Why Shamans will never get the nerf

We wonder all the time why Shamans are getting stronger and stronger while other healers are progressively being produced to be weaker from Blizzard. There are several reasons for this. One of the reasons that we see a lot of complaints about Shamans is because they were never the best healers before. When some thing new arises to the top, we find it unusual and its not some thing we are used to. In a similar example, we can see that Warlocks have always been the top DPS class every season since TBC. If they are extremely powerful (right now, and every other season), the complaints are minimal because we have grown used to their strength. We accept that they are an all around great class. However, a Resto Shaman has always had one simple strat to win: Train the Shaman.

In TBC, they were my favorite healer to go against. All that was needed to win against a Shaman is one single interrupt and they go down. Any other healer in TBC was a struggle that required coordination and control to take down a player. In Wrath, Shamans were slightly more difficult to kill due to Riptide being added to their spell book. However, a double melee cleave wouldn't have any trouble plowing through them. We have seen this strat used in tournaments several times. When all else fails, train the Shaman. This is not a standard strat to most of the top rated players since you have an increased chance of losing by going on a healer. But when all else fails, the strat of training the Shaman gives you a glimpse of hope, and it can work.

In Cataclysm, Shaman has become the powerhouse of all healers. Since this is new to every one, we tend to think that it is best they fall back to where they were in the past. Warlocks are practically dominating every other DPS class, but its acceptable. The same with DKs. Some thing that has always been overpowered we brush it off to the side because we figure the class will never get balanced. When we see a class that has never reached the top, we realize that Blizzard could in fact tone the class down to when it was at it's weaker state, but they are hesitant to do so.

As we know by now, Blizzard does not balance the game by what is at the top of the ladder. They balance the whole picture frame. We can see from several sources including WoW's official website that over all, Shamans are not that popular.

From this we can see that on average, Shaman are the least represented. In fact, we can see the total amount of Shaman healers all together under 'Top Comps by Pop.' is still less than TSG alone. Holy Paladins are the most popular healer, which is why they are receiving little to no buffs for so long. Priest comes second with RMP dominating most of the brackets. Druids are third, and Shaman comes last for over all healer.

There is a lot of reason why this is true even though we can say that Shaman are over powered at the moment. Shaman is a hard class to play, even though they are at the best state they have ever been, the difficulty of the class is far harder than a Holy Paladin.

The other reason and the main reason why I believe that Shaman are so unpopular is because they are only over powered at the highest possible rating. Playing a Shaman myself for five seasons, there hasn't been one season where I have felt that playing my Shaman against 2k-2400 teams were easier than playing against gladiator contenders. The play style against a middle range team and the top of the ladder teams are extremely different when you play a Shaman. Playing my Paladin from 2k and up to 2500, the play style feels the same. There are hardly any difference. You stand there and you spam heals, as you get higher though, you heal less which is why Paladins are weak at the highest rating. Ironically, Shaman is a class that gets easier as you get higher.

The play style is extremely different when you play a Shaman at different ratings. Most teams 2400 and under play cleave teams, and their strat is usually nothing more than tunnel into something until it dies. As a Shaman, you notice the rating of a team right away based on how the other team is playing. As a healer, you become stuck with nothing but spamming greater healing wave and keeping Earth Shield up. This is the worst possible play style for a Resto Shaman, but that is how they have to play at this rating. As you progress further in the ladder, you play less cleave teams and more melee,caster, healer set ups or double caster. This is because control is above all at the highest rating. When I play against multiple Gladiator teams on my Shaman, my play style becomes flipped around. Instead of spamming greater healing wave all game, the opposing team does nothing but control control control. One of the biggest difference I notice is that I can shock a lot more frequently, dispel more often, and get better grounding totems. Why is it easier? Because the teams at the top of the ladder are more focused on consistent and heavy control before they try to kill any thing. They spam CC constantly until one person gets thrown out of position and then they land a kill. A Resto Shaman is the best healer to stop these CC with shocks on casted CC and dispels on instant CCs. This is why Resto Shaman are OP at the highest of ratings. Lower teams tend to spam damage onto each other and that usually leads to a DPS race and inconsistent win ratios where as higher teams are more focused on control and the better team with more coordination will always win.

The other night, I ran across a well played Feral druids and I decided to look him up. To my surprise, I find out that he is playing with Lazerus, one of the best Shamans currently. I've seen this Shaman since Wrath. He has always been a contender for rank 1 and usually hovers around the top 10 spots in the ladders all season. As we can see, he is currently playing with a team with a lower ranking than what he is used to. In the past, I've seen him consistently get close to perfect ratios. However, since he is not playing against the top teams on the ladder, we can see that his loss is half of his wins. I wouldn't doubt that most of the loss came from playing against 2400 teams (most likely from the Rogue's mmr since he hasn't got a title), when it really becomes DPS race for both teams. It is very likely that their wins over loss were improved a lot higher once they have been consistently playing against 2600+ teams. This is true for any Shaman healer team. The higher their rank, the better the win/loss. The closer they are to 2400 rating, the closer to an even win ratio. The higher the Shaman rank team the less loss they usually have.

