Now, I will admit I haven’t done any real “serious” content on a Shaman in like 5 expansions… but a cursory search into enhance Shaman DPS rotation has me wondering what you’re talking about with this “strategically lining up” talk.
I mean… it seems like beyond making sure your target(s) have the flameshock debuff you’re spamming your core abilities making sure they stay on CD while keeping an eye out for Stormbringer procs and making sure to use your maelstrom.
Not quite. While sure, 2h Enhance didn’t pull the same kind of numbers that DW did, you could still use your full set of abilities with a 2h. Currently, you can’t use either Stormstrike or Lava Lash with a 2h.
And you gimped yourself to the point of only being relevant if the content was trivial.
The person was talking about how the RNG proc of windfury 1 shotting someone, was basically the same as lining up a few class abilities, with full MS to do something “similar”.
Yes I have.
Having to change the entire toolkit, and simplify it (per your own words) means its not “viable”.
Now you are just being dishonest. You know you were not suggesting just changing “1 part” of a rotation. I know it. We both know it.
Lets be honest.
You suggested changing lava lash, storm strike, crash lightning, windfury, and lightning bolt, sundering.
And making some of those abilities passives instead of a part of the rotation.
Seriously. What is left that you do not want to change?
Currently what I watch for :
Is Hot Hands active?
Do I have PLA stacks?
Is FS spread?
Do I have 5+ stacks of MS?
Do I have 10?
Does FS have less than 4 seconds?
Its a lot more than “something is off cd, hit it”
That is what a lot of these 2h suggestion threads are missing. A fundamental understanding on how enhance works.
Someone has an enhance alt they play an hour a week. And wants to completely rework the spec for their part time alt, and they seem to be like “but why am I meeting resistance from the people that actually play the spec”
O…k? Then that would be players who play 2h Enhance’s problem. Meanwhile you can continue on your merry way playing DW.
“The person” was me. Maybe it’s just me, since I’ve played more MMOs than just WoW. MMOs where you actually have to really pay attention to multiple resources, half a dozen procs, abilities that combo off of each other or abilities that change depending on what long DPS CD you just used. By comparison vanilla Shaman and current live Shaman are brain dead easy.
Ever since like…what… Cata? MoP? You have SO MANY indicators that a passive ability (like hot hands) has proc’d that unless you’re a little incompetent there’s really no need to actively “watch out” for it. You have the actual buff itself on your buff bar, the graphic indicator that appears around your character, and the giant glowy, rotating yellow/gold outline on the ability that the proc affected. Oh right, if I remember correctly (out of town so can’t quickly check to confirm) you also have a mini buff bar directly under your character while in combat.
Also, “is FS spread”? Seriously? You seriously need to stop and think to yourself about each of these things?! Here, I’ll give you a tip. Before you Lava Lash, use flameshock. If you accidentally Lava Lashed before using flameshock, don’t worry, the CD is super short so you can get it next time. And hey, good news! Both Lava Lash and Flame Shock are abilities you use with insane regularity so you will very soon automatically spread flameshock whether you want to or not. AND, since our shocks are no longer on a shared CD, you have 14 seconds to work your way through all of your other abilities before you even need to get to the question of “does FS have 4 seconds”.
And again, really? “Does MS have 5+ stacks?” Gee, maybe if there was a bright golden indicator that rotated around LB, CL, HS, and CH then any non-brain dead person could easily tell from their peripheral when they have enough MS to use.
Even taking only the DW aspect of enhance, the class/spec ALREADY changed significantly many times. Players used to be able to put WF on each weapon. We used to have more than two weapon imbues. We also used to have a wide array of totems to buff ourselves/party and totems that contributed directly to DPS/AOE. Our shocks used to share a CD. Heck, Shaman didn’t even get maelstrom weapon until I believe it was the WoTlK prepatch. THAT significantly changed how enhancement Shaman played the class and how the class worked. OR that time when Shaman’s attack power was based off STRENGTH instead of Agility? Yeah, that was a thing. Pretty significant change right there. Thank goodness apparently nobody had a “fundamental understanding” of how Shaman worked over the past 18 years or else the class would have never changed.
ALSO, look at my suggestions. Did I mention taking away anything from DW? No. In fact my suggested change puts hot hands in a much better spot for players who would go down the Lava Lash route.
ALSO, I heard about some argument as to validity of various sites as guides, but I guess Icy Veins does not have a fundamental understanding of the class?
