Since I haven’t gotten access to the beta forums yet, I’m posting my general beta feedback on enhance here for the time being.
Enhancement Shaman Feedback:
MSW as a buff rather than a resource:
The current design of MSW as a buff rather than a resource and the current spell alert for MSW makes it hard to keep track of stacks 6-10. Would be nice if MSW acted like a resource (e.g., holy power) so that it was reflected below the character nameplate.
Also, on entering combat, MSW stacks start at 0 which makes the shaman very vulnerable at the beginning of combat. What if MSW stacks also built up while out of combat so that the shaman entered combat with MSW stacks? This could potentially be a talent in the enhancement tree, or a talent in the general tree so that ele/resto shamans that take the MSW talent get an instant cast spell out of it, even if they don’t melee for additional stacks during a fight.
General Tree:
Chain Heal: Would be nice if this benefited from swirling currents, refreshing waters, and the PvP talent swelling waves in some way (e.g., increased healing received by the primary target or by the shaman). Since it doesn’t benefit, it’s hard to justify taking/using this talent.
Lava Burst: This makes for alot of abilities occupying a similar ranged single target niche with ele blast and lighting bolt. Not a big complaint, but might be nice if ele blast was a choice node with a second charge of lava burst as another option for those looking to simplify the rotation a bit.
Thunderous Paws: This seems pretty weak as is since you can’t choose when to trigger the snare removal/speed boost since it is just spent the first time you enter ghost wolf regardless of whether you want it. To be appealing should have a substantially shorter ICD, like somewhere between 15-30 seconds instead of 60. And/or what if it only triggered the ICD if it actually removed a snare? Would also be more appealing if it could remove roots as well.
Earth Elemental: Would be nice if this increased temporary current health by the same amount as it increases maximum health. Like rallying cry. So that it was better as a reactive save. As is, it only increases current health by 15% of current health (e.g., if you use earth elemental when you are at 20% health, it will increase your current health by 15% and cause it to go from 20% to 23% of max instead of increasing it to 35% of max like battle masters or rallying cry).
Greater Purge: This seems like a clearly inferior option to regular purge. Rather than a spammable dispel that costs 10% mana per buff, you get a 12 sec CD dispel that dispels exactly 2 buffs and costs 20% mana. So you trade the ability to spam dispel in exchange for saving 1 GCD in the exact situation where there are exactly 2 buffs on one target that you want to dispel. In that exact scenario you save 1 GCD and nothing more since you are still paying 20% mana for the 2 buffs. In every other scenario this ability is worse. This needs to be significantly improved or it should just be removed.
In order to compete with regular purge it need to fill a different role by either guaranteeing to remove a key buff at a key moment or sacrificing repeat casts for something else like mana efficiency. For example, it could either clear all magic buffs on the target and have a longer CD like 30 seconds (like kleptomania for mages), or if it stays as 2 buffs, then it could have a shorter CD and be more mana efficient per buff than regular purge. Such as: 2 buffs, 10% mana instead of 20%, 6 sec CD instead of 12.
Focused Insight: This is a very awkward talent. Particularly for enhance, since we can spread flame shock with lava lash and might only need to apply it once in a fight. Seems inefficient to have to keep casting flame shock on targets that already have it when you don’t need to cast it just to get the healing buff. How about if any shock could apply this like the old version and it just has an internal CD so it can only proc every 5 seconds or something? Alternatively, just eliminate this so that enhance healing isn’t nerfed based on its existence.
Enfeeblement: How about changing this to decrease movement speed DURING hex? That would make it much more desirable since it would actually help lock down the hexed target so they couldn’t so easily position themselves into damage to break out.
Nature’s Fury: This talent provides a very small benefit for 2 points. Nature damage is only a small fraction of the enhance DPS kit, particularly in PvP where lightning bolt and chain lightning are rarely used. Would be nice if this was a more versatile stat node. Like regular crit. Or how about renaming it “elemental fury” and making it increase crit for nature+frost+fire like how enhance mastery is. That way it would increase crit chance on half our kit at least (since the other half is physical from WF, stormstrike, auto attack, feral spirt, ascendance). Also, if regular crit is budgeted at 1.5% per point, then maybe as elemental fury it should also be bumped up to 3% per point for 6% crit for 2 points since even affecting nature/frost/fire it’s still only about half our damage. Another option would be to reduce this to a one point talent and make it just give 3% crit for nature/frost/fire.
Winds of Al’Akir: This is underwhelming as a one point talent, nevermind as a two point talent, since having 3 totems down at a time seems like it could be a rare occurrence. Would be nice if the totem buff was 5% per totem instead of requiring 3 totems to get any benefit. Would also like to see this reduced to a one point node. Or just delete this talent all together. I don’t think it would be missed. If this were eliminated, then spirit walk/gust could take it’s place and improved spirit walk/gust could go where spirit walk/gust is now which would be a much more satisfying investment than ak’akir.
Spirit Walk/Gust of Wind: In order to take this, the shaman MUST spend 4 points on Nature’s Fury and Winds of Al’Akir which are both extremely low value talents and would never probably be taken otherwise. Would be nice, as mentioned above, if those other talents were buffed or changed. But it would also be nice if there was an alternative path to get to spirit walk/gust.
