Blizzard to Paladins:

[Skandranon]

poison only, not that many important player buffs are poisons.

*cough* Tremor totem?

I disagree.  Paladins are much better, especially at the buffing and clensing part.
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And you leave out the healing part. Lesser Healing Wave is the second-strongest fast heal in the game. Checked out the stats on Flash of Light recently?

[oldmandennis]

*cough*  Tremor totem?

Heh.... have you tried using Tremor? It's very tricky, and can't be relied upon. It works in pulses, and you have to be in range of the totem when a pulse goes off. Often you run out of the range while you are feared. You have to plant it to try and cover 5 people, which means that someone is barely covered, and has a very high chance of not being in range. Even if it works, you are feared for a second, interrupting casting. Also, mobs that wipe/reduce aggro (like Onyxia, I believe) when they fear get that wipe in. Several things that seem like fear, aren't they are magic. Two that come to mind are the zombies at the second farm in WPL and the corehounds.

Oh, and the other GINORMUS advantage pallies have is that 3-4 of them can cover an entire raid with every concievably useful blessing. Shaman need atleast 8 to cover an entire raid, and even then many people will be missing important totems. Of course this could cut both ways, with the 5th and 6th pallys being told to shield hearth cause the group would rather have extra DPS or priests, but thems the breaks. At least the 4 who are there will have an excellent shot at loot.

And you leave out the healing part.  Lesser Healing Wave is the second-strongest fast heal in the game.  Checked out the stats on Flash of Light recently?
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I just did, and I agree HPS sucks. <Theory craft>However, the HPM looks fantastic, especially with Blessing of Light, the talent, and a little heal gear. How much mana does an end game pally have? It seems like you could spam that for ever, for a reasonable and very steady stream of heals</Theory craft> Shaman may be able to heal more quickly, but run dry very fast. I usually spend at least half a boss fight just rubbing my hands infront of my mana totem.

[Kevin]

I just did, and I agree HPS sucks.&nbsp; <Theory craft>However, the HPM looks fantastic, especially with Blessing of Light, the talent, and a little heal gear.&nbsp; How much mana does an end game pally have?&nbsp; It seems like you could spam that for ever, for a reasonable and very steady stream of heals</Theory craft>&nbsp; Shaman may be able to heal more quickly, but run dry very fast.&nbsp; I usually spend at least half a boss fight just rubbing my hands infront of my mana totem.
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I can't speak for pallies or shaman at raid level but I can speak for 5 mans up to Sunken Temple. I think a pally is a better healer than a shaman for a 5 man at those stages. I haven't played the shaman that high but Treesh has and I've been with her. I see how fast she burns mana and some of the healing issues she has. I've played with her priest (who is 60) a ton as well and know she knows how to conserve mana and how to heal well. I've played a paladin to 51 and a druid to 60. I've got a good grasp on healing myself. My druid is a better healer than my paladin but I actually don't think the druid is that much of a better healer for 5 man stuff based on healing the same instances with similar group compositions with both the paladin and the druid. Of course I had more healing experience when I did them with the paladin having done a lot of healing with my druid first.

But regardless based on personal experience and close 2nd hand experience I think the paladin is a better a healer in 5 man. And I think you are right that lovely steady stream of Holy Light (I almost never use Flash of Light when healing) with Blessing of Light on the tank is great. 2.5 second cast is also fast enough to get another person healed and not lose the tank. Plus you will have Blessing of Wisdom running on yourself if you are main healer so you get that mana back as well and BoW kicks the snot out of mana stream, though mana tide is better.

If I get aggro (which I almost never do from just heals) I have high armor and a shield even in my plate/mail/leather/cloth mismash that I heal in and you can't interrupt my heals from damage. That alone is part of the reason a paladin has an advantage over a druid in healing. I can heal just as well, no stuttering at all, while taking a beating and I can take a beating in my healer form better than a druid can in healer form. This is also an advantage a paladin has over the shaman in 5 man healing. The shaman does have a multi target heal but it really isn't that great. Shaman basically get flash heal and a weak greater heal. I can heal without using flash heal.

