What happened with this? I really hope work isn’t done here.
-Astral Shift was moved down from the first row so now theres only 3 talents in the first row which means to get to Earth Shield Ele and Enhance need to talent into Chain Heal which is a waste of a point especially for Ele (no way to instant cast chain heal means it will never get used).
-Utility totems are much harder to get than they were prior to the beta. Tremor is now on a choice node with Poison Cleanse and its at the bottom of the tree. Cap Totem CDR is a 2 point node and further down the tree.
-Many talents became 2 pointers for very little reason. Brimming with Life is a 2 pointer, Winds of Al’Akir is a 2 pointer, Cap totem CDR is a 2 pointer, Nature’s Fury is a 2 pointer, etc. And none of these are 2 pointers on live.
-Stone Bulwark removed and replaced with Totemic Surge (most totems CD reduced by 5 sec) which is an awful capstone. Its a nerfed version of what it is on live and its also just way too bland to be a capstone, it isn’t exciting at all which all capstones should be.
-We lost Thunderstorm. I know every class lost its knockback so it seems like the design decision is just completely moving away from knockbacks, but I have not seen any melee specs losing mobility to compensate for this. Warriors still have 2 charges+Heroic leap, Havoc DH still has insane mobility, WW monk still has insane mobility.
It feels like our class tree went backwards. It got some okay additions to it but nothing amazing. I understand we’re pruning buttons, but if Shaman utility is what gets hit the hardest here then we need to compensate with either some extra mobility or defensiveness. Hunter still has x2 Wall, Turtle Exhil and Roar of Sacrifice all in its class tree or baseline whereas Shaman has to use a pvp talent on Burrow (equivalent of turtle/ice block/bubble) and is now getting way less utility in its class tree.
PvP Shamans got a real bad deal here so far. Lost Thunderstorm, Lightning Lasso got moved to PvP talents so its much harder to take, Tremor is on a choice node with Poison Cleanse so we no longer have two good totems into Rogue Lock comps or rogue warrior etc, Stone Bulwark got removed leaving us with 1 less major defensive and no additional passive defensiveness was added to compensate (3 min earth ele is okay but it is not better than having Stone bulwark+5 min earth ele).