I’m over it your right I’m wrong have a good night
“I don’t understand how the toxicity and exclusion can be completely ignored when it is an obvious issue”
“people are still being excluded or told to pick a different class and just as I’ve recently posted inclusion all around is the main focus of this conversation.”
“Again it’s not even a dps issue it’s an inclusion issue or viability however you want to put it”
And since my personal experiences mean yours are wrong, here’s you proving my personal experiences wrong with yours!
“I’ve seen runemages hit over 120k on multiple occasions and never seen a shaman hit over 65k”
If people tell you to stop playing shaman, block them, or report them. Problem solved.
Yup you’re right
1. Having totems load in right away, and having the pulses start immediately would be awesome.
- The other place it could use some TLC is mobility. The only place it sucks for PVE is boss 2 of HM Cit. Shaman really needs mobility + DPS boost for that boss.
The mobility talent swap just hurts them too much. Currently, our shamans are switching to another class for the duration of that boss. It would be really nice if they got to have fun on their main class there too.
2. Thank you for brining this forward. It is the first I have ever heard of shaman players being treated that way. It is unfortunate that it has been happening to you.
Perhaps consider, that the people treating you that way are unworthy of your time and effort.
Or if you deem them worthy of your time and just misinformed, you might find this useful:
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Shamans pull nice & consistent DPS. With the proper tutelage brand new shamans can pull 40k out of the gate.
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This allows players to immediately include shaman mains (& those who are learning another class while playing shaman) in endgame content across the board.
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For numbers to back you up. Here you can see a bunch of shamans parsed on a single target (w/o any party boosts) vs other classes in that precise situation: https://leaderboard-orbus.xyz/
I hope the above helps.
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Oh yea, if totemic call cooldown was reduced that would be awesome, maybe that would help a bit on damage with a more consistent damage boost, tradeoff being that you have to keep moving to keep the boost up
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I appreciate this, thank you.
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Looking at DPS charts I’ve seen, Shaman is second in DPS right behind Ruin mage. Have you researched the class and how others get good results? I have a Shaman but am not enamored with the class myself so I have not really looked into it. I just know that alot of players think of the class as high DPS.
uhh shaman is last in dps lol. it’s goes runemage, ranger, scoundrel, shaman.
(insert more quotes here)
This is exactly why we need an ingame dps parser, so people have an idea of how they are performing and have a solid basis of which to discuss rotations, tilesets and improvements.
This isn’t in the interest of naming and shaming anyone, but rather how to improve as a character. Much like most mmorpg’s have been doing it for the past 20 years (EverQuest being one of the first enabling this back in 1999 or so).
Does showing your own performance come with a “shadow side”? Sure, it does. But first and foremost it may alert a player that they might be playing a class “wrong” and early on at that. Which not only gives them time to react early on, but also polish for the long run.
Does meters have a toxic side? Yes, they do. Or rather, they don’t. People have a toxic side. But there are many players out there who do simply not know they are performing badly. Giving them a gauge on their performance is the first step to showing them what works at what does not. The rest is easily handled by word of mouth, looking up rotations, tilesets, personal styles etcetera. But if they do not themselves use one of the third party tools along with combat logging (or are unable to), they are at a serious disadvantage.
Oh, and to add to this, it is an easy way for the community to “self correct” on perceived class balance with actual numbers and arguments in specific situations, making it easier to both post about and for the developers to look upon if balancing seems needed in certain situations.
Personally (for now) i am quite content that currently a very needed and very hard look it taken towards fixing old and persistent desync bugs. But over time, this particular issue would be a close second on my list of things to do something about.
Just a quick reminder that this post is about possible changes for shaman. dps meters are being discussed elsewhere.
Honestly I would love to see the opposite type of balencing to happen for all the classes in the game. I think designing boss fights such that different classes excel in different roles and situations would be more beneficial than making every class equal. I think every class should be playable in every fight but I think that some bosses should make some classes feel awkward to play and some classes feel exceptionally useful. I think if every class had unique situations and a few bosses where they feel very important it would be a lot harder to directly compare and evaluate them.
No matter how much balancing is done there will always be a meta. As long as 2 classes fairly similarly fulfil the same role there will always be a better and worse pick. The only way to break free of that is diversity of roles and having every class be situational viable.
You see this a bit with things like rangers and scoundrels being good at hitting targets in the air. I think more stuff like that to encourage party diversity would help.
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Making mobility shaman a thing won’t take away from the other classes
First things first the things I support giving shaman:
I support giving shaman their totems immediately as long as its done in a way that doesn’t greatly increase their sustained damage output.
I support buffing shamans aoe a little bit to allow them to feel more secure in their specialization of being good at clearing minion groups and maintaining boss ads.
in terms of greater class balance I feel like shaman is very hard to justify buffing because of how simple and static its play style is.
Unlike every other class in the game its play style really doesn’t change that much from the start of the game. I dont think its “easy” because at high levels, players will always find ways of complicating things and squeezing all the damage they can out of every class. I do however think that the learning curve is very shallow until you hit very late game.
In a lot of ways I think this is a good thing. I have always thought of shaman as being a casual dps class for people who main tanks or healers or just people who don’t want to get RSI playing mage or ranger. Early game accessibility is a big problem for a lot of casual players in orbus and shaman helps a lot with that.
