Actually I was playing a shaman at the time everyone complained about how underpowered they were. I was doing just fine keeping people alive in raids back then.
Raids we were fine. PvP was the problem. I've had a shaman since November 2004 and he was the first one I got to 70 when TBC came out. Also the restoration tree was never the problem, the other 2 trees were the problem.
They only people that ever thought shamans were underpowered was shamans. Those are EXAMPLES of places where Blizzard made mistakes. They have had a very good recent track record. EA has 10 years of nothing but trashy consumer relations.
No just recently, I'd say back in February or January we were getting support from other classes when patch 2.4 came out which was the last big patch to come out. Other classes took a look at some of the nerfs coming to shamans, such as Nature's Swiftness and Elemental Mastery not being able to be used together and supported us. I also find it funny that before the patch notes came out a player, who was supposedly on the Lead Designer's arena team, was able to name the nerfs that shamans were getting then lo and behold the same nerfs come out. And this was just back about 4 months ago so no their recent track record sucks too. I'm not saying EA is good with theirs but Blizzard isn't as great as you think.
What are you talking about? They are one of the most powerful healers in the game. They are the one of the best meleers in the game. They are one of the best casters in the game. They routinely top the healing and dps (casting and melee) charts. They are HANDS DOWN the most powerful support class in the game. Have you played the game at all since TBC came out...shamans are the only class that guilds will drag on raids while they are still in greens and honestly try to get one in every group because they buff the rest of the raid so much. Shamans have always been about buffing, and in WoW they are now the most powerful buff class...I would think that would mean they are just powerful toons now.
I will not argue with your healer comment and yes they are very good meleers, when they can get close enough to someone to melee (talking about PvP) but their casting is quite bad, i should know I was an elemental shaman. Lighting Overload was useless after TBC came out and when they made LO useful they knocked down the damage output of our Lightning bolts and chain lightning to compensate for the buff they gave to LO. When they did that they almost guarenteed that LO had to be taken if you wanted to be an elemental shaman. Best part is the nerf wasn't even told to us, people on test check the co-efficients and confronted blue's on the test forum, which ignored the shaman community for the better part of 3 weeks, no we looking into this or nothing. When a player actually showed proof with equations and everything we still didn't get a comment from blue until 2 weeks later at which point they said we were wrong only to come back 2 weeks later and say we were right. Great communication.
They have tried to keep the game balanced patch by patch for the entirity of the game. That is a lot more than EA has ever done. No class has ever been nerfed out of existance. The only ones whining about nerfs were the people that could not adapt. Back when shamans sucked I was routinely killing everyone 1 v 1 in PvP with a restor (HEALING) shaman. Now, if they sucked so badly explain how I could do that.
No they just make one class extremley powerful then knock it down a few pegs and make it week while another class becomes powerful, Warlocks, Warriors, and Druids are great examples. I adapted quite well to the changes. As far as you killing people 1v1 as resto that is simple. Resto has the ability to outlast people, Earthshield is a wonderful tool and we have great mana regen, especially with mana tide totem. Water shield is good too to get mana back. All you have to is make someone waste their mana then kill when they have nothing left, mages and priests for example. Warrior's, Druids, and rogues are the toughest for a shaman so I find it HIGHLY doubtful you were able to beat either of those 3 classes routinely. Besides WoW is an item game. If you're a shaman in Season 4 facing someone in season 1 gear then chances are very good you're going to win, which is one of the few ways shamans managed to compensate for their weaknesses.
Now they are the most powerful buff class in the game and everyone is making them as FoTM. They are hands down one of the most powerful PvE characters in WoW, and restor and elemental shamans still do quite well in PvP. So, if you think its a broken class you honestly haven't played WoW since TBC.
Played WoW since the beginning and still am playing WoW. They are very powerful in PvE now but the game is shifted more towards PvP now and they are quite weak there, except resto. Elemental isn't too bad, just need the gear to compete for our lack of tools such as a stun, root, or other neat little tricks other classes got. Also as of 3 months ago Shamans were the lowest population class in the whole game with, I believe about 8% of the population while some classes had much higher percentages.
I'm not saying they haven't bungled some communications. However, I haven't seen them do half as bad as EA when it comes to communications about game breaking bugs, and I have yet to see them leave game breaking bugs in the game without even trying to fix them like EA has.
There was the bug where you would fall off the zepplin into deep water and drown which was in for about 6 months before it was fixed, there was high latency times and constant server restarts, multiple warlock bugs which were almost in for a whole year before being fixed, Totem twisting which while not illegal has yet to be fixed like it said it was going to be, and a mulititude of other things. What you think isn't half as bad as EA is your opinion. In my opinions Blizzard is on par.
Oh and as a little piece of info, lead designer for PvP at BLizzard for WoW, Tom Chilton, AKA Kalgan, was the lead designer of Age of Shadows and jumped ship i believe not too long after AoS release. One of the people who is with WoW and you consider to have great customer service was part of the company you consider to have the worst communication.
