Shaman is in a purty gud state

Fell

If OTHER players are 100% effective in stopping a caster from casting, then they are whimps and easily defeated

In groups, I've killed probably tens of thousands of caster mobs that never got one spell off. Why? Because half the classes in game have some means to interrupt a caster. But only ONE class can cut melee dmg in half. Bringing up "special attacks" is a red herring - higher level mobs do proportionally more dmg from base melee. In fact, there are mobs in FW -- not even named mobs -- that one healer literally CANNOT HEAL unless they're slowed. They'll go OOM otherwise.

Argue this all you wish, and try to convince us that shaman slow sucks. Want devs to remove it then? What point do you believe you're making?

In any group without an enchanter to slow, shamans are far superior to druids for healing and, depending on the situation, can sometimes best a cleric. That's because of slow. If an enchanter is present, then druids and shaman are pretty much tied. There's a word for that ... and that word is "balance".

Growlron

Jat His main being enchanter.. and prob zero hours on shaman.

Mesh

Fell

In any group without an enchanter to slow, shamans are far superior to druids for healing and, depending on the situation, can sometimes best a cleric. That's because of slow. If an enchanter is present, then druids and shaman are pretty much tied. There's a word for that ... and that word is "balance".

A healer whose healing efficacy is contingent on no support being present does not seem balanced to me. A support will almost always be present in any decent group.

I'm also not sure it's true. Druids have higher raw healing in addition to utility with less support overlap. I'd still prefer a Druid over Shaman in any group with a support.

All of this is sort of silly to argue over anyway. Devs have already said several times that they're just roughing in the reworks at this point and that there are many balance and tuning passes still to come.

Growlron

His main being enchanter.. and prob zero hours on shaman.

If he was agreeing with you the amount of hours he's played Shaman wouldn't matter to you.

Gotta stop trying to gatekeep people having different opinions, friend.

Jat

Growlron I see his points slightly, but mostly from a paper and statistics point of view. It’s not his fault. He doesn’t actually play the class. He knows the game well I don’t argue that, but he’s not actually reading word for word what we are writing. Like for example: I died and it’s not consume pack’s fault when I clearly stated in my comment that I could have healed myself in that situation if I didn’t have consume pack up.

And he doesn’t know how good of a player of these types of games I am. So there’s no disrespect there either.

I’m done in here man. Good luck to you Growlron. We’re trying to make sense of things to people that aren’t even playing the class. I don’t understand why they are even in this thread. You don’t see me posting over and over in an enchanter or bard thread. Sure, I know what they are capable of doing, but do I really know what it feels like to have played those classes for hundreds of hours?

Good luck Growlron.

You’ll probably see me again. Just not in this thread. And good luck to us Shamans, brother. I’m hoping that they will eventually find a good place for us since I am probably going to stick with the class in EA. I think they will keep trying to find that sweet spot for us? Hopefully leaning a little more into what it used to play like vs now.

You really made a great point when you said “why not just tweak the old consume numbers - less mana, more loss of life - keep tweaking it until they find the right point”. I believe that consume should always put us ahead of the mana game even when using mana to heal ourselves from the damage we’ve done using consuming. We should still have a net gain so that we can keep using the spell over and over again (practice your abc’s). And we should also benefit from the amount of Wisdom we have. The more Wisdom, the less we have to heal ourselves for more of a net gain of mana. It should be consume consume consume heal ourselves consume consume etc. It was fun. It felt good. It doesn’t have to give us as much mana as it did before fine. But keep that rotation going because we enjoyed it.

We never asked for this devs. Please. We are the players. Hear us out. Help us.

Fell

Mesh

A healer whose healing efficacy is contingent on no support being present does not seem balanced to me.

I read the balance equation like this. Druids are third in raw healing, but they have a far bigger toolkit than other priests. Don't need a wiz to port or evac us -- we got a druid! Don't need an Elie to dmg shield us -- we got a druid! And on easy content where the priests have mana to spare, a druid can dps better too (unless perhaps a cleric against undead). Even if all that adds up to slightly less group utility, druids solo better, and that has to factor as well.

I'm also not sure it's true. Druids have higher raw healing in addition to utility with less support
overlap. I'd still prefer a Druid over Shaman in any group with a support.

Let me elaborate. On easy content, where priests are not challenged, druid utility wins. But my statement was on raw healing -- and trust me, on tough content when pulls are being regulated not by spawn timers but priest mana, a druid cannot keep up with shaman or cleric ... not unless they have someone to slow. In that case, druid + enchanter usually beats shaman + enchanter.

Fell

Jat

Like [saying] for example: I died and it’s not consume pack’s [sic] fault when I clearly stated in my comment
that I could have healed myself in that situation if I didn’t have consume pack [sic] up.

You're still missing the point. A huge pull of high-con mobs in a group with no CC and your healers LOM is a situation that SHOULD take extremely intelligent tactics to avoid death. Instead, you did the worst thing possible -- cast a spell to flag yourself unhealable, then cast one of the highest aggro spell a shaman has, before tanks have aggro lock. And you think your dying is a GAME flaw? AoE heals at the start of a bad pull are a sure-fire death wish.

