The Shaman Identity Crisis: Redundancy in the 95% Grind Meta (Brd/Ench Overlap)

Zorg

To be fair. SK hasnt been done yet so we cant say if its been cooked or not. My enthusiasm levels arent what they were, for sure; but lets at least see it first.

Zest

Bard comparison is way off base. Long duration buffs with a mana cost are far stronger than a bard song that does the same thing.

Each bard song costs about 20% of the bard's action economy- thats 20% of everything they contribute to the group. Increase the mana cost of buffing your party to the point where applying one buff to your whole groups once per 35 minutes costs 20% of the mana you would regenerate over those 35 minutes your have an effect on similar footing to the bardsong. The mana advantage of the bard is mostly just that they never need to sit and thus are free to stay mobile and do things like pulling more than in total quantity of buffs provided to the group; their action economy if far more limiting on their buff uptime than any mana gating currently in the game.

And that's before we even touch on the fact that many bardsongs are already categorically worse: the stat buff song caps at level 16, and the slow song does half of what shamrn does, doesnt work on named enemies, and while it does ha e an ape the ape is a tiny PBAE that requires the bard to basically stick to the target to keep them slowed. And SoW is way better than march by simple virtue of being able to bring it inside dungeons and allies not needing to stay near the shaman while fleeing or kiting.

Jaor

I played a shaman to lvl 30 during the open playtests. I currently have a lvl 22 shaman on the beta. My main critique is that shaman doesn't debuff as strongly as needed. From my experience, enfeeblement is the only debuff worth the effort to maintain on every mob. Slows are much weaker in this game compared with eq. At lvl 10 you can do a 10% slow. Lvl 20 is a 20% slow. Lvl 30 is 30%...you get the picture. Those values need to be at least 1.5x stronger for me to bother with them on anything but a named mob. Everquest values for slows were drastically stronger and showcased a shaman's ability to heal despite having weaker healing spells. Having weak healing spells and significantly weaker slows just makes shamans less effective than they were in eq.

The class is no longer fun after the deep dive. There seem to be some folks like Zaroura trying to trick us into believing the changes made by the deep dive are good, but those folks all appear to prefer to play other classes in the first place. The feedback from actual shamans that play the game has been overwhelmingly critical of the deep dive changes.

As to Zaroura, most of your arguments seem to just say that Dyvlish's post "is AI garbage" so it was difficult to find anything specific to counter. You seemed like you were in a real tizzy trying to address each one of Dyvlish's points but, since you asked, here's a counter-point to some of your slop:

Zaroua Letting Shamans contribute even more DPS to a group than they already do would create an imbalance between the healing classes. I'm against this.

Shamans dont contribute to dps in a group. Their mana efficient dot takes 1 minute to complete, so if the mob dies in 30 seconds, even the "efficiency" aspect is gone. Their nuke has such low overall damage and damage to mana ratio that it's not worth the spell slot, or even the silver it costs.

The absence of any acknowledgement by development on the overwhelming feedback of the shaman changes has me convinced that the class is no longer worth my time. An admission that the changes were too severe and that they are going back to the drawing board with help from players like Jat would've helped. Instead, we get gaslighting on the forums from folks that don't play shamans telling us everything is fine. LOL

I've earned 3 or 4 levels since the deep dive on my shaman. I'll go play something fun instead.

Growlron

Jaor Well said.. after reading elemental and pally deep dives, I am even more convinced they dont give a fuck about shaman. They actively hate the class.

Zaroua

Jaor Shamans dont contribute to dps in a group.

Haste, Berserker Fury, Enfeeble. The DPS they provide to a melee heavy group makes Clerics and Druids look terrible in comparison.
I am curious as how much DPS Enfeeble actually provides through its AGI reduction, but testing this manually seems nightmarish due to the ban on parsing. The time and effort required to gather a large enough sample size in order to get an accurate representation at different level/spell level ranges and then manually parsing all of it is far more than I'm willing to deal with. I'm sure some brave soul will eventually be up to the task, godspeed to you whoever you will be.

