SHAMAN in Burning Crusade Classic: Is It Any Better Now?

[Music] hello ladies and gentlemen willie here with tbc confirmed it's about time we did a little bit of a class update let's take a look back at each class in the burning crusade the performance overall and hopefully help you make your choice moving forwards we will be looking at what's new in terms of talents and abilities leveling pve who's the new king of the meter pvp has much changed and tier sets which actually exist for every specialization now and through this i hope to answer is your class any better now and today we meet blizzard's answer to the question how can we justify adding a class with shamanistic powers to the alliance the answer of course was the dwarves after the summoning of ragnaros their binding or creating of elementals within brd they seem the natural fit for the wait wait they're dark kind wolves yes but they are they're different oh okay sure if you say so so what did blizzard come up with then well the second most obvious choice have a race of space goats crash their spaceship into azeroth and then have prophet velen do some profit vision stuff that came out as hey the alliance looked like our type let's go make friends with them i read the law for this you know honest finally the faction only class was gone never to be returned yet by late game of vanilla it's easy to see how the grass look reena on the other side holy paldas started to become unumable healing machines and elie shamans were perhaps one of the most lethal pvp combatants before resilience came out and of course for a huge amount of players they had only ever faced these two quote-unquote new classes never having played alongside them or got a real feel of how they played first hand and there was a huge surge and quite frankly a demand for both shamans and paladins to fill raid spots for their excellent utility for both the reds and the blues today though the focus is on the shaman if you want an easy raid spot in tbc not just on alliance on horde 2 shaman is arguably going to be the highest demand class bar none this goes for all three specializations too though restoration more so than others that's for sure so with three specs to cover and plenty to talk about let's get started shall we so what's new baseline of course then we'll get into the spec specific stuff after well without a doubt the biggest most important impactful and noticeable change for shamans from classic to tbc is that they are no longer shown as pink on the ui by default it just looks plain wrong they get their true deep blue colors new totems are in those being the fire and earth elemental totems as the name suggests they are summoned from the totems themselves and if said totem dies or is replaced so does the elemental so use with care as they pack a 10 minute cooldown they're also guardians not pets this means you do not control them directly so they may just have the tendency to decide that a mob 20 yards in the distance has looked at them the wrong way and they need to pop on over there and give them a bash on their head so use recaution if in any way they could risk a chain pull or just be ready to replace or recall a totem the earthen boy is more tanky taunts does some minor damage to the target and they're also nature immune the fire provides a small reflect shield for the shaman and the elemental fire nova and a fire blast though is quite liable to umi itself very quickly this will be your go-to elemental in most cases we need that extra dps and of course it's immune to fire effects speaking more about totems we have two new main changes that have been made a new er totem with a focus that this shaman will be part of a spellcaster group in mind wrath of air adding a very solid extra amount of spell damage to your whole group as well as a huge quality of life change totemic call over the expansions blizzards have tried so many iterations of how do we allow shamans to move their totems about easily i guess this is the first try it instantly destroys all your totems refunding 25 of the mana cost it goes without saying that the wipe you've no doubt experienced on the horde when dog randomly gets pulled from out of nowhere in molten core when a whole flock of whelplings appear midway through your broodlord fight or when a dozen trash mobs decide to join you for the heightened encounter you get the idea but yeah there really is no excuse now this allows much easier movement of totems and a lot faster too a new elemental shield was added water shield giving a very nice passive mana per five tool with a proc to restore some mana when hit this all but replaces lightning shield in near all areas of content by a few it's even free to cast and finally the big one the reason why on top of all the already great utility shamans offer the reason you're going to be seeing so many of them this noise right here heroism or bloodlust so in tbc they are a little bit different from retail whilst they do the same thing for both factions 30 haste for 40 seconds i guess blizzard wanted to keep a little something faction specific for each of the new race class combos coming in the form of the sound animations and the name the differences back then were it's a party-wide buff not raid wide and you can swap party members during combat so shaman in your more min max guild will be rotated into the highest dps group