Most things in the tree have more than one potential path to get to them. And no other talent in the tree requires 4 mandatory filler points. On possibility would be another path from flurry to brimming with life to spirit walk/gust. Another possibility would be to swap spirit walk/gust with Winds of Al’Akir so that only a 2 filler point commitment is necessary.
A third possibility would be to switch spirit walk/gust with spirit wolf/thunderous paws. That way the base mobility talent is easily accessible and the spirit wolf talents are placed together for someone that wants to specialize in that. Feels bad as enhance to have to commit so many points in order to reclaim what has long been our baseline sprint/root break.
Gust of Wind: This used to be a 15 second CD in Legion. It’s feels like a very small distance to jump for a 30 second CD. Could this get another 5-10 yards added if it’s going to be this long of a CD? Or could it break snares/roots like spirit walk does? Would also be nice if this pushed you higher in the air so that it worked better going up hill.
Elemental Warding: Would be nice if this was more versatile since it’s at a key juncture point in the tree. A versatility stat node would be great here instead. Or all damage and just less of it, like 1.5% per point.
Improved Lightning Bolt: This is required to get thunderstorm and lightning lasso but is very specific and doesn’t provide much benefit for enhance shaman. Particularly if you pick up lava burst and elemental blast which seem likely to be common picks. You might actually NEVER cast lighting bolt unless you take primordial wave and then only every 45 seconds to trigger it. Also makes it so that chain lightning isn’t as clear a choice in 2 target situations when this was just addressed during shadowlands by brining chain lightning damage up to be closer to lightning bolt.
Would be nice if this talent was more flexible to work with more builds and in more situations. Like making it increase all elemental damage or at least all nature damage. Or at the very least make it affect chain lighting too so its agnostic on target count and doesn’t mess with the priority between the two (which could also be an issue for Thorim’s Invocation since that works with either spell).
Thundershock: This ability barely moves the affected enemies off the ground and is an extremely short (fraction of second) cc. So, it basically just acts as an interrupt. Would be nice if this either had a bigger knock-up for a longer cc effect or, better yet, was a choice node with thunderstorm itself so that it doesn’t have to compete with lightning lasso as it seems hard to justify taking this over lasso and seems more like an alternative rather than an improvement as compared to thunderstorm.
Poison Cleansing Totem: This is a very short duration totem on a long CD. Would be nice if it cleansed ALL poisons from a target every 1.5 seconds instead of just one (maybe based on the closest party member or the one with the least remaining health). Cleansing just one poison effect makes it very unreliable and not worth the point, at least for PvP, since you can’t count on taking off a key poison and may just get easily reapplied filler.
Improved Spirit Walk/Gust of Wind: How about making this a one point talent? Two points is pretty expensive for the amount of CD reduction. Or at least make spirit walk/gust and the improvement talents more easily accessible. As is, you already have to spend 4 filler points to get the baseline talent plus an additional two for the improved version which is basically 7 points for one ability since the 4 filler points are almost worthless, aren’t at all related, and aren’t necessarily anything that someone that wants spirit walk/gust actually wants to pick up. It’s very limiting on build options to have to spend 7 points for one ability and feels really bad.
Stoneskin Totem: Can this be a stronger effect on a longer CD? Spending a global (and a talent) for 10% physical DR for 15 seconds seems really lackluster. Would be alot more tempting if it was a bigger damage reduction on a longer CD so that it could act like a kind of defensive for important moments.
Enhancement Tree:
Overflowing Maeslstrom: This talent would feel alot better if it also increased max MSW stacks by 5 so that you can spend 10 and cap at 15. That way you don’t constantly overcap if you try to cast at exactly 10 stacks and you can still bank some stacks for healing like you can with the regular 5 stack casting. As is, I feel like casting around 8 stacks to avoid an overcap. The biggest issue with that is actually the newly announced LotFW redesign since you wouldn’t actually get the LotFW proc each time by casting at 8-9 stacks. Increasing the overflowing MSW cap to 15 would fix both problems (overcapping MSW and missing LotFW procs). Another solution would be to reduce the stack requirement for LotFW to 8 so that it procs after using 8 or more MSW stacks and then resets.
I’m also worried that this talent is going to be hard to balance in PvP. Particularly on the healing side with huge heals for the same mana cost as smaller 5 MSW heals. It might be better if this talent didn’t exist if the result is going to be a nerf to MSW spender throughput to balance this talent. Seems easier to balance if this talent didn’t exist and our MSW building and spending is just balanced around the bank 10 spend 5 model which works really well.
Doomwinds: Wish this was guaranteed instead of 75% chance (although it admittedly does scale with mastery). I’d happily trade the extra damage for more reliability here. Feels bad when it doesn’t proc. Particularly with how short of CD it is and how dependent the damage is on building stacks of forceful winds. Also, could the on-use hit be AOE instead of single target? Like crash lightning is? That way it could generate multiple FFW stacks in AOE so it scales better.
