Enhancement Defense

Let’s brainstorm; even if it’s been done before. Always the chance someone with the power to do something takes a look and gets an inspired idea.

Enhancement shaman defense is notoriously weak. Reincarnation is nice, but on the ground it’s weak. As a melee class, already liable to be in the middle of danger, reincarnation doesn’t do enough and shouldn’t weigh down the defensive budget of Enh. Astral shift is weak, and the stoneskin totem is too far away and impacts our role as damage too much.

I like shields! I want to brainstorm a way to make it so shields aren’t something you’ll use in solo content. Earthshield for healing yourself, lightning shield for when you take damage. Both mostly useless in group content like dungeons and raids. I like the idea of maintaining your life with your damage, and I think that lightning shield or earth shield should interact with some of your melee abilities or spells, overloading them and giving you minor defensive burst. 2 examples off the top of my head.

  1. using a lightning spell overcharges your shield, discharging an orb, similar to DH crystals. Picking up adds to your shield. Maybe a chance at it, we do like gambling alot with stormstrike, why not gamble a lil with defense? Keeps it balanced too with the skill required to pick it up, and the chance.
  2. using stormstrike adds a small, stacking shield that QUICKLY dissapates, only to be refereshed and capped out by, casting stormstrike. Adds some complexity to the rotation, could be alittle unbalanced however.
  3. I can’t think of an interaction with earthshield that you can proc yourself with damage abilities. In my opinion, pair it with the only technical earth ability we have, sundering. A relatively big CD so it isn’t too broken, but depending on amount of targets hit with sundering, some interaction occurs with earthen shield. In my dreams? Earth spikes. Stand in earth spikes with your enemy to shatter them, giving you a shield. No clue.
3 Likes

Outside of silences and stuns i feel like i am pretty hard to kill.

Go do arenas and you will change your mind.

7 Likes

I really like this idea actually. I like this a lot. Its a very good melee talent. Especially for pvp. Like I would tie it into lightning shield but it would allow enhance to actually use mealstrom to attack sometimes instead of always heal with it.

I’ve had a few ideas

  • they could rework unleashed shields to do any of what u said or just a flat defensive cd

  • make feral lunge baseline and rework the wolf affinity talent so it works in conjunction with all the other wolf talents.

  1. using feral lunge let’s u keep ur stacks of dmg reduction from improved ghost wolf for 6 sec
  2. thunderous paws now inc ur speed by an additional 40% and makes u cc immune for the duration
  3. the elemental wolf summoned now affects ur feral lunge
    a) lighting - feral lunge inc the dmg of ur next storm strike by 10% and generates 1 addition maelstrom per wolf
    b) fire - feral lunge causes the next sundering to apply flame shock to all targets hit and tick dmg inc by 10% per wolf
    c) ice - feral lunge causes ur next ice strike or frost shock to root and inc dmg by 20% per wolf
  4. feral lunge activates alpha wolf and inc damage by 50%

-I also like the idea of being able to use our maelstrom for defensives or ccs

  1. Insta cast hex with maelstrom
  2. Our maelstrom heals gives us dmg reduction
1 Like

How about fury of air like from Bfa that instead last 10 seconds and increases you parry chance by 50%. Cd could be 1 min

Or last 8 seconds with 30% parry and does no dmg but reduces healing by 15%

1 Like

Take Lightning Shield, Earth Shield and Water Shield and make them all defensive cooldowns rather than constant buffs.

I like the shields as they are.

I think we need more sustained defense outside of CDs not less.

Like give us 10% DR tied to lighting shield or make our self-healing less impacted by dampening.

Or ramp down on dampening in general. Dampening in arena on hybrids is too much right now. It’s like 35% 1 min into a solo shuffle match which is kind of nuts.

1 Like

My ulterior motive is just to be able to disable the ugly Shield visials, tbh. But I think any of the three Shields would make for a potent “get off me” cooldown.

10% DR on LS was a thing — just bring that back

Shields are iconic, so much so that LS was a shaman ability from Warcraft 3.

If we really want it to be something we don’t just use in solo content, we can push it to be put on other players like earth shield.

Then you could put it on kill targets in PvP, or the Tank in PvE - and reap the benefits of it generating maelstrom stacks for you.

Kind of with Zezu, as I think of the few visually iconic features, the elemental shields are high in the rankings for me.
Unleashed Shield is currently there for pvp that is in the flavor of what you mentioned.

