This is not a shaman spec thread, this is a thread discussing hybrid roles with theorycraft to back it up. I only know about shamans as that's all I've played, so naturally all my examples are from that class.

Perhaps a raid could benefit from an "off spec", and different play styles can become more common, without damaging a raid. Convincing raid leaders and other non-hybrids that there is a viable raid spec and playstyle beyond the expected can be a difficult task, and experience may prove this whole argument to be moot. We'll just have to wait and see, but speculations like these early on may provoke food for thought when the expansion comes along.

Thus far shamans, paladins, and druids have been more or less pigeonholed into a healing role in end-game encounters. As a shaman who has been raiding endgame for some time now, I have explored the different available talents and gear for shaman, and I can say from experience that maximizing the ability to heal is the best way to support the raid as a shaman.

Right now, the added support of totems is just as available to a resto shaman as any other spec, with the exception of mana tide, which of course requires 31 in resto. A shaman hurling bolts constantly or swinging a WF bat is just wasting a raid slot, because our current ability to heal effectively far outweighs to DPS. Sure, you can toss in some damage occasionally, but you can't be dedicated to DPS.

Summary for the TLDRs: A BC Enhancement shaman adds 326AP to 1000AP unbuffed rogues. Net mana use is a theorycrafted 0-1200 mana deficit every 2 minutes. Hypothesis: an ehancement shaman focused this way heals no one, but maintains a "raid DPS" equivalent to a rogue

To start, I wanted to explore the Enhancement tree. Enhancement to date is so incredibly bad outside of a battleground (it's not that great there, either), that mentioning "endgame" in the same sentence is the setup to a joke. With the new talents, I think we can try something new.

0/47/14 Enhancement
With endgame melee DPS gear available right now, the talents I linked, the Strength enchantments listed in this thread, and a Deathbringer or Misplaced Servo Arm in the offhand (chosen simply because they are unlikely to be highly desired by other classes), a shaman would have:

289 Strength
18% chance to hit
25% chance to crit
around 1000 AP unbuffed
3800ish Mana
4100ish HP

Now, I am not gonna theorycraft out the DPS of the shaman, because the math of including Windfury, dual wield miss rate, Flurry, etc, is a giant headache. I would concede that even considering all those things, the shaman fleshed out this way doing nothing but melee and using stormstrike every time it's up would only produce something like 60-70% or less of a rogue's DPS.

So who cares? Well, based on SoE totem rank 6 curse-gaming data mining, and extrapolating that a new rank of GoA totem has the same value, each of these totem would yield 99 to their respective stats with talents. Of course, that's only 12 points into Enhancement. But then there's the gem of the tree:

Unleashed Rage
Tier 6
5/5 points: Causes critical hits with your melee attacks to increase the attack power of all group members by 10%.

Let the theorycraft begin! Lets see how much we can improve a rogue's AP

Unbuffed AP: 1000
AP from SoE: 99
AP from GoA: 99
AP from improved Mark of the wild: 81 (27str, 27agi)

Add it all together, and you have 1277AP. 10% increase from Unleashed rage: 128AP.

The grand total from an enhancement shaman: 326AP for every 1000base AP rogue in the group. A warrior gets a little less AP, but more crit from AGI, and of course Imp Battle Shout isn't included in the calculations. Hunters get less bonus AP because STR doesn't help, but again, trueshot aura isn't included. Suffice to say, a group could be stacked with melee and the enhancement shaman would boost the DPS significantly.

Well, that extra 10% requires a crit at least once every 10 seconds. Dual wielding 2 Misplaced Servo Arms at 2.8 speed, 18% to hit and 30% crit (don't forget GoA totem), you can pretty much guarantee that crit once every 10 sec.

