first, again :P


edit : btw, when will we see the mage Q&A ?

( from a PR point of view - try not to give them more detailed answers , or this forum will burst into flames :P )

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Q u o t e:
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

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If they had those answers it would be in the Q&A, which of course... you know... was the perceived purpose of it.

Please formulate your questions in a matter that the community devs can answer

Like :
Will shamans change?
or
Will something be fixed somewhere in the future?

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Q u o t e:


If they had those answers it would be in the Q&A, which of course... you know... was the perceived purpose of it.

Please formulate your questions in a matter that the community devs can answer

Like :
Will shamans change?
or
Will something be fixed somewhere in the future?

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Lol, read the Q&A post dude. The say that they´re going to give us more HP, and they have talked about changes to restoration, and a little help to the enhancement. Also to put 4 totems at the same time, and fusion totems... read it

Well, the Q&A is a turnover. Shaman is now group healing and single target. A lot of people think group healing is raid healing but it's not.
Group healing is needed when a group (not the whole raid) is taking heavy damage.

Thing is, group healing is not in the game at the moment. We only have Mimiron in phase 2. And that leaves us on single target.

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Q u o t e:
Well, the Q&A is a turnover. Shaman is now group healing and single target. A lot of people think group healing is raid healing but it's not.
Group healing is needed when a group (not the whole raid) is taking heavy damage.

Thing is, group healing is not in the game at the moment. We only have Mimiron in phase 2. And that leaves us on single target.

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Well reshuffle those raid groups then, that's what I do all the time, I like my melee in 1-2 groups and the ranged in others, THEN, you're group healing prowess can shine ^^ If anyone will care to find out, actually, since you'll be the last on the healing meter anyway, because Serendipitied PoH with clinking clanking PoM in the pot followed by a CoH and a HNova and there goes your Chain Heal *sad*

To Blizzard

Well I have to say I’m happy with the Q&A it gave some (vague) answers, it’s good to know that blizzard has some cool idea’s in mind. I’m looking forward to the patch notes with high expectations!

To Shaman Community

And for the people who are negative towards the Q&A, please stop. I know some answers aren’t that clear but seriously you should stop the negative reactions, blizzard told us they were looking into things and that they are going to help the shaman community. So there is no need to make even more QQ posts.

Neather logging out..

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Q u o t e:
[snip] I’m looking forward to the patch notes with high expectations! [snip]

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Please don't, take WoW with moderation :)) I myself like to be pleasantly surprised rather than bitterly disappointed.

The Q&A is frustrating, because it really could do with being released with whatever patch notes there are going to be in 3.2.

There is only so much "we're aware of this being an issue" one can believe.

We got told, in blue posts, that they were aware of our health being low, prior to the 3.1 patch notes being released, and yet nothing was done about it. One can't help but be pessimistic in the belief that on the one hand you're aware (and have acknowledged) some problems of our class, and yet we're still not actually going to see anything done about it.

How is the problem of our health going to be fixed? Are we going to see only our base health go up? Are our sets going to be updated (I highly doubt that considering it's never been done before), or is it simply going to be new sets in the next tier that health gets increased? I can see it now

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Q u o t e:
We've increased the stamina on the new pvp / pve set , but you're going to have to suck it up using the old out of date set you're currently in.

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What about the little things, such as reincarnation being on a hour cooldown? It's implied that our totems are yet again going to be tidied up (although I'm going to be skeptical considering how little has already been done), are we going to see some of our talents tidied up as well?

There was alot in my opinion that wasn't answered in that Q&A, but who is to say that the patch notes aren't going to address these issues?

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Q u o t e:
It might also suggest that the flow of suggestions from these forums to the developers is occuring as intended. ;-) If the community and the developers have come to the same conclusions, however it was done, then surely this is a good thing?

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It would be, if they had done that somewhere around, say, patch 1.19. They're extremely late with some of their realizations, and the Shaman community is hurting because of it. Throughout the whole Q&A there's still this semblance of insecurity which leaves us unsure about just how many changes will make it in the game in a short timeframe.

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Q u o t e:

Thanks for your feedback. Though I believe the current Class Q&A series is already well underway in its current form, it is possible changes may be considered for future Class Q&A efforts.

