dude thanks for putting so much time and effort into this
- a fellow ele shaman lover
2 Likes
I agree. Even the DK and mage summon doesnt do that. its a really dumb AI they should be ashamed o even present that and be like well its your tree.
1 Like
Hi Team 2. Iâm back and with suggestions for moderate changes to Farseer Shaman that will improve the excitement and impact of the hero spec. As a bit of an explanation of my thoughts, I want to address certain talents and mechanics that I consider problematic.
Offering from Beyond creates a bias for Ancient Fellowship over Latent Wisdom. It similarly creates a bias for Routine Communication over Heed My Call. Final Calling has more obvious synergies with Routine Communication and Ancient Fellowship. Without forthcoming tuning the synergies point towards all content preferring an unchanging combination for the choice nodes.
Elemental
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Ancestors have a chance to respond to overloads or Ancestor spells can overload themselves.
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Flame Shock DoT ticks increase the chance to proc Ancient Fellowship for each currently active Ancestor. This can be adjusted to be crits or simply a chance on each tick.
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Offering from beyond should reduce the CD of your elemental for each spell cast by your ancestors (giving additional value to the increased uptime of Heed My Call)
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Final Calling should be reworked to have Ancestors cast Elemental Blast upon summoning. This would create more consistent value for both elemental and restoration when summoned with Ancestral Swiftness or P Wave. Both the crit and the haste will also more often be more effective during the uptime of the Ancestor.
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Heed My Call reduces the CD of Ancestral Swiftness and/or P-Wave in addition to making Ancestors last longer.
These suggestions are made to improve interaction with Elementalâs base kit, improve the perceived imbalance in choice nodes, and add additional gameplay moments without increasing rotational complexity. I hope one or more of these ideas spark inspiration in the team and spur communication on the design intent for this hero specialization.
Also can we change the name to Spiritwalker? That sounds so cool.
1 Like
Agree with the Spiritwalker name change, the current ancestor thing vibes much more with that than Farseer.
I have been putting this off for awhile as Shaman has been a dead zone for communication for a long while. Offering feedback has felt a little like screaming into the void, but we will give it another shot, because I love Shaman, and Elemental in particular. This post will be mostly about Elemental Shaman, but there will be some Resto mentions as well
Farseer seems fine or good thematically, but leaves a LOT to be desired when it comes to the aesthetics, and most importantly, gameplay.
I believe that Elemental Shaman was the most fun to play when you would use all of the elements at your disposal, weaving Lava Bursts with Lightning Bolts, Earth Shocks, Elemental Blasts, Frost Shocks, and Earthquakes. Dragonflight gave us talent choices that allow us to spend almost every global on Lava Burst. How can you be a Master of the Elements (pun intended) when you are only casting Lava Burst? Farseer does not help get Lava Burst into a more reasonable position, it only makes it worse.
What can be done about gameplay?
- Ancestors should not be summoned by Primordial Wave (via Call of the Ancestors, Starting Node)
- Change Call of the Ancestors to proc off of some number of Master of the Elements Buffs expended. In Restoration (if you wanted, for sake of consistency), you could have it proc off of some number of Tidal Waves buffs/charges expended. For Elemental, this makes Farseer far more neutral, as then we arenât so clearly incentivized to stack on every single talent that gives us more Lava Bursts (so you can get your Primordial Wave back). Also, it doesnât remove the Lava Burst focus from Farseer to distinguish it from Stormbringer, as more Lava Bursts still means more Ancestors, just not a constant stream of Lava Bursts
- Routine Communication (Row 2, Column 2) should not proc Ancestors off of Lava Burst casts
- This would be better if it was changed to reduce the number of Master of the Elements buffs to expend. You already have the 15% chance for an Ancestor to call another ancestor, we have the RNG node. The choice between longer ancestors or more frequent ancestors seems like a better choice. Otherwise, if we want to keep the RNG, change it to be a % chance on a spender, not Lava Burst. Lava Burst doesnât need additional synergies/interactions, it has the most in the kit by far.
- Ancestral Swiftness (Capstone node)⌠I donât have any ideas for this, but it is not compelling. Please change this to something where the visuals of Shaman can really stand out.
Some points on Ancestors themselves
- They should cast on their own.
- You getting stun locked or an unlucky mechanic should not completely negate your Hero Talent choice. Ancestors should cast a set rotation of abilities based on the context. (Single Target vs. Multi Target vs. Healing) Use this to show off the visually stunning aspect of Elemental Shaman.
- Have them heal you during loss of control effects
- Doesnât have to be the same heal that they would target your allies with when playing Resto, but, it would be nice if grandpa and grandma were invested in me surviving in those dangerous scenarios.
7 Likes
I mean it is sad that our hero tree spawns things that are essentially less effective than a trinket that currently exists in the game (Tome of Unstable Power).
I like your ideas. I just wish someone was reading them.
2 Likes
I love the idea of Ancestors proccing from master of the elements
Day 54, still no response.
Once again from a Restoration perspective,
- Call of the Ancestors suggestion, Please make it have some interaction with Undulation, Iâm flustered already with keybinds and the intensity healing especially in M+, I do not need another button/weak aura to keep track off. I hate the idea of being forced into Unleashed Life especially in M+ where I donât even take it.
Solution/Reasoning, Every 2nd proc of Undulation calls an Ancestor to your side for 6 sec. Whenever you cast a healing or damaging spell, the Ancestor will cast a similar spell. This gives players especially in M+ an alternative way without requiring Unleash Life if they choose too, or even in Raid if they prefer to not run Unleash Life at all, let the player have choices.
- Final Calling suggestion, Ancestors should cast âHyrdobubbleâ, when a party member drops under 35% HP, if not theyâll cast it on expiration on an injured party member.
