Hearthpwn

It's no secret: Shaman is too strong.

At first the issue was with cards Tunnel Trogg and Doomhammer+Rockbiter. While I agree that the amount of snowball and burst these cards give is obscene, I don't know if that was the root of the cause. At that time the aggro deck was annoying, but not unbearable by any stretch.

Then came the 4 mana 7/7 controversy. While the card is certainly strong and can be frustrating when you don't have an immediate answer, that card isn't even currently seeing play right now in many Shaman lists, which indicates that this isn't the issue.

Now the main source of controversy is the Tuskarr RNG instawins, and the huge strength and power creep of malestorm portal and spirit claws, both of which have largely pushed doomhammer completely out of midrange deck and using only one in aggro. While I agree that these are certainly pushing shaman into top tier territory, I don't think it is the worst abuser.

However, The REAL issue I believe is Thing from Below combined with the already efficient minions Shaman has. Being able to drop a 0-3 mana 5/5 taunt for doing nothing except for playing some of the strongest tempo cards in hearthstone such as totem golem and tuskarr is so back breaking. This card alone basically makes most midrange and aggressive decks straight up lose to Shaman, as once they pay 0-3 mana for a Thing from Below, you lose so much tempo that it makes the game borderline unwinnable because there is no efficient counter to it:

1- You can't try to out tempo shaman with minions once it drops, because the value for the mana is the best in the game. It is difficult enough to keep up with Shaman with all the other high value minions and swing cards, but once this drops it is impossible to keep up.
2- You can't ignore it and try to all in going face or try to hit other priority cards like thunderbluff, like you would be able to with cards such as Giants, because of the taunt. You have no choice but to deal with the Thing from Below.
3- Removal cards designed to remove big threats for a tempo gain like hex, fireball, execute, deadly shot, etc. aren't even effective because you STILL lose tempo on removing it because they most likely played it for less mana than the cost of the removal. Even in control decks that are designed to make big swings from their efficient removal can't overcome the huge tempo loss of the card.

There is really just no way to deal with it, and even though it doesn't feel as bad losing to as a high roll Tuskarr, I would say it is more likely the reason you lose so much to Shaman.

Maelstrom portal and spirit claws are too effective against aggro,  giving mid-range shaman good matchups against everything. And they also both have super synergy with spell damage.  Not a hard thing to get in the board with a mid-range shaman. 

Doomhammer, lava burst, flamewreathed,  and trogg aren't even really necessary in mid-range builds. 

Lightning bolt is a really good tempo card,  and totemic has no real downside thanks to rotation of vitality totem. 

Thing from below is a good card.  Strong,  but not gamebreaking.

If there was only one issue with shaman it wouldn't have multiple strong archetypes.

Their minions are just stronger on curve than most other decks.

I did not choose any options in your vote, because there is not a single card that is broken if taken outside of it's context. 
First of all, I'm not the one to whine because Shaman is op, I do recognize that it's quite strong at the moment.

The thing is, it's not a single card that breaks the game. It's the fact that there is a combination of card that makes it very strong in different archetypes (aggro, midrange, control). 

• You have Spirit Claws that in combination with spell damage is ridiculous four 1 mana
• The Tunnel Trogg & Totem Golem combination can be very powerful in the early game
• It's hero power combines really well with cards like Flametongue, Thing From Below, or even Bloodlust
• It's got pretty effective board clears that can easily be upgraded with spell damage. Especially Maelstrom portal, which is cheap but very effective. That's potentially 4 board clears in a deck with Lightning Storm.
• Tuskarr can balance a game in his favor with the right totme (Mana Tide or Flametongue). It's also a easy way to cheaply repopulate the board, and again works well with Thing From Below.

You see, it's not a single card but the COMBINATION of strong cards that work well together, that brings Shaman to T1 decks. And I didn't even mention control Shaman that also has some strong cards. 
Even so, it's not as broken as a lot of ragers here think it is. I mean at every single point in time there's a class that is stronger than the others, not so long ago people were whining about Warrior that had the best decks (OTK, control, Dragon, C'Thun...), right now it's Shaman, tomorrow it will be another. 

