Shaman Totems vs Paladin Blessings

[Kevin]

You know what I find the most amusing part of this whole "debate" to be?

So many people saying "pallies are the best, pallies are uber, pallies are awesome raid buffers and healers!" and yet...almost no one wants to PLAY one. There are very few pally players I know of who are happy about their end game role (and really, who can blame them) and wished for something more. But from what I've seen, there are tons of shaman, as they are or tend to be a very popular class.

Shaman are fluid. Paladins are not. That is what a lot of it boils down to. Shaman can do every job a paladin can do and can fill a caster roll paladins can't. While both classes get severely limited in raids, when not raiding shaman can still do other things.

Another factor is healing. Raid healing I actually think a paladin is more effective than a shaman. I personally like raid healing with a paladin better than a druid as well. However, the base healing power of a shaman is more effective than the base healing of a paladin. What I mean here is shaman get flash heal. The average healing of lesser healing wave is within 5 points of flash heal. Paladins flash of light is not effective without blessing of light up and/or without sacrificing a lot to get the healing power behind it leaving them with only the 2.5 second cast heal. This means a paladin that is in DPS gear does not have much in the way of effective healing at all. Shaman in DPS gear still have effective burst heals which still makes you feel you are doing something. Both classes trying to do raid DPS are generally much less effective than any other class trying to do raid DPS. But there are always exceptions. We've got Starkos on alliance side, and I've seen Shnuckums horde side both in the top 5 in damage out. The difference? In the gear they both wear to do that DPS, the shaman will be a more effective emergency healer than the paladin. You put the same skill behind the keyboard and the shaman will win out because of the way DPS delivery works. Not that a DPS paladin can't heal and not that they can't do it well.

The paladin on gearing though is much more like a druid. There is virtually no overlap in DPS gear and healing gear. Since a shaman to do DPS is not only doing DPS but also throwing elemental damage in the mix they still generally have some kind of damage and healing and int gear on. The other thing is that paladins can and do wear mail/leather/cloth in addition to plate the more you step down from the top flight of armor the more you feel like you aren't doing something quite right. It's like hunters wearing leather, sometimes that is clearly the best option but you really feel that it shouldn't be. That wears on you. It's actually easier for a shaman to get a multi role gear set that is all mail than it is for a paladin.

Shaman also fill the tanking roll that a tank that is limited by a mana pool generally end up filling. Emergency off tanking. A shaman with a shield in end game gear will break 5000 armor. This isn't that different than a warrior with a 2 hander on. Shaman have better burst aggro and aggro control. If they need to pick something up, even for just a few seconds to save more of the raid they can do it. I've seen shaman off tank destroyers that got loose in MC for 20 seconds without any real support until things got back under control. The paladin, unless they are holy/protection spec would like never get enough aggro to even get the thing to pay attention to them in that time. I say holy/prot becuase you need holy shock and imp righteous furor so that you get 90% more aggro from holy damage and can get that up holy shock, and judge righteousness on the mob as well along with the swings most other build simply can't generate that much aggro. The shaman may have some heal aggro (not reduced like the paladins) and can earth shock + rockbiter on it.

Finally I've touched on it. Shaman simply have much more control of the character. Yes windfury procs are much like seal of command procs, they are very random. However lightnight bolts, chain lightning, and shocks, and even something like stormstrike offer you so many other ways to control the DPS. The seal + Judge is slower than shocks and doesn't do nearly the damage anyway and that is pretty much the only control you have. The rest is sit and let auto-attack do it's job.

Another point is how things change if you change spec. A retribution paladin plays pretty much like a holy paladin (you just use different skills and a holy does less DPS). I haven't really played a full protection paladin, but I imagine that it will still play like a paladin. No other class in the game is that way. Shaman certainly aren't. An enhancement shaman does not play like an elemental shaman. A resto shaman does not play like the other specs. A paladin plays like a paladin pretty much no matter how you spec them.

So you throw that on top of the fact that at base levels without talents or gear support the shaman healing is better, the fact that shaman have more control over damage, the fact that in just about any gear set the shaman will feel they can do other jobs better, the fact that shaman can do more jobs than a paladin, the fact that your optimal gear set for the job you want to do is likely all made of the best type of armor you can wear, and the fact if you respec the shaman playstyle will change then it makes sense that people are going to enjoy playing them better. Oh and others covered the PvP side.


The rest of this post isn't really isn't related to Mirajj's post as I don't think he was arguing at all with the analysis, but I'm glad he brought that tangent up. I just want to comment on it in general framed a bit with my above comments.

Paladins do add more to a raid, by far. Paladins had the worst class review to date as some paladins simply came out of it nerfed, doing less damage, having less survivability and not healing any better. Most other classes really didn't have that happen. But paladins suffer from a fundamental class design flaw. The only thing they have control over in any real sense is healing. No other class suffers like this. Sure priests may still not do a lot of damage (though with the class review and certain spec choices priests that are primarily healers can still deal some very solid damage) but they can at least control that damage much better, though admittedly if they want any longevity they end up just wanding a lot which makes it behave like a paladin but they can at least choose to blow the mana pool to do damage. Paladins are always a support class, in every spec of the class and playstyle never changes. I don't see that for any other class, not even a priest. A priest can spec shadow and be a DPS leader, out in the front if they want. Paladins end up chained to someone else or just watching the game play itself while self healing and regening mana and surviving everything, which has appeal at times, but not when that is all you have going for you, even if you respec. They do distill down to very good raid healers and buffers.

Shaman suffer from getting reduced back to a support class in raids that can't do that job. Yes a resto shaman can, in a raid situation keep up with druids and priests but they still aren't better, it generally just means that the person behind the shaman is a great player and that possibly the priests and druids in the raid aren't doing everything they can. Shaman are the only healers that really don't have any talents that really increase longevity. They get 10% to healing and 5% mana reduction and 5% more mana. Paladins get a very nice longevity talent with illumination. Druids and priest both get 15% regen while casting along with at least 10% reduction in spell costs and at least 10% more healing. So again in the raid situations, paladins that go the route of the pigeon hole end up being better healers, this does not contradict what I said earlier about shaman having better base healing and better healing when they don't have the gear support. Shaman buffs as pointed out don't really help the raid that much either. So you have a class that is very fluid, is very good at going from healing to damage to off tanking, to ranged DPS, back to healing, but gets in a raid where most every class gets distilled down and what they get distilled to doesn't work all that well. The need for emergency burst healing isn't as high after things are learned and execution is better. They can't really dispell well (though the cleansing totems are more valuable in AQ20 and ZG than what a paladin can do, but the time frame of those instances not simply being overwhelmed by gear are very short lived) since so much of what needs to be dispelled in raids is magic and curses not poison and disease. The value of a fluid character is just not that high in most raid encounters. The value of a good healer, buffer, and dispeller is very high.

It's not a simple situation. Both classes are broken. Paladins are broken by really being so "the same" when you play them even though they are very powerful in raids (and PvP too). Shaman are broken by just not working right in the role they look to be designed to fill in raids and while they are still very powerful they just aren't powerful enough outside the pigeon hole roles to be more optimal than some other class in that spot and no other class can even do the poor job they end up doing in the roll they are supposed to fill.



And consider that a lot of the time horde are fully raid buffed in a 5 man. They have Mark, AI, and Fort and if they have a shaman along they get as much or more totem support than they will get in a raid. Alliance can't be fully raid buffed by just a 5 man group. I think that statement can help clarify the issue for people that don't always get it.