These are just some thoughts on Stormbringer, and what I expected from the tree.
First off, I want to clarify that I am not commenting on the gameplay side of things, I don’t play Ele enough to know if this tree works or not.
This feedback is mainly from a theme perspective.
I was wondering if we could get a lighting-only Shaman, similar to Skyrim’s lightning mage build, and while Tempest does skew us in that direction, we are still forced to cast spells like Earth Shock, Elemental Blast and Earthquake just to proc it, as well as Flame Shock to proc Lava Surge.
Here are a couple of suggestions that could make this happen (with some cool gameplay stuff with it):
Lightning Shock (New Talent): Throw a bolt of Lightning at your target, dealing (250% Spell Power) Nature damage. Castable off GCD. Cost 60 Maelstrom. Replaces Earth Shock/Choice node with Earth Shock.
Thunder Break (New Talent): Blast your target with a bolt of lightning from the sky, dealing (160% Spell Power) Nature damage to your current target and all enemies within 8 yards. Castable off GCD. Cost 60 Maelstrom. Replaces Earthquake/Choice node with Earthquake
Sparks (New Talent): Applies a jolt of electricity to your target, dealing (104.5% Spell Power) Nature Damage over 18 seconds to your current target. If Lava Surge is talented, this damage has a 10% chance per tick to cause your next Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning to be instant cast and crit on targets with Sparks applied to them. 6 sec cooldown. Replaces Flame Shock.
Ascendance: Thunder (New Talent): Transform into a Lightning Ascendant, causing your next Thunder Break to apply Sparks to all targets hit. During this time, your Lightning Bolt generates 50% more Maelstrom, your Chain Lightning jumps to 1 additional target and every 200 Maelstrom consumed during this time grants Stormbringer. Choice node with Ascendance (renamed to Ascendance: Lava); Deeply Rooted Elements removed.
Note: These spells above could be anything, but I just don’t think that Stormbringer delivered on a “Lightning caster” like it should have. Whether you cast Earth Shock, Earthquake or Elemental Blast; none of those spells are Lightning-focused, and you must cast them to be able to use your Maelstrom and get Tempest (outside of the capstone node effect for Stormbringer).
Please consider this Blizzard. I suspect there are a LOT of people who are itching to play a Lightning caster; it may be one of the coolest elements in magic schools and would be a shame to be so under-utilized.
Hard disagree. While it’s thematically fine for Stormbringer to lean harder into lightning, shaman should never be reduced to only casting a single element. We are not just primitive mages, whatever Blizzard seems to think since Legion.
I previously argued for a lightning-only mage spec and people disagreed saying Ele should be the lightning mage, which is fair.
But then I argued for a version of ele that casts only lightning (while also having the non-lightning version via the farseer build), and now people are saying ele is not fit to be a lightning mage
Make up your damn mind.
Either you are a lightning mage or you aren’t. And if you aren’t a lightning mage then mage should get a 4th spec based around lightning.
makes you think I’m suggesting shaman should exclusively cast Lava Burst?
I did. Lightning should remain primarily a shaman element, but should not be the only element in a shaman’s arsenal, because the fantasy of being a shaman is mastering all the elements.
It’s a shaman. Speaker to the elements. Not “speaker to the lightning god”. It’s not rocket science here, your criticism is about the visual effects, that’s fine, provide feedback around that.
But its a leap to go from that to ‘make them lightning only’.
But blizzard intentionally wanting us to play fire/lightning not both and we cant change that. so with the exist of a spec called fire mage let us be lightning mage make much more sense. You need some uniqueness for a class and fire is clearly not one of them. I get that you are talking 'fantasy’of the class or the word ‘elemental’ or whatever, but casting every element wont create a uniqueness feeling for players.
Beside, the original shaman in war3 only cast chain lightning and earthquake i think? maybe im wrong
Yes. And that’s also bad. But the solution to that is not just changing out which single element the spec spams for another. Elemental needs a complete rework to make all of its elements matter. Not just trade one spam for a different one.
Yes. I believe I was very clear on that.
Yes. And I’m saying that’s wrong, because it goes against the fantasy of the class, and would take design space away from an all-elements version of the spec.
And I say take up design space literally, as it would eat up half the spec tree, dramatically reducing the number of talents available for the all-elements version of the spec to have any variety.
You don’t get to say what’s right or wrong on something as subjective as theme.
I want a lightning mage, and I even offered to keep it as addition to the current Elemental shaman build, but since you’re choosing to stonewall my opinion, I’m going to advocate for the removal of current Elemental Shaman build and instead replacing it with Lightning only.
You DON’T have a lightning mage in WoW, that’s my point.
You have a literal raid based around a lightning mage (Throne of Thunder).
You have an entire class that uses lightning
But you DON’T have a lightning mage.
This is an area of the game that brings players in for the sheer coolness of the element (arguably the coolest element there is)
This is the equivalent of saying that if Arcane mages had Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage but their damage spell was Pyroblast or Glacial Spike that you have an Arcane Mage.
No, that’s not an Arcane mage. That’s a spaghetti chef mage that casts whatever the hell they want.
I want lightning builders and spenders. I want a rotation of cool electricity, not this sorry excuse for Fire mage crap you see in Lava Bursts.
You ever wonder why Elemental Shaman gets left behind? (tuning wise, no raid buffs, no defensives, no reason to ever bring them over other specs in PvE content?)
Because they don’t have a direction. They don’t even have a direction in theme.
Either you fix it or stay hard-stuck in never-play land.
You spoke to two separate people man. We are not a hivemind with one single opinion on this spec. Going full lightning is boring AF, even mage is pushing back into multi element casting. There’s no reason at all to just abandon a huge aspect of shamans master of elements theme in order to triple down on a single section of it