-Nerfs hurt Totemic a lot while offering no compensation for Totemics sustain. Everything aside from Ice Strike that got buffed are spells Totemic is not currently pressing, and that will not change with these buffs as they are too small. A small buff to Lava Lash or just not nerfing Prim Storm at all would have been good. Prim storm does great damage, but it is not what is bursting people down right now, that is Windfury proccing from Prim Storm. Buffing Lava Lash, and then one of Legacy of the Frost Witch, Frost Shock or Surging Totems damage would be helpful for Totemics sustain.
-Buffs are likely too small to our rotational abilities to make up for the loss of burst damage from the nerfs. Stormstrike got a 50% nerf on PTR due to PvE which applied to PvP, but the 100% buffs to Stormstrike/Ice Strike/Lava Lash did not apply to pvp, so it is just doing 50% less damage than last patch. With Totemic not getting any compensation for these nerfs, it just gets worse than it was prior to this week, Stormbringer is now much closer to it but neither of them are as good as prior to this week which should not be the case.
-No mobility update. It was great to see the devs aware enhance has uptime issues, but I really cant believe the solution was to add 10% more to Ice Strikes slow. A 50% slow going to a 60% slow that we apply every 13 seconds assuming we press Ice Strike on cooldown is not going to do much…the issue is how much mobility other specs have and how difficult it is to catch back up to them. This wont address that.
Enhance did not need to be doing more or less damage than prior weeks, it just needed its damage profile shifted from burst into sustain a bit. That did not happen here though, Totemic build we were playing just got straight up nerfed with no compensation, Stormbringer buffs make it equal to where Totemic is now, not where it was before, so Enh is just overall worse now damage wise.
I absolutely do agree with that, if the devs are willing to go that route I would much rather mobility be toned down than brought up. Rogue/Evoker/Mage/WW/probably War/DH and I think hunter as well though I dont really know how they’d go about hunter if it needs it at all. I see they targeted mage mobility slightly in these notes and even though that specifically wont change anything, maybe they are willing to go in this direction.
My main concern with these tuning notes though was how off the mark they are and will be for our damage as explained in the first post, essentially just losing our only way to kill people in exchange for barely an increase in sustain damage. Though it is possible Stormbringer ends up being better now, it won’t be as good as totemic prior to these upcoming notes which sucks and even if we assume it might be, it’ll be just as cheesy as totemic prim storm lol.
Wind walker has the same mobility it’s had since it’s inception.
And in fact has had their mobility nerfed multiple times since their inception while everyone else is only just gained more
And because of everyone gaining more mobility is why windwalkers defensives keep going up.
But they added a few mobility talents into the monk talent tree tho, yeah? In WWI. I don’t know if WW takes them, but there was like 3 more added. It’s not really the same as inception.
I’ve played Enh and its mobility does feel bad. Imo it’s partly be design. You’re supposed to get a rush when you do connect with its playstyle. It’s just not quite there yet and does need a little bit more.
Altho alot of enh I’ve seen don’t run static link totem and they should… like this shaman posting.
Right, I think WW coming in hot with a lot of mobility further increased mobility of other classes too, and then DH did the same thing lol. And mobility largely kept going up from there. At some point they realized mobility is insanely fun in PvE so I imagine their thought process largely leaned towards “Why not add more?”, its the one major thing thats fun for both casual players and hardcore players alike. Enhance mobility is great in pve as well btw having Feral Lunge/Wind rush/Spirit walk (or gust) is more than enough there, its just completely trash in pvp due to how crazy mostly everyone elses mobility is.
Its the most immobile melee by quite a bit, they could’ve made us tankier at least but didn’t even get that really. If they reduce mobility from the most mobile than I think it’d be fine though.
Also on the subject of DF talent trees, specs like WW did gain more mobility. Even enhance did, really everyone did. Theres a ton of talents in class trees that you could only take one of before, whereas with DF trees you can get all 3 of the options that were previously on the same row. For a lot of us thats mobility, defensives, etc. Paladin for example had Cavalier on the same row as Unbreakable spirit, so you had to pick between a defensive and more mobility, usually opting for the defensive, whereas now you get both.
Except mobility was their defense.
So there was a balance between a monk over using that mobility to stay on top of a target and then they couldn’t get away and they got punished for it.
That’s why the best comps were with dps partners that could cover the escape and why WW was nonexistent in RBGs when they were introduced.
Nope had 1 mobility returned, not really gained more.
Tigers lust, Celerity and Chi Torpedo were on the same row though, now you can take Tigers lust and either Celerity or Chi Torpedo, so you gained an additional bit of mobility there by being able to take 2/3 of those instead of 1/3.
I cant speak for passives as I dont know what windwalker had prior to DF, but there are a lot of passive movement speed bonuses in the class tree ie Celestial Determination, Quick Footed, Flow of Chi, Bounding Agility, etc and I dont think some of these existed before at least according to wowheads database but im not sure.
To keep this a bit more about enh though just going to reiterate while we continue talking, to improve enh sustained in a meaningful way without hurting totemic:
-Small buff to Lava Lash to help Totemic recover from the nerf to its burst.
-Bigger buff to Stormstrike (nerfed by 50% this patch due to pve, should not have applied to pvp at all). This ability should be hitting decently hard if our burst is getting nerfed this hard.
-Bigger buff to Ice Strike. Hits for 300-400k, needs more than 10%.
