The Lack of DPS Shamans on Icecrown

Over the past few months, I've noticed a significant drought in shaman players let alone good shaman players even though the need for them is as high as ever.

I know the meta has shifted somewhat over the years but I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this. There used to be quite a few great eles after moltdown and there were few, but really talented, enhances on Deathwing. Maybe it's just my own bias, but they seem to have disappeared, possibly because bugs were fixed over the years or maybe they've just fallen out of favor (pugs treating them like trash idk).

I have a shaman myself, 6k enh/5.9 ele/6k resto. The reasons I don't play it (as a multi-classer) are because enhance is just a trash ret with BL (double buff covered by the abundance of dk tanks), ele dps is about the same as a BM hunter's, and rsham, though nothing is wrong with it per say, feels like it is just there to bring 5% haste and BL.

As a raidleader, I feel increasingly handcuffed to prio mediocre or downright bad shams (having to settle for rshams (also wth is with the enhances that I do find being 'spellhance'??) over better players simply because of raidcomp and the void of dps shamans (10 man HC ICC is the material I'm running for the most part). Furthermore, shamans straight up seem to be the most frequent offenders of d/cing or ragequitting / holding the raid hostage.

So yeah, I would just like to open up this discussion. Maybe some veteran players know something that I don't about this issue. Maybe it's not an issue (sham seems rarer than lock nowadays (Lock used to be like an endangered species on the server lol)). And for new players, what has your experience been with dps speccing as shaman?

I never played a shaman in 2009 and decided to main one here. Quickly became an alt. While I enjoy resto I will never play DPS because the specs are mediocre in terms of play style imo. Why would I dedicate time into making an ele set when I could play a mage or warlock instead?
Also I'm curious what makes a shaman player bad

I have recently played Enha shaman almost every week in both 25m and 10m Icecrown heroic raids.
While I did Enha, I geared up Elemental shaman also, and tried it in couple of raids (hopefully I get in a full 25m hc as Ele in the next couple of weeks to see how its overall damage done goes).

When it comes to pure DPS, Enha is fine, doing more than enough DPS on every fight (classic, arp and even spellhance build, doesnt matter which one you chose they all work), BUT, Enha shaman is not a Fury warrior.
When it comes to Elemental shaman, rotation being dull (spamming Lightning Bolt 90% of the time), it also does good enough DPS to earn its spot in the raid, BUT, Ele shaman is not a TTW mage.

When it comes to buffs and debuffs both specs provide, Enha's totem does give a bit more Strength and Agility than a DK's Horn of Winter, but Windfury totem does have a lot lower range when it comes to its area of effect (also, most shamans fail to place the totems in the first place), on top of that, Ele does not have anything unique when compared with other classes.
So, in the end when it comes to 25m raids, bringing a Blood DK tank, Boomie and a Demo Warlock with a Resto shaman completely negates all the effects both Enha and Ele could provide to the raid and they are outdpsed by a Fury warrior and TTW mage on almost every fight in the game (why waste a spot on Enha when you can get Fury, same goes for Ele and TTW).
This might be the big reason why noone choses to play Shamans in the first place.
Other classes provide "better" buffs and debuffs, while being more usefull to the raid, when it comes to DPS, utility and role as a whole in 25m raids.

When it comes to 10m raids, its a completely different story.
Both Enha and Ele can provide a lot of assistance on top of DPS in a solo tank solo heal 10m raid content.
Using Enha and Ele you can get every single buff and debuff in a 10m raid while having 2 paladins doing the tanking and healing.
So for any 10m content, Enha and Ele are more than welcome and highly needed if you ask me.

On top of everything here, both specs wont provide you with an unique play style, as said, Ele spams Lightning Bolt most of the times, and can hardly fill GCDs while moving, while Enha cant be called a "fun" spec when its rotation is compared to Feral or a Frost DK for example (at least from my point of view).
For example, unless spec/class I play bring me an unique play style or a feeling, all I want to do is to top metters so I would chose Fury warrior when called to a raid over an Enha shaman any time of the day (unless I am trying to gear the shaman or any of its specs).

I also feel like this when it comes to Frost DKs in the last couple of months especially.
If you have 0 DK tanks in the "pug" raid, and 3 DK dps, you somehow dont have Icy Talons. :D
Frost vs Unholy DK is a completely different story for many reasons, one being Frost DPS is high on skill cap and performance needed to do good DPS (topic as a whole is enough for another post completely new so I wont dive in to it more than this), but it confirms the general idea I have when it comes to where server got in the past couple of years.

Fun is completely lost, everyone wants to "minmax" ICC hc to gear as many alts as possible, and does it in a "notsofun" way, completely shutting down doors to classes that are more than enough viable for any raid in the expansion as a whole.

The worse part is, you cant blame them.

