I dabble in most specs/classes in pvp. Once I got to enhance… Oh my god. Its near unwinnable. The spec is bloated with buttons and just doesnt seem to do any bit of pressure. Even through all my CDs and running and healing myself I fall over. Healers cannot keep me up.
In prior seasons i was able to get past 1800 but I don’t even think I will bother this season. Please do a massive overhaul for enhance. Like wow it is bad!
Yea, and unless I’m missing something, doesn’t look like the next expansion is seriously changing things for enhancement. The trees look the same as they do now.
And the biggest issue I have is how the spec has an excessive amount of global cooldowns making it feel a bit clunky, especially as a melee toon. As a caster who actually has to cast, a few extra global cooldowns are not that bad because the spell will be ready again after the cast. It feels smooth. But with melee? Not so much. I hated dealing with it on my feral druid with all the shapeshifting and would hate it on an enhancement shaman dealing with all the totems on top of all those melee abilities with short recast timers.
Looks like both of these classes I’ll avoid in TWW. Ferals should have no global cooldown for shapeshifting and enhance should have no global cooldown for totems.
I don’t think enhance needs a rework. Imo it plays the smoothest and most fun since WoD. Enhance needs work on its capstone talents and a few of the other talents moved around, but nothing major. They need to do something with the Ascendance nodes for sure.
Elemental needs more work imo. The spec has devolved into lava burst spam and the maelstrom spenders feel weak to press which is wrong.
The Storm build needs a rework because spamming 1 ability to try to proc RNG while ignoring your primary resource is just bad design.
The elementalist build is mostly fine. Biggest problem is target capped AoE.
Elemental definitely needs a serious rework though.
Enhancement Shaman doesn’t need a rework but needs restructures or adjustments on talents and target capped AoE. Especially, shamans have terrible survivability. The totemic hero tree highlights how bad talent points squeezes are. You would need to spend 11 points in gate 1 then you have to spend 3 points which is mandatory. The specs talent change I’d love to see:
I haven’t played Elemental but yeah, it needs a serious rework.
If someday it should happen that some changes must be found, I’ve got a little list. — I’ve got a little list. Of talent tree offenders that might well be underground and that never would be missed — that never would be missed!
Overflowing Maelstrom removed, damage and MSW generation rebalanced around 5 spenders holding up to 10 stacks again.
DRE, just remove it and reduce Ascendence cd to 2 min.
Possibly rework Thorims to convert(autospend) MSW to Stormstrike/Windstrike damage increasing stacks that ramp up over the duration of Ascendence. (crackpot idea, can be ignored)
Make Stormflurry deal increased damage additional Stormstrike hits rather than reduced. Obviously as it can chain off itself, the additional damage wouldn’t increase.
Buff Crash Lightning, if it is going to sit in the center of the tree it should be pretty strong. Maybe it could also benefit from the talents that effect Stormstrike.
Either buff, rework, or remove Doom Winds. I think this would be great for Windfury-based RNG burst rather than a sad version of what it once was on a cd.
Bake Alpha Wolf into Spirit Wolves baseline, the effect isn’t worth being where it is on the tree.
Bake Feral Lunge effect into Lava Lash. If Monk can have their level of mobility and still get to tp to their opponent with every Tiger Palm than I don’t think this is an unreasonable request.
Windfury Totem either baseline or in the class tree.
If we aren’t gonna get 2h, give us another weapon type. Swords/Warglaives. Alternatively, they could add Short Spears to the game. (pretty please)
Replace Ice Strike with a talent that causes Flametongue damage to increase the damage the target takes from Frost Shock, stacking. Hailstorm buffed to compensate for loss in AoE. (crackpot idea, can be ignored)
Focused Insight reworked to give either healing or damage reduction from generating MSW stacks.
They’d none of 'em be missed — they’d none of 'em be missed!
Problem is, PvE Enhancement is in the best place it’s been in ages, and actually the shaman spec least in need of a rework. It’s also very precariously balanced, and any significant changes would have high potential to utterly ruin it.
They need to just bite the bullet and completely separate PvE and PvP class design. No more pitiful “3 talents tacked onto the PvE tree” band-aids, but a fully blown alternate talent tree that replaces the PvE tree entirely in PvP content.
The voice of reason
Fire Nova itself is fine just the way it is- what holds it back is the cap on flame shocks. Removing the cap on flame shocks would go a long way to fixing many of enhancement’s problems- including making fire nova viable.
