It was never bugged. The people who started that rumor had no idea how the Shapeshifter spec worked in the first place. In any case, Bioware actually relented and gave the Shapeshifter a minor boost in one of the earlier patches, but that wasn't good enough for players who expected the spec to be like WoW's Druid, which spends it time in animal form for like 80% of combat.
The thing about Shapeshifter forms is that they do poor normal damage (except for Flying Swarm), unless you know how the spec mechanics work and you actively try to circumvent this via items. This is because a Shapeshifter mage was never meant to spend most of his time shifted, which is why shifting to animal form has a casting time (you need to plan when to use your forms) and shifting back to human form is instant (when you gotta be a mage, you usually have to be a mage NOW).
The Shapeshifter's forms are 100% spellpower based, so a good Shapeshifter must dedicate all his points into Magic. You can aim for 16 Cunning for Persuasion, but that's it. Any less and you compromise the strength of your forms, as well as the strength of your spells while you're in your human form. Although there's a quirk about the forms, which is if any of your strength/dex/con attributes is higher than those of your forms' then these will be carried over instead, this is only noteworthy if you actually want to play as a mage with high strength.
As far as optimizing your character goes, Shapeshifter does not work well with Bloodmage. Shapeshifters are at their strongest when using their really high spellpower to nuke things, and all the strongest Magic Shapeshifter builds I know have
at least 80% of the primal spells. This means a Shapeshifter regularly takes in a large amount of aggro, which is fine because it has its forms and healing poultices work really well on someone with high Magic. Obviously though you won't be able to heal that well if you have Blood Magic on. The ideal second spec for a Shapeshifter is Spirit Healer, which allows it unrivaled control over which HP bars to drain
and raise in battle. Blood Mage on the other hand is built for prolonged casting, usually of disabling spells and perhaps a few nukes. This part alone discourages pairing with Shapeshifter, and the only reason it actually works well with a non-casting spec like Arcane Warrior is the quirk that allows Blood Magic to be not as affected by fatigue. If fatigue worked as normal, Arcane Warriors would avoid the spec like the plague. Also Constitution and perhaps Willpower helps the Bloodmage, while neither of these stats are a priority for a Shapeshifter, who can reach really high Con values with their forms as their spellpower increases and who can simply pop a least healing poultice in if attacked in human form and get 80% healed.
If I were to name the Blood Mage/Shapeshifter's strong point, however, it would be the fact that it absolutely chews through mobs regardless of spell resistance. It may not have a lot of survivability, but it can cast spells incessantly and all of its class-specific skills ignore spell resistance (though not physical/mental resistance). The build might be worth it if you play in nightmare difficulty.
Modifié par TBastian, 08 juillet 2011 - 09:35 .
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and I know Blood Mage/Shapeshifter is impractical and I won't get the full effects of either (don't care, I MUST RP it 
). Thanks for the explanation on it, that means I can do the whole high magic, moderate willpower, moderate con without sacrificing points to dex or str (maybe some cunning for persuasion :x).
