With almost 80k members, the Shaman Classic Discord has been a prominent place for Shamans across all Classic games to learn about their class. The Discord has rotation advice, leveling tips, gearing, and talents for MoP, Classic, SoD, and now WoW: Forever. It also provides a space for like-minded players to discuss and theorycraft changes.
As of this morning, the Shaman Classic Discord server has been shut down, and all channels have been made read-only.
Shaman Classic DiscordWe are locking down the entire Shaman Classic server, active immediately. The reason for this drastic measure, is how the developers are approaching all shaman specs in WoW Forever. Community Feedback gets completely ignored and Class Fantasies are getting destroyed. With this we intent to give them a sign and show them, that the community is not only with how they approached our beloved Class.
Give us back our class and spec identities, and fantasies!
Despite this protest being about WoW: Forever, the entire Discord has been made in read-only mode. Classic-era, MoP and SoD channels have been shut down as well, despite the protest being about WoW: Forever.
This is not the first time that a Class Discord has been shut down in protest. In August 2025, the Retail Paladin Discord's Ret Paladin channels were closed in protest of their performance in the current raid, citing the class being "left behind and ignored". However, this was only limited to a set of channels, as this protest was Retribution-based and players could still post in general off-topic and other spec channels. These channels were closed for less than 24 hours, as Ret Paladins were announced to be buffed shortly afterwards. There was no indication that the Discord closing had anything to do with these buffs due to the quick turnaround of the announced class tuning.
Around 9:33 AM PST, the Classic Shaman Discord posted an update:
Follow-up post to the lockdown announcement from earlier.
First and foremost we want to be clear that locking down the server is not an attempt at blackmail or coercion, it is simply an attempt to be heard after weeks of sending feedback through other legitimate channels to no avail. The server will re-open regardless of the outcome here, but while we have your attention We think a little explanation is in order.
The biggest complaints from the shaman community are not throughput related, this is not about damage output.
We repeat, this is not about damage output.
Truthfully, hybrid tax us all you want if the result is a cohesive class with strong class fantasy elements that are actually represented in our playstyles.
This is about fundamental design intent and overall class feel.
Design Issues with Enhancement
Windfury Weapon will not be our primary imbue for raiding, which feels antithetical to the 2-Handed Enhance Class Fantasy.
Spell Power and Intellect gear appears to outperform physical or hybrid gear, especially when considering Maelstrom Weapon and utilizing Flametongue Weapon as our primary imbue.
Changes to Maelstrom Weapon and Intellect exacerbate the spellpower issues rather than solving them.
Design Issues with Elemental
PvP perception continues to hold back Elemental's spec design and Shaman's class design as a whole. Moving Improved Ghost Wolf is yet another example of this that feels specifically targeted at Elemental PvP and ruins an exciting milestone for all Shamans.
Blizzard has made it clear that Elemental can't have both Lava Burst and Chain Lightning, so they've chosen Chain Lightning. This leaves Elemental without a second school to fall back to in PVP and against nature immune mobs, and Chain Lightning is still barely worth using in Single Target because of its high Mana cost, leaving us with a 2 button rotation.
Flame Shock was left in our rotation with zero interactions with the rest of our kit. Now it just becomes even more of a boring maintenance DoT. At the very least there should be some form of interaction that lets it feel like a valuable part of the rotation.
Elemental's Mana situation is dire. While some specs have been given near-limitless access to it. Water Shield should not consume charges when procced from crits, otherwise we're constantly having to refresh it for worse Mana gained than other specs.
Totemic Projection being changed disproportionately hurts Elemental, as we no longer have an option to project totems from range. Yet another way that fun has been removed.
Design Overlap between Elemental and Enhancement
The hybrid Spell power issues mentioned above shove Enhance directly into Elemental’s path, muddling the differences between the two specs' identities.
This overlap makes tuning one spec without effecting the other nearly impossible, often resulting in Elemental getting the short end of the stick.
Design Issues with Restoration
Removing the upfront healing from Riptide fundamentally changes how the spell feels to press and turns it into a sad copy of Renew or -Rejuvenation. Furthermore, it also takes away any decision-making when choosing who to heal, as you're punished for not healing the person with Riptide rolling.
Just like Elemental, Restoration should not be punished for its PvP perception.
