#0 - July 20, 2007, 2:57 p.m.
This is that post:
"Intro: Though you may not know it, there is a great divide that separates what an enhancement shaman is at 60 and the sad state of the class at level 70. "What has changed?" you might ask, well let me explain.
Unrecognized shaman nerfs going from 60-70
Earthshock
Earth shock at level 60 costs 450mana deals 517 to 545
Earth shock at level 70 costs 535mana deals 658 to 692
Average HPs at 60 4,000
Average HPs at 70 10,000
Now you can see just by looking at the numbers here that ES suddenly goes from dealing 12.5% of the average persons health to dealing 6.5%.
So at level 60 it would only take you 8 earthshocks (3600mana) to kill someone with shocks alone. At level 70 it will take you twice that, 16 total (8560mana). At level 60 I remember remarking that my mana was always = to my hps, so with 4,000mp it was more than possible to earthshock kite and kill someone, as I did quite frequently against warriors and rogues. At level 70 however my manapool is 6000, so not only would it take twice as many earthshocks to kill someone in this fashion, it would also be imppossibe as you would run out of mana far before the target ran out of hps.
What's this you say? Everyone suffers from the doubling of hps at 70? Alas this is not so. Becauase as blizzard decided to increase the amount of stamina they put on gear, they also saw fit to double the amount of plus damage. At level 60 the most +damage a caster could have was ~500, at level 70 it's ~1200.
As a result the only classes that saw a diminished effect in their nukes are those that are hybrids and cannot stack up damage, healing and attack power all at once.
Healing wave
Healing wave at level 60 costs 629mana heals for 1620 to 1850
Healing wave at level 70 costs 720mana heals for 2134 to 2436
Now dps didn't quite double from 60-70 but it's close, at level 60 you needed every raid member to average about 500dps to down patchwerk (certinaly not everyone had this much however) and he was regarded as the de facto gear check in naxx. At level 70 you can achieve 900dps with similar top end gear, so not quite double but almost.
At 60 a 1735 heal with a 3 second cast time could outheal the 500dps (500x3=1500dmg), barely, but still possible, meaning if you could get some distance with earthbind you could recover.
At 70 a 2280 heal over 3 seconds versus 900dps (900x3=2700) does not outheal the damage you are taking, not by a long shot. This is very important to note, becuase it means an enhancement shaman may have heals, but they do not meet or exceed the incoming damage on any target, meaning it is almost always better to continue to DPS than it is to try and heal. Meaning an enhancement shaman at 70 is basically a cat druid or shadow priest with all the weaknesses of not getting to use abilities from his other tree yet none of the damage bonus's.
Purge
Purge at level 60 (pre nerf) dispels 2 buffs, costs 75mana
Purge at level 70 dispels 2 buffs, costs 236mana
Now this is a huge issue, as I already mentioned, enhancement has less mana at 70 yet our spells are more expensive. Part of this is offset by the fact that we no longer have to bother casting heals since as I've explained they are next to worthless, but shocks and totems eat up huge amount of mana. Shamanistic rage helps to address this issue, but it only helps in pve where we are guarenteed to be hitting a target while it is up. In pvp however this is another story entirely as you are often CC'd or snared and unable to reach your target to gain mana during a large portion, sometimes during the entire duration, of your shamanistic rage.
The increased mana cost on purge is huge for enhancement, because while we may not have CC in any form, purge is perhaps the only reliable utility an enhancement shaman does bring, not being able to use it due to OOMing quickly hurts us a lot.(I'll talk about totems in a minute).
Totems
This issue is one that effects all shaman equally. With the introduction of icelance and the new macro system it is exceedingly easy for any class to disable totems. This would not be such a problem except that totems cost a great deal, in not only mana but time consumed laying them, this is time we could spend earthshocking and purging. This is especially painful when we lose a totem with a 15 second cooldown.
The biggest and perhaps most glaring inequality lies in the Global Cooldown on totems. Any pet class does not have to waste a GCD to destroy all of your totems, yet every shaman has to spend 6 seconds in GCD's to recast them.
Mana is also a huge issue, all shaman spec's are very mana ineffecient, unless you're a resto spamming chain heal in a raid setting, elemental, resto and enhancement all run out of mana very quickly.
