Enhancement Fan Re-Design 2.0

Classes Shaman
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TL:DR - Combination of things I enjoy about Enhancement mixed with some changes and tweaks from other versions of shaman in the Warcraft IP across other games that I feel could help “complete” Enhance.

Enhancement Class Changes

  • Enhancement is reimagined as a Warrior Totemic, who uses totems to enhance and react to the world around them while augmenting their own physical prowess with the spirits.
  • As such, several things about the class have changed

Most Notably is a re-design of Maelstrom Weapon to move away from a pseudo-resource and instead copy Thrall’s Frostwolf Resilience from Heroes of the Storm. It’s clear these abilities have influenced each other over the years, but Thrall’s Frostwolf Resilience focuses solely on defensive survival, giving him passive defense as long as he is aggressive.

Maelstrom Weapon

  • Maelstrom weapon no longer increase the spellpower and reduce the cast time of any spells
  • Instead, dealing damage with certain abilities generates one stack of Maelstrom Weapon. Upon reaching 5 stacks, the shaman is instantly healed for a small amount, replenishes some mana, and the stacks reset.
  • Stormstrike, Lava Lash, and Crash Lightning each give 1 stack of Maelstrom Weapon when used. Windfury procs also give you 1 stack of Maelstrom Weapon.

Due to Maelstrom Weapon no longer affecting spell casts, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Elemental Blast, Healing Surge, and Chain Heal have all had their damage and healing increased to compensate for no longer being instant cast. What this does is turn the mechanic into a defensive, allowing for strong self-sustain that is no longer at the expense of dps, but still punishing the shaman for being off-target or being cc’d (where heals are no longer effective). This also allows for Enhancement to have a passive mana regen that should assist with mana issues that have previously plagued the past, in a way that does not destroy self-healing.

Furthermore, we see additional changes made to Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning.

  • Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt are now instant cast spells for Enhancement, on a 7 second cooldown that can be reduced with haste
  • Adding a cooldown maintains the identity of waiting to build up to a bigger Lightning Bolt, while also keeping value on haste to reduce its cooldown
  • As maelstrom weapon loses interaction with spells, you don’t need to worry about overcapping stacks and can simply use the ability when you need it, providing its off cooldown
  • By making them instant cast, we also keep the identity of Enhancement turning them into instant cast spells. The cooldown prevents spamming, also simulating the previous design of waiting for enough stacks to cast.

Chain Lightning - 100 mana - instant cast - 40 yd range - 7 sec cd

  • Hurl a lightning bolt at the enemy, dealing X nature damage than jumping to additional nearby enemies. Affects 3 total targets. If chain lightning hits more than 1 target, each target hit by your chain lightning increases the damage of your next Crash Lightning by 20%.

Lightning Bolt - 100 mana - instant cast - 40 yd range - 7 sec cd

  • Hurl a bolt of lightning at the target, dealing X nature damage.

We also see a redesign of a few other abilities:

Stormstrike - 200 mana - Melee Range

  • Energizes both your weapons with lightning and delivers a massive blow to your target, dealing a total of X physical damage and granting you an additional 25% chance to critically strike that enemy with your next Nature damage spell within 15 seconds.

We see a return to critical chance on nature spells from Stormstrike, however, unlike previous design this will only increase the chance of your next Nature spell, rather than all nature spells within 15 seconds for balance reasons

Crash Lightning - 550 mana - melee range - Instant - 9 sec cooldown

  • Electrocutes all enemies in front of you, dealing X nature damage. Hitting 2 or more targets enhances your weapons for 10 sec, causing Stormstrike to also deal X nature damage to all targets in front of you, and Lava Lash to spread Flame shock to 2 additional targets. Each target hit by Crash Lightning increases the damage of your next Stormstrike by 5%.

Crash Lightning also gets a change, removing the extra damage from Lava Lash and instead adding a baseline spread mechanic to the ability, allowing it to be better useful for cleaves. This also sets up synergy with certain talents listed below. This spread mechanic used to be a glyph considered mandatory for enhancement, and not having the ability to spread flame shock easily now is a contributing factor to the dead Fire Nova talent.

