Additional questions:
- Do ancestors stay in place or move with the shaman?
- If multiple ancestors can be up, is there a cap on how many Ancestors can be up at any time?
Additional questions:
can you atleast tell us you guys at blizzard are doing a Class rework for Elemental please? so far as im sure you can see no one is liking Farseer for Elemental. More RNG that we dont want and while many dont want to be forced into Lava burst ( i dont mind it ), yall couldnt change it up a bit? Elemental is a hard Capped Dps class with no raid buff ( give us skyfury already ), horrible Defensive CDs, Horrible RNG, no one like Deeply rooted Elements.
like just rework the entire spec at this point please. do something as yall have pretty much ignored Elemental community the entire time during Dragonflight while other classes got cool new thing/reworks.
EDIT: i forgot to mention, since Elemental uses you know the elements, why not make it where we can have a couple of elemental pets out at the same time where they can do Damage but also buff the shaman and/or buff the group while they are active?
First off, Iâd like to take the time to thank the devs for putting these out for us to review/preview so that they can be iterated on. This has never happened before in the history of the game and it is a refreshing sight to see. Thank you.
Before we bring out the pitchforks and torches, I hope that my fellow shamans understand that this is pre-alpha and to not get focused on âthis is all we getâ. There are some serious issues with the Farseer tree though. Iâm approaching this from the Elemental perspective:
The Negatives:
This pigeon holes us into Fire vs Lightning for ele shamans. This tree does nothing for lightning side of the tree and if the trend continues of us selecting our talents based on our tier gear, it really removes a lot of choice from our chosen class. This hero tree will only be used if fire is the tier set of the season.
Primordial wave is really unfun in my humble opinion. It is a reskinned flame shock/riptide that is buried at the bottom of the spec tree. These buttons are fundamentally the same and just add to button bloat for no reason. Vesper totem in my opinion was a much more thematic and fun ability that wasnât a âreskinâ of another ability.
Offering from Beyond: Is a nice touch, though why it doesnât affect earth elemental either doesnât make sense. Make it affect all of our elementals.
A 45 second cooldown on primordial wave for an ancestor to be up for 8 seconds (with the 2 second increase choice node) essentially allows for a guaranteed 3 casts of âsomethingâ every 45 seconds from our ghosts.
The Positives:
Thematically I like the general concept. Calling upon our ancestors to help us in times of need. This has been a warcraft staple forever for shamans.
Spiritwalkerâs momentum. Great idea. Allows slightly more improved skill expression without being âmandatoryâ to min max.
Potential Solutions:
Get rid of the dependence of using Primordial Wave. Create a new casted ability on âxâ cooldown. âCall Ancestorâ. This button reaches out to our ancestors and requests their aid in battle. (Roll the bones concept from outlaw rogues) When one ancestor is called they are depleted and must recharge before assisting again (canât get same ancestor over and over, helps with planning) Always get a âx%â damage/healing increase along with another benefit (increased move speed, shield, healing totem effect etc). Each ancestor would have a different secondary and can be different races, HM Tauren, Tauren⌠Iâm sure there are other shamans out there but more TaurenâŚ
Passive node: Increase range by 5 yards (nothing says Farseer like sitting WAY in the back)
Passive node: Whenever ancestor is called, increase each totems effect by âx%â as well as range
Souls of our Ancestors: Summons all âxâ ancestors for âyâ seconds gaining all benefits of them
Overall I appreciate the work that went into this tree, I just feel this can use a lot more iteration. As a side note, Iâm sad totemic isnât Elemental though I totally understand.
Thank you.
Couple of clarifying questions:
Some feedback:
This tree feels undone? Not really a fan.
As an Elemental player, please donât make Lava Burst the focus of this tree. I wanât to play a spec that focuses on both elements, iâm tired of spamming Lava Burst or Lightning Bolt, it feels lazy.
Absolute dumspter talents, feels like a 5 year old came up with the tree.
Just delete the class already.
Itâs too focused around Lava Burst.
Itâs alright. The RNG summoning of Ancestors could be cool.
Ancestral Swiftness feels super week unless it summons an ancestor for like 30 seconds or something.
Primordial wave is horrible, get rid of it
The rest is just a carbon copy of current holy priest summoning a naaru
Yawn
Do better
So as Resto if Iâm talented into Undulation Iâm sort of screwed?, why not have it trigger off both as they are a shared node?
