Aside from Hunters, there is no other class that gains a good deal of benefit from four blessings vs. three.

The 'problem' with Shaman stacking is kind of a two parter, part one being any group without totems will be weaker than a group with totems, to the extent in many cases that it's more beneficial to bring a Shaman than a pure DPS class. This can be remedied by removing the group restriction of totems, but at the same time, you would only ever really need 2 Shaman for maximum benefit if this were the case. Part two is even with the addition of raid wide benefit, you'll run into fights like M'uru where people may be a good distance away and nullify the benefit of raid wide totems where you would either have to stack Shaman for their buffs or suck up not having buffs.

Shaman simply bring too much raid utility to the table in comparison to Paladin currently. Even if Shaman raid utility were consolidated as to only need 2 Shaman in a raid environment, they would still be more useful than Paladin on an individual basis because all of their raiding specs are viable where as Protection Paladin, for example, are more situational. With the requirement of their presence for some of the strongest buffs in the game, Bloodlust/Heroism, less situational raiding specs, and the fact that Paladins can buff and log... Paladin really fell off the truck in BC and will continue to do so unless Judgement and, Auras are vastly improved, or some new mechanic is added to Paladin to make them more desirable.

You missed the point I was trying to make I think.

You're fighting felmyst, you have raid wide totems and 3 shaman, dropping totems in different groups of people. Because of the fight, half the people aren't getting totems, period. You're melee are getting Windfury and Strength of earth definatly, your tank Might be getting Grace of Air and Windfury, but probably isn't getting Healing stream or stone skin. Half of your healers aren't getting wrath of air or mana spring, half of your casters aren't getting totem of wrath.

The point I'm making is that because of the 30 yard range and the necessary mobility and sprawl(spread outness) of fights, totems aren't as powerful because some people aren't getting them, period. Meaning, if totems go raid wide, they also need to go to 40yd range minimum, probably up to 60yd range. Then, yes they are just plain better then blessings because of their versatility.

It's not a paladin vs shaman arguement, it's a stacking arguement. You'll still want to stack shaman with raid wide totems if the totems are at 30yd range because of the range issue and mechanics of fights.

Aren't the "buff" totems 20yd range baseline, not 30? Even if most resto & elemental shaman take it, enhance may not.

Which would affect probably hunters the most, since they'd be the most likely to be out of range of a beneficial totem (GoA).

The most common melee+3 ranged camp approach to Felmyst could be modified for 1 melee shaman and 2 ranged who drop totems in between the 3 camps covering 1.5 each. They get single dispels on the gas nova and you even have more easymode encapsulates. Problem solved, whole raid at least gets 1 totem each with 2 less shamans.

Range issues and mechanics of fights will just get approached differently and with less thinking about party positioning of 5 people but more in areas around group buffers. The changes to mass heals follow the same approach and im still thinking is a change for the better to the current situation.

Thinking that you could get rid of all static min maxing to the benefit of dynamic "the better you adjust to it, the more you benefit" is naive i think. Stacking will always give you an edge the same way world buffs gave you an edge, it gets removed from the top of most unreasonable/easiest to implement it seems. It just should be easier to make up for it if you lack something, which is the area the changes seem to aim at.

Ret paladins can definitely benefit from Kings, Might, Wisdom, Salvation. Enhancement Shamans too, but to a lesser extent because Shamanistic Rage usually gets it done. It's the intersection of "mana using" and "physical DPS" that makes this so. If Rogues or Warriors got energy/rage from Wisdom, you'd better believe they'd want 4 blessings too.

Also, a Paladin tank could theoretically benefit from Sanctuary, Kings, Wisdom, and Might, but the latter two are much less important.

"Also, a Paladin tank could theoretically benefit from Sanctuary, Kings, Wisdom, and Might, but the latter two are much less important."

BoL too.

Hm... I'm imagining a world in which "Blessing of Light" is cast on the Healadin, not the heal targt...

...now I'm imagining a world in which it's cast on any healer, whether the healing comes from a Holy spell or a Nature spell...

...and now I'm imagining it as a generic buff to any Holy or Nature spell, to cover the gaps left by the new version of "Curse of Elements" while also still including a buff to healing.

Might that work? Would it be overpowered?

Please, *please* stop saying this. There is no "gap" for those spells. They are balanced without the 10% damage curse, unlike fire / frost / shadow / arcane damage. If a buff existed that did boost them by 10%, they would all be nerfed to bring them down to the current level. There is no gap. Trust me, you do *not* want a debuff that increases nature or holy damage like Curse of elements does.