Hex

  • Has been moved to the shadow school

Hex moving to the shadow school allows for Shaman to have a CC that doesn’t lock them out of the rest of their kit when interrupted.

We also see new abilities in the form of totem cooldowns, talent changes, as well as some other baseline functionality added to the class for QoL.

At level 10, when choosing the Enhancement spec, you now receive an additional passive ability:

Totemic Projection

  • Totems can be reactivated to move an existing totem to a new location once.

This allows for an enhancement shaman to move his totems around the field, repositioning them for better placement or control over the situation.

Examples

  • Your ally is feared out of range, so you cast Tremor Totem then move it into their range to break the fear
  • You cast cap totem then move it into range just before the stun
  • You cast earthbind but as an enemy leaves its range, you move it ahead of them forcing them back into it, or to choose a different pathing

This ability also builds on the identity of Enhancement being a TOTEMIC warrior of the elements.

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New Baseline Abilities

With the focus shifting to a TOTEMIC warrior, that also requires new totemic abilities to appear for the class.

Cleansing Totem - Instant Cast - 1 min cd

  • Summons a Cleansing Totem with 5 health at the feat of the caster that instantly removes 1 disease, 1 poison, or 1 curse from party members within 15 yards, every 3 seconds. Lasts 10 seconds.

  • The totem will only remove 1 debuff from any target, chosen at random between the 3 afflicting debuffs

  • The instant effect on use avoids being useless when instantly stomped

  • The low hp and cooldown prevent it from being spammable

  • Enhancement is given access to an ability that can remove disease and poison (which is something they lost from previous expansions) making them more appealing for PvE groups

Wind Rush Totem - Instant Cast - 40 yard - 2 min cooldown

  • Summons a totem at the target location for 15 sec, continually granting all allies who pass within 10 yards 60% increased movement speed for 5 sec.
  • Made baseline to further identity of Enhance as a TOTEMIC warrior that enhances themselves and allies

Searing Totem - Instant Cast - 3 min cooldown

  • Summons a fire totem with 50% of the caster’s health at your feet that instantly hurls a searing boulder at your last attacked target within 25 yd range inflicting X fire damage, repeating every 0.5 sec for 10 seconds.
  • Searing Totem returns overhauled as a BIG DPS cooldown, chunking people who choose to ignore it, forcing people to bring it down, or forcing them to move out of its range.

Grounding Totem - 5.9% of base mana - Instant Cast - 25 sec cooldown

  • Summons an Air Totem with 50 health at the feet of the caster that will redirect one harmful spell cast on a nearby party or raid member to itself, destroying the totem. Will not redirect area of effect spells. Lasts 15 sec.

The triumphant return of the original grounding totem as baseline, continuing to only further the identity of TOTEMIC warrior. This also allows for a more interesting pvp talent, as it is currently considered mandatory.

Searing Totem returns as an iconic totem with a major DPS upgrade. It now serves as a high damage single target cooldown, that chunks people forcing them to either kill the totem, or get out of range.

ENHANCEMENT ABILITY LIST

Here you will see the new layout of enhancement abilities, along with some changes made as certain talents become baseline and new abilities are add.

Level 10

  • Windfury Weapon
  • Mastery: Enhanced Elements
  • Dual Wield
  • Critical Strikes
  • NEW Totemic Projection
    • Totems can be reactivated to move an existing totem to a new location once.
  • NEW Spirit Wolf (moved from talents to baseline)
    • While transformed into a Ghost Wolf, you gain 5% increased movement speed and 5% damage reduction every 1 sec, stacking up to 4 times.

These changes allow for Enhancement to feel as though they have advantage on things pertaining to physically altering their body (Ghost Wolf) as well as showing their TOTEMIC warrior prowess (Totemic Projection)

Level 11

  • Lava Lash

Level 16

  • NEW Feral Lunge (moved from talents to baseline) - 8-25 yd range - instant - 30 sec cd
    • Lunge at your enemy as a ghostly wolf, biting them to deal X physical damage

This gives Enhancement a baseline burst mobility/gap closer.