During the same night, I got into a queue against Sodah, Venruki, Valrath. This was probably my favorite match all night, and also the only match where I felt like I was actually playing a Shaman that night. When playing against a clear cut high quality team, the strat and their game play seems to make more sense than middle range teams. Playing against mid range teams, I can't understand what the other team has in mind, most of the time they really have nothing in mind other than pick a target and train it down. As soon as the gates opened, Sodah's team seemed to have a well prepared strat to defeat our team right away. Their strat was: Prevent our team from going offensive by slowing down my dispels, make sure Sodah doesn't get zerged down, make sure Venruki can free cast.

As the gates opened, Venruki gets a quick nova to stop both my melees and Valrath jumps on me to prevent us from moving closer to Sodah. Their first move is already a great start as they made us work to get pressure back on their team already. My DPS is hopelessly trying to get on a target for a while and decides they switch to Venruki. As soon as my Warrior charges, he gets gripped instantly by Valrath and frozen both me and my Warrior. Venruki preemptively kited closer towards Sodah as he realize he was going to be the target and ran to a safe position. Unfortunately for us, once my warrior is gripped. Sodah followed up with a fear on my Rogue. Suddenly, my whole team is CC'd for 8 seconds. Realizing that I was frozen along with my Warrior, my rogue follows up with a trinket. After a minute or so has gone by, Sodah's team has not even attempted to kill any thing yet. They have successfully blown most of our trinkets as well as made my Rogue and Warrior use waste their Dance/Deadly Calm. There really hasn't been much dmg up to this point, tanking Valrath took nothing more than keeping Earth Shield on myself. I noticed Valrath spent a lot of time rooting my DPS to help stop them from ever getting more than 2 seconds up time on a target. Nearly 80% of my globals were spent dispelling roots and shocking venruki.

After about two, three minutes into the game. There is no chance we could get a kill since we have just about used up every cooldown. Finally, Venruki sets our melee far away and places a nova on them, Valrath pulls me out for Venruki with a quick deep freeze to follow. Icy veins, Pillar of Frost, Shadowfiend, Holy Fire, and it was lights out for us.

Although we lost, I thought the match was a lot of fun. It felt more like a chess game rather than a tug of war. I can look back and see exactly how badly our team got outplayed by the skill of all three of them and the way they pretty much forced us to play exactly how they wanted. The reason why top ranked teams usually come out with next to perfect win ratio is because they don't play matches with the intention of killing any thing. Their game play revolves around limiting their death chance close to 0. As we can see with Sodah's team, I couldn't find any way our team could have came close to killing any thing. Their perfect coordinated CC stopped every chance of even forcing a pain suppression. Game plays such as this plays a huge role in the strength of a Shaman. If my team played more than a couple of hours, we may have forced a pain suppression. Playing another team running the same comp, they did hardly any thing that Sodah's team did. They just went straight to zerging the Shaman. Although it worked, the chance of their mage getting forced into an ice block and subsequently dying is far higher if they lose out on the kill. Teams like these are the ones that regularly wins one and loses another. You see most of these teams at the middle, and less of them as you play higher ranked teams.

Now here is two movies of the same comp but at different ratings. We can see a major difference between the two videos. The first one is a Frost DK/Feral Druids/Resto Shaman at 2000-2400 rating and the second is a 2800+ team running the same comp.

Trucko 1:
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=189245

Kadryel 1:
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=188745

What we see from Trucko 1, the Shaman is stuck spamming greater healing wave from start to finish with shocks every few moments.

In Kadryel's team, you can see that their Shaman is running around and shocking CC that could slow down their team. His healing consist of only Earth Shield and riptide. Damage is minimal which is ideal to maximize a Shaman's true potential. This class at its top performance will do nothing but shock incoming CC. At its worse, they are spamming heals. Spamming heals is a job for Holy Paladins, not Restoration Shamans.

So why doesn't the top teams dump damage against Resto Shaman teams if it works? Simply because Restoration Shaman are playing the most heavily control comps in the game. They play RLS, MLS, Shadowcleave, etc. Usually a set up with a caster. Any team that decides they want to spam damage against a RLS, MLS, etc. They will know that it will be shut down immediately, especially when you are playing the top of the ladder teams. That kind of play is not consistent and most of the players at the top of the ladder doesn't practice this style of play. They may win one game, but a series of five games against the same team, the other team will win the other four. I would say an example like this is close to poker. An inexperienced player has the best chance of winning a pot against a professional poker player due to bad, over aggressive play, but if you were to play the same way 10 times against that professional poker player, the professional will most likely win at least 70% of the hands. In other words, Resto Shaman team is the professional poker player, a team that decides to mindlessly zerg his team has a chance of scoring a win (the strat of training the shaman ever since tbc) But in the long run, the Resto Shaman team will win most of it.

