Enhance button bloat solution (minus 10 buttons!)

Classes Shaman
1

Flame shock and Frost shock combined into single button.

“Elemental Weapons”
1000 Mana
20 Yard Range
5 sec cooldown
Requires Melee Weapon
“Applies Frostshock and Flameshock to the target for 10 seconds, and empowers your weapons with the power of Ice and Fire, causing your auto-attacks to increase the duration of these effects by 1 second”

  • Ice Strke Removed
  • Flame Shock Removed
  • Frost Shock Removed

Only Maelstrom Spenders are Chain Lightning and Chain Heal, but buffed for boosted performance on first target struck Like DH first blood talent. Chain Lightning is also made to not hit crowd controlled targets, like how convoke does not strike mass entangled targets.

  • Lightning bolt removed
  • Elemental Blast removed
  • healing surge removed
  • Lightning Bolt and Ele Blast glyphs added for chain lightning

Gust of Wind reworked to activate when the character is in mid-air and acts like a double jump, the “gust” distance has a 30 second DR. If used repeatedly this results in much shorter “gusts”

  • Gust of wind removed

Thunderous paws/spirit walk combined into one passive.

“Thundering Spirit”
Passive
20-45 sec cooldown
"Shifting into Ghost Wolf removes all movement impairing effects and grants buffs based on effects removed. When snare effects are removed, gain 25% movement speed for 3 seconds. When roots are removed, gain 60% movement speed for 8 seconds.

Root clears (45s) and snare clears (20s) do not share a cooldown. Ghost wolf is off the Global Cooldown when Thundering Spirit is not on cooldown

  • Spirit Walk Removed

Healing stream totem functionality built into chain heal replacing healing stream totem with new passive, Undertow.

“Undertow”
Passive
30 sec cooldown
“Every 30 seconds, Targets affected by your Chain Heal are also granted Riptide”

  • Healing Stream Totem Removed

Ancestral guidance is built into Feral Spirit, causing damage done by Spirit Wolves to heal nearby players for damage dealt

  • Ancestral Guidance Removed
10 Likes
2

I am on board with removing ice strike — just adjust the cooldowns of our other melee strikes accordingly - and adjust hailstorm as needed. Or maybe even just combine Lava Lash and Ice Strike into a new ability that does the effects of both — call it Unleash Elements like olden days.

However, something named Elemental Weapons I’d rather just be a combo that auto places windfury and flametongue on our weapons — not that these really apply to button bloat

I like having flame shock and frost shock separate - but I also can’t think of a situation where combining them would necessarily be bad

I am less on board with this. I’d be kind of down with surge getting removed and chain heal being our main heal — but I am less on board with removing LB, EB, and just making CL the main.

I think it’s too much work vs reward for them to make CL not break cc — I also like having the 3 options: they are used for different things (providing you take pwave/splintered elements).

I’d be on board with this, but I doubt they would remove it as a talent. The idea of a double jump activation fits with more modern gameplay (DH and Evoker) and keeping it with the DR would maintain current balance while removing a button — this is a great idea

Less on board with this one, though I see what you are doing. My main issue is I don’t want to silence myself in ghost wolf when I want to use spirit walk. Also, currently, you can spirit walk while silenced, but I do not think you can cast ghost wolf while silenced — so you lose the ability to spirit walk out of things like root/solar beam.

Its an interesting idea, but HST is also iconic — though it is outdated. Perhaps give it the mana spring treatment, and activate it off other abilities?

With the amount of uptime we have with wolves, they would have to severely reduce the healing done. Not sure I’d be down for this as the healing would end up being way less, whereas right now AG can be held to be a defensive cooldown with the amount of burst we can put out.

Some other ideas for reducing button bloat:

  • get rid of Windfury Totem: turn it into a passive aura, turn it into a place once and apply a 60 min buff to targets, etc.
  • possibly return astral shift to its passive WotLK version: “When stunned, feared or silenced you shift into the Astral Plane reducing all damage taken by 30% for the duration of the stun, fear or silence effect.”
3

This is a little more pruning than be comfortable with …

As for windfury being an aura that’d be a good good improvement. I think just taking it off the gcd would work too without breaking the class fantasy of having a totem etc. that way you could macro it.

3 Likes
4

why u tryna make us the new warriors maaaaan
dont enable the morons

6 Likes
5

I dont think people realize even after removing 10 buttons, we would still have more than most specs in the game.

2 Likes
6

Yes, but most of that is situational utility that should not be removed.

Our priority is still akin to a lot of other specs in regards to the buttons we press (its on the higher end, but its not that far).

It’s all the other stuff in pvp that we need to pay attention to that adds to button bloat:

  • totems
  • cleanse
  • purge
  • off-healing
  • refreshing earth shield
  • interupt
  • totemic projection
7

Noooo I love all my buttons don’t take em away

2 Likes
8

This is the problem I had with previous expacs though like wod where they pruned us down to nothing and every class was basically the same
Thing with a different coat of paint …

2 Likes
9

is it the same though?
the playstyle is not changing at all with the changes I suggested, and takes inspiration from previous iterations of enhance.