Level 18

  • Cleanse Spirit

Level 20

  • Stormstrike

Level 22

  • Lava Lash (rank 2)

Level 23

  • New Static Charge (moved from talents to baseline)
    • Reduces the cooldown of Capacitor Totem by 5 sec for each enemy it stuns, up to a maximum reduction of 20 sec.

By being baseline, we again highlight Enhance’s TOTEMIC warrior prowess over the other specs

Level 27

  • Stormbringer
  • Mail Specialization

Level 29

  • New Maelstrom Weapon
    • Dealing damage with certain abilities generates one stack of Maelstrom Weapons. Upon reaching 5 stacks, the Shaman is instantly healed for X, replenishes X mana and the stacks reset.

As discussed earlier, this gives Enhance passive self-sustain on par with other melee classes that no longer sacrifices dps. They still get punished inside stuns and cc as they are now.

Level 31

  • Earth Shield (moved from talents to baseline) - 1000 mana - instant - 40 yd range

Adding Earth Shield baseline allows for better use of the unleash shield pvp talent, as well as once again promoting the spec’s identity of group enhancement.

Level 32

  • Searing Totem

Level 33

  • Wind Rush Totem

Level 34

  • Feral Spirit

Level 36

  • Wind Rush Totem

Level 38

  • Crash Lightning

Level 43

  • Stormbringer (rank 2)

Level 44

  • Spirit Walk

Level 49

  • Windfury Totem

Level 52

  • Chain Lightning (rank 2)

Level 58

  • Windfury Totem (rank 2)
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Talent Changes

Highlighted above, we’ve seen that some talents have gone baseline:

  • Earth Shield
  • Wind Rush Totem
  • Spirit Wolf
  • Feral Lunge

But we also see the removal of a few talents, with compensation in certain places while lackluster elements are removed altogether.

Level 15

  • Lashing Flames has been removed, with its damage baked into Flame Shock baseline
  • Forceful Winds has been removed, with its damage baked into Windfury baseline

New - Searing Flames

  • Your damaging attacks and spells incite primal fire to come to your aid for 6 sec, repeatedly dealing X Fire damage to your most recently attacked target.

New - Echo of the Elements

  • Stormstrike, Chain Lightning and Healing Stream totem now have 2 charges. Effects that reset their remaining cooldown will instead grant 1 charge.

Elemental Blast - 2.27% of base mana, 40 yard range, instant, 12 sec cooldown

  • Harness the raw power of the elements dealing X Elemental damage and increasing your Critical Strike or Haste by X% or Mastery by Y% for 10 sec.

Level 25

  • Hot Hands has been redesigned to include flame shock
  • Ice Strike has been removed, with the iconic Earth Shock returning in its place

Stormflurry

  • Stormstrike has a 25% chance to strike the target an additional time for 40% of normal damage. This effect can chain off of itself.

New - Hot Hand

  • Melee auto-attacks with Flametongue Weapon and Flame Shock ticks have an X% chance to reset the cooldown of lava lash and increase the damage of your next lava lash by 100%.

New - Earth Shock - instant cast, 6 second cooldown

  • Instantly shocks the target with concussive force dealing X nature damage

Tier 30

  • Spirit Wolf, Earth shield, and Static Charge have all been made baseline as QoL change and are instead replaced with all new TOTEM abilities

New - Earthgrab Totem - 250 mana - 35 yd range - 30 sec cd

  • Summons a totem at the target location for 20 sec. The totem pulses every 2 sec, rooting all enemies within 8 yards for 8 sec. Enemies previously rooted by the totem instead suffer 50% movement speed reduction.

New - Windwalk Totem - 6% base mana - Instant - 1 min cd

  • Summons an Air totem with (2 * Total Health/100 ) health at the feet of the caster for 6 sec, granting raid members within 40 yards immunity to movement-imparing effects.

New - Ancestral Protection Totem - 1,100 mana - 40 yd range - instant - 5 min cd

  • Summons a totem at the target location for 30 sec. All allies within 20 yards of the totem gain 10% increased health. If an ally dies, the totem will be consumed to allow them to Reincarnate with 20% health and mana. Cannot reincarnate an ally who dies to massive damage.