Maybe Cheat Death
I think an interesting option might be a cheat death like effect from Nature’s Guardian. Preventing a one shot of 100k or less and returning health similar to tanking trinkets from Shadowlands.
Making MSW baseline for enhancement and using that talent spot for a cheat death talent. Or even making it exclusively for enhancement might fit it into the talent trees.

I honestly dont want more buttons to press in pvp. I’d rather it just stay on us and actually be a shield that provides defense. the 10% DR should never have left it.

2 Likes

Let’s also keep in mind, that at the end of they day — any change or addition Blizzard would make, would have to be a worse version of what other classes get to fall in line with the rest of our abilities:

  • 2 sec cast timer on stun
  • the only incapacitate that doesn’t actually prevent the enemy from moving
  • reincarnation is a defensive to budget around (lul)

etc. etc.

with that in mind, why not just rework Static Discharge to be an Enhancement talent? It never made sense to me to be an Elemental talent anyway, as Enhance has always been the spec that gets the most use out of lightning shield. Or, make maelstrom weapons baseline, and put this in class tree for all of them to pick.

Static discharge - 1 minute cooldown
Overload your Lightning Shield with excess energy, causing it to pulse every 0.5 seconds for 5 seconds striking enemies within 10 yards. Enemies struck are inflicted with Deadened Nerves, reducing their damage dealt by 1%, stacking up to 10% for 5 sec.

OR Conversely

Static Discharge - 1 minute cooldown
Overload your Lightning Shield with excess energy, causing it to pulse every 0.5 seconds, for 5 seconds striking enemies within 10 yards. For each enemy struck, you gain Deadened Nerves, reducing incoming damage by 1%, stacking up to 10.

Why something complicated? Just give them DR there is no need for a cheat death mechanic when you can just give them DR. I support the idea op had for a rapidly decaying damage shield you build on stromstrikes mostly because its a very interesting way for two abilities to interact which each other and encourages being aggressive as you should be when in melee. But ultimately it doesnt need to be that complicated.

“Why not DR”
I think passive effects are boring. Like they can be effective, you adjust the numbers and anything can be effective. Cheat death is passive but it adds, yes complexity.

A cheat death gives you a quick interactive reminder that you just died, you have maybe a global to rectify the situation or you’re dead anyway.

Active things like a toothy Thorns like aura means more than just living through damage, as it involves the attacker as well, potentially changing damage priority.

In PvP, cheat death can also provide a target priority situation depending on the cooldown. Like if they blow their “One shot” on you that you’ll for sure cheat, it’s essentially a trade in cooldowns. He overkilled you but didn’t kill you.

Dude we have like, way too many buttons and active effects as it is. You are on the right class if you find passives boring, but shaman needs more passives and less buttons. It just does.

This is the most hee-honk thing blizz has ever said. You know, especially when warlock exists, has a better version of it, and gets all the defensives in the world. Blizzard I can buy you a costume if you really want to look like a clown. You don’t gotta do this.

You’re not wrong. I just think active gameplay ought to be rewarding or we end up with boring broken things like DK Spellshield. Yeah it’s the bane of all casters, tanks for days, and is the greatest thing since Frostmourne for that class.

If you want less buttons, I mean there’s DH’s right there. Sacrificed half his keyboard turning that even his jump is both an attack and defensive.

Enhance already has a ton of active defensive tools. I think we could use a bit more passive. Or buffs to our existing active stuff (like lowering the effect of dampening on our self-heals). Agree with others that I don’t really think we need more buttons.

Perhaps I should clarify, “Nature’s Guardian”:

When your health is brought below 35%, you instantly heal for 20% of your maximum health. Cannot occur more than once every 45 sec.

My thinking was bringing this back to TBC style days where it could also prevent your death in addition to healing you back to 20% of the maximum health. It was often used in conjunction with the Battlemaster trinket, which increased your health by +%.

My idea was the cheat death would be a passive talent that you can actively prepare for. Perhaps as an addition to Nature’s Guardian talent’s functionality, or as an addition somewhere in the tree, such as Brimming with Life in the general tree or either Refreshing Waters or Improved Maelstrom Weapon in the enhance tree.

In this context, this would mean you could prepare for getting wrecked in a situation like pvp, actively by using the defensives we currently have, like Earth Elemental or a Battlemaster trinket that increases your health. You get chunked, healed to 20% of your buffed life, because one effectively prepared for it. OR you could not prep for it, and be healed to your base health.

It’s not an additional button, it’s an auto cheat death.