Indirect Nerfs
There are numerous random abilities that have been given to other classes at 70 that directly effect shaman. At 60, however, we never had to face these abilities, I will try to list them here.
Deadly throw:
Previously we were told Frost shock was too powerful because it was a ranged snare so it was put on Diminishing returns, yet blizzard has seen fit to give rogues the exact same sort of ability deadly throw. Only Deadly throw is not on DR, this is a huge inequality principle wise as well as making rogues impossible to "shock kite" as we were able to do at 60(pretending we actually had the mana pool to do so).
Stoicism:
30% chance to have all paladin blessings be undispellable. This is a direct nerf to enhancement, because as I said an enhancement shamans primary utility is purge. Other classes have dispell, but most of them have other utility roles.
Vile Poisons:
40% chance for all rogue poisons be undispellable. This is a nerf to anyone with poison dispel but especially to shaman considering poison cleanse only ticks every 5 seconds as is and druids (the only other class with poison cleanse) can simply shape shift out of the snare.
Icelance:
Previously mages were the one class that shaman truly shined against, with all long casting nukes (besides PoM and fireblast which has a long cooldown) grounding totem and earthshock were both exceptionally useful. But with the introduction of icelance a mage need never cast a single spell against a shaman, rendering both grounding totem and earth shock useless. The mage never winds up a nuke so there is nothing to ES, he casts a 200 mana icelance and your grounding totem is gone. I have been defeated by mages time and time again that never casted a single nuke besides icelance and frostnova.
Lifebloom:
This is a hot which when dispelled, turns in to a direct heal. Never before have we been actively punished for purging hots, yet now we are.
These are all abilities that directly effect shaman, yet do not really effect other classes as dramatically.
Windfury:
Countless others have talked about the Windfury nerf so feel free to look up their posts, Strawberry has a good one as does Graxxon.
Conclusion:
I hope this list helps explain (especially for those just starting out) why shaman play perfectly fine all the way to 60, yet enhancement in particular goes from being the most versatile and effective pvp class at 60 to being the least played and most ineffective pvp class at 70."
I would also like to add a couple of my thoughts.
With lvl cap move up to 70 we all got 10 more talent points ,new spells ,new talents, tier 9 talents that requires 40 talent points already invested in that tree. Considering shaman, our new talents are mostly passive except totem of wrath and earth shield, and none for pure pvp. Also investing 40+ points in 1 tree lives as with 20 or less points in other trees and that’s making us less of an hybrids. Before tbc we had 51 talent point and usually talent builds were like 30/0/21 or 31/0/20 (depends what did u prefer, more kick or more survivability) or 0/30/21 or 0/31/20 or even 20/31/0, and as we can see there was just 9-11 talent points between our primary and secondary tree which made us hybrids. And now in tbc that gap is bigger 19+ talent points making us more specialized and less hybrids. Also look at our sets tier 4. tier 5, tier 6 each has 3 versions, specialized versions for 1 of our 3 talent trees. So everything is directing us to heavy specialized in 1 talent tree and yet when we spend 40+ our talent points in chosen tree and get gear for it we cant outperform pure dps/healing classes. I have no problem with that. Because in same time we can compensate with our other talent trees in witch we invested less then 20 talent points and our gear adds nothing to it. Or can we?! Closest to hybrid gear that can be found in game (not counting outdated A'Q set) is elemental sets, witch lacks melee stats so our melee side of shaman hybrid can benefit from it. Restoration shaman with lets say full tier 6 has so small dmg output is close to none.
I can bet that mage blinking around in raids and bandaging people will have more healing than then restoration shaman will have damage done. Or lets assume we have elemental/restoration shaman out of mana on 1 side and on other side mage/lock/priest out of mana do you think shaman can do more melee damage then mage/lock/priest with wand?!
Most of u will say he is a healer he should be able to do damage. Well we are HYBRIDS before everything else, or did i got wrong impression while playing World of Warcraft.
The gap between base skills and bonuses from gear is big and its getting even bigger and this affect hybrid classes badly making our unspecialized skills well useless. So what we need aside from talent review (seriously how can someone in sane mind justify toughness as valid 5 points talent as it is now?) is HYBRID GEAR with all stats melee crit/hit, spell healing/dmg /hit/crit. God forbid base melee skill.