This entire tier now becomes dedicated to showing the TOTEMIC prowess of an enhance warrior allowing for the options of several group utilities: An aoe Root, an AoE movement immunity, or an AoE small defensive with a battle res.

Tier 35

  • Fire Nova has had its cooldown reduced and range increased
  • Elemental Assault has been removed, with the damage portion baked into Stormstrike baseline. It is now replaced by a redesigned Crashing Storm, which has also seen a small re-work and moved up to create an AoE tier.

Crashing Storm - Passive

  • Crash Lightning also electricies the targets, causing them to crackle for X nature damage over 6 seconds.

Hailstorm

  • Each stack of Maelstrom Weapon consumed increases the damage of your next Frost shock by 15% and causes your Frost Shock to hit 1 additional target per Maelstrom Weapon stack consumed.

Fire Nova - 550 mana - 40 yard range - Instant - 6 sec cooldown

  • Erupt a burst of fiery damage from all targets affected by your Flame shock, dealing X fire damage to up to 6 targets within 8 yds of your Flame Shock targets.

The change to Crashing Storm allows the DoT portion to no longer be wasted if enemies move, as the DoT is attached to enemies rather than the ground. Fire Nova’s cooldown reduction, in combination with the natural flame shock spread on Crash Lightning now makes this a viable choice.

Tier 40

  • Feral Lunge made baseline
  • Wind Rush Totem removed

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.

New - Eye of the Storm - 1 min cooldown

  • Instantly activate your Maelstrom Weapons to heal for 150% the normal amount, regardless of how many stacks you have.

New - Nature’s Swiftness - 3 min cooldown

  • Your next healing surge or chain heal becomes an instant cast.

This talent tier focuses entirely on healing and self-sustain. Nature’s Guardian remains as the time-tested talent for shaman self-defensives and is a passive option. Eye of the Storm is an active ability that allows a shaman to utilize the healing aspect of Maelstrom Weapon at any time, regardless of their stacks. Lastly, Nature’s Swiftness returns, allowing for an instant cast on your casted heals, that can be used either for yourself or an ally, allowing for a bit more utility at the expense of a longer cooldown.

Tier 45

  • Stormkeeper has been redesigned for Enhancement
  • Crashing Storm has been moved to a different tier, and instead replaced with Thunderstorm — giving Enhance a way to peel other melee from them in lieu of their limited defense kit.

New - Thunderstorm - Instant - 45 sec cooldown

  • Call down a bolt of lightning, dealing X nature damage to all enemies within 10 yards, reducing their movement speed by 40% for 5 sec, and knocking them away from the shaman. Usable while stunned.

New - Stormkeeper - Instant cast - 1 min cooldown

  • Charge yourself with lightning, causing your next 2 Chain Lightnings to deal 300% more damage and have no cooldown.

Sundering

  • Shatters a line of earth in front of you with your main hand weapon, causing X Flamestrike damage and incapacitating any enemy hit for 2 sec.

Another AoE tier, this focuses on different amounts of burst dmg with utility — ranging from high dmg with no utility, to low dmg with huge utility.

Tier 50

  • Elemental Spirits has been removed
  • Earthen Spike has been removed
  • Ascendance has been redesigned into 3 different talents, each focusing on a different elemental aspect

New - Air Ascendant - 3 min cooldown

  • Transform into an Air Ascendant for X sec, immediately dealing X nature damage to any enemy within 8 yards, reducing the cooldown and cost of Stormstrike by 66% and transforming your auto attack and Stormstrike into Wind attacks which bypass armor and have a 30 yard range.

New - Flame Ascendant - 3 min cooldown

  • Transform into a Flame Ascendant for X sec, immediately dealing X fire damage to any enemy within 8 yards inflicting them with flame shock, reducing the cooldown and cost of Lava Lash and Fire Nova by 100%.

New - Earth Ascendant - 3 min cooldown

  • Transform into an Earth Ascendant for X sec, immediately causing the earth within 8 yards of you to tremble and break dealing X physical damage over 6 sec and sometimes knocking down enemies. Additionally, your skin transforms into pure granite reducing all damage taken by 40%.

