Compilation of a few ideas for enhance for shadowlands:
Utility:
Capacitor totem - Stun increased to 4 seconds
Hex - Instant cast for 30 maelstrom
Healing Tide Totem - Returned
Chain Heal - Returned w/instant cast for maelstrom
Frostbrand - Initial hit slows for 8 seconds (instead of Frostbrand returned)
Spirit Link - Some form of this introduced as an Enhance PvP talent
Mobility/Survivability:
Spectral Recovery PvP talent - Baseline
Spirit Walk - Immune to first movement affecting cast (root/snare/grip/knockback) while it is active
Astral Shift - Heals for 10% of health every 2 seconds over duration (40% heal over duration)
Stone Bulwark Totem - Returned baseline or as talent
Healing Surge/Healing in general: Stamina/Spell Power ratio remains constant during xpac so spell power based heals remains consistently effective throughout xpac.
Damage:
Stormstrike - Physical damage reduced by half. Now also casts a lightning bolt on the target for nature damage equal to the physical damage dealt.
Flametongue - Intial hit casts Searing Assault baseline. Talent replaced w/Primal Primer.
Rockbiter - Stormstrike has a chance to cause next Rockbiter to deal 100% increased damage (same as legion tier effect). Stacks up to 2 times. Replaces Landslide Talent.
Overcharge - Damage increased back to legion levels (16x instead of 12x).
Ascendance - Stormstrike CD removed
Earthen Spike - Range increased to 20 yards
What he said is that there won’t be the level of major class overhauls that there were in legion. I expect there will still be tweaks to the existing toolkit in addition to the announced return of previously removed abilities.
What I have suggested above are mostly tweaks to existing abilities and the return of old abilities. Not a major rework. So I think these kinds of changes are quite possible for Shadowlands and potentially consistent with what I heard on the video of the blizzcon presentation.
Utility:
Capacitor - Don’t see the purpose. It’s already very strong in PvE. And it’s going to be trinketed off regardless in PvP.
Hex - Sure. I liked being able to do that.
Healing Tide - Don’t recall us ever having Tide. We had Healing Stream. I’d like Healing Stream back, sure.
Chain Heal - I preferred Rainfall, but make it a talent somewhere then sure.
Frostbrand - Also don’t see the point. Frostbrand isn’t supposed to be a big kiting ability. You effectively have a permanent slow when you hit something.
Spirit Link - Eh. I’d rather not be the cause of someone else’s death because I linked myself to them.
Mobility:
Spectral Recovery - Eh, make it last for a few seconds after leaving Ghost Wolf. Make it also dispellable for balance.
Spirit Walk - Not necessary. Making Feral Lunge baseline would solve more problems.
Astral Shift - That seems too powerful. Not something I’d feasibly want for balance.
Stone Bulwark - Sure. I’d like that baseline.
Healing Surge - Agreed. Percentage-based healing is too strong late-expansion and spellpower-based healing can’t really keep up. Not specifically a shaman problem, though.
Damage:
Stormstrike - That seems… odd. Just make the offhand portion of the damage (Already 50% of the mainhand, 33% of the total damage) Nature damage. Affected by Mastery and ignores armor.
Flametongue - Sure. Looks neat. Basically just makes it Flame Shock but less fun.
Rockbiter - Sure. I like more build options.
Overcharge - No opinion. Sure, I guess.
Ascendance - Unnecessary. The cooldown is ~2 seconds already. You’re constantly autoattacking with it active. You really don’t need to completely remove the cooldown. I’d rather it just be baseline.
Earthen Spike - Doesn’t seem necessary.
Capacitor - I was mainly thinking about pvp. In pvp a 3 second stun given the difficulty/unreliability of using capacitor seems like a little bit small of a payoff.
Healing Tide - We had it in MOP and it was a strong CD. Healing Stream seems like it wouldn’t do much for enhance unless they buff the output substantially. Healing Tide seems like the better option to give us a meaningful water totem to enhance utility/survivability.
Frostbrand - Point of a long duration slow is to be able to actually kite or close better. Having to spam rockbiter/frostbrand every global is a tough way to kite or close and prevents use of ghost wolf.
