I have recently rerolled a shaman and have been reading the shaman class forums on the wow website, and was wondering if all that doomsaying can be confirmed over here. Are shamans currently nerfed harder than any class? Are they a waste of a raid spot? do they not bring enough to the table to make up for their shortcomings in dps/heals?


Any and all input is appreciated. thanks.

Your questions are a bit broad, you may want to expand to avoid some harsh replies on this post. You might want to consider posing a goal for yourself along with your questions, otherwise you'll likely not get what you're looking for as far as answers are concerned.

Are you talking about Restoration, Elemental, or Enhancement?

Are you talking about 5mans, Heroics, 10man or 25man content?

I think it's generally agreed upon that Enchancement Shaman can put on some very high dps right now. Restoration Shaman also bring a lot to the table besides their heals. Bloodlust, Totems, and Reincarnation to name a few.

I also think that as a general rule of thumb, people bring every class to most encounters if for no other reason than to avoid sharding class loot. This certainly does not always apply to first time kills or kills that require min/maxing but it applies as a general rule.

If you are alliance, you know how they viewed Paladins for nothing else but healers because they were and are very good healers...

Same applies to shaman, the same stigma.. The resto spec is very strong and with Healign way + Healing wave, and 3 TS + imp CH and chain heal abuse, add in Trinketed HEaling spring totem and Earthshield... a Shaman is a *very* strong healing class..

It's not the only thing they can do. But its by far the thing they are the most famous for.

I've attended my first Karazhan raids with my enhancement shaman this week. Newly 70, brand new to raids, 2.5 years in the game. I previously had a 60 warrior, 60 rogue, 70 mage. I've cleared MC, BWL, AQ20, ZG.

I have never in my WoW playing career felt as useful as I have as my enhancement shaman. Never.

1) Prior to my arrival we'd have our top rogues and top mages running roughly neck an neck on the damage meters. Toss me in and there's no contest. Even with my shitty gear I can hang in at spot four in KZ (three until I toss out heals) and holy cow, the stuff I add to the melee group.

2) Moroes is, for whatever reason, the toughest boss for us. I can't explain it but he is. So last night the heals aren't quite where we want them. I pull out my healing set, slap on some heals while keeping the totems up, win after five wipes.

3) I'm so essential on the Curator I can't even put it into words. Following Gurgthock's suggestion of Frost Shock/Stormstrike I was sucking them up like a vaccuum cleaner. We're still sort of learning him so we had some wipes but the last attempt I died, hear "Troxartus down" in a dismayed voice over vent, Reincarnate, pop Heroism and get back to work. We down him first attempt on our second KZ night and my guildmates were emoting cheers at me.

Was I more useful from a strict numbers standpoint as a mage? Quite possibly. But I have a pretty good feel for this game and I can just tell the whole ten man raid does better with me there. That's a pretty neat feeling to have and one I can't say I've had prior.

Ok. My target is high dps output in raid enviornment. However i have a large intrest in pvp and healing as well, its a bit broad because, honestly, i just want to play a multi function class. If there was a viable way to spec hybrid i would but thats not really an option right now.

My focus however is definitely raiding as enhancement. thats what i want to do and sub healing. probably 41/20 enhance resto i think.

Is that a bit more clear? My goal as a shaman is just to do what im designed to do: Play a support class. Whats the best way to do that in an enhancement build?

*Edit*

Alright, thanks guys, totally encouraging. Regardless of me being fairly short with my words you guys nailed what i was looking for and i feel MUCH better about my choice as a shaman. Viator, especially your little "story" for lack of a better word. Thats the type of shaman i was anticipating when i rerolled. thanks again.

This was your first mistake. Reading WoW forums make you stupider than you were before. The Signal to Noise ratio is awful. Shamans are fine, just like every other class. If you like the DPS/Healing playstyle, you will like the class.

Don't let other emo children of the wow forums tell you how feel about a class.

An elemental build is going to be a lot my "hybrid" than an enhancement build will be. You can still do a decent amount of healing in your dps rig as an elemental, but for enhancement if you don't start the fight in your healing set you just aren't going to be very efficient.

The problems with Shamans are almost entirely limited to PvP. If geared and specced properly, Shamans are quite a powerful class in PvE. 4 good specs (Deep in any of the three trees + Ele/Resto hybrid) and the ability to change roles simply by changing gear (as opposed to Druids, who cannot nuke or heal in Bear/Cat forms and cannot melee in caster/moonkin forms) make it a fun class and much desired in groups.

The only real problem Shamans have is terrible PvP survivability unless they're full Resto specced...and even then it's pretty bad.

Regarding gear choices, itemization for Enhancement and Elemental is pretty poor at the high end, barring the occasional novelty drop. T4 and T5 aren't great as a whole, so I'd recommend researching ahead of time to figure out which pieces of which sets you want. There's 3 sets (one for each role) and certain pieces of these sets really stand out. For example, for T4 I'm getting the gloves/shoulders of the Elemental set and the helm/legs of the Resto set.

Oh, man pvp. I had my first arena night with my shaman this past Monday and it was painful. Did six matches or so as Enhancement and there was literally nothing I could do. I tried everything I could but I was completely helpless as soon as they saw me. And they always saw me and targetted me first.

So I specced elemental for a few matches. It was slightly better but, again, once the snares and stuns came nothing I could do. This coming Monday I'm thinking I'll try Resto just so I can at least maybe live through a Heroism.

I don't feel quite as bad in a battleground or world pvp (though still not great). It's the damned arenas.

I gets even worse if you are doing 2v2 with a mage for a partner. Anytime we didn't kill one of the opposition with our alpha-strike I would spend the rest of match cc'd till he was dead then get rolled myself

Is it any better with a priest there to help ease the CC on you?

My friends and I were going to do a 3v3 with hunter sham priest combo. we thought that might do fairly well, what problems would arise for a shaman there even with a priest dispelling and healing when needed?