That being said, I think shaman would need greater differences between its level 5 and level 30 play styles to really have the complexity to justify being able to keep up with the single target dps output of the other classes. Scoundrel is a good example of this. Scoundrel is preaty easy to level early game but in the process of leveling they go from pointing and clicking at point blank to doing curve shots, weaving charge shots, effectively using their deck, and fighting from farther away. This is important because those extra mechanics are where you can reward players for their growth. Shaman on the other hand mostly just learns to redrop their totems every couple volleys and put down their totems in the right order. Almost all of their damage increase is locked behind talents and tiles that don’t really force you to change your play that much.
Again I don’t think shaman needs to be a big single target dps class. I think it should continue to be a casual class that excels in doing aoe damage.
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I think every class should have strengths and weaknesses. One of shamans strengths ideally should be group damage and ad clear and shamans weakness is mobility and lack of range. If every class can do everything equally well it detracts from the flavor of the classes and runs into the problem we are having right now where classes can be directly compared to eachother.
I think instead there should be some fights where shaman feels great to play in and some fights where the other classes feel equally awkward
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Ok. At this point I completely give up 
This is a very important point. World of Warcraft for example is a grand example of what happens when you standardize all classes to the point that they lose all identity. Every single class is essentially the same, but with different spell effects for their buttons. They do the same thing, they have the same buffs, they have the same debuffs, they have everything the same. This is not good. Classes need to have strengths and weaknesses. Not only does it make them interesting to play, it adds almost required diversity to group compositions.
A good example of this is once again Final Fantasy XIV. They have a system where by the entire party gets 1% to every stat when the group is diverse. That means, if you have a tank, a healer, a melee dps, a ranger physical dps and a ranged magical dps, you get a 5% bonus to everyone in that group. Not only that, but classes themselves have abilities that are the staples for those classes. As an example, Ninja has Trick Attack, a debuff on a 60 second cooldown that makes the target take 5% extra damage from all sources for 15 seconds, which is a huuuge boost in a group of 8. XIV also has the “selfish classses” (Black Mage for spellcasters, Samurai for melee and Machinist for ranged physical) which do not provide anything else except pure damage to the group.
Orbus has similar mechanics when it comes to class debuffs. Rangers have their damage taken increase debuffs they apply with charged shots, scoundrels have theirs too on charged shots, mages apply weakness with affliction etc. I have no idea how they stack in today’s game as I’ve not really played properly for a very long time at this point, but I can tell you that in preborn and early reborn when we were active, all those mechanics were very much utilized.
When it comes to shamans themselves, they have their uses. Niche uses, but they have abilities that others don’t (hex totem, stun totem for example). In certain situations, boss fights or parts of boss fights can be made trivial.
Classes have other uses except pure damage, if you have half the wit to use them the way they were designed. Stop tunnel visioning numbers, and look at the broader image of what each class can provide. Damage is not the only metric for performance. Never has been, never will be.
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While i see where you’re coming from, i disagree on several points here. Let me elaborate a little, as well as put a little history on top:
While this is somewhat true, it turned into this for a reason: Namely, if your raid group could not field the optimal meta setup, you were at a serious disadvantage. This held true for around the first 3 or so years of WoW (2004-2007ish). As such, over time buff and debuffs were standardized to both ease group composition as well as not force players out if that spot was already filled. Overall, while you are right that it made classes lose some of their identity, this was actually for the greater good - and still is today.
With that said, most classes still hold special utility that you lose out on if you can not include one (in some cases several as their utility is group specific) on your team:
- No priest, no fortitude (hp) buff
- No mage, no intellect buff
- No warlock, no easy summons (especially detrimental if a raid requires respecs between encounters), no healthstones
- No deathknight, no grips
- No demon hunter, no raidwide magic damage buff
(the list goes on for every class but you get the point i am sure)
The first part is just “forcing” a different kind of meta, essentially (and i am guessing) occasionally forcing people out as something specific is needed. While WoW tried to get away from that with standardization, this still happens in many cases for many reasons. And as seen in my response above, the same holds true for WoW in terms of diversity. Only instead of gaining a buff for being diverse, you lose out on power by not being diverse.
My point is that standardization isn’t always bad nor is class identity always bad. Basically i am saying it’s not as black and white as you make it out to be in my opinion.
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Little late to the party here, but I’ll just throw in my two cents as well…
I think in endgame content (T7-15 shards & All Raids) shaman is just fine as it is.
I have pulled over 80k many times (including solo in my player house) and compete with high level mages/rangers all the time!
I would say that instant spawning of totems on your belt when switching to the class would be a nice QoL change.
I also agree with the orbs spawning instantly, as long as it doesn’t affect dps much.
At lower level gameplay (Unsharded-T6), shaman is sometimes unable to deal much damage before adds/mobs are dead. Especially when switching between classes. Bosses are still usually tanky enough to be fine.
I think shaman is a very viable class even at the highest levels. It gives players who do not have as much experience with advanced dps classes a chance to run ALL endgame content with the best players in the game. Allowing them to improve upon the other higher skill cap classes, if wanted, without missing out.
I have never been turned away for being a shaman and while I have occasionally heard misinformed criticism, it is definitely not true. Shaman is a great class and CAN keep up with any class through all content as it currently stands.
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