Thank you for your input buddy because I feel like our PvP point of view feels completely ignored. So basically Stormbringer is dead for arena for few reasons and the only way to make it viable is complete overutning. Why?
Because when you get locked on Nature you cannot use things that are your biggest strength → most of your disruption (Wind Shear, Grounding, Tremor etc.) and 2nd reason is a nerf to Mastery (Mastery used to be 75% and now is way less) so Stormkeeper is way weaker in single target scenarios than it was in DF and previous expansions. It’s not a CD at all and barely moves someone’s HP.
What I think is the biggest deal in Shaman’s overall design. There are two Fire spells (Flame Shock and Lava Burst), 3 Nature’s spells (Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Earth Shock) and 2 Frost Spells (Frost Shock and Icefury). To make Fire or Lightning Build work they need to make some changes to magic schools for totems or introduce more magic oriented spells for example a talent replacing Chain Lightning with Lava Beam without Ascendance.
To be fair the easist way to make Stormbringer work in PvP would be moving Wind Shear, Grounding and Tremor Totem to Elemental school so you can use them even when you are kicked on Nature but it would make Resto Shamans insanely broken and impossible to CC in good hands.
I think it is cuz Ele was top in Wrath, top during first phases of SoD, top in regular lvl 60 Classic, so Blizz wants to have ele nerfed to the point to where if you’re going to play a DPS shaman in TWW, it will be enh or nothing. That’s clearly how the dev team wants it.
Yea and they were super overpowered in TBC Classic and all of Wrath Classic too, WAY more powerful than they were in the original version of Wrath. You play on Illidan. Cool. I do too. Soon as I’m done in SoD, I go back to retail if its any good.
Enh is so bad in PvP that I cannot find a single reason to play it over Elemental. Spec is extremely outdated. It has insane damage that it cannot deal due to lack of mobility and real utility. First of all it needs a partner that stuns the target, applies MS effect and optimally has CC on a different DR. There are 3 at the moment Warrior/Demo/WW. Some people play with Hunter but there are better options.
Well cool, seems they have changed things up since last I was in. It could get me playing retail again if what you people are saying about the shams is true. Enough of you are saying it. It would be cool if you could summon your wolves in ele spec though. Ele was my fav back in original Wrath and beyond up until Blizz seemed to be pushing people to play enh by making ele less viable. If ele had the wolves though that would be cool. I may come back to retail again sometime soon.
I would like to be able to opt out of using fire spells because it feels like a waste of casts for Stormbringers. I suggest altering talents and paths that force the use of fire.
-Add a path connecting Elemental Unity without requiring Master of The Elements
-Fusion of Elements changed to the next time you cast 2 Nature “or” Fire spells.
-Have a choice node for 2 Ascendances, one Fire, the other Lightning. Have the lighting one increase overload or anything that doesn’t break the game. I’m sure tuning would be needed but it really would be appreciated.
-Remove Stormkeeper cast time and GCD so people can just macro it into they’re spells. Nerf it’s damage buff to compensate. This would remove button bloat which is a major annoyance.
-Power of The Maelstrom should trigger from using one of your Maelstrom spenders. It even make more sense honestly.
-PVP talents need more passive options, there are just so… many… totems…
Button bloat and GCD bloat are keeping this spec from being it’s best self. However im hopeful the current rework notes shows they are working towards giving us more options in playstyle.
People say that but I think they forget why we asked for totems to go away. Totems were so powerful that Shaman could never get properly buffed. Kind of like how some classes today are being held hostage by their AoE Shaman were held hostage by their totems.
It was a very boring rotation back then. It was constant Lightning Bolt spam. Then every once in a while you got to do something else. You kept your 4 totems up and Lightning Bolt spam. Your totems didn’t even hardly help you half the time, and they were more valuable to the raid than to you. Thus shaman’s were held hostage by their totems.
More so for looking cool. Shaman have some of the best looking spells in the game. So people like to play shaman no matter what. Blizzard cares not so much of how OP you are but how many people are playing. An over representation no matter if it’s under powered will get nerfed.
This is quite literally why the spec has been so scuffed is due to people wanting to avoid using half of a tree. Your dog isn’t going to die if you have to use lava burst every now and then.
Pwave granting Lava Surge pretty much is a win for Stormbringer since now you have a haste AMP cd and even if you’re lazy and only get 4 flameshocks from just Pwave+ LMT you’ve just generate over 55+ Maelstrom (assuming no overloads) on pull in M+ to jump start your rotation vs just spamming CL till your next ES/EQ.
My favorite Ele shaman time was the throwing meatballs like a truck era. What you got is these new players that don’t come from the old school. Then we have those left over who keep playing and didn’t quit the game or those recently coming back after Blizzard made Lightning Bolt the overwhelming source of damage instead of the truck hitting Lava Burst days.
Frankly I hated the move away from Lava Burst, it felt like the class I played for years was ripped out from under me and lost it’s identity. Kind of like when they made Arms an AoE spec (one of the worst fails in class identity history).
Meatball spam and current FoL CDR Lighting Bolt/CL spam are bad imo. I was really hyped for Farseer Fire since even though there was a lot of Lava Burst still, you still wanted to hit other things regularly.
Ya but you could burst in PvP and kill people back then. Ele has no way to deal with some classes but burst. And Hail storm or what ever it’s called looks like (backside of a donkey). Kind of like earth spike. Fire looks way cooler and sounds like “Kabooom, how you like dat”. It’s all preference, but what it looks like to me is that the vast majority of Ele meatball enjoyers quit the game. Back 3 years ago we had pages and pages of Ele shaman fighting the Lightning Bolt, Lightning Rod changes. IMO it’s a trash spec compared to what it use to be. Just like how you can’t get the old Lightning Bolt effect anymore, na your bolt has to be announced to the whole PvP world and traced back to you.
I’d take the old meatball / ascendancy days any day.
Typical rose colored glasses nonsense, assuming anyone who disagrees with you is an ignorant noob. Everytime someone tries to improve anything, some arrogant incel wants to go back to a half remembered time when they were happier.
Hero Talents were NOT a thing then, but they are now and Stormbringer simply doesn’t fit in well with shamans fire kit, that’s a fact.
Button bloat was not a problem back then either. Guess what the main issue the creator of this thread wants resolved? Some of us actually want to fix that problem, if you don’t, then go away and keep your toxic opinion to yourself.
My first impression and still continuing issue with Stormbringer is that it’s a cast. Why is it a cast? idk
Everything else about it is just wonky grievances rolling down hill.
Control over it? Nah, 3ppm or multiple hundreds of maelstrom spent.
Oh those are roughly equivalent? Yup. Oh, that means you’re very likely to overwrite your limited charges of instantaneous chain lightning? Yup.
Overwrites your ability to cast lightning bolt? Yup. Oh your key abilities and features require you cast lightning bolt and we didn’t update them to even interact with Tempest. Oh, woops.
Oh your charges building up to Tempest disappear when not in use randomly as you’re entering a new encounter? That’s for balance! Also hand over your maelstrom, kid…
Looks over at enhancement, I press it when I have 5 Maelstrom Weapon, instant cast Tempest goes “burr”