That doesn’t sound like a shaman player problem that sounds more like the Blizzard employee’s problem for sucking. Blizzard should have never allowed a noob to punish a whole class for the employee’s noobness.
2h isn’t the issue here, WF is. The RNG nature on auto attack causes 2h slow attack create problems… but I’d be ok with a rethinking of WF anyway… So sick of being related to a Pocket buffer for warriors
2h isn’t the issue, but neither is WF. There is no issue, in the way you’re saying. The idea that if you use a 2h you become an auto-attack bot is laughable. Frost Death Knights are definitely not auto-attack bots, and they use either 2h or DW. Ret Paladins use a 2h and their rotation literally went from auto-attack to the multi-button rotation it is today. Even Arms Warriors have multiple attacks they can use.
If you think any spec is ever going back to auto attack RNG, you’re stuck in 2004.
You can absolutely have WF with a 2h and still offer a fun, engaging rotation and playstyle.
As I may have mentioned in a previous post, personally I don’t care if 2h is sub optimal. Just having it available would make the leveling/questing/world content so much more fun!
That’s what we already have available to us in-game. You can log in right now, equip a 2h mace or axe, imbue it with WF, and just go around auto-attacking stuff. Nobody is asking for this because again, we already have that much.
O…k? I never said it was faster or as fast as DW, just that the experience wasn’t you sitting there waiting for the slow auto-attacks of a 2h. You still have many abilities that use your weapon, one of which that doesn’t even have a CD (frost strike).
It’s still a choice for players who don’t care about min-maxing every single option the game gives them, regardless if it’s for mythic+ raiding, PvP, or questing/farming.
Sorry if it came across wrong, I agree with you. I was responding to someone pointing out that 2H would end up being that… but a big reason was 2H was removed was an issue with older issues of WF.
As to WF, the Dev’s themselves pointed out in interviews recently the importance of teams bringing Shaman’s to buff Warriors… and while it was dismissed as a bit of a joke… I can’t help but wonder, as a shaman main ,and feeling that WF totem is a mostly boring and useless global, that they might see it the same way.
That said I’m pretty sure I said I’d also like to see WF reworked, so that 2H makes more since… and I think it is absolutely possible.
The funny thing is, I believe that everything I’m saying and pointing is not only reasonable, but well within the scope of the Dev’s… and literally not as system breaking as other things they’ve implemented.
I love this game… and just wish that the dev’s loved it as much as I do… I just don’t know anymore.
2H enhance shaman was part of the Shaman talent tree through BC, was replaced with DW in Wotlk. (may have been late BC but I remember it happening in WolK.) While Blizzard made some claims about tuning and wierd op situations in battlegrounds, the reality was that Doomhammer was a 2H wielded by a famous orc Shaman for years until legion retconned it so that the dev’s could avoid dealing with Shaman WF problem.
And while I love WF and know it’s a big part of Shaman identity, it’s literally one of the most RNG DPS abilities in the game. That said, Enhancement is in a mostly good place.
For me, it has more to do with the fantasy around what the class used to be. I could get into more of the history, where Shaman’s were meant to be a type of off-tank, and etc… but for now I just wish Blizzard would listen to the player base more… Just within this thread it seems like at least 4 or 5 to 1 people in favor of bringing back 2H.
2h Frost might not be auto-auto attack bots, but auto-attacks and more specifically auto-attack crits are a big part of the spec to get the full damage of Obliterate. DW gets over double the chances to auto-attack crit due to 2 weapons and has a better overall feel and not only that but does just as much or more Obliterate damage that 2h is more focused on. Its why they had to increase the chance for 2h to get Killing Machine procs to 70/100% (first and second crit) when it was 30/60/100%? I think for DW. While it might work, its far from implemented properly and having a split in the spec is a detriment to the weapon choice.
Enhance would need a pretty good overhaul of some abilities to work with a 2h.
Frost DKs literally have this as well and its RNG on top of RNG, a chance on a chance. There is just other stuff to do while hoping for the RNG to happen.
It would be nice if Blizzard gave us an answer to this question for Dragonflight, especially considering so many shamans have ALWAYS actively wanted it’s return.
Just in case there winds up being zero support for 2h Enhance in DF (looking like probably will be the case, but having damage calculation for 2h for Crash Lightning and nothing else is a little strange… anyway…)
The 1h mace “Fiend Collector’s Cudgel” is actually a somewhat decently long mace (for 1h anyway, it’s no Hammer of the Naaru). On top of that, it slings to the back!
