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I'm not comparing two classes. I never was.

Explain the advantages of having a shaman in a raid group during the later AQ encounters.

Tacks wrote:Explain the advantages of having a shaman in a raid group during the later AQ encounters.

Windfury totem, are they good for anything else?

except you can't use windfury and still have agro reducing totem, try again.

Tacks wrote:Explain in some of the later encounters why you would ever prefer a shaman over a paladin in Ahn'Qiraj. I'm listening.

it's never a choice, paladins and shamans can't be in the same raid n00b

NO REALLY? I DIDN'T KNOW THAT OMG! that's not the point, n00b

it was a stupid point

Luckily i didn't fucking ask you!

it is a big point asshead, if you can't see it you are fucking dumb. It has to do with advantages that the different factions have or don't have...

Faction, aside you can still compare both classes positives and negatives.

As a Paladin, I have a lot of thoughts, but most are based on PVP last year, and not raids to newer areas I haven't seen.

Why is a Shaman better in PVP?

Why is a Paladin better in raiding?

I'd be interesting to hear detailed thoughts, versus harping. How does a Druid figure in at the endgame, since that's what I'm levelling now.

Windfury totem, purge, most totems pretty much, alliance have this thing for not attacking the stationary totem with 5hp, then complaining for over a year about them on the forums.

Paladins bring the e-z mode to pve with their blessings.

Druids come with the best buff ingame. Their heals however are mediocre compared to a priest/shaman seeing as they cost an arm and a leg.

Stabfase wrote:Windfury totem, purge, most totems pretty much, alliance have this thing for not attacking the stationary totem with 5hp, then complaining for over a year about them on the forums.

Paladins bring the e-z mode to pve with their blessings.

Druids come with the best buff ingame. Their heals however are mediocre compared to a priest/shaman seeing as they cost an arm and a leg.

Druids usualy come in second or third in our raids behind me and one other priest mainly cuz most of our priests suck anus

Paladins have auras. Example, fire resistance aura. Its mana free and applys to anyone near the paladin. Shamans have totems. For example fire resistance totem. A totem is mana costly must be recast about every 90 seconds. It lays on the ground (cant be moved without being recast)

Paladins have the best buff in the game imo (kings). Paladins also can cast blessings which do significantly more than their totem counterparts (blessing of might something like 185 attack power for 15 minutes, versus a shaman totem which will give something like 61ap to rogues and 122 ap to a warrior)

Blessing of salvation, reduces agro generated, the shaman counterpart is 2/3rds as effective. The paladin cast lasts 15 minutes, vs 1.25 min on the shaman totem.



Alliance also has certain racials which gear them towards PvE e-z mode. Fear ward from dorf priests, make certain encounters a cake-walk. A dorf warrior w/ stoneform makes one particiular AQ encounter ridiculously easy. Horde have like.. warstomp. A few second stun (aoe). Obviously nice for PvP, but what are you going to do, warstomp the instance boss? (immune duh).
I think horde have 3 of the 4 good pvp racials while allys have one (shadowmeld) -- and allys have the solid pve racials like the human bonus to reputation gains.


As far as PvP -- the shammy class is more offensivly based. We have damage-shocks, powerful burst damage. But none of thoes things are useful in raids. No solid sustained DPS, we're not DPSers, we're not "good" healers.

Paladins are laughed at in pvp, while shamans are feared. But pallys have their place. If an ally guild stacks plate in pvp theres not much you can do to counter it. A few pally healbots and some DPS warriors will roll you. Paladins can take beatings via plate armor, if they hit a bump of trouble they can use their sheilds to go invinsible, and as of the patch before last, their dps isnt horrible either.

Just two minutes ago I pited my resto sham vs a healing pally. I didnt feel like playing the endurance game and burned 90% of my mana shocking him. He healed through it and had 85% of his mana left. A holy priest showed up to help me. Five minutes later a shadow priest came and killed him for us.

Shammys have a reputation for being 'pvp gods' -- but truly their strength is only in 1v1. As far as group pvp goes, finding a good shaman is very, very rare, and the paladin class is more aimed at group pvp anyway.

or something like that, i'm trying to ab righ now writing this inbetween checking the farm.

Oh yeh, have fun countering 2-3 pallys in WSG. And the pally mana buff is like, 33 mana / 5 sec vs sham mana tot, which is like 25/5 sec. yeh.

