shammie
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Tseric on Enhancement
Being a primarily Alliance player, I haven't had a chance to play with very many Shaman. There's one at level 70 in my guild, and he's Enhancement; going on Heroic runs with him has showed me the beauty of totems, and possibly made Heroism my new favorite spell in the game. However, despite the fact that I haven't grouped with Shaman very much, the general aura of discontent with the state of the Shaman class is fairly difficult to avoid. So when Tseric posts something that looks an awful lot like "Enhancement is for 1-69, respec at 70," I cringe when I think of inevitable backlash from the community. Of course, it's important to note here that Tseric didn't actually come out and say "respec at 70." What he said was "Enhancement Shaman have a difficult time in PvP compared to the other trees," as well as "in PvE, while Enhancement can put out some decent dps, they are also seen as absorbing heals by being in melee range for a boss encounter, so they may not be preferable to a plate wearer or someone who can mitigate enough of their own damage cleanly." Now I might just be reacting without thinking through it, but to me, that really seems to read as "Enhancement is sub-par in PvP, and non-preferable in [group] PvE."Nevertheless, it doesn't look like there are any new changes to announce to the class at this time, and Tseric has specifically said there won't be any sort of "class redesign" or anything. Every time I read a CM saying they won't be redesigning a given class, I die a little inside, because it's really starting to seem more and more like the devs absolutely refuse to make any big changes to the game, despite stressing how balance in an MMO is a constantly evolving thing. I understand the drive not to make huge changes all at once, but on the other hand, it's impossible to arrive at a redesign by way of gradual changes, so by only using gradual changes, it seems like WoW is doomed to be essentially fossilized in its current state.Tseric's several posts are copied after the cut. What do you guys think? How are Enhancement Shaman doing in the endgame right now, and is it essential that every tree for every class be viable in the end game, or is it more important to simply make sure that every class is viable?