If we look at Kadryel's movie again, we can see that they have an easy time against Restoration Shaman teams. Typically, if you force a Resto Shaman to spam a heal four times in a row, that means your team is in full control and about to land a kill soon simply because you have just put that Resto Shaman at its weakest performance. Kadryel is pretty much abusing the weakness of a Shaman team by playing as if they were 2400  players. So what makes them get so high when they play substandard? They are only playing like that against Resto Shaman teams, against an RMP or a Druid healer team, you can see that they play a lot more safe and less aggressive. They use more CC, kite most of the match, and staying away from danger. They don't force a kill, they try to maintain control of the match until there is no more no chance the other team can get a kill on them, and then they push for the kill. However, the grind to 2800 is most likely a lot longer and harder for them and their win/loss is close to most double cleave setups you see at higher ratings.

In conclusion, Resto Shaman will probably never get a huge nerf this expansion. I wouldn't say that Resto Shamans are overpowered as Druids or Holy Paladins were in previous expansion. Resto Druids and Holy Paladins in previous expansion were the best healer all around, no matter what rating you were. You had to grab those healers. In this expansion, if you're not playing against teams that are at least top 50, you probably have better luck taking a Priest, Druid, or a Paladin over a Resto Shaman and have easier success. If you are trying to push closer to the top, your best choice is without a doubt a Resto Shaman.

Shaman becomes the ultimate healer

Shaman
Restoration

• Deep Healing now benefits all heals, not just direct heals.
• Spirit Link Totem (new talent) reduces damage taken by all party and raid members within 10 yards by 10%. This lasts 6 seconds, and every second it is active the health of all affected players is redistributed among them, such that each player ends up with the same percentage of their maximum health. This counts as an Air totem and has a 3-minute cooldown.

The long awaited defensive cooldown Shamans have been asking for has finally come. Spirit Link is a design that Blizzard has been working on since the pre-release of WoTLK. The idea was to split the damage among players so that they take an equal amount of damage. However, there was many bugs and issues with the spell that could not be fixed before it was published to the game. The major problem with the spell in the past was that it was a permanent CC breaker for the two players that were linked. If player A was taking damage, player B would take an equal amount, this caused Player B to be permanently immune to CC such as Polymorph, Repentence, and Blind. 

The new Spirit Link has been redesigned again. They released it in a form of a totem, which I thought was the best choice. Shaman is a totem class, and totems have been becoming less and less important since after they've homogenized all the classes buffs, specifically the Shaman buffs. The air totem was the perfect choice as well. This gives us the ability to protect the totem by combining Spirit Link totem along with Stoneclaw, allowing the totem to take a few extra hits before it dies. Since the change to tremor and the removal of Cleansing totem, we can now use our third set of totems once again. 

Typically, all Shamans should now be running with these three totem sets:

Stoneclaw, Empty, Healing Stream, Grounding Totem

Stoneclaw, Empty, Healing Stream, Spirit Link Totem

Strength of Earth, Flametongue, Healing Stream, Windfury Totem

The last set could be different depending on the comp you are running with. 

Although, I am happy that Shamans has an ability to counter melee teams. I find that this ability has been released at the wrong time. Spirit Link would have been ideal in WoTLK because every class was capable of killing you within a blanket silence or a charge stun. In Cataclysm, the only class capable of spewing out WoTLK damage is Warriors. The other classes has an incredibly hard time dealing any burst to kill someone. 

Essentially, what this totem does is redistribute the health of every player within the range of the totem and making one gigantic health pool. There are several ways you can view this spell, you can see this ability as a Drain Life that can be used on your partners, that can heal you for as much as 12k per 1 second without a cast or channel time. You can also view this spell as practically killing a Shaman's entire team, in order to kill one of them. As long as the totem is down, you technically have to do up to a total of the Shaman's entire team's remaining health, in order to kill your target. The ability can also be used as another form of Nature Swiftness with a consequence. 

Here is how the totem will work from my understanding of the context:

Team Member 1 is at 100%

Team Member 2 is at 100%

Team Member 3 is at 5%

As each second goes by, team member 3 will be gaining around 10% of his health every second. Meanwhile,  Team Member 1 and Team Member 2 will be distributing their health to Team Member 3. They will be losing around 5% of their health every second.

