The short answer - Blizzard priorities. I don’t know or understand why they move heaven and earth for some class/specs, while giving the rest the usual canned answer of wait until the next raid patch/expansion. Blizzard controls the quality control and direction of how classes work.
Most players seem to gravitate towards simple and powerful spec (usually meta). While the same, or others, want a challenge that isn’t boring. I can’t speak for the other classes, but if you want complex and button bloat, Shaman is the class.
Coming back to your reply on Ret Paladins. They’ve had their issues. All I can say is that they must be easier to fix then Shaman. There is no build up and stacking damage buffs like Enhancement. It’s just frontloaded damage once you have enough holy charges. Which is why they do damage faster in the short run then Enhancement. That doesn’t work in PvP.
Retribution Paladins sure did come a long long way. In Vanilla they where kinda crappy, with TBC they “fixed” them by giving them Crusader Strike among other things, turning them into a “push whatever is off cooldown” class.
I remember having leveled a Enhancer Shaman in WotLK, and they played very similar to Retribution Paladin.
I think the issue with Enhancement Shaman is that they feel like cobbled together like a Frankensteinian Monster. There is no through-line with them. Seemingly they have attacks from way before, but suddenly they have to be bend into the “Enhancement” theme where they have allot things that enhance their power.
You could give Enhancer Shaman the same treatment that Retribution Paladins got, give them some form of combo-like-points and then several attacks that give those and other attacks that spend them.
So you mean to say, Enhancement Shaman right now is bad for PvP, because they need to ramp up their damage? I looked around on Icy-Veins and they list both Shaman DPS specs as low for M+ and Raid. Someone told me Enhancement Shaman is good in PvP, so that is wrong then?
With the changes they were making on Beta, I think they decided not to bring all the builds over to not have the issue of people flocking to a spec that they felt was meta or OP then get upset when the tuning numbers pass and the build is not the all powerful build.
I am a bit confused on why to bring the broken build over, but Shaman is not the only build that is broken. Druids, Paladins, Demon Hunters, have some issues with builds as well. So until they figure it out, all will just have to adapt.
Honestly, during this catch-up period there is nothing that a toon sitting at 470 at least cannot tackle. Toons leveling is getting crazy XP. So the whole patch is not crisis of sorts, but I do hope on beta that they get all the numbers right. 20 days until the new expac hits.
If you compare Ret Paladin to Enhancement Shaman’s power bar to spend on abilities, Ret needed 3 out of 5 charges to use, while Enhancement could use 1 out of 5 or 5 - 10 (depending on talent) to power up certain abilities, or at 5+ made into an instant cast. The difference is here is that Ret is fire and forget at 3 Holy Power as a spender, while Enhancement continues to scale incrementally, made instant by 5, and then buff cut in half, though still scaling between 6-10 charges of Maelstrom. Furthermore, Maelstrom at 5+ charges, affects Nature and Fire spells to become instant cast. It can’t tell the difference between offensive and defensive use. So, if you heal yourself, you’re hard stopping your offense. Which simulates the idea of what it would be like to be a Shaman Tank as your DPS greatly falls. We’d need a class/spec talent to deal with this issue. Of which hasn’t been suggested nor on Blizzard’s radar as a thought or problem.
The other issue in PvP, and maybe more important is survivability, Ret Paladin was better at it then Enhancement. Divine Protection to hard stop a focus always beat out Shaman self-healing and forced to use Maelstrom charges in the process. We didn’t have much else going for us in survivability. One of our key defining class abilities - Reincarnation, isn’t unusable due to being greater then 5 min. CD. Even if we could use it, it wouldn’t matter and show how bad this “defensive” would be. Oh look, I got to come back and play at 20% health and Mama. That’s going to be SO IMPACTFUL as a ground dot kills us in a few ticks or opponent waits for us if we could use it.
Realistically, set a side Shaman is bad in PvP. WoW PvP has had a lot of issues in general. Much of it being class balance, crowd control, macros, and addons being a crutch to win. Example, for many years Rogue/Mage/Priest combo to juggle and burn a team down by numbers based on which spec was viewed as weak. It’s my opinion that PvP talents should focus more on helping the spec perform in environment to cover the short comings.
What I like to know is why ench shammy feels very chuncky to play/. The rotation feels bad there are way too many abilities to use and then your totems. Why can’t the dev make ench more fun with less buttons. Is one spec I will never get.
Your post was a nice read, interesting to me at least.
