SHAMAN in WotLK Classic: Was It Any Good Though?

[Music] we started this journey in 2019 and with wrath of the lich king classic confirmed for 2022 it is time for another class retrospective series during vanilla we asked was it any good though in tbc we moved on to ask is it any better now and for wrath well it's no longer a question of asking if your class is good or not because every spec in the game is great at something so we're going to be looking at what is new to your class baseline the pve talent changes as well as raiding how well your class is expected to perform in raiding throughout the expansion pvp performance in the arena as well as taking a look at your tss and then through this hopefully we can give a proper answer to your class in wrath of the lich king classic just how broken is it now [Music] before we talk more about world of warcraft though i wanted to mention a different type of raiding first a little known game you probably haven't heard of called rage shadow legends sometimes now and again i hear they let world of warcraft players outside at which point you'll become aware that you cannot log into your computer but what if you had access to awesome games on your phone instead here's just two examples of raid's huge cast of champions we never is a boss in the campaign but you can also find her in a shard she's got some nice utility in applying an attack buff on herself and she puts out here reductions on her default skill she can also block revive with a strong single target attack as well but her best use will be her third skill an aoe nuke that resets its cooldown on all her skills if it kills an enemy gala is a masterful single target nuker who was built from the ground up to overcome enemy defense champions with all of her skills ignoring a portion of enemy defense and she also turns 20 of her damage dealt into a shield and there's currently tons happening in raid this month they've got special events every day including an entirely new event for the summer solstice called the path of light where you'll be able to explore three branching paths to get the rewards you want the most braids currently running a special deliana chase event where new and existing players can get their hands on the amazing deliana a brand new legendary champion all you have to do is log in and play raid for seven days between now and july 20th and you get hair for free and once you're in game you can enter promo code my deliana to get 50 xp brews to match your legendary hero straight away and getting a nice bit of silver as well but that's not all the gifts for new players keep coming hit the link in the description and get a free champion verges 200 000 silver one xp boost one energy refill and one ancient shard you can summon an awesome champion as soon as you get in game you'll find these rewards here in your inbox for the next 30 days only many thanks to raid for the sponsor let's talk wow so if you've played tbc or even if you gave it a miss the shaman was by far nova class even came remotely close the most in demand for raiding content between totems three specializations that brought a wide variety of utility on top of good performance and this little known spell called heroism or bloodlust this class was always on everyone's recruitment list i said in the tbc shaman video if you just want to guarantee a raid spot play resto shaman and i think i got that right but for wrath of the lich king as it does for every class a lot of stuff changes and some of those changes don't work out too favorably for our totem dropping friends at least in pve that is because pvp is quite the opposite with three specializations tons of changes and additions there is so much to cover here so let's talk about the shaman in wrath of the lich king starting from the top what's new to the class baseline then first up is a huge quality of life change to totems shamans now get what are essentially totem presets these are call of the ancestors elements and spirits using the drop down toolbar you can customize a set of totems that you can then drop all four with with the press of a single button or three or perhaps even two it depends how many you add into it meaning if you more or less always have the same totems that you want to drop it's not four gcds anymore it's one which is such a nice change makes repositioning in pve so much easier and setting up in pvp considerably faster you'll still want the good utility totems keybinded like your earthbind grounding tremor and so on also the totem you equip we are one would usually go will now count as every type of totem so you don't carry the quest ones around in your bag anymore what's new in the elemental tree then so earthshock does not interrupt anymore it now applies a small attack speed slow shamans do however gain an entirely new spell for interrupts called windshear this is a two second interrupt on a six second cooldown and yes it is about as obnoxious as it sounds to try and cast a spell versus a shaman and this is also off gcd all interrupts are off gcd and wrath actually but this is very nice to have in pve and exceptionally powerful in pvp via nova totem has been removed from the game and turned into a spell that the shaman casts it will now make your active fire totem erupt instead doing damage to nearby enemies overall this is a big buff as its cooldown is lower it does