Enh vs. Ele - AoE Fantasy - Fire Nova vs. EQ

Classes Shaman
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TL:DR This post is to vent my frustration at certain design choices for AoE of Enh and Ele and provide some food for thought. I understand people will be triggered by the idea of losing AoE from their spec. Fire Nove should be moved to Elemental’s AoE toolkit to fuel the playstyle of managing flame shocks, the intended spec design by developers. Earthquake should be moved from Ele to Enhancement as a talent in place of Fire Nova, given that Enhancement already has 2 abilities that deal with disrupting the earth (Earth Spike and Sundering), and the spell does Physical damage.

But we want the focus of the rotation to be about managing your Flame Shock debuff on multiple targets to maximize the payoff of Lava Burst through Lava Surge Procs.

This statement was the design intent of Blizzard for Elemental shaman in regard to how they wanted the spec to move forward in Shadowlands.

Managing Flame Shock has been a crucial part of Elemental for several expansions. Lava Surge has been core to the kit since perhaps WotLK even, surviving through the class overhauls from WoD to Legion/BFA. It is crucial to Elemental’s PvP playstyle, as much as it is to PvE.

Which is why I found it so odd that there is an ability that existed in the Enhancement toolkit, previously removed, then re-added as a talent in Shadowlands, built around maintaining flame shocks, something not stated to be the design intent of the playstyle. That ability is the following:

Fire Nova - Melee Range
Erupt a burt of fiery damage from all targets affected by your Flame Shock, dealing (25% of attack power) fire damage to up to 6 targets within 8 yards of your Flame Shock Targets.

Previous versions of this spell were the following

Fire Nova Level 120
13.7% of base mana 100 yd range
Instant 4.5 sec recharge

1 Charges
Requires Shaman
Requires level 44

Ignites your Flame Shock spell on up to 6 nearby enemies, causing each of them to emit a wave of flames that deals (12.0174% of Spell power) Fire damage to every other enemy within 10 yards.

Really strange that a melee spec had a spell ability usable at 100 yard range, isn’t it? Running off a spellpower modifier no less?

Fire Nova was originally part of a totem in the Elemental Tree that after 5 seconds released a blast of AoE burst damage. It was the Burst Damage option for fire totems where Magma Totem was the sustained damage option. I bring this up, because Fire Nova Totem was originally an Elemental ability. It had talents to augment it in the Elemental tree, before being split into Fire Nova and Capacitor Totem.

The reason I find this so interesting, and annoying, is because Fire Nova works off spreading Flame Shock. The more Flame Shocks you have out, the stronger your AoE damage will be, as each one erupts to deal damage.

To make this work for Enhancement, Blizzard added a flame shock spread to lava lash, because Enhancement was not built around spreading Flame Shock as part of its playstyle.

But it was for Elemental!!! Why wasn’t/isn’t Fire Nova part of Elemental’s Toolkit? If the desire is to go back to managing flame shock uptime for Lava Surges, wouldn’t it also make sense to tie their AoE into this as well? It would provide seamless fluidity between AoE and Single Target.

Fire Nova is perfectly suited for the Elemental Shaman to be part of its AoE toolkit, but for some reason gets forced into Enhancement where it has always felt clunky (and currently in SL is completely subpar due to lava lash no longer spreading the flame shock dot).

Furthermore, Enhance now has Crash Lightning, which interacts with Chain Lightning…something that didn’t exist when Fire Nova was the way Enhancement did AoE.

On the other hand, looking at Elemental’s usage of Earthquake.

Earthquake in WoW

Earthquake
60 Maelstrom 40 yd range

Instant cast
Requires Shaman (Elemental)
Requires level 48

Causes the earth within 8 yards of the target location to tremble and break, dealing [Spell power * 0.2875 * 6 * (1 + Versatility) * 98 / 100] Physical damage over 6 sec and sometimes knocking down enemies.

