Its because not even shamans will look at the fundamental problem how wards work. A ward is four square a bad deal when it needs to get compared to druid healing (hots) I can't say for sure its fair ... but is it suppose to be? Maybe its become more about how people view the ward?
I'm ok with wards being left alone. but if we're going to be the **** healers now, then re-balance something else. When shamans were teh top healers, Druids were needed for buffs and AE blocks. If Druids are going to be top healers, move AE blocks and dps to Shamans and both will be needed. Although really, given that wards are the entire basis of the archetype, leaving them broken and doing other fixes doesn't solve the issue. But i guess i can regognize that developers have decided that they screwed up 10 years ago when they created a ward-based healing class and now would rather get rid of them.
If they want to go the route that our debuffs give us purpose, then they should provide some in game feedback as to the effect that the debuffs actually have on the mob so it is measurable. Right now I am spamming my debuffs in between heals with no real idea of how effective they are. My raid leader has me back on my defiler under the theory that my debuffs actually do something, but we have no way to measure if they do.
All they have to do is let crit bonus fully apply to wards (or at least MORE of it apply to wards) but I think class imbalance is just SOE policy. Either they aren't aware of the problem (highly unlikely) or they know about it and just don't care. Balance has never been their goal.
They need to unlock it completely, there are two reasons for this: 1. Obviously it would increase wards, and I doubt they would enter anywhere close to the pre-ToV 'OP' territory since they are already getting burned up instantly 2. It would make the WDB gear more viable. Why does this matter? Because it would allow shamans to wear some DPS centered gear during easier content and have a little more fun. This is a video game after all. As it is a shaman wearing WDB gear would be a disaster for healing. The biggest problem, imo, isn't that Shaman performance severely suffered because it didn't. The problem is for a shaman to be effective they have to be played COMPLETELY differently than they once were. While the STA/HP (edit:lol stahp) was seemingly a shift in stats it resulted in a class overhaul for Shamans. MMO's that don't even have ward specific classes have healers with more effective and faster reusable ward type abilities. Most shamans I know didn't just 'adjust' either, they quit being shamans outright. Either by quitting the game or switching classes. Resulting not in a balanced priest population but one with almost no shamans at all.
In my defence I've never switched voluntarily I've always pushed to remove crit bonus penalty, even if they simply adjust base values for no effective change, at least itemisation would make sense, because currently itemisation doesn't apply equally for all priests/heals. It's a glaring oversight. Shamans forever strong, just not forever easy. The day I replace myself because I can't do my job is the day I'll consider the alternate position.
The CB multiplier lift to 0.8 in December made such a small difference to the size of wards it was a complete slap in the face, it was something in the magnitude of 10k to a group ward iirc I could look the thread up where I posted values (as did others), but I seriously cbf wasting my time. They could completely lift the CB penalty and it wouldn't make much of a difference to the size of wards comparable to the incoming damage we're seeing now. With the amount shamans now rely on secondary healing outside of wards it's a complete farce this penalty still exists at all since CB still affects a shaman's non-ward heals and speccing too heavily towards potency for wards alone is detrimental to overall healing. It makes zero sense that the same piece of gear does not do the same for a shaman as it does for any other healer. The mechanism of how wards work is the real issue, not being able to control where a group ward is spent and having a generously sized 450k ward cast pre an AE that hits each individual in the group for 400k+ is an absolute farce especially when the same person just keeps dying over and over cos they have non-stam gear and reckless assault ear and don't know how (or are too lazy/don't care) to use their own abilities/temps. If people aren't going to use (and appropriately time) things like Turnstrike, Sever Hate, Equilibrium etc then maybe SOE should just remove them from the game. Other classes solo heal **** like Irdul just fine with 1 button, so honestly why work 5 times as hard as them for the same output when they don't even need your help, just debuff, cast temps and dps just like clerics and druids did when shamans were apparently "op" and they were the "cure bots", take a hiatus and have fun, Spiritual Leadership ftw. As for adjusting, I highly doubt there's any shaman that has cleared wing 2 that has not adjusted, they had to to survive. Those that didn't, quit when ToV launched back in November. As for me, I scored an awesome new job, can't raid anymore and am loving life, sayonara eq2.
It would amuse me to watch a druid try to solo heal Irdul post-5 minutes with 1 button. If I were going to fix it I would make CB 1.0 on wards, and just change spirit aegis to a 3s/30s base cast/reuse ward, then boost all wards for all healers by ~15%. Would also change Equil or DG to the same thing. 5 trigger reactive per person 3s cast 30s reuse. Would Druids still be better under really heavy healing situations? Ya. But Clerics/Shamans wouldn't be trash.
Let me ask you this, how many full-time druids are on your roster? and how many shamans? and if tomorrow, magically, shamans HPS goes up by a raw 20% due to whatever "ward buffs", will that make you dump some of those druids and run more shamans? (or clerics or channelers).
The devs had the fixes for shamen, but used those fixes to create the Channeler class. Just sayin'...
If I were raiding in my own perfect little world I would use 1 of each healer, tbh. The first healer I'd drop would be the Channeler, even. The second would be the Inquisitor. I haven't been in Fatality long enough to know their roster, but imo the best setup right now is 1 of each healer class.
well, in that case you're on the same page with the developers then. from what i've seen, carrying 4 druids is just a lot more beneficial than carrying a 2nd anything else. but i'm not raiding Maw yet, so maybe there is content i haven't seen that has use for.. wards.. or something, because in all of Wings 1 & 2, there is absolutely no reason to have a shaman in the raid. I mean, they can work - and we run 3, but if i could have druids instead of them, i'd take them in a heartbeat. And what most often prevents us from killing content this expac is not having enough druids on.
You can clear all of the content with 2 druids, I know because Equil did it. There are many more reasons to bring a Mystic, but Defilers get a lot more important if they keep going with this resist gating that they're doing in Deathtoll. If you raid without a Mystic in Wings 1/2 though you're just gimping yourself. EotA, Stampede, Enhanced RoA, Full Moon Bolster, etc are all amazing, and Totemic is just as good as Tshell for CS2.
Obviously using 1 button was an exaggeration but not far off the mark...one button (group HoT) accounting for >60% of a druids outgoing heals on Irdul solo healing the group is reality and about as close to 1 button healing as you're going to get, the rest is mostly passive stuff and the occasional dribble from something like hwtp or the occasional direct heal. If group ward even did 20% of outgoing heals for a shaman on the same encounter we'd not even be having this discussion. Also you say "clerics", while I agree Inq's could use a little love, Templars solo heal Irdul without breaking a sweat and definitely don't need any more *******.
Group reactive is as dumb as group ward. Just because templars have additional tools outside of group reactive doesn't mean the base group reactive (shared between members) doesn't need changes like group ward (shared between members) to match group hot (not shared between members). But I was suggesting simply changing something else so that the base group heal/reactive can be mainly used as tank heals, as they nearly always have been, at least the times I raided on clerics/shamans.
