re: shm and panther

[goodthink]

I understand needing or wanting to change the spirit of fail and clickies giving out *free* spirit lines, however, this reduction makes shaman less desireable. Already, there is little need for a shm. If you want buffs, see sune. Slow? Any mob that drops anything you'd want is immune. Heals? Cleric does it far better.

The spirit line was the one massively defining ability for shm and made it worthwhile to roll one. I would suggest you look at the items, or the custom procs (spirit of fail) rather than change the spell that shm cast with mana that have very short buff times.

Right now, it hardly seems worth leveling my shm or investing aa into it when the chaos pants procs a 90dd for 28mins vs a 175dd for 7min that costs mana.

The spirit line is the main form of dps for shm, and their main contribution to groups.

I hope you reconsider the changes to shm and offload the dps reductions to the items granting cross class skills/spells.

[Tyler]

I understand your concern but Panther in its stats was tooooo powerful. I will look into making Shamans still needed. Whether that is through Panther or another spell.

[Expletus]

Topic this should be in is stickied at the top of the page.

[Valsavis]

Another possible fix on this might be to make slows less resistable, should also help out the tanks that seem to be too fragile to handle content now and bring the shaman back into their main combat role (which in my mind should be slows/patch healing)

[iaewedar]

Another possible fix on this might be to make slows less resistable, should also help out the tanks that seem to be too fragile to handle content now and bring the shaman back into their main combat role (which in my mind should be slows/patch healing)

^^ I like this. I always found part of the thrill of taking down raid mobs was the fight of actually getting a slow to land. It could apply in both high-end and low 70 content as well and shake the cobwebs off all the Shambots out there.

[khaliss]

^ +1, I like Val's idea. Wizards have their spells very hard to resist now... why not shamans?

[Smallgreenguy]

I agree with the slow change. With spirit of fail being available to everyone, my shaman (who I've spent time gearing and AAing) is next to pointless when compared to a cleric. His spirit line is available to everyone, heals are subpar compared to cleric, and starting in icewell there is hardly a mob that isn't immune to slow. Really the only thing that is needed is to make boss mobs slowable, then shamans would have a purpose. This has always been the purpose of the shaman.

[Tyler]

I agree with the slow change. With spirit of fail being available to everyone, my shaman (who I've spent time gearing and AAing) is next to pointless when compared to a cleric. His spirit line is available to everyone, heals are subpar compared to cleric, and starting in icewell there is hardly a mob that isn't immune to slow. Really the only thing that is needed is to make boss mobs slowable, then shamans would have a purpose. This has always been the purpose of the shaman.

Seems you didn't care to look what the Spirit line actually does which is available on player gear. It's like half of that what a Shaman can do at Guk level and still only like 66% at ToV level.

Again, Shamans have the 3rd best heals in game, 2nd best hp buffs, Champions, Panther and the best slow in game. I really fail to see why they are pointless to play.

Also again, im not saying leave Shammies where they are now. But just because Panther now does 500 dps instead of 1k dps as a BUFF, it's far from being worthless.

[Smallgreenguy]

I didn't say shamans are worthless, just that when compared to a cleric, there doesnt seem to really be a reason to choose a shaman. What you're saying I said and what I did say are quite different. The point of a healer class is to heal, shamans lose a lot of this healing potential in exchange for utility, the defining spell of theirs being slow and panthers. The only problem is, anything worth killing is immune to slow. I wasn't saying that Spirit of fail is as good as panther, but it's half as good, and there goes more of the utility that takes away from the point of a shaman. 3rd best heals and 2nd best HP buff is right. In exchange for what? Utility that everyone already benefits from (decent spirit line buff), and a slow that isn't usable because anything worth killing isn't slowable. The other utility spell that you mentioned, Champion, is available in the form of a clicky Avatar off of Tolapumj.

I guess I just don't see the trade off of exchanging the best heals and best hp buff for a semi better version of two buffs that everyone already has, and a slow that isn't exactly usable. But maybe I'm missing something.

EDIT: If anything, shamans would be 100% fine if the leg procs and avatar mask-type procs were just removed.

[Citizen]

The mana regeneration aspect of the class could be further developed in order to make the class more desirable to play.

While clerics and druids have generally always had mana issues I have prided myself on the shaman ability to basically spam heal a fight (recasting he as soon the heal is offcooldown) for the entire fight without encountering too much of a mana problem.

This ability could be further augmented so that while druid have their skin line and clerics have their wide variety of heals, shaman could keep healing the longest.

This is already generally the case, I am suggesting increasing this ability further.

Also if we really intent to make a healing niche for shaman the cast time on orbs would need to be increased.

Making mana regen and mana management part of the strategy again would serve to increase the viability of not only the shaman class but of necros and bard as well.

Furgis / Burt