Leveling Deadtime
I leveled a fresh Enhancement shaman through MoP Remix in Dragonflight, and the experience was highly frustrating, due in majority part to a spec tree laid out with seemingly no regard to leveling progression, only endgame builds. After leveling another Enhancement shaman through the current Legion Remix, I can confidently report… that nothing’s changed. And looking at the Alpha tree, it isn’t being fixed there, either.
Between having only two active melee attacks on cooldowns, no guaranteed Maelstrom Weapon generation, and lack of Haste, low level Enhancement is painfully boring to play. The majority of your gameplay for many levels consists of auto-attacking because you simply have nothing to press, and the Alpha tree is not only doing nothing to alleviate this, but may be making it worse.
The big issue is that Enhancement’s rotational core is designed entirely around a Maelstrom Weapon feedback loop, where everything in our offensive kit is doing some combination of generating Maelstrom Weapon, spending Maelstrom Weapon, and/or triggering off either that generation or spending; but our Maelstrom Weapon generation rate is balanced for entirely for endgame and heavily dependent on a combination of talents and optimized secondary stats.
Most egregiously, with Alpha removing Ice Strike entirely from the spec, the new Voltaic Blaze is now the earliest available source of guaranteed Maelstrom Weapon all the way at level 27; the same level Overflowing Maelstrom becomes available, allowing the shaman to spend up to 10 stacks of the resource they are still struggling to get 5 of.
Our most frequent and reliable source of guaranteed Maelstrom Weapon generation, Elemental Assault, doesn’t become available until level 50-flipping-3 at the absolute earliest, 16 levels after the shaman gained the ability to spend even more Maelstrom Weapon stacks they don’t have.
While it makes sense for the spec to start out with fewer buttons and a less frantic pace, this is not only extreme, but makes for a very poor segue into the spec’s final flow. Reliable Maelstrom Weapon generation must come online earlier in the tree.
The simplest solution is moving Elemental Assault to an earlier point in tree. With the current Alpha layout, my suggestion would be moving it into Crash Lightning’s current place; Crash Lightning down to Raging Maelstrom’s; Raging Maelstrom into Overflowing Maelstrom’s; and Overflowing Maelstrom down to Elemental Assault’s current place. Overflowing Maelstrom is entirely out of place in its current position, as a talent the spec can’t actually leverage until after picking up many other talents throughout the tree anyway, and makes much more sense in the final tier.
While this doesn’t cover all the bases in leveling Enhancement’s deadtime, it should help substantially, and make the development of the spec’s rotational kit feel much more natural.
Solo Survivability
I went into detail about the survivability issues of the class as a whole in my Alpha Class Tree thread, but I feel the need to dig additionally into Enhancement’s specific soloing woes as a notoriously squishy melee spec, to the point of sometimes struggling to stand up to the basic autoattacks of simple world mobs without overgearing.
Blizzard has long held that self-healing is meant to be shamans’ primary survival strategy. But while Alpha is increasing the viability of this strategy through the change to Raging Maelstrom separating our healing empowerment from our damage empowerment, and the addition of Therazane’s Resilience/Reactive Warding to the class tree, the issue of being able to live long enough to self-heal is still primed to be an issue – especially at low levels, where Maelstrom Weapon generation hasn’t come online enough to fully support Raging Maelstrom procs, and the Earth Shield talents are still locked away in the final talent tier.
Enhancement needs something a little extra to survive the basic damage intake of a soloing melee spec, and if it can’t be in the Class tree for balance reasons, it needs to be either something baseline to the spec, or rolled into existing unavoidable spec talents as secondary effects.
The simplest and most obvious thing would be a straightforward Armor bonus to bring our Mail closer to Plate value, whether through a direct percentage bonus, allowing our Agility to contribute to Armor, or some other avenue. But if the devs want something a little more creative, maybe Windfury procs could also grant us a stacking Dodge buff, and/or Flametongue grant increased Parry against. Whatever form it takes, though, this defense should be passive, and baked in early for the benefit of leveling Enhancement shaman who don’t have the tools yet to rely on self-healing.
