What's the problem w/ Ele Shamans?

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What's the problem w/ Ele Shamans?

by Kaellrus » Fri Mar 25, 2016 8:35 am

I was messing around with the talent calculator and noticed that they have some pretty ridiculous talents. They have 100% crit damage, 1 second cast time reduction on Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning, 3% spell hit, clearcasting, and something like 11% total crit chance.

What's bad about them? Nature resistance?

Seems like Lightning Bolt would just be an electric Shadow bolt.
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Re: What's the problem w/ Ele Shamans?

by Overtime » Fri Mar 25, 2016 9:00 am

Oom.
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Re: What's the problem w/ Ele Shamans?

by St0rfan » Fri Mar 25, 2016 9:50 am

Lets not forget aggro issues.
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Re: What's the problem w/ Ele Shamans?

by Aethelwulf » Fri Mar 25, 2016 12:32 pm

Shadowbolt has the same aggro issues to be honest.

The main problems are nature resistance and going oom. To be clear, Shaman gear does not carry anywhere near enough magic penetration to get nature resist down so you may have to gear cloth just for penetration. Plus a lot of magic penetration gear (such as Don Rodrigo's Band and Sageblade) simply cannot be equipped by Shamans. The one grace Shamans do obtain is that Thunderfury procs reduce the target's nature resistance by 25 (and base nature resist is lower to compensate for the lack of a Warlock curse) so if your tanks carry TFs nature penetration is much easier. Still, you need AQ or Naxx gear for proper nature penetration so Shamans are usually healbots until Naxx (see here). Not to mention Mana Tide is too useful for raids to ignore.

If you manage to obtain the necessary spell pen and mana recovery, Shamans do become top-tier DPS, but it's usually not until Naxx that you see that happen.
Last edited by Aethelwulf on Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:36 pm, edited 8 times in total.
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Re: What's the problem w/ Ele Shamans?

by Dr. Doom » Fri Mar 25, 2016 2:18 pm

Overtime wrote:Oom.


^ Essentially. Their damage isn't bad yet really hard to sustain. Similar situation to moonkins. Moonkin DPS is well above cat, but it goes away pretty quick so it averages down in a lower number.
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Re: What's the problem w/ Ele Shamans?

by Thatoneguy » Fri Mar 25, 2016 5:07 pm

Half of the bosses and trash mobs in MC are immune to nature dmg. Even if Elemental Shamans were on par with Mages and Warlocks they still wouldn't be good in the current patch because the most raided raid says 'no' to nature dmg.
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Re: What's the problem w/ Ele Shamans?

by Dr. Doom » Fri Mar 25, 2016 5:22 pm

Thatoneguy wrote:Half of the bosses and trash mobs in MC are immune to nature dmg. Even if Elemental Shamans were on par with Mages and Warlocks they still wouldn't be good in the current patch because the most raided raid says 'no' to nature dmg.


Another area where paladins get a great advantage for some reason. Out of all raid bosses in WoW I ever got to know of, only Maiden of Virtue in Karazhan was a problem for them since she was holy-themed. For the rest, holy dmg breezes through everything and everyone, even the supposed 'anti-magic' mobs like the Chromatic dragons are. Only hard magic immune things, like the packs in Scholomance, or the worgen in SFK, get in the way.
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Re: What's the problem w/ Ele Shamans?

by Cragen » Thu Mar 31, 2016 10:48 pm

Biggest issue is mana regain. Elemental shamans with proper gear will be on par if not above most mages and warlocks with how lightning bolt scales with gear.
But we got no way of sustaining that dps outside of consumables and being rotated around the raid for mana tide which is generally reserved for the top dps mage or main priest.
You can make it work for MC and BWL, but the real test is things like Twin Emps, C'thun and Naxx. If you can't pass the Patchwerk test of 6-7 of sustained casting without any real interruptions then it is really hard to justify bringing a elemental shaman over another mage when you don't bring any additional buffs.

I absolute loved my elemental shaman in vanilla, but for raiding it never really worked which is a shame. TBC on another hand actually made it viable. Especially once other casters realized just how big a boost it was to their e-peen to have a elemental shaman in the raid.
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Re: What's the problem w/ Ele Shamans?

by Thatoneguy » Fri Apr 01, 2016 7:05 am

Cragen wrote:You can make it work for MC


Nope.
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Re: What's the problem w/ Ele Shamans?

by Dr. Doom » Fri Apr 01, 2016 3:45 pm

Thatoneguy wrote:
Cragen wrote:You can make it work for MC


Nope.


Shaman vs Nature-based elementals is such a broken match, unparalleled.

Comparing to all other classes and all other schools of magic:

Holy: No Holy resistance in mobs (at .least that's how it should be). In WoW's entire history, only Maiden of Virtue was holy based, one single encounter for paladins where they can't really do much. Smiter priest DPS also benefits from this, and even vs Maiden of Virtue they could attack with shadow (which was the default DPS spec in TBC anyway).

Arcane: Except for the DM:W elementals that guard the pylons and patrol around Immol'thar, there are no arcane elementals in vanilla content. Only mage and druid use arcane damage (I guess hunter too, heh). Mage can just use fire/frost, and moonkin can spam wrath vs them, or hurricane.

Fire: Fire elementals exist in BRD, UBRS and MC. Classes affected are mage and warlock chiefly. The former can stick to frost and do fine, maybe Arcane AoE too. The latter can stick to shadow damage.

Frost: Frost-immune elementals appear very sparsely. BFD, Noxxion in Maraudon and that's basically it. Only mage is truly affected by them. Can resort to fire based spells and do just fine, as well as having arcane dmg as supplementary.

Shadow: There aren't any shadow elementals in the game. There are mobs with high magic resistances that are a problem, say the chromatic dragons of LBRS, but resist =/= immune, and one CoS evens the field just fine. Even shadow using demons like Balnazzar or the Dead Scar/Darkwhisper Gorge mobs (including Kazzak) can be hit with Shadow, so can the shadowflame user Nefarian, or Emperor Vek'lor. Warlocks and Shadow priests never run into an immune problem.

Nature: The lowest dungeon in the game, RFC, already puts a fourth of the mobs being rock elementals immune to it. Maraudon packs a number of nature immune mobs as well, Roccor in BRD and every rock elemental in Molten Core is as well.
Classes affected: Shaman and caster Druid. A moonkin can just stick to moonfire and starfire (which has a higher spell quofficient than wrath anyway).
A shaman?....
Frost: Frost Shock, every 6 seconds (5 seconds if reverberation 5/5), and auto attack with frostbrand I guess.
Fire: Flame Shock, autoattack with Flametongue and put fire totems down.

The damage dive is brutal from not being able to use lightning, since there's no other spammable spell. Shocks are a nice instant move but not being able to cast anything for 5/6 of the time is just absurd. Frostbrand proc (unreliable like all procs) and Flametongue bonus are minimal, and magma totem (highest DPS compared to searing and fire nova) might add something but not nearly enough. Another way that shamans get screwed badly in comparison to paladins (who can even use holy damage on the otherwise magic immune Emperor Veknilash).

Arcane immune: Mage just spams frostbolt/fireball anyway. Moonkin spams wrath.
Fire immune: Mage spams frostbolt. Warlock spams shadowbolt like he woud anyway, and shadow dots.
Frost immune: Mage spams fireball/pyroblast/fire blast.
Shadow immune: Doesn't exist.
Holy immune: Doesn't exist.
Nature immune: Druid spams starfire/moonfire. Shaman grinds his teeth and sighs at Blizzard's attention-level.
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