Enhancement seems to be missing the mark currently

WoW: Forever World of Warcraft: Forever General Discussion
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Currently, it feels like enhance (shaman in general but I’m going to just focus on enhance for now) is in a bit of an awkward spot, we have a lack of identity and the desired gearing route not exactly lining up with how the class will want to gear. There’s a few things I just wanted to draw attention to because the current iteration just feels like its missing the mark.

Maelstrom Weapon – this talent is currently a mess, which is certainly made worse by sharing a “spender” with elemental and the changes that have been made to spell coefficients. Without getting too lost in the weeds of hypothetical damage gains at 60 here, the big issues with the talent currently:

  • Assuming weaving does not function, this talent is almost entirely useless for enhancement until you reach 5/5 points in it
  • Our lack of hit means this talent will miss a lot
  • As a consequence of not being able to weave, we will lose DPS due to this talent over capping. This is even worse as a 2H class vs in Wrath and beyond when you’re DW
  • This spell will take a long time to buildup and be similar damage to an auto attack
  • Combine all of the above and sprinkle in the base damage changes for LB so players need SP to make their spells do damage, this talent just wont be worthwhile for enhancement to take while levelling

Personally I think this talent needs a complete look over and to be changed up, this is meant to be our penultimate talent that rounds out our rotation and just with the issues listed above it looks so insanely underwhelming. I really implore Blizzard to look into different, unique options as we have been given a different, unique version of enhance for Forever (2 Handed) but then given dual wield talents from future expansions with no consideration for how that will function with a 2hander. Having played 2handed enhance in classic, the spec certainly has issues with long miss/dodge chains or long periods of time without proccing windfury. This talent will only exasperate the bad RNG chains that can occur. There’s a lot of things that can be done here, just some ideas I’ve seen floated around; making shocks have a higher critical chance per stack in order to proc elemental devastation while decoupling our shock cooldowns in some fashion, giving us a new “spender” as our 31 pt talent that scales better for enhancement, making maelstrom gain stacks on stormstrike cast vs a chance on all melees, adding spell hit and a % lightning bolt damage mod to the stacks. Lots of options here but I primarily wanted to call out the weird design for this talent currently.

Rage of the Farseer – while people might not really agree with me here, this just feels like a very bland and boring 31 point talent that doesn’t really seem worthwhile of a capstone talent. On the surface, getting a cooldown is great but the removal of casting from it and the general holes in the rest of our kit just makes it feel a bit hollow. Personally I would love for this to be some type of Strike/Slam ability that is enhanced by a reworked Maelstrom Weapon that gives it (this hypothetical strike) bonus elemental damage based on weapon imbue or something to that effect. Ever since I first played and raided as enhance in classic wow, I just desired for more melee attacks, not necessarily to proc windfury but just to add more flavor. Lightning Bolt because it is a key component of the elemental kit just doesn’t really fit that flavor to me. I feel like Ele and Enhance are very homogenized, using a lot of the same spells and changing this is something that could make enhance stand out from elemental.

Windfury Totem, Grace of Air, Flametongue totem, Personal Imbues - As it currently stands enhance will typically want to run their own personal WFW (Windfury Weapon/Imbue) which wont stack with WFT (Windfury Totem) and we’ll want to run FTT (Flametongue Totem) because that will stack with WFW. This means we will never realistically drop Grace of Air in a group setting, which isn’t the end of the world but does put the totem in a weird solo use-case territory. Which is fine, plenty of specs have to give up personal DPS for the sake of the group. Where this kind’ve gets awkward is how FTT and WFT will function together in a group setting, if theres any chance that FTT will override WFT for a party member, it also puts FTT in an un-useable state for party/raid play. Now, all of this is primarily just to call out the issues with our totem design and not providing a unique buff for enhance. If enhancement doesn’t gain mutual benefit from being in a melee group to the point where their DPS is weakened by being in a melee group, it really puts the spec in an awkward spot. I don’t know 100% how any of these interactions function together but wanted to make sure it was at least mentioned before release so we can avoid this unintuitive situation. With the lack of polish/fine tuning with the rest of the class in general I worry we end up in weird situations where we have to stop dropping FTT so our party can receive WFT or end up in a situation where we ideally want to use WFW, FTT and Grace of Air for Imbues/Totems but in group play we are forced into Flametongue Imbue, WFT and Searing Totem.