to maintain a permanent uptime on heroism and they can do this because on top of being able to move characters there is no debuff like sated or exhaustion after having benefited from this effect also you can use it in arena i think this could be an area that may attract some criticism as we go into tdc because getting heroism is just well it's fun for any class role or spec having that taken away so your warlocks and hunters can dominate the meters even harder is something i can see being frowned upon and are a number of extremely easy fixes like not allowing groups to swap in combat or adding a debuff to it either way though i just thought i should let you know about that levelling then as always we'll keep it short here mana efficiency for dps specs is considerably better now compared to classic meaning generally speaking there's just a lot less downtime another positive is gaming and tbc is just well a whole lot better in classic it often felt a bit of a struggle to actually find male quality gear that had the stats you wanted as either dps spec quest actually gives some of these now and i say some because yes you're still going to have plenty of lever gear as enhancement or cloth is elemental but at least your gear is giving more relevant stats than a random pile of intellect stamina and spirit and you're just trying to make do you'll probably still be enhancement too for levelling until decent greens or blues start appearing on the auction house which in time can make elemental a bit more attractive of an option jewelcrafting on top of this gives a lot of new great rings and necks at all level values which should be something else to aid out your performance onto pve then this is where the shaman really shines like we started off with you want a raid spot you want to think about shaman so in classic they are a bit all over the place you see plenty of restoration less elemental and very few enhancement generally speaking in tbc it's good news across the board while still not really a meter topping dbs class what shamans offer is just too big to ignore in any of their roles let's start with what is in my opinion the most improved out of the three specs enhancement so for enhancement or actually just shamans in general they're a class they just have so many good talents in each tree that it's often too difficult of a choice to branch out into the other trees for extra support rather than just cramming nearly all of your points into the main tree because you kind of have to here's a ballpark kind of enhancement specialization you will see in pve changes with the spec include the threat generation from rock biter weapon is gone it's just flat bonus damage now the tanky talents are still there though if enhancement tanks were raring classic they're going to be next to non-existent in tbc as blizzard guided them much more towards their intended role now having decided what that would be the big new highlight for this tree is talents that make sure you don't go um in about 30 seconds including shamanistic focus mental agility and shamanistic rage your end of talent tree ability which also packs a solid 30 dr on top i guess the big change here is that it's time to hang up the two-hander and become a dual-wield lightning god it's hand enhanced totally dead though in pve yeah it basically is yeah a number of talents really benefit from dual wielding such as the updated storm strike as well as the fact you can have a win fury on both your main and offhand weapon now you also get 97 melee hits solely through talents as shown here which is pretty incredible and streamlines your gearing a nice bit the real selling point for enhancement and why your raid will always want one is unleashed rage essentially a permanent 10 increase to your party's attack power goes without saying as to why this is so good there's also just a lot more going for the spec in general now than there was in classic you still got totem twisting storm strike can actually be used as the debuff cap is raised as we'll be using flame shock as another debuff your mana management is overall also much better and though those big meaty hits from the two-hander are gone it's replaced with a much more fluid and fast-paced feeling playstyle so from one dps spec to the next just like enhancement elemental has come a long way much as has been the case with the previous a far better man efficiency now and can put out some very respectable damage early on into the expansion but does not scale as well as other casters do here's an idea of what you may be looking at for ellie elemental focus gets a little reworked to save much more mana giving a spell discount guaranteed after a spell critics landed and believe me ellie's are going to be spamming crits hard more mana gained from unrelenting storm no it's only got three points in here it's just a result of having so many mandatory feeling talents if struggling you may wish to take points out from extra spell range and put them here instead the threat modifier from earth shock has been moved to frost shock keep that in mind and if you thought enhancement got a lot of free hit well with this build you're packing nine percent hit baseline draenei shaman get an extra one percent for free through the racial and then you have totem of wrath your end of talent three ability which gives a further three so you're looking at a possible 