Feedback: Farseer Shaman

Classes Shaman
468

It does not interact with any spell/talent, rotation so its bad and DOA. (maybe not in term of numbers)
Its a hero talent planned around Pwave and lava burst ( fire build)
SO fire build is dead.
Well i dont like fire cause u can just go play fire mage but still, this is not acceptable compare to other hero talent that other classes get.

469

[summon ancestor] 30s cd
next spell call out a elemental ancestor or w/e u wanna call it , last for 15s, depending on the spell u cast and enhance spell of that school.
-nature spell : lightning grandpa, enchance lightning bolt,chain lightning,earthquake

-fire spell : fire papa , for lava burst flameshock

Yes it sound like fire ele and storm ele, but at least it will actually affect our gameplay.

You can also put some utilities/defensive value when our spell get enhanced so that we dont just spam fire/lightning spell, but use all of our spells depend on the situation.

470

Greetings, I had posted some clarification of the Farseer spell interaction over on the Earthshrine discord but wanted to include it in this thread as well for those who may not go over there.

General rules

  • You can have multiple ancestors active at a single time (most I have had up at a single time has been 4 so far)
  • Ancestors will be of the race of your character
  • Ancestors can body-pull
  • Ancestors follow the shaman around

Cast behaviour is as follows:

  • Ancestor cast Lavaburst on your target for any single target move regardless if the target has FS on it or not
  • Ancestor cast Chain Lightning on your primary target if you cast Chain Lightning yourself or Earthquake
  • Ancestor spells can crit. These crits are independent of the player’s crits
  • Ancestor’s Chain Lightning will only hit 2 targets.
  • Ancestor’s Lavaburst will always crit if it hits a target with the player’s Flameshock on that target
  • Ancestor’s casts do not interact with the player’s overloads.
  • Ancestor spells do not overload.
  • The spell that triggers the Ancestor cast does not affect the power of the Ancestor’s Chain Lightning or Lavaburst
  • Ancestors will cast Healing Surge if you cast Single Target Heals
  • Ancestors will cast Chain Heal if you cast Multitarget Heals

Talent Clarifications:
Final Calling:

  • When an Ancestor casts Elemental Blast you get the bonus
  • The Ancestors will cast at a nearby enemy not combat if there are no enemies currently in combat. (Ancestors current prefer to cast this at targets out of combat but this is likely unintended and bugged behaviour)
  • This on-death cast does not cause aggro, nor pulls you into combat.
  • If there are no living enemies in range it will cast at a corpse.

Ancient Fellowship:

  • Can trigger in chains.
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471

i dont wanna be a doommer, i dont.
However u can add ’ which is bad’ at the end of the sentence to almost all of the cast behaviour u have stated that its not even funny

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472

Fire build focuses on mastery.

Fire hero spec doesn’t get any benefits from mastery.

Who designed this and why?

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473

Ancestors have limited scaling with Elemental’s mastery stat. Fire can benefit more than lightning builds because it can indirectly benefit from LvB overloads through the CDR of Rolling Magma.

You spam LvB and get more frequent PWaves from the deal to summon more ancestors. This also works with Offering from Beyond both through the lowered CD of PWave and the procs of Routine Communion to reduce the CD of your Fire/Lightning Elemental.

Currently on testing you can have your Elemental active more than it is inactive and nearly up all the time in prolonged multitarget situations and depending on your build.

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474

Found some videos from alpha if anyone is curious. This isn’t me, but the guy is pretty passionate about shamans and does a solid job.

resto-
:droplet:BUBBLES OP! FARSEER Hero Talents | Resto Shaman | #TheWarWithin (youtube.com)

elemental-
Ancestors look
 FARSEER FIRST REVIEW | ELEMENTAL SHAMAN | #thewarwithin (youtube.com)

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475

I sounds ugly its actually worse than Holy Priest Divine Image. Who in the world thought Farseer was a good idea as a hero talent build. It’s such a waste like out of all the ideas they had to choose from this is what they went with?

They only last 6 seconds (Just silly considering haste is our worst stat)

Ancestors can body pull (Again how silly can you be its not like Shaman are the top choice for M+ and this will make groups HATE to invite us)

Ancestor spells can crit. These crits are independent of the player’s crits (Again this is just silly)

Ancestor’s Chain Lightning will only hit 2 targets. (Why limit the spell again who thought of this)

Ancestor’s casts do not interact with the player’s overloads. Ancestor spells do not overload. (Again, why change things around so much)

If there are no living enemies in range it will cast at a corpse. (We have finally done it things can’t possible get more silly now)

My overall thoughts of the Farseer talent build. Why in the lords name why I was so looking forward to it and yeah this is just nuts. I agree with Walabi I don’t want toi be a doomer but this is all bad. I get it no one likes to see their team lose the game, but if 90%+ of the shaman’s posting here think its a really bad job then maybe it is a really bad job on the design of Farseer.

