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Perhaps because I’ve been involved in game design in the past, or perhaps simply because I play a Shaman in World of Warcraft (WoW), but the issues pertaining to play-balance between the Shaman and Paladin classes has maintained my attention. Though I’ve already commented on the core issues in the past, I wanted to lay down some thoughts to attempt a clarification as to what roles the aforementioned classes should carry out. It is clear that the original developers for these two classes are either no longer at Blizzard, or are themselves confused as to what the Shaman and Paladin are supposed to do, so let me propose two philosophies that can be used to influence future design decisions.

The Warrior-Priest

The “holy warrior” of the Alliance, the Paladin’s current implementation fosters the idea that the class is a support role whose purpose is to off-heal and deal marginal damage in the interim. Between fights, the Paladin uses buffs to extend the capabilities of his allies, be they in a party, or in a raid group. Nonetheless, the Paladin’s role end-game is without much action, on account of the fact that the Paladin cannot generate enough aggro to actually tank. Nonetheless, the “holy warrior” archetype can still be furthered with a few changes to Paladin abilities.

The Warrior and Druid are able to be a group’s main tank because they can soak damage, they can taunt enemies, and they can output enough damage to secure aggro. Some of their abilities are also high in threat, despite the fact that these abilities may have little damage to go along with them. The Paladin on the other hand can also soak damage, but cannot taunt their enemies. While they have some abilities with higher threat, the only real way for a Paladin to obtain and hold aggro is to do damage, which the Paladin can do reasonably well given the right talent spec.

To secure more versatility for the Paladin, the first philosophy for Paladin design would be to fix the Paladin’s ability to tank. In this respect, the Paladin should be seen as a defensive class, rather than an offensive one. A Paladin’s defensive abilities are already quite obvious in Battlegrounds, where stopping them quickly becomes a pain. In line with this idea, give the Paladin some form of taunt, and increase the threat he generates with attacks accordingly. Rather than rely purely on damage to hold aggro, however, do not allow the Paladin to diminish threat via heals, and instead allow that threat to build up, such that enemies are forced to attack another plate-wearer. With this type of design, Paladins would be ideal for gaining aggro from enemies who were pulled off of the main tank by another class, as the Paladin’s heal’s of that class would in turn grant him the aggro to keep the enemy off his teammates.

An increased ability to tank would in some ways diminish the need for Warriors and Druids. With the shortage of tanks end-game, this would give Alliance an upper-hand in end-game PvE, as they would have three classes capable of being a main tank, rather than two. The idea of a Warrior healing himself, and generating lots of aggro from it, does seem like a solid “holy warrior” implementation, however.

While the prior aforementioned ideas place little emphasis on melee damage, others have called for the Paladin to be a more capable damage dealer. Obviously, such a design shift would be more drastic than the previous suggestion, as the Paladin is currently relegated to group support already. Furthermore, there are already numerous other DPS classes. Nonetheless, the Paladin as a potent melee class bears consideration, for many players chose to roll a Paladin based on the melee aspects of the “holy warrior” concept.

Balancing this type of role for a Paladin would be difficult, as it would inevitably require a reduced ability to heal and buff in a manner based on talent-spec. For instance, allowing the Paladin to tank effectively based on taunts and high threat attacks/healing would be viable talent spec, while building the Paladin into a DPS class would be another viable spec, though this type of build would forego talent points spent in making buffs and heals very potent, relegating aggro management to a function of damage rather than taunts and high-threat heals. In other words, a player can make a DPS Paladin but lose healing and support capabilities, or they can build a Paladin capable of tanking sans the damage output of a Fury Warrior or pre-1.11 Shaman. This duality would be similar to the flexibility allowed for Warriors, who are able to spend talent points to focus on offense, or on defense.

The Pagan Chief

The Shaman is a more confused class design than the Paladin, because the Shaman is without a clear purpose. While the Paladin’s current implementation hints at the role a Paladin should serve, what with his ability to wear plate armor, the Shaman’s implementation does no such thing.

