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aragornx45
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We just got the changes that were coming to us. Play a Priest and you'd see how we really needed these changes.

For example, we are designated by Blizzard to be the premiere healing class. However (pre-1.10), a Disc/Holy Priest was only on the level with resto Shamans/Druids and Paladins. However, in terms of efficiency, Shaman's Lesser Healing Wave was actually MORE efficient than our Flash Heal. So was the lower rank Druid Healing Touch spells, and the Paladin's Flash of Light. Not to mention Priests were the only class not to get the full HP/S benefit from +healing, and the only casting class without any sort of mana regeneration talent or ability (Mages - Evocate, Warlocks - Lifetap, Shamans - Mana Tide/Spring, Druids - Innervate, Paladins - Blessing of Wisdom). It was an insult.

The classes now are pretty much balanced.

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We just got the changes that were coming to us. Play a Priest and you'd see how we really needed these changes.

For example, we are designated by Blizzard to be the premiere healing class. However (pre-1.10), a Disc/Holy Priest was only on the level with resto Shamans/Druids and Paladins. However, in terms of efficiency, Shaman's Lesser Healing Wave was actually MORE efficient than our Flash Heal. So was the lower rank Druid Healing Touch spells, and the Paladin's Flash of Light. Not to mention Priests were the only class not to get the full HP/S benefit from +healing, and the only casting class without any sort of mana regeneration talent or ability (Mages - Evocate, Warlocks - Lifetap, Shamans - Mana Tide/Spring, Druids - Innervate, Paladins - Blessing of Wisdom). It was an insult.

The classes now are pretty much balanced.

Amen.

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I know, the problem is that they only strive to solve class problems. They don't even try to have some sort of balance be put in.

A restoration druid should be as good a healer as a priest without talents.

A shammy should be as good a healer as a priest - 20 levels.

A pally should be as good a healer as a priest - 10 levels.

The problem with the priest mana restoration is that other than the pally restoration, most mana restorations would basically give the priest too much power. Pally blessing is slow, that time usage is the best aspect of the thing. Evocation is a pretty cheap and dumbass talent. A mage with no mana is useless, I know that. So have that mage learn how to conserve mana. Improved mana gems would be a much better talent. And a lot more balanced.

A warlock's lifetap is balanced because it uses his life to add more mana. If a priest had lifetap, all he would do would lifetap, heal himself, and relifetap...

A druid innervate, if I remember correctly, is others only. If not, it should be that. A warrior cannot (other than by using potions) have an ability that brings his life back up in an instant. That would be gamebreaking. Just like the mana restoration abilities.

They need to work on balancing the classes beyond just buffing and nerfing seemingly randomly. Every month, they satisfy half of their population and piss off the other half.

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I know, the problem is that they only strive to solve class problems. They don't even try to have some sort of balance be put in.

Yes, they do.

A restoration druid should be as good a healer as a priest without talents.

With 1.10, that will be the case. Resto druids are very efficient, have the biggest heals in the game (come 1.10 since GHeal will be weakened), the best heal-over-time spells, combat rez, innervate, and Nature's Swiftness, all of which are lifesavers.

A shammy should be as good a healer as a priest - 20 levels.

Then that would be useless for PVP AND PVE. Right now, Shamans are pretty balanced, believe it or not. I've done all content except AQ in the game and PVPed for hundreds of hours. Shamans have a good role as a support class.

A pally should be as good a healer as a priest - 10 levels.

With 1.10, they will be weaker than Priests overall in terms of healing, though they will make up for it in other areas.

The problem with the priest mana restoration is that other than the pally restoration, most mana restorations would basically give the priest too much power. Pally blessing is slow, that time usage is the best aspect of the thing. Evocation is a pretty cheap and dumbass talent. A mage with no mana is useless, I know that. So have that mage learn how to conserve mana. Improved mana gems would be a much better talent. And a lot more balanced.

That avoids my point. Priests didn't have any mana restoration abilities, other classes did. Shouldn't a MAIN healer have more staying power than a HYBRID?

A warlock's lifetap is balanced because it uses his life to add more mana. If a priest had lifetap, all he would do would lifetap, heal himself, and relifetap...

I'm not proposing giving Priest's lifetap. I was pointing out, once again, that all other casting classes had mana regeneration, and we did not. We actually still aren't gaining anything, but our efficiency changes make up for it.

A druid innervate, if I remember correctly, is others only. If not, it should be that. A warrior cannot (other than by using potions) have an ability that brings his life back up in an instant. That would be gamebreaking. Just like the mana restoration abilities.

Innervate can be cast on yourself, too.

They need to work on balancing the classes beyond just buffing and nerfing seemingly randomly. Every month, they satisfy half of their population and piss off the other half.

