Shaman Deep Dive!

Crestian

Big UNHAPPY. Please change the class. Very dissapointing!

DEVS, It is completely okay to be wrong sometimes—you don't have to be perfect. You are more than capable of handling the fix, and We are right here with you.

Jat

58 Shaman Jat.

Please bring back the 12 second cannibalize. This, to the ones who “play” this class, means everything to us. To everyone else, I understand - we buff/we heal, whatever. But to the ones that play this class, the canni-dance is what allows us to maintain our mana while doing all the other necessary things we are supposed to do as Shamans. It also sets this class as an extremely high actions per minute (apm) class. Those that are able to cannibalize every time it is up, set the player in a different bracket of skill level compared to those that don’t. This is ok. We need this avenue of gameplay. Without it, the class is just considerably slower.

I duo’d the other day with the Necro Elcid (Head Necro in Charge). What we were able to achieve in Giant City in VoZ together was something of beauty. I was able to “canni-dance” while maintaining my mana to a point where I could sustain all that I needed to do, while he was doing all the things on his end. The point of this is that we would still reach low mana lvls together and recharge our mana at almost the same speed. Mine was a little higher but not too noticeable. The difference was that I had to cannibalize close to every 12-15 seconds. This is just part of our rotation as a Shaman. We love it! It makes the class FUN and perfectly balanced so that I’m able to keep up with the head Necro in charge.

45 second Cannibalize cooldown -

We no longer have a high apm. We no longer can regen our mana at a higher pace equal to the amount of “work” and “skill level” we put in. 45 seconds has rendered this ability nearly useless. I can’t even heal the difference of loss of life since it would negate the mana I gain from the cannibalize. I now have to sit - and wait - and not do anything. The fun of this class has been - read the next paragraph.

With one single change, the fun and identity of this class has been gutted. I consider myself someone who has played this class for so many hours that I truly know this class.

And I am completely demoralized at the moment.

I understand this is beta. And this is why I am pleading with you guys to revert to the way cannibalize used to be. It was perfect. It felt really good. It was so much fun.

But, for the time being, my fingers will rest.

You should have the slower apm classes for the people that want to play them sure. But not the Shaman. We are crazy people who want to eat our skin every 12 seconds!

If any dev is reading this - why have you never reached out to me while playing? I really hope you have watched me play the Shaman through my playtesting. I am doing this for “me” because I love playing the game you have made - it’s absolutely breathtaking and brilliant - but I am also doing this for the community and for you guys. I considered this class a thing of beauty before the Shaman rework yesterday. Using our pet for numerous different things - trying to fit in cannibalizes as much as possible while casting torpify/susceptabilty/exhaustion on every mob - rooting and maintaining root on mobs that need to be cc’d - healing the party - whilst keeping everyone buffed - this is what makes a shaman a shaman. But I’m telling you - through all of this, cannibalize is the heart of it all. Without it, we are not Shamans.

Not 45 seconds. Not 30 seconds. Not even 15.

12 seconds. That’s the sweet spot. It was perfect 🙂

Zaroua

Jat
What we were able to achieve in Giant City in VoZ together was something of beauty. I was able to “canni-dance” while maintaining my mana to a point where I could sustain all that I needed to do, while he was doing all the things on his end."

Stuff like that is why it had to be nerfed. But I do agree with the sentiment that 45 seconds feels bad. What I'm about to say isn't even about numbers, balance, min-maxing, or anything else. Just how it feels. I only have a little bit of experience with the 12 second Consume, but it did feel pretty decent to use. It was busy, but not a super great kind of busy. The original 0CD Consume felt awful, super busy but the bad kind of busy. I think a better feeling middle ground would be somewhere around 20 to 25 seconds. You debuff a mob, Consume, put your HoT on the tank, and then Consume and HoT/top off the tank. Once again, this would feel better with the current TTK. Consume's CD shouldn't line up perfectly with the HoT duration since that just turns it into a boring FF14 combo spell, but Consume's CD should be closer to the HoT duration than its current 45s CD.

Once the cooldown FEELS good, numbers can be adjusted. Same with the using your health bar as a secondary mana bar mechanic.

Jat

Tested DoT's solo on VoZ Giants and Wolves roughly lvl 54-55 (the ones near growler/spicy). The ttk using the two DoTs given to us is roughly equal to OR faster than what it used to take me to kill them. It takes 2 of each so roughly 4 DoTs to kill them currently. The way I used to do it was - root the mob - load up 3 of the highest disease line spells and the highest poison dot (4 dots total), then when the root broke my pet would attack. He would never take agro. I would have to stop my pet from attacking about half way and re-apply 3-4 more dots. Root breaks, send in pet, this would finish them. It wasn't a bad way to solo at all. In fact it was super fun to manage all this. Now? It feels empty and boring. It's less exciting. I can't tell if it's mainly because i am no longer consuming constantly, or if it's because i no longer have a pet (probably both). But loading up 2 spells and then waiting/root rotting feels empty. I no longer have any other options.