I have long since been a proponent for Enhancement having Earthquake as part of their AoE kit, where they channel energy through their weapons and slam into the ground to create the earthquake. I feel this idea is validated for a few reasons:

  • No other caster has a spell that deals physical damage (at least not that I’m aware of)
  • Enhancement already thematically has two abilities dealing with forcing the earth to erupt in Sundering and Earthen Spike
  • Thrall in Heroes of the Storm plays as a melee assassin with an Enhancement toolkit and has the option of Earthquake or Sundering as his ultimate abilities.

If the design intention for Elemental is truly to be around managing Flame Shock uptimes, then Fire Nova should replace Earthquake for the Elemental spec to further fuel this desired playstyle for their AoE toolkit. With fire nova’s cooldown, Ele’s rotation could be to maintain Flame Shocks, use Chain Lightning, and then Nova (where EQ currently fits).

Conversely, Earthquake should be removed from Ele in favor of Fire Nova and moved to Enhancement as a talent in the place of Fire Nova. Again, this spec already has talents dedicated to forcing the earth to erupt. It should target the ground centered around the shaman (stationary, not following like fury of air) rather than be a targetted ground placement. The physical damage would have synergy with Earthen Spike, and flow much easier between Crash Lightning and Instant Chain Lightnings than tab-targetting for flame shock and fire novas, while competing with Hailstorm on the same talent row.

3 Likes
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Hey Bubblies!

I really like your idea and I completely support it. I have always thought the same way about the odd interaction Fire Nova had within enhancement. You did a great job explaining why it should be changed as well as inputting historic evidence as to its “initial” intended use.

I want to add that if Fire Nova were to become and Elemental spell, that I would want Lava burst to have some sort of ability whether through a talent or legendary to spread flame shock. I believe that would make elemental shamans so much fun!

Earthquake should be removed from Ele in favor of Fire Nova and moved to Enhancement as a talent in the place of Fire Nova. Again, this spec already has talents dedicated to forcing the earth to erupt. It should emanate around the shaman rather than be ground targeted similar to how it used to erupt around the earthquake totem (when it was tied to a totem).

I like the idea of Earthquake being cast around the shaman on the floor, and not targeted how it currently is. However, I believe that it would be weird to see the earthquake emanating from the shaman as he ran around (Like hellfire for warlocks, but it makes sense for them). I would almost rather have the Earthquake be cast and placed at his feet, and require it to be cast again similar to crash lightning works.
Why? Well…

We had the Fury of Winds Talent in BFA that made the aoe spin around us dealing damage, slowly consuming our resource. That is the similar functionality of a spell that follows the character as they move since it’s a “channeled affect” like hellfire.

BUT HERE IS MY SUGGESTION

1. Rockbiter weapon - has a chance to proc earthquake, making it instant cast and drop below the players feet.

2. Flametongue Weapon - has a chance to blast your target with fire, exploding in fire damage to all nearby targets within 7 yards

3. Windfury Weapon - feel the haste of the wind, attacking with a fury of blows, rapidly increasing your auto attacks for 8 seconds

TAH DAH!
Turn Enhancement’s WEAPON AUGMENTS into gameplay mechanics! If you’re focusing on single target, with small cleave, use windfury and flametongue. If you’re in HEAVY AoE, use flametongue and rockbiter!

Well, what do you think?!
I like it. I think this would offer a lot of “on the spot” gameplay decisions, and maybe give the weapon buffs a 3 minute cooldown so that you’re not swapping weapon buffs in the middle of a pull in Mythic Plus.

As always, Thank you for reading and I look forward to more feedback!
-Gubby

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I didn’t explain properly. The EQ would place on the ground centering around the shaman, but not follow the shaman.

As for the weapon imbues, I am a big advocate for an active windfury, but as seen by BFA revert to SL I don’t think the majority are interested in active abilities for the imbues. There seemed to be a large distaste for active imbues as they were viewed largely as maintenance buffs.

I like the idea overall, but I miss the fantasy of maelstrom weapons and really like the idea of using lightning bolt.

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I personally wish they’d move away from fire a little bit for Ele and focus more on lightning and storms since there are already several classes that use fire.