Mechanics vs Theme
One of the first things a lot of us clocked upon seeing the Alpha trees for both Enhancement and Elemental was that Frost has been all but entirely eradicated as an element in our damage profile, solely lingering in our beloved cockroach of a spell, Frost Shock, which has been reduced from rotational button to a light CC with a vestigial damage component, or as itself a vestigial component of an omni-element spell like Elemental Blast or Primordial Storm. I can’t speak to Elemental in depth, but for Enhancement at least, this is only one facet of what the mechanical design of the Midnight Alpha is looking to cost us in terms of theme and fantasy.
Mechanics vs Theme In-Depth
Master of (Some) Elements
Sticking with the frost issue for now, wielding the four elements together has always been a core aspect of the shaman fantasy, but one which has frequently not manifested meaningfully in our gameplay. Enhancement has spent a lot of its history struggling to feel like we tangibly wield more than just fire and lightning, with Earth and Frost frequently relegated to a single niche ability if present at all. Worse, sometimes we even find ourselves feeling like we’re being reduced to only fire or lightning, usually through turning Stormstrike and Lava Lash into dichotomous abilities that we have to fully commit to one or the other of in some way.
We have been seeing shades of this ever since the Dragonflight talent tree built itself out of a clear division into a Lightning side and a Fire side, creeting the Storm vs Elementalist builds, which wound up translating into the Stormbringer vs Totemic trees in TWW, with Storm/Stormbringer being so fully committed to Stormstrike that the specs were almost one button rotations before the One Button Rotation.
On the other hand, Elementalist and Totemic (barring Totemic’s disastrous S1 implementation) have come perhaps the closest of all iterations of Enhancement to finally landing the 4 element fantasy, with Elementalist incorporating Air, Fire, and Frost in healthy balance, and Totemic representing Air, Fire, and Earth at the expense of Frost falling out of the rotation as Surging Totem lacks any support for either Ice Strike or Frost Shock/Hailstorm.
Going by the Alpha tree, Midnight is set to hold the course on Totemic representing Air, Fire, and Earth; but now completes its TWW rejection of Frost by all but fully removing it from the spec. This is a sharp loss for the elemental mastery fantasy, as despite the refrain that we still have water represented by healing spells, the bottom line is that Enhancement is a DPS spec. If an element is not represented in our damage profile, it doesn’t land the same way for fulfilling our fantasy.
The Melee/Caster Tightrope
Enhancement’s unique fantasy within the shaman class, if not the game in full, is being a melee/caster hybrid. This fantasy is powerful, alluring, and just plain fun, holding a space in the game’s class design that few other specs approach, and no others quite land in. This may well be in large part due to what a tightrope act it can be to not feel like the spec is tipping too far into being too much of one or the other, with too much emphasis or power put onto one side, or too few buttons to represent the other.
Elementalist/Totemic Enhancement has managed to walk this line well for the most part. Stormstrike, Lava Lash, and Ice Strike (DF)/Sundering (TWW) present a solid melee core through a combination of frequency, MSW generation, and either solid direct damage or strong interactions with other abilities. MSW spenders comfortably represent the caster side without ever threatening to overshadow the melee side via the build/spend MSW cycle, and reinforce that cycle’s central importance to the rotation via maintaining Legacy of the Frost Witch and Feral Spirit’s cooldown reduction. Crash Lightning sort of straddles the line, being a weapon strike with a weapon attack animation, but also heavy emphasis placed on its magical cleave both audio/visually, and mechanically. Flame Shock does fall out of the rotation directly, but its crucial importance to Lava Lash’s cooldown reduction and Primordial Wave’s cleave always keep it’s DoT presence firmly in mind.
While it’s hard to say without being able to try the rotation directly, the Alpha rotation looks to be losing this balance at least on paper. With Ice Strike fully gone and the loss of Sundering’s chance to reset itself through Molten Thunder, our melee representation outside of Sundering’s 30 second cooldown is reduced to only Stormstrike and Lava Lash, with Crash Lightning straddling the line behind them.
Crash Lightning being promoted to fill this gap in the single target rotation along with the AoE rotation still feels like a loss to the melee side, given the aforementioned heavy emphasis on its magical nature compared to its melee side, and the promotion of Voltaic Blaze to full rotational button for all situations only further tips the scales toward caster – especially as Voltaic Blaze adds 3 guaranteed Maelstrom Weapon stacks per cast with Fire Nova, putting it ahead of both Stormstrike and Lava Lash in terms of MSW generation, even with both Elemental Assault and Lightning Strikes talented.