Astral Shift - a 40% hot on cast is what we had in legion. So all it does is restore the legion form of astral shift. Granted the legion HOT was over 15 seconds so it could go back to being 15 seconds instead of 8.
Stormstrike - Point was just to make part of the damage nature to bypass armor/benefit from mastery and to fit the theme of STORMstirke. So the idea is you hit with your weapon (physical) but it is lightning charged as well. That makes more sense to me than saying offhand is all lightning and main is all physical. Stormstrike did pure nature damage during BFA beta for a while but the change was reverted I guess because it was too strong/put too much emphasis on mastery. But it seems like reverting it completely went too far in the opposite direction.
Ascendance - no CD vs a 2 second CD matters. It can be the difference between efficiently spamming stormstrike every global and either having dead periods or having to weave other stuff in and only stormstriking half as often unless you proc stormbringer. Removing the CD would make ascendance reliable without depending on stormbringer procs to maximize stormstrike usage during the window. I’m with you though that I would take baseline ascendance over elimination of the CD on stormstrike.
Earthen Spike - Was thinking about a longer range to give it more PvP viability.
I used Ancestral Guidance back then. Throughout the second half of the expansion most things just killed you very quickly but you also had more opportunities to do massive amounts of damage, so converting your offensive cooldowns into a defensive one was better off in the end, and fit the old class dynamic.
Frostbrand shouldn’t need to be used to kite. You already are practically immune to slows while in Ghost Wolf (to 100%). And if you get rooted or otherwise made unable to move a longer slow won’t help you. You have a totem with a 40 yd cast range and a 20yd diameter aura that can slow people for the same amount. Use that to close the gap if Frostbrand isn’t going to cut it.
I didn’t like the concept of piling all of my defensive power into one button back then either. If that one button is down, then you’re dead. I want more options if my effectively one and only defensive is down.
I think we do agree on the Stormstrike bit, I was just explaining how the damage is broken down currently. It’s really stupid how the tooltip literally starts with “Energize your weapons with lightning” and ends with “physical damage”.
I don’t think it does make a difference since Stormstrike is reduced by haste already. I reduced my Windstrike to 2 seconds just by sitting there autoattacking. No haste procs.
Longer range Earthen Spike for PvP doesn’t mean anything if you’re not in melee range to make use of it. Considering it and Ascendance are on the same tier, you’re definitely not using them together.
Healing Tide totem - Was baseline in MOP. Not a talent. So you could have it as well as Ancestral Guidance.
Baking Frost Shock into Frostbrand casts - Earthbind only goes so far. And ghost wolf 100% speed doesn’t really do that much with how many gap closers and how much movement speed and/or abilities other classes have. I think having a frost shock like slow (longer duration than 3 seconds) would be a very meaningful addition to enhance survivability in pvp.
Astral Shift Heal - I’m fine with no heal on astral shift if we have a second defensive. I was just trying to work within the framework of the existing toolkit. I’d love sham rage back. Back in MOP we had sham rage baseline and 6 sec astral shift as a talent. Bring that format back and I’d be happy. Give us sham rage baseline, feral lunge baseline, and put astral shift in place of feral lunge as a talent and I’m happy. But short of that, at least give us back astral shift heal.
No Stormstrike CD during Ascendance - it does make a difference. I’ve run it regularly with very high haste and there are still gaps. If you have high haste, your GCD isn’t 1.5 seconds, it’s closer to 1 seconds. If you still have a 1.8 second CD on stormstrike but a 1.2 sec GCD, then you either wait .6 seconds doing nothing for stormstrike or you cast something else and have to wait 1.2 seconds for your next stormstrike. Feels bad. And its all random because if you get Stormbringer then you can just spam stormstrike and get alot more value out of the Ascendance window.
Earthen Spike - Longer range is useful because you spend alot of time in PvP at range. If you can use it at range you can use other stuff when you are close. 10 yards isn’t much more than melee range. Plus with feral lunge you can instantly close. I think it could help make earthen spike a little more competitive. Right now, no one takes it. Perhaps there are other ways to make it more viable. But 20 yard range at least makes it eat up less of your valuable time while on target and gives you another mid range damage dealing ability to complement your weapon imbue attacks.