Would be nice to have something pretty and lightning based, like crash lightning. Or like healing rain, but a lightning storm instead. That would set elemental shamans apart from other classes imo better than another mage shooting another fireball.

We use fire with lava burst frequently. Would be nice if the big damage cooldowns were more lightning/storm based.

I love your ideas about shaman though and you described it very well! I just felt I kind of disagreed with this because I think earthquakes and other natural disasters are totally elementals thing.

I have no experience playing enhancement, but I always pictured them enhancing themselves and totems with the elements, while an elemental shaman would more manipulate the environment.

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In regards to Earthquake yeah I can dig that being for Enhancement Shaman replace Crashing Storm with it buff the damage, make it Nature to compete with the other 2 talents scaling, but also give it a relative cooldown to the other talents on the row.

That Windfury never became an actual attack has boggled my mind for years. I honestly thought it was going to become an attack in WotLK, but instead we got Lava Lash. Also the image of an on use Windfury has always been entirely different thing from the bland maintenance buffs that were weapon imbues, but now you have to press them more often it was an actual attack!

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I think Enh is the lightning based Shaman spec

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Honestly I feel like ele should be kind of a lavamancer type thing mixing fire and earth, they already sling lavaburst around they could do something for aoe as well like a lava wave or “magma totem” lol make magma totem do an aoe wave of lava spewing chunks of molten earth in all directions, maybe a volcanic eruption ability, take earthquake as a base and add magma in the cracks and erupting sporadically. That’s something that no other class has

Sorry didn’t mean to make this into a change ele completely post just some cool ideas

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I can respect this. Too much of one theme would in fact make it feel like fire mage right? That could be an aesthetic reason as to why ele doesn’t have fire Nova, and instead earthquake, something missing from the kit (earth based attacks). Still, I wonder if they just called fire Nova something like shocking lava (throwback to an azerite trait) and combined the fire Nova graphic with electric sparks, if that would be enough?

Most of my desire to see Earthquake in enhancement comes from Thrall in HotS where it legitimately just feels good as a melee, and there is already the precedent of them taking sundering from him in HotS for an enh talent.

Or just remove fire Nova entirely (don’t give it to ele) and give enh a talented eq in it’s place that places on the ground centered on the shaman.

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Ok you can have earthquakes, but Ele gets to use crash lightnings animation for the empowered lightning bolts w/ stormkeeper. :slight_smile:

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Um the icon next to the ele spec is a lightning bolt. And we obviously have lightning based spells.

Anyways, It’s obvious lightning is iconic to ALL shaman specs. It would be pretty unthoughtful to suggest otherwise. I imagine quite a few people play shaman because of it.

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Hard pass on that one. But I like the idea of creating volcanoes! Honestly a lot of really cool things could be added as cosmetic glyphs and I’d be more than happy even if the gameplay didn’t change at all.

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Enhancement was the lighting spec until they added LL. I hate that ability I wish we could get rid of it.

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We still have stormstrike, crash lightning, lightning bolt and chain lightning is back. I feel like lightning is still enh’s primary element.

Fair enough but I’m fine with it as is. In it’s current form I see it as more of an earth/rock spec. Lava is melted rock, and we have our earth shock and earthquake. Yes, lighting is unique to Shamans but so is earth and water. I’m fine with each spec specializing in a different element

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I definitely should have not suggested lavamancer but just more “lava” in talents. Like you have said already lots of us play shaman and love the lightning, I would never suggest take that away. Cause like you said tho, casting volcanoes sounds cool lol

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I feel like this suggestion is like the current “fury of air” talent but maybe shorter duration with a one off cast instead of constant resource drain.

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I really like this idea… have the weapon imbues change the game play and how you attack would be a great idea.

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Will agree to disagree here. That is way too similar to mage. And ele isn’t a mage.

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Im not seeing how earth is similar to fire but sure. Agree to disagree

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It isn’t the element. It’s specializing in specific elements that makes it too similar to mage. And this is all just my opinion so that’s why I agreed to disagreed. I accept you have a different vision for the class and that’s cool. :sunglasses:

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Oh I see now. Gotcha.