13 spell hit for elemental before any gear speaking of totem of wrath this is the big selling point for ellie three percent more crit and hit is huge for your caster group note that it is a fire totem though so the fire elemental is going to be sitting on the bench for most of the raid content finally lightning overload i like to think of this as wind fury for spells an extra chance to fire off a duplicate spell but with a damage penalty and no threat this is where you can really fly up on the meters early on with some good rng during cooldowns and at least you can say as the shaman you always know you're going to be getting heroism which leaves us with restoration here's something along the lines of what you'll be looking at the build depends on what kind of group you're going to be in of course if you're not in a melee group you don't need these extra tone talents in the enhancement tree and you can just put more points into restoration instead when it comes to restoration if you've been playing it in classic i can safely say you know most of what's up in tbc i'd like to introduce you to your new best friend they're called chain heel chain heel is um yeah it's really good it gets even better now through talents as well you've got earth shield which is a solid upkeep buff remember to keep it on your tanks or a fellow caster or healer who could benefit from the spell knockback protection in some cases for real though raids often have multiple restoration shamans because they are so strong and they bring heroism of course once again if it's anything to go by by how constantly high the demand is for restoration shamans on the horde siding classic at the moment i think we can take that by two and that's what it's gonna look like in tbc in fact i'd say restoration shaman will be the most desired spec class combo in the entire game so then pve wise we are looking in a very strong position overall is it the same story in pvp uh no not entirely no so you may have noticed in the video so far i haven't talked about five versus five in arenas at all they do exist in tbc they're even a good way to cap out your points for the week but in terms of a frequently run competitive format no i don't expect them to be that the five's bracket was totally removed at the start of legion and it went quietly into the night for the longest time it's been considered a more for fun mode rather than something competitive and i bet the number of five starting in tbc compared to twos or threes would just be such a massive difference you can still get titles and gear from it though so i've no doubt they will still be run but why is shaman the first time i'm choosing to bring up fives in arena well let's have a look at elemental in pvp as a case in point you may have noticed so far with basically every other class that's very highly represented in arena pvp is they can do all the stuff their class is good at doing instantly rogues warlocks even frost mages to an extent elemental to do damage it needs to cast and casting with a rogue in your face and pillars is a big problem now early in tbc with next to no resilience i bet they could find a good few run it down burst comps but as the expansion goes on they're gonna start to really fall off here is an example spec pretty much packing all the tanks possible into burst and praying to the rng gods the lightning overload procs when it needs to even still resilience reducing damage from crits will start to hurt builds like this did i mention if shamans get interrupted on nature they can only cast flame or frost shock what made this speck so grain classic is there was pretty much zero burst protection whatsoever as well as most of pvp encounters being open battlefields and both of those are being taken away from elemental now also elemental mastery just gets straight up nerfed in 2.3 and you can no longer batch chain lightning and earth shock the spec is definitely sold in fives though bringing that standard shaman group wide utility and there's just more players on the field so the chance you'll actually be able to play the game is much higher so does enhancement fare any better yes i'm happy to say it does it's not without its issues like you know having a mana bar being vulnerable to being kited having to choose between a slow or an interrupt through shocks they don't have any hard cc at least it can get some things done tants like the updated toughness and improved ghost wolf help on the mobility side you're still very reliant on wind fury procs to really put out damage consistently though like other shaman specs it's best to be on the offensive through purge grounding totems and shocks to keep the pressure up is two-handed enhancement totally dead in pvp as well then actually it can have its place as can using a shield you aren't just running around dual wielding all day two-handers can be really good for when you finally reach that frost mage and land one attack before he catch you for another 30 seconds and shields can come in very handy when you're starting to get focused by melee and just waiting for peels or for your healer to be available but much like with pve most the time in pvp you're gonna be seeing restoration shamans here's an ideal spec for you if i have to describe resto shamans i'd say they are fair they have very clear strengths and weaknesses and unlike the previous two specs restos