more damage and there's no longer that annoying thing that happens when you drop your fire nova totem it generates about one million threat and then enemies just turn around and one-shot it blame shot periodic damage can now crit and scales with your haste stone claw totem will shield all other totems this is actually a huge deal in pvp as we will get onto a little later new to elemental is hex some consistent cc for the shaman at last it's kind of like a polymorph but a bit better as the target needs to take a little bit of damage before it will break this spell does have a 45 second cooldown though and it is considered a curse effect in wrath and of course you can't have an elemental shaman without a lava burst the big spell elemental has been waiting for the time of weaving those spaghetti and meatballs is finally upon us this is a huge nuke which will always create against the target with flameshock active and contributes a lot of the shaman's damage particularly in pvp content changes to enhancements toolkit are mainly for the totems in fact there's quite a lot to go over here lington totem now gives spell power instead of wrath of air and flametongue weapon bluffs your active weapon with spell damage too rather now instead gives your group five percent spell haste race of air that's the agility totem and tranquil er totem that's the threat reduction one have both been removed from the game and strength of earth will now give strength and agility instead stone skim totem gives armor instead of just reducing damage taken and win fury totem has been reworked and no longer grants bonus attacks to party members and instead increases melee haste win fury weapon will still give bonus attacks though don't worry about that and the biggest change perhaps overall for the shaman in the expansion is that heroism and bloodlust now applies to your entire party or raid its cooldown has been lowered to 5 minutes but it applies a 10 minute debuff called exhaustion or stated that prevents you from benefiting from another similar effect you may see people actively trying to die to reset this debuff but we'll see how it works in practice once the bait is up this single changed this one single ability is why you will see raids going from wanting five shamans in tbc too well a lot less in wrath oh and yes you can still use heroism in arena in wrath as well restoration tree has a few last changes cure disease and poison have been combined into one ability the same goes for poison and disease cleansing totems though this totem is one of the few in the game that is only party wide because automatically dispelling two different effects is kind of op also resto shamans gain the ability to decurse but only resto shamans can do it as they have to talent it restoration also gets a weapon enhancement now called earth a living weapon this gives you a bit of extra bonus healing and a chance to apply a heart effect on your heels let's check out some talent trees for shamans in pve then we have three specs to cover overall so we better make a start and i would like to begin with elemental as with every caster going from tbc to wrath mana problems are solved and the rotation gets more interesting it's still fairly straightforward though shoot lightning sometimes shoot meatball see be crits be happy call of fire now also gain some extra benefits for lava burst and the fire nova totem is reworked a little bit to increase the effect of the new spell instead either the storm gets changed to actually be consistent this is such a huge quality of life buff in tbc elemental is one of the very few casters that has no decent spell knockback prevention but old either storm to proc you had to be cripped by specifically a physical attack which is useless in pve and too random in pvp another great quality of life changes elemental reach now increases the range of flame shots so you don't have to be really close to apply this spell elemental mastery gets a small change now making the next spell instant and then giving a 15 haste buff for 15 seconds thor murph and fire is just a good all-round talent for every area of content reducing the cooldown on chain lightning adding a route to earthbind and increasing the damage of flameshock's periodic effect booming echoes buffs your shock spells a little bit more an elemental oath is new to the tree giving you some bonus spell damage after you crit and increasing your group's spell crit chance by five percent totem of wrath has been reworked to give bonus spell damage and add a three percent crit debuff to enemies lava flows is a huge new talent that makes lava burst scale really well with your spell damage and adds a little heroism effect to you after flame shock is dispelled which it will be in pvp a lot shamanism just makes your main damage spells scale a little bit better with your gear and the final tone in the tree is thunderstorm which is such a versatile ability a self-peel mana regen damaging aoe invisibility potting and running to the center of eye of the storm will never not be fun with this spell in fact on retail they added extra walls to eye of the storm because knocking people off was so powerful in pve it can be like a reverse death grip if there's one mob that isn't on the tank's deathball overall it's just a really good ability to add to elemental's diverse toolkit elementor uses glyphs such as lava