A lot of people are expecting others to carry their weight and are just being bad without any desire to improve (why learn a boss fight or how to dps/heal/tank when others can kill the boss while I just auto attack the boss mashing random **** on the keyboard).
On top of that, for some reason, even tho you have internet and any information on the palm of your hand at any given time of a 10+ year old expansion, missinformation about almost every class and spec in the game is higher than ever before.
You have a lot of content creators that are spreading all kind of dumb ideas and play styles that make an average player become a really bad player.
And we also have people buying toons, getting in raids with 0 knowledge on how fights work, yet alone their classes, and inflated gear score to cover for that. :D
This highly welcomes the idea to chose only the best DPS in this meta in raids, in case people are clueless so you can somehow push trough a fight with high numbers.

All in all I feel like if everyone played their class properly, we would see a lot less need for high gear score numbers to get in the raid in the first place, and a lot more diverse raids.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gnimo

On top of everything here, both specs wont provide you with an unique play style, as said, Ele spams Lightning Bolt most of the times, and can hardly fill GCDs while moving, while Enha cant be called a "fun" spec when its rotation is compared to Feral or a Frost DK for example (at least from my point of view).
For example, unless spec/class I play bring me an unique play style or a feeling, all I want to do is to top metters so I would chose Fury warrior when called to a raid over an Enha shaman any time of the day (unless I am trying to gear the shaman or any of its specs).

I also feel like this when it comes to Frost DKs in the last couple of months especially.
If you have 0 DK tanks in the "pug" raid, and 3 DK dps, you somehow dont have Icy Talons. :D
Frost vs Unholy DK is a completely different story for many reasons, one being Frost DPS is high on skill cap and performance needed to do good DPS (topic as a whole is enough for another post completely new so I wont dive in to it more than this), but it confirms the general idea I have when it comes to where server got in the past couple of years.

Fun is completely lost, everyone wants to "minmax" ICC hc to gear as many alts as possible, and does it in a "notsofun" way, completely shutting down doors to classes that are more than enough viable for any raid in the expansion as a whole.

The worse part is, you cant blame them.

A lot of people are expecting others to carry their weight and are just being bad without any desire to improve (why learn a boss fight or how to dps/heal/tank when others can kill the boss while I just auto attack the boss mashing random **** on the keyboard).
On top of that, for some reason, even tho you have internet and any information on the palm of your hand at any given time of a 10+ year old expansion, missinformation about almost every class and spec in the game is higher than ever before.
You have a lot of content creators that are spreading all kind of dumb ideas and play styles that make an average player become a really bad player.
And we also have people buying toons, getting in raids with 0 knowledge on how fights work, yet alone their classes, and inflated gear score to cover for that. :D
This highly welcomes the idea to chose only the best DPS in this meta in raids, in case people are clueless so you can somehow push trough a fight with high numbers.

All in all I feel like if everyone played their class properly, we would see a lot less need for high gear score numbers to get in the raid in the first place, and a lot more diverse raids.

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1000% agree with you on these comments and it's as relevant as ever. Literally videos coming out on Youtube as we speak "WOTLK CLASSIC will change everything for elemental" etc garbage

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Illik

Also I'm curious what makes a shaman player bad

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Here are some healing recounts with the last 3 resto shamans I've played with.
@ https://imgur.com/a/JeLHx8i
I mean LOOK AT THESE RECOUNTS BRO. LIKE, WHAT AM I EVEN LOOKING AT? SO BAD (sorry just looking at these is giving me PTSD)


1. ToC 25 TODAY,
two resto shamans on Jaraxxus
**OVERHEALING Recount**
Not a single heal on anyone with >Incinerate flesh<, nor do they even attempt to wind shear or purge nether power. Half of shaman #4's overhealing was Earth Shield. How do I know they weren't doing sh** on Incinerate Flesh?? Because I did ALL OF THEM 100% I was the Hpala. Then I got flames once, wasn't able to heal for a few seconds, only to check the Incin Flesh guy with about 6 seconds left before debuff pops. So I pop cds and I get it off.


2. ICC 10 TUESDAY
**HEALING RECOUNT**.
Next set of 4 images is an ICC 10 before reset (hence the melee cleave comp). Rsham was 5.7 with Lower healing / equal to the ret pala and spriest on DBS, Fester, Rot, PP. Again, fairly typical. Clueless, useless people attracted to shaman nowadays. Like why even come as rsham?????????

- That is fairly typical play from MOST resto shamans I have played with in the past year. Rest of the raid is working hard, meanwhile these resto shamans are sitting in the cooler smoking weed and jerking each other off, doing the bare minimum as they cruise through simply because they have BL (which requires like 7 raid warnings for them to actually use).

I have no idea what is up with this phenomena but it has seemed to be more and more common. Want a guaranteed raid spot? Want free gear? Want raid place safety? Want easy spots for 25m? Play Rsham and let the raid carry you as you provide must have buffs in 5% haste and BL. GG.

Also, I want to clarify. I'm not hating on new players or noobs. These shamans and these imgur images are just a tiny sample size are all in that 5.5+ territory. I just can't stand what players shaman seems to be attracting/plagued with right now. Disgusts me

I'd much much much rather take an ele or enhance with a chip on their shoulder or just trying to contribute in dps rather than play resto and literally sleepwalk through the raid like they seem to have embraced culturally