I really know nothing about shaman, or windfury, but i know that when sword spec goes off on my warrior with a brutality blade equipped, i kinda just wish i had my oeb on at that point cuz its slower. :-/

edit: that's me saying fang < 2h staff even though their listed dps is comparable.

No, but you don't have mages arguing that the Hexxer's cover should be their priority over warlocks.


Anyway, I understand your argument. I still don't agree though, but oh well.

It's not, though.

As I just described above, shaman enhancement talents do very little to enhance our melee DPS. What the tree does, is allow us to take advantage of itemization that actually has high DPS. To repeat, the only reason that most shamans have Enhancement talents is to use 2h maces and axes. This gives us the best talent in the entire tree, for free, essentially. If I were to spec to full rest/elem, I'd still melee just as much as I do now, and if I had one of those staves, I'd do about 90% of the melee damage I do now. The different would be a vast increase in my casting power, with minimal tradeoff.

There's no reason for a shaman to ever bother with caster stats on a 2h, in my opinion. When you're mostly casting/healing, use a shield. Any number of 1h/shield combos work wonders in that regard.

In any situation where I want to do melee DPS, I don't really care about losing some +healing or +spell damage (since if I'm meleeing my only spells are shocks, which get a minimal boost from +dam). The only values that concern me are the DPS of the weapon, factoring in +str/+AP, and +crit. Look at the staff itemization out there. Every staff is a caster staff, that sacrifices DPS to fit more stats on. I don't want that from a 2h weapon as a shaman. Druids and priests and mages and warlocks are welcome to all the caster staves in the game. What a shaman needs from the 2h slot is raw DPS (we'd all love Spinal Reapers and such, but of course, those are better used by warriors, which everyone understands).

To repeat, that staff represents the sole existing example of Blizzard giving a staff that's more than a level 58 blue the DPS of a same-level 2h mace or axe, with the stats to boot.

We only want it because it's a staff. If it were a mace instead, every shaman would happily pass to any druid who wanted it, I promise.

in a pvp sense you have to switch back and forth. If I am up against a caster that shield is worthless. In PvE you are right I am going to be using my malistar's and aurastone but in PvP it is all situational. How often were you planning on meleeing in BWL to take advantage of this.

Are you kidding?

First off, Fang vs. Terminator is 51 vs. 67 when you factor in the +str.

Second, until I got a TUF, I used a Dreadforge Retaliator to DPS rather than my Fang/shield combo. 2 DPS more and +1% crit made it worthwhile.

As a shaman, in PvE, I am meleeing in any situation where my healing isn't needed or when I'm regenning mana as part of a rotation. In those settings, I don't care about caster stats or armor. I want to do damage. I take off the shield and put on a 2h for more melee damage.

In PvP, against cloth casters, I don't need the armor of a shield, and I want more melee DPS with the potential for large windfury crits for burst damage. Again, all I care about here is DPS. Caster stats are irrelevant.

Some math:

20+ points into Enhancement with a 65 DPS 2h weapon:

Assume 15% melee crit (5% from talent), 400 AP.
107 base autoattack DPS. Windfury adds 40.5 DPS to that.
Net result: 147 autoattack DPS --> 153.6 with Flurry

20+ points into Enhancement with a 50 DPS 1h weapon:
90 base autoattack DPS. Windfury adds 37 DPS to that.
Net result: 127 autoattack DPS --> 132.7 with Flurry

0 points into Enhancement with a 65 DPS 2h weapon:
(Only 10% crit now, no flurry.)
103 base autoattack DPS. Windfury adds 39.6 DPS to that.
Net result: 142.6 autoattack DPS

0 points into Enhancement with a 55 DPS 2h weapon (shitty staff):
92 base autoattack DPS. Windfury adds 37.5 DPS to that.
Net result: 129.5 autoattack DPS

-----

So dropping the entirety of the Enhancement tree costs me ~25 melee DPS. If I get that staff, the loss is only ~11 DPS. How is that not a big deal?