Edit: Donât get me wrong as Resto I donât mind the idea of Ancestors helping to heal, especially as a Farseer, but sort of tired into having Talent Trees all really giving the illusion of choice when really we are always being shoehorned into a preferred playstyle requiring mandatory choice talents.
Are we getting Unleash Life baseline? The whole talent tree competing with Undulation isnât great.
Can we have some interactions with the boo ghosties? Maybe rework Final Calling to where we can consume the ghost for the shield. Also, please remove the the shield decay on Final Calling talent. Having any kind of external would be huge for high M+.
Iâm not a fan of Primordial Wave or all of the little +5% effectiveness talents, but I like the idea of calling ancestors up to help out. Shaman has always been about zone control to me, and calling up a posse to help you control an area fits well with throwing down totems and saying âThis is my space.â
That said, I hate Natureâs Swiftness. It plays against the idea of planting your feet and saying, âIn my totemâs radius, I am in controlâ. Not only that, it just feels underwhelming. Ever since Vanilla I have detested the idea of wasting a hotbar slot and a cooldown on something as boring as âremoves cast time on one single spellâ. Especially for Elemental Shaman! Our mastery throws out instant cast duplicates of spells for free! No cooldown needed!
Thereâs also no actual Far Seer flavor in this tree. Far Seers in Warcraft 3 had Chain Lightning, Far Sight, Feral Spirit, Earthquake, and rode around on giant wolves. Weâve got a lot of that already. What donât we have? Our Far Sight doesnât dispel invisibility or break stealth, and we donât get to ride wolves.
So, what I was hoping for from the Hero spec was this:
As a long time fan of both Elemental and Restoration Shaman the Farseer Hero Talents have been an extreme disappointment.
General Overview:
At an overall feel for the tree there seems to be zero cohesion to bring elements of both resto and ele together to make a unique tree with interesting gameplay. I also donât really get âFarseerâ from the talent tree and Call of the Ancestors as the capstone. Call of the Ancestors is not a terrible concept, but it being tied to RNG and just echoing âsimilarâ spells is very lack luster and not creative as this might as well just be Elementalâs Mastery as a hero talent. None of the talents in the middle stand out as interesting or exciting in anyway possible. Nearly every part of these talents is out of your control and what essentially will be a pet will just cast stuff when you press said button or it procs and you wonât really do much else. Lastly Ancestral Swiftness is just plain boring. This is not a very fun or interactive button you just press for an instant cast that now does extra damage. I think this is just very boring design.
Elemental POV:
I find this hero talent tree very problematic for Elemental Shamans. The number one concern for ele this expansion is the very obvious Lightning vs Fire builds in our current talents and tier sets. This hero talent is very favored towards fire (from name alone Strombringer likely will focus on lightning aspects) which further amplifies the problem with the design on the base spec and talents. I highly dislike being forced into Primordial Wave as I think the design of the ability really holds Elemental back from more creative ideas. Two nodes stand out to me as very âpointlessâ. Why is Elemental Reverb Echo of the Elements but with a 5% buff, completely a waste of a talent. Primordial Capacity in our current state why would we want more maelstrom while spenders have extremely low value in the kit of Elemental.
Restoration POV:
While I donât find this as problematic as ele, I do find this tree to be incredibly boring. Firstly as similar to ele being forced into Unleash Life is not very fun and pigeon holds builds around it. While the focus in this tree is heavily Riptide focus I worry, as Blizzard has forced many Riptide based builds, talents, and tier set it always feels weaker as priority is more focused on Chain Heal or Healing Wave/Surge. One positive I will say I like is Final Calling for Restoration and the additional element of a small absorb which Restoration lacks is a more creative choice.
Possible Solutions:
There needs to be agency within the tree for Call of the Ancestors. Possibly Keep the first node but remove needing to cast Pwave and Unleash Life instead make it Routine Communication with Lava Burst and Riptide proccing it and instead scrap Ancestral Swiftness and make Ancestral Guidance a âsemi cdâ where it keeps is base functionality and in addition you are granted to procs ancestors with extra healing and damage and the Ancestors also cast healing and damaging spells and/or have 2 ancestors at the same time. Something to speak more âFarseerâ and make more of an interesting button to press.
I think that overall could be a more fun direction to take this as it blends the classes together, keeps some rng to it but still have agency when you need it.
For the other talents I think they could use a bit more spice to them, but if the key capstone talent doesnât change this will be very disappointing.
TLDR:
Generally boring and lack luster
Problematic for Ele with no solution for the Fire vs Lightning builds (No Lightning elements.
Not very interactive and lacks gameplay choices.
