Shaman "overhaul".

[Snake]

Main issue: Bad group healing.
Lesser issue: Needs way more self healing for some things to work (stance from tome and R2).
Annoying issues: Many spells have way to long refresh/recast on them, also many spells have way to long cast time.



Now I don't want the Shaman to be an amazing group healer, so don't change the amount of healing that R1 does, but please remove the snare and slow, and just let it be a regular group hot.

When (if) the snare and slow are removed, this spell will no longer be flagged as a "buff", meaning that the AA that cuts the Shaman's buff cast time by 50%, will no longer effect it.
So the spell needs to be faster too. 4 seconds is my suggestion, then it will end up about as "fast" as it is now.
The same would be nice for the single target self hots, perhaps make them more mana expensive if thats an issue, but don't forget about the casting speed.

Why do we need this? How come we can do this?
The Shaman's stance Blood Ritual and his Canabalize AND his R2 heal, all eat his health in order to work.
So the Shaman is in dire need of alot of self healing constantly, or he cant use Blood Ritual and R2. (Canabalize is not really an issue)
Being an Ogre helps alot, but are we really all encuraged to try and gather fame and change race or re roll, to function? And even then we don't really function, just 20% less bad heh.
Also the healing on these hots wouldnt change, so its not like the Shaman would be able to heal anything he cant already, the spells would just not cripple everyone (or just her self) in a manner, that its basicly not an option.


Way to many spells have way to long recast/refresh time, like Bih'Li, The Bear form, Plague Wind (also very long cast time) and many others I cant remember off the top of my head, I'll make a list, if this suggestion will be considered.
The Runic 2 heal has an issue with its range. Its fast, so obv you'd want to use it over Chloroshock, but its range is not very long.

 

[Nebi]

Main issue: Bad group healing.
Lesser issue: Needs way more self healing for some things to work (stance from tome and R2).
Annoying issues: Many spells have way to long refresh/recast on them, also many spells have way to long cast time.

• Bad group healing not so much. bad detrimental group healing is bad.
• I think we heal for a good amount as is.
• The shaman is this. you have to learn to heal extremely early and know that your heals are not mana efficient. Your tomes and spells offset your lack of efficiency with just the overall sheer mass of health points healed.

Now I don't want the Shaman to be an amazing group healer, so don't change the amount of healing that R1 does, but please remove the snare and slow, and just let it be a regular group hot.

• Ideally in a perfect world this would be the case. But you need to remember that shamans are not group healers. The slow aspect of the spell ruins the shaman entirely. With the removal of this spell a shaman can effectively heal a melee group and a caster group (help heal not be the main healer). As it stands now you can only help heal casters and well casters suck.

When (if) the snare and slow are removed, this spell will no longer be flagged as a "buff", meaning that the AA that cuts the Shaman's buff cast time by 50%, will no longer effect it.
So the spell needs to be faster too. 4 seconds is my suggestion, then it will end up about as "fast" as it is now.
The same would be nice for the single target self hots, perhaps make them more mana expensive if thats an issue, but don't forget about the casting speed.

• Again you need to learn to cast sooner. if you need to be healed faster then target yourself, /s 4 and cast a single chloro

Why do we need this? How come we can do this?
The Shaman's stance Blood Ritual and his Canabalize AND his R2 heal, all eat his health in order to work.
So the Shaman is in dire need of alot of self healing constantly, or he cant use Blood Ritual and R2. (Canabalize is not really an issue)
Being an Ogre helps alot, but are we really all encuraged to try and gather fame and change race or re roll, to function? And even then we don't really function, just 20% less bad heh.
Also the healing on these hots wouldnt change, so its not like the Shaman would be able to heal anything he cant already, the spells would just not cripple everyone (or just her self) in a manner, that its basicly not an option.

• My shaman is one of the better off geared shamans on the server. I refuse to put work into the runic 2 after trying it on other shamans. The spell is absolutely terrible. Even more so when you have a tome that will literally do the exact same thing. Runic 2 should be changed to some amazing buff or changed all together into a different heal spell because I dont think shamans use this / should use that spell all too much.

Way to many spells have way to long recast/refresh time, like Bih'Li, The Bear form, Plague Wind (also very long cast time) and many others I cant remember off the top of my head, I'll make a list, if this suggestion will be considered.

• Why are you trying to cast Bih'li so often? you should be fine with one cast. deal with it if it takes a couple of seconds to pop up.
• Bear form should be used once every couple of hours in a zone. this has no issue what so ever.
• Plaguewind - if refresh time is the only problem you have with this dot then i dont know what to tell you.

