Shaman Tanks

So after reading this awesome post over at Healer Envy, i got to thinking about shaman tanks myself. After commenting I realized I a crap load of ideas for it myself, way to many for a comment so I decided to write my own post. In this I'll reference some of the ideas from Healer Envy but mostly throw in some of my own.

My only real disagreement with the post was the use of ice for the primary elemental theme for tanking. In my opinion, WoW rolls ice and water into one, though less in the case of shamans. Instead Earth would be my element of choice. But there's a problem there, there's already and earth shield, and Resto has it. First off I'm kinda annoyed by resto getting two shields, water and earth, and elemental having none really. It is my opinion that elemental abilities should come in sets of 4, one for each element, earth, air, fire, and water. Shocks, Shields, Elemental Weapons, and Totems (which should be evened out a bit). Secondly I see two possible fixes for this, one you ignore earth shield and make another shield, which is possible there are two earth weapon enchants (Stonebiter and Earthliving), or rename Earth Shield. In Christie Golden's Lord of the Clans Thrall has to commune with not 4 but 5 spirits. Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and the Wilds. The Wilds consisted of a hogpog of spirits that represent life on azeroth. For example Thrall call on the spirit of Horses from the wild to cause the Warhorses of Durnholde's knights to throw their riders. This fits perfectly with Resto, rename Earth Shield to Spirit Shield (Earthliving doesn't have to be renamed) and create a New Earth Shield that does something like Increase chance to block or parry attacks. It could also restore mana on parries or blocks.

The same way a warrior uses defensive stance, and druids use bear form, shamans will use an ability they already have, Stoneskin Totem. Talented it could give the shaman he uncritability and additional armor they need while still giving the same benefit to the rest of the party. To prevent the placement of the totem it would also do something like, "Your Stoneskin totem becomes immune to damage and lasts as long as you are alive only or until a different Earth Totem is summoned. As long as the totem exist the you receive its benefit regardless of range." It essentially makes Stoneskin sort of a stance, and sacrifices the bonuses of Strength of Earth. A damage decrease could be added as well if needed.

Shaman could get a Health version of Mana Tide Totem that gives a quick burst of Health for emergencies as an additional cooldown, or have an ability like, Chill Totem - "Freezes your water totem, temporarily negating its normal effect, but Healing you for X over 5 secs" this could give flexibilty to the totem used and avoided adding another earth or water totem.

With Cataclysm's removal of spell ranks Stonebiter could become the tanking weapon enchant. A To avoid conflicts with it uses when leveling, it can be talented to increase parry and threat. And it can be added to elemental weapons for that purpose. In that same talent Earth Shock could become the Tanking shock increasing threat. This brings me back to my rule of 4, we need a new shock. Wind Shock became Wind Shear, we need a (sorry about the name) Thunder Shock (Maybe Sonic Shock? Echoed Shock? Going with a Thunder theme for this one), It would be the new Enh DPS shock replacing Earth Shock, doing straight damage, it could also absorb stormstrike charges and do more damage. back to tanking. Like Death Knights you could pair DPS abilities with a Tank ability. Where DPS would take Dual Wield, Tank would take Storm Shield which would increase block. Static Shock could have Crystal Vein which would buff New Earth Shield. Stormstrike, Feral Spirits, and Lava Lash could be used by both. Lava Lash could receive a shield component that when used with a shield increase threat generated when enchanted with flametongue. there could also be a talent like Elemental Avatar- transfers 50% threat from your fire totems and 100% from your feral spirits to you, increases the threat generated by your chain lightning. Maelstrom Weapon procs could be used for chain lightning cleaves or emergency heals, it could also proc off blocks with a shield to compensate for using only one weapon.

The last thing is something i've been asking for forever a non-talented main hand weapon strike, like the one I outlined here which could benefit all spec's as it's effect would vary based on the enchant. But there's one ability that should have always been in the shaman's tool kit. Like feral spirits Thrall used it in WCIII, more importantly he used it in the awesome cinematic against Mannorth, the one where he hurls the lightning charged Doomhammer at him, Thunderstrike. A ranged attack based on Weapon Damage, sort of like shattering throw, but it would be talented for enhance as either a DPS or Both, if only dps there'd be a different talent for Tanks, maybe a spirit themed cooldown? ("the spirit of an ancestral warrior aids you in battle, standing in front of you and reducing your damage taken by x)

The key thing here is a lot of it is simply using abilities shamans already have, but taking focused talent shift them towards that roll, untalented Earth Shock is still a solid DPS shock (though inferior to Thunder Shock) it also takes some under used shaman abilities, Stonebiter and Stoneskin and brings them to prominence as tanking skills. Many of the talents could remain with additional survivability talents added in (toughness alone probably won't cut it). Guardian Totems would go opposite Improved Windfury, (both two points, one's survivability the other's dps). There's also a lot of threat generation in this, since that seems to be the issue with most tanks these days. Since many tanking weapons have strength on them maybe a talent that would either make it useful or remove the need for it by giving as a bonus to dodge and parry from agility, not as big as the dodge bonus for Druids since we can block. Mixing the ideas presented in this and the Healer Envy article could create a solid tank out of the shaman class and bring back that possibility that faded with Vanilla WoW along with Two-Hander DPS