Worse is that, even ignoring the highly imbalanced group and the bad pull itself, there's likely a half-dozen or more errors the rest of your group probably made too. I suspect most of them did what they do most pulls, except try press the buttons faster. Did your SK terror? If he was the puller, did he try to FD it off? Did your ranger use snare arrows and root, or was he just pew-pewing as usual? Did you have even a few seconds warning it was going to be a big pull? If so, did your druid try an exodus? If not, were they trying to root to help CC, or did they just help heal, and draw aggro themselves? What was your second tank doing? Assisting the main tank -- the worst thing possible -- or was he CCing also?

Sorry, but the idea that, in a situation like this that "I died because Devs broke my class" is quite frankly absurd.

Mesh

Fell

on tough content when pulls are being regulated not by spawn timers but priest mana, a druid cannot keep up with shaman or cleric ... not unless they have someone to slow.

On tough content you will always have someone to slow because nobody is doing tough content without a support.

AFAIK, With mantles and seasons, Druid has much better HPM than Shaman (especially considering they don't have to spend mana on debuffs.) Therefore, whenever there is a support present to debuff mobs, Druid is going to perform better.

Which is why my point throughout all of these Shaman threads has been that I think it's a bad idea to balance Shaman heals and mana efficiency around their ability to slow.

Growlron

Mesh Im gate keeping anti shaman haters who dont play the class and only want to nerf it into obscurity to improve the superiority of their own chosen favorite class.

People that dont bother to play the class dont get to weight in on the necessity of things ACTUAL shaman players deem fun.

Fell

@Mesh

On tough content you will always have someone to slow because nobody is doing tough content without a support.

Circular logic. Let's use a concrete example. A group composed of tank, shaman, and some rando DPS - but no enchanter - can do a certain set of content. Now replace that shaman with a druid, and that set shrinks considerably.

When you say "support" what you actually mean is "enchanter". Balancing a shaman's healing power on their own ability to slow is certainly more sensible than a druid's ability to heal being based on one other specific class being present.

I'll also note that enchanter slow is 20% less effective than shaman slow, which largely obviates the HPS differential.

The one thing I DO agree with @Growlron on is that the druid+chanter vs. shaman+chanter equation would balance better if shaman had sole access to STR buffs, and thus really did unquestionably have the best line of physical enhancement.

@Growlron

People that dont bother to play the class dont get to weight in on the necessity of things ACTUAL shaman players deem fun.

Given you've loudly and repeatedly told us you've "quit the game entirely", it seems we need to put you in the class of those who aren't actual shaman players.

Qorsk

goes and gets marshmallows

The flames are strong and hot. I approve.

🏕 🔥

nyslater

Fell You've asked twice why the other healers in the group didn't heal him. Have you ever played a healer in a game which had an 80% healing debuff? There's a reason almost no game has healing debuffs that go up that high. If someone has an 80% heal reduction in a game, they can't be really be healed through damage.

In the current state of the game, in normal group play a good Shaman is going to have the 80% consuming pact healing debuff up almost all the time except for very small windows. You can't usually predict a bad pull 2 minutes in advance, but if you can you need to make the choice to stop hitting Consuming Pact 2 minutes ahead of time, and that choice for flexibility will cost you quite a lot of mana.

Classes are defined by their abilities and interaction with other players. In most good group situations, Shaman in their current state will be defined as the squishiest member of the party - who cannot take damage, who aren't worth bandaging, who aren't worth healing unless it's an extreme emergency due to an 80% healing reduction. Your Shaman can't reasonably be healed, so they can't take any hits. People will quickly learn this and Shaman will be defined around the lack of interaction other people can have with a Shaman's health bar. Party members used to bandage us to help out. It only takes about 2 bandage attempts now for people to give up on that after they see how little it heals the Shaman now. The first time they try to bandage, they are confused and think something went wrong which is why they try again.

kloqqa

nyslater Yup, this will be the lame metagame that shaman get stuffed into. Effectively they will have half or less hp than other healers, because that's just what %hp theyre going to be stuck on to do optimal consuming pact 2 min cycles. The debuff needs to be less punishing, less duration, or we need some kind of extra step to mitigate it after building it up, or like a low HPS, high HPM HoT that bypasses healing reduction.

Qorsk

Did they change the debuff from 67 to 80?

nyslater

Qorsk It scales down as you level, oddly enough. I think mid 40s for example it drops down to -75% healing or so.

Fell

nyslater

If someone has an 80% heal reduction in a game, they can't be really be healed through damage.

Right, which is the entire point of this debuff. You can heal enough to prevent dying from a dot, but if a mob's on you, it needs to be mezed, stunned, rooted, or taunted off -- and fast.

in normal group play a good Shaman is going to have the 80% consuming pact healing debuff
up almost all the time except for very small windows.