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476

Do you know if meatballs cast by ancesters also lower CD of pwave? With ancestors reducing CDs of eles and flameshocks reducing reducing eles via skybreakers, youre going to be reducing the CD a ton.

If ancestor meatballs do reduce pwave CD, does anyone know if it is possible to reduce CD fire elementals to a degree where you have 100% uptime of elemental? Also, is there ever a concern where it may be better to cancel your existing ele to recast so that you can throw out another meteor via primal elementalist?

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Seriously thank you for taking the time to compile everything together like this, genuinely the best communication we have had in the thread.

It is unfortunate that the more we seem to read about the elemental side of things the more depressing it is, this reads like the spec will scale terribly if most stats have no effect on the ancestors. It genuinely feels like this will just be mastery except worse and ghosts eating your frame rate.

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478

Hey there. I will try my best to provide some additional context to the behaviours.

They only last 6 seconds (Just silly considering haste is our worst stat)

The duration can be increased with the Heed My Call talent but the exact duration is a matter of tuning. It might be that a greater base duration, a greater extended duration when talented, or an increase in the spell power of Ancestors will solve this.

Ancestors can body pull (Again how silly can you be its not like Shaman are the top choice for M+ and this will make groups HATE to invite us)

Hunters, Warlocks, and other classes with pets have been desirable in mythic plus and many of their pets are around for longer than 6 - 8 seconds. I don’t believe this to be an issue that will greatly change how shamans are viewed.

Ancestor spells can crit. These crits are independent of the player’s crits (Again this is just silly)

By this, I mean that each hit rolls independently of the Ancestor’s response spell. So If you cast a CL and get no crits, the ancestor could crit on both hits of their CL cast. Ancestors appear to inherit your stats, including your crit rating. So if you have a high crit chance, so do your Ancestors.

Ancestor’s Chain Lightning will only hit 2 targets. (Why limit the spell again who thought of this)

This is a tuning matter. If Elemental or Restoration Farseers are deemed lacking in burst AoE increasing the number of jumps for Ancestor CLs can help. That said I would prefer that they err in favour of more jumps per cast at lower damage per jump to increase the cool.

Ancestor’s casts do not interact with the player’s overloads. Ancestor spells do not overload. (Again, why change things around so much)

I agree that the lack of interaction with mastery feels bad to me. In my last reply in this thread, I noted that there is some indirect scaling with Rolling Magma. I would like to introduce additional hooks by having the proc chance of Ancient Fellowship increased by each overload that happens while an Ancestor is active for Elemental. For Restoration, I would suggest that the proc be increased by the missing health of your party/raid (to parallel Deep Healing).

If there are no living enemies in range it will cast at a corpse. (We have finally done it things can’t possible get more silly now)

I am chalking this up to bugged behaviour. The Ancestors casting offscreen is far weirder than I suggested.

  • If you cast Ascendance (not proc’d from DRE) Ancestors prefer to cast CL where they can hit 2 targets. This priority means that they prefer to cast at something you may not be fighting if you’re targeting an enemy standing alone.
  • Final Calling likewise seems to favour firing off into the wild blue yonder instead of anything you are fighting.
  • Again this is likely bugged behaviour and these casts do not aggro you or your party.

Here’s a quick YouTube vid of the initial observed behaviours: https://youtu.be/R5rag8Es1fg

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479

I’m not disagreeing with your post, but where did you find this information? Seeing as we’re already reaching mastery cap and crit is doodoo most of the time, haste would be at worst the 2nd best stat if you have enough gear, right?

480

Ancestor LvBs do not interact with Rolling Magma to reduce the CD of PWave.

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481

I’m glad to get some info out to different places.

Here’s something that might help brighten your day. James and I discovered that you can have each Ancestor spam LvB on up to three targets with Electrified Shocks. That could make for some impressive 3 target burst damage:

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482

That is actually a pretty cool interaction, but what are the chances that is intended and makes it live? lol.