As the totem expires.

Team Member 1 will be at 68%

Team Member 2 will be at 68% 

Team Member 3 will be at 68% 

Given that no one in the team has taken any damage during the time the totem is up. In a realistic sense, all of the Shaman team will probably be sitting around 60% by the end of the totem. Since this is a transfer of health instead of splitting damage to your team (old design), the rest of the team should not be immune to CC for 6 seconds.

The strength of this cooldown will depend on the health of your team mates. Comps such as DK/Warlock/Druid or DK/Spriest/Druid will have a much easier time with this cooldown and can very well take advantage of this. If all three targets are fully dotted, and a Shaman used this totem to re balance the health of his team to save one player, you have just left your entire team equally susceptible for a swap and kill.

DK/Warlock/Druid could drain a team's health slowly down to 50% across the board, chain silences and fears on the Shaman with gargoyle, dk pet up to get someone down to 10%. The shaman will have to use Spirit Link to counter this pressure. At the end of the duration, the shaman's team will all be sitting at around 25% health. Endangering the survivability of every one on the team. 

The cooldown is extremely situational. I think that is what will keep it from being a super overpowered spell like Colossus Smash. Colossus Smash, you can just pop as soon as its off CD and you're guaranteed to do over 70k damage. Spirit Link will still require you to be aware of your positioning, where your team mates are standing, and the health of your team. This isn't a cooldown that you can pop whenever you like and its not a cooldown that you can always pop when you're sitting at 5% health. The 10 yard range requires your team to be standing on top of you to get its benefit. It brings your range into a terrible position and it forces your melee to sit on a melee target. This also forces the Shaman himself to stand there and tank more damage instead of kiting. Resulting in a great loss of mana. 

In conclusion, shamans have always been a good healer against casters due to Earth Shield, Grounding Totem, Shear. This cooldown was strictly a counter for a melee zerg team. Shamans will now have an easier time with every type of comp out there and probably be the best all around healer to have. Melee zerg comps was the last piece of weakness that Shamans had problems with in Arena. As frustrating as it is to play against melee teams as a Shaman. I think all classes need a weakness and a strength. This is something that Blizzard has been shifting away from when they started homogenizing classes. They've successfully covered up every classes weakness to allow every spec to be viable in Arena. And doing so, it leaves you with a question such as "What the hell can we do against this team?"  If a team has no weakness, there is nothing you can exploit or use to your advantage to counter them in the future. You are left with a feeling of hopelessness as you continuously queue against a ladder full of similar teams. 

Growing a new tree. The reason why Holy Paladins are struggling in Arena

Recently, I began leveling a new character. I decided to finish up the last piece of the puzzle and chose to level up my Druid. I am surprised at myself that I didn't level this class sooner, but I guess it is true that you save the best for last. Personally, I feel that I should have been playing a Druid long before I made my Paladin. However, being drawn to the conclusion that Paladin were going to be the healer to play in the early seasons of the expansion. I went along with the decision of playing a Paladin.

This may have been the worst decision I've made. The talent tree feels like it was still designed with WoTLK in mind and most of their abilities feels clunky and not up to par with the modern day arena. They are currently the weakest healer at the moment in both the 2v2 and 3v3 bracket. I do enjoy playing Paladin in 5v5. This is because the Paladin class revolves around the proper usage of defensive cooldowns and you really only get to experience the full extent of their benefits in large brackets such as 5v5, Rated BGs, and raids because the damage in larger brackets are a lot higher.

So what went wrong? 


One of the major reasons why Holy Paladins feel weaker in smaller brackets and higher in others is due to the loss of Mortal Strike debuffs. In a 2v2 or 3v3 match, the most helpful cooldowns have short durations, and the less effective cooldowns are too long in duration.

The good cooldowns for the small brackets include:

• Aura Mastery
• Hammer of Justice

The least effective cooldown for the smaller brackets include:

• Guardian of the Ancient Kings
• Avenging Wrath 
• Divine Favor

Hand of Sacrifice and Hand of Protection are the only cooldowns that can be considered to be good and useful in small brackets, because they can be used as a CC breaker or a life saver. 

Aura Mastery gives equal utility for every bracket. If you pop it in 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, or rated BGs. This spell doesn't favor one bracket over another because its purpose is to immune interrupts onto you. This is useful when being trained or you're looking to free cast into heavy damage. However, the duration is too short and Paladins are extremely susceptible to crowd controls, most classes are capable of countering a Paladins Aura Mastery in almost every occasion and it is far easier to counter this ability in 2v2 and 3v3 since the opposing teams have a wider variety of crowd control available for healers in smaller brackets than they do in larger ones. 