And the direct damage spell is completely mana inefficient and just not worth it.

Don't get me wrong - I am constantly grouping when i can. But i also have a wife and a full time job so there are a lot of times when i only have an hour or two to play. The only way i can even remotely keep up is by soloing during those times or when i can't find a group.

I honestly thought the class was close to perfect before. It was so much fun having a pet and being able to dance with my health. At least I was able to enjoy it for about 2 months. I hope the devs find any of this information useful. We all seem to pretty much agree that some of the changes made the class less fun and incomplete.

Sildinis

Zaroua If the 12 s Consume was too OP, then it just needed to be rebalanced, maybe changing the numbers or increasing the cooldown to 18.. maybe 24 s tops. The fact that the Consume cooldown perfectly mapped to two procs of our HoT felt intentional and satisfying to play around. Anything too far beyond 12 s would stop feeling like meaningful gameplay and start feeling like whack-a-mole where you're punished for leaving it off cooldown.

Raven

I'm not a Shaman player and I never played shaman or care about rolling one but hearing that they cannot canni their health to death is a sad thing to hear. I will definitely miss seeing my shaman healer almost dead in my group. Now, I will probably forget what healer class I have in my group.

Variety is fun, was canni too OP? I don't know. But was the mechanic thematic and fun to watch? yes... please don't remove unique mechanics. It's like finding Monks losing FD... that's sad.

Jat

Sildinis I agree that the 12 seconds consume felt perfect. You would time it perfectly - get yourself to low health using consume - then right before the timer of consume refreshed you’d cast a HoT on yourself. Then consume again. Tick. Tick. Tick. Consume. Tick. This felt soooo good and gave us meaningful gameplay BECAUSE we would be doing other things as well during all of this. The gameplay felt so alive!!! High apm yes. But holy shit absolute fun.

Now? At 58 I have to use a lower level heal to bring me back up after I consume. I’m just taking way too big of a hit from consume to stay at that lvl of hp. Plus, I can’t consume again if I don’t heal myself the regen just isn’t enough. So not only am i barely getting any mana back as is with the 45 second cooldown, but it’s even less because I have to heal myself.

cabbage

Cannibalize Self:
1 minute cooldown, 3 charges.
Eat yourself lmao, recovering A feel good amount of mana% over 20-30ish seconds and inflicting one stack of "Cannibalized!" on yourself (maximum 3 stacks). If your mana is below 40%, increase mana recovered by Enough to make it feel even better%.
Each stack of Cannibalized! reduces your Max HP by 20-25% and increases your INT and WIS by 10% for 2 minutes.

there. shaman gets to keep the class fantasy of infinite mana and killing themselves for power, but the infinite mana part gets a cooldown. making it lower max health instead of just doing damage makes it an actual risk instead of "lol i heal my fingers back to infinity forever". loading more mana regen into having low mana gives incentive to continue casting spells, pulling more and more threat as you get stronger. you now have shaman's unique mechanic. adjust numbers as needed.

this really isn't rocket science

ImNotACleric

Hi Gamers, Big Shaman fan and longtime player here. Would like to add some feedback for the Devs:

Rework Pros:
DoT Line DPS Increased in Both Lines
Ancestral Wisdom (Or Bear Form) Consolidation of 3 buffs into 1 (Wis, Health Regen, See Invis, Sense Magic)
Ancestor's Eye Consolidation (See Invis, Sense Magic)

Rework Cons:
Completely Gutted a Unique playstyle (Cannidancing) involving resource management, aggro, and moderate APM in a game where there generally is none for healers. (This isn't groundbreaking gameplay, but the game is so slow it is very enjoyable to us shaman enthusiasts!)
Took away our Spiritual Companion (The most thematically on brand thing we had)
Added Ritual Of Escape, a Get out of Jail Free Card that has no business being in our kit

The underlying importance of cannidancing and its loss cannot be overstated. And please, Devs, don't roll your eyes and think we're just gnashing our teeth. The reason you are seeing this vitriolic response to the change is simple: Healing in MnM is extremely boring.

Is anyone saying Shaman Cannibalize was groundbreaking or high-skill expression gameplay? No
Was it way more fun than sitting on my cleric pressing 2 buttons for hours? Absolutely
Did resource management include my health bar, mana bar, and mob aggro because of 1 Mechanic? HELL YES BROTHER

As Shawn so eloquently said "the premise of this game is you go to a camp for hours, kill a bunch of mobs, then go to another camp, kill a bunch of mobs, rinse repeat". Why in a game like this would you ever dilute a player's Fun for Balance? Absolutely criminal what was done here to Cannibalize. Bring back the 12 second timer.

