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.