Hammer of Justice is a Holy Paladins only form of Crowd Control. The cooldown on it is far longer than any other healer's cc, and the duration is too short. There is an inconsistency between the cooldown on Hammer of Justice and the number of opportunities you can kill someone. 

If we analyze Guardian of the Ancient Kings, Avenging Wrath, and Divine Favor. These abilities get half their use in smaller brackets, and close to full benefit in larger brackets because of the large number of players to heal. This is where the loss of Mortal Strike effected these abilities the most, and consequently lead to Paladins lagging behind the rest of the healers. In the current state of Arena, any healer is capable of healing one's health from close to death up to 100% of their health in as much as four heals. When you use abilities such as the three listed above, you could potentially get one's health from dying to full in as little as two casts. Leaving more than half the remaining cooldown being unused. Nearly half of a Paladin's cooldowns are greatly diminished as the number of players to heal get smaller. 

When you use these abilities in 5v5, you feel that these cooldowns are responsible for keeping your team mates close to full health. Allowing them to continue on with their offensive damage abilities. In a 2v2, or 3v3, using these cooldowns feel more of a mana conservation cooldown than a survivability cooldown. 

If Mortal Strike is still present, these cooldowns would be considered overpowered. We would see an abundance of Holy Paladins running rampant in Arena, and a cry for help from other healers. You will typically get a repeat of season five all over again since these cooldowns would allow Paladins to be the only healer that could keep their team alive. However, when every healer is capable of capping one's health bar to full in a few heals. What is the point of having cooldowns that boost your amount of healing by a percentage? Arena currently revolves around consistency, and relying on cooldowns that sit on 3+ minute cooldowns is not reliable, especially if you're spec is balanced around cooldowns. Control is more important than ever, and that is what Paladins are lacking at the moment. 

So based on this reasoning, I have gone down the path as a Druid. The first few levels were not too bad, but tanking dungeons proved to be a bit of a challenge. Since we share the same specialization as a DPS spec, they gave us Mangle as the ability if you spec into Feral. This doesn't help much at all with tanking if you compare it to Heart Strike/Avenger's Shield/Shield Slam that the other tanks get as soon as they specialize in a tanking spec. Moreover, I don't get Enrage until level 22 so I get absolutely no rage until a few seconds after the pull. Oh well, I get swipe at level 36, and I don't mind going Resto until then. 

Ways to improve your Arena game

 Macros

Macros are extremely important. Find any thing you can macro, no matter how small or large, and macro it. Any spell without a GCD should be attached with another spell. The effectiveness of macros are tremendous. It could raise your actions per minute by up to one-third. If your bars are not filled with macros. You could potentially lose an extra spell cast once every 20 seconds. In an average four minute game, you may have lost out on nearly 12 GCDs on a spell/ability that you could have used. If you're not convinced that this may completely hinder your game. 12 missing GCDs in one game for a DPS is potentially 60k in damage. For a healer, we are looking at nearly 80k healing that could have been used in the match.

Raise your APM

Macros is one helpful tip that increases your actions per minute. It's important that you're always doing something as much as possible. Don't waste away cooldowns and don't waste away your usefulness in the match. There is always something that you can do. Whether your being kited or stuck in a long cc chain. There is something you can do within that time span. This can be changing your focus target if you're expecting another incoming CC, throwing out range abilities on your target, dispelling your partners, or buffing your team mates. You can inspect the buffs on every target of the opposing team and call out any type of buffs that needs to be purged/controlled until it falls off.

Keybinds are another way to raise your APM. Make sure all of your spell are keybinded. Each and every keybind should be no longer than two keys away from your movement keys. Any keys that are located further than your movement keys could make you lose out on a few actions during a single match. Your GCD should constantly be spinning over your action bars.

Play by the situation


Situational awareness plays a big role in this aspect. You need to be completely aware of whats going on in the match. The target of the enemy, the cooldowns they've just used, crowd control available and the crowd control on your team mates. A good way to improve on this is reducing the number of addons that may prove to be distracting. Combat texts are probably the most distracting addon to use for arenas and should be avoided.

A team that had just blew all their offensive cooldown should require you to use your own defensive CDs and control until you've successfully made it past their pressure. At this point, you should be trying to maintain position as well as control of the game as much as possible. When their offensive pressure has finished, yours will have just begun. This is a seesaw motion that occurs throughout most arena matches and when one team fails to control the match when the opposing team has their cooldowns up. The match is typically lost.

Make the most out of your abilities


When you pop cooldowns, you want to make sure you can get the longest benefit from the cooldown. Any class that can counter your cooldown should be controlled before popping your cooldown to ensure that you get the full duration of any cooldown. For example, a Ret Paladin using wings should make sure that a class with purge is being controlled. If you Iceblock, you need to make sure the priest is controlled or outranged. If you shadow dance it is important to control a class with a spammable CC.