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483

Following and followed, thanks for the insight Majinstorm

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484

One thing to add would be 100% better is they could cast on their own rather than waiting for the shaman to use a spell. Mainly being because there is so much movement in M+ and raid we would lose tons of uptime on them.

485

Same with pvp. Perhaps worse in pvp given the amount of cc going every which way.

486

I would like more agency on when my ancestors appear. Having new hero talents be a Chance to Proc isn’t as exciting as activating an ability in my opinion.

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487

Hello Shaman friends,

I’m James. I am a PvE-focused Shaman (CE raider and KSH M+ player). I am also a moderator on the Earthshrine Class Discord and a contributor to the Storm, Earth & Lava Shaman fan site.

I am grateful to have had a chance to do a deep dive of the currently proposed iteration of the Farseer Hero Talent tree on The Wart Within Alpha. The goals of my deep dive were to:

  • Interpret the design goals of the Farseer tree (and Hero Talents overall)
  • Analyze the currently proposed Farseer options as well as use cases for choice nodes
  • Test Ancestor interactions with individual Elemental Shaman abilities
  • Discuss bugs, Farseer design problems, and propose potential solutions (with regards to interpretation of Farseer design goals)

As the Farseer Hero Talent tree is currently proposed, Elemental Shaman are pushed towards a “fire-based” playstyle that brings more power and reward to Primordial Wave. As a result, through Rolling Magma, Shaman are also encouraged to cast Lava Burst as frequently as possible. With more Primordial Wave casts, then the more Ancestors spawn over an encounter.

Hero Talent Node Notes
Call of the Ancestors Initial node.
Ancient Fellowship vs. Latent Wisdom Interacts with Ancestors.
Heed My Call vs. Routine Communication Interacts with Ancestors.
Elemental Reverb Similar function to pre-existing [Echo of the Elements].
Offering from Beyond Interacts with Ancestors, and by function, [Primordial Wave] and [Nature’s Swiftness]. [Fire Elemental] and [Storm Elemental] cooldown reduction.
Primordial Capacity Similar function to pre-existing [Swelling Maelstrom].
Spiritwalker’s Momentum Interacts with [Spiritwalker’s Grace].
Natural Harmony vs. Earthen Communion Interacts with Ancestors.
Maelstrom Supremacy Interacts with Elemental Shaman spenders and [Healing Surge].
Final Calling Interacts with Ancestors.
Ancestral Swiftness Interacts with [Nature’s Swiftness]. Capstone node.

In the current Farseer design, Elemental Shaman should opt to route and take the following key talents:

Shaman Tree Elemental Tree
Nature’s Guardian or Earth Shield (or both) Lava Surge
Spiritwalker’s Grace Windspeaker’s Lava Resurgence or Skybreaker’s Fiery Demise
Nature’s Swiftness Primordial Wave
Rolling Magma
Primordial Surge or Splintered Elements

Ancestor Nodes:
At a glance, Offering from Beyond (Fire/Storm Elemental cooldown reduction) and Final Calling (Elemental Blast on despawn) influence the choice nodes of Ancient Fellowship vs. Latent Wisdom and Heed My Call vs. Routine Communication.

Through Offering from Beyond and Final Calling, if a Shaman is able to spawn a higher quantity of Ancestors over an encounter, this will lead to:

  • Increased Fire/Storm Elemental frequency and uptime.
  • Increased Elemental Blast frequency and uptime.

This is a reasonably desired outcome for a player to pursue.

Latent Wisdom and Heed My Call have no impact on the potential quantity of Ancestors over an encounter. However, Offering from Beyond and Final Calling encourage Shaman to trigger more Ancestors. It is reasonable for a Shaman to double down on both random spawn talents and gamble for increased Fire/Storm Elemental and Elemental Blast uptime. Because of these potential gains, it does not seem efficient to consider Latent Wisdom & Routine Communication, or Ancient Fellowship & Heed My Call.

The power of these talents thus swings between the Shaman or the Ancestor, and poses a mathematical question. What will return more damage: increased Fire/Storm Elemental and Elemental Blast uptime for the Shaman, or stronger and less frequent Ancestors?

Ancestors, Conceptually:
Regardless of which options produce greater numbers, how does the feedback return to the player?

Ancestors are entirely passive to the Shaman. Ancestor spawns provide benefits to the Shaman’s core rotational abilities but do not impact decision making or gameplay when they appear.