(Also to note, I put in (2) 4–6-hour sessions of Duoing Post-Rework, extremely boring gameplay as a healer compared to what I was doing before).

Lastly, Ritual Of Escape, oh boy! I thought we wanted to explore a dangerous and fun world?

Shaman has an extremely powerful kit, there's no world we should have a GROUP Get out of Jail Free Card every 1 hour, this is insanity. We have Direct Heals, HoTs, Group HoTs, Slows, Hastes, Stat Debuffs/Buffs, SoW, and we can trade our HP for Mana; our kit is HUGE.

JUST BECAUSE CLERICS HAVE A NEW BLESSING OF DEVOTION LINE, DOESN'T MEAN WE NEED SOMETHING TO COMPENSATE FOR IT. STOP TRYING TO MAKE THE HEALERS EQUAL, JUST MAKE THEM FUN AND UNIQUE, FFS.

TLDR: Make shaman fun again (Cannibalize), it's so boring to play now. Take away this ridiculously overpowered ability we do not need that trivializes the game (Ritual of Escape).

ImNotACleric

cabbage

Really cool idea, this should be looked at.

Jat

Next noticeably different change that I think hurt the class - and this might shock you guys -

The two dots that we have now are way too efficient.

We used to have to cast 4 dots in order to do less damage than the two dots currently do. So why am I saying the new way is worse? F U N

Hear me out. Please.

Before the rework, in order to damage anything significantly, we would have to - disease dot, disease dot, disease dot, poison dot. (You could even add more if you wanted). And in between all these inefficient mana wasting dots we would throw in consumes in order to balance the high amount of mana we were using to cast these spells. So we were able to keep up the pace but also be able to keep up a HIGH APM (actions per minute). And with all the consumes we would have to throw in a HoT. This was actually meaningful and fun gameplay believe it or not. If you ever watched me or other shamans play, you’d understand the beauty of all of this. And having to always practice your ABC’s (always be consuming) would force you to make meaningful decisions - do I consume now in order to restart the timer or do I cast a few more dots before the root ends? Do I run from this mob or take a hit in order to consume? Consume at your own risk. It was so much fun!!

NOW?

Dot (faster casting time than before). Dot (faster casting time than before). Sit. Chill. Go make some coffee. It’s boring.

And this is why I said in my recent post - why aren’t any of the devs private messaging me? Have you guys never seen me play? I can’t be the only Shaman that was doing all of this and having a blast. Why not reach out to US THE PLAYERS and see what we think? You guys have never reached out to me and I’ve played hundreds of hours. I’m not just a player. I am your playtester. How is it that you’re not asking your playtester what he thinks about the class that he fell in love with?? Especially when you can just watch him and obviously see that he knows what he’s doing. I’ve helped three different high lvl Shamans on how to do things with the class that they didn’t know was possible. But it wasn’t game breaking at all. It was amazingly fun as inefficient as it was. You could just counter the inefficiency with consume to make it equal out. Please bring it back.

Kors

Personally I appreciate the lower apm and more "boring" gameplay and have now moved Shaman to the top of my EA play list so thank you for that devs. No disrespect intended to those who prefer a different play style.

wizard

Kors there was nothing stopping you from playing like that before this playstyle was forcibly removed from us, or just playing a low APM healer.

Mesh

Jat

Before the rework, in order to damage anything significantly, we would have to - disease dot, disease dot, disease dot, poison dot. (You could even add more if you wanted).

Have to disagree on this one. Stacking different ranks of the same spell is pretty cheesy. I'd much rather have different unique DoT's.

My problem is, similar to Necro, that the DoT's are just straight DoT's with no added flavor. Would have liked to see some secondary effects or utility that make them feel worth their mana cost in a group.

Jat

Mesh yah I agree with the cheesiness of casting the same line of spells. I actually didn’t know this until lvl around 40. I just assumed you couldn’t do that.

The point I was trying to make was that it was more fun to have to cast more spells and then negate the mana hit for casting all those spells with consume. It was just an extremely fun game play. Now there’s just way less to do. So I might as well…. sit :/

Perhaps the devs could give us more dots from a different spell line in order to negate the cheesiness?

I’m also speaking straight solo. In a group, we are not needed to damage really. We are not a dps class. Which is why having the pet was pretty nice since we could still contribute a low amount of dps for free. It would also give us something else to do as well (pet management).

ThePanda

Tried to take on a level 27 Named Mob with a 33 shaman, 23 Archer, and 24 Wizard. I’m a 23 Twinked Ranger.

I died because the shaman ran out of mana. That feels terrible. Shaman should never run out of mana if they canni dance. That was their big draw.