What about mana? 3800 is next to nothing!! Well, GoA, SoE(225 mana each with talents), Stormstrike every time it's up(200 mana at level 60), over 2 minutes is 1650 mana. The new rank of Windfury weapon is 200 mana every 5 min, so over 2 minutes it's 80 mana. So total mana usage is 1730 mana every 2 minutes. This brings up the new 41 point talent:

Shamanistic Rage
174 mana, 30 sec duration, 2 min cooldown
Gives your melee attacks a chance to restore mana equal to 20% of your strength.

2 weapons, 2.8 speed, stormstrike with 2 weapons twice = 24 swings. With 18% to hit, It's not unreasonable to assume 22 of those swings land on average. With SoE totem and MotW, Strength is at 415. 20% of that is 83. If 100% of those swings proc the talent, thats 1826 mana. For the sake of argument, lets assume you manage to get ahold of a Pugio and Harbinger of Doom (we know rogues won't let those go, but this is Theorycraft!), that's about 35 successful hits. 35*83 mana =2905 mana.

You can deduce the mana recovered from the proc rate from that. We know Blizzard is a big fan of overcompensating for balance, so let's say the proc rate is 30%. 30% of the dual servo arms mana recovery is 600 mana, and 871 for the daggers. Even at something that low, 600 mana is an enormous amount.

The down side: Technically, the only added AP past 12 points in Enhancement is the 10% from unleashed rage. One could easily spec 0/12/49 and be a spectacular raid healer and include the basic totems.

Now, of course, none of this hypothesis takes into account gear down the road. Who knows? Maybe it will turn out that being a healer is the best way to go.

Edit: fixed rogue AP math

If we take the Enhancement setup from the first post, and include an elemental shaman in the raid to take advantage of Stormstrike, then the DPS provided by the 2 shamans is greater than their individual contributions. If Stormstrike is used every time it's up, then the next 2 lightning bolts from the elemental will do 20% more damage. Since an elemental shaman is unlikely to cast any OTHER damage spell ever, and we use 12 casts every 20 seconds (2 sec cast time +Lightning Overload+4 sec of extra interval), then you could say it's a 3% increase in damage.

10 casts at 100%, 2 at 120% = 12.4/12 = 104%

Throw in the mana recovery of a Resto shaman with mana tide and Blessing/Judgement of Wisdom, and you have an extremely effective team of DPS and healing. Perhaps one of each spec is the way to go!


As an addendum, there are a wide variety of ways to play a raid shaman in the upcoming expansion based on the new talents and spells. There might be a way to do a half spell DPS, half healing role. Or maybe spec for smaller group activity, focusing on damage and healing as necessary (I know I do this in Strat/scholo for example).

I'd like to see the possibility of entertaining different roles for the hybrids, even if it means switching roles several times during an instance. I wanted to explore just how to do that with talents.

Edit: added Elemental shaman stuff

The thread you mention was before the talents were revealed. This thread deals with the actual talents Blizzard has proposed, and uses facts and theory to back up statements. That other thread is merely a digression on numbers of each class and "play what feels good".

Unfortunately we dont know the specifics of druids yet ,so it a little too soon and their are other threads where this discussion probably belongs, so I wont go into too much detail.

But its looks like with improved sanctity aura and the ability for Shaman to dual wield naxx level healing weapons,as well as the existing talents like increased int for Feral druids that blizzard is offering a trade off. Go a little further down the dps tree and you also get some increased healing ability.

For Shamanist Rage the proc rate is unknown but in a raiding enviroment with both Judgement and Blessing of Wisdom available it may be less attractive then going 21 into restoration.

I do not want to digress this thread with which gear is better for what spec, or how to maximize healing. I was looking for justification for "off spec" raiding in the expansion, and I hope I have provided at least one example.

I doubt even with that setup that your DPS would equal the gain that the 4 rogues would get combined.

Personally I'm interested to see what the projected math for a 41 elemental is with a group of mages or locks.

Your first problem with all that math is you are giving rogues 2ap per agi, which they don't get. As a fury warrior with a rogue as my old main, that 10% AP proc from enh shamans sounds hot. If it's worth it or not yet who knows, but it looks interesting.