So what you do is xmog your main-hand as this mace, xmog your off-hand as a small fist weapon (I use the Worn Vrykul Smasher) then also xmog an enchant effect to the fist weapon (I like Sunfire personally… it looks like you’re charging up a flameshock or something). Voila, even though you’re not using a 2h, it kind oflooks like you’re using a 2h.
I figure this is probably the closest we might get aesthetically for now. Still hoping for the real deal at some point in the future!
Blizzard would do the shaman community a big favor by giving us back 2h enhancement. Everybody wants it. They said they wanted to reverse a lot of the cutting down of classes they did over the last few expansions, well this would be a great place to continue. I think more shamans have wanted 2h back than frost dks wanted 2h back, and those players were heard.
I’m with you brother. It doesn’t need to look like 2 fury warriors running around. A warrior and Shaman team where the weapon combos of 2H and 1h shield, 1h and shield and dual wield, dual wield and 2H. These thins look cool.
Agreed, I don’t need it to be good. I just want it to be fun. Let it be a garbage 15% chance to windfury but let me swing a fat club and pray for a roulette to spin. Let me rockbiter weapon on it and just smack stuff around.
These were three examples of potential changes that I spitballed in the moment as possible ways to address WF proc issue.
I wasn’t saying all these changes were necessary for 2H to work. Only they were possible suggestions.
Again, I’ve already admitted that I don’t see reworking some abilities to create a play style that isn’t entirely built around WF RNG as a “complete revamp” but clearly you do.
Lastly, I have played Shaman since vanilla, and I know it’s been through some of the craziest overhauls. Class changes are inevitable.
What I will reiterate, because you really haven’t demonstrated, is why 2H wouldn’t work?
That doesn’t sound like a shaman player problem that sounds more like the Blizzard employee’s problem for sucking. Blizzard should have never allowed a noob to punish a whole class for the employee’s noobness.
2h isn’t the issue here, WF is. The RNG nature on auto attack causes 2h slow attack create problems… but I’d be ok with a rethinking of WF anyway… So sick of being related to a Pocket buffer for warriors
2h isn’t the issue, but neither is WF. There is no issue, in the way you’re saying. The idea that if you use a 2h you become an auto-attack bot is laughable. Frost Death Knights are definitely not auto-attack bots, and they use either 2h or DW. Ret Paladins use a 2h and their rotation literally went from auto-attack to the multi-button rotation it is today. Even Arms Warriors have multiple attacks they can use.
If you think any spec is ever going back to auto attack RNG, you’re stuck in 2004.
You can absolutely have WF with a 2h and still offer a fun, engaging rotation and playstyle.
As I may have mentioned in a previous post, personally I don’t care if 2h is sub optimal. Just having it available would make the leveling/questing/world content so much more fun!
That’s what we already have available to us in-game. You can log in right now, equip a 2h mace or axe, imbue it with WF, and just go around auto-attacking stuff. Nobody is asking for this because again, we already have that much.
O…k? I never said it was faster or as fast as DW, just that the experience wasn’t you sitting there waiting for the slow auto-attacks of a 2h. You still have many abilities that use your weapon, one of which that doesn’t even have a CD (frost strike).
It’s still a choice for players who don’t care about min-maxing every single option the game gives them, regardless if it’s for mythic+ raiding, PvP, or questing/farming.
Sorry if it came across wrong, I agree with you. I was responding to someone pointing out that 2H would end up being that… but a big reason was 2H was removed was an issue with older issues of WF.
As to WF, the Dev’s themselves pointed out in interviews recently the importance of teams bringing Shaman’s to buff Warriors… and while it was dismissed as a bit of a joke… I can’t help but wonder, as a shaman main ,and feeling that WF totem is a mostly boring and useless global, that they might see it the same way.
That said I’m pretty sure I said I’d also like to see WF reworked, so that 2H makes more since… and I think it is absolutely possible.
The funny thing is, I believe that everything I’m saying and pointing is not only reasonable, but well within the scope of the Dev’s… and literally not as system breaking as other things they’ve implemented.
I love this game… and just wish that the dev’s loved it as much as I do… I just don’t know anymore.
