No changes planned for Enhancement Shaman in World of Warcraft

Tseric gave out a few details on changes in the newest patch in a recent WoW Forums post. One of the topics he covered was regarding the Enhancement Shaman and the complaints some World of Warcraft players have been fielding.

It’s a known fact that this branch of Shaman has not been known to be a solid contender on the PvP circuit. A lot of people still choose to spec this way because it is extremely efficient when soloing. The main problem, as Tseric pointed out, is that once these players reach higher levels, they’ll have a harder time on the PVP circuit. Respeccing is a valid choice for those who want to compete. More often than not though, the gear they’ve gathered all support their current spec.

The developers from Blizzard don’t consider the class as broken but they do admit that certain changes will have to be implemented…in a future patch. In other words, they’re not going to be doing any major changes on it for now.

Tseric said that “the changes going in to 2.1 don’t show signs of being altered and are seen to place the class in a reasonable performance category.” He also gave some details on the other changes that were discussed by the developers.

• Counterspell locking out a primary source of damage, nature. Paladins are in the same boat and this is deliberate.
• Along with that, nature immune creatures. The devs do see this as an issue and are being more relaxed with immune mobs. While these immune mobs may crop up from time to time, it isn’t in such a way as to block progress.
• Mana Tide has been considered for trainability, but it is not seen as a candidate. I’m sure this will come up again at some point, but it has been acknowledged before and the answer doesn’t seem to be changing for now or the foreseeable future.
• Threat generation, or more particularly, the ability to remove threat has been considered, but as shaman, for the most part, share standard 10% threat reduction with other casters, the devs don’t see it as a pressing issue.
• Weapon itemization for healing or damage spec’ced shaman not comparing to wands. The point has been brought up and acknowledged, but there isn’t anything to say beyond that at this time.
• Windfury buff scaling with weapons better than other weapon buffs, making it the obvious choice, which also seems to exacerbate people’s concern over the upcoming off-hand buff change. Yes, windfury does scale better and that’s fine, however the devs don’t see a necessity for buffing the other buffs to make them “more desirable”.

After all is said and done, Shamans are really going to have to wait for the full-release of the patch before they can tell if the changes are really for the betterment of the class in general. Still, a lot of players would really want to see the 10% threat reduction on the Shaman gone (thus giving them an easier time in tanking), hopefully it’ll happen in the next patch.

Via WoW Forums

Tseric gave out a few details on changes in the newest patch in a recent WoW Forums post. One of the topics he covered was regarding the Enhancement Shaman and the complaints some World of Warcraft players have been fielding.

It’s a known fact that this branch of Shaman has not been known to be a solid contender on the PvP circuit. A lot of people still choose to spec this way because it is extremely efficient when soloing. The main problem, as Tseric pointed out, is that once these players reach higher levels, they’ll have a harder time on the PVP circuit. Respeccing is a valid choice for those who want to compete. More often than not though, the gear they’ve gathered all support their current spec.

The developers from Blizzard don’t consider the class as broken but they do admit that certain changes will have to be implemented…in a future patch. In other words, they’re not going to be doing any major changes on it for now.

Tseric said that “the changes going in to 2.1 don’t show signs of being altered and are seen to place the class in a reasonable performance category.” He also gave some details on the other changes that were discussed by the developers.

• Counterspell locking out a primary source of damage, nature. Paladins are in the same boat and this is deliberate.
• Along with that, nature immune creatures. The devs do see this as an issue and are being more relaxed with immune mobs. While these immune mobs may crop up from time to time, it isn’t in such a way as to block progress.
• Mana Tide has been considered for trainability, but it is not seen as a candidate. I’m sure this will come up again at some point, but it has been acknowledged before and the answer doesn’t seem to be changing for now or the foreseeable future.
• Threat generation, or more particularly, the ability to remove threat has been considered, but as shaman, for the most part, share standard 10% threat reduction with other casters, the devs don’t see it as a pressing issue.
• Weapon itemization for healing or damage spec’ced shaman not comparing to wands. The point has been brought up and acknowledged, but there isn’t anything to say beyond that at this time.
• Windfury buff scaling with weapons better than other weapon buffs, making it the obvious choice, which also seems to exacerbate people’s concern over the upcoming off-hand buff change. Yes, windfury does scale better and that’s fine, however the devs don’t see a necessity for buffing the other buffs to make them “more desirable”.

After all is said and done, Shamans are really going to have to wait for the full-release of the patch before they can tell if the changes are really for the betterment of the class in general. Still, a lot of players would really want to see the 10% threat reduction on the Shaman gone (thus giving them an easier time in tanking), hopefully it’ll happen in the next patch.

Via WoW Forums