are actually seen in a few high-level comps consistently retribution paladin and resto shaman in twos can be a real lethal combo with their combined class syngi stacking up very well or equally well in freeze comps with double melee cleaves like rhett's arms resto when fury totem is huge they can make appearances in caster cleaves remember hiro works in arena so a frost mage of icy veins up and hero is gonna have under one second polycast and just overall extremely high pressure openers strength wise for the resto sham purge to keep pressure up giving huge buffs to teammates through their utility when you're in ghost wolf you count as a beast it's instant cast so you can immune zap grounding totem and interrupt with earth shock very strong heels so what are the weaknesses you see about those very strong heels you need to cast them they don't have a very good instant cast healing toolkit and one interrupt totally cripples the entire class you're relying on earthshield nature's guardian procs nature's swiftness that's only once every three minutes though especially at lower gear levels it's really easy to just get zerg down in a matter of seconds you need good peels the ability to duke interrupts and just generally to be able to outplay and stay cool under pressure you could say as much for any healer but i really think this goes doubly for the shaman also if you ever find yourself playing versus a warlock and you do not have a curse to spell on your team you're gonna have a permanent curse of tongues running on you and that's gonna make your life so miserable the melee cleaves that is quite the problem and is another reason you need to apply the pressure and aim to end the game fast overall though the arena representations for shaman goes something like resto enhance elemental and overall it doesn't have as easy a time as seeing high rating that other classes do but it's still very possible so let's finish up with some tier gear tier 4 enhancement the two set 12 additional strength from totems that sounds like something you get from a level 25 green item the four set 30 more damage on storm strike i mean i get blizzard wanted to buff the hybrid dps classes but they didn't exactly go overboard with this did they restoration three mp5 three the four set smaller cooldown on nature's swiftness that's actually not bad elemental 20 spell damage that's a bit more reasonable than the other two we've seen so far and a chance on crit to reduce the mana cost of next spell not bad mana can still be a concern early on tier 5 enhancement 2 set gives you a chance to get an instant castle as a healing wave that's pretty solid actually if nothing else to cast in the moment it helps with your survivability a little bit it's something the four set is five percent more haste from your flurry proc really nice actually most of your damage will still be coming from auto attacks so this is a big help restoration smaller cost on lesser healing wave not the best you shouldn't really be casting this too much the four set a decent reduction on healing wave after getting a crit from another heal it would be good but it's once per minute so not so much elemental like enhancement better off feels but you still have to cast them on the two set as for the four it's like a reverse tier 5 mana refunds instead of productions now tier 6 enhancement 2 set mana cost reductions mana shouldn't be as much of an issue anymore for you the 4 sets some attack power after storm strike hits albeit a relatively small amount resto though here we go now this is a tier set the two set 10 cost reduction on chain heel all set five percent more heels on chain heel this is what you want to see really powerful resto shamans are going to be seeing a lot of use out of that chain heal button in tbc elementor again pretty nice rather thematic 2 set giving you some extra bonuses when you have all your totems up they made something akin to this an actual talent in legion as well i believe which i thought was really cool the full set more damage on your main spell love to see it also this set looks absolutely amazing which means it's that time again after having covered a good deal of how the shaman has changed and how it looks in the new tbc landscape can we give the answer to the shaman is it any better now in pve hugely better enormously whilst you are already happy seeing resto shamans in classic you can now add enhancement and elemental to that list although places will be more limited for the dps slots they should experience a much better quality of gameplay throughout the expansion on the pvp side elemental takes a fall as we progress there's no real two ways about it whilst enhancement and especially restoration continue to grow and i would say both improve moving from classic so overall the majority is certainly positive feedback for the shaman heading through the dark portal there we go then that's the shaman anything you would add below let me know oh also if you like to support the channel moving forwards i am on patreon which i'll link below anyways thank you all so much for watching and listening in and i'll see you on the next one very soon you

Channel: WillE

Views: 197,291

Keywords: the burning crusade, tbc, tbc beta, WoW Classic tbc, World of Warcraft, shaman

Id: rhHDogcUFgs

Length: 19min 53sec (1193 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021