After doing some play testing in dungeons on the alpha I would like to provide my thoughts on the current implementation of the Stormbringer hero tree from the perspective of an elemental shaman.
Tempest
“Every 400 Maelstrom spent replaces your next Lightning Bolt with Tempest”.
“Tempest deals xx,xxx Nature damage to your target, and xx,xxx Nature damage to other enemy targets within 8 yards of your target.”
I like what Tempest as a spell does by offering a reasonably strong package of Single Target and AoE damage in a single cast.
Currently, Tempest is locked at a 2-second cast time with no haste scaling. This feels completely out of place and really ruins the flow of playing the class. I have to imagine this is not intended, considering a later hero talent even offers a stacking haste buff, but I do want to point this out.
400 maelstrom feels like a bit much. Lowering this to 300 maelstrom feels much more reasonable and fits nicely with both the base maelstrom cost of 60 for Earth Shock and Earthquake as well as their reduced cost of 50 through the Eye of the Storm talent.
Having Tempest replace Lightning Bolt creates a number of awkward overlaps and uncomfortable choices when combined with other talents in both the hero tree and the base elemental tree. Currently, tempest removes your ability to cast Lightning Bolt but does not gain any of the benefits of Lightning Bolt itself. This means that if you attempt to properly line up your cooldowns and resources to maximize the damage potential of a Stormkeeper+Surge of Power+Electrified Shocks combo, and you end up forcing a Tempest proc, you could potentially ruin your damage output.
Unlimited Power
“Spending Maelstrom grants you 3% haste for 15 seconds, stacking. Gaining a new stack does not refresh the duration.”
Not a lot to say about this one. It’s simple but effective. Potentially changing the haste value for Elemental Blast specifically to make up for the higher resource cost and cast time but even thats a stretch.
Tempest(2?)
“Increases the critical strike chance of your Nature damage spells by 10% and the critical strike damage of your nature spells by 5%.”
Fine. A nice simple talent that can be used to easily tune the overall strength of the tree. Should probably have a new name, though.
Shocking Grasp
“Your Nature damage critical strikes reduce the target’s movement speed by 50% for 3 seconds.”
This is honestly a really bad effect to always have on. While there are many times when having a strong slow like this could be useful, there are also times when having a slow effect is actively harmful. And if I had to choose between always having it or never having it, I would pick never having it every time. This should either be part of a choice node or redesigned into something new.
Supercharge
“Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning Elemental Overloads have a 50% chance to cause an additional Elemental Overload”.
I like that this brings more value to the mastery stat for the lightning side of Elemental. In previous iterations, mastery was very much a wasted stat. Having said that, providing more power through an additional layer of RNG is less than desirable when elemental is already full of RNG effects.
Storm Swell/Arc Discharge
Stormwell: “When Tempest only strikes a single target, gain 30 maelstrom.”
I heavily dislike the idea Tempest providing direct maelstrom. Later on the tree we gain access to an RNG method of gaining tempest. Making use of tempest at the wrong time could potentially see you over-cap on maelstrom very easily.
I also don’t think limiting the targets to just 1 is going to be effective. There are VERY few fights in either dungeons, delves or raids that are truly single target. If there are any additional adds in the vicinity and you just happen to clip one, that’s it, you’ve wasted your Storm Swell benefits.
I would much rather see this talent provide a % increase to maelstrom generation for a set amount of time as well as removing the 1 target cap.
Arc Discharge: “When Tempest strikes more than one target, your next 3 Chain lightning spells are instant cast and deal 75% increased damage”
Possibly my favorite talent in the entire tree. This feels great in aoe and is very fun to use. However, much like with Storm Swell, the target restriction feels awkward. Feeling the need to NOT cast Tempest on a single target because adds will be spawning in a few seconds feels really bad. I don’t see the need for there to be a limiting factor on obtaining the buff.
Rolling Thunder
“Gain one stack of Stormkeeper every 50 seconds”
Taken from our 10.1 tier set, this talent is a VERY hot topic among elemental shaman. As things are right now, there is no way to track this effect without the use of external resources such as Weakauras. The dependency on Weakauras has been a growing topic within WoW and a lot of steps have been taken by the development team to reduce the need for stacking Weakauras. Rolling Thunder seems to work in opposition of this by forcing the player into using weakauras to make any use of this talent. Please, give this a buff that can be monitored by the player so we can see the entire 50-second cycle for this ability.
Voltaic Surge
“Crash Lightning, Chain Lightning, and Earthquake damage increased by 15%”
Similar to Tempest(2) this is fine.
Conductive Energy
“Lightning Rod targets now also take 20% of the damage that Tempest deals, and Tempest also the applies Lightning Rod effect.”
This talent is not yet implemented so we can’t test exactly how this works but in theory this looks fine enough. It will be interesting to see if this will apply the Lightning Rod effect without needing to talent into Lightning rod specifically.
Nature’s Protection/Surging Currents
Nature’s Protection: “Targets struck by your Tempest deal 10% less damage to you for 6 seconds.”
Surging Currents: “After using Tempest, your next Chain Heal, or Healing Surge will be instant cast and consume no Mana.
This is, honestly, very bad. Tempest is a core part of our damage rotation and not something that is always available when incoming damage is most dangerous. Tying a defensive buff to our offensive abilities encourages the player to sit on their hands and not cast their spells while waiting for the boss to do something dangerous.
Awakening Storms
“Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning have a chance to strike your target for x,xxx Nature damage. Every 3 times this occurs, your next Lightning Bolt is replaced by Tempest.”
This is the previously mentioned RNG mechanic behind getting the Tempest buff. Much like with Rolling Thunder there is currently no mechanic available to the player to track this buff. This also has the potential to “over cap” on your tempest spell. For example, if you find yourself in a situation where you want to hold your tempest cast for some amount of time, maybe you need the defensive buff to survive a big hit, or you want to hold so you can hit either 1 or more than 1 target to make use of Storm Swell/Arc Discharge, you run the risk of RNG casting your way into another Tempest from Awakening Storms, effectively wasting 1 cast of Tempest.
This talent also makes it possible to get back-to-back tempest casts, which sounds great in theory, but can very easily end up delaying your ability to cast storekeeper-enhanced Lightning Bolts long enough to lose out on the buff effect or to miss out on our already tight damage windows with electrified shocks.
Tempest deserves to stand on its own
Tempest is honestly a really cool ability and it deserves to stand on its own without being tied to Lightning Bolt. Lightning bolt has too many synergies within the core rotation to be replaceable. Tempest needs to be a separate button from Lightning Bolt.
With the current acquisition system for Tempest, it really needs to have 2 charges to avoid over-capping and to ease the need on delaying your Tempest cast in an attempt to work around the numerous restrictions tied to its buffs.
Too much of a good thing
Stormbringer as a Hero Tree is all about celebrating Shamans exclusivity to the lightning element (I guess we’re just going to ignore Mountain Thane Warriors). But much like with the Farseer tree, it makes me sad to see how we are actively moving away from what made elemental shaman appealing to so many. Shamans should be the masters of multiple elements, not forced into one exclusive tree. In doing so we are neglecting so much of what made many players love the class in the first place. With all of the benefits to Lightning Bolt that are present in the Stormbringer tree, its possible we get to the position of forgoing spells like flame shock and lava burst all together and just devolve into exclusively casting Lightning Bolt for our single target rotation.
Overall, I think Stormbringer needs a substantial amount of work, with access to the Tempest Spell in particular being the highest priority.