I was wondering how quickly this was going to turn into a "I got kited by a Shaman" thread.
Mvl130 wrote: Sun May 28, 2023 9:59 amShamans have a free tactic that makes them run 30% faster for 5 seconds, 25% chance of proc on being hit, every 10 seconds, and they can cast healing/damaging spells without loosing that (and they are a ranged class that does not have to stop to cast its spells).
Goblins do, not just Shamans. For Shamans, it allows them to cast HoTs and DoTs and the very limited selection of instant-cast (or cast-on-move) abilities. Is this all a Shaman needs to kite and win in 1v1s? Yes, but once you scale up from that the tactic is less useful as Shamans in larger-scale play cannot just HoT and DoT their way to victory.
But a 12% chance to proc a 20% running speed for a melee healer equipped with a specific shield is "stupidly strong" ?
If you look at live and a little bit on ROR, you will see that speed boosts and procs VERY quickly become meta when they can be active while still attacking. Is the current proc very niche? Yes absolutely, but your suggestion would make it an auto-take for melee WP and likely other classes who get access to the proc. My Zealot would love to be able to run around with +20% speed spamming Flash of Chaos as it has the same proc on an off-hand. Does it *need* that? God no.
Reworking the proc to be something else entirely would IMO be a better proposal to give a new useful proc, as there is almost no middle ground on speed procs being useless and OP. History has proven that repeatedly with this game.
Can you tell me Detangler what are the drawbacks of playing chalice/book compared to shield ? You heal more, you die less, it works in any situation, you don't have to worry about being kited, your healing isnt negated by parry/block stacking and absorb effects on targets, tanks can save their guard for a melee damage dealer... The only reason to play shield is because you find it less boring than backline healing.
The reason to play melee heal is because you are contributing additional damage to the assist train while also being able to heal everyone around it (or switch between other types of healing, such as group or AOE). As fights get bigger in size, the need for a DoK/WP to apply additional single-target pressure becomes less and less, much like lifetaps in general are pretty useless outside of very small-scale fights (before anyone mentions FotG/EoV - that ability is amazing because it heals so much even when doing terrible damage with it and might as well be considered a heal that does a bit of damage too).
For ORvR vs ranged kite groups being a melee healer is a liability, but then being melee in general is a liability vs ranged kite groups.
The situation becomes much better for PvE (shield DoK was meta for speed-running dungeons at one point for the extra damage output) and for scenarios where you can't be kited forever, and if a group wants to try and kite you then they give up the objective. The maps are also far smaller and more cluttered to prevent excessive kiting.
It's actually so easy to play book/chalice that pretty much any healing warrior-priest or DoK runs that spec, and that warbands or 6men tryharding kick you if you use a shield because they find it inconsistent, and it's inconsistent because of how easy it is to kite (among many other things I just listed). But making a shield functionnal would remove the "only" drawback from the spec according to the enlightened Detangler
The other reason WBs kick melee healers (as well as "DPS" Shamans/AMs) is because if you're trying to join a warband as a melee healer it's a sign you have no idea when to pick what spec for your class
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Pretty much every healer plays pure ranged heal spec for WBs because with those numbers of players what the warband needs is huge non-stop healing constantly to stay alive, not 1 extra person on the melee assist when 8 dedicated DPS players can already spike down targets. Additionally, it's the pure heal spec of a healer class so people who want to play a pure healer (seemingly most people who pick a healer) will want to use that spec.
if you play with this shield you can spend 30 seconds in melee without having a single proc from it, so this idea that you're all the time sped up is actually wrong, the reason for that is that you block/parry attacks and when it occurs it cannot triggers this effect.
Sounds like a lot of dumb players hitting you from the front rather than the back...
Shamans are a range class so I don't see why they should have more chances to proc a higher bonus running speed that does not break upon using abilities, while having aoe snares and punts, and no need to stay grounded to cast abilities on top of that. Their need for mobility is lower because they have 125ft range on their abilities, as a shield healer you have 5ft. Also they do not block/parry attacks so their tactic is triggered as soon as they are focused. It's actually funny to see you complain about that shield bonus while at the same time writing that shamans tactic is not so bad
Where did you get 125ft range on Shamans from? Unless you're taking the average of the single-target heals (150ft) and damage (100ft), which isn't a fair way of looking at things. As for them not being able to block/parry... correct? Your shield gives you additional survivability, and the Shamans survive by running. And as you get up to larger scale those Shamans are now only 80ft away from the enemy at best in order to use FoTG which makes them very easy to catch with something like a ranged knockdown, ranged snare, etc.
Did you know that as a warrior-priest, if you try to use Judgement on a shaman to snare him, you're going to proc his running speed tactic, so you're actually making him run faster by trying to snare him ? Judgement is a 20% snare, the shaman tactic gives a 30% speed bonus, so he just ends up running 10% faster thanks to you. Isn't it great ? Now you can have all your fun looking at your shield while dying from the dots
Did you know that nothing in this game is balanced around 1v1? At this point I'm pretty sure the devs kept DPS Shamans and AMs as they are to keep people from thinking 1v1 should ever be a thing. Group game, group comps. 1v1 is an aberration, regardless of how much some people really want it to be a thing.
Okay, but how is it normal that range classes end up having more mobility and control tools than a melee spec ? They already have the range advantage, on top of that they have mobility tools and multiple controls to prevent you from reaching them (snares from range, knockdowns and punts from range). And on top of all of that, as a shield healer you have almost no tools to close the gap.
And even though they have all those advantages, melee still dominates pretty much every aspect of this game except inconsequential random roaming 1v1s.
