Shaman Totems vs Paladin Blessings

[Mavfin]

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.

That's an interesting question. Kinda fits if you think about the fact that I raid with my shammy because that's the 60 I have on that server, and I built her the way she is because she was a lot of fun to play up to 60 and still is. I didn't build her for raiding. I have a built-to-raid toon already, an MT-class warrior, so the shaman is something different for me. That *is* one of the nice things about WoW talent/char builds, in that in most classes you can build 2 of the same class and not have them play the same. Pallies, from what GG said, do, but they're the exception rather than the rule.