Quote:Perhaps someone else can speak to whether there is a similar situation with shamans; the few that I know seem to prefer playing another class over the shaman as well.I have a level 60 dwarf priest, a level 60 night elf rogue and a level 60 tauren shaman. The shaman was my first character created (though not my first to 60 due to some unfortunate circumstances) and whenever I was pressed to name a main, Mogo was it. She still is. I absolutely love playing my shaman. Absolutely love it. What I love most about the shaman is the flexibility. If there's a role that needs to be done during a fight, I can do it. I've offtanked, main-tanked, nuked from a distance, beat the crap out of things melee, main healed, solo healed, and backup healed and in most cases, all in the same gear now. Yes, I am not as effective in any one role as another class, but I can flow between the needed roles all in the same fight without a lot of difficulty. Now, if I am main-tanking throughout the instance or solo healing an instance, I generally do have slightly different gear on than my normal gear. I absolutely love the fact that during a fight, there is always something I can do to help that is mostly effective. As a priest, I can heal or do some damage and, depending on mob types, do some CC, but I can't really off-tank for any length of time and forget about main tanking. :) With my rogue, she does damage, has limited CC and, oddly enough, can off-tank for a short time with or without evasion, but if the healer goes down or is out of mana, I can't do much to help out. Now, the shaman is short on CC a bit, but I can do so much else to help out a 5 or 10 man group, that I'm certainly not going to complain.:D Some of the flexibility helps out in the 40 man (and it helps more in the 20 mans), but usually that's only when something goes wrong. I have off-tanked in MC to protect my clothies and casting druids when a critter has gotten loose from the warriors/feral druids, but usually I'm just DPS (as best I can) and healbot. Thankfully, with her spec and gear, I can do both and usually not run out of mana and not just end up standing there doing nothing but wand if I'm out of mana like I have to do with my priest.
Edit: The druid has some flexibility as well, but if you are shifted to tank, you can't heal. If you're shifted as cat to do damage, you can't heal. You have to spend mana to get into the different forms and then you are limited in what you can do in those forms, which is balanced. Imagine a bear tank that can heal as well as an unshifted druid. Ain't gonna happen and it shouldn't. :) So, while I do have fun with the druid, it's not as fluid as a shaman is to me. They can do better in their roles than the shaman can, but they give up a little bit of fluidity.
Intolerant monkey.