Hey all!

I've been looking at the talents for shamans/paladins and the plate and mail gear for lvls 60-70. Discounting the obvious warrior/hunter items in the itemlist, I've come to the following conclusion:

* Paladins are being typecast more into the off-tank position with slightly less focus on the healing/buffing.
* Shamans are being typecast more into the DPS position with slightly less focus on the healing/buffing.

This, in and of itself, is not a bad thing; the classes were never meant to be the same and should be considered to be two completely different classes now that Blizz doesn't have to design encounters where you have either paladins or shamans.

The problem, however is the following:

In the first couple of months (weeks?) of the Burning Crusade, we will have alliance guilds entering the BC-instances without shamans and horde guilds entering the BC-instances without paladins. Won't it be easier for the alliance to bring extra DPS in the form of mages/warlocks/hunters/rogues than for the horde to bring extra off-tanks in the form of warriors/bears?

The way I see it, tanking is a relatively rare class function which we'll now be seeing in three classes (warriors, bear-druids, paladins), while DPS is a rather generic and interchangable class function.

Weeks? My group will be lucky if it takes the guy who's going to powerlevel a shaman to 60+ a week. The guy is damned fast.

will be interesting to see how this works out horde not having pallys for a bit will hurt them alot kings/salv are extremely helpfull

Its not a relevant imbalance considering for blizzard to do anything about.

It's a short term thing that will have more impact on the forums than it does in game. Sure, as they balance BC with the idea that Paladins and Shamans will be in every raid group in an instance the first few weeks will leave most teams weaker than intended. But to worry if Horde or Alliance are relatively weaker than their counterpart is a poor use of time. The differences will be gone before you know it.

i dont see a problem there, we have been through any instance, including karazan up to the prince without a problem and without ptoblems.

This is a non-issue and there really isn't much else to say.