I would prefer they make Ice Strike and Lava Lash a choice node. Storm builds take IS and Hailstorm then goes into the windfury stuff while Elementalist takes LL and FN then goes for AC and HH stuff.
Yeah and place hailstorm/fire nova right behind it at the center and not behind 3 LEVELS of lavalash.
Making Lava Lash and Ice Strike a choice node is a big glue sniffer take. Absolutely not. You would do this and severely hamper Elementalist cleave potential in Single Target which is a core strength of the build: not needing to full commit talent points for cleave. Much rather just have Lava Lash baseline and Ice Strike take it’s spot with Hailstorm/Firenova in the spot where Ice Strike is now. It would allow Storm to play Ice Strike and Hailstorm/Firenova if they wanted to without needing taking anything related to Lava Lash without royally screwing Elementalist Builds. Honestly you could also just swap Molten Assault with th Hailstorm/Fire Nova node.
What the need to do is remove Refreshing Water/Focus Insight node and stick WFT there.
Even without the balancing concerns, making Lava Lash and Ice Strike mutually exclusive would be a massive misstep for the class fantasy. Enhancement had issues with feeling like both the frost and melee parts of its identity as a elemental battle mage were lacking for years before Ice Strike joined the kit in a worthwhile form in DF.
Being reduced to only two special melee attacks of only two elements again would take a huge bite out of the fantasy.
True. I was thinking that though you wouldn’t really change your rotation even if you took it, Storm being able to have Hailstorm would deff make moments where Stormstrike isn’t able to be reset feel less bad especially in cleave. You get a meaty hit in while waiting to get back into Stormstrike spam. Not to mention playing those two would be your MSW safety net since with Swirling Maelstrom and Elemental Assault you’re generating 2 MSW which will get you back to being able to spend you MSW to reset SS.
If you’re going for Hailstorm you can go for Fire Nova as Storm, you’re already pretty GCD locked between SS resets and using LB to get Legacy resets, Frost shock + Hailstorm is really good in Elementalist builds as you have enough free GCDs to use it consistently, Fire Nova is better for burst in AoE, can get 6 MSW which can lead into an instant LB and a possible legacy SS reset.
More so speaking of those terrible moments where you Lightning Bolt or Chain Lighting at low stacks of MSW (5-6) and it doesn’t reset SS. Since you’re going to hit IS anyways to generate MSW to fire another spender to get to reset, hitting a Hailstorm-empowered Frost Shock is gonna feel much better than hitting Lava Lash should you need to hit another GCD.
The other thing playing Fire Nova points into Molten Assault to get Flame Shock spread and you have to engage in one of the aspects that people do not like about Elementalist/Primordial Wave: needing to manage Flame Shock. I love Primordial Wave and Elementalist build but I can say that it feels off having that gameplay facet in Storm Builds even if Fire Nova scales off of physical damage.
The problem with Fire Nova is that we don’t care about MSW generations from Fire Nova. If you take Fire Nova, you lose 10% damage in ST and cleave. Not having Hailstorm is terrible to play because you are sitting on the boss waiting for abilities to glow up. Fire Nova actively makes us worse at ST and cleave when we are supposed to be good at them. In season 2, Freehold had a lot of big pulls and we still take Hailstorm over Fire Nova regardless. That is how bad Fire Nova is.
I’ll concede that I haven’t really played storm that much in keys but of the people I knew who did they often played Fire Nova, so its interesting to hear the reverse is also true.
See, OP is coming at this from a PvP perspective, which meatball flying makes for fun gameplay. I can understand in raid and M+ this is a problem.
Which means the class or spec is fundamentally flawed.
In no defensible way can someone justify a spec being good in 1 content and utterly unplayable in the other. That’s bad game design.
Which is also why I think hero trees are even a thing to begin with. But that’s another point.
I played Fire Nova in S2 for Freehold once, I moved on from Fire Nova very very fast. Fire Nova is still bad even in a dungeon such as BH and AA where it should shine and you have empty GCDs with Fire Nova on the bosses. Fire Nova in ST is so bad and low-target fights are worse. Fire Nova actively makes us worse at ST and cleave when we should be good at them.
Fire nova was so much fun in WoD. It’s a shame they haven’t tuned it to be competitive.