A lot of good stuff here. I like the spirit of it.
I think they need to clearly define us. Are we a battlemage who is a caster but specializes in melee? Or are we a warrior who happens to do magic damage? I’d prefer the former, but we lack sufficient Maelstrom generation and damage power at medium ranges, especially without the right talents.
That said, of your proposals, I had comments on the following:
Hex should baseline instant for no Maelstrom cost as Enhancement, just like DH Imprison.
Cap Totem needs to go off instantly for Enhancement, just like DH Chaos Nova. The 3 sec stun is fine (Nova is only 2) since we don’t also have access to a Fel Eruption equivalent.
I like your thinking for Healing Stream/Chain Heal, but I prefer we had Rainfall back as it synergizes with our damage rotation.
If we’re getting Frost Shock back, we are likely losing Frostbrand and Hailstorm entirely. I’d love a Surge of Power style talent where we can empower Frost Shock to root after a Stormstrike or something like that.
Spirit Walk should be removed and Ghost Wolf should break snares and roots when activated. They can even put a mana cost or 10 sec cooldown on Ghost Wolf. Feral Lunge should also break snares and roots.
Astral Shift is a very strong defensive. The problem is we have to activate it before we get stunlocked. It only needs to let us use it when stunned again.
Would like to see Flametongue gone and Flame Shock take its place, generating Maelstrom for us every tick. But agreed with Searing Assault baseline otherwise.
Agreed on Overcharge. Would be great if Overcharge were tweaked in a way where it could be used on cooldown without competing with Stormstrike. Problem is Stormstrike is both a Maelstrom spender and, because it can proc Windfury and Stormbringer, a generator + cost reducer. How does Overcharge compete with that? Is more burst damage that can be cast at range enough?
Would like to see Flametongue gone and Flame Shock take its place, generating Maelstrom for us every tick. But agreed with Searing Assault baseline otherwise.
I imagine Flame Shock coming back is really likely, since they mentioned all the spells you start with (1-10) will be baseline for all specs of whatever class you’re playing, and it’d be really odd to only have Frost Shock without at least one other Shock to accompany it.
They likely only showed Frost Shock at Blizzcon because it’s missing from both Enhancement and Restoration, while Flame Shock is only missing for Enhancement and I doubt they’d give Earth Shock to Restoration if they’re unpruning it at all.
Also, I don’t think they’d remove Flametongue and Frostbrand entirely. Before WoD Shaman had both Shocks and Imbues, the Imbues being 1 hour (in MoP) buffs doing the same thing they do now while Shocks were actual rotational abilities. I think they’ll probably go back to that model, since it reinforces both class and spec fantasy.
Seems like they’re going back to Enh being a sorta battle-mage with Shocks (at least FrS) coming back. Wouldn’t be surprised to see Fire Nova (if we get FS back), Elemental Blast, or even Icefury as parts of the spec.
I’d love to be a battle mage again, it’s part of the reason I insist on talenting Overcharge, Sundering, and Earth Spike even when they were not optimal talents.
I really miss the original Maelstrom Weapon implementations actually, where on achieving 5 stacks you shot out a Lightning Bolt / Chain Lightning at your enemies. Man, that was good times.
Alternatively there could be some kind of shrine that allows us to choose a reward for max stack of maelstrom. Say damage reduction/heal or a lightning bolt/damage ability. That might give us some survivability in pvp.
I forgot about the original Maelstrom Weapon! Yeah, that was great. Surprisingly flexible too, since you could consume the 5 stacks of it with any casted ability, so you could spend it on Healing Surge if you needed it or Elemental Blast for quick damage. I don’t remember when it was that it worked on Hex, but that was fun too.
I wonder if Rockbiter will stay in Shadowlands, actually, or be replaced with Lightning Bolt again. I like Rockbiter honestly, though I wouldn’t mind Lightning Bolt coming back as Enh’s filler so long as it’s castable while moving.
I’d rather rockbiter be taken away and replaces with some version of doom winds. Or redesign maelstrom gen. Spamming the same button repeatedly that hits for low numbers isn’t fun.