Now in PvP, the shaman is probably the better healer because of the fact that their fast cast heal does actual healing and even with blessing of light up flash of light does pretty much nothing. But I think I would take, if I'm using one as a main healer and I have several times, a paladin over a shaman. I would take a shaman over a paladin as a secondary healer though, I think. But again this is 5 man world, not raid I just haven't seen horde raids to really get a good idea, it's all extrapolation from the L40+ 5 mans and my knowledge of alliance raids.

[Quark]

Oh, and the other GINORMUS advantage pallies have is that 3-4 of them can cover an entire raid with every concievably useful blessing.
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That's true, if you don't want the paladins to be doing anything else. We typically don't optimize our Blessings simply so that Paladins can actually do something in Molten Core.

[Quark]

You don't even really need to do that.&nbsp; Just CC the paladin.&nbsp; Or have a shaman watch him and earthshock him as he starts to heal.&nbsp; There are a multitude of ways to screw with a paladin's "healing" ability, and the only response to all of them?&nbsp; Bubble.&nbsp; Bubble.&nbsp; Bubble.&nbsp; And the moment he uses the bubble you can mark him for destruction twelve seconds later.&nbsp; For the next four and three-quarters minutes, you'll be able to focus fire and own that paladin almost instantly.&nbsp; In all honesty, you can't discuss Divine Shield as a tactic for the paladin as 96% of the time the shield's on cooldown.&nbsp; There's a reason no one claims rogues are too powerful because they can Vanish out of everything; why is Divine Shield treated differently?
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Oh, but they do. They complain constantly. Rogues can do this, Rogues can do that, Rogues can .... Yeah? So, what. If we don't do that, we die, and it's on a 5 minute timer. That's why Preparation has become so valuable to me ... Blizzard has tried to balance Rogues based on mostly timered skills.

[Rinnhart]

Oh, and the other GINORMUS advantage pallies have is that 3-4 of them can cover an entire raid with every concievably useful blessing.&nbsp; Shaman need atleast 8 to cover an entire raid, and even then many people will be missing important totems.&nbsp; Of course this could cut both ways, with the 5th and 6th pallys being told to shield hearth cause the group would rather have extra DPS or priests, but thems the breaks.&nbsp; At least the 4 who are there will have an excellent shot at loot.

Four guys with around 4500 mana each buffing 40 people, assuming we have salvation, kings, light, and either Might or Wisdom on everyone, because that would be "covering an entire raid with every concievably useful blessing" = four of your healers doing literally nothing the entire raid besides buffing. If you were some kind of god, you could get it done in a minute, if you're lagging and human, half the buff's duration, or more, will be gone before you're finished blessing a full raid force.

Realistically? If you're in a paladin's party, you'll have a blessing. If you're the MT or an OT, you'll have several, if you're neither important nor in a paladin's group, you'll be lucky to have any blessing besides the 15 minute salvation, IF a paladin on your raid has it.

If your paladins are all set up with whispercast you're in luck, you'll probably be set for all the yard trash you want. But nearly every MC boss necessitates reblessing mid-fight, and if I'm busy cleansing and healing, your fricken might isn't priority.

We have 5 or 6 paladins show up, we start booting rogues. If we had 8 show up, Jekyl might not die every pull.

I just did, and I agree HPS sucks.&nbsp; <Theory craft>However, the HPM looks fantastic, especially with Blessing of Light, the talent, and a little heal gear.&nbsp; How much mana does an end game pally have?&nbsp; It seems like you could spam that for ever, for a reasonable and very steady stream of heals</Theory craft>&nbsp; Shaman may be able to heal more quickly, but run dry very fast.&nbsp; I usually spend at least half a boss fight just rubbing my hands infront of my mana totem.
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A "steady stream of heals" is inefficient. 5-second rule. Flash of Light is too weak to quickly heal anyone if they're not also blessed with light. Holy Light's a jackhammer on the manapool. Averaging around 4200 mana to a paladin in my guild (a couple guys with nice big pools, a few guys who haven't broken 4k, yet). Plate's got #$%&ty caster stats, we've got smaller, less efficient heals. I would imagine we run dry as fast as a shaman who's just healing and not burning mana on nukes.