The desire for Spell Power gearing – this was stated in the most recent podcast and it just feels a bit off. As it currently stands our damage is about 85% physical and 15% elemental (Shocks/Totems), once we progress to 60 the elemental damage portion will certainly go up with the addition of MSW to our kit but not so significantly that it makes spell power that strong of a stat for us. There really needs to be some hard thought into how we want enhance to gear because while I like the idea of the elemental warrior, the idea of gearing a class that desires for strength, spell power, spell/melee hit, expertise, critical strike and intellect in varying amounts just sounds like a nightmare. It will feel in a lot of cases that we are making our melees weaker to make our spell stronger, or vice versa, which just adds to the confusion of this class. I also dont really want to get into a situation like Wrath where a melee class is “stealing” spell power trinkets and off-pieces from caster classes because it is confusing for players. Even in Wrath which is a very well-understood game, there were lots of players confused by why Enhancement shamans had items like Reign of the Dead equipped. Maybe theres a design intention with hybrids in mind for mail spell power to have a lower stat budget than whats on cloth spell power but that feels like a bit of a clunky solution.

But mr Gambler how can you be so sure that these things haven’t been looked at and thought about already? Look no further than Call of the Elements – WHO WAS THIS MADE FOR? WHAT IS THIS ABILITY? Elemental and Restoration dont even have 4 totems worth placing down in a raid setting if they are in a caster/healer group and enhancement is never going to stop auto attacking to cast a 3 second ability. Okay so we can drop 4 totems pre-pull and save ourselves 1 global… uhh lole. This ability is one of the big reasons I’m concerned for Shaman and enhancement for the near-future of WoW Forever. Its something that was taken from future expansions, shoehorned into classic with some “friction” (a cast time) and not thought of beyond that. This ability just feels like a microcosm of the entirety of the shaman class at the moment, just things shoehorned in from future expansions without thinking through how it will actually function in-game.

In closing, I just want to say that enhancement has always been a strong support class for melee classes in the first handful of expansions for WoW. Its probably one of my favorite specs because of the support it offers. I can understand the desire to want to remove weird/“boring” interactions like totem twisting and not wanting for people to have very specific raid compositions but its left enhancement to be in somewhat of a bland spot for its spec identity. Maelstrom and Rage are both very ‘on the tracks’ with no ability to do anything fun or unique with them which certainly just makes the spec feel very uninspiring.

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Enh Shaman losing its identity
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Agree with a lot here. I have some confidence that there are some moderate to large changes coming to shaman because all 3 specs feel a bit undercooked right now. If shaman launches like this it will do a lot damage to the playerbase. Raids open a month after release and people will want to get leveling their mains straight away. I already have a couple guildies who don’t want to play shaman because it’s designed so poorly right now.

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Absolutely nailed it. I hope the devs take a serious look at enhancement and ele design overall. Both seem extremely rushed and not well thought out at all. Shaman has the ability to be truly something awesome and unique in forever and it’s just a stitched together copy pasta of various expansions, really boring and lame.

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smd my head go back to retail if your gonna cry

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just kidding i agree with GruulGuildMaster here :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hoping that MSW can be changed to not have to eat 5 talent points and stack to 5 before it’s even useable.

Agree that using elementals filler spell is a little bland, many thoughts on these things and will give a general agree here.

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I do think we need to be able to use our own weapon imbues and not have a damage loss by using weapon totems. I’ve suggested before that maybe if we have windfury weapon active, and we drop windfury totem, the proc chance should go from 20% to 30%, or it should get an extra hit on procs (3 instead of 2 additional swings).

What’s worse is that they’ve removed all air totem stacking, so even if we have two shamans in a group, windfury gets dropped and now grace of air totem does nothing for us or anyone else.

As far as maelstrom weapon, I think a lot of people really aren’t seeing the light here. Current datamining suggests it’s a 16 ppm ability, meaning if your weapon is 3.75 speed or slower, it has a 100% proc chance. I do think that value needs to go up just slightly (17-20 ppm would be ideal) to allow slightly faster weapons (3.3-3.6 speed) to benefit equally.