2h Frost might not be auto-auto attack bots, but auto-attacks and more specifically auto-attack crits are a big part of the spec to get the full damage of Obliterate. DW gets over double the chances to auto-attack crit due to 2 weapons and has a better overall feel and not only that but does just as much or more Obliterate damage that 2h is more focused on. Its why they had to increase the chance for 2h to get Killing Machine procs to 70/100% (first and second crit) when it was 30/60/100%? I think for DW. While it might work, its far from implemented properly and having a split in the spec is a detriment to the weapon choice.
Enhance would need a pretty good overhaul of some abilities to work with a 2h.
Frost DKs literally have this as well and its RNG on top of RNG, a chance on a chance. There is just other stuff to do while hoping for the RNG to happen.
It would be nice if Blizzard gave us an answer to this question for Dragonflight, especially considering so many shamans have ALWAYS actively wanted it’s return.
Just in case there winds up being zero support for 2h Enhance in DF (looking like probably will be the case, but having damage calculation for 2h for Crash Lightning and nothing else is a little strange… anyway…)
The 1h mace “Fiend Collector’s Cudgel” is actually a somewhat decently long mace (for 1h anyway, it’s no Hammer of the Naaru). On top of that, it slings to the back!
So what you do is xmog your main-hand as this mace, xmog your off-hand as a small fist weapon (I use the Worn Vrykul Smasher) then also xmog an enchant effect to the fist weapon (I like Sunfire personally… it looks like you’re charging up a flameshock or something). Voila, even though you’re not using a 2h, it kind oflooks like you’re using a 2h.
I figure this is probably the closest we might get aesthetically for now. Still hoping for the real deal at some point in the future!
Blizzard would do the shaman community a big favor by giving us back 2h enhancement. Everybody wants it. They said they wanted to reverse a lot of the cutting down of classes they did over the last few expansions, well this would be a great place to continue. I think more shamans have wanted 2h back than frost dks wanted 2h back, and those players were heard.
I’m with you brother. It doesn’t need to look like 2 fury warriors running around. A warrior and Shaman team where the weapon combos of 2H and 1h shield, 1h and shield and dual wield, dual wield and 2H. These thins look cool.
Agreed, I don’t need it to be good. I just want it to be fun. Let it be a garbage 15% chance to windfury but let me swing a fat club and pray for a roulette to spin. Let me rockbiter weapon on it and just smack stuff around.
These were three examples of potential changes that I spitballed in the moment as possible ways to address WF proc issue.
I wasn’t saying all these changes were necessary for 2H to work. Only they were possible suggestions.
Again, I’ve already admitted that I don’t see reworking some abilities to create a play style that isn’t entirely built around WF RNG as a “complete revamp” but clearly you do.
Lastly, I have played Shaman since vanilla, and I know it’s been through some of the craziest overhauls. Class changes are inevitable.
What I will reiterate, because you really haven’t demonstrated, is why 2H wouldn’t work?
And no, “because Ion said so,” isn’t really a reason. You haven’t pointed to some fundamental connection between shaman tools that DW is an essential part of the mechanics.
Summary:
WF seems to be the only ability heavily reliant on DW, because of its RNG nature.
Most of the enhancement shaman’s toolkit is built around this issue.
In Legion and BfA we saw iteration of our weapon imbues baked directly into abilities
By using those concepts, it seems we could easily (with only a minor change to existing tools, not a complete change) make 2H viable.
Please, be specific, and tell me how this is a complete rework?
P.S. Yes, 2H play style should feel completely different in some ways. The whole point of the new talent trees we’re getting in Dragonflight seem to represent a philosophy that is more in line with what I’m suggesting, seeing old tools in new ways.
Honestly, the changes required to make 2h viable are relatively mild, but they do impact lots of powers.
Stormstrike needs to be “all equipped weapons”, rather than “both weapons”
Lava Lash needs to be a choice node allowing an alternative that works for a 2h weapon and doesn’t require Flametongue to be active. This spell needs to only be usable with a 2h weapon, apply an additional DoT to make up for a lack of Flametongue damage, and spread Flame Shock.
Talents associated with Lava Lash need to work with the alternative to Lava Lash from above.
These things together should address most of the differences in damage output between a DW and 2h build. While 2h is slower, and so you autoattack less often, Windfury only triggers on MH attacks or when Doomwinds is active (if using a Doomwinds build). The difference between a 3.3 sec 2H swing and a 2.6 sec MH swing is made up for with extra Maelstrom generation. (I suspect anyway)
I don’t understand why a 2H build seems to be so complicated?
