Enhance numbers might be fine, but holy #+#$ elementalist stormbringer is dead. Most proposed builds don’t even take lava lash, it feels like [multiple expletives] to play. Damage is up in the air, but I suspect it will be a nerf, totemic is also a$$ to play on any fight where the boss moves, spamming stormstrike is carpal tunnel inducing pain…
Jfc
My other character is warlock. Aff is unplayable because of its bugs pulling stuff, demo sucks to play because everything is hard casted and you just nerfed destro aoe, even though that spec was beans.
What are these changes, who greenlit this absolute dog water.
2 min ascendance + 2 stormstrike charges and am aura nerf would’ve been fine. Instead you massacred the gameplay (and damage, at least with elementalist stormbringer) and replaced it with lobotomized totemic stormstrike spam.
7 Likes
OK, first off. If you arent using Lava Lash and specced to buff it, youre wrong. Lava Lash is critical to Enhancement with the Imbue. Now thats out of the way. Enhancement is VERY solid right now. Its not the same as it was in DF. Stormbringer Enhancement is crazy good right now. You do have to pay attention though because if you are just pumping damage with how squishy it is, you will die. You do have to rotate through totems more but in the long run its extremely powerful. I would have to put Enhancement in the top 3 for melee DPS right now, it is that good. The AoE is almost next level. Its crazy fast to play and you WILL pull threat right off the tank if you arent careful. Dont build according to Icy Veins. Build the spec to your playstyle and you will enjoy it much more.
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The enhacement elementalist is indeed very bad. I was hoping this update would make elementalist/totemic viable but it is even worse.
Before the update I could dmg 2M/s (620 ilvl) on the 5 dummies in TWW.
Now it is around 1,8M/s. The damage on single has improved a little, but not worth for m+ at all…
It is play Stormbringer or don’t play it.
Very disappointing.
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The people who say shaman is strong on PVE, are the people who only play Storm build or people that don’t play shaman.
As long you use storm build, your dmg is good, if you go for elementalist, a pala with 20lvl less than you dmg more.
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Admittedly, Enhance builds need to be worked out. The builds on Wowhead and Icyviens are not the builds you should be using. Now I did use one of the Storm builds (Totemic) that had you use just storm, and it even forwent using lively and reactive totems. The damage was made up by the redirect talent which was very high. The damage was OK, better than I thought, but still it’s not the correct build, at least for me.
Moving the totem is not to bad, learning where to drop it will help, the most I had to move it was maybe 1 one time in fights with boss movement. The redirect will hit no matter where the totem is placed.
I will be working through builds today, I had some builds done from the PTR, and will go through them. I slaped together a build so I could get to the raid, but I will work it out today. Overall, I am happy with the changes. Makes it more fun to play.
The new patch is tuned/designed such that most builds which have been proposed do not have lava lash. It’s that bad. Stormbringer was nerfed substantially (or bugged), with tempest doing 20% less damage.
On the aoe target dummies I’ve lost 500-750k damage. Before the patch doing 3+ Mil sustained was easy, I didn’t have to play around lightning rod or lashing flames. Now, even maintaining high uptime on both debuffs, my damage is around 2.3 mil, when using the old elementalist build.
Now maybe I forgot how to play my shaman in the span of 24 hours, or maybe they gutted the elementalist build
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Frankly I came back to WoW because Elementalist build in DF s3 was soo rewarding and fun to play. If they kill elementalist than I will probably not renew until next patch. Storm build Enhance is not fun to play at all. I had such high hopes for totemic elementalist build, but they’ve not done anything to improve it. It’s funny that right before TWW launch they said ‘we like where enhance is at and don’t want to fundamentally change anything’ and then 6 weeks later force you to move on from elementalist build.
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We DID receive a 6% all abilities nerf.
They gave an unmovable pet as our biggest damage output, even we already being the spec with most active rotational skills in the game. And even if you do all correct, your damage is bad 
I’ve been crazy enjoying it, especially with totemic. Could probably stand moving a talent around, and hot hands needs something to make it worth going that deep on that side of the tree. Personally want to see voltaic blaze merged into hot hands, or something along those lines.
