Earthen Power Nerf: Overkill.

#0 - Sept. 10, 2009, 2:58 a.m.

The 3.2.2 PTR change to earthen power will be crippling to Enhancement Shaman, I am not saying that this talent isn't a bit too powerful, but granting the shaman short term immunity to movement impairing effects is not the issue, the issue is it granting the shamans team mates the immunity.

Removing the immunity from the shaman themselves will do nothing but cripple a spec that has just recently regained viability, without showing any form of dominance, except as a part of a counter RMP team in one tournament, a tournament which doesn't well reflect the state of play on live (nothing over item level 213).

This comp (beastcleave), has not shown any heavy dominance on live as of yet (a whole one week into the season), and people have not even had the time to develop and test counter strategies to it.

I would propose that if you feel earthen power is overly powerful, you remove the snare immunity from allied targets, but leave it on the shaman, else we will see a return enhancement shaman being unable to stick to a target.

We already suffer greatly from a lack of controllable damage, reliance on long cooldowns (bloodlust/heroism, spirit wolves), and inability to kill healers. Returning Enhancement Shaman an easy to kite class will severely undermine everything you have done to give us arena viability.

Ghostcrawler

#140 - Sept. 11, 2009, 5:07 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Posts still being locked, Shaman still deserving a response.

Fishing can get you banned. Please don't.

[Not tracked]

Ghostcrawler

#141 - Sept. 11, 2009, 5:09 p.m.

We think Earthen Power and the Ghost Wolf change were trying to solve the same problem. Together they felt like overkill to us, and we thought the Ghost Wolf change was more interesting so we kept that one. Your mileage may vary and I would be surprised if many shaman agreed since they were the target of the nerf.

Players in general make too much of Arena representation, and especially the SK-100. Those numbers can be very valuable if analyzed correctly, but they are not a measurement of Arena balance the way a thermometer measures the temperature. Besides, abilities or strategies can be annoying or overpowered even if that doesn't translate to comp dominance.

To address the (frankly overblown) RMP "bias", we're seeing a lot more comps this season so far, which is cool. We just want to make sure those comps are doing something besides just blowing someone up. We certainly think the Arena can support more than RMP, which is why we have made so many changes for other classes. But the reason a lot of players like the RMP playstyle, and why some consider it the only legit team (though that is emphatically not our viewpoint) is because it requires a lot of coordination and layering of abilities. That's not to say RMP can't go for the blow someone up strategy on occasion, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that strategy existing, as long as it's not the only one. When every match feels like the same match, Arena gets a lot less interesting.

Ghostcrawler

#253 - Sept. 11, 2009, 9:16 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Biased much? You really think Shamans and Hunters were blowing people up and thats it? Maybe you should play this game more to see this wasn't the case. There were times they could but so does RMP and every other comp.

I was addressing two different points. This thread asked for an explanation for the shaman changes. It also speculated that we want to nerf any comp that isn't RMP. That's a bit of a silly thing to say, but I wanted to go on the record anyway of saying that isn't our goal.