We can see right now on live that enhancement shamans are a very heavy global spec. We have to track certain procs and modifiers as well as all the “on cooldown” abilities we have, all that for a optimal rotation.
For instance, the addition of lava burst, ascendance and wolf bones at the same time, doomwinds, ice strike and other totems, are giving us a lot of potential but also a lot of new buttons. Moreover we are losing the enourmous amount of haste that keeps our current rotation fluid.
But don’t get me wrong I enjoy enhance because it has a lot of buttons to press, but the amount of ON GCD abilities we have is getting pretty frustrating. Blizzard 100% have to consider making some abilities OFF THE GCD, so we can pair with other abilities and also making our rotation more fluid.
Abilities to consider getting OFF THE GCD:
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Ascendance, 3 min cooldown, can be off the gcd like every other big cooldown in the game.
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Feral Spirit, this would give us a lot of room to breath, since we are most likely getting wolf bones most of the time.
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Doomwinds, 1 min cooldown, already nerfed by 1/3 of its duration, so getting that extra global would be more than welcomed
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All totems in their own gcd, WF is the prime example of a totem that feels bad to place not bc is bad, but bc we have to place it every single pack on M+, and we are gaining more short CD totems, so bake them into their own gcd.
For PVP
- Shamanism, I rather have the mana cost reduced than getting it off the GCD, but if doomwinds is still on GCD on launch, consider getting this talent out off gcd.
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Moving 1-3 minute cooldowns off the GCD is not going to help the issue of our rotation being over-cluttered with new buttons and interactions. What needs to happen is more of these buttons need to be combined into choice nodes so we’re picking between the playstyles they enable instead of trying to cram everything into one.
Totems being on a separate GCD would be fantastic, though.
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Probably, I can say tho that with wolf bones, feral spirit is pretty much a rotation button rn, but this is amplified by the tier set. I do agree that some abilities can be redundant in some points, ele blast can serve as a second/stronger charge of lavaburst for example.
And I do believe getting at least 1 button off the global CD is necessary. Because, In the hypothetical case that ascendance is bis for ST. Having 3 on gcd buttons (Feral Spirit, Doomwinds and Ascendance) is very lackluster knowing that for this talents to work, we need to spam abilities, not like they do a lot by themselves but amplify our core kit.
In PVP this problem is even worst, if picking shamanism as a talent. And even not doing it, is a lot of wasted time just to pop things.
Ascendance IS an ability though. Regardless of the changes it does to our rotation, that initial burst of damage just from going into the form is MASSIVE and easily one of our hardest, if not the hardest, single hit an Enhance can do (10 stacks of Maelstrom consumed at a time may say differently though in the expansion), not to mention it is an AoE hit as well.
(I think in BFA) Blizzard noted many/most 3 min CDs were simply macroed together. They wanted to do away with that playstyle so they made all CDs (well, at least most) have their own GCD. This then caused the issues you are mentioning. So they compromised. Some CDs were kept on the GCD, but were given damage components to compensate for that “feel”. If it wasn’t given a damage component, it was likely put back off the GCD. I’m sure some abilities were missed, as well as a new expansion (times 2) has happened since this philosophy waa changed at Blizzard, so this isn’t an end-all statement of fact.
Be thankful I would say. Compare the size of the hit from casting Ascendance to the size of the hit added for casting Beastial Wrath for BM Hunters. Night and day difference.
It is also hard telling what the numbers will look like until we all get prepatch, but taking Deeply Rooted in lieu of the actual Ascendance talent might end up being a DPS gain, precisely because of said major hit (especially in AoE). It depends on how often we are casting Stormstrike.