Here’s a list of a few improvements i could think of for enhance. Enhance is already a fun class, but there are a few improvements that could be made.
1: Remove windfury totem, and make it a normal raid buff for the shaman class.
2: Cap chain at 6 instead of 5, and make it so the crash lightning buff applies to the whole duration instead of just the first hit and remove the soft cap for crash. This will keep low target aoe as enhance forte, while giving us some extra options for mass aoe. Not too weak, not too strong.
3: Bring back current s3 tier set as a talent by integrating primal maelstrom into the base pwave, which feels lacking without it, both as an ability and for flow, then replace the 2 point talent node with pwave cdr, but not based on wolves, but rather on maelstrom weapon generated. Then simply re balance a little. This will work well with both storm and elementalist since the proc is based on something that both specs need to generate anyway, in fact storm generates more, but elementalist benefits more from each pwave cast, so it should actually work out pretty damn well.
Also, it would frankly be a shame to let such a good tier set go. Wonderful gameplay.
4: Molten assault spreads to 5 targets, consider making it a 1 talent point node.
The issue with number three is that it forces a Prim Wave build. Storm is currently a distant second to elementalist because of the tier set. Baking the current tier set into the class just further reinforces this unless its part of the totemic hero tree and storm build gets something equal from the Stormbringer build.
I understand a lot of people like it and that’s great, but other people would like to be able to play their way, too.
Balance right now, should never be in the picture for adding something that’s good design and gameplay, because ultimately you can just… Balance the numbers later, and tah dah, problem solved! Isn’t that interesting?
And this is why many would not make good designers, because you are so hyperfocused on balance, and especially in the short term that you fail to see the long term, and the bigger picture.
If they listened to these arguments all the time, classes would literally be stripped down to 1 variable in order to make everything balance. It’s balanced, and it’s also trash.
And frankly speaking, balance has almost never been better than right now.
Storm is relying on elementalist being bad. We played storm on 10.1 because elementalist wasn’t good until they fixed a lot of glaring issues, and they are really good. They can fix elementalist unlike storm because elementalist’s issues were MSW generations.
Storm doesn’t have a same problem as elementalist, storm’s biggest problems:
Storm is all AoE or all ST talents
Storm is so shallow, that means storm have no controlled burst / no good cleave / other perks.
Storm is having a triple RNG elements.
All these problems have a same cause is DRE, it’s impossible to fix storm build as long as current DRE in a tree. Totemic / Stormbringer wouldn’t fix storm build at all because storm is relying on elementalist being bad. The problem is that elementalist is currently really good. I am 100% prefer that DRE should get deleted from the game then we can figure how to solve the problems with storm build.
Including 2h, but not limited to it. Current frost DK (and unholy tbf) is a series or “Hey, you know what would be cool” with no thought whatsoever to the ramifications of the changes and additions. 2h vs dw doesn’t play nice, BoS is impossible to balance, Obliteration has to be crazy strong to compete with BoS, and the two combine to gut the rest of the tree. That’s just a few examples.
Dps DKs used to be just as common as dps paladins, but now they are the least played dps in the game because the designers had no foresight and the class is awful to play. DK was my main for a long time.
So you are the grand master of all that is gaming and any pleb that disagrees with you has no clue what they’re talking about? You seem nice.
Storm isn’t losing to Elementalist because of the tier set, it’s losing to Elementalist because of reliability. Storm is so utterly RNG-based that it has literally no control over its own damage profile, which means it only functions on Patchwerk fights where that randomness can even out enough over time.
Any encounter mechanic that makes it important to ensure that your damage goes hard at specific intervals like burn phases or add spawns massively devalues Storm because it can’t guarantee DRE will proc in them, and any mechanic that closes your damage windows like immunity phases or having to run things out has a chance to completely waste your DRE procs. And don’t even think about trying to push high level keys with your damage completely out of your control.
The only thing propping Storm up in seasons 1 and 2 was Elementalist having glaring weaknesses in ST. Season 3 fixed that for Elementalist, so now Storm is limping along on ease of play regardless of what tier sets are.
Except this is really not true, and what I get from your argument is that you simply do not like breath at the end of the day, this “rule of cool” is just an obfuscation for the real issue you have with the spec, because if you just said “I don’t like it” you wouldn’t be taken as seriously.