[Tal]

Oh, and the other GINORMUS advantage pallies have is that 3-4 of them can cover an entire raid with every concievably useful blessing.&nbsp; Shaman need atleast 8 to cover an entire raid, and even then many people will be missing important totems.&nbsp;
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Oh sure I can do that. Spend a minute or two blessing each member then another minute or so running all over to find the rogues who insist on stealthing right after ever fight. Plus I usually have to run from the front lines (warriors and other paladins) to the back lines to catch the casters. If I'm lucky I can then sit down and drink before the pull so I can have more than a thousand mana to spam cleanse and flash heal. Or to fire up Seal of wisdom and judge it for the casters. Or vice versa with light for the melee crowd. If I'm not lucky then I spend the fight watching my mana creep up so I can repeat the process for the next fight.

But the truth of it is that in MC to keep up the pace needed to stay ahead of respawns I can't bless everyone in the raid. So we hope that one of our extra long Salvation paladins is in the raid so they can salvation everyone. Everyone else blesses the even or odd groups based on what blessing they have available. For example if I have to Ret Paladins I will put one in the odd group and the other in the even so they can cast BoK on their members. The odd paladin will cover what other blessings are needed in the odd or even groups. Since I'm usually the odd paladin out I try to hit the Tank and priest of the other side with a blessing when I go through.

[Treesh]

Heh.... have you tried using Tremor?&nbsp;

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Yes actually and it's really damned handy. It's not fear ward, but it's still good. And you also forgot about clearing diseases in PvE and grounding totem. Shaman can take care of more debuffs than just poisons.

[Lissa]

Heh.... have you tried using Tremor?&nbsp; It's very tricky, and can't be relied upon.&nbsp; It works in pulses, and you have to be in range of the totem when a pulse goes off.&nbsp; Often you run out of the range while you are feared.&nbsp; You have to plant it to try and cover 5 people, which means that someone is barely covered, and has a very high chance of not being in range.&nbsp; Even if it works, you are feared for a second, interrupting casting.&nbsp; Also, mobs that wipe/reduce aggro (like Onyxia, I believe) when they fear get that wipe in.&nbsp; Several things that seem like fear, aren't they are magic.&nbsp; Two that come to mind are the zombies at the second farm in WPL and the corehounds.

As other have pointed out, Tremor totem has far more uses that just to dispell fear. It dispells EVERYTHING. To use the Female Undead Silly, "Curse, no problem. Polymorph, LIKE A SPRING BREEZE!".

Simply put, the Shaman has too many tricks. It has no true weakness because anything that is potentially a weakness is covered somewhere else (talking a lot of damage, switch to one hander and shield and take only about 10% more damage than a Warrior in plate with the same shield while you're wearing mail, not enough mana, get some of the mail that tends to have Int, Spirit, and Sta, seems to be most the high end blue mail in the game, need +healing, there's plenty of mail with that too).

Oh, and the other GINORMUS advantage pallies have is that 3-4 of them can cover an entire raid with every concievably useful blessing.&nbsp; Shaman need atleast 8 to cover an entire raid, and even then many people will be missing important totems.&nbsp; Of course this could cut both ways, with the 5th and 6th pallys being told to shield hearth cause the group would rather have extra DPS or priests, but thems the breaks.&nbsp; At least the 4 who are there will have an excellent shot at loot.
I just did, and I agree HPS sucks.&nbsp; <Theory craft>However, the HPM looks fantastic, especially with Blessing of Light, the talent, and a little heal gear.&nbsp; How much mana does an end game pally have?&nbsp; It seems like you could spam that for ever, for a reasonable and very steady stream of heals</Theory craft>&nbsp; Shaman may be able to heal more quickly, but run dry very fast.&nbsp; I usually spend at least half a boss fight just rubbing my hands infront of my mana totem.
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So wrong. Both you and Mongo need to sit down and make a Paladin and play it. You'll find out just how wrong you are concerning the Paladin. The Paladin is not some invulnerable terror, they're quite defeatable, probably more easily defeated that the Shaman if you know what you're doing. A Pally that knows what they're doing is a very difficult oppenent to beat in PvP, but a Shaman that knows what they're doing is nigh impossible to beat.