Edit: As far as Slow goes: I also never bothered to cast the first two ranks outside of named mobs. Mobs just die too quickly at low levels which means there's a high chance that the mob will die before the Slow debuff has the chance to reduce the amount of melee hits it would have attempted against the tank. In other words: if a mob dies before it gets 10 swings off, Slow does nothing. From my experience, that's almost always the case for rank 1, and usually the case with rank 2 unless you're casting it on red mobs or if you're in a low DPS group (2 healers, undermanning, etc). And even if Slow DOES remove 1 or 2 melee potential melee swing, there's still a high probability that those swings will be avoided, blocked, deal low damage, or be overall less mana efficient to have Slowed the mob than to heal the extra damage. I think a good compromise is to start it at 20% and give us 1 less rank overall on the way to 60.

Zorg

Zaroua having higher base values on slow just means players will derank at higher levels to save mana.

Also, if 10% is negligible and more or less irrelevant and not worth the mana, so to will be 20%, which will also require a raise in mana to offset the value of a higher delve and the downranking aforementioned.

Thus making the spell even more unusuable.

Jephry

Nazgrimn Right?!? I was leaning toward rolling an enchanter for EA until the 35-minute buff thing. Enchanters have (had?) just as many, if not more than, buffs as shaman...and putting them all on a 35-minute timer is just nuts. If anything, they should have been made to last longer. Memming and casting 4-6 buffs every 35 minutes does NOT sound like the pinnacle of fun gameplay.

Jephry

Zorg Druids and paladins are the belles of this ball, to be sure. Their reworks have been amazing.

Jephry

Jaor Incredibly well said. Thanks for not using AI to form your opinions. 😉

TexKSAH

Zest WHAT "long duration buffs' are you talking about? Buff durations were CUT IN HALF!

TexKSAH

Zaroua So, your good with Shaman beign a buffer and casting 1 debuff in groups! Have fun. HOT nerfed to where it is LESS efficient/effective than our single tgt heal, which is less efficeint/effective than the heals from a cleric or druid 15 levels BELOW US. WIthout effective mana managemnt, we can't afford to cast DOTs and as you stated, on quick fights they are as useless as the slow. So, now we bring 1 debuff and totally NERFED buffs to the table. Again, have fun! I'm done with this game. Shaman was the only character I liked and they have no vision or plan to make the Shaman desireable, that is obvious.

Luda

TexKSAH Regen is still 1hr, takes 4 sec to cast / higher costs. Unsure if it was just missed in the buff pass change or intentional.

Based on my calcs, the HoT is still stronger healing/mana than single target. Maybe I missed something?

Not saying I agree with the SHM changes, just pointing out some facts.

TexKSAH

Luda Can't log in now to recheck, but last night the heal/mana on the single tgt spell is slightly better than the HOT spell and it is an instant heal that doesnt take 24 seconds to heal. Why ever cast the HOT now that WAS our signature heal when the single tgt heal is better? But a Druid or Cleric 15 levels below me gets heals better than mine. Shaman as group healer is undesireable at best now.

TexKSAH

Luda And regen has NEVER been 1hr. At 40, it is 40 minutes. The first regen is 20 minutes. Maybe at 60 it is 1 hr, but not before then.

TexKSAH

Luda Just logged on at lunch to check.... at lvl 41, my HOT spell lists 128 health (times 4 ticks) for a total of 512 health healed in 24 seconds for 285 mana. 1.78 h/m ratio. Single tgt heal is 296 health for 194 mana, 1.53 h/m ratio but is instant, not slowly over 24 seconds.