The Retribution can use 3 Holypower also to heal himself, but of course he still has Lay of Hands and his Bubble which doesn’t cost Holypower.
Yeah I agree. If you assume everyone wears the same iLevel gear, then class balance is still bad. One thing why PvP is nonfun as someone that only participates in it casually is that the hardcore cracks use all kinds of macros and addons that show them things you might miss.
I didn’t run Arena for a long time, but I do remember that always how it went. Even before you go in, you check the specs and you just know that Shaman is squishy right now and focus on him.
They tried to “fix” those issues with things like Resilience but that never really worked out.
All fantastic questions. Quite frankly I am very disappointed with the state of Enhancement right now. It’s like they spent all the time and money on Elemental rework and gave what little time and effort remained to Enhancement.
I really don’t understand their hesitancy to buff & or rework the spec. I don’t care if it’s not the BEST spec in the game but being on the bottom of EVERY single streamers pvp Tier List is depressing af, and really puts me off from playing it.
The difference in Shamans two dps specs is astronomical. Stormstrike damage is a joke, 3 mins ascendance is outdated. Again they gave Ele a way to lower it to 2mins but left Enhancement with the 3 mins…
I know I am basically just repeating your post but I think you did a great job describing a few of the more pressing issues facing Enchancement.
Sorry for the long post, I am just upset cause I wanted to main it in TWW but if it goes live in it’s current state there would be absolutely no point as it brings nothing to the table that Ele doesn’t.
Firstly, stop calling it ench, that would be short for Enchancement, it’s Enhancement.
Secondly, the word you are looking for is clunky not chuncky. However, it’s neither of those. You could argue it’s bloated, but every spell has a purpose that works with other spells and abilities. Once you figure out the priority, at least for the elementalist build, it plays very smooth. The only thing that I would consider clunky about the rotation is having to tab target in aoe situations to maximise lightning rod buff.
Enhancement definitely isn’t for everyone. I’ve spent most of my time on beta playing elementalist tempest build. I’m not a fan of totemic, I think the design is far lazier than tempest. I’m not sure how the SS build plays yet, but if it’s anything like the last few expacs if just spamming SS chasing dre procs, I’ll pass.
The changes on the Beta has made the Stormbringer build play better according to some who have tested it. I have been focused on Totemic.
There are several ways to go about building a Totemic build, and they all are doing decent damage. The Elementalist build works well with Totemic, so your looking at LavaLash and Hot Hands procs, getting seeing totmes down, and getting your surging totem to do max damage by getting the haste buff in from PWave and Splinter E.
The other build is going with the right side of the tree and getting a mix of the talents, and using hailstorm or fire nova, while putting points in the physical talents.
The build I am currently using and I feel will do well is a physical style build, going down the middle of the tree, using Crash Lightning, Fire Nova and Sundering, and picking up 2 points in Legacy of the Witch and Elemental Assault. You are also using all of the Windfurry talents, and you can still get Pwave and Deeply Rooted. Though you get the RNG from DPE, you still have burst from PW > LL > to LB > CL > FN > Sunder. Still working the best rotations, but basically Totemic has a lot of burst if you lay it down correctly.
Now I will say with Tometic there are a lot of things going on, and the build is not forgiving for when your rotation does not go as plan. Totem placement is key, and also to get the most out of seering totem, you need to hit frost shocks while it is down.
This looks like what Blizzard is going to give us for Totemic, so best to get it down now. I am hoping a few QOL are done, but I feel Totemic will be a refreshing change of pace in TWW to play.
There’s nothing refreshing about a tree that can’t figure out its own priorities and requires the player to bash their head against a wall in the process
It’s a poorly put together mess, and digs heavily into RNG with the searing totem talents - moreso than old fire wolves/HH overlaps at the end of SL. Recent updates didn’t eliminate this either.
You use Alpha wolves with the Totemic build. You want physical damage and Flame. You can even play the Elemental build, but IMO the physical style build is the better build to play.
Yes there in RNG with seeing totem, but looking at the logs, it goes down enough to contribute to damage. If you look closely at where the damage comes from, it is not as big as mess as you may think.
What logs are you referencing? The swings are still present, albeit apparently not as violent as they once were.
It is, by design, a conflicting gameplay mess.
Totemic puts more of a strain on points than Stormbringer does right now, but it’s yet to be seen what build actually works best with totemic so doubling down on what talents are needed at this point is futile.
But enjoy the half-cooked underperforming tree, I guess.