Solution/Reasoning, With Ancestors casting on the player that essentially needs it sooner than later is a huge quality of life change, I need the shield now not in 6 seconds time, this just creates a better window/buffer time to heal players in need and reduce over healing aswell. When the Ancestor expires I may not even need the Shield or a player who did might be dead.
I think these 2 simple changes, creates better player choice rather then forcing mandatory talents that increase keybinds and QoL when comes to utilising the Shield.
3 Likes
Why does it take our class so long to receive any feedback? It took so long for these hero talents to come out and even then they were terrible and only deepened the elementalâs current problems, further limiting the gameâs choices. Apart from the fact that it is visually very bad and doesnât make you want to play with it, unlike the mage hero talents, each one is completely exciting, like the phoenix.
3 Likes
I think theyâre still upset about Bus Shock.
2 Likes
they have to baby druids before putting any time or attention on their least favorite classes to tune.
this is embarrassing blizz.
2 Likes
I was excited to see an update to our notes for AlphaâŚuntil I saw how it compared to notes for literally every other class. Man, this neglect is depressing.
4 Likes
I feel like Iâm the only one that actually likes the farseer tree. With that said, if they made two changes I think itâd be super awesome for ele. For one, increase the duration to 8 or 10 seconds. 6 seconds is too short. Along with this, make the farseer also have your mastery effect them. The only upside to shorter duration is they will cast elemental blast quicker which gives us the ele blast buff.
The concept is cool, but without mastery effecting them they are essentially a guaranteed 40% dmg overload for 6 seconds. If they could also have mastery shoot more, it would make them far better and exciting.
3 Likes
Where is the stormbringer feedback forum?
4 Likes
They forgot to make one, so we had to make an unofficial one.
2 Likes
Yea seriously, itâs been quite a while of radio silence from the Blizz team. Not even a âweâre looking into itâ.
My false hope is that theyâre going to announce a rework of some sort but based on this classes history I may as well wish for the moon 
This is why shamans can call on water at will: from all of our repressed tears.
10 Likes
Whether or not my reply will mean something, I feel the need to express my opinion being a Ele main since I started playing WoW. Both of the current available trees for the spec feel like theyâre pushing the class in the right direction thematically, but the abilities seem so lackluster that it didnât seem that the devs cared to put a lot of thought into, no offense. I think something dealing with ancestors is very cool, but after being a longtime Fire build enjoyer, the ancestors show barely any synergy with the current âfireâ build that the hero tree seems to want to play around. Primordial Wave feels strong only when a tier set implements an effect playing around fire/Flame Shock/Elemental Blast, so I get why the abilities in the tree are the way that they are, but they do nothing âinterestingâ or âfunâ to make me want to choose that class over something like Stormbringer. Ancestors may have the ability to get called from a few different things (Lava burst proc, prim wave, and resummon after expiration), and Ele does not need anymore random procs. Why do we even have utility talents that only affect the self-heal (Natureâs Guidance), and Earth Shield? Natureâs Guidance is good as a baseline ability, even for a class/spec that can self-heal, but why ES? Most builds Ele uses nowadays donât even recommend putting points in Chain Heal and Earth Shield because the current Shaman Talent require us to make use out of Liquid Magma Totem and Totemic Recall. You could make the case that it has its utility in Raids, but it just feels like a slap in the face to give a boring and useless ability like extra ES stacks to Ele. On top of that, Spiritwalkerâs Momentum? You mean that every maelstrom generator/ONE spender (Elemental Blast) grants more duration to Spiritwalkerâs when lava burst can instant cast with Windspeakerâs Lava Res., Lava Surge, and Primordial wave when paired with Primordial Surge, and in some cases procs lava surge with splintered elements in M+ atm? What would be the need to cast any other spell when our main focus for this build/tree is spamming lava surge super fast? All in all, I hope this talent tree gets a lot more love than it does right now.
1 Like
I suppose many gripes with this tree could be addressed with several changes:
- Allow Ancestors to proc from Undulation affected spell with 15 seconds internal cooldown, so that people who donât want to take Unleash Life can skip it.
- Make Ancestors always do something and have a default spell that they use even if Shaman does not do anything (like when being crowd controlled) - for example that could be Lightning Bolt / Lava Burst for Ele and Healing Surge for Resto. Their AI behaviour could be simple - attack / heal current target of Shaman and if there is none - nearest enemy / wounded ally.
- Improve some of their spells cast - Chain Lightning should hit same number of targets as the Shaman, Chain Heal being cast when using AoE heals and affecting similar number of targets as the Shaman and so on.
- Improve the defensive choice node between Natural Harmony and Earthen Communion, since currently it is a bit underwhelming. At least one of the options could involve an absorb shield or damage reduction, as currently both are tied to healing that is heavily affected by mortal strike effects and dampening.
- Buff generation of Ancestors for Ele, since it is much lower from Primordial Wave (45s CD with CDR) than from Unleash Life (15s CD)
- Buff the capstone a bit, as what is currently does is just reducing CD of Natureâs Swiftness by 15 seconds, adds a small damage / healing boost to affected spell and an Ancestor summon. Compared to other hero tree capstones it has a bit low value.
Suggestion: Make it always summon an Ancestor (even without Natureâs Swiftness taken) and instead have 15 seconds of CD reduction if Natureâs Swiftness is taken. There are 2 specific reasons for giving access to either 30 or 45 seconds CD for it - makes Natureâs Swiftness less mandatory for people who donât want to take it and it would align with CD of Primordial Wave for Resto (30s with and 45s without capstone) and 30s CD would align with CD of Icefury, allowing to use Ancestral Swiftness to negate its stationary and clunky cast if Shaman would want to. Such change would allow to integrate Ancestral Swiftness into existing gameplay loops and make it more useful than just another Ancestor summon.
2 Likes