Stormstrike does 107% damage with each weapon currently, make it do 215% weapon damage if it’s a 2H.
Lava lash deals 75.6% off hand weapon damage. Damage increased by 100% if your off hand weapon is enchanted with flametongue. If a 2H is equipped, instead deal 75.6% main hand damage increased by 100% if your weapon has flametongue. Spread flameshock regardless.
Crash lightning already has a 2H damage calculation. AFAIK, all other skills are based on attack power, yes?
Not sure why it can’t just be that easy. Probably would not be as effective as DW, lava lash might need it’s damage increased by like 30-40% with a 2H, but what am I missing here that makes it more complicated than that? If it’s worrisome that SS will deal too much burst damage with a 2H, lower the damage a little bit?
Currently we rely on Windfury main hand, Flametongue offhand. 2h weapons only allows for one of these. Making LL one choice in a node, while the other is a 2h-specific ability would allow the 2h ability to behave differently and not require Flametongue. It would need to run higher damage to make up for the loss of FY damage and the spreading effect. It would also mean changes to Hot Hand and the Improved LL talents. Those are relatively mild as long as they affect the 2h ability. Otherwise changing Stormstrike to “all equipped weapons” for X total damage works well.
Aside from this, 2h loses procs for Windfury and Maelstrom Weapon, which are its biggest problems with the current design. Either generating extra maelstrom via abilities or increasing the proc chance with 2h weapons addresses the MSW problem, and could address Windfury as well, depending how it’s handled exactly.
I can understand the hot hand proc issue, and honestly I don’t think that would be something they would need to include/fix. As far as I can remember, and see on the talent tree for DF, you just wouldn’t build for LL with a 2H in mind. Also, fwiw, you do not need flametongue to spread flame shock using LL. It might be like that on the live servers currently, I can’t remember and am not at home to check. But the DF talents for LL do no mention needing flametongue to spread flame shock via LL.
As far as maelstrom generation and windfury procs, I think a 2H build would most likely focus nearly entirely on SS damage. Taking all the SS talents, you could easily keep up with maelstrom generation (I believe, I don’t have alpha access so I can’t confirm this) with the assorted skills that give you additional resets on SS, as well as making SS generate maelstrom. You probably would suffer heavily in AOE with that kind of set up, but it would be very strong single target and small cleave damage with a SS/doomwinds/ascendance build. Especially if they give enhance the option to get DRE, that would really solidify it as a viable option. Even with the potentially terrible damage on LL.
Bleh…balancing…rotation…math…gross.
Just give us 2h weapon appearances so we can look cool….while changing little. Why is this conversation complicated at all if the big payout is using 2hs in general? Just make it LOOK like we’re using 2hs for mog purposes. I love my 2h artifact appearance on my hpal but I’m still using a 1h and shield technically and it functions the same
I think this is a solution that the overwhelming majority of players would be good with. However, it’s still worth noting that a 2h enhance build would have more weight on SS procs than DW would. If you’re DW, and each weapon has 1000 weapon damage, it would deal 1000 x 107% damage (per weapon), for 2140 damage stormstrikes. A 2H with 2000 weapon damage, dealing 215% damage, would deal 4300 damage with stormstrike. Having significantly weaker lava lashes would be a fair trade off, and could make a SS build focused on building crit/haste, windfury weapon stacks, and ascendance playstyles viable. Would probably suck in AOE, but low target counts it would be pretty strong.
But I digress, your idea would still appease the majority of people I feel like, and would by far be the easiest solution.
I believe the concern here is viability. Part of the enjoyment of 2H windfury wasn’t that it was viable. It was that sometimes it was broken and wrecked to high heaven. It is certainly what I loved about it. It was chaotic.
I do think that there are logical changes that can be made to the class to have 2H come back and be useable without throwing the game balance terribly out the window or be completely useful. But what we probably are going to need is a hero in the main cast to represent us. Since Thrall got dumped by the elements (probably for hoarding moves to himself like that tornado flight and stuff) and Orcs being converted to priesthood in dragonflight, Shamanism is kind of fading away in the horde.
Why couldn’t Blizzard just allow us a two-hand transmog option while allowing us to still keep our two one-hander? Been thinking of that lately. I mean we can transmog a staff and polearms when having two one-handers.