Ancestral Swiftness is boring on top of boring needs replaced.
Possible solution make CotA a passive proc without the need for the mentioned talents
Rework Ancestral Guidance into the bottom talent and have it interact with CotA for more interesting and interactive gameplay.
Throwing in an additional comment, the fact that this leans so heavily on PWave for Elemental (and thus, inherently, Lava Burst), massively limits design space for tier sets going forwards. If a tier bonus interacts with PWave, LvB, or FS, it will essentially make it mandatory for Ele Shamans to spec Farseer, unless âStormcallerâ also ends up being tied to PWave. If Stormcaller ends up being Lightning-centric, youâve completely split the spec in half, and it removes all customization choice entirely, instead pushing players to switch which âhero specâ they are based on which of the two is allowed to have a tier bonus.
It also makes Pwave ridiculously hard to balance by putting a lot of conditional power on it, based on if the Shaman casting it is a Farseer or not.
From a resto POV, this is boring. The lack of a defensive on a class thatâs already light on defensives hurts. Also, the resto-ele tree would be the best place for a raid buff that the 2 specs currently lack. I donât see it.
Looks solid at a first glance even if the theme is kind of boring for resto and the lack of a more elemental theme for it.
However Unleash Life would 100 percent have to be made baseline or Undulation pretty much becomes a dead talent.
6 seconds is kind of short duration for Ancestor and leaves less room for interaction like the Naaru with Holy Priests. Making it 8 seconds to 10 seconds would be considerably better.
I do like the interactions in the tree but as many said it just looks very generic and theme while looking good for say orcs looks far less so far other races who can also be shamans.
My initial thoughts (this is gonna be long, I apologize):
The leaders of the resto shaman community are saying that we should be happy with this tree because itâs not gameplay-breaking like Lightsmith or Oracle and will likely provide a passive healing bonus so we can just play how we want and let the pets do their thing. But to me, this opinion suggests that there is a fundamental problem with the hero trees themselves. In the Farseer hero treeâs case, the main issue is that because the tree is âboring but fineâ, we wonât be forced to play around awkward or gimmicky mechanics for an entire expac. We will, however, be relying on procs to provide a large portion of our throughput from this talent tree, procs of pets that we have no control over and are tied to spells that are in turn subject to tuning.
For some other classes, their trees are seen as clunky and awkward to play around, or keying off of abilities that they rarely use as part of their core rotation. What will these trees do for the game that is positive other than adding something ânewâ and shiny that we can get when we level up? This expansion-defining system is both mandatory and offers little choice. By tying two specs together in the name of âflavourâ (donât get me wrong, I love flavour), you tie their reworks/balancing together. At least some spec communities will be forced into playing hero trees they donât like. Please donât try to argue that weâll be able to choose the more fun/less gimmicky option if it does less damage/healing or offers less to the group.
To get into specifics for the Farseer:
Right now, Unleash Life has no place in a M+ shamanâs build. We all know that the talent trees are going to change and Unleash Life will likely be easy to take in The War Within. But even if Unleash Life was made baseline, it would bring a modest throughput buff in M+ environments, but it would be annoying to use and would contribute to button bloat. It is a filler spell because on its own, it does very very little healing. Currently, in raid, you cast it during downtime as you anticipate needing to heal, you use it on the move, or you choose to sacrifice a gcd to buff Chain Heal because the buff is worth it. Unleash Life is usable on the move and resto shaman have very few instant casts that we can use while moving, which is the spellâs main redeeming quality. Making Unleash Life worth casting on its own would go a long way towards fixing one of the main issues with this hero tree, but so would finding a new button for the ancestor procs to key off of (riptide exclusively perhaps? and then procs from healing rain ticks or healing crits? - these options would be more in keeping with the bread and butter resto shaman rotation/healing style after all)
In addition, the defensives that are currently built into this tree are profoundly underwhelming, especially when compared to those offered to all of the other healer specs. Resto shaman currently have a single on-use defensive on a relatively long cd (astral shift). We can also talent into a modest %health increase when we use our earth ele (on a 5 min CD), but most M+ tanks donât want us to take that talent because our earth ele still taunts randomly (that change still needs to be made). The two new healer trees also released today offer monks a new absorb shield on their fort brew or a DR + %health heal when they cast their new ability, while evokers get a new heal proc whenever they take damage (that procs more often from big hits). If druids choose to be keepers of the grove, they can maintain a constant 8% DR on themselves by keeping regrowth up. Chronowardens get to choose between a flat 10% stam buff thatâs active all the time, OR they get the same 10% stam buff when they use a defensive ability. All of these other new defensive buffs are stronger than the options offered to shaman, a class with few options available to us when we take damage or when we anticipate taking damage.