The Runic 2 heal has an issue with its range. Its fast, so obv you'd want to use it over Chloroshock, but its range is not very long.

[/quote]

• I do not want to use this spell over Chloroshock. My job in a raid is to heal, heal early, and leave the fast heals to a cleric. Your problem here is not that your spell is not fast enough. Your problem is that your spell suck and you should leave the niche to clerics for fast healing.

-----

You also did not touch on the
Slows are trivialized. No longer is this a reason to bring a shaman to 6 man that does insane amounts of AE damage.
Bear form + bear tome DPS is garbage after the changes
We have no decent disease dot

Something must be done with a shamans slow (the supposed king of slows) over everyone elses. An enchanter and beastlord should not be able to touch remotely anywhere where a shaman should be slowing.

Shaman slow should be looked into providing special effects like making mobs miss certain or something. but as it is now mob slowed by a shaman means garabage.

 

[Pecannius]

Hmm, we walking down this road again okay. Agree with most of the stuff Nebi said. Some followups.

-When they nerfed bear form & blood feast after someone was found abusing it, they should have brought up the proc rate or damage or something to compensate.
-Blood Ritual tome is just bad with so few times that it's actually useful. Maybe if it scaled off the mana of the spell instead of the shaman's hp that would be more reasonable, and also work with clickies which last I checked it doesn't. It would also make R2 niftier and increase the skill cap on shaman healing. Maybe if it dealt 3x the base mana cost as dmg to the shaman that would seem reasonable and I would at least use it situationally.
-R2 and blood ritual are too similar. One or both should be changed to something useful. Previous suggestion to change blood ritual.
-Slow is so rarely useful at all.
-Spell recasts are not an issue that affect the shaman that much. Other classes are effected by it more. It's a broader issue.
-Shaman cast more rebuffs than any other class (Kedrin's suggestion here is good, maybe combine acumen into that)
-Totally random / minor issue but I find that all 60+ shaman spells at least somewhat situational except for Fury of the North. 7.25 seconds for an 890 nuke is very lol and one of (if not the worst) dmg for cast time spells in the game. To make this into anything.... lower the cooldown a lot and give a recast... or make it AE and bump the mana a lot... would give shaman at least some situations to load this. For the dmg vs cast time you're better off meleeing.

 

[Daffie]

The two last posts are really good. I agree that R1 is basically dog shit. I've used it in caster group 1 time on a raid and for some reasons none of the casters had pets or required much movement. Bad in groups, bad for 2 our of 3 groups in a raid, and a lot of times it is bad for all 3 groups. Remove detrimental effects and all of a sudden it is usable and can supplement the heling power of the real group healers.

R2 don't have wouldn't use. Bad on paper.

Another thread is devoted to bear form and maul tome.

Blood feast. Cool idea, bad in practice. I have rank 2 done and the only time I use it is when I'm using plaguewind and am not meleeing. Basically, cast self hot that fucks your melee, cast plaguewind, /s 4 during cast, then /s 3 again. I can't see using this on a raid ever.

I'll say it again, but the pet can't even live through BQ mobs AE. Fucking frustrating.

 

[Swiftur]

I'll say it again, but the pet can't even live through BQ mobs AE. Fucking frustrating.

If it makes you feel any better, Druid frog doesn't fair too well here either heh.

 

[Ulandx]

Too bad I cant find this post from 3 or 4 years ago where a dev stated Shamans are hybrids(seriously),'nuff said.

 

[Daffie]

Oh yeah:
plaguewind cast time, wtf please lower it. It is brutally long. Personally, I love the spell for duo situations, but my god the cast time is dog shit.

The cold nuke line was mentioned before. No shaman should ever cast these spells. They are a very bad hold over from live. If this turns into an ultra fast casting nuke that can be used between heals that could find a spell gem slot. I'd almost rather see the line turn into a high damage fast casting magic dot like was eventually done on live. Places like cmal that mobs have PR basically means shaman can't do damage other than melee.

 

[luciferblack]

Oh yeah:
plaguewind cast time, wtf please lower it. It is brutally long. Personally, I love the spell for duo situations, but my god the cast time is dog shit.

This. So much this. A 5 second cast on that spell would be plenty.