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And thanks for the effort Wryxian. A possible change may be that an independent source gathers the questions and Blizzard representatives answer them in a podcast. I feel that the current iteration of the Q&A is wholey impersonal, especially (despite them saying otherwise) since the questions they attempted to answer were not as prevalent as they want us to believe.

You need to get rid of the conflicting language from Blizzard. They say they don't want anecdotal evidence yet they produce it themselves. They say that the voice of the forum majority is not the voice of the class. Yet they pick questions which supposedly were asked the most, not the questions that mattered.

Truth be told, this is a great Q&A if you just started playing WoW and you're not a Shaman.

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Q u o t e:


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.

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I disagree with this
It's not hurting anyone for writing it really, so no point in complaining about it
Yes we already know what most of the problems are but it's still very good to actually see what blizzard thinks about the class

Apparently they don't find resto to be too bad in raids, which is something most shamans didn't expect to see

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Q u o t e:
It might also suggest that the flow of suggestions from these forums to the developers is occuring as intended. ;-) If the community and the developers have come to the same conclusions, however it was done, then surely this is a good thing?

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Considering ideas have been flowing on these very forums for 2 years regarding MANY of these issues.....you will have to forgive the pessimism with which many look at the Q&A.

Developers acknowledging issues is one thing (they have done it many times before) but getting the needed fixes is what really matters, and on that front Blizzard have been found extremely lacking.

I will not be holding my breath for the totem changes, nor the enhancement itemisation issue on weapons (for which I have posted an easy solution for MANY times both here and on the suggestions forum).

It seems that the Q&A was a damage limitation excercise seeing as there are a lot of dissolutioned players at the moment and subscription numbers are already dropping now that the summer is here........looks like only the US were gullible enough to fall for it though.


Most Europeans expect to see results, not just get more empty promises or "hints at possible changes".

As always, with the shaman class, the huge post lacked any substance, this community has grown to not expect much, I'm sure other classes would be thrilled with such a big post concerning their class, but this is just the same content shamans get to hear for years now, Ever since TBC was released this class start to dry out, it's getting more and more boring to play this class, not just because it feels weak, but also because other classes simply have something else to them, shaman has the same feel ever since the 70 talents, there is no big difference, just little details made in vain to fix PvP. Enhancement got the wolves, in hope of helping this class get better at PvP, look at how many arena shamans play enhancement... Elemental got a knockback, sounds cool, but everyone else has something to counter, there is no other feeling from knocking back a DK just to be deathgripped... Resto, we got ourselves a weak HoT, a talent that was changed back and fourth because the devs didn't even know where they wanted to go with that.

The class needs a revamp, not some little changes so I can drop totems faster or have extra bag slots, I was expecting this Q&A to be about how they are going to fix shamans in arena and in the current PvE state, not a whole lot of nothing, empty promises (can we even call them promises?) that this class has been used to.

"No raid worth its salt would turn down an Enhancement, Elemental or Restoration shaman for fear of bringing down the raid."

I do not play resto myself, nor is my guild at heroic hardmodes yet, but this sentece seemed odd to me. It appears to be a blatant denial of many posts made in this Q&A, saying they were being left out of raids. Most raids appeared to be ok, but at some heroic hardmode bosses there did not seem to be a spot for quite a few of the resto posters. To be sure, some PvE resto problems are adressed later on in the Q&A and that's not really the problem. The problem is that the devs say 'There are issues, but it's not like it keeps you from being able to raid' while many responses to the Q&A stated that they were. Of course, this sort of post is hardly unique, but there are usually just as many posts saying 'l2p, I have no problem healing just (or even almost) as well as any druid or priest'. Here, there were none.

By saying raids who take other healers over shamans are not worth their salt you are being rather disrespectful to these raiders, but more importantly, you are excluding from the start the possibility that there might actually be a serious problem here, which the posts that you asked for did seem to suggest.

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Q u o t e:
Earth Shield is too easy to dispel. An idea we’d like to explore is just letting a single charge get dispelled at a time.

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Scary.

