I wanted to take this time to bring out an issue I think should be discussed: Improved Stormstrike be changed to 100% mana regen even while casting instead of 50%. When we have 2/2 talents in Improved Stormstrike, we have a 15 sec mana regen on an 8 sec CD ability. In short, the mana regen part makes no sense as it is basically double the length of the abilities CD. Enhancement Shamans have to spend 125 mana per Stormstrike and this ability resets on parry or dodge with Improved Stormstrike. So the amount of mana used increases even more.
If Enhancement Shamans did a full rotation at lv 30 in Beta, they will have loss over 50% of their mana.
Full Rotation: Lightning shield > place totems and totem project to boss > flame shock > SS > fire nova > earth shock.
That is 50% of our mana at level 30. Stormstrike does say its a flat 125 mana regarding the talent. Improved Stormstrike at level 30 provides roughly 30 MP5 or 20 per tick every 3 seconds with my gear. If we doubled this value it would be 60 MP5 or roughly 40 per tick every 3 seconds. So by the time you had SS up again, it would be free to cast as you regen the total back at level 30. My guess is Stormstrike is base mana cost and 125 is not intended. If Stormstrike is 125 mana cost, then level 60 Shamans should be fine, but their rotation will still eat a lot of mana.
I think the best solution is to increase the base mana regen to 100% in Improved Stormstrike, because the mana costs for fire nova is very high and yes it is a part of our core damage in our rotation as it is our only long spell ability skill and Stormstrike is our 1 non-ability long CD skill. The goal of WoW Forever Devs was to make us have 3-4 buttons. Our current rotation (Shock Spell > SS > Fire Nova) gives us the 3 button minimum with a 4th button when we get 5 stacks of Maelstrom stacks to instant cast LB.
What’s strange is that stormstrike costs 125 mana for us, no matter if it’s level 25 or level 60, while holy strike for paladins is a flat 20 mana at any level.
These things used to be based on a percentage of your base mana (before gear/buffs) so they could feel rough at lower levels but would eventually even out. Why does stormstrike cost more than 5x what holy strike costs at every level? It doesn’t even have the benefit of doing elemental or additional damage, while holy strike is doing half of its damage as holy which bypasses armor; not to mention paladins get it baseline for all specs at like level 6 while shamans can’t get it until 25+ with talent points exclusively in enhancement? Makes zero sense from a cross-class balance perspective.
Without shamanistic focus, shocks cost too much, and only just become bearable for enhancement after that talent.
That is what I was thinking too. But I also like to get the Hunter 0.5 gear over the Shaman 0.5 gear for the bonus Agi instead of Str. I do this for the main reason of making sure I get enough melee crit chance. But with the change of crit % to be on both melee and spells, I may have to use the Shaman gear this time around as it does have spirit attached to it.
I still think they need to change shaman stat benefits.
Strength should only give 1 AP per point instead of 2.
Agility should give 1 AP per point instead of 0.
Our stat focus for enhancement shouldn’t be Str + Agi + Int on top of the crit, hit, and spellpower we’re going to need regardless. Most classes focus on two stats: For us it should be Agility + Intellect. We make up the extra AP with mental dexterity, and now we’re itemized the same way as hunters and can benefit from the absurd amount of gear balanced around that class (while we’ve got basically nothing good for shaman mail post-40).
Remove the threat generation from abilities. If they aren’t pursuing a tank build, get rid of it. You can add it later if you develop the tank build.
Enhancement is not a hybrid. It doesn’t have the mana.
Grace vs Windfury is bad. Was there any thought on this after ditching DW in favor of 2H? Just seems so right hand vs left hand.
I’d rather they add the couple of extra things we need to just make shaman tanking work, at least for endgame dungeons and off-tanks in raids. If they don’t want us to main tank endgame raids, fine, I can live with that, but shaman tanking is fun and just needs a little more support to remain viable at 55+.
All it needs is a taunt (Wind Shock, taunts target, physical, shares cooldown with other shocks - easy as pie), and some form of mitigation/avoidance.
My preference on that aspect is still to lean on dodge/parry, which other tanks don’t focus heavily on (we’ve got shield tanks with warrior/paladin and armor/hp tanks with bears, but we don’t have any tanking class that uses high parry chance for their mitigation, and while dodge is the only avoidance for bear druids it still doesn’t feel like a core focus over just absurd armor and health).
Change the guardian totems talent to give the shaman 10-15% parry from stoneskin totem and 10-15% dodge from windwall totem. Now you give up your earth/air totems (Strength of earth, grace of air, windfury) for extra survivability, and you’re already giving up your dps imbue (windfury) for a threat imbue (rockbiter). That’s our equivalent of “changing forms” like druids do - our totem selection and weapon imbue ARE our method of shapeshifting for different needs.
I also still think one of the biggest things holding enhancement back is the lottery ticket called windfury. The one in five times it works, it’s considered overpowered, but the rest of the time it’s absolute trash. I made a thread regarding a potential rework of windfury/enhancement here, based on another poster’s suggestions:
Basically: windfury isn’t there for extra hits anymore, it gives 20% melee haste to the shaman. Windfury totem gives 10% melee haste to the group. They stack, so up to 30% for the shaman so he doesn’t feel like it’s a DPS loss to drop windfury for the group. Both provide a minor AP bonus to the shaman/group equivalent to windfury’s extra attack bonus divided out across the average procs.
Then alter maelstrom weapon and stormstrike: Maelstrom stacks with every melee hit (not a chance per hit), stacks up to 10, and stormstrike uses up to 5 charges to strike twice when cast. That gives us some of the windfury burst back (not all of it, two hits with stormstrike =/= three hits with windfury); but we can control that burst this way instead of it being random.
enhance is very powerful right now. like 4-6 hits OR LESS and people are dying with equal gear and hp. Add to that the ability to drop all the totems and the interrupts and other utilities its in the hunter OP range right now to be perfectly honest and objective and I Have a dwarf shaman
PvP aside as Enhance in Classic was always a burst heavy class/spec. I see the DPS meters and it fits well. But going mana oom after 2 full rotations is not good, especially for end game. Yes Fire Nova is the main issue for the mana oom. But not pressing it really drops our DPS. Blizzard might want us to swap out Fire Nova for Lightning Bolt damage via Maelstrom, but I do not like that idea as it defeats the entire purpose of even having the spell. Fire nova does less AoE damage than AoE spells that channel, it should not cost the same amount as one that is channeled.
We need to see more than Sims of Enhance and if our mana regen is the issue; i would prefer to resolve in beta and not live.