I quit my shaman because it was dissatisfying seeing my group heal out perform my group ward. We made several threads on the problem and saw nothing by way of fixes, even after the developers responded and said they knew there was a problem. For the most part, we've all given up hope or moved on. It's discouraging to see clerics in the same boat. :/
We aren't dead yet ainaree and either are shamans but we all need something from high up to keep us going...will we ever have the occasionally touted but never announced character revamp 2 to hopefully address these issues I don't know but if they do happen my guess is probably in march as currently they are doing open world pvp fixes (still need much more than proposed so far but thats another story).
Not dead ... but it is incredibly frustrating to know when mechanics are against you and that no matter how you try, you're at a disadvantage against a class that just has to maintain one or two spells to completely dominate your efforts. Even though I'm no longer a shaman, I am hoping they tweak things around so everyone feels a little more well-rounded.
You seem surprised. Xelgad mentioned healer class balance coming in February on our original shaman thread back in November (yes in Beta). February is nearly over, I have stuck with the mystic waiting for these class balance changes to come and nothing, it's incredibly frustrating. I'm loosing interest rapidly too when the more other classes gear up around me the more shamans fall behind because we don't make full use of crit bonus. I am better off living in non-stamina gear with WDB and just dps'n.
Don't you dare! Merig etc are a pain as an inq and we have to work our butts off, but we get through it. And I agree, direct group heal gets way too much work. It would be really nice for my group reactive to work on most of that damage. It's way inefficient to cast it with the cast time vs benefit.
My only suggestion is to hold on till march when I hope they finally get around to fixing classes especially healers.
My vision of the healer revamp is the devs noticing that a few of us are still playing our shaman, and nerfing us furthur.
Consolidate all priests into 2 classes, I'll let you guess which ones. (Hint: HoTs) That's the update, remember you heard it here first lol. Joking aside, it's discouraging having the most vocal threads from beta AND initially when ToV went live be completely swept under the rug, my faith in the devs giving a damn about priest balance waned significantly months ago.
TBH if the promised healer revamp does not occur by march not sure what I'll do....I mean is it the intention to fill out healer slots in raids with only channeler's and druids for the harder content?
Oh, I don't know...they include one of these on the next collectors edition: and I can just put it place to hit my group heal button and go have a sandwich and a drink during those fights.
It appears that they are either blowing this off, or seriously considering the marketplace tequila thing....
No news in this case probably means "we don't care". Going through fights where my job entails watching my group on the edge of death while I have ONE button that does anything to alleviate the situation and cheering on the druid is not my idea of fun (don't get me wrong, 1) our mt warden is awesome and 2) I don't hold it against the other archetypes ). Perhaps we can use station cash to buy encounters that are actually challenging in a FUN way.
I request this mechanic not be changed. I have no issue sitting on certain fights so druids can shine with wards backing (fronting?) them up. I listened to them complain about not having anything to do last expansion in raid, now they get to do the bulk of the work. As for shamans, they're still doing tons of healing so other than CB use and maybe minor recast adjustments they're not losing out on fun. Until there's a fight that ONLY 4 druids can heal on and the other healers post a 0k HP I appreciate the ability to sit and take a breather. It's hard keeping up with Dirges on the parse every fight, those pesky dual weilding scouts! Honestly, there's not much to heal until you get to MHG, QQ, so what if we as Inqs can't heal it, any raid worth a damn has 4-5 druids on the roster \ alts now any way. Inquisitors complaining about Derig and Swiftclaw make me laugh, I run a fail 430 base potency on my dps set and have no issue keeping up on those, I don't even swap to heal gear for them.