Let me start by saying that I have been playing enhancement shaman since vanilla. In Vanilla, I had my good ole nightfall, swung away like a champ. In pvp, I loved the burst potential of my Two Handed weapons. I understand that todays Enhance shaman “Isn’t setup for that”, but I have to ask why we are restricted in choice, where so many melee aren’t?
There was an amazing post from the Shadowlands Beta Feedback forum on Shamans, https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feedback-shaman-class-changes/490695/4?u=razeil-black-dragonflight, written by Byucknah. You should read it, honestly, but if you don’t want to, at least look at his thoughts on Two Handed Weapons.
So let’s talk about it, and let’s bring Blizzards attention to this. There is a whole potential for class fantasy, and choice to be restored to the shaman class. Personally, I want to see this return. I want to see Lava Lash maybe be Dual Wield only, but replace it with Rockbiter/Boulderfist for 2H only.
I understand that I don’t understand what it takes to itemize and balance this class, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and it certainly doesn’t mean its not worth doing.
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There’s a lot of these threads but they always fill me with a bit of sadness because I know Blizzard will ignore our wishes…
Ion’s on record a couple times now saying that 2H Enhance is very unlikely to ever come back because it’s “so far removed” and because of specific mechanics that are more reliant on dual-wielding (Maelstrom Weapon and Windfury), and those two mechanics would be both unreliable and significantly weaker with 2H. That’s why we got DW in BC in the first place, to smooth out and make Windfury damage more reliable.
Still… It should be possible. I think Ion just doesn’t want the team to put development time into it when it takes much more work than something simple like 1H Fury or 2H Frost. Fingers crossed that one day Blizzard finally puts in the work anyways.
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You are more than welcome to continue asking for it. Just dont expect something to come back that never really worked to begin with. And hasn’t been the primary mode of play for over a decade.
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Arc, I appreciate the thoughts on why it can’t/won’t work. Do you think maybe the trade off in play styles could be worth it? For example, I give up maelstrom/WF proc reliability, in exchange for more potential burst.
The discussion on the DK forums seems to elude to Razorice being significantly weaker as a 2h Frost DK, Blizzards solution was to introduce new runes for DKs to offset that. In this scenario, they didn’t just flip the switch for 1/2 Handers, they took the time to make an adjustment to the runes as well. I think that having 2 Handed weapons generate 1-2 maelstrom, instead of 1, would work, and having WF extra procs ALREADY scaling with weapon damage, means the trade off should come down to consistency vs burst.
What are your opnions on the above?
How would it be more bursty? Stormstrike just does attack power damage now. So wouldn’t it be the same if it were 2-hander? WF also just does AP damage. Same with Lava lash. Each auto attack would hit a little harder I guess.
On my ret, templar’s verdict hits alot harder than stormstrike. But that’s not because it’s using a 2-handed weapon. That’s because it does more attack power damage and the damage is holy so it ignores armor and the damage is boosted by mastery.
Basing it off of the way they handled Obliterate for Frost DKs, equipping a 2H weapon as opposed to DW increases the damage in the tooltip of the ability. If you then assume they handled it similarly, your WF extra hits, as well as SS damage would scale up as well. This would mean that on a very lucky WF AA + SS you could achieve a higher burst potential.
I am all for burst.
Relying on RNG for burst is lame.
Its one of the reasons that windfury originally was so horrible. I don’t want to go to that lazy design again.
Akston,
Could you elaborate on how the current dual wield system doesn’t rely on RNG for burst? As far as I can tell, your WF Procs and Maelstroms are still based around RNG and chance on hit. The only difference being two weapons proc’ing instead of one.
Not directed at you
I don’t know; apparently completely uncontrollable RNG proc dmg from the newly buffed ascendance and the legendary helm has made ele the most enjoyable PVP exp ever. Though there is apparent crying that the potential 20 LvB you instantly proc that cost mana for each make you go oom and that is completely unacceptable and must be fixed.
should at least let enhance climb out of the dumpster before you push it back in
I expect that to get nerfed a bit for PVE. The legendary power “Deeply Rooted Elements” lets you proc ascendance at a 5% chance from lavaburst. Ascendance procs Lavaburst on FS targets. Control of Lava talent stacks with this.
Another fun aspect. Enhance going into Ascendance was also procing lavaburst on all targets.
https://i.imgur.com/BLmtGWr.jpg
Bah lost lvl 3.
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Dont forget primordial wave adds to this as well.
So get out 3-4 FS cast primordial wave into FS into Ascendance
20+ seconds of setup seems reasonable