Here we see 3 versions of Ascendance for enhancement, allowing them to take the standard version through Air for Single Target damage, but also a massive AoE variant through Flame Ascendant, as well as a purely defensive version via the earth element.

Rotation/Priority Ideas (before talents)

Single-Target
Flame Shock if not on the target, or about to expire
Lightning Bolt if you have SS debuff up
Stormstrike
Lava Lash
Crash Lightning
Frost Shock

AoE
Chain Lightning if off Cooldown
Crash Lightning
Stormstrike
Flame Shock
Lava Lash

PVP Talents

  • Shamanism/Heroism have had their mana cost removed entirely.

  • Ethereal Form has been removed - Shamanistic Rage has taken its place

  • Skyfury Totem and Counterstrike Totem are unchanged

  • Thundercharge, Purifying Waters, Spectral Recovery, Swelling Waves, and Ride the Lightning have all been removed

NEW Shamanistic Rage - instant cast - 1 minute - Replaces Astral Shift

  • You instantly dispel any magic effects on you and reduce all damage you take by 30% for 12 seconds. Useable while stunned.

NEW Sentry Totem - instant cast - 3 min cooldown

  • Place an sentry totem down with (2 * Total Health / 100 ) health that greatly increases the stealth detection of yourself and allies within 30 yards for 10 seconds.

NEW Colossal Totems - Passive

  • Increase the health of your totems and the range and area of effect by 100%.

NEW Earthen Power - Passive

  • Dealing Nature or Physical damage inflict the enemy with Weakened Blows. Additionally, your Earthbind totem’s initial slow increases to 90% for 1 sec.
  • Weakened Blows - The target deals 10% less physical damage for 30 seconds.

NEW Spirit Haunt

  • Your spirit wolves’ attacks heal them and their master for X% of damage done.

NEW Frozen Power - Passive

  • Your flametongue weapon is also imbued with frost, having a chance to deal additional frost damage and slowing the target’s movement speed by 25% for 8 seconds. Additionally, your frost shock now roots the initial target in ice for 5 sec.
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So I would baseline Earth Shock. Return all 3 shocks to Enhancement. I would also tweak the ss effect to guaranteed effect that stacks buffing the shaman. So at 4 stacks would be 100% Crit chance and crit damage would be done to your target. This way if the target dies before you reach the stacks you want your not punished for it. Like how they did for rogue combo points where they transfer over to the next target if the current one dies.

I do not like the whole Mail Specialization thing we should be automatic like it is in retail. Also imo Crashing Storm should already be baked into Crash Lighting. I understand what your doing but I do not like totems being talents they should be baseline with talents enhancing them. Like earth grab should be baseline. Wind walk and Ancestral Protection I can see being talents.

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Honestly Bubblies, you put so much thought and great ideas forward it honestly leaves me gob smacked, I really love your ideas!! :heart:

My only thing I’d like changed I’ve always wanted Lightning Bolt to go back to instant cast no CD!! For easy QoL on clearing old content (but that’s just me), and Earth Ascendence is very very niche maybe also grant CC Immunity? For use in PvP? but other then that I love the ideas!

My biggest question is why arnt you working for Blizzard as a Shaman Class Dev!, they definitely need someone who cares, thinks a lot through and consciously not making the spec OP but more so actually balance and bringing it up to par!.

Edit: Maybe also look into Reincarnation, I feel like the CD 30 min is way to long, do you think having it lowered to 15 or 20 min is too much??

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You put defensive talents on damage tiers guaranteeing they will never get picked.

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This is a solid idea. Thinking back, I realize that having only the next spell get an increased chance is lackluster. Perhaps going back to just the static 25% crit chance for nature spells for 15 sec might be good as well.

I thought about this, but there’s too much bloat. It’s there as a talent for people who want an extra ranged ability and I think can compete well with the row.

Crashing Storm is garbage, but I don’t know what else could take its place. By moving the debuff to the enemies rather than the ground, I think it solves a lot of the reason crashing storm is considered bad.

As for Earthgrab — the baseline is earthbind, which is why earthgrab is a talent (same reason it is a talent for resto).