[Artega]

a Shaman that knows what they're doing is nigh impossible to beat.
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Pfft.

1v1, maybe.

In groups, they're little more than healbots/shockbots. They can be disarmed to stop any melee damage they deal. They can be silenced to prevent use of shocks, purges, and heals. They can be sheeped.

And guess what? Both classes are susceptible to these abilities.

Neither class is overpowered, so everyone needs to stop whining and bitching about how they supposedly are.

[Treesh]

As other have pointed out, Tremor totem has far more uses that just to dispell fear.&nbsp; It dispells EVERYTHING.&nbsp;
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No, just fear, charms, and sleep. Grounding totem is used to get rid of some other debuffs.

[oldmandennis]

Treesh, I agree tremor is useful, it's just not reliable at all. I did mention diseases, and also mentioned that most fall into the annoyance catagory, and I can't think of one raid disease.


Grounding will eat a poly, and the bonus there is that only spells that have a DD component destroy the totem, I think. I don't think DOT's do, and I know poly doesn't. If the totem is not destroyed, it will eat aonther spell in 10 sec. It cannot be reactivly used to remove buffs. It actually takes about a second to take effect, which is very frusterating when you are wandering about as a sheep staring at the totem that should have saved you. Since you can't use it reactivly and you have no control over what it eats, I don't consder grounding a clense. It might eat a critical poly or CoEx of your flag carrier, it might eat a single moonfire and be gone.

Oh sure I can do that. Spend a minute or two blessing each member

Ok ok ok. I actually do have a pally, but he's only 31.

So you can't buff an entire raid. 4 pallys can still cover the important people with the important buffs, where as 4 shaman leave atleast 1/2 the raid uncovered. The buffs last 5 min, which is a heck of a lot more then 1 1/2, and you don't have to run into harms way to apply them. You don't need to worry about the spacing. I'm not saying this is imbalanced or unfair, but the rather clear advantage the pally has over the shammy here should be considered in the overall balance.

[Tal]

So you can't buff an entire raid.  4 pallys can still cover the important people with the important buffs, where as 4 shaman leave atleast 1/2 the raid uncovered.  The buffs last 5 min, which is a heck of a lot more then 1 1/2, and you don't have to run into harms way to apply them.  You don't need to worry about the spacing.  I'm not saying this is imbalanced or unfair, but the rather clear advantage the pally has over the shammy here should be considered in the overall balance.
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You can drop multiple totems for a party to enjoy the benefits of - I can bless someone once. In situations like Onyxia and MC boss fights you can just as easily run in and drop a totem in range as I can to bless the target. 20yd range versus 30 yds in places like that make for minimal "advantages" and you know it. If you're counting auras I have to stay within range of the MT and anyone else it would apply to for them to enjoy the benefit. I'm the mobile totem in that scenario.

[oldmandennis]

20yd range versus 30 yds in places like that make for minimal "advantages" and you know it.
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I could not disagree more. For Ony, for example, you can chill on the little ledge, and still cover the MT with a FR aura. I have to get within 15 yards (she's going to hit him and hes going to move), where there is a substanital possibility of a cleve or firebreath hitting me. If I am trying to tremor him for phase 3, the totem needs to go nearly directly on top of the tank.

As far as being a mobile totem, you have 10 yards on me. If you are worrying about covering a whole group, that is more then double the square area your people can run around in. And if you need to move that area, it costs you nothing, where as each replant costs me nearly a heals worth of mana.