From an offensive (purging) point of view, this would be rather OP. ES is 1 gcd to cast, 6 charges. Unglyphed, dispelling one charge at a time would mean 3 gcds to get em off. You could keep this up indefinately and still have time to cast other stuff. Also, you effectively have a barrier against dispels for all your other buffs. If you can never get through ES, you can never reach those other buffs.

Compared to druids and priests, resto shamans are indeed easy to purge, especially considering the lack of instants to refresh the line of buffs. My experience with (uncced, obviously) priests and druids is that I purge them down slowy, they keep putting up new buffs, but I purge off a little more in the same time, stripping them bare eventually, while someone else nukes them. With this proposed mechanic, you could never possible get past ES. On just the resto this isn't even such a bad thing, as their other buffs arn't that big a deal, but combined with other, more powerfull buffs, thus shielded from any dispel, this could get very OP.

Possible other solutions to the too easy dispelling of ES:
- just make a dispel resist instead
- make it 1 charge per dispel, but also make ES a stacking buff, with 1 or 2 applications per cast, so that the amount of gcds is balanced

I find Q&A an awesome idea. However, I am disappointed in relation with how the important questions were dodged.

From a healer perspective, I would like to say a few things.

- yes, shaman spells are working good for the situations they are designed. But are those situations really in the game? There is group healing at one phase of one boss. The rest is about raid taking damage, not group taking damage.

- tank and group is a paradigm that in practice doesn't make sense. It often makes more sense to go with raid and group, like priests. You don't take healers in middle of fight away from the tank to heal groups.

- this days, raids don't go with 7-8 healers but with 4-5, and that means you have 2-3 spots for raid and group healers. Sometimes, it's not the best option to take group healers for those 2-3 spots, but to go with more versatile raid healers.

- our healing stream is limited and weak. It is passive healing (good) that works on group (fine..), only our group (bad..). Make it heal 5 - 10 closest players, and make it not stack. I only mentioned healing stream because I think it should compare with JoL. At the moment they are on different levels...

- lowering mana regen of other healers is interesting, but it's not exactly the cookie shamans are looking for. OK, the good thing is it may lead to more healers in the raid, and for healers it is good. OK it may force other healers to go for mana regen stats instead of HPS stats like they do now. At the same time it may force shamans to go with glyphed mana tide and put them in raids for mana tides, and it's not what shamans want to be in the raid for.

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Q u o t e:
It might also suggest that the flow of suggestions from these forums to the developers is occuring as intended. ;-) If the community and the developers have come to the same conclusions, however it was done, then surely this is a good thing?
Thanks for your feedback. Though I believe the current Class Q&A series is already well underway in its current form, it is possible changes may be considered for future Class Q&A efforts.

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You could suggest that, but it would be sophistry.

I do appreciate the effort and I don't belittle what it takes to get even this much information out. I work in a similar environment (with a similar job to GC's although in a completely different sector) so I'm not unsympathetic. My beef was more to do with how this was represented compared to how it turned out.

The community dynamics between the reaction on the EU forum and the US forum would make an interesting sociology study though.

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Q u o t e:
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 :|

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Really love this post. The man tells people to stop whinning, and whines in his P.S. Great !!!

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Q u o t e:
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.

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The fact is that he dooesn't. A bit more health and a new totem system is quite welcome, but clearly not enough to make shaman attractive again. It doesn't change anything for PvE, and I doubt it will change many things for PvP.

i dont think we need swords, but you could make some decent/good daggers/maces/fist weps IN PLACE of some swords, so instead of addin more items just swappin stats around would be good for upcoming contents, i doubt you'd do that for already existing items(too much to change)

for example more haste/crit/hit mix of caster weps instead of having SPIRIT(we're the ONLY caster class/spec that get NOTHING else than some tiny amount of mana regen that we have absolutely no need for from spirit) like they have now(ulduar only has 1 decent(10man hardmode) and 1 good(25man yoggie)ele wep's, and even naxx/sarth/maly only had Wraith Strike(Maexxna) for ele. so even if we have 3 weapon types for caster weps(never seen/remember seeing caster axe) they just dont have good stats for the liking of ele shamans

similar changes could be done on melee fists, maces and even axes if they put any

keep in mind that with this post i mean the stuff in upcoming raids/instances, not that items should be changed now