And that’s setting aside how weird it feels to have 2 AoE abilities poised to have comparable or possibly even higher priority to Stormstrike and Lava Lash even in our single target rotation. Add Sundering, and our single target rotation has more AoE strikes in it than single target attacks.
Add in the automated Lightning Bolts and Chain Lightnings from Ride the Lightning and Thorim’s Invocation, the increased emphasis on always spending exactly 10 MSW from Lightning Strikes, and the MSW refunds from Thunder Capacitor, and we’re tipping more and more off-balance.
Cooldown Incohesion
The Alpha change that really got me on this track of noticing mechanics overriding themes and fantasy was the change to combine Sundering and Primordial Wave. Mechanically, this makes a ton of sense. One of Totemic’s current pain points is being overloaded on ~30 second cooldowns between Sundering, Primordial Wave, Surging Totem, and Feral Spirit after CDR; doubly so during our 1 minute Doom Winds window when we want to pack as many of those abilities into an 8 second window as possible.
Combining the two static 30 second CDs into one is a very tidy way to reduce that congestion mechanically. But thematically, it makes no sense whatsoever. How does cracking open the ground with Sundering thematically lead to a catastrophic weather event in Primordial Storm? These are both thematic elements which comfortably fit into our kit independently, but they do not lead from one to the other as a 2 stage combination ability.
On the same note, what thematic sense does it make for Sundering to summon a Feral Spirit? For that matter, it feels like a thematic failure for the Feral Spirit redesign to summon only one wolf at a time, on cooldowns separated by more than double their durations. The entire thematic core of wolves in contrast to any other animal we could be summoning is that they are pack animals, and now we can only summon them individually but for the 1/minute line up of Sundering and Doom Winds, which summon wolves of opposing elements. The theme is in shambles, even setting aside how crappy it feels for our iconic DPS cooldown of 17 years to be butchered into a passive trigger off other abilities.
Taken all together, the changes to the Enhancement spec tree seem to be driven entirely by mechanical experience, with none at all to the effects these changes have on the fantasy experience.
Mechanical Concerns
Cleave Overload
With the promotion of Crash Lightning, Voltaic Blaze, and Sundering to our builds, potentially universally, we are now in the bizarre position of having more AoE strikes than single-target attacks in our single-target rotation. With both Tempest and Surging Totem also leaning into AoE damage, and the likely universally-taken Ride the Lightning, plus both Doom Winds and Primordial Storm as AoE cooldowns, we are about to be made of so. Much. Cleave. Just… all the cleave, all the time, non-stop.
How intentional is this, and what is this going to mean for our performance disparity between raid and M+? I’ve never been a fan of pretending that ST vs AoE was a compelling build choice and not just the ability to count past one target, but this seems extreme, not to mention potentially inconvenient in any situation where we don’t want to accidentally aggro something nearby, but can’t not be a walking blender and still do damage to what we do want to kill.
I’m Sick of Gambling
Fire Nova is a 30% chance to trigger on Voltaic Blaze cast. After the last two seasons of routinely watching my 40% chance for Sundering to reset its CD instead immediately roll the other 60% on its first cast, I am not the least bit enthused for this mechanic.
I’d much rather have some way to guarantee this effect, even if it means bringing the damage down accordingly. That could take the form of Voltaic Blaze turning into Fire Nova for recasting within 10 seconds after the initial cast, or we could give Molten Assault a callback by making Voltaic’s initial cast cause our next Lava Lash on a Flame Shocked target to trigger the Nova.
While we’re at it, could we also transfer Lashing Flames’ effect trigger from Sundering to Fire Nova? It’s just a lot cleaner for AoE.
Lightning Capstones
The entire bottom left capstone line gives me trouble.
Ride the Lightning has several apparent issues for me. First, the automated casting aspect tilts the balance of our melee/caster tightrope act more toward caster. Second, at least from the Alpha videos I’ve watched, a Chain Lightning just spontaneously jumping off of us in the middle of our melee animations looks silly, and has potential to cause visual confusion with Thorim’s Invocation or our normal manual casts of Chain Lightning as to just what the heck we’re actually doing. Third, the high potential for random jumps to nearby creatures we didn’t want to aggro.