My main (60 SK) usually trio’d with a 60 Monk and 60 SK. We’ve gone from Tank/DPS/Healer to Tank/LaysOnGrounder/OomOrDead

Jaor

The part that bothers me the most about having consume on a 4x cooldown is that my chat window is filled with dozens of lines of "you can't cast that ability at this time" spam.

It's a subtle taunt, is it not?

Nazgrimn

I'll be honest. After reading the Deep Dive, I was too pissed off to try the changes.
Now that I've had some time to cool down I decided to jump in and give it a go.

Here are my thoughts.

I'm fine with the 45s CD of Consume, but the numbers need to be tweaked. Consume 4 should be 528 Hp for 528 Mana, or something very similar to a 1:1 ratio.
The lower APM is fine with me. I really like the idea above of making it a 1 min CD but with 3 charges, that's actually really good.

The DoTs are perfect, thank you for listening. I thought having to stack 4 DoTs to get sufficient damage was pretty cheesy. Love the new changes, especially making the poison dot a magic dot.
Now susceptibility effects it which is great.
I love the addition of Magic Resistance Buff, very welcomed. I also like the group cure disease.

I thought the addition of group buffs were great until I tried casting them on another group. Why....
Make this castable on other groups. Switching groups to buff, then buffing the person that had to drop, it's just annoying.

The escape spell, Ritual of Escape, is great. It's saved me twice today, solo. This is meant for a group getaway so I get the 30min cooldown.

Now to something concerning. I've been LFG all day and haven't had a single group invite. All testing has been done solo'ing.
I spoke to a guildie earlier, another shaman, and he explained that he had been turned down for 2 groups today because "we don't have an enchanter so you can't join because you run out of mana too quickly"

That's concerning. If the perception is that we aren't adequate healers now, that's a problem.
Fix Consume or lower the mana cost of heals/debuffs.

I submitted a bug report but I keep having Invis/Undead Invis break immediately once it's been cast.

Addition of Blind is cool. I like the faster cast time. Helps me get a mob off me so I can step back and root.

Self buff is really nice. Thank you for giving us the choice to look like a bear or not. I like it.

Trying to find a group so I can do more testing but no bites yet. Will continue to try.

Velthorian

i actually prefer a less spammy canni, but you have to up the numbers alot. EQ did this 75+ and it felt great, we went from a regular canni doing like 150 hp 75 mana, to a canni with a cool down (30 sec? shortish)that was suddenly like 350hp 175 mana, then it got upgraded even more to be like 600hp 300 mana. So you could actually fully utilize canni, and also have time to cast other spells, instead of being forced to canni so often that it's all you where doing. "Just" nerfing it to a cooldown without upgrading it's life/mana conversion feelsbadman. -- The numbers above are irrelevant. the formula is more like this : if player can currently spam canni and get back xx per tick, on the new system he should get close to xx back per tick. but with less spam. It could be slightly less, for the convenience and power afforded by not always having to canni. But it should not be dramatically less. By the time EQ moved to the bigger style canni, mana pools where at 20k, and canni was 2.5 sec + global cool down, and it was problematic to actually cast it frequently enough, while also doing your job. There are other reasons the comparison may be inaccurate, EQ shamans also had a massive AA canni that was on a pretty short cool down, in addition to regular canni, and mount mana regen, and FT20+

Sounds like the intentionally made shaman spells shit efficiency with the expectation of you using consume to "fix" the poor ratio, and also somehow "come out ahead". But if they nerf Canni, and leave efficiency as shit, they did not help anything. Similar error's and omissions where made with the sweeping TTK changes, things like Harm Touch being totally killed by it. When you make huge changes to things that have scaling vector's but don't adjust said vectors... This was never a thing in EQ, shamans did not have horrible ratio's with the expectation that canni would fix it. Canni was just a net positive, not fixing something prenerfed by default. No, shamans direct healing spells never compete with Clerics for efficiency, but they where quite competitive with druids and any efficiency difference was minimal, not core.

Not sure how i feel about making them bad on purpose to artificially increase the utility of Canni -- it's supposed to be a net positive, not something that you must do to just keep up with other healers. I guess EQ's canni never had any cool down at all, (pre 60) so it felt like you always had to chain cast it/dance. MNM always had a 12 sec cooldown, so not quite the same comparison, that does allow for a canni / heal /canni, in EQ it was always if im healing im not canni, if im dotting im not canni, but that was never really a thing here, because of the base 12 sec.

Full disclosure: I never played a MNM shaman past level 12 in alpha. I have played EQ shamans alot however in various era and various level ranges. 0-80.

Velthorian

K_J careful what you wish for, those buffs don't normally stack with Enchanter mana regen line, while canni stacks with everything.

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