Play with your team, not by yourself

Assist your team, and your team can assist you. Increasing the over all uptime of your team mates will create a lot more pressure onto the other team than you can do by yourself. Allowing your caster to free cast, or snaring a target for your melee to catch up and reducing the damage taken will allow your team to create a lot more opportunities and overall pressure onto the other team than trying to maintain uptime by yourself. Reducing the amount of damage taken also frees up GCDs for your healer that can potentially be used for offensive abilities such as dispels and purges.

Changes I would do to balance Arena in World of Warcraft

Lots of mechanics in World of Warcraft feel very clunky. The addition of all these new spells caused arena to be nothing more than one big cluster of sparkling magic.


There is so many changes I can think of that would make World of Warcraft Arena to be much more enjoyable and competitive.


First and foremost;


I would make every match fall under the decision of mana. The winner of each Arena game will come down to which healer runs out of mana first. You may say that the mana game could drag on for a long time and make the game very boring. But this is actually where opportunity and team work come into play.


There will need to be strategy and cooperation between all the team members to quickly force the other healer to use up as much mana as possible as well as allowing your own healer to drink as much as possible. Any team that fails to do enough pressure, or allows the other team to drink more often than their own, will find themselves constantly losing every game.


In order to make this work, there will need to be many changes:


For Healers:

• Increase the mana cost of all healing spells by a large amount. Each healer should run out of mana at around the same amount of time. Preferably all healers should run out of mana in about one minute.
• Remove mana returning cooldowns as well as talents that return mana, such as Rapture, Improved Water Shield, Judgement, Revitalize.
• Remove food/water from Arena. Every healer should have a channeled ability that replenishes their mana by about 10% per 3 seconds. Can only be used outside of combat. 
• Nerf Spirit regen so that it gives only 1% of the healer's mana once every 10 seconds. 

For Melee Damage Dealers

• Remove all interrupts in the game. Kicks/Pummels/Wind Shear should be gone.
• Increase sustained damage by a lot for every melee class.
• Burst damage from Melee should be non-existent. Colossus Smash/Wings should be gone. 
• Increased mobility for every melee class. Every melee should be on their target close to 90% of the time.
• Strangulate, Blind, Intimidating Shout, Feral Cyclone, Instant Hex, Repentence removed from the game.

For Range Damage Dealers

• Counterspells/Spell Lock/Silences all 30 second cooldown. 
• Remove several of Frost Mages roots. Keep only Frost Nova and Pet Freeze.
• Crowd Control back to 10/5/3.75 seconds in duration. 
• Reduce damage from all DoTs from casters. 
• Increase the burst damage of all casters. 
• DoTs can not be dispelled. 

If we put all these ideas together. What we get is:

• Healers go out of mana extremely quickly
• Melee Damage doing the majority of the damage
• Range Damage Dealers controlling most of the other team.

How will all of this effect Arena?

We get less zerg fests and mindless RNG deaths. You can analyze what went wrong and quickly find better ways of improvements. Strategy and teamwork can more easily executed. Larger emphasis on Healer/Caster/Melee comps. And a more equal balance in every bracket. 

Here is how Arena will be like if it was designed this way:

Each team will engage each other. Melees will engage the fight every time. They have the ability to stick on any target for nearly the entire match. Their damage will not be substantial, but it is sustainable. You can imagine about a 5% of one's health bar depleted per swing of attacks. The range damage dealer main focus is control. They will do close to no damage in a given match. However, their burst can be extremely fatal. The burst should take up to 5 seconds of preparation in order to execute and it could only occur once every 20 seconds. Similar to how a mages Shatter combo worked in TBC. They can take off as much as 20% of someone's HP bar. This one burst is equal to the amount of damage a melee can put out over 20 seconds if he is on a target the full duration. 

There will be no interrupts, and only a spell lock once every 30 seconds. This allows the healer and casters to free cast as much as possible. For healers, each heal should be able to heal equal to the amount of a melee damage dealer. Therefore, as long as a healer has mana. The team should be kept alive. However, the mana cast of every spell should be high enough that after about 1 minute of free casting. A healer should run out of mana. 

At this point, the critical role of every team member plays a role and determines the fate of the match. It will be up to the range damage dealer to be able to control as much as possible to allow their healer to replenish their mana from the channeled ability. It is also up to the melee damage dealer to put out as much damage onto the other team to force the other healer to stop the channel first. By having only the range damage dealer with the controls and eliminating crowd control from melee. This should limit the amount of ticks a healer can replenish their mana. They should get at most 50% of their mana back, given the amount of crowd control available and the awareness of the other team. 

If both healers equally replenished 50% of their mana. This should be enough to sustain them for about 30 seconds of healing. Eventually, a healer will go out of mana and a team will lose. 