As I've said repeatedly, now, they ARE quite balanced. Perhaps a few tweaks to Rogues, but that's about it.

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Can only speak for the shaman class but we do need significant buffing in the PVE area, our resto talent tree is a complete mess. Our vast inferiority to pallies in the raid environment also imbalances Horde progress.

And btw, 9 classes*

Keep in mind you can't look at EVERYTHING from the 40-man raid perspective. But if you do, Shamans are still pretty nice. Threat reduction, +agility, mana regeneration, nature's swiftness, non-timer rez, reincarnation, efficient 1.5 second heal that's on-par with the Priest flash heal, chain heal, an assortment of other useful totems, and of course, Windfury (more importantly, Windfury totem).

If you look across the board there are as many Horde guilds dominating AQ as there are Alliance guilds.

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At some point, rogues are gonna need more than a minor readjustment. So far, the only easily killed class for rogues will remain non-ice mages. I can't test it, but I am sure all priests will be at the level of shadow priests. As one of my friends said: "the only thing that can kill a shadowpriest is a troll shadow priest."

Obviously, rogues do deserve some of the crap they receive about their power in PvP, but to ensure victory for the rogue, they have to pick a target and eait for a vulnerable moment. Fighting any target at full power for a rogue is complete madness and will cause death. In pve, a rogue is a boring experience.

All you do is wait while you are at full power for about 5 minutes, then you wait 5 minutes for the tank to gain aggro, and then you have to not do as much damage as you can because the tank has to hold aggro.

WARNING, UNRELATED RANT

Should you try to suggest something not in a walkthrough (mind numbing poison on the bat boss comes to mind), most people act as if you are stupid. If you do it and you work, you don't get the credit for it, and if it doesn't people just reinforce the idea that you are stupid for trying to improve a strategy some doofus wrote on a website.

No one plays WoW anymore. They download macros, use strategies from other guilds, and then they argue about loot.

If there was any kind of balance, I wouldn't even complain about the rogue's status. But unlike for some classes, many people believe there is only one viable rogue build, and that is the sub/dagger spec. Now priests have gone from 3 viable specs to about a dozen interractions between talents. At some point, I wish that rogues will get the option to have a more flexible and interesting talent interraction.

Also, you cannot concider the rogue complete as long as "improved distract" will remain a talent.

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Keep in mind you can't look at EVERYTHING from the 40-man raid perspective. But if you do, Shamans are still pretty nice. Threat reduction, +agility, mana regeneration, nature's swiftness, non-timer rez, reincarnation, efficient 1.5 second heal that's on-par with the Priest flash heal, chain heal, an assortment of other useful totems, and of course, Windfury (more importantly, Windfury totem).

If you look across the board there are as many Horde guilds dominating AQ as there are Alliance guilds.

We're okay, far from useless for sure, but we have so much useless shit in both skills and talents, and pale in comparison to the paladin's buffing power in raid situations. It's frustratingly enough like we're a class designed around pvp/elemental, yet unable to contribute to ranged dps, yet even when specced restoration are basically inferior heal/buffbots. I don't mind the heal and support role, I just wish if I put all my points into it I didn't still end up with a majority of useless totems and basically zero caster beneficial totems except one with a five minute cooldown. Why should we be, as someone suggested earlier in the thread, -20 levels on a priest in healing powers if it's basically all we do in a raid. Let alone -10 levels on a pally, considering our role in raids are basically identical.

As for my focus on 40 man raids, it seems to be that that's the thing Blizz are really trying to push people towards. It's either that or PVP, and dividing PVP and PVE shamans is what talent trees are all about.

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You deal damage.

You deal a lot of it.

In a raid, you should be a back up healer in a "oh shit it all went wrong" situation. With my 60 rogue, I have only met one pally able to defeat me in a duel, and that was because I so rarelly fight pallies. Shammies can often defeat me (well, those that are well played.)

With the whole damage dealing aspect of the shaman, they should do less in terms of healing. The problem you have is that the first guild to do something used a shammy as a healer and now everyone follows that one walkthrough and never questions it. A shammy is more suited in front, dealing damage, and healing when necessary. Just like a feral druid should be in cat form, and a balance druid in moonkin form.

Also, pallies suffer from the same problem as shammies, they are stuck in one role because someone arbitrarely decided that pallies were buff/heal only. So I see pallies wearing cloth in instances...

Go figure.

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You deal damage.

You deal a lot of it.

In a raid, you should be a back up healer in a "oh shit it all went wrong" situation. With my 60 rogue, I have only met one pally able to defeat me in a duel, and that was because I so rarelly fight pallies. Shammies can often defeat me (well, those that are well played.)