Only for shamans who refuse to adapt.

Example best-practice for new usage: big pull arrives: shaman expends most of his bar healing while all mobs get aggro locked, mezed, slowed, etc. ONCE that stage is done, the shaman now cannies up, then meds/heals others while all the mobs are killed, assured that he's at no risk.

Killing those mobs should take 2 minutes, but if not, then either:

a) the puller ensures the next pull is easy, or
b) the group waits till the timer is nearly up, or
c) the group is prepared to adopt tactics that don't require the shaman to draw aggro.

You can't usually predict a bad pull 2 minutes in advance...

Yes, but any good group can nearly always predict the potential for a bad pull before it happens. And regardless, when you DO get a huge bad pull, the worst thing a shaman can usually do is lead off with the highest aggro spell he has (as he admitted he did).

you need to make the choice to stop hitting Consuming Pact 2 minutes ahead of time,
and that choice for flexibility will cost you quite a lot of mana....

Again: that's the entire point. You now must be judicious in using it -- you can't simply continually spam it without bad consequences.

Still, I repeat: two minutes does seem a bit extreme. Around a minute makes more sense ... or possibly start the debuff at 100%, but have it roll down to 0% in 90 secs time -- so, say 45s after your last cast, you can get healed for 50%.

odz

nyslater

it's the opposite - it starts low and scales up, around 20 it's 67%, then up to 76% at 30, etc.

odz

Fell i disagree with this, i've been doing a bunch of mid level grouping with consuming pact in pugs and i've been ripping it from the moment i get there 'til the moment i leave - the only difference is that any time i precast/clean mobs i make sure that i've got my self-peels ready if a tank is slow to taunt, and i sit in the shoot dead zone of active mobs so i don't get pelted with arrows.

as long as you continue to med and manage your spellcasting economy as is expected, you have plenty of mana to enfeeble/slow + hot + dot and stay very high on mana AND health, and again if you're in a scenario where a bad pull is going to result in immediate healing aggro you should mitigate that risk before investing into anything else.

essentially it's the high risk/high reward that shaman players were asking for, but that's not really what they wanted - they wanted "high risk" they could immediately mitigate with a single hot while retaining all of the benefits of the previously overtuned cannibalize.

so long as you play around you aggro, which is quite frankly very easy to do, you can heal through some pretty messy shit with very suboptimal group compositions, it's just asking shaman players to do more than bitch about their relative power level on the forum and that's a bridge too far.

nyslater

Fell Well, your example of best-practice results in a very significantly lower mana regen over time for the Shaman. You can absolutely spam it and change the rest of your play around those consequences. So are Shaman going to be balanced around your lower mana regen scenario or the substantially higher mana regen a good Shaman can pump out while also still being safe?

This really isn't a risk/reward thing - it's bad design that narrows optionality for good play. It feels fine while leveling, but it's also pretty dumb and pigeon holes you / the group if they care to adapt to you like your scenario lays out. We already have multiple Shaman mains in this thread not even realizing they're leaving a ton of mana regen or making mistakes because of the mix of convoluted mechanic and additional effort.

Reducing the healing debuff by making changes like you're suggesting would definitely help make it a bit less restrictive. Also changing the debuff to only reduce self-healing. Or introducing the low HPS / high HPM HoT bypassing the reduction like Kloqqa mentioned. But see how all of these are more duck tape over the duck tape that has become of Shaman design? None of this is well designed stuff from the ground up.

Do we see other MMOs using mechanics like this, or we think that they've designed an amazing new MMO category of healer that can gain more mana at the cost of effectively not being healable a large percentage of the time? I just really don't think we'll see this borrowed by other games...

I'm not trying to be rude at all, and you clearly have a good understanding of a lot of aspects of this game. But the main point I'm trying to make is that Shaman is getting clunkier and clunkier.

Fell

odz I don't disagree at all. My post was a reply to those shaman who seem to believe that their aggro is wholly unmanageable, and that, when they do get aggro, they should always be able to just heal their way out of it.

@nyslater

Are Shaman going to be balanced around your lower mana regen scenario?

As others have pointed out, those shaman able to manage their aggro and reliably predict imminent risk will be able to canni nearly as much as they did before.

Do we see other MMOs using mechanics like this, or we think that they've designed an amazing new MMO category of healer that can gain more mana at the cost of effectively not being healable a large percentage of the time?

Come now, this is HARDLY anything new. In fact, in the earliest days of EQ, it was a truism that, if any healer or caster got aggro -- other than perhaps an extremely well-geared plate-wearing cleric -- heals were not going to save you. The only thing that would was someone getting the mob off you -- and fast.

nyslater

Fell There are 0 other MMOs with a healer that can't heal itself most of the time, haha. There's a huge difference between taking more damage from hits versus having an enormous healing debuff up.

It's not hard at all to spam Consuming Pact 100% on cooldown and be completely safe, as odz mentioned. We have almost as much mana regen as we had before. It's still too strong. And the risk/reward offset is implemented poorly.

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