All of them are very problematic but I always have problems with 4 mana 7/7 

See there are several answers here, but one answer is smarter than the rest. The only reason shaman works is because they can take the board and hold it. A 4 mana 7/7 can be removed cheaply (Hex, morph, etc). But those decks cant deal with a better value minion for the cost: 0 mana 5/5. 4:14 is about 1:3. 0:10 is infinity. 

Spell Power Totem.

4 mana 7/7 is overrated I got to play with the card and against the card a lot and it just not that great a lot of decks got big minion removal and then you are with 3/2(with coin) mana next turn and lose badly if it got removed by something like aldor or execute or deadly shot or just some buffs like POW..

The new cards pushed shaman which was already a very strong class to the top.. Blizzard just doesn't look at the state of the game before releasing stuff do they? they gave Priest the worst card in the game Paladin a shitty portal and a synergistic card for a failed archtype for the class (if dragon paladin wasn't a thing so far.. it never will be)  and rogue really garbage cards (but turns out they are really good in arena WHERE THEY DON'T NEED HELP!)

It's like they release cards at random without thinking about how will it affect the game the cards weren't even strongly attached to the adventure either..except a few like the chess pieces the grandmother or the legendaries so some cards could be not released.. 

 I think tuskarr is the most problematic card BTW RNG instawin if coined turn 2 into golem.

I voted for doomhammer since it's key to most aggro shaman wins, but I don't think that tells the story. The real issue is that any class would like to have any one of those cards mentioned. Shaman just has all of them.

Imho spirit claws is the real problem

its just too good

I love this threads, is awesome to see the salt on the wounds of so many players demanding changes on shaman when it was THE worst class since the funding of the game.

Is like if people never played card games and doesn't know that rotation does this to card games, instead of stale metas we get evolving ones with very dominant archetypes every season. Deal with it or stop playing card games really.

First it was c'thun druid+tempo mage, then it was dragon warrior and c'thun warrior, now it's midrange hunter and aggro/midrange shaman. Don't you see the meta DO evolve? if anything zoowarlock has been the only build  that saw little to no change over time, good thing is not that relevant now, but those players wanted to pick the next strongest deck, so there you have it, if you want to hate onto something hate on your fellow players that don't want to playtest their ideas and just netdeck (not that netdecking is bad, but when is the ONLY thing you do, it's a problem for the game) because the builds we see now where there at the beggining of standard and they become popular only after prominent decktesters got bored of the obvious deck builds. (Disclaimer: I'm fully aware of the coming of new cards, be there or not, none recent cards became THE KEY to make a deck, if claws are relevant is because they are the slow nephew of fiery war axe for example).

the only aggravating thing with this type of evolution is that the game revolves around fixed classes and limits the spectrum of what can be build, but oh well, that's something the dev team needs to learn to sort, since they were the ones who decided to uses WoW's classes instead of races, type sof mana, tribes, whatever.

Quote from DoubleSummon >>

4 mana 7/7 is overrated I got to play with the card and against the card a lot and it just not that great a lot of decks got big minion removal and then you are with 3/2(with coin) mana next turn and lose badly if it got removed by something like aldor or execute or deadly shot or just some buffs like POW..

The new cards pushed shaman which was already a very strong class to the top.. Blizzard just doesn't look at the state of the game before releasing stuff do they? they gave Priest the worst card in the game Paladin a shitty portal and a synergistic card for a failed archtype for the class (if dragon paladin wasn't a thing so far.. it never will be)  and rogue really garbage cards (but turns out they are really good in arena WHERE THEY DON'T NEED HELP!)

It's like they release cards at random without thinking about how will it affect the game the cards weren't even strongly attached to the adventure either..except a few like the chess pieces the grandmother or the legendaries so some cards could be not released.. 

 I think tuskarr is the most problematic card BTW RNG instawin if coined turn 2 into golem.

Quote from Boethion >>

As Noxious pointed out in one of his videos: The fundamental problem of shaman is the randomness in its very design starting with the hero power, which makes the class horribly inconsistent and forces blizzard to overcompensate with good cards so that shaman doesn't suck.

Flamewreathed Faceless, Doomhammer and Thing from Below are strong, but still fine from a design perspective. Tuskarr Totemic and all shaman cards with random outcomes are really problematic and I really hope Team5 will at some point just rework shaman, so it doesn't have to rely on rng and strong cards to have a chance.