With the whole damage dealing aspect of the shaman, they should do less in terms of healing. The problem you have is that the first guild to do something used a shammy as a healer and now everyone follows that one walkthrough and never questions it. A shammy is more suited in front, dealing damage, and healing when necessary. Just like a feral druid should be in cat form, and a balance druid in moonkin form.

Also, pallies suffer from the same problem as shammies, they are stuck in one role because someone arbitrarely decided that pallies were buff/heal only. So I see pallies wearing cloth in instances...

Go figure.

I like the way you think.

In an ideal world (of warcraft) I'd like it if our spec could decide our role in instances, as it should be in the nature of a hybrid. I spec enhancement, I go with the rogues and warriors and buff them with the improved melee totems I get from putting points into the talent trees, I also contibute to melee damage. If I spec elemental I'm with ranged dps buffing them with similar elemental totems I have points in and contribute to ranged dps with lightning spells. With restoration it's the same deal. I support and group with these classes well because I'm specced like them. I make up for the fact I don't do as much damage/healing as my group by the fact I buff them to do more damage, or help them sustain more damage, or just last longer.

But in practice this isn't how it works, because of shitty talents and missing/defunct totems. Maybe it was intended this way to a certain extent, that healing simply is the PVE role for shamans, but it wouldn't take too much to change this and there's no reason it wouldn't be for the better.

Look at our skills and trees. All three trees are littered with useless totem talents, the only two really useful ones being improved fire nova (good for pvp) and mana tide (in the restoration tree, hence our pigeonholing as healers). Half our totems themselves aren't even worth having on hotbars. Our only support fire totem is ice resistance (i'll avoid mentioning flametongue totem). We have a total of one support totem for casters aside from mana tide, and the difference that makes is so minute it's invisible in all except the longest endurance fights, where even then it probably isn't worth the bother of casting and recasting every minute and a bit. An obvious solution to this would be to fix mana spring and add another caster totem, such as a magic damage or healing effect buff totem, but as we've seen it takes a game company a long long time to get round to making changes to anyone. Not that I blame them for this, they do have a lot on their hands.

It's quite a vision that the hybrids should, as I'm sure it was intended*, play out more role than one in the game, even if it is a matter of speccing that way and only playing that one role, but our talent trees and skills are ameaturishly designed so as to make that impossible. Trying to get Blizz to change the class enough so that they might fulfill that maybe a little ambitious, so right now all the shaman community are pushing for is a fix for the resto tree. PVPers can keep elemental, enhancement for levelling if that's what it takes to just fix that tree and make us useful in raids.

*this much is clear from the armour sets the current 40 man instances give us: EF is resto, TS is elemental and AQ40s armour is enhancement

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In terms of other things Shamans can do, I've found a few things.

* If you go the support route, a 1h/shield Shaman with appropriate Enhancement talents is very hard to kill, having more armor than any other healing class besides a Paladin (possibly MORE than a Paladin if they're using 2h). Survivability is key in PVP, and you guys have Nature's Swiftness to back you up. What's nice is that as opposed to a Holy/Disc Priest, a Druid, or a Paladin, you can ALSO push out a game winning burst of DPS with a shock or Chain Lightning, possibly augmented by things like TOEP/ZHC.

* If you go the Elemental route, I've seen and played with Shamans absolutely tear it up with massive CL/Shock damage. "Why not roll a Mage? Mages do it better." Because you guys ALSO can heal yourselves and others, as well as do melee damage when you're out of mana, and support your team at the same time.

* Regardless of what route you go, and even though you have some useless totems, you still have some really good ones. Windfury totem is amazingly powerful when you have Warriors using tier 1.5-2 epics like Bonereaver's Edge, Spinal Reaper, Drake Talon Cleaver, and Untamed Blade. One of my favorite AB tactics is to send 3 Warriors with such weapons, a Shaman, and one other person to the Blacksmith and just overpower them with massive melee dps. Grounding totem can make the difference if you only have one dispeller of sheeps, Earthbind owns WSG, your fire totems can break node capping (incredibly annoying in AB) OR bring Rogues/Druids out of stealth, and so on and so forth.

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Also, pallies suffer from the same problem as shammies, they are stuck in one role because someone arbitrarely decided that pallies were buff/heal only. So I see pallies wearing cloth in instances...

Go figure.

What Blizzard did to Paladins was unforgivable to be sure. I loved it when Caydiem said(not in so many words) that Paladins were just priests in plate. She's such an idiot. There is still nothing stopping someone from walking away from a paladin in PvP.

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In terms of other things Shamans can do, I've found a few things.