With even only one holadin BoL > 10* BoM for protadin.

Do you have anything to back up this claim? That's quite a bold statement.

Do you really think that if you are dealing 2000 dps right now, Blizzard is just going to give you a curse which increases your damage to 2200 dps? They are going to nerf your base DPS down to 1818 and the curse increases it to 2000. Abilities are balanced around the assumption that raids will be min/maxed; think back to the pre-2.1 consumable usage. You could not kill Gruul/A'lar/etc without every single elixir in the game, because if you could, the encounter would be trivialized when you did use such consumables.

There is an unfair disparity between DPS classes as a result of this though.

Holy damage dealers are stuck with a static non-scaling additional amount that isn't affected by any percentage modifiers (yes, Judgement of the Crusader is really that messed up). Nature damage dealers are stuck competing for 3 charges that are only refreshed every 10 seconds (that is even eaten by Rogues if they're not in the Windfury group).

The classes are most likely already balanced around these two debuffs, why would changing this hurt anything? I really don't think the devs are worried about Elemental Shaman, Moonkin Druid and Ret Paladin (or even smite priests... lol) DPS if these debuffs have been in for this long.

After playing a restoration shaman for far too long, i cant agree more. I always thought a great change to Chain Heal (and other group heals possibly) would be to give it like a x second cast on your current target, and in that second you target two other players for the next two bounces, or perhaps 1.5/2second cast whatever/change the healing amount to balance. Point is it would be a lot more fun and challenging to heal as a shaman if this were the case, allowing the target selection manually may also make its bounce range alot more flexible, it may even be useful in pvp with an increased range and different hps values.

The CoH change is clearly silly if it were to come into play, as others have said it would just be worse then the current twins mentality of 'lolbringshamans'. It would need values adjusted of course, but yeah to echo what others have said it really isn't a good avenue for the game to go down.

I very much feel after over a year of pressing chain heal that the game needs to play itself a lot less then it does in PvE(appropriate for many classes, particularly dps ones with 1-2 buttons in their damage rotation), but then again i suppose its half the reason the game is so popular.

Is this confirmed? I saw the new cooldown to Circle of Healing, but I didn't know of any new cooldown to Chain Heal. Wotlkwiki doesn't show any cooldown to Chain Heal either.

Shadow Priests is a special case and probably shouldn't be used as a comparator for damage scaling. We must not scale or our support by the increased mana and life-return would go from where it is now to gigantic overpowered. Well ok not quite that much. The very strong return in support from our damage limits us, that's probably why Vampiric Touch returns less percentage of mana in the current WotlK Alpha from the leaks.

Wrath for Moonkins is not viable mainly because there is no curse. Insect Swarm would be viable longer if there was a curse for nature.

There IS a gap for at least some of "those spells".

I think Blizzard should be more careful with mana regeneration synergy. Take mages: add vampiric touch and blessing/judgement of wisdom (and mana potions) and they can focus purely on damage stats and take such mana intensive talents as icy veins while lacking the need to make trade-offs, but if for some reason you're missing a few of those buffs you'll find your gear/spec inadequate. I think it's more sensible if mana-management is tied to the character's gearchoices/spec and not to external factors like the raid set-up.

Edit: Meaning, I'd really rather have classes balanced around zero buffs for 10-man and something like BoW for 25-man raids. Shadowpriests are a failed experiment in my opinion and they'll stay disruptive even with their manaregeneration cut in half.

The poster i referred to said they scale just aswell which they don't for moonkins. If its intended, alright, but it's not making them plain better if they gain 10% damage.
Giving a tool spell like IS to a caster class that has 4 ranged spells total is a bit of a joke. In SWP the IS is good on exactly 1 fight, its decent on 2 more and the rest it just doesn't matter at all or is not usable. I would argue that hunters working in Scorpid Sting would essentially provide more utility with less dps cost and i would trade the damage part of IS for 3% more avoidance in a heartbeat and vice versa.

Use both allways if you get those. I would say 4/6 in swp when you'r tank don't outgear the content. And even at muru you definetly can use IS for extra avoidance.

Perhaps Wrath is not a raid spell because there is no damage curse for nature? I know it has worse mana efficiency, but so does Arcane Blast spam, and that has its use as a high-damage mana dump. It's argueable that Wrath is supposed to be a high-damage mana dump but is prevented solely by the lack of nature damage curse.

Confirmed raid totems and merging of totems \o/.

Example given was strength + agility totem in one.

I thought there was a slight implication that bloodlust would also be raid wide. It, bloodlust, was only mentioned one time in the remark about alleviating the current shaman/group problem.