Some have purported that the Shaman is the “caster” equivalent of the Paladin. That is to say, the Shaman ought deal the majority of his damage via spells, rather than via melee strikes, which would be consistent with Blizzard’s decision to “nerf” Windfury, the Shaman’s go-to melee ability. If this is so, however, then the Shaman should at least make up for in damage what he loses in survivability. While this is true for PvP play, the Shaman’s inability to maintain a steady damage stream for prolonged fights is problematic, as he has no real way to maintain a high mana pool without foregoing the very abilities that do damage in the first place. In other words, to obtain Mana Tide, the one ability that does return mana (ala Evocate or Innervate), a Shaman cannot spec for damage.

It is clear that a Shaman’s inability to wear plate armor means that he should not tank. However, his ability to use a shield is inconsistent with this, unless we assume that the Shaman’s high damage (as he has no taunts) may pull aggro, and his better-than-leather armor and shield exists to soak only enough damage until aggro can be regained. This would be fine, but using a shield means the Shaman cannot deal the melee damage Windfury has made him famous for, and so we’re again stuck in the rut of requiring something that makes something else virtually useless. With the philosophy previously mentioned for the Paladin, where he can heal and tank and forego damage (or vice versa), the Shaman needs an equivalent, and it is clear that tanking is not it.

So what are the Shaman’s merits? The Shaman’s core DPS comes from his spells, and this can be assisted with melee strikes (Windfury), which is what a pure DPS build for the Shaman looks like, even in 1.11. However, while we can see where healing could benefit tanking for the Paladin in the aforementioned Paladin philosophy, we need to find a way to change the Shaman such that he is not relegated to a pure healing role, and that instead, healing should assist another role. Or, perhaps this assistance idea could be worked into the core totem rules as follows:

• As seals have a dual-purpose, so should totems. This can be managed by keeping (or slightly modifying) the current totems effects. Nonetheless, a dropped totem should still have an effect as they do now.
• Anyone within a totem’s area-of-effect (AoE) has the potential to gain a buff granted by the totem when activated. This buff would be given to a character when another Shaman ability is used. For simplicity, we’ll stick to heals, though the system could easily work with other Shaman abilities. So, if an ally is within a totem’s AoE, and the Shaman heals that ally, then the ally would not only be healed, but would gain a buff based on what totem(s) were nearby.

An example would be the Stoneskin totem. Currently, the effect of the totem is negligible. With the proposed system, however, anyone within the totem’s AoE who is healed would gain a buff. Let’s say that for the Stoneskin totem, the buff is a temporary increase in armor, ideally better than what the Stoneskin totem offers in AoE when dropped. Balance testing can determine if these two effects should stack or not, but likely no stacking would be necessary. As the buff, like a Paladin’s buffs, would be mobile in nature, fights that begin stationary can become mobile without the Shaman’s support role being diminished. Since the buff effect is reliant on another ability (such as a heal), it would require planning during combat to activate.

When one extends this idea, it not only gives the Shaman increased versatility to a group, but requires that he use the full range of his abilities. For example, a frost resistance buff might be granted to everyone within a Frost Resistance totem’s AoE after the successful cast of Frostbolt. Since the buff is granted to everyone in this case, the buff can stack up to four times, after four successful Frostbolts have been used.

A third example might be the use of a Windfury totem. When the Shaman receives a Windfury proc, then a Windfury buff would be granted to everyone within the Windfury totem’s AoE. As one can see, these types of totem-based buffs would allow a Shaman to buff his party by acting like a hybrid, using all his abilities to help the group instead of relying only on his healing abilities. In this manner, parties would want the Shaman to jump into the fray, as they will directly benefit from the Shaman doing so.

Unlike the aforementioned Paladin philosophy, the Shaman would not become a viable tank end-game, but would be used as a damage-dealer, since successful hits (spells or melee) would increase the survivability of the group and the damage they do.

The roles of the Shaman and Paladin won’t ever be the same, because their current implementations are simply too different from one another to contrive any sort of similarity. Nonetheless, complaints of both classes can be alleviated to a great deal by allowing the Paladin to make use of his plate armor, and by allowing the Shaman to enter the fray of combat in order to buff his allies in a manner similar to how a Paladin can. Both classes would still be hybrids and hold rolls beyond being just buff-bots and off-healers, and that’s really what players of both classes want. Even better, no major itemization revamps would need to be done by incorporating the aforementioned philosophies, as Paladins would still rely on mana for heals to increase threat to tank, and Shamans would still use mana and heals/spells to buff.

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