for even more damage on that ability lightning bolt for some flat increase and wrath for more spell damage on to enhancement then much like tbc it's still all about dual wielding yet we have a bunch of changes to spice up the rotation first up the whole totem twisting thing to maintain wind fury and agility totems at the same time it's not only dead it's mega dead as neither of those things even exist anymore enhancement gains more exciting cooldowns and access to some solid aoe there is also an alternative play style for enhancement that we can talk about in a moment but for the time being this is a standard pve type spec that i've decided to go with so we can look at the new talents improved shields now affects all various shields across your specializations from lightning to water to earth you still have to cast ghost wolf baseline in wrath i thought they would have removed this but nope and we don't really have enough talent points to pick this up in the tree either which is a shame shamanistic focus now reduces the mana cost of shocks by 45 at all times instead of 60 after a melee crit making it a more attractive talent for a variety of specs elemental weapons is new and just adds a bit of extra damage to whichever style you're using mental dexterity is also new and increases your scaling for enhanced damage improved wind fury totem increases the melee haste it provides from 16 to 20 only either a shaman or a death knight can provide this buff however normally death knights are a lot more flexible in the either a tank or a dps can provide this buff and i want to say a raft of the lich king raid without a death knight is just unthinkable but if there for some reason isn't then it's probably worth taking unleashed rage has also been changed now giving some expertise and being a passive rather than a proc after you crit towards the bottom of the tree is where we start getting to the newer and largely more interesting stuff static shark makes a lightning shield useful in pve content you won't need watershield anymore as mana isn't a problem thanks to shamanistic rage only being a one minute cooldown and improved storm strike also helping lava lash is another brand new talent that gives enhancement shaman something else to track a short cooldown attack that deals bonus damage when using flame tongue on your offhand maelstrom weapon is also introduced in wrath this gives your attacks a chance to proc a stacking buff when it reaches five stacks you can fire off an instant cast spell a lightning bolt or chain lightning in pve a hex or perhaps an off-heel in pvp this talent provides so much diversity and has always been a favorite of mine in enhance its toolkit finally at the bottom of the tree is feral spirit a 3 minute cooldown 45 second duration these doggies give the shaman a ton of utility and a little bit of extra damage they can remove roots and increase your movement speed and their own they provide a small amount of healing they can stun they even have an aoe taunt as well if you really wanted them to over in the elemental tree for enhancement here we've talked about most of the bits we want the only one to mention is elemental devastation which hasn't really changed since vanilla there is also expected to be another way to play enhancement which i should give a mention to it's called spell hands the idea here is that instead of focusing the majority of your damage into physical attacks is that you actively try to use certain spell damage focus weapons jewelry and trinkets to rely on shaman's capability to do magic damage instead just from a melee distance not a huge amount changes build wise but it should give you access to much better aoe through the likes of fire nova and more consistent single target damage the idea of this being an actual thing was never fully explored during wrath of the lich king when it was alive and it's more of a fan server creation though i'd say at the moment it's very up in here whether things are going to work on blizzard's wrath compared to what people have been experimenting with elsewhere shall we say it's one to keep an eye out for the beta people will test it thoroughly i can guarantee you that it could pop off or it could just flop a bit if i'm honest we don't fully know until it happens nevertheless if you're playing enhancement do keep it in mind enhancement shamans power up further with glyphs such as fire nova storm strike and flame tongue weapon which brings us to restoration is there finally more to life than just pressing chain heel well yes yes there is but chain heal is still very good let's get straight into the talents then tidal force is new and adds a huge extra crit chance modifier to your next few spells this plus nature's swiftness is practically guaranteed to top somebody off improve water shield add some mana regen by having it proc when you crit with certain spells and healing way doesn't stack up a buff anymore it just gives a flat increase to healing wave blend spirit is a brand new spell and adds a d curse effect to shaman's dispel nature's blessing adds a bit more stats and improved earth shield just improves the amount of healing and the number of charges this ability has blessing of the eternal adds some more spell crit and guarantees earth-loving weapon procs on low-health targets ancestral awakening makes it so your single target healing crits also