The same can be said about a lot of other cards and classes, but shamans are the only ones who are screwed over by having a random hero power.

After Kara came out for few 2-3 weeks, I came to an acceptance state that Midrange Shaman should be a solid good representation for this class since the beginning of Hearthstone, since GvG and Naxx. Some cards should be in Shaman's classic set to be honest to make sure that this class won't fall into pitfall after the next rotation, but this is not what we discuss here. People should look at MR Shaman from a different perspective. Early game cards like Tunnel Trogg, Spirit Claws, Maelstrom Portal help carry MR Shaman a lot to control the board and go to the late games. MR Shaman never became viable in the past because of the lack of these cards. Now MR Shaman became viable, but Blizz pushed it too far that it got overpowered due to a combination of other already strong cards aka Doomhammer, Tuskarr Totemic, and Flamewreathed Faceless, now Shaman class race exceeds other classes. Blizz clearly underestimated and did not test enough the combination of all these new Shaman cards. 

In addition, Shaman class wouldn't get this much hate if Aggro Shaman were not born before MR Shaman became viable like this. MR Shaman is what the players need for this class. People just hate it now since this class was always considered garbage before LOE. Aggro Shaman is the problem, and cancer for this game.

Therefore, the Shaman problem could be solved if Blizz can nerf/change certain Shaman cards somehow that MR Shaman still stay viable but not too broken AND Aggro Shaman becames weak like the current Face Hunter. 

IMO, the real problem cards here are Doomhammer, Flamewreathed Faceless, Lightning Bolt, and Lava Burst that push the cancer, Aggro Shaman. 

The problem with shaman is that there are not clear answers in many of the other classes. Heck, the problem with the game is that the classes are badly designed, more specifically the classic/expert sets.

When LoE rotates out shaman will be trash once again. And the common player is unable to see this, that's why developers never really ask about how to make the game better, they simply let you talk so you can release your high-pressure steam based on subjective personal experience.

I agree that shaman has too many class cards being good right now, pratically the whole deck are class cards, wich makes me think: The class is not "broken" or "cancer" is just the unability of the dev team to properlly spread out the cards to keep shaman useful during the rotations, instead they throw all the shit to a single rotation.

I love shaman (look at my portrait lol) the bloodlust's shaman ability in WC3 was what made me play orcs all the time, shaman was my first class in WoW, and in HS I tried since day 1 to make shaman playable (needless to say I never succeded past rank 10, and aggro shaman was just a stupid variation of aggro hunter), and I'm very happy that shaman finally has it's archetype going on (midrange) and I'm worried that when the next roation comes, shaman will lose almost all it's cards. with claws, maelstrom and halazeal I guess our next main archetype is going to be control.

The problem isn't one minion, it's just that all these minions are all very good on their own, so combined they become broken. Plus rockbiter shouldn't be able to go face.

Quote from Nimehte >>

Quote from Boethion >>

As Noxious pointed out in one of his videos: The fundamental problem of shaman is the randomness in its very design starting with the hero power, which makes the class horribly inconsistent and forces blizzard to overcompensate with good cards so that shaman doesn't suck.

Flamewreathed Faceless, Doomhammer and Thing from Below are strong, but still fine from a design perspective. Tuskarr Totemic and all shaman cards with random outcomes are really problematic and I really hope Team5 will at some point just rework shaman, so it doesn't have to rely on rng and strong cards to have a chance.

The same can be said about a lot of other cards and classes, but shamans are the only ones who are screwed over by having a random hero power.

 random hero power you say ? even if it is andom Shaman's hero power is still better than Paladin's one drops. Shaman were bad before because of incompleted overload mechanics . Shaman was playing overload and next turn they were suffering to find an answer because variety of cards to fill curve was lacking. Now Blizzard solved that problem but now the cards are too strong .Think about why were you depending rng previous because you were requiring right totem to close that gap.

Quote from brilliant_gnome >>

 

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 There was a time when paladin crushed shaman because their hero power so perfectly countered shaman's hero power.

And OP: I think the trouble-cards is Tuskarr. The rest can be planned for, but Tuskarr steamrolls too many games.

 But all in all it's more a combination of "all of the above" more than one single card. The combined value is too great. We've all played a lot against shamans and we know how it is: You run out of answers, because they drop too much value way too consistently.