 

[Snake]

Nebi you and I don't see things eye to eye, thats for sure.
But just to clarify a little "how I work"... You ask me "Why do you cast Bih'li so often?".
In my oppinion, you don't get the issue at all. Here is an example. Our Wizard port us out of a dungeon (so obv we don't have run speed spells on), and when we arrive, we have a run ahead of us, thrue an area where Scale of Scale could easily "wear off", so Bih'li, perfect solution, ok, mem spell... 4 seconds... cmon... 8 seconds.. What is this?! We need to move, not wait Come on!!. 9 seconds YAY!!! CASTING!! (DAFUQ!)

Same goes for Bear form, ok so we arrive, now time for battle!!! Mem Bear form... Cmon... 4 seconds... Omg what is this... 8 seconds... Jeez... 12 seconds FINALLY!!!!

Yes I could have pre memed it, or just always dedicate spell slots to both buffs, but what is the friggen point?! Why is 9 seconds refresh and 12 seconds refresh time needed on these spells?What happens if i chain them?! ... Cmon dude...


All your "Cast it earlier" is basicly just as misunderstood in my oppinion. Oh, and you do realize that I ask for them not to be slower (not asking for them to be faster), as they will become slower, if they lose the "buff"-tag, right? I dont think you do hehe.

Either way, thx for all the response all, lets hope they give Shm an overhaul, so we are more than walking Woundbane machines that can cast focus, and bother you with stats

Also the Ancient haste should also just be 60% haste, again what is the point in making us cast a single target spell 12 times, to give all ppl who wants haste, haste, and its not even a best in game haste or anything, changing it to 60%, would change anything what so ever, other than making the Shaman more "nice".

And this is really what it is mostly about, what we need to change to make the shaman nice. Its not alot, remove silly detremential effects on hots, remove silly refresh times on alot of spells, and some spells just needs to be a bit faster in general (Plage Wind mostly).


I don't agree with Slow should be a "must have spell" in groups, I like how in SoD slow isent very important. But the Archaic slow could perhaps have a dampening effect on spells.... Meh, forget i said that, Slow is not the issue imo

 

[Daffie]

Nebi you and I don't see things eye to eye, thats for sure.
But just to clarify a little "how I work"... You ask me "Why do you cast Bih'li so often?".
In my oppinion, you don't get the issue at all. Here is an example. Our Wizard port us out of a dungeon (so obv we don't have run speed spells on), and when we arrive, we have a run ahead of us, thrue an area where Scale of Scale could easily "wear off", so Bih'li, perfect solution, ok, mem spell... 4 seconds... cmon... 8 seconds.. What is this?! We need to move, not wait Come on!!. 9 seconds YAY!!! CASTING!! (DAFUQ!)

Same goes for Bear form, ok so we arrive, now time for battle!!! Mem Bear form... Cmon... 4 seconds... Omg what is this... 8 seconds... Jeez... 12 seconds FINALLY!!!!

Yes I could have pre memed it, or just always dedicate spell slots to both buffs, but what is the friggen point?! Why is 9 seconds refresh and 12 seconds refresh time needed on these spells?What happens if i chain them?! ... Cmon dude...


All your "Cast it earlier" is basicly just as misunderstood in my oppinion. Oh, and you do realize that I ask for them not to be slower (not asking for them to be faster), as they will become slower, if they lose the "buff"-tag, right? I dont think you do hehe.

Either way, thx for all the response all, lets hope they give Shm an overhaul, so we are more than walking Woundbane machines that can cast focus, and bother you with stats

Also the Ancient haste should also just be 60% haste, again what is the point in making us cast a single target spell 12 times, to give all ppl who wants haste, haste, and its not even a best in game haste or anything, changing it to 60%, would change anything what so ever, other than making the Shaman more "nice".

And this is really what it is mostly about, what we need to change to make the shaman nice. Its not alot, remove silly detremential effects on hots, remove silly refresh times on alot of spells, and some spells just needs to be a bit faster in general (Plage Wind mostly).


I don't agree with Slow should be a "must have spell" in groups, I like how in SoD slow isent very important. But the Archaic slow could perhaps have a dampening effect on spells.... Meh, forget i said that, Slow is not the issue imo

The recast stuff and haste spell have been posted about before. No one with thrn ability to make these quick changes cares, or they have better things to do. I personally started a thread about the haste spells and stacking issues related. I started a thread about stacking issued with rbow and conduit too. No movement.

Imo Most of the shaman cast times, recast times, and detrimental hot effects are bad hold over from live that were fixed on live a long time ago.