Also, I have to make pretty big choices. If I am putting FR on the MT, I can't put mana on my self. If I put WindFury on the tank, I can't put Agi on the hunters. I choose 3 buffs from an odd set for the whole party (unless we are facing frost mobs).

Also, our theoretical 4 palidins can keep Might, Light, Sanctuary, and Kings as well as a FR aura on the all important MT, as well as buffing most of the rest of the party. 2 shaman can provide all the totems you need for the MT, but they are dangerously exposed running around, and if you only brought 4 shaman, then 2/3 of the raid gets nothing.

[Roland]

Wierd.&nbsp; I hardly ever see an undead warrior, and orc warriors are now the big "in" thing with their resistance to stun ability actually working now.
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Where the hell have you been? ALL the Undead I ever see are Warriors and Rogues. Mages, or god forbid Priests, are a rarity. I think I've seen, MAYBE, 2 of each since retail. Undead Warriors are like Night Elf Rogues - you can't spit without hitting 10 of them in any given area. :P

[MongoJerry]

Where the hell have you been? ALL the Undead I ever see are Warriors and Rogues. Mages, or god forbid Priests, are a rarity. I think I've seen, MAYBE, 2 of each since retail. Undead Warriors are like Night Elf Rogues - you can't spit without hitting 10 of them in any given area. :P

95% of Horde priests are undead, because the only other choice is being a troll, which have no useful racial abilities for priests. The 5% that do choose trolls do it for looks.

(The 95% number is based on the "95% of statistics are made up on the spot" school of statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm close with that number).

[Quark]

95% of Horde priests are undead, because the only other choice is being a troll, which have no useful racial abilities for priests.&nbsp; The 5% that do choose trolls do it for looks.
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But, but! They have +5 Throwing Weapons. It must be good, because Blizzard's implementing a repeatable quest for Throwing Weapons! They even have a Rogue talent for them!

[kandrathe]

I could not disagree more.&nbsp; For Ony, for example, you can chill on the little ledge, and still cover the MT with a FR aura.&nbsp; I have to get within 15 yards (she's going to hit him and hes going to move), where there is a substanital possibility of a cleve or firebreath hitting me.&nbsp; If I am trying to tremor him for phase 3, the totem needs to go nearly directly on top of the tank.

As far as being a mobile totem, you have 10 yards on me.&nbsp; If you are worrying about covering a whole group, that is more then double the square area your people can run around in.&nbsp; And if you need to move that area, it costs you nothing, where as each replant costs me nearly a heals worth of mana.

Also, I have to make pretty big choices.&nbsp; If I am putting FR on the MT, I can't put mana on my self.&nbsp; If I put WindFury on the tank, I can't put Agi on the hunters.&nbsp; I choose 3 buffs from an odd set for the whole party (unless we are facing frost mobs).

Also, our theoretical 4 palidins can keep Might, Light, Sanctuary, and Kings as well as a FR aura on the all important MT, as well as buffing most of the rest of the party.&nbsp; 2 shaman can provide all the totems you need for the MT, but they are dangerously exposed running around, and if you only brought 4 shaman, then 2/3 of the raid gets nothing.
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You get to put AGILITY on the Hunters?!?!??!!?

Let's reroll HORDE!!! We need Shaman!!!

[Artega]

One-second Flash Heals sound more useful than a situational fear dispel.

You'll always get critted by melee opponents, but you won't always get feared.

[lemekim]

It is appalling how uninformed some people in this thread are. Have you guys even read what some of the skills do?

Since this thread has deteriorated into something akin to a 3rd grade food fight, I am just going to point some things and leave it be. Blessing of Salvation will get nerfed. Or Shamans will get a buff to counter it. But probably the former.

Remember WotF nerf? BoS will still probably be useful, just not as overpowering. No, this will not ruin Paladin class, nor will it make Paladins much less desirable in raids. Yes you will get used to it. And yes, Paladins will get changes soon, hopefully something to make them less boring, and they are getting a buff already in the next patch.