Resto shaman are generally dreading the release of the Totemic tree. We anticipate that itâll involve something gimmicky and clunky because - while totems are an iconic part of a shamanâs kit (that I love!) - having them be a core part of your gameplay loop is a challenge because of the following issues:
The Farseer tree is likely to be the âfavouriteâ of the resto community not because itâs good, but because it wonât lean into a totem-centric supportive playstyle that is hampered by the limitations of the totems themselves. Thatâs not a good reason for a hero tree to be the community favourite.
For the last few years, I have grown more and more convinced that resto and ele shaman have been left without any developers who care about how either spec feels to play. Both specs feel like afterthoughts and not the products of people who love to play them and who are excited about where theyâre headed in The War Within.
Since the launch of DF, with the exception of the very small talent rework that seemed largely to benefit enh, every time new changes were announced, ele and resto received at most small numbers changes, and most recently just aura buffs that donât address the underlying issues with the talents/specs themselves. Shaman have been giving feedback on the talent trees and gameplay loops and playstyles of both specs since the trees were released in the DF alpha, and almost nothing has changed since then. If either spec is seen as âgoodâ by the raid or m+ or pvp communities, itâs because of tuning, rather than gameplay.
The description for the new Farseer hero spec is a perfect demonstration of what Iâm getting at:
Harness your spiritual magic, improving your spell casting capabilities and empowering you to call upon ancestors to aid you and your allies in combat.
Compare that description to the one for the new Warlock tree (the Hellcaller):
From darkened corners of Azeroth and to the shattered lands of Outland, Satyrs have spread corruption and summoned hellfire in the name of their masters. Amongst their sects, Hellcallers are the most feared; weaving together the vilest of Shadow magic and entropic fel fire. Following in the footsteps of epochal Hellcallers such as Xavius, Perothâarn, and Xalan, you now wield their terrible, corruptive magic and may even lose yourself to the same promises of power that consumed them.
It seems like resto and ele are being handled by someone who is overworked and has been handed the class without having played it and having any vision for it. Who are the famous farseers who are the models for this tree? Why are the ancestors that are summoned as part of this new tree virtual carbon copies of a holy priestâs Divine Image ability?
Iâve been playing a resto shaman since TBC, and the recent lack of a clear direction for the spec and lack of raid buff/external (weâre still the only healer without either!) makes me less and less interested in The War Within. I wonder why no one at Blizz seems interested in doing anything with this iconic healing spec.
TL:DR: Iâm glad this isnât another version of the Oracle tree (which I worry Totemic will be), but a proc-based healer tree built around pets that will likely have a hard cap is uninspired and dull. The defensives in this tree are lacking. This could have been an amazing tree and it isnât, but at least it isnât Oracle or Lightsmith.
EDIT: I also want to mention that building a hero tree around procs is just bad design for a healer. We will try to fish for them, and without bad luck protection thereâll be huge variance between the best and worst logs that donât have anything to do with skill. Wasting a proc to top someone off before a pull will either feel bad, or will be how we are encouraged to play (weâll spam heal so we can get the max number of ancestors out before the pull to max our throughput then drink). It already feels bad to waste a proc with DRE but thatâs a single talent, while the ancestors are the core mechanic of the Farseer tree.
EDIT 2: I have some other thoughts -
If the dev team is committed to hero talents, they should:
Lightsmith is 100 going to be passed over for the other Holy Paladin option too. Sunspot and EF look wayyyy tooo good.
And the rest 100 percent agreed. Farseer doesnât look terrible but it certainly could be a lot better compared to other hero trees.
ACKNOWLEDGE THE FLAWS FIRSTUnfortuantely no matter what the team designs for the ele side will make the ele sham community unhappy. This spec has been in the gutter for 3 years now and only works because of a tier set which always upsets one of 2 houses(lightning or fire camp, personally im team fire ONLY because frostweaving is sloppy and juggling the lightning trees buffs is not fun gameplay). Devs need to play ele in m+25 groups for a few days (With pugs) and then make an informed decision about how to go about a proper rework. I have already posted a complete rework to ele shaman in these forums after TRYING to make ele work for 2 SL+3 DF seasons before retiring to be a resto shaman and bringing an alt up to feesaBle ilvl. So if your team needs any starter ideas for a rework please search my thread and steal all of it.