The spec still functions the same, some things that gobbled up GCDs are being built in to other spells. I feel like your mind was made up before you read the post. There are some very good practical changes in here that most people would agree with, obviously it not expected to agree with everything I said, but on enhance you can literally go above 60 keybinds no problem, that should be setting off red flags for people. I love the spec and dont want it to change, but it should be smoothed out some.

I think there is a misunderstanding, perhaps on my part, the original post laid out a bunch of adjustments to enhance, netting 10 less buttons in the spec. None of those were even remotely touching utility.
I appreciate your effort in responding to the post and not being a typical forum hatewatcher.

3 Likes
10

I’ve been saying for a while now, that I’d like to see more passives on the ENh spec tree to bring down our button issue. As much as i like the idea behind ice strike, it seems unnecessary, seeing as it does the same thing as frost shock, earthbind etc. maybe put the the ice strike buff that increases frost shock damage as a passive. When you SS, it buffs your next FS…OR when you cast EB seeing as thats frost/fire/nature.

But yeah, deff what to see more pssaives and have less buttons for especially pvp. pve is fine. The pvp button bloat is insane. Im running out of macros etc. Its as if who ever designed the ENH shaman button/spell/ability system was pianist

1 Like
11

I’ve mained Enh since WOTLK, and I won’t lie

I love how the class plays? I don’t feel there’s button bloat, except for Windfury Totem. There’s zero reason that’s not an aura

But the class is fun, the abilities flow in to each other. It’s the most fun I’ve had with this class, 15 years in to playing it.

5 Likes
12

amen

what button bloat rofl these guys have 3 finger hands or something

2 Likes
13

No, I understand what you are trying to do — but I mostly disagree.

Here are some comparisons (No-talents were selected in the WoWhead sections so this is rough estimate)

Spec rotation/priority unique abilities (before talents added via wowhead rotation page)

assass rogue 11
Sub rogue 6
Ret Paladin 9
Enhance 6

Here are breakdowns of each:
Assass

Sub

Ret

Enh

Obviously we add a lot via talents: Ice strike, Crash Lightning, Doom winds, Primordial Wave, Feral Spirits — but other classes also add talents.

Elementalist that adds Ice Strike, Sundering, Crash Lightning, Pwave, and Feral Spirits is bumped to 11 — which is tied with assassination rogue BEFORE it’s taking talent abilities.

This is why I mentioned utility in my post — I personally don’t feel Enhancement’s priority list has button bloat. I feel the button bloat from the class comes from everything else we have to run and manage alongside our priority list (especially in PvP where that utility sees a lot more play).

I could get behind combining Lava Lash and Ice Strike — and definitely your suggested change to Gust of Wind (which I think is innovative and amazing — more movement abilities should tap into this type of gameplay) — but other than that, I think our dps priority list is fine. We linger towards the higher end of ability numbers, but so do other classes.

1 Like
14

From when? Legion BFA when we were discount fury warriors without the sustain. No we do not need to be combining abilities and removing what we just got back.

15

You are making points about things the post never talked about though. Along with some of the claims being outright false.

100% agree with you, but the post never really talked about that. Most of the recommendations streamlined our self sustain and mobility, and combined our frost/flame shocks into a single button that functioned similarily to legions flametongue/frostbrand/short duration rogue poisions.

As for the maelstrom spenders being pruned I think we will probably be at odds over that as I do like the idea of that being streamlined into one smart ability with mechanics blizzard have already created for other abilities that they could easily integrate into chain lightning.

But even then, most other specs have a single target spender, and AoE spender, I just really like the idea of having one that does both given how many buttons we have (I love the first blood blade dance design alot from DH for how it turns an AoE ability into a useful single target ability as well.)

Im also a PvP’er so maybe other enhances dont feel like they have that many buttons, which is reasonable. Maybe the issue is that there are not enough mechanics in PvE that force enhances to use their entire kit, but in PvP scenarios, push it to its limits, I am closing in on 60+ keybinds.

I think this is the defining factor on the button bloat debate. Definitely seems like PvE’ers dont see the issue, but they probably havent hit their utility in years, whereas in PvP we live and die by it.

1 Like
16

Topic says Enhance Button Bloat

  • your first two address DPS abilities
  • your next three address utility

Meaning, the ‘more than most specs in the game’ is largely our utility toolkit, which they can’t really make too many changes to without a complete overhaul.