However, if your weapon is 3.8 swing timer, you’re getting a maelstrom stack on every hit. Every time windfury procs, you’re getting 3 stacks all at once (if all of them hit). Every time you storm strike you get a stack. The chance doesn’t change with attack speed buffs, so if you get flurry you’re swinging every 2.9 seconds and still have a 100% chance to get a stack on hit. If you add rage of the farseer to that, you’re swinging every 1.7 seconds and still getting a proc on every hit.

Ideally, as long as we can cast one free/instant lightning bolt every 6-8~ seconds (The same cooldown as storm strike), it’s going to work out pretty well. That also changes the balance of damage to around 50% melee and 50% earth shock/lightning bolt, which is where it should be if we’re going for the perfectly balanced battlemage archetype.

I do still think that we need mental quickness to get buffed up to 60% to match ret pally, the current 30% feels very low given that we’re supposed to be relying on spell damage as much as melee. I’d be fine with even 50% int as sp from mental quickness, as we essentially get half value on mental dexterity as well (1 int = 1 ap, whereas 2 str = 1 ap). Intellect giving us essentially 50% of what strength or pure spellpower would give us seems like the right balance.

As far as lightning bolt damage from maelstrom weapon, a level 60 lightning bolt in wow:F does 190-212 damage. Elemental gets extra crit, and a small chance for an extra half-damage zero-cost bolt, we’re getting a guaranteed free and instant bolt every few seconds - but we can also bump that by 20% with stormstrike, and we’re getting more spell power on it than elemental due to mental quickness.

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I love shaman, I wanted to play it in Forever (got 30 enhance on beta today) and all I can say is you’d have to pay me to main this class in a raid at the moment.

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Yeah I think enhance is almost there. I have concerns about mana constraints also but that’s not too bad to tweak. If they can fix imbues/totems, spellhit/scaling on maelstrom/shocks and get the mana feeling right then I think enhance will be in a good spot.

Ele needs to be using chain lightning on single target and needs some form of Elemental Mastery back. Right now it just looks really unfun and shifted pretty far away from its vanilla identity.

Resto I think just needs some version of tidal waves so they regularly use HW/LHW and it will be in a really good spot.

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@Oasis, Even if it WERE to proc on every swing (let’s just say). My main gripes with MSW are

  1. No weaving, so useless until 5/5 talents
    1. Overcapping due to msw on a slow weapon because we are not being able to weave is going to feel real bad
  2. Unless we’re suddenly gearing enough hit for spell hit cap, it’s going to be missing a good amount, which feels bad (again)
    1. They COULD work around this by making a 5/5 msw LB guaranteed to hit (ignoring immunity/shields/etc.) and then this issue goes away
  3. It’s kinda just boring here. I think they could do something more interesting, but that’s a personal opinion. For me, it’s definitely better than nothing. But I think they could make it a bit more unique for the 2h forever vibe.

The proc rate can be easily adjusted to fit 2H and still feel fine, so I agree with not really being too too concerned on that front, though.

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Totally agree with this post.

I feel like Maelstrom weapon as currently implemented feels clunky and needs a better design (They probably need to allow it to stack more than 5 to prevent overcapping, increase the damage it deals to make up for our lack of SP, and then they need to give Enhancement access to more +hit rating imo)

Moreover, I kind of wish Blizzard would look at some of our current abilities in the Enhancement ability list from classic like our Weapon Imbues and make them more meaningful and impactful and actually give us a reason to swap them for different situations.

This combined with maybe a new 21 talent point capstone ability like “Unleash Elements” from Cata that does different things based on the Weapon Imbuement would make Enhancement more interesting. I think this could be used to fix Shaman Tanking and also introduce some variety in Enhancement Shaman gameplay for PvE and PvP.

I was kind of thinking the following

Windfury Weapon

  • Keep it as-is.
  • Primary single-target DPS imbue.

Flametongue Weapon

  • Melee attacks deal Fire splash damage to enemies within 5 yards of the primary target.
  • This becomes the go-to imbue for 3–4+ targets.

