Peter Lee's Awesome Tauren Shaman Art

Over at the official World of Warcraft Forums we’ve recently been blessed with a Shaman Q&A!

What’s in store for the Shaman in the future? What do the chaps at Blizz want to do with the Shaman? And how do they see the class evolving in the future?

The original post is a good 4,000 odd words, but I’ve summarized the important notes and news here.

If you’d like to read the original full post, go here.

Otherwise, read on for my summarized version.

Shaman Roles:

Shaman’s have three key roles, as any good Shaman player would know – ranged DPS (my favorite), melee DPS, and healing. Blizzard have no plans to change this, but apparently in the past they had thoughts of letting Shamans tank… no more however.

Blizz state that they are looking at making Shaman’s a more viable class in PvP – especially in 2v2 arena games. In 5v5 we’re obviously very handy with our totems, but 2v2 Shaman’s aren’t popular and Blizz are looking into changing that.

The Shaman is still the most “hybridized” class – for example, unlike Feral Druids, Elemental or Enhancement Shamans can cast heals effectively without shape shifting. Again, no plans to change this.

Totems:

For a long time Shamans have bemoaned the unmovable nature of their totems – they’ve been called “turrets” as they generally just have to stand in one place and “shoot”.

Blizz are stating they’d like to make it possible for Shammys to drop all four totems at once on one global cooldown, which would be nice, but they’re still working on implementation and have no release date on that yet.

There’s a “far out there” word on making totems mobile (I don’t think it’ll ever happen) by letting players carry one on their back, and on a similar note, there’s talk of making some totem buffs normal spells… this has ramifications of course, like, if we can strength buff without using an earth totem, that means we might be able to add yet more buffs or protective states to our fellow party members or PvP buddies. Tremor and earthbind totems all round for PvP!

I liked this minor but handy improvement, “…as a small quality-of-life improvement, we are going to let low-level shamans trade in the four elemental totems that clutter their bags for a single totem they can equip in their totem slot. Since the four “clutter”; totems can’t be destroyed or sold, currently there is no way to get rid of them. This change will essentially give shamans their four bag slots back.”

Now how about removing Shaman totem quests altogether?

One of my favorite ideas re totems in this Q&A was letting Elementals come out of preexisting totems, rather than having to lay their own individual totem. So, if you’re using a fire totem of any kind, your elemental will be automatically deployed at the same time. How this will be balanced and implemented isn’t touched on.

Other random comments:

Shamans have for a long time been known for having the lowest bas  health levelsin the game, something which Blizzard have finally realized, and say will be rectified in 3.2! Awesome news for any Shaman player.

There’s lengthy discussion regarding item drops and how it relates to WoW as a whole – suffice it to say, its a very complex problem trying to come up with a way to satisfy players loot needs without making drops too rare or overly specific.

Raiding:

Some Shamans have been feeling that their role as a group healer has been diminished in Ulduar — Blizzard are aware of this, and of the fact that Resto Shammys have it tough trying to keep mana levels up compared to other healing classes which seem to never run dry. There’s also comment about new sets of gear arriving soon to help out Shamans who would like to buff their chain healing ability.

There’s also a short discourse on Shaman roles in raids, are Elemental Shaman’s performing well enough, are Resto Shaman’s where they need to be to preserve an interesting play style: Blizzard says yes – they especially want to ensure chain heal and LHW are optional – not just a “spam chain heal” class they were in Sunwell.

PvP:

As I’ve experienced a lot myself, Shaman’s are pretty easy kills with their low hitpoints in PvP – and they’re also big targets since any opponent worth their salt knows that totems plus good group & single target heals will make life difficult for them… so they target Shamans as a high priority.

This situation, combined with the fact that Earth shield is an easy dispel makes Shaman’s lifespan pretty short – Blizzard are toying with the idea of making earthshield harder to dispel, perhaps making one layer dispelled per cast rather than all 2 or 3.

Shamans have a “high skill cap”, in other words, they’re a difficult class to play in PvP if you want to equal the other classes. Blizz is working on this, but its hard to balance this without making them overpowered for skillful players.

Totem killing macros in PvP – get ready for a big surprise pet users, Blizz is doing the right thing and stopping /easy kill macro commands that swipe down all your totems with the click of a button. Players using totem killer macros will now need to devote precious attention and time to doing so. Oh my yes!

Conclusions?

All of this stuff sounds great, and I’m drooling, but like a lot of Shamans out there I’m saying, “show me the money”… or in other words… a lot of this stuff has been known about for a long time, lets see the changes implemented – soon!

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