It seems like the Shaman class is in for a little review (see this thread):
Since we suspect that this forum is read by devs every now and again, maybe we could get some good ideas going for them in one place?

My top changes would be: (coming from my enhancement/resto perspective)

1. Give us 29% melee threat reduction like cat druids and fury warriors.

2. Make it so that offhand WF procs make the MH proc. I don't have a problem really with the (linked) 3 sec cooldowns per se; but this suggested change would buff our DPS only slightly and make it so that we could go after slow MH/fast OH like everyone else, instead of the current awkward itemization situation where, for optimal DPS, we need an offhand that is slower than our mainhand.

3. Make Shamanistic Rage have the same function as The Beast Within (i.e., immune to root/snare/CC for the duration). With our newly-nerfed enhancement dps I don't think this would be that overpowered.

4. Give us better mobility in pvp. Perhaps improve Ghost Wolf in some way? Some way to get out of or delay an assist train would be lovely.

5. Improve the efficiency of the Restoration spec. The efficiency and power of Chain Heal is not matched even remotely by Healing Wave, even with a full Healing Way stack. We have to use way too many mana pots while raid-healing - even after the Illumination nerf our efficiency isn't going to be anywhere close to that of paladins for single-target heals.

6. Reduce the bloat in the resto talent tree (particularly the lower half). In particular, how about combining Tidal Mastery with Restorative Totems? Totemic Focus and Tidal Focus? Healing Focus and Healing Grace?

7. Make Mana Spring totem scale with gear - it would be nice to have some of that utility that shadow priests have. While you're at it, improve the way Healing Stream totem scales.

8. Give Enhancement shaman a talent that gives them some measure of +damage/healing from attack power, similar to the feral druid talent Nurturing Instinct. This would really help our hybrid capabilities and our ability to spot heal while in Enhancement gear. Like what you were trying to do with the old Cyclone/Cataclysm enhancement sets, only make it actually work this time.

Shaman should get a level 70 dire wolf transformation spell. You could make it attack really strong, solving the enhancement woes as of late, fix the PVP mobility thing by eliminating snares (can't catch a ghost, logically, they are ephemeral) and solve the problem of being overpowered by still restricting heals/totems to regular shaman form.

The two obvious enhancement items seem to be greater threat reduction similar to other melee classes and altering windfury weapon. I think the most logical windfury change that still maintains the 3 second cooldown is unlinking the weapons so each hand has an independent 3 second cooldown. I hate the idea of the offhand proccing the mainhand since that would lead people to wanting a slow main hand and fast offhand; I'd rather have the freedom (in a min/max sense) to use whatever I want.

As an aside, don't we have an entire forum for threads like this?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that exactly what using two ranks of Windfury accomplished?

My understanding, and it could be inaccurate, is that windfury as a whole is on a timer. If the offhand procs the main hand is prevented from proccing for 3 seconds. The offhand could then proc again and the main hand would be on cooldown again and never have the chance to proc in the 6 second window. I'd rather see them separated so they could proc at the same time, but both would then have a 3 second cooldown.

It would be nice if the last point in improved ghost wolf made it non-dispellable.

I think some of your points are taking too much from other classes. IMO our main problems are PvP (enh and ele), DPS/threat (enh and ele), and longevity (resto and ele). Out of all of these problems, I'm most concerned with elemental longevity, because it seemed fine and then got the nerf bat in less than one patch.

Humbaba, do you mean the wow forums? Or the shaman google group? I'm assuming you aren't talking about the WoW forums, because that place is a nightmare.

Rogues and Cats have 29%, Warriors have 19-20% in Battle/Zerk, Shaman have 15% (melee) talented, Paladins have nothing; I see nothing wrong with this picture, really, except for rolling a -threat to elemental damage talent into a currently less-useful talent in the Elemental tree.

Would this not be like a rogue asking for OH poison procs making the MH poison proc instead? Vastly different application, but it's the same basic idea; DW has its ups and downs and this is one of the downs. I could see it making sense for the hidden CD on WF to be reduced when DW though.

Immune to CC + Free Mana Bar. Sounds kinda borderline to me but I've always hated being on the receiving end of The Beast Within.

I thought that this was always one of the key weaknesses of the shaman class -- they have some decent to good local CC options (mostly slows with Earthbind & Frost Shock) but can't remove any CCs on themselves and/or effectively speed themselves up over the short run. If I'm correct in that assumption, then that would eliminate that drawback and make them much more powerful (akin to 'fixing' the paladin Ret tree without nerfing bubble, as it were or, if you want a different example, giving paladins a -movespeed CC while not removing BoF & Cleanse).