provide a little bonus to the lowest health target in the raid tidal waves makes it so you want to do more with your life than press chain heal all day every day giving both healing wave and lesser healing wave bonuses after you either cast chain heal or riptide speaking of riptide this is the brand new end of town tree ability a small instant here with a hot on top of it on a very low cooldown and then if you chain heal the target with this active it'll consume the effect and increase its potency this fills a gap for the resto shaman something you can press on the move a little bit of help to top people who are dipping and just an overall good spell which they needed your glyphs depend a little bit what your role is in the raid as a resto shaman i've come with a more aoe focused setup here with chain heel healing stream totem and earth living weapon so how is shaman going to fair throughout rafa the lich king then well here's the shocker a lot of raids will drop from bringing at least five of them in tbc to two of them in wrath in fact i'm quite confident in saying that guild's pushing high performance will bring one and only one which will be resto or maybe enhancement so what gives do shamans just underperform this expansion well not exactly no it's just that some other classes do what they do whilst performing better this is the not so pretty side of bring the player not the class i expect elemental shamans to fare quite similarly to how they have done in tbc they'll start off looking pretty good and then each new tier that comes out they just gradually fall off as they don't scale as well as other spell casters do as for enhancement i think it's one of the specs that could really be a surprise in terms of how well they will do as mentioned earlier the whole idea of spell hands just isn't fully known at this point in time whether it's going to work as expected on blizzard servers but the normal enhancement spec is also a known high performer in early game content and also scales very well on top of that also you don't have to bother with totem twisting anymore and i think it's got overall a more interesting rotation restoration shaman should still be very popular not a contender for top healer anymore as they have consistently been through tbc but they still have that good utility and a mix of tank and raid healing and of course let's not forget whatever happens to a shaman they have literally the best spell that's ever been put in the game ever to this day in world of warcraft heroism or bloodlust whether it's elemental enhancement or resto there will always be a raid spot for a shaman just not as many as they used to be that's about enough on pve though so what about pvp let's get straight into it again with elemental so whilst elemental does not get the best reputation in pve for wrath content if you care more about pvp it should definitely be something to consider playing if you enjoy casters because this spec is an easy s tier all day i should have mentioned this somewhere by now really but it's one of those less well remembered changes in wrath and that is to spell knockback you see in classic and tbc it's a big problem sure there are talents to counter it but sometimes rng doesn't go your way that one second spell cast turns into over two seconds and you lose half your health at the same time not a very fun scenario in wrath spell knockback happens twice and after that it's like you're an npc with zero knockback at all and for a specialization like elemental which needs to cast a lot whilst often face tanking this is such a massive buff it cannot be understated if we take a look at talentry now elemental warding is just a flat six percent damage reduction and quite far down his astral shift which is another 30 percent damage reduction when stunned beard or silence so basically elemental shamans just take a huge amount of reduced damage baseline and of course they're wearing a shield and have male armor thor murph and fire gives elemental a root on earth by totem lava flows as mentioned earlier gives you a big haste buff when flame shot gets dispelled thunderstorm and pvp particularly on the likes of blades edge arena or dalaran is incredibly impactful one knockback can absolutely change an entire arena match germans have that consistently great utility an interrupting windshear on a six-second cooldown grounding totem tremor totem heroism on top of that elemental pacsum of the scariest burst in the game a lava burst into elemental mastery with a few overload procs in there is 50 of anyone's health any day of the week combine that with another caster and you will see people getting 100 to zeroed by good coordinated comps with elemental shamans in stonecall total now provides all your other totems with a little shield when it's dropped meaning there has to be a bit more effort put into totem stomping and you can glyph stonecore on top of that to put a shield on yourself as well oh and i nearly forgot on top of all of this shaman's get hex a hard cc to help set up all that burst you have access to best of all though it has to be the change to totems you can instantly drop four at once now or three if you want instead or even two it's all up to how you customize it and you will want to customize it for mana efficiency's sake even if you just prefer casual battlegrounds this spec is still absolute god tier