Why a shaman?

If you don't play a shaman, you might wonder what the appeal is. Sure, back in the day they were widely regarded as the most powerful PvP class, so it's no wonder they were initially so popular. But since then, shaman have received very little love in terms of class updates and are known to have a number of issues currently. Shaman is the least popular class, so why would you want to play a class that Blizzard (and popular opinion) has recognized has some serious concerns?

To me, the biggest advantage of the class is its versitility. Shaman have three very viable, very different talent trees that give you the option to play a hack-and-slasher, a spellslinger, or a healer, all for the small price of a respec. If you get tired of a particular playstyle, hit your local shaman trainer, grab some new gear, and you have a completely different character - but without having to grind all those reputations again. The downside is that the talent trees don't play particularly well together, making it more difficult to make good hybrid builds (at least from a raid perspective. There are several good PvP hybrid spec's).

A second advantage for the shaman isn't just how powerful your own DPS or healing is (and they excel at both), but how much you bring to the rest of your raid. Totems provide some phenomenal buffs and there's a smattering of additional boosts in each of the talent trees as well. Obviously this isn't a big draw if you're primarily PvP-focused, but they're well worth adding to a raid (I can't find the link, but there was an estimation that an enhancement shaman can boost a warrior's DPS by as much as 20% from totems and Unleashed Rage alone).

With the pluses come the minuses, of course. Both enhancement and elemental have serious threat issues due both to their reliance on crit, providing unexpected burst damage, and their lack of aggro-shedding abilities that other classes enjoy such as Feint, Invisibility or Soulshatter. Elemental shaman have the additional difficulty of sustaining their DPS over a long fight due to poor mana efficiency, although a good shadow priest generally fixes that problem. Gear itemization is also an issue for both elemental and enhancement, though they're certainly not the only ones with that problem. Enhancement shaman are often regarded as weak in PvP due to their lack of crowd control or ways to close quickly with their enemy. Although frost shock and earthbind have some utility, it is usually the opponent that sets the tone and speed for the fight. And what about restoration? Not a whole lot of minuses there, fortunately, other than having so many good talents to choose from and the lack of synergy making taking talents in the other trees relatively unappealing.

I've certainly questioned whether making the switch to shaman was worth it from time to time. But those times are few and far between these days. I wasn't particularly good at enhancement, but it's hard not to get excited when you have those sudden string of Windfury crits and your enemy's health just melts away. I also really enjoyed playing elemental and switch back every once in a while for a change of pace and WTFpwnage. But most importantly, I find healing as a shaman to be incredibly fun. Besides being very strong healers (only lacking a heal over time or instant-cast spell), Chain Heal is simply amazing, making shaman one of the best raid-healers in the game.

Shaman have some issues right now, but Blizzard is supposedly looking into them. They've been saying this for some time, apparently, but I'd like to think they'll eventually make good on it. And in the meantime, all three roles are a lot of fun and fairly successful at their roles already, so I'd heartily recommend that class to anyone who wants to be able to "do it all."