07-16-2006, 10:38 PM
Quote:he really shines in 5-mans, as the totems can really help, and *will* help the whole group, and her flexibility helps, too. Got a dedicated healer in the group? Woohoo, time to start nuking, just keep an eye out for secondary heal needs. No dedicated healer? Ok, I can help another shammy heal, and still smack stuff with my big hammer, and toss in a nuke, depending on how much healing is needed. Need an offtank? Sure, let me put on my shield. With healing support, I can offtank any but the heaviest hitters for a bit. And yes, I *can* get aggro on them. Earthshock and rockbiter ftw.
Sometimes I wonder if the central game mechanical problem with World of Warcraft is that it has become a game focussed around raids and occasionally PvP while featuring classes designed exclusively for small groups. The shaman totem is a perfect example of a game mechanic that works fine in 2-10 man groups and then gets completely left in the dust when you inflate everything to raid scale. Even things like the shocks and shaman tanking abilities go from a bad joke to an interesting possibility in small groups. The shaman and rogue seem to just be classes whose fundamental design rewards small group play, so when the game focuses more and more on raid situations these classes just shrink.
It almost makes you wonder what posessed the live team to focus so completely on large-scale raiding in the first place when it was a barely explored niche upon release. In almost every respect, switching to raiding has done nothing but damage their careful game balance.