Archmage/Shaman

[Nosun]

I have played a good amount of dps am they are good for dotting then bursting down single targets but you have almost no aoe and you are one of the squishiest classes in the game. The only thing that i could see that could be changed as long as it isn't a huge nerf to kill the class considering how many people play them on both sides is to change the stupid mechanic of needing to heal to do the best dps and vice versa its incredibly annoying and nobody likes it. As far as the ap drain and the shammys kiting abilites i think these are things that can be looked because they can seem overpowering at times but as far as getting rid of the 25% damage tactic this would make either class completely useless and goes way to far.

[Nekkma]

The main complain you hear about these two classes are concerning aspects of smallscale roaming (1-3 persons) in dps spec. By contrast, there is close to consensus that their respective healing specs both place themselves at the bottom of each side. Based on this, adjustments should be made in a way that adress these aspects.

Personally, I think the hybrid concept is flawed and will always cause balance issues. As such, healing and damage should be separated. To achieve this I have a few suggestions which could be implemented (probably not all as that would be to much).

1. Rework divine fury to be mandatory to do damage. Lower damage globally and change divine fury to increase damage by 50-75 %. The goal here is to have damage stay the same. Additionally, increase the healing reduction from 20 % to 75-90 %. The purpose of this is to make the classes more into rdp and reduce the avaliable selfhealing when doing damage. The classes will still have alot of utility with ap drain , cleanse, puddle etc.

2. Define the classes roles. Personally, I think the classes should be focused on smallscale (2-6 man groups). As such, I would rather see buffs to single target healing than warband healing and utility. Both classes are good enough in WBs at the moment (if we consider this a secondary healing role).

3. Buff the respective classes unique healing abilities. For shamans DSU could have the toughness component increased by 50-100 (values subject to testing). Funnel essence should be a shorther channel and could be reduced to 2 sec while retaining the same healing (again values subject to change after testing).

4. Switch resistance buff values between chosen/shaman and knight/am. This gives some additional group/wb utility. This is actually someone elses suggestion but it was a good one so I write it here as well. Another option could be to add a secondary effect in the lines of reducing magical damage by 5 %.

5. Merge group cleanse tactic with hot on cleanse tactic. Keep it specable high in healing tree to keep it from dps specs as much as possible.

6. Rework shrug it off /magical infusion to provide an anti focus tool. One idea could be a short duration of reduced crit damage, e.g. 10 sec of -30 % crit damage taken (values subject to change after testing). Cd should stay the same (60 sec). If this again would make dps to strong (as it is low in the heaing tree, then it could be made to not work on the caster). Remove "desperation" for shamans and restore it as a unique AM tactic with no connection to magical infusion (alternatively, rework desperation to also reduce cd of magical infusion and/or allow it to be cast on the AM).

7. Adjust healing values and values of other buffs as needed to achieve the intended level of power. Smaller adjustments are better than larger (if needed several small adjustments).

[Sponn]

Run away!

[Ysaran]

Bleed fer me
Next we need to talk about "bleed fer me" and the opposite spell on order.
Guys seriously, I find the spell glorious as a DPS shaman, but 24 seconds, selfheal and damn much damage. This has already destroyed many a player who has only briefly crossed the path of an Archmage/Shaman.
So how to deal with it now?
Wouldn't it be possible to reduce the damage and set a higher multiplier for the resulting healing?
So that the long-suffering full-healer can also benefit from it. With a 30 feet AOE-heal on the passive target so that the Archmage/Shaman (like all other healers) can contribute some AOE-heal?
This would bring down the damage of the DPS healer further while the full healer would rather participate.

Healing through damaging is unreliable imho. If you want keep up the lifetap nature of Shaman/AM I think the solution is to put a base healing value to both Bleed Fer Me and I'll Take That. To effectively use these skils in a healing rotation would really help with the class mechanic and would also make Shaman/AM more fun to play

Fury of da green
FODG is a very strong spell and a great way to add to any player's build. However, it has major weaknesses and is nowhere near as good as you would think. It would be nice to see changes here that would make the output more reliable.
Short explanation. So in the heat of battle, the healer looks for an active enemy target. This target has best few willpower to not disturb also it carries of course no shield. Then this target stands best still in the direct proximity of further "easy targets". The healer, who is completely underchallenged by the game, now combines this with a passive target that is also in close proximity to other allies whose life indicator shows less than 100%. He then remains stationary in place while casting the spell and hoping that no danger approaches him, nor do the circumstances around his active or passive target change. WOW!
You see, there are a lot of "ifs" and "buts" listed. Therefore, in my opinion, FODG is overrated and only playable in combination with other setups.
If we could at least cast spells while running, fewer of the spells would break off because we could keep sight. We would also be able to move and adapt to the battlefield.

You can already cast FODG on the move, just use the class mechanic

Don feel nuthin
This is one of the few spells that the shaman can cast on critical targets without casting time and that have an immediate effect. After the recalculation of "Absorption" this spell was indirectly weakened. It would be great to get a higher value that gives the healer the possibility that his subsequent heal over time also contribute to the game.

This is one of (or the one?) highest absorb in game, i think it's fine-

Gather round
Would it be possible to reduce the group healing spell time by 0.5 seconds? Often the healing of the Archmages/Shamans comes to nothing because their group healing has a longer duration than for example the Sigmar Priests / Disciples.
Yes, their group heal may be weaker and based on a different resource. However, it's still modest when the result of 2.5 seconds of spell time, 65 action points and stationary positional play just fizzles out to nothing. By equalizing the spell time, we would have the chance to actively participate in the battle in a timely manner.

