Both specs have severe playstyle limitations that make so many encounters/situations just painful to play, with nothing to show for it.
Class tree is messy with loads of 2 point talents, having no defensives, earth ele sucks, if it’s just a health buff now, why do we have a GIANT pet (with glyph btw) that gets in the way? We are constantly respeccing to get the utility we can provide (cos it certainly isn’t our damage) Boths specs only have 1 viable hero talent tree in all situations.
For actual gameplay though:
Flameshock is miserable, full stop. All specs rely on it, it doesn’t auto spread reliably and is pretty much too outdated for current encounter design that constantly has new targets to switch to, it’s a massive damage amp and its ticks make our rotations possible. Lavaburst/Lavalash should apply it and spread it passively, too many times you just lose out on damage completely out of your control. Or lower volcanic blaze’s cooldown by half at least and don’t have a target cap on it.
Why do we have to talent into frostshock?
The speedboost on casting ghostwolf we can talent into should be increased and or cooldown lowered or the damage reduction portion we can talent into should be fully applied instantly. I think that change alone would modernize the class feel immensely. It’s not like shaman is good in PVP.
Ele:
negative damage outside of ascendance unless you highroll back to back procs with stormbringer up, 2m ascendance is also just too short? mainly due to having bad low target damage and losing lots of damage in earthquakes
the cooldown misalignment causes problems all the time; i propose making ascendance cd 30s or 1 min shorter and make 30s stormbringer talent more appealing to use
cast time of elemental blast is brutal
horrible 2-3 target damage and constant switching between LB and CB depending how the mobs move, if a target dies and lavaburst being more or less a single/2t button now that does nothing
earthquake is a joke, the area is too small, period. and it has no place in modern wow, there are like no situations where you can get full value out of it and that’s with a competent tank, most of the time it genuinely feels like a waste to press it since you’re barely getting 1-2 ticks out of it.
i think i speak for everyone when i say that the constant target switching to maximize lightning rod is miserable and it’s not like we’re getting rewarded for it, with so many constantly moving targets, fast casts that need to be interrupted and a halfway broken tab targetting system, trying to play around it is a liability for almost all players in high end encounters but we are seemingly balanced around it in all situations
Enhance:
Since we are forced to play totemic, we have an absolute reliance on perfectly needing to do our mortal combat doomwinds window, ANY downtime (due to tanks moving, mechanics) dumpsters our damage to the point we might as well be healing
if targets die and flameshock didn’t RNG spread to a relevant target (happens all the time btw) your damage window is bricked cos you don’t get enough cdr when using lavalash
Primordial Storm is a sick ability, but deciding to either lose a chunk or damage due to waiting for 10 stacks and losing globals or using it at low stacks to do less damage but get more globals in doomwinds feels REALLY bad sometimes
As mentioned earlier, flameshock just doesn’t spread properly sometimes, i think the easiest fix is to just increase the amount of targets it can spread to
visual clutter, as cool as enh is, crash lightning, totems pulsing fire and lighting shooting out of us makes it really hard to see ground effects sometimes, particularily bad in nexuspoint
our feral spirit gap closer should not have a minimum distance, too many situations you will get out manouvered by your tank and cut off by ground mechanics and have to take the scenic route because you’re still too close to the mobs somehow, it’s not like it would break anything since it costs a global to cast and has a long cooldown
We really need attention and to get rid of these awful 3% stat nodes and 5 second off of totem nodes. They all feel awful to pick, the stat ones are mandatory and just artificially fluff out the talent tree too.
Buff Farseer. Bring back DRE. Bring back Icefury. Rework Earthquake.
I agree with a lot of this except for the visual clutter. I love enhances visuals and if anything I want things like Lava Lash to have a bit more visibility. I don’t think its too hard to see ground effects even with our visuals mostly because the way they’ve been making the ground visuals has been quite good overall, much better than in the past.
-Everything else though I agree with. I think downtime heavily impacts Enhance due to low duration on Doom Winds and Hot Hands in both Pvp and PvE. This is why I actually want Ascendance deleted and baked into Doom Winds a bit.
For example: Ascendance Capstone is replaced with a passive“Ascendant Doom: Doom Winds duration increased by 3 seconds. During Doom Winds, your Stormstrike is replaced with Wind Strike that has a 30 yard range, 20% reduced cooldown(?) and bypasses armor. Your auto attacks are replaced with Wind attacks that have a 30 yard range and bypass armor."
-Feral Lunge gap closer should not be limited by distance or my preference would be it should have a lower cd like 20 seconds and have a 30 yard range+movement speed boost. It hasn’t been updated in years, its damage effect literally does like 200 damage lmao, just delete that and add in movement speed+lower cd+5 extra yards.
-Stormbringer needs a rework bad. Theres so many things they can do that would be cool, a focus on enhancing Windfury and Stormstrike would be sick, there have been some great ideas passed around on the shaman discord and here. Some ideas for a Stormbringer rework:
“Imbued with Lightning: After using Tempest, your Windfury attacks are imbued with lightning, causing them to deal Stormstrike damage and x% increased damage for 10 seconds” This talent would replace Unlimited Power
“Storm Lash: After using Tempest, your next Stormstrike is replaced with Storm Lash. Storm Lash deals Stormstrike damage and has a 30 yard range. Inherits all benefits from Stormstrike talents” During Doom Winds this would also replace Wind Strike and just inherit its benefits (this is assuming the above ascendance changes were to happen ie it gets baked into doom winds) This talent would replace Awakening Storms
“Descending Skies: Doom Winds upgrades your Lightning Bolt into Tempest”
“Stormwell: Windfury Weapon damage increased by 10%. Crash Lightnings weapon enhancement now grants you 2% mastery"
Theres more to do regarding that but just throwing out a few ideas of what I’d kinda like to see.