Shaman Tanks? - Follower Dungeon NPC in The Rookery
During the Rookery's story playthrough, one of the accompanying characters plays the role of a Shaman tank! Here, we speculate on what that might mean for player Shamans during The War Within.
Baelgrim, the Shaman Tank
Keen eyes may have noticed this during their initial leveling experience during the Isle of Dorn, where one of its main characters Baelgrim and a retinue of Earthen replace the typical four followers with story-fitting characters. However, while the other three are a role-fitting Restoration/Elemental Shaman, Fire Mage, and Beast Mastery Hunter, Baelgrim has the ability to play the role of tank while retaining his typical Shaman class.
Like most of the follower dungeon NPCs, his kit is fairly simple, with a Chain Lightning for ranged pulls and an AoE frontal cone for grouped up enemies. His one notable ability is a passive tank stance befitting his story role as Stormward, with a simple damage reduction effect.
Shaman Tanks for Players?
While this is a relatively minor story on its own, it does raise the interesting question of how this might relate to player shamans and their specialization options. During The War Within Beta, the class got a small overhaul of their class tree, and at the end of the lengthy forum post, Blizzard promised future changes not only during the Beta cycle, but in a later patch during The War Within.
Please note that we intend to continue tuning and iterating on the changes above throughout the Beta, and we also have plans for further updates that will come with a future patch in The War Within.
This, along with the conspicuous addition and re-addition of mitigation abilities such as Seasoned Winds and Stone Bulwark Totem, have led many to speculate that Shamans may be getting a fourth tank specialization during The War Within. While this concept may have seemed impossible in the past, the addition of new specializations was proven to be a possibility during Dragonflight with the addition of Augmentation to