If we look at this in 3v3, this will encourage all teams to play Healer/Caster/Melee. Double melee teams will not work because of lack of control. They may do a lot of sustained damage, but due to the lack of control. The opposing team healer that is playing Healer/Caster/Melee will get longer duration of replenishment of mana. Therefore, he can heal longer. 

Double casters/healer will not work as well because of the lack of damage going out. If the other team is playing Healer/Caster/Melee. The other team would force the Double Caster team's healer to replenish his mana more often and eventually use up more mana at the end. 

In 2v2, it would balance out as well and there would no longer be 30 minute games. 

A team player Healer/Melee vs Healer/Caster would be close to being even. The melee team can do lots of damage, but their healer won't be able to replenish his mana as long because melee brings no control at all, making it easily interruptible. The Healer/Caster may not do as much damage, but his healer will be able to get longer replenishes. However, since melee can stick onto casters almost permanently. The damage will force the caster's healer to come out and interrupt his own replenishment to heal his caster. These matches should finish no longer than 5 minutes. 

The skill portion of every role is much more clearer. You will be able to recognize the weak point of your team and find better ways of improvement. The focus for each role will be as follows:

Melee - The more skilled you are, the higher DPS you can do, and the more damage you dish out in a single game.

Range - The more skilled, the better the control, the more you can allow your healer to replenish mana and stop the other team's healer from replenishing mana.

Healer - The more skilled healer will be determined by proper use of cooldowns, resource management, as well as positioning yourself to get the most out of replenishing mana. 

Macro for Shamans

Here are a few macros you can use to help improve your Shaman game play. These macros are specifically used for Restoration Shamans, but they can be adjusted to fit with other Shaman specs as well.

Cleanse Spirit/Purge Macro

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:alt, @player][help] Cleanse Spirit; Purge

The macro allows you to save one key bind by combining the two spells, Cleanse Spirit and Purge together. This can be helpful as these abilities are reactive abilities, therefore, it may be better to place these spells into comfortable and reachable keys. The macro automatically changes to the appropriate spell based on your current target. If you are targeting a friendly player, it will use Cleanse Spirit. If you are targeting a hostile player, it will use Purge on the target.

Wind Shear Arena 1-3

#showtooltip Wind Shear
/cast [target=arena1,exists] Wind Shear


#showtooltip Wind Shear
/cast [target=arena2,exists] Wind Shear


#showtooltip Wind Shear
/cast [target=arena3,exists] Wind Shear


As a Restoration Shaman, you need to use your interrupts as frequently as you can. There are times where you will not have time to switch your target or focus to Wind Shear the next cast. By having Wind Shear macro'd to use it on Arena frames 1,2,3. You are able to quickly interrupt any casts immediately when it is needed.

Emergency Button
#showtooltip 14
/cast Call of the Spirit
/cast Vicious Gladiator's Emblem of Tenacity
/cast Healthstone


This macro allows you to activate your totem set, battlemaster, and your healthstone in one key press. You should have one emergency totem set for your Shaman as well. This set will include; Stoneclaw Totem, Grounding Totem, and Healing Stream totem. These are your three survival totems that can be placed in one GCD, allowing you extra GCDs for healing.

Upcoming Healer Changes in PTR 4.1

Druids

• Cyclone duration has been reduced to 5 seconds, down from 6.
• Efflorescence has a new spell effect.
• Lifebloom's bloom effect has been reduced by 20%.
• Stampeding Roar's duration has been increased to 8 seconds, up from 6. The movement speed effect has been increased to 60%, up from 40%.
• Restoration
• Gift of Nature (passive) also reduces Tranquility’s cooldown by 2.5/5 minutes.

Arena Druids

The latest patch notes has been released and we can already see some large changes done to the Druid class. The first and most important change is the new cyclone duration. The changes certainly comes as a nerf to the Druid class as a whole, but it greatly effects Moonkins and Ferals the most. As of right now, a druid landing three cyclones in a row on one player could lock him out of the game for a total of 11.25 seconds until diminishing returns has faded. The new duration of cyclone will be 5/2.5/1.875 seconds as long as there is diminishing returns. This is a total of 9.375 seconds of crowd control on an opponent. A net loss of 1.875 seconds of control compared to the current cyclone, the total amount of time lost for the new cyclone is equal to one entire cyclone on its third diminishing return. That is a huge buff for teams facing off against Druid teams!