Frostbrand Weapon

  • Applies a 25% attack/casting speed reduction and 25% movement-speed reduction for 8-10 seconds. (Length of the Debuff would need to be balanced so it isn’t too strong - Honestly they need to do this for a lot of classes - Like Warlocks having Curse of Tongues last 30 seconds and Curse of Exhaustion lasting 12 seconds is kind of wild)
  • Gives Frostbrand a strong PvP utility role and creates a reason to swap Frostbrand → Windfury → Frostbrand during combat.

Rockbiter Weapon

  • Could be redesigned around defense, potentially requiring a shield and increasing armor by X% - Whatever percentage would be needed to bring Shamans in Line with other Tanks.
  • I think this could be the solution that helps fix Shaman Tanking Damage Mitigation issues.
  • This gives it a clear tanking identity.

Enhancement new 21-point capstone:

Unleash Elements*
20-yard range | 10–15 sec cooldown (Cooldown would have to be balanced but ideally I would prefer for it to become a rotational ability)*

Instantly triggers the effect of your active Weapon Imbue against the target and causes a secondary buff or effect

Unleash Elements w/ Windfury Weapon (This is the one I’m having the hardest time coming up with a design, but here would be an example maybe)

  • Causes your attacks to be charged with lightning (changes damage type to nature/magical) for the next X seconds and increases attack speed by X%.
  • This would need to be balanced so it’s not OP but maybe something along these lines.

Unleash Elements w/ Flametongue Weapon

  • Causes your next Flame Shock to spread to up to 3 to 5 targets. (Needs to be balanced so that it isn’t too OP for AoE damage)

Unleash Elements w/ Frostbrand Weapon

  • Roots the target for 3 to 5 seconds (This would have to be balanced somewhat and not become overpowered).

Unleash Elements w/ Rockbiter Weapon

  • Hits multiple multiple targets for reduced damage but generates extremely high threat.
  • This effectively becomes Enhancement’s AoE threat tool.

I feel like with a revamped weapon imbuement design + something like Unleash Elements it would give Enhancement Shaman more flavor and variability while also helping shore up Tanking and/or other playstyles.

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I think this is probably a bit too much for what they’re going for, but I agree that it would be fun and I hope at some point they’ll expand their vision of wow:f rotations to allow for something like this. I think wotlk-level rotational complexity, maybe with fewer procs/cooldowns, would be a good place for classes to land.

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Thank you for this.

Especially calling out the totem awkwardness. I really don’t want to be in a situation with totems where optimal for the group is suboptimal for me. That just feels bad.

I understand we provide a lot of support, but there isn’t any good reason that means that we have to suffer in order to do so.

Rage of the Farseer should be a baseline ability or something we take through the tree that isn’t the capstone.

And +1 on the Call of the Elements current implementation — WHO is this even for?

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Haha Ret Paladin go BRRRRRR

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I agree with basically everything here, great post!

Maelstrom weapon: man I just don’t like this talent, and now that it’s lightning bolt only I’d like to see it changed to something, idk, original I guess. It’s so boring, but atleast when you could heal with it you had some choices to make.

Rage of the Farseer: I’m sure it will be powerful, but I hate spells like this. would much rather see something interesting like ret got, even if it ended up being worse on the meters at least I wouldn’t be playing a dmg cd version of my favorite class

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if anyone played enhance in this beta, you would know SS cant hit the broadside of a barn.

respec’d to resto and it’s like I’m playing a comepletely different working as intended game.

enhance is a broken mess in comparison.

for example, pull 2 mobs in enhance lucky to live and will be oom. get 3+ will most likely die or have to run.

Pull 4+ mobs as resto, and I have yet to break a sweat. staying almost full hp/mana after fight ends, not even using mana tide totem. Not missing my targets either, which as enhance is just comical to start with (the melee spec that cant hit anything).

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Incredibly well said I think it truly outlines pretty much all of the frustrations that enh shamans (ele and resto too) are having right now.

The “design” feels all over the place without a fully cohesive direction in place. I am very hopeful that Zirene reads through this and truly listens.

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This was all well said. And I want to echo that the combination of 2H, +MSW, +no obvious spell power scaling (due to poor int scaling), + no spell hit, leaves us in a very weird, anti-synergistic spot.