* If you go the support route, a 1h/shield Shaman with appropriate Enhancement talents is very hard to kill, having more armor than any other healing class besides a Paladin (possibly MORE than a Paladin if they're using 2h). Survivability is key in PVP, and you guys have Nature's Swiftness to back you up. What's nice is that as opposed to a Holy/Disc Priest, a Druid, or a Paladin, you can ALSO push out a game winning burst of DPS with a shock or Chain Lightning, possibly augmented by things like TOEP/ZHC.

* If you go the Elemental route, I've seen and played with Shamans absolutely tear it up with massive CL/Shock damage. "Why not roll a Mage? Mages do it better." Because you guys ALSO can heal yourselves and others, as well as do melee damage when you're out of mana, and support your team at the same time.

* Regardless of what route you go, and even though you have some useless totems, you still have some really good ones. Windfury totem is amazingly powerful when you have Warriors using tier 1.5-2 epics like Bonereaver's Edge, Spinal Reaper, Drake Talon Cleaver, and Untamed Blade. One of my favorite AB tactics is to send 3 Warriors with such weapons, a Shaman, and one other person to the Blacksmith and just overpower them with massive melee dps. Grounding totem can make the difference if you only have one dispeller of sheeps, Earthbind owns WSG, your fire totems can break node capping (incredibly annoying in AB) OR bring Rogues/Druids out of stealth, and so on and so forth.

I'll have to admit my bias in this area, I avoid PVP like the plague. The plethora of 3 maps available to PVPers (well, 2 maps and one big stalemate) after the introduction of the battlegrounds that all but killed world PVP do get old after a while, and now everytime I see arathi basin or warsong gulch I tend to get tired very quickly. Hopefully we should see a ressurection of outdoor PVP as promised, but this is an irrelevant rant.

As tempting as it would be, I wouldn't buff PVE shamans at the cost of the PVPers, even if that means giving them the elemental tree and throwing away the vision of the PVE shammy as something other than a healer as described above. I don't doubt for a second that shammies have a great role in PVP, both in terms of their own power and their ability to support on the battlefield, but once again we are nothing if not a certain spec (in this case elemental). Enhancement is a nice idea, and we've all seem nice PVP videos out there of OMG INSAEN WF CRITZ (eg Creed) but those are just strung together montages of a few lucky moments (chance of WF is 20%, then add the chance of crit..).

EDIT: I'd disagree that survivability is the key in PVP.. it's a nice thing to have but the majority of the time you're a stones throw away from the nearest GY (dying can even work in your advantage for quick travel around the map and topping up mana)

Regardless of all that, our viability in PVP doesn't address concerns about our shortcomings in PVE, which is what is being called to be buffed.

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Also, pallies suffer from the same problem as shammies, they are stuck in one role because someone arbitrarely decided that pallies were buff/heal only. So I see pallies wearing cloth in instances...

Go figure.

What Blizzard did to Paladins was unforgivable to be sure. I loved it when Caydiem said(not in so many words) that Paladins were just priests in plate. She's such an idiot. There is still nothing stopping someone from walking away from a paladin in PvP.

Heh, this is true. Once you get past the initial hammer of justice pallies just aren't worth your time on the battlefield. Let me see... weak dps, almost impossible to kill without a big time commitment... very small minority know the heal button works on anything other than themselves... no snares left... time to run and get back to the battle.

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I loved it when Caydiem said(not in so many words) that Paladins were just priests in plate.

Just as Warlocks are Mages in... well, still cloth I guess. :roll: ('Locks should dress in leather to match their Succubi :P )

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-warlock&t=885675&p=1&tmp=1#post885675

I am still finding out how messed-up Blizz's plans for the Warlock/Pally were/are. At first, we were supposed to be the only two classes with mounts, which is what set us apart. Now, nothing does.

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Paladins are, by far, the most effective combat healers in all of WoW. In AB in particular, they are a serious force to be reckoned with. I cannot tell you how many times a Paladin has completely turned the tide of an encounter in a PVP match.

Aye, put 2 loladins on the FC in WSG and you've got yourself a near invulnerable FC. Frustrating as hell to take down.

I can kinda understand paladins that don't want to heal in PVP though, considering it's their primary function in raiding seems a little boring to not be able to go on killing sprees in the battlegrounds. If they're specced that way anyway.

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Level?

22. This is my first character, so I'm still learning the intricacies of the game...or non-intricacies, judging from some of your comments.

Even with my limited experience, I had to agree on some of the points made in that thread. The Warlock class seems to be much more DOT-focused than a debuff class, which is what I initally expected. I've heard some relate to it as a solo class, which is possible to a certain extent, I guess. I'm horrible at controlling my aggro, so a lot of my solo efforts inevitably end in corpse runs.

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