Are Shaman even shaman now?

Fidric

There is NO dedicated "support" class, nor would any group take a class that did nothing but "provide support"

that is the role designation for enchanter and bard's crowd control, buffs & debuffs

wizard

Fell Given that-- what's the Dev vision for WHY a person would pick shaman? I'm not sure they have one at this point.

really good point. felt like the point more than anything was to nerf the shit out of shaman and do 'identity' pruning but they didn't actually give shaman anything to make up for it meaningfully.

Raybane

Mesh Most groups will want a support, but far from all will have it making Shaman more useful.

Growlron

people take shaman in groups out of pity or desperation.

Cleric is by far the best healer in the game. Because at the end of the day, when EVERYTHING is looked at side by side.. the Cleric can Rez and druid and shaman cant.

There is NOTHING the shaman has that is compelling enough to take a shaman over a cleric.

Crow

Ocellus This isn't EQ.

Growlron

Crow This isnt a shaman 🤷‍♂️

Crow

Growlron 🤷‍♂️

odz

Mesh

mm nah i don't think so, plenty of groups run 2 priests, enchanter/shaman aren't the only classes that can slow, and shamans are a mix support/priest playstyle which is why they offer buffs/debuffs in addition to throughput healing lines, so that's kind of a moot point.

also describing your ideal group and then discovering that a class becomes mandatory under those conditions is bound to happen regardless.

enchanters can be valuable to a group without having to slow, their kit is extremely overloaded and powerful enough as is, just by virtue of mez and enchant ally. also clarity. also lull, root, haste, tash, enfeeble, raw stat buffs, mana surge, mana drain, aoe stun (off gcd).

e: also i don't want to go down the line of healer dps discussion but i'll simply add that healing is a zero-sum game so surplus resources going into dps to improve clear speeds is valuable; the reason i don't want to discuss dot damage with regard to shaman identity is because i want the class to have clear strengths that aren't tied to "lol i put a dot on boss :3"

Raybane

odz If anything so would it be interesting if Shaman leaned even more into the support kit to make it an option to not bring a real support and bring the budget version instead. If a Shaman and an Inquisitor can fill the support well enough so would that be a good thing.

Fell

odz Shaman slow is 20% more effective at dmg reduction than enchanter slow (yes 20, not 10), and without slow, enchanter soloing - especially if he's in tight quarters or lacks sow - is incredibly dangerous.

Shaman are already a better group healer than druids (MUCH better in a melee-heavy group that lacks an enchanter), and, for sustained grinding, arguably better than a cleric, especially in smaller groups. And, for the really tough content (which I hope MnM will add more of) most groups will want a cleric AND a shaman/druid.

Gathbard

Fidric This is going a bit OT, bu I think, well...I hope, that the point was that "in the group scene there is currently no demand for a dedicated support class because another dps or another healer would be more advantageous for the group", which I don't entirely disagree with.

I think there is an argument to be made there: every "non support" class currently has too much built-in party support, which in turn makes pure support classes feel not needed, rightfully or not, blurring the lines too much.
This is a problem that affects Healers in particular, since they have the most utility/support skills at the moment (except Clerics, who keep asking for more party utility outside of healing, to further prove that point).

The underlying problem there, is that Healer should above all Heal, not buff, nor debuff/dps, at least not to the point of blurring the lines between archetypes. Right now both Druid and Shaman are Healer/Support imho, with Druid even closer to Healer/Support/DPS (that's a problem).
Honestly it wouldn't be horrible if every non support class was stripped of their party buffs (self buffs are fine) entirely and the totality of those buffs were grouped up into a few re-worked group buff skills and spells to be divided amongst the pure support classes.

Alternatively, the Support archetype should be re-labeled CC, tailoring the class kits accordignly.
Alternatively alternative: Pure Support should be the only archetype dealing with mana generation enhancement, group travel enhancements and similarly effective QOL improvements. In my experience, If a party rarely needs to rest when they have a pure support class on board, they will resort to any sort of bribery to get one.

If adding a pure X non support class makes the group more effective than having a pure support class in its place, the support archetype is dead.
"No class has to feel necessary or undesired" should not, in my opinion, translate to archetypes as well.
Every group should feel that it's IDEAL (not mandatory) to have: a tank, more than one dps, a healer and a pure support class.
All of this, while making sure that within a specific archetype every class feels equally desirable.

