DoTs--- nerfed Healing spell---nerfed preincarnation---nerfed root rotting for xp--- nerfed pet--- still useless and people wonder why it's hard to find shaman mains anymore.
?? I've never seen folks say it's hard to find shaman mains - they're still almost god mode for their usability, etc.
I'd actually consider shaman one of the most overall useful healers in the group game by far. Druids have some nice abilities but as far as their role as a healer / priest they really have fallen FAR behind clerics and shaman imo. I can't speak for the raid game but the combo of buffs, rain heals, and heal over time spells put them on par with clerics for raw healing, add their buffs and ADPS boosts they grant their group i'd say they overall edge out clerics even. Druids pretty much just offer burst dps and ports as their 'advantage' over the other two priest classes. Their best dps aura is nullified by enchanters superior aura (and situationally cannot be used with mages or a couple other classes at all), ports really aren't a selling point, and while their burst dps is significantly higher than the other two priests, odds are if you are playing a priest dps was not your primary concern. Clerics have pretty similar heals to shaman but honestly they only have two specific abilities that I find useful that my shaman lacks: 1. Viral Dots, 2. Shining Armor (significantly better than the shaman variant of the spell) Even with all the other minor nerfs shaman still add up to a fantastic well rounded priest class, if people stop playing shaman because of this latest nerf to preincarnation then odds are they weren't playing a shaman to be a healer - they were playing a shaman to be invincible. #PowerOverwhelming
This Post --- LOL! Really don't find it hard to find a shaman.. more issue with choosing which shaman to invite to group... I think druids have it way worse then shamans.. but whatever. thanks for the good laugh.. -C
Slows - Still working perfectly fine Epic 2.0 - Still extremely viable and a cornerstone of melee burn DPS ---And I could literally stop right here. Because those two things make shaman's invaluable-- Cannibalization/Spiritual Channeling - Still an endless source of spell casting even with increased mana costs Spiritual Surge - Still the most potent AE Healing spell in game for any class. The ONLY rain spell that doesn't get used after 4-hits. Preincarnation... should've been nerfed, I will admit it. However I think the "1-hit and poof" was sufficient, making it 40% instead of 60% wasn't really necessary to remove the exploits -IMO- Pets... yes they are useless and they have been since level 50 basically... I honestly can not think of a time where shamans were under-powered in EQ's history... Kunark/Velious... LOL, Torpor+Slow made them ridiculously OP Luclin/PoP/LDoN/GoD... Slow was made a requirement to group in current content at this point in time. Guess who had the best slow! OoW-Modern Game... Epic 2.0 + Champion + Panther, hello melee DPS synergy If you want to complain about anything, you can complain about your personal DPS. The problem with that, is no matter what, you can still provide thousands of ADPS through a few simple clicks/AAs/Buffs. To the point that the DPS you bring to your group or your group in a raid, is quite large. You just can't parse that. Removing the Timer ID6 on their Bite nukes so that they can use the current and previous expansion nukes together, as well as an AA line to reduce their recast by 2-3s would be a start. Improved Twincast AA also would help for their burning.
About druids: About shamen: Haha. Personally, I find my shaman's DPS to be in line considering all the other stuff it can do. You won't be topping the parse on an extended fight or a raid, but don't you have better things to do at those times, anyway? And on short fights, your quick dots and bite will do fine. (If the fight's that quick, you didn't really need to contribute anyway, right?) Now, as to:
Shaman are way OP compared to the other priest classes, in terms of power and obvious "easy" utility and buffs, they beat the heck out of druids, and they compete not at all with "robots" the way a cleric does. That being said, the shamans biggest downfall is that they are so OP and "easy" utility. So much so that at least half of every melee/tank/pet-class player I know boxes one. And they all probably think they play their shaman better than you can play yours. This is why both of my brothers(both shaman mains) quit EQ. It causes burn-out. In my opinion the dev's should get creative about how they can make shaman "harder" to play(box) So that having a real live player at the shaman's helm has obvious benefits. You don't see any melee or casters boxing druids for the 3 or 4 casts of debuffs it takes to equal 20pct of a shamans fast cast slow.
