Hayatet Shaman Changes Review

[balder]

I have a level 40 Hayatet Shaman on Shidreth and a level 31 on the test server from beta so I thought I would check out the changes that you have made so far and give you my opinion from an experienced player.

General Shaman Changes:

Mitigation lowered: Well I dont know about other shaman totems but wearing medium armour the best I can found at lvl 40 (there is not a lot of high level armour in the game yet) I still get killed by 3 and 4 dot mobs even with a shield. Now maybe turgin or rakurr shaman are overbalanced in their tanking/mitigation but they get buffs to make that better and if thats the case then you need to balance those buffs and not the entire shaman class because right now hayatet shaman cant tank at all and lowering it even more will make us like light armour casters who cant take any hits.

Spear of the Ancestors: I notice this physical finish has been added on the test server as my shaman there has it but I do not on the live server. This is great to have when meleeing as right now we have no melee finishers.

Spirit Strike fixed to 2.0s casts: This was a great change and sorely needed for us as its our main nuke, as I levelled up it kept getting slower and slower it went to 2.5 then 3.0 seconds and at 3.0 was way to slow to use regularly and if you were soloing it interrupted all the time. Definately a nice fix that we really needed.

General Shaman Spells:

Shield of mortality/spirits: These are 6 second wards to block spiritual and physical spell damage i believe. I have not found any use for them in 40 levels as a shaman. I had thought the mortality one would block all melee damage for 6 seconds but is apparently only spell damage. Now these spells are completely useless and not worth casting. Players have no idea what damage type mobs are hitting them with or when they cast to use them as we are not casters so have no idea when a spell is incomming. I think these should just be changed into maybe a buff that raises spiritual and physical resistances and then they would be nice and useful.

Hayatet Specific Spell Changes:

Fire Claw: I think this is still buggy but the reduced mana and endurance cost helps out alot. However on test right now it is not ticking damage it is only doing its regular fire damage, it is still a 3 second cast which is an extremely long time for a nuke and with 12 seconds needed for its damage to tick off that means 15s for full damage from this spell. It is still not a good functional spell because of that. For a totem specific offensive nuke like this it should be better than spirit strike by a long shot. I would rather see this as an instant cast with a cooldown timer similiar to starfire like druids have so it could easily be used in conjunction with spirit strike, or it needs to do signifigantly more damage than it does already. In Beta this spell did more and more damage with each cast on the same mob and was really nice, it was limited in use by endurance but that was changed and since then the spell has really not been worth using. I think it needs to change into a big damage spell with a refresh or if it just becomes a regular 2 second nuke that does fire damage but is more powerful that spirit strike that would make it good and worth using also. Finally this spell still does not create or use a weakness.

Breath of Immolation: Our fire dot, lowered the mana and end cost which is great. However, it is still a 3 second cast when our regular shaman dots are 1 and 2 seconds. It does tick longer so I suppose this is how you want it. But on a per tick basis it doesnt seem to do much more damage than the hoarfrost/flesh rot line and as a totem specific dot I think its per tick damage should be much higher than the regular dots not just last longer.

Acuity Buff: Now starts earlier and buffs intelligence. Great job with this one brings our buffs in line with the other 2 totems as far as a good stat and regen buff. Also we get it earlier like they do their buffs good jobs with this one.

Burning/Smoldering Mantle: Fire resist and damage reduction, damage shield. Well it was moved so we get a version earlier which is nice however the damage shield still doesnt seem to do any signifigant/noticable damage is this intended for damage shields to be so weak? If so it just becomes a resist buff which is still nice to have and fits with our totem.

Ignite: This is supposed to debuff fire resist and spell accuracy. I have extensively tested this spell on test and live and while it may reduce a mobs fire resistance it does not make any of our spells do any more damage that I can see. Also the spell accuracy portion doesnt seem to affect any mobs as they still hit me with all their spells wheter i ignite them or not. Maybe changing this spell so it works like silence in that they cannot cast spells while its on them or something that has an actual effect.