and you're pretty self-sufficient with off-heels and some peels as well through thunderstorm and roots i did play an elemental casually back in the day and it was super fun i can absolutely recommend the spec for pvp it is going to be great elemental is found in some of the lich king's most scary comps such as thunderclave which is arms elemental holy paladin or lsd which is destro lock resto druid elemental shaman does enhancement do just as well then i mean it's good but not on the same level as elemental very few classes in the game are on that level let's start by touching on a few talents i left out when talking pve anticipation now reduces the effect of disarms against you in addition to dodge chance you either take this talent or carry a weapon chain swap with you most of the time toughness is 10 extra stamina and 30 less duration on movement speed slowing effects i mean it's decent it's just not i want to spend five talent points on it decent though frozen power is new and gives you a root effect on frosh shock when a target is 15 yards or more away from you which is nice and i imagine there's going to be weak horrors made to show when somebody's too close or far for that to proc earthen power makes earthband remove all snares from yourself and nearby allies and makes the attack speed slow on earth shock a little bit stronger over in elemental i put some points into reverberation because more shocks always sounds like a good thing it should be seen a bunch early on in the expansion before resilience starts getting too high though most famously being part of beast cleave which is enhancement bm hunter and holy pally usually in pvp glyphs for enhancement such as stonecore feral spirit for a bit more damage and especially shocking to reduce the gcd can be good to keep the pressure up and damage rolling finally restoration another shaman spec another considerable set of improvements in pvp mainly for reasons we've already talked about for elemental which are just the same across the shaman class as a whole the totem changes interrupt spell knockback changes but now for resto specifically they've had some of their key weaknesses filled in riptide gives them a button to press on the move blending totem affects both disease and poisons and they just have so much utility it's insane talent-wise not a lot has changed that we have not already talked about focus mind makes silences and interrupts a bit less annoying and nature's guardian helps keeps you up when you drop in health a bit i've also taken guardian totems here in the enhancement tree for a bit shorter of a cooldown on grounding totem healing grace adds a 30 dispel protection on your beneficial spells and a big change that really helps restoration is that the spells no longer entirely remove earthshield they only remove stacks so basically after you've earth shielded somebody they cannot be dispelled effectively anymore which is really powerful and of course i have to mention it somewhere for shaman purge is an incredibly powerful ability which allows you to stay on the offensive even when being a healer for glyphs stone claw is op as per usual and then the likes of perhaps earth shield and lesser healing wave are good for some spot heals presto shamans will be seen widely across way more comps than they currently are in tbc particularly with casters who scale up with heroism very well so then let's check out what shamans get in terms of tier set bonuses tier 7 the earth shatterer battle gear as per usual with tier 7 looks great elemental first two set five percent less mana cost on lightning bolts well that just may be the worst two set i've seen so far in the expansion the 4 set is 10 more crit damage on lava burst which is okay it would have been better if it was base damage enhancement 10 more damage on lightning shield which will do damage now thanks to the static shock talent though just not a lot of damage overall force that means your flurry talent gives five percent more haste now this is a nice bonus for once that's more or less just five percent more melee haste all of the time restoration gets some solid bonuses too the two set makes water shield ten percent stronger that'll be for the passive regen and the proc i'd imagine the force that makes healing from chain heal and healing wave 5 more effective which is a fairly good chunk of your heels tier 8 the world breaker battle gear from ulduar looks pretty damn good but i'm not sure i'm too sold on skirts for mail and plate gear in general though elemental gets 20 more periodic damage on flame shock which as far as damage increases go isn't very big the force that means your lightning bolt crits apply a dot on the target this is a little more interesting since elemental showns get good crit modifiers through their talents enhancement gets some more interesting bonuses twenty percent extra damage on storm strike and lava lash that sounds good and the four set twenty percent more frequency of procking male strong weapon firing off those extra lightning bolts or chain lightnings is just always fun the restoration two set reduces the cooldown on riptide by one second it doesn't sound like much but the cooldown is only six seconds normally anyway and the full set reduces the casting time on chain heel by .2 seconds crane heal is still very good in wrath of course tier 9 from trial of the crusader is