And just to demonstrate how anti-synergistic all of this is, I think we can point to how much they had to do to fix these issues in SoD.

MSW generation feels bad with a slow 2h? Well in SoD, the 2H mastery rune gave you a bonus 45% attack speed to 2H at all times, and the MSW Rune also gave you +50% MSW generation on hit with a 2H.

MSW spells feel underwhelming because of no spellpower? Well Mental Dexterity gave you 35% spellpower scaling with Attack Power (not intellect). And you got 1.5AP per intellect (rather than 1 in WoWF).

Needed spellhit? Well the 2H mastery rune gave you +10% spellhit. And you had ring runes to round out the remaining hit if you needed it.

To be sure, I’m not saying any of the above should be added. I’m simply noting them to demonstrate how rudderless the WoWF implementation of 2H enhance is; that you need so very much for spec to function as shown by SoD shows that.

Another big issue is that the core of the WotLK and SoD designs is contrary to the “free GCD” pillar of WoWF (per the latest podcast with Kris and Zirene). The whole point of those designs is that you didnt have free GCDs, but did have so many actions you wanted to take. And so that’s where the skill expression and the fun came in; making the decision to forgo a part of your rotation so that you could drop a totem, cast a purge, refresh your lightning shield, or whatever other decision you had weighing on you. And overlaying this decision making over a simple, yet satisfying, SoD 1/2/3/4 rotation (Stormstrike, LavaLash, Lightning Bolt, Earth Shock) made it all the more fun.

But the Devs specifically said on the most recent pod that they want people to have plenty of open GCDs. That they want players to be able to use that proc when they get it, or use that utility like stunning a running mob, without being GCD locked. In that case, any leaning on the WotLK or SoD designs (e.g., like MSW) need to be looked at very carefully - since the underlying design of those specs was precisely the opposite - that you should be GCD locked to force decisionmaking and choices onto the player.

As an aside, I hope the devs reconsider the relationship between approachability and GCDs. It seems to me that approachability is all about informed choice. That is why things like balancing the classes and specs, removing weapon skill, and removing jank like twisting make the game more approachable. Because it’s totally unapproachable for a new player making a character to know that they’ve locked themselves out from DPSing effectively because they picked the wrong class or race, and it’s unapproachable for them to know they aren’t playing the spec correctly because there’s some nonobvious jank techniques they aren’t utilizing.

But being GCD locked? It’s not the same thing. A new player knows they are being presented with a choice - do I do my damage, or do I use some utility. And the new player knows the countervailing interests here - e.g., doing more damage vs interrupting a mob casting a spell and saving damage on to the tank. Of course, the new player may make the incorrect choice, but that does not demonstrate that the choice was unapproachable. It was perfectly approachable.

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Couldn’t agree more with everything said here. +rep, well said.

Even if one of the commenters is correct in their estimation of MSW ppm, it still doesn’t solve the issues as Gamblr stated them.

Enhance as it stands is just not cohesive, and MSW being useless until talented with 5pts and stacked up to 5x just feels rough. Especially when the payoff is a standard lightning bolt, which is balanced to be Ele’s filler spell.

I would love to see something talent-wise similar to what Gamblr suggested, IE MSW includes increased crit chance that allows for the feedback loop of Spell Crit → Ele Devastation → Flurry.

And the totem issue is a big one. Make grace of air a raid-wide aura or scrap it imo. The totems shaman drop for their group should be mutually beneficial. I enjoy buffing / supporting my allies, but when “optimal” for me doesn’t align with “optimal” for my group…

Finally - scrap Call of the Elements if it’s not going to be instant, or fix the totem issues so there are actually 4 totems worth spending 3s to deploy. As things stand it’s genuinely a useless addition.

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Agree.

Maelstrom weapons has gotta go and be replaced with something more interesting. They need to rework talents to avoid incentivizing a 1h weapon when they say they want to deliver on the 2h weapon.

They need to decide what they want to do with tanking, it shouldn’t be the optimal way to play the Enhancement tree unless they want it to be a real thing. Every new talent works better for that playstyle than a 2h dps/support.

Maybe I’ll get nuked from Bnet but I really do think they should just rip Shaman straight from Twow as a base.

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