The Spirit Realm

The problem that we face with this AA is not that it'd be overpowering as much as the fact that they are trying to make it relatievly equal to what Druids got a year ago.

Back when we designed this AA we offered a lot of arguments as to why we needed such an ability and why it wouldn't be overpowering, now I come back to these boards and it's clear that they didn't even evaluate whether our proposal was balanced, but merely looked at what our buddies the Druids have along these lines and copied it(more or less).

This proposal wasn't done overnight. The people working on it took a few weeks of their time and a lot of looking at class functions, additional abilities, similiar abilities shared by other classes, current Shaman issues etc. to come up with every single detail(those who participated in this can attest for that). In other words, we put a lot more work into drafting this than SoE and I consider the results to be prove of the little time emphasis that was put on the issue from both sides.

We as a class had the chance and the responsibility to point at this proposal and say "we want this and feel it's balanced for X, Y, Z reasons", but we didn't. Apparently the issue was not as pressing for the majority of the community as it was for me, who had been asking for this for a long time, thus we can't blame SoE for not giving it as much attention as "some" of us would have liked.

That said, we still have the chance to get this upgraded reasonable in my opinion. It's a matter of presenting our arguments in a strong and compact way, thus I suggest to request following adjustments:

Ancestral Guard Detail | History | Stacking | Raw Data


Slot Description
1: Mitigate Melee Damage by 75%, 10000 total


Mana: 0 Casting Time: 0
Recast Time: 2.25 Fizzle Time: 2.25
Range: 200 Location: Any
Time of Day: Any Interruptable: Yes
Short Buff Box: No Target Type: Self
Spell Type: Beneficial Category: Melee Guard
Source: Test 09/20


Classes: None
Duration: 1 ticks @L1 to 3 ticks @L6

or:

Ancestral Guard Detail | History | Stacking | Raw Data


Slot Description
1: Mitigate Melee Damage by 65%, 10000 total


Mana: 0 Casting Time: 0
Recast Time: 2.25 Fizzle Time: 2.25
Range: 200 Location: Any
Time of Day: Any Interruptable: Yes
Short Buff Box: No Target Type: Self
Spell Type: Beneficial Category: Melee Guard
Source: Test 09/20


Classes: None
Duration: 1 ticks @L1 to 4 ticks @L6

or:

Ancestral Guard Detail | History | Stacking | Raw Data


Slot Description
1: Mitigate Melee Damage by 50%, 15000 total


Mana: 0 Casting Time: 0
Recast Time: 2.25 Fizzle Time: 2.25
Range: 200 Location: Any
Time of Day: Any Interruptable: Yes
Short Buff Box: No Target Type: Self
Spell Type: Beneficial Category: Melee Guard
Source: Test 09/20


Classes: None
Duration: 1 ticks @L1 to 3 ticks @L6

or even:

Slot Description
1: Increase Melee Mitigation by 65%, 15000(65% DI reduction instead of DI + DB reduction)

Mana: 0 Casting Time: 0
Recast Time: 2.25 Fizzle Time: 2.25
Range: 200 Location: Any
Time of Day: Any Interruptable: Yes
Short Buff Box: No Target Type: Self
Spell Type: Beneficial Category: Melee Guard
Source: Test 09/20


Classes: None
Duration: 1 ticks @L1 to 4 ticks @L6

For each of the alternatives the changes to the current AG on the live servers was put in bold.

Ooops, Giac -- when you cut and pasted this into this thread, you missed the bolding --

I think, though, that you are right that the process SOE followed was not: shamans need a mitigation effect, what would be a good way to establish mitigation given the way the shaman class works?

Instead it was: shamans need a mitigation effect, we'll give them the same thing we gave druids a year ago.

But of course the way druids get aggro and the way shamans get aggro are not at all parallel; so simply giving shamans what druids got a year ago will not be adequate. Druids usually only get enough aggro to get hit if the tank is afk or dead: which is pretty rare. But there is usually a moment on every pull when the shaman is number one on the aggro list: and even though that moment is usually not all that long, shamans still get beat on a lot.

So. How shamans and druids get aggro is different; how they mitigate damage ought to be different, too.

It's very clear that SOE did not take that into account. I suspect that they did not give more than a cursory glance at our proposed Defense of the Arcane Spirits aa. Perhaps enough to say, "Mitigation for shamans? Nah. Oh, hell, ok. Give em a copy of that druid thing."

Fixed!

People who can't push a button when they're getting beat on are inept.

Quote away~

yeah, I was just listing raid targets I do, wasnt even checking if it was ramp or not, shit idk! You just shit on my joke, good job