Ok, I understand

I hope you can understand why it is frustrating though. Druids, in general are the bastard stepchildren of loot rights. Pretty much up until 1.8, we've had to deal with the "silly druid, you can't do dps, why are you rolling on that?" mentality. Actually it goes beyond feral gear in many cases, but this is the most common occurrence. Then 1.8 hits, and we rejoice, because FINALLY there is some justification for wanting the feral items we've lusted after. Z'G looked to be a bastion of awesome, where we could go to roll freely on sweet feral loot unhindered by the typical you-can't-have-that attitude. Then something like this drops which looks really awesome from a feral perspective, and we aren't allowed to roll. It just seemed like the same old "silly druid" attitude. We say "Oooh, that would be sweet", and The Man says "Nope, not druid priority"

But, I know this isn't totally the case. I have indeed gotten a bunch of sweet feral loot from ZG with no issues raised (Zulian Cloak, Jin set, Foror's) so we can't exactly claim discrimination.


Unfortunately, I don't think there is anyone in EJ who has played a shaman and a druid all the way to 60, so there is a lot of misunderstanding between the two classes.

No, I completely understand that aspect of it, and to tie it back into the point of this thread, I've had druids roll against rogues/hunters for stuff like the Jin set, Foror's, etc., and not just get them defaulted once all rogues had them. I really am all for druids getting real, high-quality gear to flesh out their DPS sets.

I just thought this particular item was special. 2-3 other shamans who weren't on that run were crying when they heard it dropped. It's probably, by a longshot, the item most desired by the MC/BWL-geared EJ shamans repeatedly running Z'G these days.

If there were no druid analogue, I'd say they should get a fair shot at it too, but a TUF is identical to a Terminator for a druid pretty much, not to mention the other items I named.

In a perfect world, Blizzard's itemization in all areas would be deep and robust so we wouldn't have to end up with situations where literally only one item in the entire game fits a certain profile (hey Blizzard, how about some 50+ DPS 1h weapons with actual caster stats on them? Fang was nice back in March, but come on now).

Yeah, thanks to ZG I'm actually reaching a weird point in my gearing up. There's just not a lot left that I could get aside from PvP rewards, which I just don't have the time for.

Obviously I want a Bestial Hammer, but beyond that, I don't know. My shoulders are pretty weak, and the Taut Dragonhides would be nice but I have a feeling it will be a long time before druids get those.The TD Belt is nice, but I think I'd prefer the 1% hit of the ZG belt over a little more AP and 1% dodge. I don't know, maybe I need to do like SC and take a few weeks off of raiding to get PVP faction.

It'll be sooner than you think, Chupid. They're a DPS side-grade from Nightslayer.

I'd like to note that healthy discussions and disagreements like this are one of the reasons why we remain relatively drama-free as a guild. Individual things may be frustrating to players, but once things have shaken out we end up better off because people have aired their positions and backed it up with evidence and reasoning. Knowing why someone is making a point, even if you don't agree with it yourself, helps a ton.

ok Gonktarg

Also, now you all see the real role of Druids in EJ: arguing with Shamans about weapons

Just think of how boring things would be without us!

My world for Feral shoulders that don't use the Flamescarred graphic!

heh. Same here.

I was one higher on mine than in the synced one.

This on an AoE friendly fight where I ended up asleep for a good 20 or 30 seconds total. Luckily, we had like 9 priests and 2 rogues so I went DPS as the better option than "even more redundant healing." This time at least, it was obviously worth it. (This is mine, I was #8 on synced :( )

Nerf druids! BLUE PLZ!

Did you have any aggro issues?

I killed one of the demented druids.

Elfan helped. :wub:

O.o I thought that would have been obvious.

Only aggro issue I had was on one of the trash clears. Other than that, I used Rip instead of FB and Omen of Clarity far and above made up for the energy cost of cowering every 10 seconds.

Please tell the paladins that seem to enjoy judging Light/Wisdom on the bosses that we really do appreciate it quite a bit, even if we're a bit confused why they're doing it. :)

The Hunters get a huge boner when you do it.

I think hunters are the class that has the biggest play style change depending on faction. Being mana bound would feel so different.


Our of curiosity, does damage meters pick up cross faction stuff?

And I'll be sure to pass the JoW comments along.