I thought about a no cooldown for LB, but doing that would make LB weak by default — and we’d need something to give it some punch. You could do that with the Stormstrike debuff perhaps, but I’d rather it just be like the old overload talent and be strong baseline, but have a cooldown. I understand the QoL, but with this design you have 4 instants (flame shock, LB, CL, Frost Shock) all on relatively low cooldowns so farming old content shouldn’t be bad.

Earth Ascendent is definitely niche, and I do feel needs something else. My goal of that row was to do a Single Target, AoE, and then a defensive. I basically just turn the shaman into the primal earth elemental, so perhaps adding Pulverize (the stun) could be a consideration.

15 minutes might be a good spot for this.

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There is only one defensive talent on a tier with dmg (Earth Ascendant)

  • I was tooling with the idea of having it turn Stormstrike into Pulverize for a consistent Stun during its duration — or as someone suggested, adding CC immunity — There is also the option to add in something like Earthen Spike’s damage increases while in that form — As it stands, the final tier is set up that you will alternate the talents based on what situation you are in (ST, AoE, or needing Defense).
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Thunderstorm is a defensive ability you put on a damage tier.

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Thunderstorm is as much a defensive ability as Sundering.

Both do damage and temporarily remove the enemy from the situation (knockback vs. incapacitate) and serve as a second interupt to wind shear.

You can also balance the damage of thunderstorm to match against the damage of CL and Sundering.

Where you can sacrifice the utility of Sundering/Thunderstorm for more straight Burst from CL

or

you can forgo the extra burst from CL to be able to knock enemies or pseudo-stun them.

At the current moment, Enhance doesn’t take Stormkeeper over Sundering — so I fail to see the issue.

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I do not think it would add any extra bloat. But if you do I do understand how about we change/remove something else. My point is that Earth shock has been with enhancement until wod. It should be returned baseline make something else a talent and give us all 3 shocks back.

Ohh just had an idea tell me what you think. So change the ss proc. Make it work off shocks but augment the shocks. Earth shock gets crit and crit dmg, Flame shock is aoe spread of flame shock, Frost shock is ensnare, slow targets casting speed/attack speed.

This way we actually have play style options for our shocks. Do we want to nuke the target Earth Shock, Do we want aoe dmg flame shock, Do we want to ensnare/slow the target along with its ability to fight or heal frost shock.

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I think this gets too difficult to balance. Crash Lightning is already overhauled to cause Lava Lash to spread flame shock, so having the interaction on Stormstrike is redundant. As for Frost shock, I don’t think it needs anything beyond the slow. Hailstorm already spreads it to 6 targets, and frozen power pvp talent adds more utility by rooting the primary target.

The reason I have Earth Shock as a talent is that on its own, it doesn’t really add anything. So in that row, you have the option to have meatier stormstrikes…meatier lava lashes…or another range ability for your stormstrike debuff. It fits nicely, while acknowledging that it really has no role in the main stay of the kit anymore (the reason it was removed in the first place).

All of that play style option is available with Earth shock — do you big nuke? do you dot? do you snare?

I just don’t see adding it baseline as doing much besides feeding into nostalgia. The only change I might consider if it were baseline, is making it a ranged execute like Hammer of Wrath, useable only at 20% or below…but I’m not sure that’s needed.

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So when we had it i used it as a finsher like rogues have. As an execute it could help us balance out our dps in the execute phase of fights. I know it would bw the only option i used in that talent because i just love that ability. Like the ranged execute for paladins it helped me get a lot of kills from running alliance

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I hear this, but it wasn’t an execute. It didn’t do any extra damage on people below a certain health threshold. It was simply an instant we could use when we didn’t have a 5 stack for lightning bolt that also benefited from stormstrike’s debuff.

That’s why its a talent, and not baseline. I personally don’t think Enh needs an execute…but if I were to change ES to become baseline, that’s probably how I’d do it…so it still wouldn’t be useable most of the time.

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I know this. But i bet i wasn’t the only one that used it this way. I full well know what earthshock was. And i want it returned along with the ss debuff. It was my way of playing Enhancement.

All this being said i like most of your rework. I told you what i would change. As always you show how much you love this class/spec

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I can get behind most of these suggestions. I too think that Shamans should be WAY more totemy. That’s the coolest part of Shamans. “I have a fever and the only cure…. Is more totems!” - In Christopher Walken voice.

