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.

I wouldn't say shaman are a waste of a spot in raids at the moment, but I may be a bit biased considering I have an elemental and an enhancement shaman currently. For me and my group it's all a matter of what you bring to the table, so it's going to depend on how well you know and play your class.

We had a bad start to our first khara run last week and the only thing that saved us form another wipe on Attumen (sad I know, but we have people who have never raided before) was as soon as our two priests went down I was able to switch to my healing mace/shield and help our druid keep things going. We did all of phase 3 with just five people up. I'd consider that value added to any raid.

I haven't been in on any of the 25 man content yet, so I can't comment on that though. However, in the worst you could always spec resto as it would seem there is always demand for healers.

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.

No, no, and no. Do yourself a favor; don't ever read the offical wow forums unless you want to feel emo. Play the class, get a feel for its strengths and weaknesses, and make your own judgements about whether you want to play it.

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.

Oh, i realize that with elemental im going to be a bit more flexible, as far as healing in a pinch, but im not going to lie, i love hitting things with my hammers/axes. So i think just carrying a spare set of healing gear will be what i end up doing.


Also: How is tier 5 stat wise vs heroic blues/epics? does it measure up? i know that t4 was considered mediocre by a lot of classes, was wondering if the same holds up for shaman t5

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'm just glad that we're very concious of how bad we are. The arenas are fun in short bursts, we do 10-15 games a week and if we lose our way to our stuff we had a good time doing so. If I were more competitive I'd kick myself out.

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?

Mmm... with a good priest, maybe. The thing is that I die quick because I simply have no way to get away. God help me if I get a rogue/druid or two rogue combo on me. This is all with the caveat that I didn't pvp until 68 or so and am still getting a feel for shaman pvp. Once those stuns/charges/frost novas/fears come in I'm usually dead quicker than anyone can save me.

Most of us ignore that forum. Any shaman discussions I participate in are either here, or on a Google Group that was started a while ago.
Trinketing healing stream only works while the trinket bonus is up. Once it expires, HS loses the bonus.
2) Moroes is actually fairly easy from a shaman healing point of view. Slap down HS, get all the garotte debuff'd people to stand together, chain heal.

3) Hehehe. Had a similar case first week in with my new guild. Had a pally/priest and me healing on Big Bad Wolf. Both the pally and priest got killed as little red (damn LoS issues >.<) and then I got smashed about 5% out. Anhk, pot, heal like crazy, and get the debuff again at 1% and die again! Fortunately there was enough dps up to finish him off.

I'm kinda tempted to work Imp Ankh into my build somehow...

Shamans of all flavors are alive and doing quite well in our raids. As was noted, the problems with shamans are largely restricted to PvP -- where yeah, you can demolish that gnome mage 1v1 but in the Arena you're pretty much a sitting duck.

Our shaman friend got added to our 3v3 team of priest/mage/rogue, and it's pretty rough on him no matter what happens. He's usually keyed on first, and stunned into oblivion, to the point where we're quite happy if he can just get bloodlust off. Conversely we find it easy to kill shamans no matter what our team is, they just have no reliable way to get away, and no way to CC you. Maybe it's slightly different in 5v5 where you have 2 more people.

That's not a bad idea on the Moroes healing except that I'm Enhancement. If we could just find a resto shaman...

I'm a big proponent of Improved Reincarnation. I didn't think I would be, and it's expensive, but it's just so useful when things are on a razor's edge during a fight.

I've not found PvP to be such a massive problem to survive, granted, I have been playing it almost exclusively as 0/5/56, and more often than not I play with a paladin friend for improved concentration goodness to go with talisman of the breaker and innate 15% interupt resist. Without at least the innate talent, yea, getting your spells locked spells a very fast death, but paladins face the same problem.

This should come as pretty common sense, but the key is just using the right set of gear. Many, many of the quest rewards and blue heroic drops are all +heal/mp5 with zero stats, and you will certainly be demolished using them in pvp. Go in with 8500 unbuffed hp or higher, and you have a much larger comfort zone.

In the larger sense of the question, I can only echo the replies that everyone else has already mentioned. I rerolled from a hunter, and the feeling of being truly useful/valuable is a welcome change. And, having 4 totally viable end game specs helps quite a bit, as well, in case you do get bored. Just make sure you invest in lots and lots of bag space for the 4-5 something sets of gear you are likely to pile up.

Its not hp that was the problem. I was running at over 11k buffed hp before I went to the heavier stamina set. HP doesn't really help when you have 4-5 people piling on you. The paladin gives you BoP and that stops the melee for just a couple seconds but the casters are still beating the crap out of you and when the BoP goes... see ya.

Thats not a problem. i was a warrior before, having multiple sets in my bags will be nothing new.

Other than the idiocy with the Windfury timer, Shamans are in very good shape right now. Itemization is better than it has been in a while and the talents and abilities are all solid. All three roles that a Shaman gets via talents are viable and effective.

Oh for the love of... come on now, are you seriously advocating that a resto shaman wear 3 pieces of Ten Storms at lvl 70?