Earthshield and it's Future

[Tribby]

As many resto shaman know, Earthshield in certain match-ups, becomes nearly useless. While many classes have useless 41 pt talents (LoL tree of life) for pvp in certain trees, I've been noticing that when classes have offensive dispel, resto shaman's strength drops significantly. Given that now 3 classes + 1 class pet (lol skillhunter) can offensively dispel, the issues expand.

At 900 mana for 2,700 heal (pre-multiplier) Earthshield is a fairly efficient heal when the numbers are effective. Again, earthshield is 1) limited by offensive dispel and 2) when a target is hit for less than 1 charges value there is over-heal.

I considered my own abilities (ie lifebloom stacking) in comparison to earthshield. Given a 3-stack on a target, an offensive dispels means my lifebloom stack is reduced to 2 and the dispeled lifebloom bursts healing my target for the end value. Now, while lifebloom is a special ability in the case that when it's dispeled it heals for it's final value, I see Earthshield in a similar light in the fact that it's essentially a 10-charge stack.

What I would like to see changed is that when an Earthshield target is offensively dispeled, it loses 1-Earthshield charge rather than the entire stack. To futher clarify, I don't think the dispeled charge should burst because Earthshield is not lifebloom, but offensive dispel should not totally nullify a 41 point talent. I feel this would "fix" Earthshield, and once again make resto shaman viable as something rather than windfury + Lesser Healing Wave (exaggeration but you get the picture).

What do you think Shaman?

[Gragnarth]

Honestly that would be incredibly overpowered. It would take 5 purges or dispel magics to completley remove it. Forget the heal, with that change ES would become the most powerful buff protection in the game.

With the change you proposed it takes 8.5 seconds of spamming purge or dispell to completley remove earth sheild and cost a ton of mana.

a much more balanced solution would be that when its dispelled it heals the target for the healing value of half the charges, rounded down. For example with 10 charges it would heal for the value of 5 charges combined. With 7 charges it would heal for the value of 3 charges combined. With 1 charge it would heal for nothing.

[Tribby]

A lot of classes have powerful buff protection. All druid buffs have a 30% chance to resist dispel (talented). Earthshield is only 1 buff, the chance to dispel it being 1/total buffs.

And actually it would take 10 purges or dispels to get rid of it, given my proposal, or 15 seconds of GCD.

[Porkmuffin]

Earth shield is the only buff we have that can be dispelled, like tribby said druids and priests have talents that give them a chance to not be removed and have muilt buffs as Vs are only one.

Alot of shamans and others have been pushing for this change. It would be a nice step in the right direction, but more will need to be done.

[Magdain]

A lot of classes have powerful buff protection. All druid buffs have a 30% chance to resist dispel (talented). Earthshield is only 1 buff, the chance to dispel it being 1/total buffs.

And actually it would take 10 purges or dispels to get rid of it, given my proposal, or 15 seconds of GCD.

Priest Dispel and Shaman Purge is two buffs per cast.

This has been outlined before, but the problem with dispel targeting individual charges is that it only takes 1 global cooldown to apply. Meaning it's 5x more effective than a dispel, and it's an extremely powerful buff when left alone.

As also mentioned in this thread, the dispel protection that would allow for is absurd. Earth Shield on a target with any other buff worth removing makes removing it virtually impossible.

On that same note it's also ridiculous that the pinnacle of the resto tree is so disposable and furthermore that shaman rely on it to prevent occasionally obscene amount of spell pushback.. so some change is in order. But making it overpowered isn't really a solution to making pvp better. Innate dispel resistance or dispel punishment (a la ua/lifebloom) is much more reasonable.

[Grup]

Make earthshield the lowest priority for dispels. That way you can dispel other buffs, but you'd have to spend a lot of mana to get earthshield off, so the good players wouldn't try to dispel it. Consider that 5 purges is around 1100 mana. That's if the earthshield still has 10 chargers on it. Earthshield is 900 mana. And this is for a spell that's relative strength is similar to renew, except it's not only easier to dispel, but it can only be cast on one target. It needs a significant change. Watershield is vastly superior to it right now, and watershield isn't a 41 point talent.

I actually did a test with my warrior partner, the test was that he would try to kill me while I stood still and only cast max rank LHW (since various ranks of HW and LHW would make the test more complex than what I wanted to do). By only refreshing earthshield when it was down and keeping myself up with LHW, I lasted 2 minutes 47 seconds. By never using earthshield, and refreshing watershield every time I could, I lasted 4 minutes 1 second. This is against a warrior who can't dispel the earthshield. Doesn't that seem a tad ridiculous watershield is the superior choice? EVEN when it isn't dispeled?