No, need. Really. with the class mechanic you can already decrease it at 1.5s. Just alternate Gather Round and FODG.

Greener & cleaner
Well ... cleaning friendly targets is a super important matter in ROR. The two tankyst healer classes do it, group cleanup without cast time. Wow. Now I'm not saying that the Archmage/Shamane needs this as mandatory as well, but a small improvement to this currently single-target ability would be great. Again, yes there is a really tiny absorption. Perhaps one would like to increase this? Or automatically add a small healing bonus to it? Something that puts this ability more in the spotlight.

ok

[Gurf]

This seems to be primarily a Shammy issue, is AM really OP? Because AM can be taken down by many destro MDPS classes while Shammy fears nothing. Maybe AP drain on both sides needs to be looked at, but primarily the problem is Shaman survivability is so much higher than any other class in roaming its crazy and much higher than AM.

I am not sure what can be done, ideally you would have Run Away break on use like all other speed boosts in game, but as that has been in the game forever and is kind of part of the Goblin identity it is tricky. I guess it is still Run Away if it breaks on skill use, or maybe breaks on damage skill use if that is possible so you could still heal when kiting.

[phononHYPE]

I love my healin git, always have, always will. Never tried dps, so on heal topics:

Don' Feel Nuthin is in a solid place right now.

Bleed For Me (healer pov) is good, but I need to land Gettin Smarter first often to ensure it lands, no worries there in general as I'm running around but under pressure and BFM is not on my rotation. Similar for AP drain as healer, seems to be resisted about 30% of time which is fine I guess.

Scrub Ya Good and Green Cleanin' don't stack, and like many we are pretty tactic starved. Combining them (or at the least making them work together - come on!) would be a great step to up shaman healing.

Gather Round, eh, I'm fine with the casting time honestly. There are procs to shorten it, but as we pretty much have all our healing in one tree it doesn't seem that bad to me.

Pass It On - man I want this to be worth while, I really do, but it ain't. Perhaps up the % to trigger or the amount healed, but even at over 1k WP this has a 25% to heal like 450ish? Nope.


Lastly, if ... IF you decide to change (nerf) shaman dps, let me know via PM so I can try it out for a weekend and see what its like. Past that, back to my alts. Da green boyz just keeping my character log in screen pretty for now :*(

[Caduceus]

I can only talk about AM, since I don't fight Shamans regularly, but I'm assuming many of these things apply both ways.

What seems to me the combination of things that make AM OP is not their damage, but it is their damage combined with their survivability. Whenever I fight AMs their health rarely drops below 50%, even when I'm bursting at maximum potential. Likely this is happening through a combination of Shield of Saphery and lifetap healing. I know for a fact that AMs tend to have very low health pools, yet damage simply doesn't get through. This becomes painfully obvious when a double pot takes them from ~25% health back up to ~100% health, showing that the last minute you've spent barely denting what can only be around a ~6k health pool. What is more painful; this even happens when I outgear my opponents significantly.

Another option they have that seems broken to me, is the ability to DoT their targets, detaunt and then keep themselves up with a combination of lifetap healing, normal healing and Shield of Saphery.

The simple issue is this: a ranged class that has this amount of utility and damage, should not be getting such an amount of survivability for free, through class skills/mechanics.

I see two potential fixes for this:

- A small-ish damage decrease over the board. This knife cuts both ways, because a reduction in damage also constitutes a reduction in (self-)healing done. To compensate I would consider increasing the damage of AM pure damage spec.

- Change "defensive target" to no longer apply to the player, and only to group mates. This would leave AM's usefulness in groups intact, while targeting their survivability, which is where the problem lies.

At risk of repeating myself, I've spoken about AM because I play this class and play against this class regularly, and these are the problems I encountered. I don't hesitate that Order encounters the same issues when fighting Shamans, so don't take this as a one-sided argument to nerf Order. Wherever this logic can be applied to Shamans, it should.

Thanks for reading,

- Caduceus

[Ysaran]

Bleed For Me (healer pov) is good, but I need to land Gettin Smarter first often to ensure it lands, no worries there in general as I'm running around but under pressure and BFM is not on my rotation.

The problem with BFM and ITT is exactly that you can't really use them while under pressure. You can use them only when there's another healer that help you keep up the party. BFM and ITT are basicly wasted gcd, you use them only to switch the class mechanic from damage to healing. Make them worth one gcd would greatly help shaman in every context, since switching from damage to healing would also help with aoe healing (e.g zerg/city).
I mostly agree with everything you said

[Xergon]

Fury of da green
FODG is a very strong spell and a great way to add to any player's build. However, it has major weaknesses and is nowhere near as good as you would think. It would be nice to see changes here that would make the output more reliable.
Short explanation. So in the heat of battle, the healer looks for an active enemy target. This target has best few willpower to not disturb also it carries of course no shield. Then this target stands best still in the direct proximity of further "easy targets". The healer, who is completely underchallenged by the game, now combines this with a passive target that is also in close proximity to other allies whose life indicator shows less than 100%. He then remains stationary in place while casting the spell and hoping that no danger approaches him, nor do the circumstances around his active or passive target change. WOW!
You see, there are a lot of "ifs" and "buts" listed. Therefore, in my opinion, FODG is overrated and only playable in combination with other setups.
If we could at least cast spells while running, fewer of the spells would break off because we could keep sight. We would also be able to move and adapt to the battlefield.

You are wrong here, this ability already is extremly strong. Its probably the most powerful healing ability in the game if used properly. Also u can cast it on the move if u have Heal Stacks of ur Class Mechanic.

[cynicprophet]

Honestly shaman and archmages dont need changes and fine as you learn the class better you will see it doesnt need a change.