[Shaman] Shaman Manifesto

#0 - Nov. 5, 2008, 1:12 p.m.

This is a repost of a thread I created a little while ago, hopefully there'll be some sort of response to it, as it went unnoticed by any officials on the Shaman forums. The original can be found at : http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11162526636&postId=111614723536&sid=1#0

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How many times in the past few weeks have you seen a "Re-rolling", "Goodbye" or "I'm fed up" thread? Quite a few I'm guessing, unless you've been under a rock for the last few weeks. How about all the jokes about the CMs / GMs ? "I bet none of them play a Shaman" , "Here comes another one to lie to us", "We won't be seeing him for 6 months". I can bet you've seen those.

Who's seen a post with "The buffs are a lie" in it? How about "L2 Play scrub, look at those Arena ratings". Or even, one of my favorites, "Shaman are fine, I've been here for a bit and my thoughts trump everyone else's'". Those are things you've all seen tens, if not hundreds, of times.

Is it so much to ask for a blue post more than bi-yearly? Is it so much to ask for some of the intelligent, well thought-out, feedback to be looked at? Each time I visit the forums I notice Danemoth's post, 51 pages strong and stickied, at the top of the forum posts. Look through it, notice the problems with the shaman class are EXACTLY THE SAME. Still, after countless pages, after getting it stickied, after 9 Months, we are the same.

I have yet to see Danemoth on the forums lately. What happened to one of the stalwart defenders of the shaman class? What about others, such as Scotch, Thelun and Caizanno? They are all gone, or at least, they aren't here anymore. Maybe they found that it was useless to continue on against overwhelming apathy and ignorance. Maybe they found that another class would just be easier. Mayhaps they just got fed up with it all and stopped playing.

The jokes we use each day, are real concerns. "Can't do that while stunned" is a real problem. We joke about it, but it's been a problem for a long time, with no resolution. "LFM 1, CC/DPS" is another problem, being one of the few classes without any DPS, we die a little inside each time we see someone ask that. These are things that have plagued us forever. Yet, no matter the posts we make, no matter the feedback we give, it never changes.

Everyone says we're an expansion behind.. That makes sense to me. Seeing my roommate's Paladin (not knocking on Paladins, just making a point) Solo a level 70 group-quest Elite on the PTR both awed and inspired me. Divinestorm is amazing. Seeing him run a BWL and healing the whole raid with Beacon of Life. That amazed me. Then he turns to me and asks what I got. I got two spirit wolves that are still broken and don't scale. Divinestorm is the paladin equivalent of Stormstrike, except it hits multiple targets, does massive damage (two handers), all of which ignores armor (being holy) and, heals your party. I don't mean to compare them, but it's that amazingly beneficial, that it has to be said.

All other classes are gaining incredible abilities; Mirror Image, Shadow Dance, Blade Storm, Starfall, Titan's Grip, etc. Can the same be said about Shaman talents? According to most of the people on the Beta forums, on the shaman forums, on the PTR Server and on the live server, No. Going into the patch being released later today, I see Enhancement Shamans calling upon wolf spirits to smite their opponents, only to watch their health barely decrease and suddenly, the 45 second limit is up and they disappear for another 3 minutes. I see Elemental Shamans calling lightning roaring from the sky, thundering into the ground, Enemies flying away from them in all directions... until they hit a small rock or a fence. I see Restoration Shamans casting a HoT that is neither amazing nor special, nor powerful.

And we laugh, we cry, we QQ, we discuss and we bicker. Every day, every thread is a mixture of informed responses, intelligent replies, angry disapproval, depressed bickering and "L2 play" Elitism. Look at us. Look at what Shaman have become CMs and GMs. What are we but those tossed aside, the one class that it seems you ignore. I used to laugh along with posts such as "Not one Dev plays a Shaman" and "The red-headed stepchild of WoW". These days I shake my head. I feel sorry for each Shaman that leaves, who re-rolls, who gets laughed out by others, others who have then gone on to quit themselves. There is talk of lowering our population to under 1% to gain some sort of recognition. Is there a reason why we should have to? Why hundreds upon thousands of posts are ignored, are lost to the annals of the forums. Where are the regular blue posts? The buffs that do not follow the once mythical, but now all-too-real 50% rule? What will it take to get the Shaman class some help?