Metavahn

shaman pet never made sense to anyone, when that could of easily gone to ranger who needed something extra and it made more sense for ranger to have a wolf pet

odz

Fell

just to be clear i'm not advocating for the removal of slow from an enchanter's kit, just saying that there's a rework coming for the class and that the removal of enchanter slow would greatly improve shaman stocks. i don't really want to get into the soloing implications of that because i don't think the game is intended to be balanced around soloing, otherwise we'd be playing monsters & memories: legends.

regarding cleric vs shaman healing i don't think it's particularly close - clerics are far and away better than both druid and shaman in terms of raw throughput and efficiency, but similarly i'm not really interested in trying to carve out a niche for druids because it's not my wheelhouse - i would generally say the class needs improvements, but they at least have strong identity present with seasons, balancing issues aside, and my only rationale for advocating that clerics be knocked down a peg would be to create space for the weakest of the three priest classes, which would be druid in the current iteration of the game.

ultimately though i'm not advocating for power distribution for shaman vs cleric or enchanter for that matter, my agenda has strictly been related to class identity and flavorful gameplay, because let's be honest, the game is easy enough that you don't need to have an ideal group composition and be operating at 100% efficiency from the rip - it's a chatroom with dragons.

i think the introduction of pact of consume is 100% a step in the right direction, and if nothing changes between now and EA i'd be more than happy to continue playing the game with pact of consume as it exists, however, i think the gameplay loop feels more punishing than rewarding, but it's hard to budget power for systems like this, hence the ongoing discussion.

topically though i would reiterate my last point: shaman IS good and FEELS good to play, as it exists, today. i just think it could be better and more interesting.

odz

Metavahn

also yea to address the whole pet situation, i don't think a pet is particularly useful or interesting for shaman, i'd rather see our power budgeted elsewhere in the kit

Mesh

odz

shamans are a mix support/priest playstyle which is why they offer buffs/debuffs in addition to throughput healing lines, so that's kind of a moot point.

Every class has a mix of utility but they all still have a primary role. Shamans are healers.

Archetypes should be mandatory, never a specific class. Each group should require a tank, healer, support and DPS but you should be able to combine various classes within those archetypes into viable group compositions.

By removing haste or slow from supports you're necessarily making either the other support class or Shaman a mandatory pick in groups. Haste and slow are important enough that you never want to be without them in any 40+ group.

It's a bad idea and I'd hope NWC devs are familiar enough with their own game to know that.

odz

Mesh

again, i've never advocated for the removal of slow or haste from supports - you said that.

Mesh

odz

well keep in mind there is an outstanding deep dive slated with our largest overlap contender, and i'm partly suspicious that one of the reasons why the shaman deep dive was relatively underwhelming is because they're intending to prune some of the debuff lines from enchanter to allow a shaman niche to emerge in that void.

odz

enchanters can be valuable to a group without having to slow

odz

just to be clear i'm not advocating for the removal of slow from an enchanter's kit, just saying that there's a rework coming for the class and that the removal of enchanter slow would greatly improve shaman stocks.

If this isn't advocating a sparrow could starve on the difference.

odz

Mesh

"hey man i think they might remove some spells" is not "i think enchanter should lose slow" and the only reason i even mentioned it again is because you brought it up (with the inclusion of haste, no less).

but that's fine, if you want to argue in bad faith or intentionally misunderstand my statements then i won't try to stop you.

Fell

odz In groups with no enchanter, shaman heal efficiency is doubled -- literally doubled -- through the use of slow. Shaman also add more dps-- far more if the group is melee heavy. And of course shaman have their infinite mana pool, which clerics lack. Clerics have a raw edge in heal intensity alone ... and that's unneeded in your average exp group -- if any such group has EVER said "no, skip that shaman that's LFG and get a cleric instead", they did so because of res, not better healing.

That brings me to my second point. It's absolutely insane that, with travel time being so extraordinarily long in this game, that only 2 classes have resurrection. There MUST be more ways to reunite a dead member with their group. Shaman and Druid should both have this, even if it's a zero-percent res with a highly expensive material component.

Fell

odz Oh come, you didn't simply say "enchanters might lose slow", you said "enchanters would be perfectly fine if they lost slow", then doubled down with "if they did lose slow, it would greatly help shaman".

Anyway, please, let's not quibble -- as an enchanter, I'm on your side. Enchanters need some nerfing in some areas (though probably not slow) and shamans could benefit from better archetype visualization.

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