11.0.5 Elemental shaman changes feedback
The general theme behind most of the changes to elemental shaman in 11.0.5 seem to be focused on removing a lot of the “single element” builds/play styles for elemental shaman and I view this as an absolute positive. For the majority of dragon flight, elemental shaman has been far too reliant on investing all of their power into either lava burst spam or lightning bolt. Elemental shaman, at its core, should see value in using all of their base spells no matter the build, and most of the changes being made in 11.0.5 are moving the spec in a very ‘unified’ direction.
Our major cooldown, Ascendance, has undergone a complete rework. No longer does this spell only benefit builds constructed around lava burst, and instead is a powerful, general purpose cooldown that every elemental shaman can make use of, no matter what other talent options they have chosen. The new benefit to overloads feels powerful and has great feedback with its visuals, but it is not without issue.
The base cooldown for Ascendance is 3 minutes, with the option to reduce this down to 2 minutes via the talent “First Ascendant”. Unfortunately, this comes at a steep cost, as “First Ascendant” is tied to a choice node with the talent “Preeminence”, which provides a massive 25% haste bonus to our Ascendance form, as well as increasing the duration by 3 seconds. World of Warcraft feels like it is moving past 3 minute (dps) cooldowns as more and more classes are given ways to shorten this wait time. I would like to see 1 of these 2 talent choices added into the base effect for Ascenance so that both the haste buff and the shorter CD can be obtained allowing Ascendance to feel more “complete”.
One could argue that the talent “Deeply Rooted Elements” is meant to be the workaround to the 3 minute CD of Ascendance by offering frequent “mini bursts” through its activation. Unfortunately, DRE has been a balancing issue for years now, and with the jump in power that the Ascendance form now has, the inconsistent uptime offered by DRE is more problematic than ever. The activation requirement for DRE has shifted back into casting any of our resource spender abilities, which is a very positive change, but the activation frequency is abysmally low, often being only 1 proc every 2-3 minutes. Ideally, I would like to see DRE removed so that more value and QoL can be added into the base ascendance ability, but if absolutely MUST stay then adjustments to its proc frequency need to be made. Its possible this is still holding on to values based on the frequency/availability of lava burst.
Speaking of cooldowns, our 2nd “major” ability is our elemental of choice. For years now, the base value of both fire elemental and storm elemental have been incredibly low and yet these poor guys have actually been nerfed this time around by lowering their active duration from 30 seconds down to 20. Even with the “Primal Elementalist” talent, these summons are just far too weak to be taken seriously. With the loss of both “Flash of Lightning” and “Skybreaker’s Fiery Demise”, our elementals now have no way of receiving a reduced CD. These abilities might feel good as 1 minute cooldowns, but at 2.5 minutes they are just unacceptably bad.
Some adjustments were made to Icefury which are a bit of a mixed bag. Icefury no longer being exclusively tied to lava burst is a fantastic change that gives the talent life and frost shock now hitting multiple targets is another great change to add some variety to our aoe. However, limiting icefury to only empowering a single frost shock per use leaves it feeling very lacking. In aoe, it can often feel less valuable to spend 2 globals on casting icefury+frost shock rather than just casting chain lightning twice. Icefury should really offer 2 empowered frost shocks per cast, or some other additional benefit to help elevate this spell in aoe.
Speaking of Icefury, what is “Flux Melting” still doing here? This talent has never once been worth taking and yet it has never been changed. This talent either needs some major buffs/reworks or to just be removed.
One of our newest talents “Erupting Lava” is genuinely awful. The additional 6 second duration to flame shock is nice but should honestly just be baseline to the flame shock and the passive of actually reducing the duration of flame shock via lavaburst feels absolutely terrible. Spending extra GCDs on re-applying flame shock is not good gameplay. The 2nd half of this talent needs to be reworked entirely.
“Herald of the Storms” is another new talent and is the replacement to “Flash of Lightning”. I think its really unfortunate that FoL had to die because of poor planning with the Farseer tree but at least keeping (and improving) the CDR on stormkeeper is nice. That said, with our general CDR gone, we have taken a hit in our defensive/utility strength, no longer having access to short CDs on important tools like Spiritwalkers Grace or Astral shift. If previous design decisions were made under the assumption we would be using these abilities more frequently, these areas might need to be watched more closely moving forward for future balancing.
The general talent shuffle is a mixed bag. Having easier access to talents like “Mountains Will Fall” and “Stormkeeper” is great but the middle section of our tree is full of useless, boring garbage like “Earthen Rage”, “Thunderstrike Ward”, “Searing Flame” and “Storm Frenzy”.
The final topic I want to touch on is Stormbringer, specifically the spell “Tempest’. From the first day it was made available on Alpha, this spell has never once felt good to press in single target. This spell should have never been designed to replace Lightning bolt. It does not benefit from Stormkeeper or Surge of Power so it disrupts your single target rotation and because of spell queuing issues, the game can’t smoothly transition into casting lightning bolt after you use Tempest. I cannot stress enough just how unenjoyable this spell is to use and I am begging for a redesign. Either make Tempest its own separate, standalone ability, have it replace an ability OTHER than lightning bolt, or let it inherit ALL of the buff that lightning bolt does. Literally anything would be better than the current design for this spell.
Despite a lot of negativity being expressed in my feedback, I do think that the major changes being made to Elemental Shaman in 11.0.5 are great and are moving the class in a fantastic direction as more emphasis is being placed on elemental unity as opposed to a forced split between fire and lightning spells. As long as this design philosophy is continued, I think that elemental shaman could be healthier in TWW than its been in years.