I’m also curious if this is really procing at 75%. Feels much lower. Like I will have full uptime on target and hit doomwinds, stormstrike, crash lighting and frost strike (don’t know if that procs WF but would be nice if to counts as a mainhand attack for that) plus have auto attacks and I’ll end up with 1-2 FFW stacks meaning only 1-2 procs… Feels like I should be getting ALOT more procs if its a 77% proc chance w/mastery…
Elemental Blast: As mentioned above, maybe this could be a choice node with a second charge of lava burst as an alternative to simplify the rotation. Maybe with a small increase to lava burst damage (10-20%?) as well to make it more competitive with elemental blast. It already is an auto-crit and has a shorter CD than elemental blast so has some advantages as compared to elemental blast to begin with.
Storm’s Wrath: An additional .64% chance to proc stormbringer and WF, albeit one that increases with mastery, seems really low value. That’s an extra 1% chance to proc stormbringer and WF for every 25 mastery. So at 50 mastery you are still only talking about 2% chance to proc stormbringer and WF. Would be nice if this was either a bigger increase (200%?) or if it had a secondary effect, like giving stormstrike 2 charges so that stormbringer doesn’t reset the existing CD and potentially get wasted.
Stormblast: This seems kind of weak given that it’s only a percentage of the damage of stormbringer which is only a 5% proc rate. Could this just be baked into stormbringer baseline instead or what about baking this into the new Storm’s Wrath to bring up the value of both talents? And how about replacing it with echo of the elements (stormstrike and lava lash now have 2 charges) and putting echo where crashing storms is now so that it’s easily accessible for all builds. Given everything going on in the tree, it would be really nice to have the flexibility to save/spend charges.
Primordial Wave: Why is this still shadow damage? Shouldn’t it be elemental damage (fire/frost/nature) like elemental blast above it?
Elemental Assault: Two points is a big investment this far down in the tree to get a reliable MSW generator. Would be nice if the MSW generation could be obtained for just one point. Maybe take out the extra damage and make a separate talent for stormstrike damage so someone that just wants the MSW generation could get that for one point?
Legacy of the Frost Witch: I much prefer this as a 5 point reset which is intuitive and predictable. The upcoming resdesign seems like it will make this talent more awkward and less intuitive to use and harder to keep track of/predict. Particularly if you are using overflowing MSW because when running that talent it might be pretty common to cast at 8 stacks or so to avoid overcapping which means you would end up procing legacy at odd intervals that might be hard to keep track of. At 5, you would have still gotten it every cast which is intuitive and predictable. A couple solutions mentioned above would be increasing MSW cap to 15 with overflowing MSW talent or lowering LotFW MSW stack requirement to 8 instead of 10.
Also, instead of a guaranteed increase to your next stormstrike damage, it’s just an increase to physical damage over the next 5 seconds. So if you cast a heal that triggers it for example while rooted/being kited/kiting, you might just lose the benefit before you get to your target whereas you would have been able to save the stormstrike damage buff for a longer period of time. We also don’t really have other physical buttons to press besides stormstrike other than doomwinds/feral spirit to exploit the 5 second window.
Elemental Spirits: Is this still going to be 2 random wolves? If so, how about the 3 choices being physical, nature and fire. Forst is potentially a negligible source of damage. Even with hailstorm and ice strike it stills seems like it might be a small percentage, particularly in low target scenarios.
PvP Talents:
Unleash Shield: With elemental orbit talented, the shaman can now have two shields at once. However, if lightning shield and earth shield are both active, then only the knock back from lightning shield applies. The root effect from earth shield is not triggered. Would be nice if both effects proc’d such that the target is knocked back and then rooted.
Shamanism: This talent still costs the same mana as the regular 40 second 30% haste raid-wide buff. Also, UNLIKE the raid-wide buff it is ON GCD. This would be a much better/more competitive talent if the mana cost was eliminated or at least reduced to 10% and if this was taken OFF the GCD. As is, it’s only a 10 second 20% haste buff and being on the GCD eats an entire global which negates a large portion of the actual benefit for the shaman.
Grouding Totem: Would like to see this come OFF GCD like other interrupt and magic defensives. Playing as enhance, there aren’t spells and the playstyle is general instant cast GCD locked so spells can’t be cancelled if opponents start casting right after the shaman presses a button, making it is hard to get grounding off to stop a cast before the GCD is up again which makes grounding unreliable as a single spell stop and can waste it.
Ride the Lightning: This talent doesn’t work alot of the time due to its strange requirements (e.g., no proc at all if there is only one eligible target or if there are exactly 2 eligible targets in melee range since neither the chain or forked lightning requirements are met). Would be nice if this reliably did SOMETHING all the time. Like make it hit your primary target + 2 additional targets via chain if there are 2 if within 8 yards or 1 additional target via forked if less than 3 targets within 8 yards.
Seasoned Winds: This is very niche and never feels good to take since it only helps after a successful interrupt its tricky to retain high uptime on it and it only helps if the shaman is the target. Would be much better if this reduced the caster’s damage done from that school by 15% for 12 seconds instead so that it retains its value when the shaman isn’t the target.
