Feedback: Farseer Shaman

Classes Shaman
85

When looking at this I can’t help but feel it’s lacking a little bit in flavor. When looking at Rider of the Apocalypse the whole tree is just oozing flavor, with a capstone that summons all 4 horseman giving you various buffs in the process. I think the Ancestor idea of Farseer works but there are other aspects of the Farseer that could also be added.

In Warcraft 3 the Farseer Ultimate was Earthquake there is only one talent that has anything to do with Earthquake is Maelstrom Supremacy, a small buff to Ele spenders and a few direct healing Resto spells. This doesn’t really synergize with the primarily Riptide focused buffs in the rest of the tree and a small percent increase in finishers is boring so I’d like to propose this change.

Replace Maelstrom Supremacy with a modified version Deeptremor Stone. Deeptremor Stone gave our Earth Elemental a permanent Earthquake that followed it around, this was an awesome power in Torghast and as seen in the Rider of the Apocalypse, the devs are rightfully pulling from some of the awesome work you’ve done in the past there.

The way I see this reading could be as follows:

Tidetremor Stone
Elemental: Your Earth Elemental no longer taunts and has a permanent Earthquake attached to it at 100% effectiveness. (Tuned to whatever is necessary)
Restoration: Your Earth Elemental no longer taunts and has a permanent Healing Rain attached to it at 100% effectiveness. (Tuned to whatever is necessary)

With this change I think adding Earth Elemental cooldown reduction to Resto from “Offering From Beyond” would also be warranted and would overall increase the synergy of the tree.

I feel this also allows for a more thematic representation of the Farseer and can be tuned to be equivilant to the healing / damage the current Maelstrom Supremacy would have provided.

4 Likes
86

This was 100 percent my first impression of the tree. Farseer doubles down on all the pain points of DF elemental shaman, the worst being the “lava vs. lightning” problem that you point out.

I fear that Blizzard is trying to design shaman around Fire for single-target and Lightning for Aoe. The problem with this design is that both styles compete with each other rather than compliment each other. If Farseer ends up being good numerically, it just forces us to take Primordial Wave in all situations, which limits variety and really hinders the class fantasy of elemental shaman. I want to commune with all of the elements, not just fire.

Really, the problem is that Lava Burst just does too much. DRE procs, MotE, PWave CDR, and now Fire/Storm Ele CDR. The worst part is that it’s all RNG and the player gets very little agency in what is happening with their character.

I LOVE the flavor of communing with the ancestors, but I think the gameplay implications of this tree are very concerning.

4 Likes
87

Took months for shaman hero talents to be revealed and this is what you seriously consider to be “Hero” talents?

From wowpedia
“Ancient orc far seers represent the pinnacle of shamanistic power. These powerful shaman are counted amongst Thrall’s closest advisors and are constantly in tune with the workings and maneuverings of the Horde. Far seers are not only tied to the elements of the earth and sky, but are also adept at foretelling the future. They can be granted visions of distant places and summon both the elements and spirit wolves to protect them. Far seers can summon lightning or the element of earth to induce a massive earthquake.”

You gave us the weenie hut junior Farseer

BOOOOOOOOOOO

Edit: At the very least give us a drek’thar talent so we can join him in a wheelchair.
:wheelchair: MAKE WAY FOR THE FARSEER :wheelchair:

9 Likes
88

Earth and sky seem to be absent from the Farseer tree.

I feel like they really dropped the ball on this one.

2 Likes
89

This is part of the problem though. Having to choose between lava and lightning has been the core of all of elemental shaman’s gameplay issues this expansion. Having a talent spec where both spell types work effectively is what people want. I would love for the lightning talents to be great for ST and AoE, but it seems like the devs are following the trend of DF, where Fire reigns supreme in ST and Lightning is better for AoE (barring current tier).

3 Likes
90

Looking at this from an elemental shaman POV here are my few thoughts,

The Farseer motif has always been an exciting one to visit, however these hero talents do little to resonate the theme or experience of one.

A Farseer in Warcraft has always been a pinnacle to shamanism, powerful shamans tied to the elements aswell as harnessing the spirits and foresight. From the hero class in Warcraft 3 their abilities have forged to create staple abilities across all 3 specs. However, from the class description

“Harness your spiritual magic, improving your spell casting capabilities and empowering you to call upon ancestors to aid you and your allies in combat.”

it already seems half baked only focusing on spiritual magic and calling on the ancestors. Surely this isn’t a Farseer and more of an Elder Chieftain from DOTA.