Wouldn't this be one of those drawbacks to healing with a shaman? You get Chain Heal but lose out on single target efficiency (that's how I understand it anyway); you can't have BOTH as that would make the shaman class too desirable to have and would require re-nerfing to correct (see Paladin illumination nerf bringing them from ~25% more efficient than Holy Priests -> 1.5% more efficient than holy priests).

Bloated talent trees suck; if there's needless bloat somewhere, it should be removed--end of story.

Isn't mana spring one of those 'only useful in group' totems? From what I understand, it basically covers its own cost (to you) and only gives a tangible benefit when someone else gets mana from it; that sounds like a conscious design decision to me, making Mana TIDE totem an encouraged choice for additional self, and group, regen (but on a timer).

You don't want nurturing instinct v2.0; it sucks and nobody really takes the thing in its current state. First off, you wouldn't get +D/H from AP, it would be from $STAT (in caster, I have >900 AP--that would yield ~450 +Heal at a 50% return whereas the return from STR would be about 150 +Heal; one is overpowered, the other isn't); secondly, it wouldn't be 100% of that stat, it would be 33-66% and, as previously mentioned, 50% of your STR really isn't enough to make a difference--it's not like you have the mana pool OR regen for sustained casting in feral or enhancement gear.

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Apologies if this post sounds a bit bitter, I'm just kinda annoyed at the Illumination nerf on my paladin and some stuff in here just seemed like asking for too much in the new 'balanced' version of WoW that blizz is releasing in 2.1 (while I agree that paladins needed a single target healing nerf, killing a key feature of the class was not the way to do it, etc. etc.).

Actually no, as we eventually figured out.

The MH and the OH had seperate cooldowns, this is true, but there was apparently no way for the combat log to tell which swing itself procced the WF call, resulting in MH swings proccing OH WFs, or (dangerously) OHs proccing MHs. All of this was fairly nonpredictable of course because it only seemed to happen when MH and OH hit at about the same time, and every once in a while you would get 4 MH WFs at about the same second.

It's wierd, but apparently the codebase that runs the combat system simply can't handle WF well, and so the 3 second linked cooldown is the only way they can mek SURE you're never hitting 5 times in one attack with crits with your MH (considering this is a really, really sizable chunk of damage...).

Change. The. Freaking. Weapon. Buffs. Somehow.
At this point I don't even care how. The fact that Windfury is STILL the best option by a wide margin even in pure caster gear after all this time is outrageous.

Couldn't agree more. I'd also add that the shields are long overdue for an addition. The fact that there's no shield that does anything for you in raiding situations where you're not getting struck is absurd.

Can a shaman get a damn fire shield already? Perhaps one that returns mana/increases spell dmg/does SOMETHING that doesn't require getting smacked around?

i'd tend to agree with you that some of the OP is a bit much.

on the healing side of things, the shaman's strength has always been HPS at the expense of HPM. paladins have historicly been just the opposite. in WoWv1 this was often a problem because much of the raid game emphasized longevity over healing throughput, but this is not so much the case in TBC anymore. i think it's a good thing that they've found ways to differentiate the healing classes, giving each some strengths and weaknesses in a raid setting. if shaman are still considered a sub-par raid healer and are underrepresented in raids, then they should buff the aspect of shaman healing that has always been our strength instead of trying to make us just like other healing classes. they did this in the shaman review with healing way, and again in TBC with imp chain heal.


edit: i'd also agree with the comments about shields and weapon buffs. Windfury has been nurfed significantly on multiple occasions, yet it is still the best buff in virtually every situation because it scales well. frostbrand & flametounge barely scale, and only with elemental gear which is not conducive to meleeing in the first place. rockbiter doesn't scale at all. at least when it had +threat it was useful once in a blue moon when you wanted to tank in SM or something.

1. Change in the magnitude of the Clearcasting nerf, if not indeed the kind of nerf. Reports of Shaman topping 25-man damage meters are few and far between and often involve use of consumables others are not using. The nerf seems highly disproportionate to any issue that might exist.

2. A non-Nature nuke, or retuning of the Hydross encounter such that is is the Nature-Immune phase that requires more healing.

3. A totem UI that shows durations and radii and saves screen real estate.

4. A reduction on the cooldowns of our lolementals to 10 minutes or a drastic upgrade in terms of survivability, controllability, and utility. A "random tank" and a DPSer that dies to one hit of Cleave etc... they're not even worth dropping.