Ghostcrawler

#36 - Nov. 5, 2008, 6:16 p.m.

I understand it can be cathartic to vent about what happened to your spec or class in the past, or how you feel let down or how you think we broke promises, etc. etc.

But really, those kinds of comments don't really do much to help us address any current class design issues. I'm personally pretty much only interested in the current state of the game. We can learn from the past of course, particularly for systems or spells that did or didn't work in WoW or BC. We can figure out why Holy paladins or mages weren't competitive in Sunwell. We can consider why shamans and hunters weren't an Arena powerhouse. But we'll get a lot more out of it if we stick to those kinds of discussions -- the objective numbers, not the subective part about how you feel you've been treated.

Current shaman issues, cool.
Remember, remember the Fifth of November stuff I'm skipping over.

Ghostcrawler

#109 - Nov. 5, 2008, 8:20 p.m.

Q u o t e:
But as OP said, our mechanics are broken! Our totems, Shock, healing, lots of things have been broken for ever and there's is no sign of change. I know those are hard programming issues, but if you can't fix them, just change them! Or you will still have a lot of complains about it.

I was hoping to see if we could get some of those bugs fixed. I gave up and started another class. It's really a shame to see that everyone is doing the same and Blizzard doesn't seems to respond to it.

This kind of stuff -- not useful. Right here is where I stopped reading your post and just skipped over to the next one.

Q u o t e:
Eh, oh well. Not like my crying will be read by any Dev or Mod anyways.

You’re right, and it will probably get deleted. Cry all you want to about numbers or mechanics or viability or even fun. Those are all issues worthy of discussion. Crying about how you were treated or about how you think Blizzard views the class is subjective, uninformed, and honestly just not that interesting to most of the players trying to accomplish something in these forums.

Q u o t e:
We can consider why shamans and hunters weren't an Arena powerhouse. But we'll get a lot more out of it if we stick to those kinds of discussions -- the objective numbers, not the subective part about how you feel you've been treated.

Current shaman issues, cool.
Remember, remember the Fifth of November stuff I'm skipping over.
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Oh man, thank you GC! That's the best laugh I've had in days! Did you laugh as much when you wrote it as I did when I read it?

Look, to be honest, I appreciate your (Blizzard's) efforts to try and make all the classes at least somewhat competitive in all aspects of the end game, and I realize there will never be parity. But you (Blizzard) would go a long way towards bridging the trust gap if you'd just step up and say something like "OK, we admit it, we screwed up, and we never should have allowed it to go on for 4 seasons, and for that we apologize..."

Uh, I’m not really sure what your statements are trying to accomplish here. You want an apology? I’m sorry shamans and hunters (and whoever else) weren’t an Arena powerhouse. Of course it was our fault. We design the game. This sounds a little mean, but if what we need to do is set up a “PAST INJUSTICES” thread, we can do that. I won’t be personally reading it much though.

Q u o t e:
But more importantly, GC obviously doesn't care for it either. If you want to see change, make a thread and talk about what's wrong with shamans, right now and at 80, not what went wrong in the past.

Bingo.

Q u o t e:
I'm not pinning these problems on you GC, I know you're just the messenger...the go between for the player base and the devs...but you can't just deny that we've ignored these past few years. It is very apparent that we have no real representation in the developer staff, or we would have seen the right changes addressed in our class, or at least a general idea for where we are going.

I’m not the messenger. We have great CMs and moderators who participate on these forums, but I'm not one of them. I am a game designer and lead the team in charge of class balance (though this being Blizzard, a lot of people have input into the design process). I am happy to discuss numbers and utility and anything else about your class. I’m not talking about those things in this thread, because I’m using this opportunity to try to suggest to the community at large how we want this forum to work.

And in fact there are already good shaman threads in this forum, and I have already stated things that we are working on in those posts. Anyone who has spent any time in this forum or the beta forums instead of nursing wounds from the past would probably know that. Demanding developer attention while you are already receiving it is a good way to get people to dismiss you as out of touch.

Sorry if all of this sounds harsh. I would much rather be talking about classes than talking about how we talk about classes. We all have a lot of work to do to make these forums as useful as we think they can be.