patch 3.2

The rest is unknown. In fact, the statements that they "want to limit the amount of class changes for 3.2" and that the next most concrete change is "Still in the planning stage" gives a good indication that many of these changes won't see the light until most people in this forum have quit the game

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Q u o t e:
I saw a question I could answer, and so I did. If you'd prefer we didn't reply at all, that's something we can't promise to do sorry, as that is what we try and do every day! :-)

Thanks everyone for all the feedback. It's very interesting comparing and contrasting EU English feedback on this with that of other languages and regions.

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Hey wryxian, could you answer me this question plz.
do you believe that this change will be available for the 3.2????
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. We’ve even discussed letting shamans carry a totem on their back (the tauren do it already) but that may be too far out there.

And this is a feedback from a player from another region :D

Nice to hear some news!
Yay shamans! Mages next, Can't wait!

I just hope it will not end like "Devs are aware of your problems" and after some time, you see a "GHOSTCRAWLER PROMISED ME A PONNY" response:/

Anyway, looking forward to the next major patch, I really hope it will change things!^^

This Q&A sounds like it was writen two years ago, I think I quit the game 1.5 years ago due to how things were with the shaman class. (Only able to post due to the other half still play). I guess I have missed nothing by not playing WotLK, nevermind playing with a shaman......

This was an opportunity that was lost.

A bunch of generic questions covering the main areas of concern got a bunch of generic answers.

I think if the expectations had been managed more carefully and the process and intent explained more fully then the result wouldn't have annoyed so many.

Of the people commenting who really enjoyed the Q&A, most seem to be from other classes. If you haven't been following the development of the class or playing it, then the answers give a nice historical overview, explain the major hang-ups of the class and give a brief glimpse of what areas the developers might work on in future. I'm sure when I read, for example, the Warlock or Rogue Q&A's I'll probably enjoy them for just those reasons.

As a dedicated class Q&A, it doesn't really work. To anyone who's played a shaman for any length of time and shown any interest in reading beta forums, class forums and other news sources it didn't offer any insight. Being told what you already know isn't news and then being told that they are planning on fixes for the major issues, but don't know yet what those will be and when they will appear wasn't very inspiring. I would expect nothing less than the developers knowing what the major problems are with the class and having plans to fix them at some point. Anything else would be incompetence.

What I wanted was facts - I didn't want GC's anecdotes about OP shaman in vanilla (salt in a wound?) or being told that totems are iconic of shaman (really?). I already knew they were planning to revamp the totem mechanic (they have been saying it for 3+years and invited threads on it), what I needed to know was how they were intending to do it and that part was too vague. I'm glad they acknowledged the health issue, but given the explanation we shoudn't have to wait for 3.2 (3 months? 6 months?) for a fix - that should be in the next maintenance. I wanted to know what they planned for CH, rather than an acknowledgement that it's a little lacklustre now. I wanted to hear about riptide (nothing). I wanted to know about Ghost Wolf (nothing). I wanted to hear about shocks (nothing). I wanted to hear about weapon enchants - apart from a brief mention in the iconic abilities and a 'use FT on OH' confirmation that wasn't expanded on, ranged AOE? elemental shield plans? new spells?. I wanted to see vision and ingenuity and I didn't see any evidence of it.

GC has said before to tell Blizzard the problems, but don't try to design the solutions as that's their job. I understand that, it's what I tell my customers, but what I saw in the Q&A was some hastily rehashed ideas from the forums and nothing else. Dropping all four totems with one button, carrying totems on the back, buffing totems becoming spells. These are staple suggestions that come up time and time again on this forum. Where's the secret sauce?

I think you would have been better off with shorter, more factual answers to a wider range of questions that really divulged the future design direction of the class. For future class Q&As keep the answers down to a word limit (50 words?), but increase the number of questions and make them more specific.

Better still, actually put together a webinar and let the community register and ask questions directly. You could moderate it and limit entry if necessary.

I liked the Q&A session, contrary to what I'd expected. The fact that the Lead Designer (if that is the correct position GC holds) acknowledges most of our pressing issues and even sketches some of the possible solutions is temporarily comforting. However, this will in turn get diminished by the time it takes for them to introduce/implement the changes, so I may be back to my old grumpy self before too long.

Moreover, it may turn out to be that the changes to remedy issue one introduce a dozen more issues, but I'd rather remain optimistic in this case.

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Q u o t e:
This was an opportunity that was lost.

I think you would have been better off with shorter, more factual answers to a wider range of questions that really divulged the future design direction of the class. For future class Q&As keep the answers down to a word limit (50 words?), but increase the number of questions and make them more specific.

Better still, actually put together a webinar and let the community register and ask questions directly. You could moderate it and limit entry if necessary.

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I totally agree. The only thing that'll easy a shamans mind atm (especially resto) is some direct facts of changes they are considering/are gonna implement. Basically the long politician speech, telling about history of the shaman was waste of time in the Q&A.. Was overall useless - with a few good mentions, which the poster whom i quoted also commented in the same way which i feel about it.