u/AcademicHefest

After my guild defeated the current raid bosses, we went en masse to play Classic TBC, and a debate that lasted for hours was about how much the classes have lost their identities, especially the Shaman, Priest, and Hunter, but let's focus on the Shaman.

Over several expansions, we've seen Shamans lose their utility totems more and more; no more defensive buffs for the team, attack bonuses, or anything else.

They've reduced the class so much that unless you play a Totem Healer, you won't see a totem on the field to help you in fights, and even if you play a Totem Healer Shaman, you may have noticed that in simplifying healers from the last expansion to this one, they removed three more totems from the abilities. (Furthermore, the shaman healer has become obsolete; the only remaining use for him is the Spirit Bond Totem.)

The elemental shaman has become a shield-and-chainmail mage; he no longer has an identity. I feel like a fire mage or an electric mage; those spirits you summon seem to use a mirror image of the mage.

This leads to another problem, which is the Seer's identity and history. Well, maybe I'm being a "picky storyteller" here, but I want to emphasize that a shaman is not a necromancer. Shamans have great respect for their ancestors, and a Seer only opens a channel to communicate with the ancestors to seek guidance, spiritual direction, and wisdom. A shaman will NEVER summon and disrespect the dead by calling them to take on earthly battles, violating their right to rest. This whole idea of the Seer's tree should be changed to a variation of the Totemic one.

That whole skill tree focused exclusively on lightning is absurdly generic; the shaman is the master of the four elements, not of reducing the house's electricity bill.

Now let's move on to another topic: the removal of the elementals. That's right, with each new update that alters the shaman, they not only remove the totems, but also the elementals. With the exception of the Earth elemental (which they further sabotaged by turning the taunt or life bonus into an extra talent), they removed the individual elemental summons, incorporating them into other abilities, leaving them with a minuscule role in combat.

I always found it strange that the shaman didn't have a skill tree focused on being a primary summoner, with the elements being a permanent summon, but no, on the contrary, he is becoming more and more of a generic conjurer.

It seems that the team responsible for developing the classes doesn't study the game's history and doesn't seek to understand the dynamics of the class within the game's universe.

Edit:

Regarding enemies with extra buttons, when I talk about the return of totems, I'm not referring to bringing back buttons that you have to constantly reactivate.

The Blazing Fire Totem could be a passive talent for the Elemental Shaman that activates whenever you use Flame Shock.

The Stone Skin Totem could be a passive effect that activates whenever you or the tank take a percentage of damage based on missing health; then the totem is summoned and applies defense to the entire group.

Adding more totems and shamanic utility to restore the class's identity doesn't necessarily mean more buttons.

I'm kind of a "Draenei fanatic," so I always try to get everything from the race, but I was still a newbie in WOD and didn't understand much about the late game. I was more focused on mastering the game's lore and such, so even trying to do the Challenge Mode in WOD to get the Crystal-Shot Longrifle didn't give me enough time, and I'm sad that nothing even remotely similar to it ever came out.

Something similar happened in Legion. I managed to get the visuals for the Mage Towers for the Holy Priest and the Enhancement Shaman, which are Draenei-themed, but I couldn't get the Protection Warrior one because I wasn't playing it at the time, and when I tried at the end of the expansion, I didn't have enough time to build it.

Is there any item you really wanted to get, but know you'll never be able to get your hands on?

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WoD had many problems, we all agree on that, but one thing we can't deny is that Yrel was a good character even coming in such a troubled expansion, which brought some problems to the lore.

It had been years since Blizzard developed characters as charismatic as Jaina, Thrall, Khadgar, Alleria, Turalion, Vol'jin, Cairns; it was always the same because Blizzard had and still has problems developing new characters with any charisma. It's no coincidence that WoW has been burning a lot of steam killing off old characters in an attempt to bring in new ones to fill the legacy of the previous ones and failing. And even doing the missions with Arathor, with so many great characters as mentors in his story, he seems to lack any charisma.

So I went to level up a character by doing the quests in WOD and wow, Yrel manages to be much more charismatic. Some might claim she's too much of a "Mary Sue," and even though she does have those characteristics, and even though the plot is in an alternate reality, I managed to develop much more empathy and connection with her than with Arathor, whose story has been spread out since TBC.

I can only think about how much more interesting she could have become as a character if they hadn't turned her into a fanatic of the Light, and if she had come to the main reality to stop Gul'dan in Legion. But no, they wasted all the character's potential to create an allied race that could have come from Outland.

And I imagine that's not just my feeling, considering the fact that she got several cards in Hearthstone, became a character in Heroes of the Storm, and the amount of fan art of her out there.