5. Totem of Wrath moved to Earth, to allow Elemental Shaman to take advantage of our Fire DMG totems. An Enh or Resto Shaman's Searing totem does FAR less DPS than an Elemental Shaman's due to gear, but an Elemental Shaman will never drop one.

EDIT:

6. Reorganize the Elemental Talent tree to be less "top-heavy" in terms of points. Reducing Unrelenting Storm to 3 points would be a good start.

Fyi, warrior threat reduce in battle/zerker is only 20%.

Mostly I would like to see weapon buffs scale with ap, or at least some of the weapon buffs.

Remove the tanking talents from enhancement already.

After reading Feorthas' post I think he does have some points. I was going to argue all day about the threat reduction, but I did happen to forget the fact that my warrior only has 5% more. Still, it'd be very welcome particularly considering us vs. cats.

I find resto shaman to be fine in their current state, though mana spring scaling would be helpful. Healing stream can already be pretty decent with enough +healing and trinket usage.

If I only had one vote, I'd have to agree with what the others said here: weapon buffs!

Windfury needs to be fixed. Itemization is totally against us with most offhands being either daggers or similar speeds(<2s). A fast offhand (like say a Searing Sunblade) is disastrous and steals a huge percentage of mainhand procs. They should remove the cooldown and nerf our damage in some other way if it's coming up too high. Reducing the attack power bonus on windfury or lowering flurry would work. Anything to prevent the faster, more common higher dps weapons from becoming substantial downgrades purely due to speed.

I've always thought flametongue and frostbrand could use a hefty boost too. I remember running some math and the biggest problem is the coefficient bonus from dmg/healing. It needs to be amped significantly either natively or through a talent. If you want to avoid people becoming an overpowered elemental/enh hybrid then just shove the talent deep into the enhancement tree. Either way they should be a viable alternative to windfury.

I'd also agree that significantly nerfing a talent after over 2 years(?) is the most idiotic thing they've ever done. Honestly, whenever I think about paladin healers the first thing that comes to mind is how awesome illumination is. When I read that patch line I just pictured a huge, violent mob heading straight for Irvine.

Make totems only show their element, not their actual name to hostile targets. (Small PvP implications).

Change all pulsing totems to pulse every second. (Poison, Disease, Tremor specifically)

Move ToW to Earth as previously mentioned.

Mana Shield returns 10% of intellect in the form of mp5 (same as the talent). Has 10 charges, same mana cost.

Lightning Shield adds some passive effect. 10 charges, same mana cost.

You realize that they did this with tremor a ways back, 2 second pulse though, and removed it due to balance concerns with fear encounters. Not that Fear Ward doesn't make learning Nightbane significantly easier or anything.

Yeah I know. This alone though gives all shaman (regardless of spec) a clear reason to be in a raid (at least for some fights).

Its still worse than fearward since people still get feared for a second. It's really the poison and disease totems I want changes since its just an odd mechanic to re-drop them every time the volley comes out. PLus its impossible to keep up with rogue poison applications.

These are all good ideas, particularly adding a pvp component to shamanistic rage. Enhance struggles in pvp right now.

I particularly think the aggro reduction (in melee) is required. I didn't realize Fury warriors had it, and can't understand why we don't get it as well.

this reminded me of my pet peeve with shaman dual wielding: weapon speed. several aspects of DW shaman abilities seem to emphasize fast weapons. unleashed rage and shamanistic rage both directly favor fast weapons. flurry and windfury both effectively increase overall attack speed. weak threat reduction favors faster attack speeds, because faster attack speeds mean more consistent threat over time. (the exception to all of this is stormstrike) it feels like the niche of dual wield enhance shaman is (supposed to be) extremely fast attack speeds, yet the current mechanics of windfury greatly penalize this type of setup.

wouldn't it be great if windfury didn't penalize fast weapons? you could dual wield 1.5/1.4 daggers or something, unleashed rage would be up 99.5% of the time, shamanistic rage would return a godly amount of mana, and you wouldn't have to hover at 80% of the tank's threat for fear of a massive WF crit spike. it just feels to me like this particular aspect of windfury is in conflict with the tone set by much of the rest of the enhancement tree.

To be fair, as said above, the numbers are 20% for warirors in Zerker/battle, 29% for kittyform and rogues, and 15% for shaman (spirit weapons). It's there, it's just not enough.

They have given us additional threat reduction in 2.1, in the form of a substantial DPS nerf.