Otherwise, kinda rips. Throw a talent in the class tree so totemic projection coats mana instead of having a CD and I’ll be happy as a clam.
Edit: still sad about 2min PCT tho, its way too niche of utility for that long of a CD
The idea of needing to babysit a 24s long totem with a 24s CD (why the hell do I need to press this at all) was enough for me. That, and praying for a proc of a proc to get sundering resets inside your asc window alongside flowing spirits with the insane RNG dam amp lineups makes me wonder if blizz is even paying attention at all
And I love how we were practically fine although quite strong, now we have issues surrounding undocumented aura nerfs, undocumented Flowing Spirits nerfs, bugs with the same talent, bugs with nova (fixed although arguably the least annoying of all of these), arc discharge eating tempest, thorims no longer affecting Tempest, last minute DRE nerf, etc
I love enhance but this is just insane, the level of incompetence that went into this
at this point I just want DF S3 elementalist build back bc what we have now is all over the place. It’s clear that blizzard has more changes coming, based on their note about DRE being affected by MSW spent rather than casts, but I have no idea why they’re throwing these updates at us in pieces rather than just holding them for a point where they could implement and test all at once. It’s absurd.
that all being said I’ll still be playing whichever of the two sham specs wins out after the inevitable tuning and changes I’m sure are coming over the weekend
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My tempest is barely doing more damage than Elemental Blast in single target now.
big sad.
Yeah. I was excited for this patch. On paper I feel like all the changes were positive but man it feels clunky rn.
It was buggy on PTR the entire time and I feel like they did nothing to fix it and created even more problems.
Hopefully we get fixes soon and they update DRE bc 3% is pitiful
Some thing we’re good some I really did not like
I made some suggestions already.
IDK, took storm version of totemic for a spin last night and I really enjoyed it too. DPS doesn’t seem that bad at all?
Though I am seeing alot of the top IO shams who are using totemic, not even take Lava lash? Wonder what that’s all about when it makes 2 of the hero talent points redundant
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enhance right now have to many buttons why the hell you need that many god
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Yeah, those two hero points are in a weird spot. They don’t interact with much and lively totems doesn’t really…do anything, it seems. Most fights its less than 0.5% of my overall damage. And lava lash doesn’t proc many other things, so tough to reasonably take.
HOWEVER…I think i stumbled on a pretty effective Elementalist totemic build that seems (on training dummies) to be surprisingly effective. Though it’s primarily geared for AoE/M+ scenarios. But of the little I tested…was pretty fun
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God, I would throw both our Hero paths in the garbage without a second thought to go back to DF S3/4 Elementalist Enhancement. Back when my buttons all mattered for their own sake instead of solely as MSW generators, and I actually felt in control of my M+ damage profile instead of not even being able to claim credit when RNG blesses me with a pop off on a random trash pack.
I get that its been like this forever but I hate how wolves & ascendence are both on the gcd, wolves being off gcd would probably be too good, but a compromise could be removing wolves from the gcd during ascendence, it wont amount to much but I hate the flow when you’re swimming in maelstrom and have to spawn wolves.
Also I wonder how a choice node on storm flurry would work with the ability to convert stormstrike into a original warrior “heroic strike” that buffs your next auto(on a lesser frequency). Not sure what tuning it would have, it would probably be more about open globals in return for slightly less individual throughput, meaning elementalist builds would favour it, I just think managing stormstrike among the rest feels like unnecessary filler that never feels good to press.
The one Storm build is straight lightning and windfurry, using totemic reboun to make up the damage from seering totem. I did run it in a Heroic raid, and it did well.
What I am running now is a Elementalist build, single target, and it did very well in a BRD run last night. I need to fine-tune a few things, and go over logs, but a quick glance was seering totem was getting damage and my sunder was doing good damage. The build using ascendance and tremor does give you the ability to burst, and when you want to do it.
You still need to babysit the totem, but with flowing spirits and only worrying about the totem, it is not so bad. Just have to get use to “where” the totem needs to be place for it it to be effective.