Your comparison should cancel common factors. A more accurate comparison would involve this;

* +10% ap to party
* Your dps
* Your utility

against

* The dps / utility of the best dps class (rogue)



I highly suspect that it would come out at least even, 10% ap is quite significant.

I think some adjustments in initial math would be in place.

1) Slow weapons (2.8) are not optimal for DW shaman in raid enviroment. Keeping buff up requires critting often, maximizing JoW proc requires hitting mob fast. Daggers, fast axes (orc racial) are all good options, 2.8 weapons are not.

2) Mana regeneration doesn't rely on Shamanistic Rage only. With BoW (39.6 mp5) and JoW (50% on hit to return 59 mana) and quite often out of 5 sec. rule (20 sec. cooldown on Stormstrike), shaman mana regeneration if not shocking will be almost all the time 100%. BoW/JoW alone (assuming 2.0 weapons) will provide shaman with way over 100 mp5 (probably even 150+ mp5) and that's without taking flurry proc into account.

Shamanistic Rage is more like Evocation tool, used after burst DPS (shocks) or healing, not something that is expected to keep shaman able to cast Stormstrike.

Rogues get 1 attack power for each point of agi. So you'd most likely be better off with windfury because of the scaling of an extra swing.

Means warrior and rogues get the same ap, and if you choose to use SoE + WF then warriors get twice as much AP as the rogues. ofc if you use SoE + GoA you have the option of using flametongue totem for some extra dps.

Something that was overshot as far as I saw was that you, OP, sort of blew past one fundamental assumption (as did a few other posters) that is valid in the current raid game (stacking a 4X DPS group) that it's fair to say, won't be in the expansion (25 cut 9 ways doesn't have a 4 anywhere).

Yes, we'd all be terribly amazing if we go Superman spec, and completely ignore the logistical toll this required in our current raids but was acceptable since we could just stack within the margin of error 40 people allows. Except we're no longer getting 39 support players to hide our mistakes in. Either you're a team player 25 ways, or you're a liability.

Check out what they're doing with classes and spells - everyone is integrating everything much better. I mean, look at mages and rogues for pete's sakes. Rogues setting up mage synergy (dazed effect, to spell it out)? What's next? Rogues with a "Sorcerous Flaying" finisher?

Don't underestimate how serious they are about hybridization and anti-raid stacking when you're theorycrafting. I suspect the limited group templates of today will die a vigorous death.

Edit: In short, if you're going to play the theorycraft party game, I highly recommend composing a class randomly composed of one - max - a class.

Indeed. If they've done their job properly then the most effective raid would be the one with people specced down to the bottom of 25 different talent trees imo.

Well a 3 Rogue 1 Warrior group will still work with 25 people in the raid group, as far as I can guess. If I was rolling a Shaman, I'd consider speccing 40/21 Orc, with 3/3 mental quickness and as much dual wield spec as I can squeeze. Weapons would ideally be a slow 1h axe like Hatchet of Sundered Bone, and offhand would be some sort of caster weapon, such as End of Dreams. Mainhand axe for the weaponskill bonus, which depending on itemization could eat individual shaman DPS alive. Also, slow weapon in the mainhand will get more from stormstrike, and I'm also making the assumption that offhand windfure will proc mainhand hits. Healing weapon in the offhand because they're usually faster, and Shaman dual-wield spec doesn't negate the offhand damage penalty in any way, so I think you'd really only lose 15-20 DPS, and gain significant healing stats. Rest of the gear would be a mix of DPS mail and shaman healing gear.

Fixed.

Really the speed of the weapons doesn't matter too much, but to be optimal, you would have Slow Main hand (for Windfury) and a Fast off-hand for JoW/Flurry.

Stormstrike gives an extra hit with both weapons every 20 seconds (if you can sustain the mana), so there slow weapons really shine.


With all the buffs to the ENH tree, I wonder about Shaman aggro, especially with Earthshock and Rockbiter being optimal spells to use for dps. There is no -threat besides BoS.