Gust of Wind change is utility, Ghost Wolf Change is Utility, Healing Stream change is utility

But largely, in PvP, most of our button bloat comes from things like:

  • refreshing earth shield
  • purge
  • wind shear
  • cap totem
  • tremor totem
  • earthbind/earthgrasp totem
  • wind shear
  • static projection
  • grounding totem
  • totemic projection
  • spirit walk
  • ancestral guidance
  • Earth Elemental
  • refreshing Earth shield
  • self healing with Healing Surge
  • Thunderstorm
  • Lightning Lasso
  • bloodlust/shamanism
  • counterstrike totem
  • hex
  • cleanse spirit

that’s a lot of utility that adds to our button bloat, but can’t be removed/changed due to their situational usefulness. So you are right, even if they combine the abilities as you listed, we still have a ton of other abilities — the bloat doesn’t really disappear.

Because its still relevant — There aren’t a lot of places you can prune buttons in Enhance without changing multiple things — I think you nailed it on the head with Gust of Wind – Windfury totem and Healing Stream totem could get the Mana Spring treatment — but even if they combine lava lash with ice strike, and our shocks together — we still have all that other utility that can’t really be pruned/changed that add to our bloat — so in the end, the suggestion is just simplifying our dps, rather than address PvP bloat — which largely comes from our needed utility toolkit.

2 Likes
17

Make Doomwinds into a passive that gives you .5-1 seconds of Doomwinds on main-hand auto attacks for each stack of MSW you spend and spending 5 stacks guaranteed additional proc (on top of your base chance to proc) of Windfury on your next Stormstrike, Crash Lightning, or Sundering. Remove Doomwinds Windfury damage buff to compensate for uptime.

Make casting a Shock spell reduce SS cd by 1-1.5 seconds.

Make LotFW proc on 5 stacks of MSW again.

Remove Overflowing Maelstrom and tune around 5 stacks once again.

Make Alpha Wolf spirits do a ST lunge attack (nature damage) then you cast Lightning Bolt or Elemental Blast.

Make a talent that gives auto-attacks a ~20% chance to cleave. Cleave WF and FT effects cannot proc Stormbringer or MSW.

As always give 2H(preferred) or swords (or glaives maybe) to Enh.

Just for fun, give Ghost Wolf form a double jump.

18

none of this deals with button bloat

19

Nah most of that crap is just for fun, probably bad propositions.

1 Like
20

Tell me you don’t do M+ without telling me you don’t do M+.

The only places I really feel like we have egregious buttons in our core dps rotation are the mess that is Lightning Bolt/Lava Burst/Elemental Blast for ST MSW spending, and Windfury Totem.

Elemental Blast turns Lightning Bolt into button bloat when talented into, because it largely replaces LB in our rotation but for 2-3 times a minute, one of which is activating Primordial Wave, and the others being subbing in as a MSW dump when both EB charges happen to be on CD, which only happens with any frequency at high ilevels with optimized haste and mastery, and Vault 2pc. Lava Burst is even wonkier, as its shorter CD means its less likely to need LB cycled in its place due to cooldown, but LB may be preferred even when LvB is up depending on wolf elements, and just… blugh. The whole thing’s a cluster.

My solution would be to just remove Elemental Blast’s cooldown for Enhancement. We already have a soft CD on the spell in the form of needing to build MSW stacks before it’ll do more than tickle. Enhancement shouldn’t even have access to Lava Burst at all - it can replace Maelstrom Weapon or Flurry in Elemental and Resto’s version of the class tree, since Blizzard clearly has no interest in actually making those talents worth taking for non-Enhancement. After that, update Primordial Wave to just directly blast all targets with an active Flame or Frost Shock debuff for Elemental damage instead of requiring Lightning Bolt as an activator - a setup that was only never necessitated by the Shadowlands version needing to be spec-agnostic with functionality for both dps and healers on one ability that no longer applies to it as a spec tree talent.

I hardly think I need to even touch on the issues with Windfury Totem.

Beyond that my complaints about Enhancement’s rotational abilities are about having multiple layers of buff effects on two abilities in particular - Lava Lash and Frost Shock - which muddy their positions in the priority system. I’d love to see Hot Hand and Ashen Catalyst changed to be a choice node instead of a talent sequence, with each ability buffed to compensate for no longer stacking with the other, and Ice Strike’s secondary effect changed to not just be Hailstorm again - maybe instead of it buffing Frost Shock, Frost Shock buffs it?

This is one of my biggest annoyances. The charge system on Earth Shield exists primarily to force Resto to spend mana on maintaining it, which shouldn’t be a concern for Elemental or Enhancement, who will OoM themselves almost immediately anyway when forced to cast healing spells repeatedly. For Enhancement especially the direct healing value from charges proccing is worthless; you run it solely for the healing effectiveness increase. I’d love to see some way to remove the healing proc charges and just let it be a 10 minute healing effectiveness buff. Failing that, I’d much appreciate a change to Elemental Orbit that casting Earth Shield on an ally just also gave you an new Earth Shield at the same time, instead of requiring you to self-cast one separately.

1 Like