Enhancement: too much bloat

Blizzard just announced that they like the way Enhancement plays, I’m not sure the pruning is happening and I for one am glad about that.

If it was up to me I would make lava lash and ice strike a choice node. Ice strike into hailstorm for storm builds and lava lash into hot hands and fire nova for elementalist builds. I fully acknowledge that I am in the minority here, though.

At the very least I would put the fire nova/hailstorm choice node where flurry currently is. Hailstorm would play so nice for storm- really a shame its out of reach for that build.

Yeah, I think most of us are looking at at least three new buttons- possibly more. Stone Bulwark Totem, Totemic Recall, and Feral Lunge are all things I doubt most of us currently have a keybind for.

Like I get wanting to reduce buttons but quite literally making any of the main current abilities mutually exclusive murders a build. Like completely. You’re would literally bring back the same issue we had for Elementalist in Season 2 where you’re unable to produce enough MSW to effectively spend during CDs. Ice Strike + Frost Shock + Hailstorm running Swirling Maelstrom and 2 points EA is literally your largest generator of MSW.

Icestrike + Hailstorm in to Storm does not flow and would clash given the rotational demands. With Tempest spending already providing a buffer, you would have to intentionally force using Ice Strike + Frost Shock. You still need to fish for DRE procs even with the emphasis on spending.

I agree. And if you do… yikes.

Enhancement isn’t hard my guy. Maybe try a low APM class.

Kills Elementalist Builds because how do you dump MSW when you want to save your EBs for Wolves windows? Unless you’re suggesting that it replaces Lightning Bolt and has no CD/Stacks which would lead to much more adjustments because with our current kit that is borderline overpowered in single target.

Sundering was actually a big reason people liked bringing Enhance to Keys in Season 1 because we had substantial CDs. Doing AA, NO, AV, and RPL not having sundering this season feels noticeably bad in higher key levels.

I don’t know about Storm but Season 3 and 4 not many people run at all because in order to take you tank your damage too much. Storm cleave if they can get it also really values it since it also can proc WF weapon, its uncapped, and potentially generate MSW from hits. So it’s powerful to do Doomwinds > Crash > Sunder for big AoE/Cleave damage in that short window.

I keep seeing this suggestion made recently and I get why this might make sense but this is one of those things where it would be noticeably terrible in some situations and just severely limit Elementalist’s gameplay and flexibility. Any fight with adds or bosses that are far from each other for a period of time (Council of Dreams, 2nd Boss of EB, Lord and Lady Waycrest) you’re gonna have a hard time keeping Flameshock up on all targets unless you’re running back and forth keep it up which would terrible gameplay. We get a crazy amount of damage from having Flameshock on multiple targets because of Ashen Catalyst and Flameshock does pretty crazy damage. You’d have Pwave but remember it’s going back to a 45 second cd because we lose this current tier set.

Yeah I was thinking just replace lightning bolt entirely and balance it around that. I get there is skill expression between knowing when to use blast vs bolt but it just stands out to me as an awkward extra button that does almost the same thing and fills a very similar role.

The others I agree with you, they all have uses. These were just three examples of buttons I would try to prune before ice strike.

They are both MSW spenders but in my mind the kit, talents, and other factors make them serve completely different roles. Pwave benefits heavily from EB and LB being separate surprisingly.

Would it really make a difference if Pwave fired off 5/6 Elemental Blasts instead of Lightning Bolts? You’d have to lower the bonus damage percentage a bit and make sure it only gave one stats buff, but overall I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.

The big downside is the loss of flexibility to put Pwave on cooldown earlier than you want the LB cleave by casting EB instead until the moment you want the cleave comes up. This is most evident on fights with add spwns that don’t quite line up with Pwave’s cooldown, and will be more substantial once we lose current tier.

You would have to start hold Pwave is pretty kills every tech we had with aligning it for specific windows while still getting CDR on wolves unless you dump with chain lighting. Literally why we were so strong in Mythic was being able to do that and leverage it for single target before adds spwan.

Any change that necessitates holding CDs is terrible.