I agree that the current version of Enhancement is fun and in a relatively good state. But I am still deeply upset that Enhancement is not getting the changes it needs going into The War Within. While almost every other spec have gotten changes between the start of Dragonflight and the start of The War Within, Enhancement has been (relatively) untouched. Many of the changes over the last year have improved the gameplay of classes without changing the core fundamentals. In this same way, I think Enhancement is in desperate need of many tweaks to improve the gameplay and quality-of-life. I’ll break down specific issues below, but most of them fall into two categories: reducing button bloat and improving UI/usability.
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Having both Ice Strike and Frost Shock be required to use Hailstorm effectively is completely unnecessary bloat. In a similar way that Windwalker’s got Expel Harm baked into Tiger Palm, Ice Strike and Frost Shock should be combined.
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Its nice to have Feral Lunge baseline, but it is adding to our button bloat. Rushing Reflexes for monk gives them a lunge when they roll; Rehgar in HotS got a lunge when he went into ghost wolf; Feral Lunge should just happen when go into Ghost Wolf so we dont need another keybind.
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The snare breaking part of Thunderous Paws shouldn’t be on a 20 second cooldown. It feels absolutely horrible to go into Ghost Wolf at 19 seconds, then have to exit form and reactivate Ghost Wolf on the next GCD to break a snare. Also, when you use Ghost Wolf to travel to the next pack in M+ and then Entangling would activate and you cant break it (Yes, I know Entangling is leaving, but the point still stands).
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Hot Hands causes wild differences in your damage depending on how many proc’s you get in a fight. This would feel much better to use if its proc rate was normalized even if that meant each proc did less damage. Or better yet, make give it Mastery scaling like our other procs so player’s feel like they have some control over it.
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Lashing Flames is a contentious talent for players. It should be given the same treatment as Havoc got for Momentum and be given a simplified version to choose between.
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Molten Assault shouldn’t require Flame Shock to already be present on the target. Warrior’s don’t need to bind Rend anymore and Enhancement shouldn’t need to bind Flame Shock.
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Elemental Blast can just be an effect on Lightning Bolt. Removes another unnecessary button, and removes the need to talent into Lava Burst.
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I understand the need to reduce our off-healing by nerfing/removing Ancestral Guidance, Healing Stream Totem, and Chain Heal. In return, reduce the number of GCDs needed to maintain Earth Shield on two targets. Or remove Healing Surge self-healing consuming Maelstorm Weapon.
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Lighting up buttons is a good indicator for players to understand when they get procs or buffs to certain abilities. It is less useful when 7 of your 8 rotational buttons are all lit up at the same time.
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- Stormbringer resets should not light up Stormstrike for the entire duration. Also, this effect shouldn’t have a duration.
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- Our Maelstrom Weapon spenders shouldn’t light up when we have 5 stacks and stay lit for the entire time if we aren’t expected to always immediately spend them. Also, the spell alert effect has never been updated to reflect us having 10 charges now. It may be more effective to just track this buff right on the button, similar to how monk’s track Mark of the Crane.
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- Similarly, it would be helpful if there was a spell alert or a tracker on the button itself to keep track of Hailstorm charges.
I have a few more changes I think Enhancement needs, but these are much more impactful and might be contentious, so I want to separate them out from the QoL changes of above.
- Enhancement’s cooldowns are underwhelming. The team did an excellent job at fixing the cooldowns for Survival Hunter and I think we deserve the same. Alternatively, we just need more options, similar to Frost DK going from 3 capstone paths to 5.
- Most of the power of Primordial Wave comes from extra MSW and Haste it gives as secondary effects. It should have more of its damage benefit baked into the baseline talent. Also, I think players would enjoy PWave more if it just fired the Lightning Bolts itself instead of being a 2-button combo.
- Feral Spirit should be removed as a “capstone” ability. Instead of having 5 different effects that reduce the cooldown of Feral Spirits, just make it a 20 second CD and a rotational ability. It would also make a lot of sense for this ability to be in the center of the talent tree since it is used by every build.
- Relatedly, Enhancement already has a lot of randomness. Instead of Elemental Spirits being a random selection, could it be based on the last 2 abilities used instead (i.e. if you used Stormstrike and then Lava Lash before activating Feral Spirits, it would give Physical and Fire imbued dogs)
- Doom Winds is really at-odds with everything else Enhancement does and it feels really clunky to completely ignore your Maelstrom Weapon charges and any other procs during this ability. There are certainly several ways to solve this issue, but having Thorim’s Invocation also active during Doom Winds might be the simplest.
- Deeply Rooted Elements should be removed. It is entirely too punishing for any loss of melee-uptime and it encourages bad gameplay of spamming one-button as fast as possible. I think it also limits the design space for Ascendence to be a powerful and interesting ability. Enhancement already has other options for more consistent, shorter cooldown gameplay in abilities like Primordial Wave, Feral Spirits, and Sundering.
- Ascendence needs a reimagining. Spamming Stormstrike as fast as possible is not great gameplay and I think Enhancement is a much better spec when its rotation is more methodical. Instead of reducing the cooldown of Stormstrike, I think it should make each SS hit harder or have garenteed procs. If it is going to increase the range of your abilities, it should increase the range of all your abilities including Lava Lash and Ice Strike (also, should that part be a utility ability instead of an offensive cooldown?). Maybe Ascendence should just be completely changed.
- Fire Nova lacks identity compared to Hailstorm. I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe this should be a harder-hitting, longer-cooldown ability so it is more distinct.
- Windfury has very little interaction with the player for being the centerpiece of an entire build and an iconic part of Enhancement. I don’t know if this is an issue or how you would go about solving it, but it feels very strange to me how many talent points you can spend on a gameplay system that you have almost no interaction with (only Doom Winds).
In case it wasn’t obvious with all of my comments above: I think the “Elementalist” build for Enhancment is in need of much less changes than the “Physical” Stormstrike build.