Hello my fella shammies, I have been seeing a lot of posts going around with interesting ideas for shammies in the minor 9.1 talent/class rework. As a enhance main who basically only plays all forms of pvp at many different rating brackets, this is my list of possible changes to make the class feel better and more fluid and excel at what it needs to do. Let’s get this post rolling I am open for discussion I just want this to catch on and get blizzards attention. My last posts got a lot of traction and some of the changes mentioned were brought to live. So although the chances are low lets push this thread up!
For starters here is a list of widely agreed upon quality-of-life changes for enhancement.
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Remove shamanism off GCD. This is pretty self explanatory
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Remove totems off GCD and make some of them usable while spell locked/silenced.
This is how it was for many expansions and only recently has this been changed. Totems are a key part of playing shaman and make the class very satisfying to play when used correctly but with the current slow GCDS and the fast-paced pvp meta means we take too long to set up things or react to things with our totems. This isnt a get good or something point it’s a “I can’t push any buttons until you push your buttons or ill die in a GCD thing.” It’s a “why tf can mages use fireblast while casting other spells” kinda thing. It’s a “why tf are rogues getting shields to help them re-stealth in pvp” kind of thing. So if you are going to complain then I don’t think your complains are really warranted tbh there a lot of quality of life changes at much more stronger power levels than this. -
Make grounding baseline.
Can’t be stressed enough grounding has been a staple of shaman pvp for all specs since as far as I can remember. There is no reason why one of our most iconic abilities should be a pvp talent that we are basically forced to take every game. It basically gimps shamans for no reason into only having 2 pvp talents. -
Shamanistic rage
Although the astral shift changes have helped more, without very low mobility and cc shammy has no way of disengaging enemies easily when every other melee in the game can. Having a low cd wall that’s usable in stuns will go miles for us as a class and I’m not quite sure why it was removed/changed in the first place. Maybe even make an honor talent where it removes all magical effects like it used to in cata. The mana regen will cover our current unability to pump infinite heals like the other hybrids as well if blizzard does not want use to have 0 mana cost heals this is a great solution to the problem at least when desperate we can hit shamanistic rage and get some mana back. TLDR: 1 min CD 15 sec duration and 30 pct damage reduction with mana regen on hit and usable in stuns. -
Frozen power
Enhance had a unique mechanic where they rooted targets who were more than 15 yards away when they used frost shock or in some expansions it just rooted correct me if I’m wrong. But this is amazing game design which I felt rewarding to use. Run a few steps back and boom you can root a melee and heal yourself or cast hex or purge etc. – You can root range and close the gap even though we did not have gap closers now we can actually close gaps and we can disengage enemies instead of just being trained to death. This is the utility that is a MUST! -
Earthen wall totem for enhance.
If not shamanistic rage, then I believe this totem should be carried over to enhance as a 2-3min CD. Provides great team utility and a very much needed defensive that can benefit the team and falls in perfectly with the totemic warrior theme. Or even bringing back a shorter cd shield/damage reduction totem such as how stone bulwark totem operated in WOTLK. Was like 20 or 30 sec cd and shielded for like 25% of health. -
PLEASE do something about cap totem.
Its actually the most useless stun in the game because it basically never stuns and if it does its so short for the amount of work and calculation u have to put into it. Why does leg sweep be instant and last almost 2x as long? Even the DK AOE stun is miles ahead now. Either make the stun an INSTANT AOE CHANNELED stun that teammates outside of the stun can break to free their cced friends or make the cd 30 seconds or make the duration 5-6seconds and bring back totemic projection as a pvp talent or just base spell. Just seems so unrewarding to countdown the explosion time and place the totem perfectly ahead of time and even burn other cc/slows and also pray to god the enemy doesn’t just right click it or use 1 amongst their 50 mobility spells to move about 3 yards out of stun range just to land a 3 second stun! Especially when u got every other spec who have MORE THAN 1 STUN! Just multiple stuns all day everyday for free with literally no planning or thinking involved just guaranteed stuns on stuns. -
Make Stormstrike do nature damage and scale with mastery.
Nerf the damage if its overturned as is. We are elemental warriors and our main ability needs to be affected by mastery. It will allow different build options and stat optimizations and help shamans do more elemental/nature damage. -
Bring back Frostband weapon
Offhand does on hit damage and slows target – non dispellable lasts 6 seconds. Although this WF/FT is nice id like to see some optionS with weapon imbunes if possible. Having a slow when we have uptime will be nice and make it a chance to proc just like it use to be. It will allow us to use flame shock more often when we are on the target to slightly increase our dps or use a frozen power frost shock on a different target to help with kiting/cc.
Ideas for new talents/pvp talents
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Improved Purge – With being only able to cast 4 heals we are currently unable to purge much, or we face the risk of not being able to heal in pvp and with resto druids, disc priest and mages all having 50 buffs on them at all times it is becoming insanely difficult to dump mana into purging important buffs like combust. A mage with triune and some other buffs from healer will basically not get purged on combust before they kill us.
Suggested talent – Purge now dispels 2 buffs OR purge now costs no mana (50% mana) and grants 1 stack of maelstrom weapon. - Improved Lightning shield Take 10%-15% reduced damage when lightning shield is up and let it build stacks. When stacks reach to 20 we can activate the ability again to gain movement speed and haste/on-hit damage/ 30% cd recovery rate for 8 seconds etc. Right now lightning shield is almost never taken and is completely outshined by earth shield. This will encourage shield swapping or using different shields for different matchups.
- I am noticing that handing out heal cuts to every melee is blizzards answer to strong healing. If they don’t want to give shaman that heal cut its fine id like the cd of our windsheer to go down so we can be the disruptive bots we used to be in the old days. No MS but made it hell for healers/casters to cast freely. Make a talent that reduced wind sheer cd to 8 seconds. Or make windsheer reduce the effectiveness of the next spell in that school casted by 30 %. This could be a very unique mechanic only available to shammies. For example, kicking a healing wave on a resto shaman will make the next nature spell he casts 30% less effective. So the next heal he uses or hex he places will be 30% less. This would also bring in some nice counterplay mechanics as once other people get sued to this they will use a weaker spell first then can use their bigger spells. For example a rsham can just use a riptide then cast a hard heal after at full effectiveness.
And if not that then we can even give shamans a MS enrage effect for a few seconds if their totems are broken. So something like:
Totemic Rage
Passive: whenever a totem is destroyed, the shaman becomes enraged and storm-strike will apply a 50% heal cut for 12 seconds. This effect lasts for 20 seconds.
This will make people think twice before simply right clicking our 45 second cd totems for free. And it gives us a much needed heal cut and it fits the class fantasy really well.
Shout out to Zezu’s Frostband weapon MS effect idea as well I like that.
