1. Totems are stationary, weak, rotten pieces of wood which collapse if you breathe on them. 3/4 of playing a Shaman is totems. This is fine in groups and shit because the AI is dumber than Frankenstein’s monster after a lobotomy, but other players know this. And well pet/wand macro your totems to death. Or heck, just hit them. It’s like when Native Americans thought their “Ghost Armour” would protect them.
2. Shaman are entirely dependant on Burst damage. Either they stand 20 yards away hoping for a slightly bigger ZAP, or up close begging for Windfury to go off. There are few DAMAGE utility spells, and they’re rubbish.
3. Shaman are entirely dependent on crap burst damage. Warriors can run around hitting for 5k on demand. Mages can hit for 3k a long way away. Shaman have to have a crit windfury, or crit lightning to get this type of damage. Heck, windfury only has 20% chance to even go off – add on the fact you’ll need a crit and forget it. THEN add on resilience. Shaman are no more likely to critical hit in PvP than Picard is to see 5 lights. It might happen… eventually… but they’ll probably already have left.
4. This of course assumes a Shaman is allowed to attack, and not locked down by the multitude of stuns every other class and their grandparents seem to have. Whoever at Blizzard came up with this idea is a complete and fucking idiot. PvP should have less crowd control, not more.
5. Pure Damage classes have this brilliant feature in their trees where they give up a little damage to get more PvP survivability (or even more PvP focused damage!). Shaman have these too. They just have to give up most of their damage to get them. THERE AREN’T ENOUGH TALENT POINTS.
6. Totems take far, far too long to put down. Shaman need them to win… but they’re dead by the time they get them all ready. Other classes just buff themselves up and walk about. Shaman have to prop up some giant logs before every fight.
7. Totems are crap. WOTLK has ensured that other classes all get the same buffs, but without relying on propping up piles of twigs.
8. The interrupts are crap. Earth Shock and Wind Shock silence a spell school for two seconds, but start a 1.5 second global cooldown on most of the other abilities except shitty totems, so you get a .5 second advantage. Big whoop.
9. Shaman actually have the lowest base health as a class. No, I don’t know why either.
10. TOO MANY FUCKING COOLDOWNS, NOT ENOUGH REAL FUCKING ABILITIES!
11. Blizzard like a funny joke.
. Just a matter of waiting until WoTLK after that.