The Lifebloom's bloom effect has been reduced by 20%. This is another substantial nerf to Restoration Druids. At first, Blizzard increased the base mana cost of Lifebloom to 11% up from 7%. Although, the numbers looks small at first glance. This is actually a 57% mana cost increase for Resto Druid on a spell they need to spend three globals to get full effect of. The nerf to healing will also require Druids to spam more heals on their target to keep their health up. Does this mean we may actually see Druids go out of mana for once? Unfortunately, Blizzard reverted the change because they didn't think it was the right way to do it. However, I agree that nerfing the mana cost of Lifebloom isn't the right way to go about it. The play style of Resto Druids would change dramatically. Thanks to Nature's Bounty and Empowering Touch. You may actually see Druids start refreshing their Lifeblooms by using heals with a cast time. This is not something that is reliable and it would make Druids too susceptible to train down if you don't allow them to refresh their Lifebloom stacks or quickly run them oom by forcing them to cast nothing but Lifebloom. 

I believe these changes were made for the upcoming defensive CDs they are about to give Druids. Druids can probably expect to see more nerfs coming in the future patch notes. On the same note, I believe Restoration Shamans can expect to see some unpleasant changes this patch for their new defensive CD as well. 

Priests

• Divine Aegis duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.
• Dispel Magic can only be used on the casting priest as a baseline effect.
• Holy Word: Sanctuary has a new spell effect.
• Inner Will and Inner Fire now last until canceled.
• Power Word: Shield duration has been reduced to 15 seconds, down from 30.
• Talent Specializations
• Discipline
  • Absolution (new passive) enables priests to use Dispel Magic on up to 2 harmful effects on friendly targets.
  • Power Word: Barrier's cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes, up from 2, and its effect has been reduced to 25%, down from 30%.
  • It is now possible to remove Weakened Soul effects that were a result of another priest's Power Word: Shield through Strength of Soul.
• Holy
• Absolution (new passive) enables priests to use Dispel Magic on up to 2 harmful effects on friendly targets.

Most of the Priest changes were due to PvE. Casting Power Word: Shield before jumping into a fight gives a Priest close to 200k absorb before the fight started, and at the cost of 0 mana because you can drink for the first few seconds of the pull. The same idea applies to PvP. You're typically getting a free 20-30k absorb for free before a fight start. 

The change to Power Word: Barrier cooldown and effectiveness was toned down because of the change to Weakened Soul. The ability to remove another weakened soul through Strength of Soul talent would allow raids to start stacking Disc Priests due to the immense amount of CDs they possess, this would also encourage the use of chaining Power Word: Barrier. 

Holy Paladins are still in need of a few changes. Personally, I think they just need extra cushion in the form of more absorb or a HoT of some sort. Allowing the absorption from Illuminated Healing to stack is probably the best way to go about it. Similar to the effect you get from the legendary Valanyr weapon from Ulduar. 

So many interrupts!! A healer's biggest challenge in today's Arena

Each and every class now a days has an interrupt! On top of it, they all have something to counter a fake cast that subsequently tricked you into wasting your interrupt.

The act of fake-casting is a lot less rewarding now. Stuns and interrupts alike destroyed the whole idea of fake casting. In a 3v3 match, you are almost constantly faced with two interrupts while you're being trained as a healer. You can juke one, and you're lined up with another interrupt. In some occasions, you may even have to get through as much as three interrupts.

If you've successfully made it past the interrupts, and you're still alive. Good for you! At this point, melee A, who used his first interrupt on you the last time has got his interrupt back off CD and is waiting for you once again. You may have to fake this as well to pick your dying self. But don't forget, you also have partners. Given the amount of time you've given you're partners to peel for you, they may actually help you out rather than point the finger at you after you've died miserably without healing yourself.

So you're partners decided to give you a helping hand. And you're suddenly allowed to free cast a few heals to pick up your health bar without any interrupts for a couple of seconds. But wait, we're hit with a stun, a stun that nearly every class has in their arsenal of spells and abilities. Sure, its early in the game and we can trinket that stun. But now we're back to our line up of interrupts once again, if not the interrupts, they have even more stuns ready for you. This is the cycle that goes through my head constantly while I'm being trained as a healer.

Every class has at least two ways to stop a heal. Some classes (DK comes to mind) has up to four ways to stopping a heal. On top of that, every healer is capable of stopping heals as well. While we are being trained by a team, we may have to go up against as much as 10 ways of interrupts (in the form of stuns/silences/kicks). Is this a bit too much? TBC was a much slower paced game, and we only had to deal with as much as 4 ways of interrupts (from stuns/silences/kicks) and that was only from RMP teams. Avoiding those types of interrupts on your casts were a lot easier as well.

The game does evolve as time goes on, but there comes a point when we've thrown too much stuff on the table and we need to take stuff back. It was awesome when Rogues were the ones with stuns, casters had the silences and control, etc. Now we have every thing thrown into one. Casters have the stuns, the sprints, melees have silences and interrupts. Every class has it all.