  • Visually, we see more Lava Bursts/Chain Lightnings through our Ancestors, but there are no resource returns or buffs to the Shaman.
  • When an Ancestor spawns, there are no immediate compelling effects or buffs that allow the Shaman to feel empowered or rewarded. At the minimum, Primordial Wave still feels like Primordial Wave, and Ancestral Swiftness still feels like Nature’s Swiftness with another icon. An Ancestor is just a “package” of non-visual benefits ala cooldown reduction and secondary stats.
  • Ancestors only act when the Shaman acts. If the Shaman is CC’d or needs to disconnect from a boss, then the Ancestors will do nothing.
  • If Final Calling triggers after a target dies or a target intermissions/becomes immune, that will likely feel frustrating.
  • Ancestors do enable greater HPS by duplicating the Shaman’s healing abilities, but from an Elemental point of view, this is more often a tertiary goal in a PvE setting.

Echo of the Elements & Swelling Maelstrom (Shaman Tree) vs. Elemental Reverb & Primordial Capacity (Farseer Tree):
Elemental Shaman already has Echo of the Elements and Swelling Maelstrom and are likely to talent these when complementing Primordial Wave and Rolling Magma (to capitalize on more Ancestor spawns).

Elemental Shaman already possesses an inherent problem of heavy resources through an abundance of Lava Burst and Lava Burst-duplicated casts. Additionally, with Lava Burst-enabling talents such as Lava Surge and Windspeaker’s Lava Resurgence, it makes the implementation of Elemental Reverb and Primordial Capacity feel uninspired and redundant, and thus may be difficult to feel the return on these two talents.

At best, one of Swelling Maelstrom or Echo of the Elements must be taken for Aftershock/Surge of Power which allows a “floater” point for, but no impactful options with where Swelling Maelstrom and Echo of the Elements currently are in the spec tree.

Other Utility Talents:

  • Spiritwalker’s Momentum
    • The value of this talent depends on the Shaman’s proactive movement. There are not often situations where players need to cast while moving for 19 seconds (let alone 15 seconds), but this a “nice-to-have.” Playing a fire-centric build through Farseer, with Lava Surge procs, Nature’s Swiftness, Spiritwalker’s Grace, and Gust of Wind/Spirit Walk, Elemental Shaman is a fairly mobile ranged spec.
  • Natural Harmony vs Earthen Communion
    • Both of these options are “nice-to-have.”
    • The strength of Natural Harmony depends on how often the average Shaman triggers Nature’s Guardian.
    • Earthen Communion enables a Shaman to recast Earth Shield less often over an encounter (GCDs spent on Earth Shield = GCDs not spent on damage).
  • Maelstrom Supremacy
    • A flat buff to spenders and Healing Surge feels uninspired but may be intended to be an “easy” tuning knob for the spec in the future.

Design Questions:

  1. Does Routine Communication have the same ever increasing chance protection like Deeply Rooted Elements? Should it?

  2. The Elemental Blast from Final Calling does not trigger any “spender” talents/buffs/debuffs such as Aftershock, Surge of Power, Elemental Equilibrium, Echoes of Great Sundering, Windspeaker’s Lava Resurgence, and Lightning Rod. Should it have any interaction, it could tune Elemental Shaman to an impossible level. How could the talent evolve into something more rewarding, without being overpowered, random, or volatile?

  3. Should the Elemental Blast from Final Calling trigger on Ancestor spawn or despawn? On spawn would feel more rewarding to have a few abilities buffed by Elemental Blast. In its current form, it would feel bad to lose the Ancestor and Elemental Blast as targets die, or as bosses enter intermission or phase to immunity.

  4. When the Shaman casts an Electrified Shocks empowered Frost Shock at multiple targets, the Ancestor will also cast Lava Burst to each target hit by the Frost Shock. Is this intended?

Personal Wishlist:
I acknowledge the design decision for Hero talents to push players towards specific talents and building or routing around those options. While I feel the Farseer tree is passive and not very engaging, I would like to see the Shaman and Elemental trees revisited prior to modifying the Farseer tree.

I would like to avoid these two binary scenarios:

  • play X Hero tree for ST, and play Y Hero tree for AoE.
  • play X Hero tree to play “fire,” and play Y Hero tree to play “lightning.”

Farseer can be a Hero spec that stays rooted in Primordial Wave. However, what other ways can Primordial Wave complement other facets of an Elemental Shaman identity, other than through Lava Burst? How can a Shaman player be incentivized to play Primordial Wave but veer towards a more lightning-centric rotational design? How can the Farseer tree be modified to appeal to either playstyle?

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