I'm bursting!

Once again I didn't have any time to play yesterday, but after starting up the shammy again recently I'm not really sure how I feel about her. The class has been great to play previously, and I usually have no trouble taking down mobs, but recently it hasn't felt quite the same. She's specced all into enhancement for leveling, but I'm finding I may not like it as much as I used to.

What I'm really noticing is how much this spec depends on burst damage. If you don't get those big hits from windfury, and your short term buffs from crits, the fights really don't go well. Sometimes a mob goes down in a few swings with minimal damage to me, and sometimes I can barely see my remaining health at the end it's so low.

Melee classes depend on talents to make them better, but those talents are usually either passive boosts to damage, or skills you can use at the hit of a button. Shamans don't seem to work the same way. They do get talents that boost DPS, but it's based on whether you hit or not.

Windfury is chance on hit, the cheaper shocks talent is chance on hit. The faster attack speed and damage boost buff talents are both procced on crits, which you have even less chance of doing than hitting.

It's very frustrating when you see four attacks miss in a row, but it's even more frustrating to know that it probably cost you a windfury proc. I just don't think having the whole fight depend on talents that you essentially have no control over is a good mechanic.

This probably isn't as big a problem in the end game when your equipment has +hit modifiers to get you to the hit cap and only miss 1% of the time, not to mention there aren't too many raiding enhancement shammies. But as you level you don't really get anything with that stat, even though many of the mobs you fight can be 2 or 3 levels above you.

The saving grace is the fact that shamans can heal themselves. If it wasn't for this I don't think I could handle playing one. Being able to heal yourself in a fight when you can't get a proc to save your life is key when playing a shaman. The totems do help too, but not enough to equal things out.

This is sort of how I think playing my ret pally will be, but she's only level 10 right now so I haven't gotten to that point yet. From what my friend told me they have a similar problem because they use big two-handed weapons that are very slow, and missing a swing with one of those is a big deal with how much time there is between swings. Luckily they can heal too, and with plate armor they have more protection.

I know the hybrid classes are probably harder to balance because they aren't supposed to be as good at anything as a pure class is, but they still have a lot of work to do. Hopefully there are some big changes in the expansion that will make this a little better. I'm really excited about being able to summon spirit wolves.