Well the only way we can really kill people right now is via Prim Storm+Doom Winds, it does so much damage the second you press Prim Storm at 10 stacks of maelstrom wep after pressing Doom Winds. That got nerfed pretty heavily (10% to windfury weapon and 15% to prim storm)
And then they buffed spells that the prim storm build does not currently use or press. Lightning bolt, chain lightning, stormstrike, the only thing that build uses that they buffed was ice strike, but that hits for 300-400k and only got a 10% buff. Stormstrike got a 15% buff, but was nerfed by 50% on the ptr due to pve, so now it will only be doing 35% less damage than last patch (and it was barely decent last patch).
So essentially they hit our burst pretty hard, and while they had the right idea to move damage out of our burst and into sustain, they missed the mark for sure. Stormstrike buff was too small, Ice Strike buff was too small, and Lava Lash should have gotten a small one. I mean Stormbringer might be decent via tempest but again, won’t do any damage outside of Tempest and Windfury nerf also hurts Stormbringer too which is a vastly underperforming build lol.
They also could have just left Prim Storm alone and nerfed Windfury activation chance via Doom Winds, that way we could have a decent burst every 30s still but our one shot wouldn’t be possible, and then the buffs they gave today would have been a bit more acceptable.
Maelstrom wep gen? No not really at all. Its built into our melee strikes, Stormbringer gets slightly more maelstrom gen at ranged but its via a proc (voltaic blaze, generates 1), totemic doesn’t talent that. You can also gen 1 maelstrom weapon if you talent it via using frost shocks buffed by hailstorm, but we dont talent that either as it just isnt worth 1 stack every like 10ish seconds or whatever. Most of our gen is from melee via Ice strike/Lava Lash/windfury wep procs/Flametongue wep procs/getting hit with melee strikes with lightning shield up has a 50% chance to gen 1 maelstrom wep, etc.
I mostly really dislike that they nerfed Prim Storm, it felt really good to have decent burst every 30s, the real issue was pairing it with doom winds every 1 min but they didnt hit doom winds at all, they just nerfed windfury wep (not great imo) and then hit prim storm pretty hard, then didnt really shift the damage out of that very well.
So my proposal is what if two things were added, something that allowed them to generate maelstrom from range, and the closer you get to the target the less that this generates so that it doesn’t necessarily affect when you’re right on top of something.
And then this is required for an active defense to reduce damage and it cost maelstrom.
You wouldn’t be increasing the overall arms race of mobility, but at least would potentially help with overall survivability that isn’t hampered by dampening.
And I’ve always liked more active defensives than reactive or passive ones
Honestly I mean sure id like that, but I don’t think they will do anything like that at all. They just reworked enhance twice in a row, they did an insanely good job, it’s mostly just pvp devs and tuning that isn’t going well because enhance is super fun and enjoyable in pve. So if anything I’d want them to add some extra stuff to what we already have, I don’t want the defensive arms race to get worse lol.
So in terms of survivability, I prefer actives too, and that’s why I would want something like: “When you apply earth shield to yourself, gain 15% physical DR for 10 seconds” that way Earth shield as a global actually feels decent because right now people barely play it and even when we do it just doesn’t feel good to press, does nothing really. They gain change that % for each individual spec. Would give it a bit of skill to use before melee pop cds on you, and melee is where we are defensively weak atm.
Aside from that, maybe making 1.5 min astral shift baseline so we can just take improved wall and have 60% dr wall on 1.5m cd. Sounds strong but with how fast we rotate through our defensives it will only make a small difference.
That’s also the issue with enh currently tho, it’s mobility is great in pve but horrible in PvP and I’m not sure how to fix that. Maybe they can make Feral Lunge a 15s cd in pvp only, that would be good, unless they plan on removing mobility soon. I don’t want enh to sit with its mobility issues for multiple expansions. They could also just make enh stronger defensively instead of adding more mobility, but it needs to be good defensively because right now it just waddles around.
can enhance get some real defensive/survivability help or something please? Healing surge isn’t going to do it, it requires 3 points in the class tree+an honor talent to be decent and it falls off in damp regardless of that. AG was so strong even in damp it was useful enough, and it allowed us to hold off on using astral shift/stone bulwark super early. Losing it nerfed our survivability quite a bit, it was guaranteed to always heal the shaman in arena as it healed up to 3 people.
We need some physical DR, or another cooldown or something. Maybe more stamina passively, I don’t know but enh really needs something. Leaving this spec in this state is not really okay, especially when so much feedback was provided about what the loss of AG would do to enhance. Physical classes destroy our health bar and eat through our cds while mobile ranged (almost all of them) kite us easily.
Aside from that, please look into buffing Lava Lash and maybe Frost Shock or Legacy of the frost witch in pvp (would benefit both builds/hero trees), that way the build we currently play isn’t completely destroyed by these nerfs. The tuning does nothing for our current build aside from nerfing it, which feels terrible considering how enhance was doing (mediocre)
Not quite true, I mean yes they are overtuned but also not too much is changing with that next week. Enh has no physical dr at all and has very long cooldowns, it’s too easy to kill an enh atm compared to any other melee. Was not like this last patch with AG, but this is what happens when you remove a really strong cooldown without replacing it. That’s mostly all it is, loss of a big CD along with no actual physical dr (almost every melee if not all melee but enh have physical dr baked into their class tree in some way). Last patch physical classes destroyed us too, but again we had AG so rotating our cooldowns felt much better.
Try to imagine how you’d feel if they removed LoH randomly and you had no sanctified plates in your class tree. It would probably suck, which is why sanctified plates was added in the first place back in DF during the class tree rework and why improvements have been made to forbearance and LoH overtime.