Until these nerfs, HOT was MUCH more efficient than our ST heal, but I can't get the #'s anymore, but it was much more efficient to where I only used ST heal in an emergency and HOT was the main heal. Now they are almost identical healing power, but HOT takes 24 seconds instead of instant. So why bother with the 24 second HOT if there is no benefit/efficiency gained by casting the HOT vs the ST heal that is instant healing?

Jiver

TexKSAH

I only have the level 12 hot numbers but it went from 140 over 4 ticks for 75 mana 1.86 hp/mana ratio to 64 over 4 ticks for 45 mana 1.42 hp/mana.

In efficiency and absolute terms that is gutted. Going into a fresh start with no gear across the board it feels really odd to be this heavy handed with the nerfs. I got into beta late so I don't know how things felt initially leveling but they seem to be wanting to make the initial climb twice as hard with the way they've changed the numbers going into early access.

Luda

TexKSAH
Greater Regeneration (level 44) is 50mins, 5 sec cast time, 150mana. Doesnt seem like this was touched by the duration nerf.

The HoT is more efficient but I agree its still pretty far behind other healers. I'm curious if the justification is the debuffs... but its different for clerics (better healing / better AC-HP buffs ie mitigation) and Druids (better healing, thorns, personal dps).

I suppose since we bring haste/stat buffs, its suppose to normalize to the other priests, then take a healing hit because the SHM slows/cripples. Still doesn't seem balanced (thus class undesirable in group play) since the class has to double dip mana and casting to achieve the primary healing role it has (vs optional dps that DRU/CLR can provide).

TexKSAH

Luda Regen is the same across multiple classes. Glad it didnt get the buff nerf, but can't count it as Shaman healing as it is the same for multiple classes.

HOT may be SLIGHTLY more efficient now, but that is automatically counteracted by the 24 seconds it takes to heal. Waiting 24 seconds to get a TINY improvement in heal efficiency is not worth it IMO. Prior to Wednesday, HOT was MUCH higher efficiency so it was worth using. We are still WAY behind other healers in effectiveness and healing efficiency.

I don't agree with the premise that some say our buffs/haste, slows and debuffs makie up for the difference since those were massivly nerfed as well (not to mention some other more desireable classes get some of these as well). We have to cast slows 3X more often (1min duration now vs 3min), and buffs 2X more often (1hr duration vs 35 min). That means we will be spenidng 90% of our time meming and rememing and rememing buff spells, dots, heals, debuffs, etc constantly now if we want to do anything other than buff and debuff. WOOT, can't wait for that!

So my healing effectiveness got nerfed, buffs got nerfed, debuffs got nerfed, Consume was already nerfed (but they "unnerfed" that by 10% to a 40s CD from 45s), group spells are non-existant, massive nerf to DOTs for soloing with the stacking change (but somewhat compensated for by increasing damage, but still a overall nerf), nothing new except the escape button which is utterly NON-Shamanisk (and good luck having it memmed when needed with the dozens of spells you will be juggling meming and re-memming just to have a slight purpose). They took a decent class and reduced it to nothing special or wanted with this deep dive. Total disappointment.

Shaman just doesnt seem to have any vision, direction or purpose anymore except a backup healer that spends most of his time re-memming spells so he can keep buffs up on everyone and their pets and occationally toss in a debuff if he has extra mana. We used to be able to play DPS, Healer or Strong Utility Support. Now we have one roll, backup healer with buffs. We can't even effectively DPS in a group anymore since the massive mana costs of DOTs and no effective mana management process anymore.

The class seems utterly rudderless with no clear purpose, direction or vision for the future. The only reason I even care is the Shaman is the only class I have ever played in 25 years of MMOs that I really enjoyed. Not looking forward to the future now. Total disapointment with this "deep dive". All other classes got "new", fun tools even if some lost somethings. Shaman is just a total nerf and hack job with nothing new or fun. Oh, but we got an escape spell some my need once or twice a week!

Laskey

AI slop is bad.

wizard

no there's actually nothing wrong with using a tool to help with organization, particularly for neurodivergent people

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