I’m just resigned at this point.
The animation and function changes to Lightning Bolt were divisive from the start. Half the playerbase praised it as the second coming, while the other half despise it wholeheartedly- and unlike the Ascension changes, we got not a single peep from Blizzard on any glyph, or adjustments on the effect.
Level 10 “shaman mains” headed out on the forums in droves to defend the changes to death. The blue cloud on it makes it look like sparks, not a bolt. The effect looks so disconnected from the other visuals now that I firmly believe it’s a leftover MoP spell they’re recycling.
The change to pwave is just the nail in the coffin. It’s clunkier, less fun, and still barely noticeable effect-wise. It’s just bad. The balance changes feel like Blizz simultaneously wants to kneecap us, while not fully committing to a nerf or rebalance.
At this point- no. No more. I’m dropping shaman unless they actually get their head out of the sand.
I feel your pain they have gone silly this tier dunno wtf they doing.
1 Like
It’s disheartening. It feels like they’re only listening to the slim group of players that agree with every change, and people who don’t play shaman.
Despite the massive changes happening, there wasn’t even a feedback thread on the ptr section. What gives?
Cannot say I agree. I have zero issues with the lightning bolt change, looks better than what it was IMO, and as for PWave, its a great change for Totemic Enhance Shamans.
Perhaps its not great as Ele Shamans, so perhaps there is an argument for that. For Enhance as Totemic, it does exactly what we wanted…
- Drop Totem
- Hit Flameshock
- Hit PWave.
- Get to 10 stacks, (which you will have) Hit P-Storm.
WIN! Maybe they may revisit PWave for Ele later on, but just as Ascendance was changed for Ele and not Enhance, well I guess we will se what happens.
They should remove Pwave all together for elemental and replace it with a talent that reduces the charges of lava burst by 1 and flame shock no longer procs it, but instead, increases the damage by 200% or something.
Something to make lightning bolt casting, earth shocking, hard hitting lava burst a thing again kind of like what ele used to be prior to this whole LB spam crap.
I do not like pwave I am more of a Chain Harvest person. I wish we actually have a choice between the two instead of just getting pwave and thats it.
1 Like
I personally hated chain harvest (on Ele, Enhance it was great) but I definitely agree it should have been a choice node situation.
As for the animation on LB, I like it more than it is now, particularly the casting animation. I kind of wish it was still more like what was originally shown in WoD or Sethrakk Lightningish, but this is ok.
You are right the particles around it are a little much, maybe if those are toned down or forked streaks more it would be better.
Never was Ele in SL so I never tried CH as Elemental. I can imagine it was a pain.
If you survived this long as a shaman, but the current lightning bolt change is an issue that crossed the line…
Its intriguing.
Esp since Ele is gonna be pretty good next season.
To be honest, it’s less about how terrible I think it looks, and more about how Blizzard has had such an utter lack of communication with us whenever they make contentious changes like these.
No feedback thread, not even a communication as to why they decided to make it so much slower.
What are you talking about? There was a big thread I started in the ptr section about prim wave that went from the very first week of ptr until now.
There were also multiple threads about Lightning bolt in the ptr section, I think one about loving it and one about disliking it. Not sure where you were, but people can only talk about the same thing for so long. They lasted a few weeks.
The thing is, yeah I think they should’ve added a second animation change for Lightning bolt and made it a glyph, ideally the 7.3 version that never made it off ptr, but not everyone will agree with what you are saying. Some people loved the new lightning bolt though, that doesn’t make them wrong lol. I actually like it a lot, but would prefer having a glyph that keeps the connection between you and your target like current lightning bolt.