Elemental Shaman Class Tuning -- March 8

We’re currently working on the following adjustment to Elemental Shaman, which we intend to make live with scheduled weekly maintenance on Tuesday, March 8 in this region.

Shaman

  • Elemental
    • Storm Elemental’s Wind Gust effect gained from casting Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning now has a maximum stack of 10 (was 20). Additionally, if you cast Storm Elemental again while having a Storm Elemental active, the Wind Gust buff will be reset.

The ability to maintain Storm Elemental at long duration and high uptime allows for extended periods of Lightning Bolts with a cast time of less than 0.6 seconds. Players have reported that this is uncomfortable to play, and we believe it might pose a significant accessibility concern. For that reason, we would rather entirely avoid having a class talent allow cast times which are this short, to avoid similar problems in the future. We are reducing the maximum cast time reduction that can be granted by Storm Elemental. In addition, recasting a Storm Elemental while a Storm Elemental is already active will reset the stacks of Wind Gust.

4 Likes

Please don’t do this.

96 Likes

is this an early april fools joke?

104 Likes

I am slightly confused, this seems like a major nerf to the storm elemental but there is no change to compensate for the damage lost?

Is ligtning bolt/chain lightning going to do double damage while the storm elemental is active since it is affectively killing the use of storm elemental if capped to 10 stacks or resetting the stacks.

77 Likes

@Blizzard are you out of your Minds!?
Couching this in a community feedback supported change is actually the slimiest thing you’ve done lately, and given the companies history that’s saying something

46 Likes

So let me get this straight. When it comes to frost mages, due to their “nerf” primarily being needed because of borrowed power, which was reverted because blizzard said “Its something youve had all expansion long and it would make the class feel like its going backward instead of forwards, we revert the nerf”

Which we are in the exact same situation right now with elemental shamans. Elementals iconic storm elemental is being nerfed BECAUSE OF BORROWED POWER.

I know its wishful thinking, But I hope you guys give elemental shamans the same treatment as you did to frost mages, and revert this poor excuse of a nerf, and find other avenues to address it.

You absolutley MUST BUFF storm elementals damage / LB CHL damage while SE is out, if you are going to keep this MASSIVE nerf.

55 Likes

This isn’t going to go over well …

14 Likes

this is horrible stop don’t do it. This will kill ele in Mythic plus and raid

37 Likes

And the award for the absolute worst change goes to…

Edit: It’s also interesting that an accessibility issue is being cited now, despite this build not being nearly as “spammy” as it was at the end of BFA. Lovely timing.

17 Likes

Why not change the tier instead of cutting the talent in half

23 Likes

This is pretty gross. Not a good change.

16 Likes

I fully understand not having our spec reliant on very fast casts, but I don’t understand why you would nerf both the maximum Wind Gust stacks and the Wind Gust uptime with the tier set.

This is a very large nerf to our potential with the tier set (which is deserved, honestly), but not having a compensation buff to our storm elemental means we’re going to be significantly weaker as a baseline, with or without the tier set, especially in M+ where storm elemental is the primary thing that makes us able to compete with other classes.

I hope you either revert the change to Wind Gust being reset or you give us some kind of damage buff to Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolt during storm elemental. This would play nicely into the fantasy that storm ele is about stacking up a large damage buff and maintaining it for AoE, whereas Master of the Elements is all about single target.

The tier set bonus was something that actually shored up one of our weaknesses in raid - these two changes heavily nerf the bonuses from the tier set and just make us flat-out weaker across the board.

17 Likes

Did you happily just post how you’re fixing and interaction that might be not enjoyable but just flat nerfing it lol

13 Likes

This is an UNBELIEVABLY BAD CHANGE. You have killed our AOE damage and given us nothing in exchange? No single target buffs, nothing to compensate? Kill the Machine gun build, fine. You’ve taken a spec from “uncomfortable to play” to one nobody will play.

36 Likes

This is a massive nerf to Storm Elemental.

You’re not wrong, Blizzard: having to smash Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning that fast is ridiculous and not comfortable.

But you understand why we’re having to do it, right? Right? You built Storm Elemental to work this way and it’s one of the few, if only, ways we can do competitive numbers.

Enhancement has gotten so many updates, reworks, and improvements this expansion and it feels like Elemental keeps getting its kit chopped apart and left behind.

23 Likes

I appreciate that you have acknowledged the accessibility concerns with the cast time, but can we please have some additional context to why there was no compensation buff provided somewhere else? Or perhaps, can we at least be informed that there WILL be a compensation buff coming?

I understand accessibility is a large concern, but our class was just nerfed for a non-performative reason, it’s easy to understand why people would be upset. Please elaborate on your plans to keep the talent at least competitive. Thank you.

14 Likes

Gutting the only talent that keeps ele barely middle of the pack. Quality work as usual about what i would expect from the team that’s been running this franchise into the ground.

17 Likes

This is beyond stupid.

11 Likes

I never write on the forums. Legit might quit with this change. Some of us have been playing Seeds and playing it well in Raid and M+ since the start of 9.1. No need to nerf it the entirety of that patch with these exact same issues. Now that it’s going to be good with a tier set you nerf it? This is killing our favorite spec, with no damage compensation to balance it out. So disgraceful, I feel like I’ve wasted my time prepping for this patch because now we’re guaranteed to be in the gutter (look at the numbers this week, not going to get much better now especially in burst AOE).

20 Likes

Nerfing a spec that is already in a mediocre spot and see near zero high end play. And disguising it as “community feedback” is next level of slimy and essentially kills all its usefulness

32 Likes