either nabondo or the roles battlegear the elemental two set makes flameshock last nine seconds longer that's more time doing other stuff than having to recast flameshock which is only ever a good thing the four set kinda reminds me of the ulduar one for elemental but better now scaling off a lava burst crit damage instead enhancement makes it so you have an additional three percent chance to trigger static shock that's a 33 buff to the talent which is good but it just really doesn't do that much damage to begin with force that makes shocks do 25 additional damage again it's going to be quite minor maybe spell hands cares more about this stuff than the regular spec though restoration gets 20 more healing on riptide from the 2 set 20 is where things start to matter it feels as though and rip time between the instant heal and the hot does do a decent amount so this should add up the full set increases crit on chain here which is more chance for improved water shield to proc and is just one of your best spells in general nothing not to like here tier 10 from ice crown citadel the frost witch's battle gear looks amazing i prefer the blue version though because you know ross witch blue makes more sense the set bonuses though on these for all three specs wow elemental gets some really cool stuff the two set makes it so lightning bolt and chain lightning reduce the cooldown on elemental mastery by two seconds each this is what i want to see from a tier set bonus not random ability does a relevant amount of extra damage remember elementor mastery also gives you a 15 haste buff for a short duration as well the four set again looks super good lava burst extends flame shock by at least two additional ticks so it's worded like this as flame shock scales with haste in wrath baseline or at least it does on 3.35 enhancement now your two set shamanistic rage gives 12 additional damage on top of the other effects well that's another cooldown for your kit and this ability is on such a short cooldown to begin with we'll stack up with heroism and other cooldowns and just allow for so much burst early on four set when maelstrom weapon reaches five charges a 15 chance to get 20 attack power for 10 seconds a bit low on the proc chance but this is a huge proc i think i prefer a bit of a smaller attack power proc with a better chance for it to happen nevertheless if this procs back to back your dps games will be pretty substantial restoration riptide gives 20 spell haste on next cast within 10 seconds scales with your tidal waves talent are super well and that's just a lot of haste riptide's on the super short cooldown everything about this tier set is great the fall set is also huge chain heel crits also caused the target to be healed for 25 of the amount over 9 seconds that's amazing why not just make resto shamans into a heel of a time class instead with this singular set bonus so now we've covered all of the main points can we give an answer to the shaman in wrath of the lich king classic just how broken is it now well it's a two-part answer in pve content they just are not as in demand as they used to be anymore whilst by no means performing poorly you just don't need to stack shamans anymore to get the key benefits that they bring whilst in pvp this class goes from zero to hero especially elemental in fact elemental shaman from tbc to wrath in pvp may just be the singular class and spec that receives the most buffs in the entire game for tbc many many many players have decided to roll shaman because the demand is so consistently incredibly high and they're practically guaranteed raid spots if everybody currently playing a shaman continues on to northrend the competition for those raid spots is going to become much higher than it is at the moment and whilst you will see guilds aiming to min max their comp only bringing one shaman for heroism all guilds will have several shamans on the roster because sometimes people can't turn up sometimes people leave a guild or quit penman content exists and you will always want a shaman in every single wrath of the lich king raid the utility particularly heroism and bloodlust are just too good to ignore but overall if you're dead set sticking with a shaman it would be one of those classes i look to try out for a guild with sooner rather than later and hey at least if you're the token shaman you can never get benched right and that's about all i have to say for this class in wrath of the lich king let me know your thoughts on everything i've gone over here whether you played it back in the day and whether you're considering it this time around as always thank you all so much for watching and listening in and i shall see you guys in the next one very soon [Music] [Music] you

Channel: WillE

Views: 246,177

Keywords: wille, classic wow, wotlk, wotlk classic, wotlk release, wotlk tier list, wotlk dps tier list, wotlk pvp tier list, was it any good wotlk, elemental, enhancement, resto, wotlk pve, wotlk pvp, dk, death knight, wotlk dps, paladin, mage, warlock, priest, druid, rogue, hunter, shaman, warrior, naxx25, ulduar, icc, dragonflight, best mmo, free mmo 2022, best mmorpg, best free mmorpg, best mmo 2022, mmo 2022, eso, gw2, ff14, osrs, riot mmo, ashes of creation, dungeons and dragons, gaming, pc

Id: KjaZUCn9-dM

Length: 29min 51sec (1791 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 24 2022