The state of shaman (discussion)

Honestly, I'm glad someone started this discussion. I play a lot of Shaman and I've been thinking about their relative strength as a class and what makes them the way they are for a while now.

For one thing, OP pretty much hit the nail on the head when he (or she idk) pointed out the current weaknesses in the Shaman card pool:
Little Drawing Power
* The most reliable form of card draw available to Shamans is Mana Tide Totem, which by itself is only guaranteed to last for a single turn. After that it pretty much becomes a mega taunt, and with 3 health it won't be long before it goes down unless your opponent has no direct damage spells and it's behind an actual taunt.
* The only other form of card draw unique to Shamans is Far Sight, which works great in the OTK build but otherwise doesn't cut it in constructed because it only draws 1 card for 3 mana.
* There are of course the other neutral draw options, but for the most part these cards are rather weak on their own (Novice Engineer and Loot Hoarder, 2 mana cards with 1 health), rather slow (Azure Drake comes in at 5 mana), or both (Gnomish Inventor, 2/4 for 4).
* All of the draw options available to Shamans pale in comparison to the draw options available to so many other classes in terms of usability and functionality (Lay on Hands, Shield Block, Arcane Intellect, Wrath, Ancient of Lore, pretty much any Rogue card, etc). In other words, card draw for Shamans guarantees nothing else but to replace its spot in the hand, while card draw for other classes either give more than a single card or affect the state of the board while replacing their spot in the hand, and sometimes both.
Board Control
* Unless you count Forked Lightning as clear, a Shaman's only option for board clear is Lightning Storm, which has the drawback of Overload (2), putting this card's effective cost at 5 mana.
* While the Overload can be crippling, I do have to admit this spell's incredible strength; however, it's the only thing Shamans have in the way of clear, which calls for extreme discretion when using them.
* The only other classes that really lack more than 1 proper board clear are Druid and Hunter. The former actually has 2 board clear spells (Swipe and Starfall), but for one reason or another has trouble fitting one of them (Starfall) in their decks, and the latter makes up for their clear deficiency by maintaining early board dominance through their minions, traps, spells, and weapons.
* This exposes another wrinkle in a Shaman's early game aspirations, which is their lack of strong early game resources to build a board. Most early game Shaman cards (1-3 mana) have an Overload attached, or are weak without an already present board. This means that in a lot of match-ups, Shamans are already playing from behind right from the get go, and have to work twice as hard to stabilize.

/r/hearthstone Thread