11/2/2026 Shaman Changes - Feedback

WoW: Forever World of Warcraft: Forever General Discussion
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Feedback on Changes

  1. Totemic Projection → Totemic Call: I guess Fire Nova isn’t designed for Elemental Shamans to use, or Elemental has to get used to casting in melee range.
  2. Base damage increases on Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning are welcome and much-needed changes.
  3. Increase cost on Shocks makes them more Enhancement-centric for frequent damage output. Fine I guess.
  4. Lightning Overload improved proc chance is awesome.
  5. Removing Lava Burst is probably a good move. Totems bloat the action bars already, and the iteration of Lava Burst suggested for WoW: Forever was just incredibly weak.
  6. Moving Improved Ghost Wolf further down the tree certainly makes it more of an “Enhancement Engagement” mechanic like a Warrior’s Charge or something, but that really hurts Elemental and Resto trying to dip for traversal convenience.
  7. Various welcome buffs to Enhancement.
  8. Riptide now heals for 50% less than a Priest’s Renew or a Druid’s Rejuvination AND is on a 12 second cooldown? Is the purpose of this capstone now literally nothing more than an interactive way to boost chain heal spam? A Priest’s Power Word: Shield grants a bigger absorb than Riptide’s old up-front heal and heal over time combined.
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The simple answer to the riptide change is clear if you read the forums. Shaman are 1 button andys. Elemental wants to press chain lightning only. Enhancement wants to spam stormstrike. Resto wants to spam chain heal. This is the design direction.

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Im sure blizzard is reading this feedback and taking notes.

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As I iterated in another recent post:

Dropping ghost wolf to fourth row ruins the utility for all specs. The baseline talents in the first row benefit all specs in some way shape or form, and ghost wolf in second row added to the fun while being a points sink, it didnt add much combat value (other than movement) but it was there and part of the identity of shaman.

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You might be on to something. With only 1 button to really worry about per Shaman Spec, it’s free to focus on “picking the right totem” from moment to moment, of which their totem arsenal already fills up an entire 2-action-bars-worth of space.

Though I’d argue it’s:

  • Elemental: Lightning Bolt OR Chain Lightning
  • Enhancement: Stormstrike + Earth Shock (and auto attacks)
  • Resto: Riptide + Chain Heal (and a lot of auto attacks)
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I agree with totemic call nerfing an elemental’s ability to efficiently use fire nova and magma totem for aoe. I do wish they could have made lava burst more impactful to add more flavor to the rotation as we are now back to LB spam and using CL with clearcasting

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did people actually want this? i didn’t see anyone complaining about riptide being too powerful. ghost wolf has been accessible for decades in every iteration of the game ever? i legit dont understand. ele buffs, cool, enhance buffs cool, resto shaman gutted in pvp? wtf? what am i missing? the game just got significantly less fun in my eyes and at the cost of essentially making zero additional players happy?

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Locking ele and resto out of indoor ghost wolf is straight bs.

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Ghost wolf change is a war crime

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Blizzard should rename Element shaman to Lighting shaman. There is no 4 Elements to an Element shaman.

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this might be true for you but not everyone else

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Honestly riptide isn’t even worth getting now. Total garbage 31 point talent.

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Pretty much take the words from me in every one of your posts (no sarcasm).

Returned from 16year hiatus, excited about Resto PvP, then wham!!!

I don’t even know what to play tbh

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You fundamentally misunderstand the changes if you think we are pushing chain lightning. It only takes like 7 to fully run OOM and it’s a 10 DPS increase over lightning bolt. We are only pushing lightning bolt. The changes are awful. We have to play in melee to AoE. We can’t shock. We can’t do anything other than lightning bolt. Blizzard made my decision for me, I’m just going enhance or rerolling.

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Can you name the 4 Elements?

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Well removing Lava Burst to cater to a minority just killed all the flavor and four elements style of play.

Nothing more than spamming Lightning bolt now, back to classic dull play that made Elemental not fun.

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Lava burst is booty without Lava Surge and I’d rather not have that in a classic+ version of the game. They could have come up with something new though.

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you could say.. the resto shaman Hype is dead…

yeah i feel u tho, trying to decide if i stay shaman and just play enhance or ele now or play resto druid or something… i can’t suffer thru another WoW iteration of rsham being at the bottom (and not just the worst, pretty much unplayable in pvp)

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I agree that they should have come up with something other than giving us 5% critical chance. They took away a button and reduced us to a single button rotation that still is projected to do some of the lowest damage in the game. We no longer can take ghost wolf in the enhancement tree. The one interesting build we had going on for Elemental in PvP was based around ghost wolf kiting. Can’t do that anymore. We are now just a low damage turret.

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Pushing 3 buttons was still better than pushing 1. But there was a simple solution, add lava surge…

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