I would suggest changing this effect to make Stormstrike and Lava Lash cause our active Lightning Shield to surge, dealing its damage to nearby enemies at X% effectiveness. This gives us better control over what gets hit by the effect, and allows for a more distinct visual effect that doesn’t look weird without an accompanying casting animation. It could be as simple as just using the initial orb spawn animation sans our casting animation.
Lightning Strikes seems like a step backwards from Legacy of the Frost Witch in terms of mental tax on the player. Even setting aside the current form requiring specifically 10 stacks of MSW expenditure at once instead of cumulatively as LotFW does, only buffing the next single cast of Stormstrike or Lava Lash has potential to make it important to contort your rotation to expend the buff on the right spell instead of just being able to naturally continue your rotation under a duration-based damage bonus. This seems contrary to the stated design goals for Midnight, and we’d be better served by just keeping LotFW and maybe buffing its duration a little longer.
Thunder Capacitor is just carved off from current Static Accumulation, and I’m distinctly not a fan on how it can already throw a wrench in the flow of our Maelstrom Weapon cycle. A sudden MSW refund instantly becomes a top priority to spend right after you’d just mentally cleared that off your check list. There’s a reason this effect is currently gated behind Ascendance and its auto-spend mechanic, and I’m not a fan of it moving into a position to become a universal required pick.
You Killed Our Spirits
I don’t necessarily disagree with consolidating cooldowns, but this can’t be the best way. I’ll give Doom Winds the praise that has the highest potential for skill expression within its active window, but I will firmly hold that Feral Spirit with Witch Doctor’s Ancestry expresses more skill through optimizing your Maelstrom Weapon generation for its CDR, while also giving some of the most tangible and satisfying real time feedback on how well you’re performing based on how quickly you’re getting your wolves back up.
Seasons 3 and 4 of Dragonflight felt so good when you could consistently be summoning a fresh pack of wolves just as the previous pack was expiring if you were executing well on your Maelstrom Weapon cycle. Feral Spirit generation got out of hand in TWW entirely because this expansion suddenly started flooding us with MSW out the gate and only sporadically pumped the brakes, but that’s an entirely solvable problem just by capping WDA to only proc once per second or something.
This could then be adjusted into a cooldown reduction cadence on Feral Spirit with good gameplay to be consistently bringing them off cooldown just as the previous pack expires again, bringing back that great DF S3/4 feeling. I would be much happier to see this version of Feral Spirit return to the spec instead of the utterly neutered passive version currently on Alpha, potentially as a replacement for Deeply Rooted Elements on Ascendance’s choice node. This would turn that node into a choice between a 2 minute burst cooldown (once the fact that it’s currently a questionable upgrade from Doom Winds at all) or heightened sustained damage.
If Feral Spirit doesn’t see any kind of change from its current Alpha form, it needs to move earlier in the tree to have any hope of being picked up in any situation, as it’s currently far too sad to compete with anything else in our final tier.
Fire & Ice
I’m not hopeful to see a new set of Frost spells be worked into our rotation at this stage in development, or even for Ice Strike and Hailstorm to return as alternative build routes. But what I could hope for including a Frost option strictly as an optional reskin of our Fire abilities.
Make Flametongue Weapon a choice node with Frostbrand Weapon. No mechanical difference, just swapping Fire damage and visuals for Frost on the weapon imbue, and our our spells. Lava Lash reskins to Ice Strike with no mechanical difference; Sundering gets an ice shard reskin; Voltaic Blaze and Flame Shock can stay the same or get iced over, too. It’s not ideal, but I’ll settle for it if it means finally getting the frost element on my plate.
Stormbind
Not even gonna try and be cute about the title on this one, 'cause it doesn’t deserve it. This is a dead talent in the spec tree. We have abundant slowing options in the Class tree, way more important things to take in the spec tree, and an uncontrollable, unpredictable, unevenly applied snare is just as likely to be a liability in M+. This does not belong here.
lol. Kidding, ofc, but it’s weird that our mastery buffs frost damage when we do zero frost damage.