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I have opinions on totems and most of them are not very positive - they just ate GCDs and provided passive buffs on tiny stick radii. I could see reintroducing them with a very different mechanic tied to them.

Specifically: if totems are going to become significant to us again, make them do something when we drop them, and not just as ongoing effects. It might be as simple as a passive like:

  • Totemic Reverberation (Level 35ish?): Dropping a totem deals X total damage divided evenly among all aggressive targets in the totem’s radius.

This makes all totem drops into active damage on top of their ongoing effect. Alternatively, throw an instant effect onto each individual totem with specific abilities (instant damage to single target, instant self heal, instant party heal, etc…).

There are likely a lot of ways this could be done, but I’d want the button press itself to feel meaningful. I hated that the original totem mechanics were basically “You need these to be useful, but pushing the button doesn’t feel useful at all.” (and I know there were iterations in between, but there was never one where the button press itself felt meaningful, including the drop 4 totems right now button)

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I like this but my concern is that it would gimp our damage elsewhere. It does do a good job of making this useful for single target and aoe however.

I think, at least to me, the feeling meaningful part just needs an instant effect: be it damage or something else.

Examples:

Earthbind - Instantly snares targets with a Snare over Time effect, so even if it is immediately stomped, it will keep them snared for 3 seconds

Tremor Totem - Instantly breaks Fear/Charm/CC and also pulses to break after that

For the suggested idea of cleansing totem, its instantly doing an AoE 5 person cleanse, and then pulsing afterwards.

I’m not sure how you could do something like that to totems such as grounding, skyfury, counterstrike, because largely you don’t want them in positions where they will be stomped immediately. There is also the problem with something like Windfury totem that can be spammed. You’d need some kind of limiter like Doom Winds has to prevent abuse.

I overall agree that totems should feel useful on press — I am just not sure I would turn every totem into a mini-ascendance pop, or that I would apply it to every totem specifically (as the only totems that ever felt useless on press to me were the buff totems, which aren’t part of the designed kit here aside from windfury).

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Tremor totem currently does pulse immediately on drop, but in most situations where I’m dropping Tremor, I’m doing it before an AOE fear (otherwise I just cleanse the fear from the single target it hits) - the immediate effect is lost. This could probably be fixed by simply allowing Tremor to be dropped while feared.

I do suspect each individual totem would need at least a short cooldown (5 seconds would probably be sufficient to make sure you weren’t spamming it). The damage dealt by a totem drop would need to be at or below the amount of damage dealt by an instant LB probably, but even that would be enough to not feel bad when dropped. It would also require minimal tuning elsewhere.

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This is really thoughtful and fantastic. I’m not so sure I’m totally on board with it but, there’s definitely some great ideas here backed up with a deep understanding (and appreciation) for the spec.

I really don’t have a big issue with the current Maelstrom system, myself. It has a certain synergy with a number of spell attacks and my chosen covenant (Venthyr) that afford me AoE burst that makes me feel truly powerful. The healing off instants is nice emergency help too. Mana is an issue but then, we’re not supposed to be a healer. I don’t feel particularly squishy (aside from the overall design aspect of armor class being painfully meaningless in modern Wow…like my warrior changing from prot to fury and may as well be a mage wearing a dress, but I digress)

Also, this now puts almost everything on a CD of one sort or another. I’m a little leery of locking LB/CL into longish CDs. I see the additional charge to SS, which would be entirely welcome, but I think with procs it functions pretty well already. Though…getting a chain of procs in a row lining up with Doom Winds is a “hell yeah!” feeling I don’t get with alot of other classes.

I’m not a long time shaman - until 9.1, he’s been my “play for fun/play for me” alt when not tanking or healing for my guild. Now he’s my raiding main and I am going to be more focused on the nuance and details. I’ve been playing this game 16+ years so I’ve seen too many class overhauls that made me feel like “I don’t like this anymore” so I’m leery of sweeping changes, even if they sound great on paper and come from the community. I miss my aff lock from Legion. I miss MoP Enhance…

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