[Eriul]

Make earthshield the lowest priority for dispels. That way you can dispel other buffs, but you'd have to spend a lot of mana to get earthshield off, so the good players wouldn't try to dispel it. Consider that 5 purges is around 1100 mana. That's if the earthshield still has 10 chargers on it. Earthshield is 900 mana. And this is for a spell that's relative strength is similar to renew, except it's not only easier to dispel, but it can only be cast on one target. It needs a significant change. Watershield is vastly superior to it right now, and watershield isn't a 41 point talent.

I actually did a test with my warrior partner, the test was that he would try to kill me while I stood still and only cast max rank LHW (since various ranks of HW and LHW would make the test more complex than what I wanted to do). By only refreshing earthshield when it was down and keeping myself up with LHW, I lasted 2 minutes 47 seconds. By never using earthshield, and refreshing watershield every time I could, I lasted 4 minutes 1 second. This is against a warrior who can't dispel the earthshield. Doesn't that seem a tad ridiculous watershield is the superior choice? EVEN when it isn't dispeled?

In my opinion, depending on your team, ES is usually(9/10) better off on another target with you getting water shield. Of course there are few exceptions(pally/sham/warrior) and such. Basically it comes down to who is the other team gonna target? If they're going to try to kill you(the shaman) you always put ES on yourself, but if it's any of your teammates, you're wasting it putting it on yourself. If you can't tell who the other team is USUALLY gonna target, then figure it out. When in doubt, use it on others and put it on yourself if you are getting hit. Just my n00bish 2100 3v3 opinion

[Fruid]

I considered my own abilities (ie lifebloom stacking) in comparison to earthshield. Given a 3-stack on a target, an offensive dispels means my lifebloom stack is reduced to 2 and the dispeled lifebloom bursts healing my target for the end value.

In fact lifebloom burst ONLY happens for the last lifebloom buff being dispelled, so going from 3 -> 2, 3->1 or 2->1 does not give you the final 'bloom' part, and going from 2 to 0 gives you only 1. Though I agree earthshield needs some buffage for pvp usage, I'm not sure having it need 10 dispells is the best option, imagine trying to purge BoP from someone with earthshield for example. I think we should wait how the upcoming earthshield mana cost reduction is going to work out before making any more changes to it.

[Magdain]

Make earthshield the lowest priority for dispels. That way you can dispel other buffs, but you'd have to spend a lot of mana to get earthshield off, so the good players wouldn't try to dispel it. Consider that 5 purges is around 1100 mana. That's if the earthshield still has 10 chargers on it. Earthshield is 900 mana. And this is for a spell that's relative strength is similar to renew, except it's not only easier to dispel, but it can only be cast on one target. It needs a significant change. Watershield is vastly superior to it right now, and watershield isn't a 41 point talent.

I'm not really against the change, but it seems like nothing more than a band-aid to ignore the problems with the spell. In 2s and 3s the chances of you have more than 2-4 buffs is rather slim meaning 2 purges/dispels at worst and you're going to have the same problems as before the change. In 5s it wouldn't be too bad of a change, but if you put it on the focus target for any given period of time (which would be the most logical target to put it on I'd say) then it will get removed in a global cooldown or two from the dispel train that most teams have anyway.

[Grup]

I'm not really against the change, but it seems like nothing more than a band-aid to ignore the problems with the spell. In 2s and 3s the chances of you have more than 2-4 buffs is rather slim meaning 2 purges/dispels at worst and you're going to have the same problems as before the change. In 5s it wouldn't be too bad of a change, but if you put it on the focus target for any given period of time (which would be the most logical target to put it on I'd say) then it will get removed in a global cooldown or two from the dispel train that most teams have anyway.

That's not what I meant. Have purge remove two charges at once, and earthshield at the lowest priority, that way it's not acting as buff protection, but people won't want to dispel it. Meaning you could remove it if you wanted to, but it just wouldn't be viable. It's like killing a voidwalker...sometimes that's just not viable. So why can't removing earthshield not be very viable?

[garmir]

As I see it, ES should get some resistance to dispell effects (this would make us harder to kill by mages and healers whom occasionly cast a dispell).

Or like blizzard did with the druids make ES a trainable skill because there are 5 classes (shaman, priest, warlock, mage and hunter) that can remove your ES which is ridiculous for a 41 talent point sinds you can dispell it without any problem due to it not having any resistance to dispelling effects. So remove ES from the talent tree make it a trainable and put something els in the place that can actualy help us.

Quote: Noes now all shamans will have ES they'll be too overpowerd!

It's effect is +heal based so an enhancement shaman would have little use for it as for elemental shamans they barly get over the 900 dmg/healing in pvp gear ( that is if you are geared decently) so it will make little diffrence for those 2 off specs.

In the end you'll die faster than Steve Irwin in a tank filled with stingray's if you're facing a team which has a dispeller (basicly all the time with few exceptions) if they leave it as it is now.

As for the upcomming changes -> mana cost reduced from 900 to 450 this is going to help but in the end if they have a dispeller you'll still find it of little use.

sorry for the long post just felt like expressing my feelings about resto shamans in the arena at 4:10 AM.