ABOUT THE HERO TALENTS. BORING! Seeing spirits appear to clone casts will be visually exciting but tying it into Prim Wave (okay for ele except capstone?!? And only helps fire⌠and then taking away prim wave from dps resto ruined the entire specâs fun factor).
RESTO vers reeds like a shaman w/ a 3cap rejuv druid with an uncontrolled monk bubble⌠really? Druids got grove guardians to match resto shaman hps while they afk kitty weave and we get⌠healing rain? And 3 rejuvs? SL we had downpours, vespers, wellsprings, cloudburst⌠now we get 2 riptides and a prim wave and then pray these spirits are needed while we spam CL and a druid efflo on a CD?
IMHO HOW TO SAVE SHAMANS: Farseers*
Farseers should be filling the flex healer/4th dps role. Casting anything should cause the spirits to cast the other specs equivalent at 35%. So a well played ele shaman will be throwing lavaburst to spot heal a lowest health teammate or healing surge to spam LB, healing wave casts lightning bolt, chain lightning would cause a spirit to cast a chain heal, riptide would cause a flameshock, eq would cast a healing rain, cap totem would cause earthwall, cloudburst would drop a vesper totem, FLIP spirit cast if ele the spirts do resto, if resto the spirits do ele⌠you see where Im going with this. That makes both specs rotation instantly become incredibly dynamic, and their value for a high skill group becomes near Aug evoker levels.
To make that rework doable these spirits will need to be on an activated button with charges that can be stored up to 2(renewing every 9 seconds, and spirits expiring in 12 seconds (6 second window of 105% utilzation) a specific heal check on a timed fight, 3 spirits or fail the conversion check (minus team using defensives). This will weave in the overcap/underutilization skill caps like holy words on current tier priests or renewing mists stacks on monk. You can get 3 out if you never overcap and 80% of the fight allows you to even get close value at 70% of the others role. 70% will be close enough throughput to keep people alive, or do comp dmg to kitty weavers, for keys sub +20 (or future +10) but will wipe groups above 23 unless the shaman can have 3 spirits timed perfectly to a mechanic uptime(disc priest skill check). Rolling spirits will also give the same ramping mentality of the old cloudburst/vesper playstyle. Seeing into the profile of the fights/pulls/routes allows the Farseer shaman to dynamically adjust every button they have available into expressions of pure skill. Tank is taking heavy damage? Ele shaman is pumping lightning bolts forgoing aoe pad dmg. Team is taking aoe dmg from a boss pulse? Ele sham is casting chain lightning, sacraficing meter for their teams survival and making each button actually serve a purpose only the Farseer can foretell⌠And a resto shaman overhealing/wasting mana will finally convert to a purpose!
This will encourage groups with weaker healers to bring farseers to low keys and higher keys talking ECHO lvl 0.1% to max its value. They will serve that flex dps/healer role in raid comps as content gets easier or is progfing at the same time.
Also maybe on the defensive side choice node⌠each spirit active provides 15% avoidance to the shaman and 7% to people within 40 yds?
Or⌠when taking fatal damage an ancestor sacrifices its soul to prevent 60% damage to the shaman and then it anks back to its original role⌠forcing more choice gameplay⌠do i drop a 2nd ancestor or hold for a dmg incoming moment? Do i take a big personal or a group aoe dmg reduction⌠what will i need given the encounters Im about to sign up for.
Shamans are more than just ST pray for DRE players! We chose shaman back in the day because of the utility and dynamic skill expressions the spec brought. Now every class has stronger utility, isnt changing 5+ talents on the class tree per dungeon +affix babysitter assigned every week because our dmg profile is super lackluster, has WAY better survivability, damage profiles are far more relevant, and party/raid buffs.
And for the love of god, take away EShield charges, and have them give vers to ALL targets theyre on! I often juggle shields to act as externals for SP/Hunters/myselfâŚbut tbh, eshield is a joke and provides no real value, other than letting my team see im trying⌠before I explode to a 2nd damage event 12 seconds after needing astral shift to some wack wrecking pain type event. I just dreamed this up so hopefully it makes sense. It does in my head and would require no talent tree reworks because the value of lightning, frost, fire buttons all serve a counter purpose regardless of tiers primary role (dmg/fotm heal button forced on us)
Please, Iâm begging you, no more lava burst spam. for elemental.
It looks like primordial wave and lots of lava burst spam. Iâm not a fan. I love lightning build because itâs visually and mechanically more interesting. I would like to see some kind of middle ground that flings lots of fire AND lightning.