The thing I think is the worst you said was when you claimed that Elemental Shamans can’t compete with pure DPS classes. This is SUCH a lie. First of all, go to Paragon’s combat log for when they killed LK 25 HC. There you will find an Elemental Shaman fourth. And you know they’re skilled. The thing is that most Ele Shamans don’t know how to balance gems and stats (crit, haste, SP) properly.

Totems are NOT BAD what the HELL are you THINKING?
I’ll just mention some totems, think whatever you want, they ARE good: Tremor, Grounding, Stoneclaw, Earthbind (especially with root talent), Cleansing, Searing (vital vs rogues, and NO i didn’t mean magma). Try being a Shaman without those totems.

Also Shamans got the best interrupt in the game, Wind Shear. Now i know some ppl won’t agree with me, to those I say: Get over 2.6k and you will see how annoying a skilled Shaman gets. Some may claim that “Counterspell, Mind Freeze etc are better because they have long lockouts” and yes, that can win the game sometimes, but 2 sec interrupt every 6 (5 as ele) seconds are simply better.

Also, you complain over the “Shamans don’t get 4 active abilities per tree”… Well, FULMINATION is better than all of the other ele talents added (for pve that is ofc)
Otherwise, you don’t need 4 active talents per tree when you got super other talents like
Ele: FULMINATION, Feedback, Totemic Wrath, Earth’s Grasp
Enha: Searing Flames, MSW, imp LL, Ancestral Swiftness
Resto: IMP CLEANSE SPIRIT, CLEANSING WATERS, Ancestral Awakenting, Tidal Waves…

WHY do you say that “hex is shitty” and that “it’s a shittier version of sheep”. Sheep will be broken by any damage, like a DKs HB, warrs BS, Rogue’s Blade Flurry, etc etc. Hex won’t. However in one way, since the target can move, it’s not as good at that point. But stating that “it’s a shittier version of sheep” is just… way too littly analyzation.

EDIT — After the Patch:
I now hope you see that Ele Shamans AND Enha Shamans are one of the Best DPS classes.

-Yeman, Dunemaul

The only thing I hope they change is a couple of the totems. Armor totem for example isnt worth crap now, I desperatly hope they replace it with something like a Spirit totem (Because Kings wont affect Spirit anymore, /wrists) or even straight up damage reduction cause I can never find a use for the earth totem space while raiding (aside from Strength of Earth but there is often another shaman in the group so one of use is wasting a spot).

P.S. reading back over comments again, its funny how the people who are fighting shamans say nerf them and the people playing them are practicly begging to be made stronger.

Which would be fine, except what does a shaman bring? They certainly cannot even so much as off-tank in 95% of circumstances. Our DPS is not competitive enough if elemental compared to the ‘pure’ classes. Our healing is good if we’re specced for it, but we’re nevertheless no priest or druid. What happens to a class when the main reason to bring them no longer applies?

Shaman totems are a clunky mechanic that should’ve been getting heavily revised back in 1.09 when shaman got their class revision. Oh wait, they gave that to someone else. Then 1.10. Then 1.11. Then they simply didn’t bother to read, look for, or hand in the feedback we’d made for them as requested (understand that at the time the shaman boards were almost unnaturally polite and cooperative when it came to these things), then given two small nerfs and a new icon, with mage buffs and warlock buffs as “their patch”, no actual attention, told “now you’ve gotten it, class reviews over, we’re never touching you again, go fuck yourselves”, and then asked “so, how do you like your extensive class review? Aw that’s too bad, you”. Then Bus Shock.

BC’s new abilities were complete crap, except for now having A reason to ever be brought along on a raid, bloodlust. Scaling got worse for shaman. The earth and fire elemental totems still suck to this day. As time went on every class got stronger, Shaman fell behind further and further. As every other class got better versions (usually longer lasting, mobile 100 yard not limited to a 20 yard stick in the ground that requires a GCD and large chunk of mana every couple of steps, and usually a much larger bonus to boot) of all our buffs, “but you can drop several” was the reason why shaman were not to get any fixes at all.

WOTLK comes out, and we finally get a single crowd control. This on the class that has been dying left right and center from day one because they had none whatsoever (as opposed to everyone else), and way to break out from it whatsoever (as opposed to everyone else) and still don’t. This crowd control (much like ghost wolf is a shitty shitty version of a druid travel form) is a half-assed weaker version of polymorph. It was introduced because WOTLK was partly about eliminating the extreme crowd-control in the game. They added diminishing returns more heavily, gave more protection and ways of diminishing CC, and so once it was nowhere near as important, shaman finally gained one.

So then of course they made it so that the same buffs couldn’t stack. Now they’re giving bloodlust away, and giving us back some talents they’d taken away for sucking, in the spirit of “we don’t want anyone to have talents that buff buffs”. Guess what our new talents are. Guess what the “four active abilities per tree” amount to for shaman (hint: its half of four). Guess who lost a bunch of interesting talents in the new trees; the ones that do something, and kept only heavily bloated versions (where everyone else is getting fat cut) of the “1/2/3% damage to this one spell” things. You know, the stuff they said they want to cut out.

Totems are to remain as they are because they don’t want everyone to be able to dispel all buffs/debuffs. In order for this to be true, it, as usual, must be false for shaman. Shaman MUST have all their buffs and a significant portion of their DPS and all utility tied to 5hp sticks that a level 1 critter can destroy. ALL classes must be able to, with no effort at all, destroy totems, or else it “wouldn’t be iconic”. They can’t move, because “it wouldn’t be iconic”. They “provide unique and powerful buffs”, which is “iconic”, except that now they’re not being made better because everyone has a much stronger, wider, cheaper, non-recast-all-the-time version of each of those buffs, usually several, and it “wouldn’t be iconic” to change totems since “they provide unique and powerful buffs”.

Oh, its just a beta. Right now. And the past few patch updates to the beta have shown the direction its going. The same kind of little beta changes that happened when shaman were overpowered.

The original WOW beta.