I don't think you can include "*Your utility" there because you've got it regardless of spec. So it's really...

*+10% ap to party
*Your DPS
*no heals

vs

*Mana Tide
*Earthen Shield
*greatly Improved heals

vs

*10% to party spell crit every 2 min
*Heals
*moderate spell DPS


If you were a raid leader, which would you pick and why? It may not necessarily be about "would you take my off spec instead of another class", but rather "would you build a raid around hybrid classes".

If I had only the 3 comparisons I listed above, as a raid leader, I would probably opt for the resto shaman in almost any scenario. If the raid is lacking a DPS class, I can't go respec to Enhancement on a whim. I have to pick a spec that I am comfortable raiding with and that will get me invites for a long time. If I am going to reliably add that 10% AP, I need dual wield and massive amounts of crit and hit, and basically never stop swinging to cast spells.

Clearcasting and Lightning Overload provide a pure spellcasting DPS shaman with 15% more mana free lightning spells, include EM and you have at least 1 more every three minutes. Even if we could compete with a Frostbolt mage in damage (there's no way we come close to catching a fire spec), we can't compete with the mana management, and the added benefit of that spec to the party appears really mediocre. However, one could easily spec deep enough in that tree to have non-trivial raid damage and still be a healer.

Which one does a raid leader want?

Hybrids? I think the change affects every class. It's just that almost every talent tree from every class (druid, shaman and warrio to some extent) has a buff that buffs the whole raid that you can't probably affort to miss.

You just have to have 41p Feral druid to receive the imba buff and you really don't want to miss the 41p Arms talent, nor the 41p Elemental Shaman talent either.

My guess is, that blizzard intends the raidgroup to be very diverse. Ie. 1x Feral druid, 1x resto, 1x Balance, 1x Prot pala, 1x Holy pala, 1x Elemental Shaman, 1x Resto Shaman etc... Not like now, with 5x resto druid + 5x frostmage + 5x holypriest + 5x holy priest

In the setup I listed above, you don't use any damage spells. The gear you have on is so pitiful for spellcasting that you have to stick with the basics: totems, WF weapon, SS. You are going to want to use WF for the added hits/crits that proc your talents, and the lack of extra threat. Tranquil Air totem reduces threat as well, but it will be multiplicative with BoS, not additive, and in this build you want to drop WF or GoA totem 90% of the time.

frmorrison brings up a good point I totally left out about mana regen: Judgement of Wisdom. It's every hit returns 59 mana, right? Perhaps JoW would be able to restore enough mana to allow for shocks while meleeing. This would significantly improve our DPS capability as Enhancment.

Given this, not only would an off spec shaman be viable, but it wouldn't unjustified to include it as a DPS class.

As a Shaman dsper, you can always stop autoattacking and throw some heals if needed. Especially with the new Chain Heal, it makes it easier to heal the people that need it.

Also you forgot NS in your Resto comparison, which a Melee dps Shaman may not have.



JoW gives 59 mana back with around a 50% chance of getting it.

Unfortunately, I think the arguement when it comes to hybrid classes will, for most raid leaders, be far simpler than any of that. The simple arguement when it comes to hybrids and off-spec is and probably will be for the future:

You (can heal)

vs.

All pure dps classes (cannot heal)

As long as you can prove you can plug a hole that a rogue or offtank warrior would normally fill, I see no reason why offspec wouldn't be good for raiding. Meaning there would be one less of that class and one extra shadow priest/offspec druid/offspec shaman. Because if you are not healing, someone else will need to.

I'm not trying to argue against offspec here. I wish BC would include fights that give offspecs a good role. I'm guessing shadow priests enjoyed Razorgore in the early days of BWL due to their reduced fade and Psychic Scream cooldowns. I've seen Feral Druids save potential wipes in MC. I just don't see why someone would recruit or encourage offspecs for raiding now or ever with the way classes are setup in WoW.