But to argue that it’s unbalanceable, no.
I prefer elementalist, that doesn’t mean I think that storm should be removed or that it’s impossible to balance.
Rule of cool, basically gameplay is why we get specs like fire mage, frost mage, enhance shaman, ww rework on alpha and others. And your ideas result in nothing.
Also obliterate is indeed competitive with breath, especially in m+.
Oh but it has to be crazy strong to compete, ok and? Is that even supposed to be an argument? That’s what balance is, if you have 2 setups directly competing you have to give them relatively the same power in order to be balanced. That’s a literal non argument.
Was iterating this when the polls were going up for which tier set we’d have in season 4, but even if we had the season 2 tier set, Elementalist far and above would be the play because honestly, the whole tier set had more going for Elementalist over Storm in the end. The Chain Lightning MSW refund had insane value for Elementalist because you could afford to utilize it if you managed to blow through 2 stacks of EB. Storm you can’t due to the risk of hitting chain lighting and then proc’ing DRE.
In season 1 the only time you would even consider Storm was Terros, which if you didn’t proc well was griefing your entire raid and if you were on Boss group on Broodkeeper which is also griefing your raid given Elementalist back then was perfect for Add group given the pack sizes, a lot of packs needing prior damage and our utility. Season 2 had a bunch of pure single-target fights but the moment you put 2+ targets with the boss it was back to Elementalist. This season you’d only want it on Volcoross (who cares), Nymue, and Smoulderon. Nymue is nebulous since if you don’t get procs say when you’re doing the mythic add, there’s a chance your group isn’t killing in time. Smoulderon would feel terrible given the only CD you can time for the damage amp phases is Doomwinds for just the first and 3rd amp widowns vs just having a consistent damage output that Elementalist has. All other bosses have adds to leverage funnel damage on the bosses.
Storm is just bad is the reason why its not doing well.
This is 100% true. Let’s use Smolderon for example of encounter mechanic. You are DPSing Smolderon but DRE proc’d on mechanics, so you have to run out. You doing damage is completely dependent on how much you are getting a DRE proc. Enh can literally get 0 DRE procs during p2, you are doing tank damage during p2 due to downtime and RNG. This would be very frustrating to play and probably straight up quit if we have to play storm on bosses like Smolderon.
Elementalist in the current state is going to blow storm out of water with any tier set and we would play elementalist for everything no matter what. Design wise storm is a very bottom rock and you can’t save storm in a current state unless Blizzard rework DRE or just delete DRE from the game.
Make it so Lava Lash baseline spreads Flameshock to 3 targets and then each point of Molten Assult increases its spread by 1 so it spreads to 5 targets.
I don’t like the spec at all. Breath is part of the spec, but not the entire spec. I appear to have hit a nerve, though. Not sure why you’re taking this so personally.
and it results in the rest of the spec being gutted because of the strength of these two talents. Outside of cooldowns frost does healer damage and isn’t fun for most people to play. Which leads to
If you love current frost then great- good for you. Go play it and have fun. That doesn’t change the fact that DK is the least logged dps (according to raider io) and the people that still play it are begging for a rework.
Nah, I don’t think so to this. It’s already a really strong talent with strong supporting talents. Honestly its in a real good place and messing with it too much could end up ruining it. I’d rather them spend their time and energy looking at the other side of the tree’s capstone. Ascension and DRE needs to be changed. Not just cause it looks ugly (Though it is ugly and we need our glyph back that lets us not turn into that horrible thing) but if anything should get cooldown reductions it should be Ascension so we can drop DRE and get a real cooldown we can control running. Hell, I would be all for them changing the talents in general.
Balance is just numbers, this interaction feels very good to play with, so, keep it. And then re balance.
In fact do the same thing for ascension, remove dre for all i care, put static accumulation as a baseline interaction for ascension, and put some cdr for it in place of static. Or something like that.
This way, both storm and elementalist should remain at around the same level of power.
You still wouldn’t wanna use ascension for elementalist, even if it was pretty strong by itself, especially with pwave being basically as good as it is now, at the same time this would give storm an excellent alternative, that should be able to keep up, without the extreme rng of dre.
I do not get why it’s so hard for people to understand that balance is relative, you can tune just about anything, so you really should focus on gameplay because ultimately that’s what matters. Gameplay first, balance later.