Also while I am on resists when I debuff a mob with ignite or with curse of frailty that debuffs a lot of things I cant really notice any more damage by any of those spells, I just dont see an effect on the mob that makes these worth casting and wasting mana on. Are resists working as intended right now or is that an overall game bug?

Firestorm: Lowered the end cost which is nice but still an instant cast aoe with a 30 second timer? When you want to use aoe spells is when you are fighting multiple mobs that do not have a lot of hps for example 3 3dots or 3-5 2 dots in a group or whatever the case may be. My point is that you are fighting mobs that dont have as many hps as a 4-5 dot so you want to aoe them to kill multiples fast. Meaning an aoe should be able to be recasted quickly to be usable. I would rather see this spell as a 3 second recast like fireclaw type spell but and aoe, and Fireclaw as an instant cast with a small refresh so we can use it in conjunction with spirit strike and dots. This would be a much better spell makeup for us.

Purging Flame: This spell right now does not remove anying on live servers and I am not high enough to test on the test server. However purge does remove a few poison/disease based dots on the live server. Purging flame also only lasts 15m which seems kind of short for a buff as the rest of our buffs last a minimum of 30m. Also we get a group purge later on as a regular shaman so this spell seems kind of redundant and I dont ever cast it or have a use for it right now. I was in the dungeon in barnid hills last night and a lot of those mobs cast wicked aoe's and aoe dots and if this removed those then it would be a great spell but right now it doesnt work or remove anything.

Hayatet Pet: Id like to see the hearts of fire ability at 35 replaced with a pet aoe, that way the pet has a dd, aoe, and rebirth heal I think this would be much more useful than a 20 second damage buff that is marginally effective at best. Would make the pet a lot better and more useful when fighting multiple mobs.

I would also like to see a buff we can cast on melee classes that makes there attacks do more damage like a fire damage proc or effect some thing like that would be very nice. Similiar to the dmg buff that druids can put on melee classes but fire based to fit our totem.

Anyways I am glad you are finally looking into Hayatet shaman and trying to bring us into balance with the other 2 totems. Please read my suggestions above and let me and the other shaman know what you think.

Thanks,

Balder
Hayatet Shaman
Shidreth Server,
Officer, Circle of Might

[Corlin]

Great review, one question I had when you said

...I still get killed by 3 and 4 dot mobs even with a shield.

Did you mean you are getting one-shotted at level 40, or that you cannot solo 3 and 4 dot mobs?

[Sigurd]

Originally Posted by Corlin

Great review, one question I had when you said



Did you mean you are getting one-shotted at level 40, or that you cannot solo 3 and 4 dot mobs?

LOL - I just read through all of that and was about to say the same thing.

I never really got to try level-appropriate stuff on my Beta-buffed shaman (my shaman alt in beta only got to 17) I was given (no option, random) Hayatet and found that pet totally blew away my wolf (and pretty too ;P) but I wanted wolf from the start so I sucked it up and hoped that stealth would be useful when get it. It pwned lower level mobs in a way my wolf never did but again - it was LOWER level mobs (3 dotters about 8 levels lower my dog could kill them too but not in such huge dmg chunks, they died way faster to bird. Again tho, I understand that is likely a factor of resists being more important with spells and melee being more 'avg')

But... all that said - my lvl 19 Shaman can't do 3 dot mobs with any regular expectation of winning (none in my teens up to 16 anyhow - hadn't tried since then) and 4 dots I would not even THINK of... so I hope you mean that the patch changes have been so bad that in a GROUP you die instantly if you get aggro vs soloing - cos if you mean you can solo 4 dots, that's sick :P (I am aware that said 'sickness' might ALSO apply to Tuurg/Wolf shamans at 40 if it isn't UNTIL 40 that you started doing this - if you were doing this in your teens - wow... ummm...powerful)