#0 - Nov. 9, 2008, 6:58 a.m.
PvP concerns:
1) Enhance mobility and survivability in arenas is terrible. Ironically, enhancement can't go toe to toe with other melee classes - but we also lack the mobility to escape from them. We can dps ranged classes, but we lack the mobility to catch them. We have to keep a shield out all the time in order to have any chance of survival, which seriously hinders our dps. Wolves help a lot, but they are only out for 30 seconds of every 3 minutes, and if we don't preemptively use them - wasting precious seconds of their life - we get stunlocked to death before we can get them out.
2) Shamanistic Rage's dual use is frustrating. It's frustrating to use defensively because it means we can't get our mana back later in the fight when we'll need it - we should not have to spend our mana regen talent when we already have full mana - and yet we have to use it defensively, because it's married to our damage reduction which we must have on in order to have any hope of survival.
3) Elemental's Thunderstorm doesn't keep most melee off of them. Warriors can intercept, rogues can shadowstep, death knights can death grip, druids can feral charge - all are right back on their target. paladins can counter with a 7 second stun and can waltz back into range with blessing of freedom. Ironically, thunderstorm only keeps other shamans out of range for any decent period of time.
4) Stoneclaw totem doesn't protect anything that we care about. Grounding totem will be eaten by the next spell anyway. Searing totem is pitiful damage that most classes shrug off without thinking about. Mana stream is negligible mana regen, and poison and disease cleansing totems are more effective when spammed rather than simply left down. The totems that need protecting are tremor and earthbind. Which can't be down at the same time as stoneclaw.
5) Imp earthbind doesn't prevent spamstring, crippling poison, wing clip, or frost trap. It's on a 15 second cooldown, which means it can't be spammed as quickly as any of the numerous spammable snares, and it can be killed before it even ticks once. Now that wands are off the GCD, making a macro to nuke it is easy, as is a totem stomping macro. This is a very underwhelming talent, and is not an effective one. As with shamrage - dual purpose abilities that are either defensive or offensive are not fun, they're just frustrating.
6) Totem stomping macros suck. Please change the game to prevent their use.
7) Fire nova totem with a 4 second delay, even when talented, means never using fire nova totem. It's not worth wasting all of that mana for no return. Changing totems to refund their mana cost if destroyed early would be a very welcome change. even better would be giving us abilities that can't be completely shut down every single time we cast them. It's not like interrupting a spell and then having the interrupt on delay - we're talking about an AoE that gives enough time for everyone to run out of range of it or destroy it before it goes off - without spending any cooldowns at all, even a GCD. There's not a weapon in the game that doesn't autoswing fast enough to kill the totem before it goes off. Again, wands off the gcd own totems like this.
8) Stunlock is not fun. In my recent pvp exploits, every time I was stunned, I died. Not because I couldn't trinket, but because I have no ability to follow the trinket with that prevents me from being stunned again, nor any mobility with which to escape from those who wish to stun me. No IBF, no Iceblock, no bubble, no shield wall or heal when stunned or stun duration reduction, no vanish, no feign death or disengage (assuming disengage gets fixed to actually do what it is designed to do), no shift to bear form with absurd amounts of armor and infinite removal of snares. Stunlock owns shamans, and it's the first thing people do in arenas.