 

[Otcho]

Why didn't you just mem bihli before you zoned?

Shaman hot having a slow has been one of the dumbest parts of any spell in the game.

 

[Snake]

Well I never mem Bihli, I play a friends druid instead, much nicer class, more healing, more dps, track, almost no bs refresh on buffs, enough said

I log the shaman on for focus, 2 years of hard work on a char, and that's what he is good for :,(

(Also you should parse the slow,
It isn't that bad, it's the snare that really ruins the spells. But yeah both are annoying and just makes the shaman not-nice. )

 

[Lleoc]

slow negates haste on kick/backstab which dumpsters on monk/rogues and not sure how it affects rangers anymore since autofire but who cares about rangers anyway.

 

[Snake]

Okey, I have to admit I didn't parse anything but my warriors auto attack. He only lost like 10% dps.
But yeah if rogues lose 70 haste (GoE) points (out of usual 224 - 250 ish) and the 20 the hot takes away, on their BS, that's a big kick right in the dps nuts for sure

 

[Nebi]

I log the shaman on for focus, 2 years of hard work on a char, and that's what he is good for :,(

Snake this post clearly states you dont even know how to play a shaman

 

[Daffie]

Okey, I have to admit I didn't parse anything but my warriors auto attack. He only lost like 10% dps.
But yeah if rogues lose 70 haste (GoE) points (out of usual 224 - 250 ish) and the 20 the hot takes away, on their BS, that's a big kick right in the dps nuts for sure

Even if it didn't trash skill repops, 10% loss of dps across 4 or 5 group members is huge.

 

[daenar_sod]

Didn't read above but glimpsed slow being useless. Yes, slow is mitigated but it does help in some aspects such as how lleoc mentioned it. The main problem I see with slow is the fact the Control Enhancement does not work with slow like it is supposed to. If it did, that boost would I think help make it much more useful, especially on a shaman who did their quests. A ticket is in for this issue, but afaik has not been resolved yet.

 

[Haenir]

But yeah if rogues lose 70 haste (GoE) points (out of usual 224 - 250 ish) and the 20 the hot takes away, on their BS, that's a big kick right in the dps nuts for sure

Slows take precedent over haste (so a hasted bs which would be 5 seconds to refresh, with a 20% slow is now 12 second refresh since it goes off the normal refresh time of 10 seconds). Don't know if something similar was done for monks, but there was a change a while back that addressed the backstab haste/slow problem:

if haste > 100 it can just add ((damage/2)*(haste-100))/100

Not sure if this went in:

Okay I think I could adjust for client slow screw as well fairly easily, not perfectly but pretty close. On the one hand it seems kind of iffy... but on the other the idea that the most impressive Backstab damage numbers by far would require the Rogue to be slowed is amusing enough to make me think I should do it anyway.

So maybe we're all doing it wrong and the shammy hot slow is really there to allow rogues to inflate their backstabs.

 

[Otcho]

Unless they fixed slow completely fucking up rogue backstab timers, it will never be acceptable to cast on any melee group without tilting out a rogue. But I agree recast timers suck. I didn't even know it fucked monk kick timers thats awful too.

dang I should read the follow up replies before replying to the immediate post

 

[Daffie]

Didn't read above but glimpsed slow being useless. Yes, slow is mitigated but it does help in some aspects such as how lleoc mentioned it. The main problem I see with slow is the fact the Control Enhancement does not work with slow like it is supposed to. If it did, that boost would I think help make it much more useful, especially on a shaman who did their quests. A ticket is in for this issue, but afaik has not been resolved yet.

Even if control enhancement does work, it is garbage on mobs that midigate slow. I think the best control enhancement adds 8%. 8% of a slow midigated to 20% is.... basically nothing. Even at 50% slow, it is not going to be a noticeable difference. Obviously, it is better than nothing, but yeah.

Slow is effective on raids, but other than the resist adjust and recast of archaic, shaman slow is just about the same as all the other classes slows. In practice.

Slow in single group situations is pretty much not used. It nerfs DS dps, and generally doesn't make tanks all of sudden heal able by only a shaman when they weren't before. This is especially true in places that require group healing. Of course I've used slow in groups, but 99 times out of 100, with an on tier tank, I don't slow.

Slow just isn't hugely powerful her like it was in old school live. Cripple is even worse here. I cast crippling surge to get agro or because I have nothing else to cast atm. I would be shocked if there is any noticed difference in dps from most mobs between cripple/no cripple.