Daldaen is pretty much right, I'm hard pressed to think of a time where shaman were bad off for the most part. I think it's the whole bard syndrome effect, bard and shaman are both OP classes in A LOT of ways, however neither class kills stuff that quickly compared to most other classes, most people in EQ just care about how fast class XXXXX is able to kill mob YYYYY Because of that Bards and Shaman for the most part remain consistently powerful desired classes that *most* of the time skirt under the radar of nerfs.
druid can offer added dps for casters in group , same for shm with melee. i like what shm can offer now with healing ( druid got much better single heals than shm tho ) and an instant " aa " cast heal. i like shm fast group heal and overtime heal.. combined with splash . but some druid can do over 100k dps on a burn ( saw in raid parse ) while shm still have hard time to pass 20k,
What a druid brings to a caster group is no where close what a shaman brings to a melee group. Not even in the same ball park.
If you want to dps roll a wiz or an zerker... your a support class... you might not be able to do 100k dps BUT you can keep the folks alive who do.. and increase others dps at the same time.
I am going to have to agree with the Druids here. If you want to talk about having it bad how about this list: NO mana return to get back in the fight Minimal ADPS/marginalization of ports No heal like Surge (really Surge should have been given to both Shaman AND Druids, I cant think of 1 legit reason Druids didnt get a Rain heal) Overall less desired/useful buffs (When was the last time a tank/melee DEMANDED damage shield? Compared to Unity?) The having to cast 3 or 4 debuffs to equal slow is also lame
i hate nerfs for any class , and i agree that druids should get some form of mana return after a rez. ( they are pretty useless after a rez ( in raids ) and for several minutes ) . i was saying about the dps and singles heals that druid got much better than us , specially to not getting us nerfed any more , if we can do better in some way, were are below on others. i am ok with no dps upgrade ( wouldn' t mind a reduce casting time for leopard tho ) specially because i raid a lot and i heal most of the time .
Druids are supposed to have better single target heals than shaman. - And they do! Shaman are supposed to have better heals over time/group heal over time than druids. - And they do! - All is right in the world (within that context). Put me in the camp that the targeted AE direct heal given to shaman did seem to come out of left field a little bit (though I remember reading shaman said they struggled in that area - though this seemed a bit excessive of fulfilling that need. ~~ Has anyone actually looked at how much ADPS shaman give to melee? It seems like (but I have no true idea) that is would be much more than a druid can do DPS wise, if you add up all the melee (in group and out) that the shaman affects.
Shamen got the rain heal because we asked for it specifically. As to druids NOT getting it? The NATURE healer, and a healing RAIN spell? So many reasons and possibilities. Healing Rain, Deluge, Downpour, Torrent, Mist, [insert precipitation her] etc. It wouldn't surprise or bother me to see it in the next round of CotF.
Shaman have an Overtly noticeable effect on melee and tanks, Druids have a let me get my spreadsheet out and then prove to you that you..... would still be better off with a shaman.... effect on casters.
The only way a druid would get this is if we asked for a combat use-able 96 rez. I am making a joke to show how druids never get specifically or even close to what we ask for, always something completely not related to all of our requests. Druid feedback has seemed next to useless the last few years. They ask for it and then seem to do nothing about it, as if they already have their minds made up what they want to do and are asking purely out of habit.
You can tell what class is currently viewed as the worst to play now, by following the raid armor available on the FV server. There is currently zero pieces of dreadweave for sale, except for the shaman class and no one is buying it. I put shaman with clerics as least desirable class to play currently. Paladins for some reason(sks) are doing poorly also, with a lot of high end raid gear sitting for weeks in the baz. Rogues are a close third to available and unwanted raid armor. Clerics don't have a lot available because there aren't many people playing them. Monks had lots of gear available, but they are seeing a rise in popularity. Rangers have become less popular(more avail gear) and zerkers, who were very unwanted, have seen an increase in demand for gear. SKs are the #1 class for fastest selling/most demand for armor/weapons(I swear 75% of the pop is an SK or has an sk alt). Necros were very popular, but I'm seeing more gear available now. Guess the Deathbloom nerf drove some away. This is just seat of my pants, watching the bazaar and people WTB in chat. But it's funny that it's always whats perceived as the most powerful class that has people flocking to it. Until that class gets nerfed for whatever fun ability they had that attracted people to it.
I don't understand the disdain for the shaman pet. It takes one line in a macro to add /pet attack and he adds up to 1 or 2 dots worth of damage for free.
My pet does ok with a cleric merc against summoning mobs and low level named. Takes forever though if SC is down. It would be nice if one of the pet focus items we can wear would work on them.