As far as druids, mine is like 52 so I havent had the chance to play end-game w/ them. But in raids they tend to be mana inefficient healbots I think?

hey mop... i will make a new char, any recommendations on what you need/want... lemme know soon so i can get it started

With your average restoration spec or even a 28/23 moonglow build you can get a 3.8+:1 hp:mana ratio, unless your blowing your mana pool on regrowth or such (that's with zero +healing gear and no crits). Heal over time spells stack with priests, providing excellent mitigation. With improved thorns and the cenarion set bonus you can give tanks a 38.5 damage shield for assisting in holding threat for whatever comes your way basically; great for those AoE pulls and kicks arse in PvP for rogues and the Drizzt clone hunters. For encounters like Jindo or the other ZG encountersdruids make good tanks for the charm immunity whilst in feral forms. Tranquility, depending on how you're specced can be a great way to gain agro prior to bear; or if you're restoration, an efficient (or occasionally free) group heal for no threat basically (or neglegable.) If you don't want to sacrifice your efficiency healing squishies, rank 4 healing touch + rejuv is good for those areas where you need some spot healing.

Lots of the AQ20 encounters involve running/swimming around it seems like, so you make an excellent decoy, spotter or what have you. Or in Moam's case you can avoid the mana drain in feral, take advantage of natural shifter and heal your group for the duration of the fight.

Obligatory decurse/poison removal and novelty buffs, auras and debuffs are just fun and/or useful to have. Highly gear dependant class though, expect a lot of min/maxing from carrying multiple sets.

Biph_Dawgy wrote:hey mop... i will make a new char, any recommendations on what you need/want... lemme know soon so i can get it started

Biph, I'm levelling a Druid and will need a lot of groupage endgame to get gear. If you want to group, make something that compliments him.

Thanks for the writeup, Shneider. Any tips for how to spec him endgame? It seems innervate is the way to go for raiding, but I'm not sure what's the best overall spec for me, since I'll probably want to do a lot of grouping and 5 and 10s.

how do you plan to spec a druid, maybe duo druids could work out depending on specs

Right now I'm specced to level, but still trying to figure out if I want to be an innervate druid or not. Not sure how specs and raids work, but I really don't want to be a healbot.

Duo Druids probably would work well, but checking TFS roster, they seem to have an assload of Druids. I'm not sure. I may level something else if this turns out to be the case.

Mop, how many Druids does TFS have, and what other classes are needed?

Biph, check your PM.

Not be a healbot and raiding druid do not mix. Good luck finding a raid that wants/needs a feral druid.

we have 8 druids only 2 ever show up tho - most we have ever had is 4 and that was me two boxing two of them

With regards to a spec, all I can say is find a niche. Demand for healers will always be high; seeing as how druids excel in the latter, if you don't find it appealing, you might want to find another class. This is the spec I use currently; it's not the end-all of the druid it just suits my needs for dungeons, battlegrounds, raids and so happens to complement my style of play and those who I play with. For template specs, Heart of the Wild and Moonglow are both quite useful obviously in so far as boosting efficiency without sacrificing much (e.g.28rest/23 balance; 30feral/21 rest). Innervate is greater as a wipe prevention tool, akin to Rebirth, and it's not on a thirty minute timer (only 6), the other two are passive, ergo active all the time. So take your pick. You'll find it's more a question of knowing what to do and when to do it often enough. But mistakes can and do happen, especially when you try stuff for the first time~. My only major problem is with Moonkin; it's a novelty at best. In PvP, you're basically a target for a rogue to come and sap you and cap the flag you were supposed to have been guarding. If a mage/priest/lock comes along he'll counterspell/spell-lock/silence you the moment you change forms. At least with leader of the pack you still have your basic beast form traits.

As a general rule, for PvP I try to keep 4K HP, 5K Mana and 10K armor for bear as unbuffed stats. I'll use the same set if there's another healer present for PvE purposes. Raids will have a focus on Mana/5sec, +healing, intellect, spirit etcetera. Stat-wise, I trade off the armor items for those, so it turns out to be about 6K mana in lieu of the armor.

(Tangeant) Itemization thus far doesn't really complement feral and balance builds until you hit BWL/AQ due to the lack of +defense gear or +damage on leather, even then genesis is pretty paltry when compared to the parent class sets, in which case you're faced with the opportunity cost of screwing a squishy out of something they could put to better use or a tank out of the dark iron ring they've been waiting forever for; whereas you'd only use it if Timmy the Tank took the night off, or wanted that starfire crit that Mickey the Mage does every second of every day and twice that on Sundays.