Summoning ancestors to help recast our abilities or replicate healing and damage does throwback to some of our old and current abilities like Ancestral Guidance and Echoing shock, however the gameplay implementation is profoundly weak. These abilities gives you control of your flow, allowing you to set up AOE heals or line up a ST or AOE nuke whilst the Ancestors from primordial wave sucks you into a specific gameplay of throwing primordial waves and lava bursts, one that we’re already doing…

As everyone has mentioned this just seems like we’re forcing the two divisive playstyles of elemental Fire vs Lightning which we will be alternating between depending on what the tier set is on the season. If that is the case, then there needs to be improvements to the Fire gameplay such as faster flame shock ramp.

This could be the case if the Ancestors could cast flame shock on other targets as well as benefit from Surge of Power. (Aswell as baking in Primordial wave proccing surge of power, like our current tier set) This would let us have 5 flame shocks from using primordial wave into a single flame shock.

How exciting the Ancestors will be will definitely depend on what buffs or what ‘similar’ spells they will cast and how they interact with our kit but that also makes it extremely difficult to balance.

Personally, I would want us to go back to the sense of control and not focus onto the Fire spec. Detaching Ancestors from Primordial Wave and Lava bursts so all versions of Elemental can use Farseer.

2 Likes
91

I like what its going for, always a sucker for summon focused stuff.

But I do wish for it to lean more towards summoning elementals instead of ancestors

1 Like
92

I wasn’t too excited for Farseer until I saw Ancient Fellowship (Ancestors have a 15% chance to call another Ancestor when they expire) and Offering From Beyond (When an Ancestor is called, they reduce the cd of Fire and Storm Elemental by 10 seconds.)

Unfortunately, the rest of the tree only serves to reinforce the current situation of Fire Elemental being far superior to Storm Elemental both numerically and mechanically.

I would very much like to make a more Lightning-based build for Elemental Shaman that capitalizes on Storm Elemental, but all the talents that support using an Elemental have far better synergy with Fire Elemental. And if I want to maximize uptime on Storm Elemental I have to spend a LOT of gcds not casting Lightning spells, which defeats the purpose of having the Storm Elemental out in the first place.

I think an adjustment to Stormbreaker’s Fiery Demise could resolve this issue by creating synergy between the Lightning spells and Storm Elemental. The goal would be to allow players to obtain a similar uptime with Storm Elemental as with Fire Elemental without having to sacrifice casts of Lightning spells for the sake of increased uptime on the Elemental.

To that end, I suggest the following:

Stormbreaker’s Elemental Demise - Flame Shock has a 50% increased critical strike chance and its damage over time critical strikes reduce the cooldown of Fire Elemental by 1 second.

Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning have a 10% chance to grant you the Stormkeeper effect and your Elemental Overloads reduce the cooldown of Storm Elemental by 1 second.

Additionally, if Call of the Ancestors is going to be activated by Primordial Wave, I would like to see Primordial Wave adjusted as well. I suggest the following:

Primordial Wave - Blast your target with a Primordial Wave, dealing Elemental damage, applying Flame Shock, and causing the target to become a Lightning Rod for 3 seconds.

You gain Primal Power, causing your next Lava Burst to hit all targets affected by your Flame Shock for 80% damage or your next Lightning spell to Overload an additional time.

1 Like
93

“Grandpa I need your help!”

“Well that’s too d*** bad.”"

Farseer gameplay.

4 Likes
94

Holes, I love that movie.

95

The shaman specs all need reworks/changes, the class tree needs a complete overhaul, and until then there isn’t much point to working on hero specs because you’re building on a really bad foundation.

My thoughts on the elemental part of the tree even though I mostly play enhancement, incredibly boring, not heroic at all, and like the antithesis of what elemental players have been asking for. It makes me dread what the remaining 2 will look like given how bad this one is. The easiest way I can explain how bad this is, we have had more impactful/fun tier sets.

6s?! Primordial wave is a 45s cooldown and you get what? 2-4 spells off at best? That’s seriously lackluster for a hero talent. Sure lava burst can lower that cooldown, but even 6s every 30 is awful for a hero talent that is meant to alter your gameplay. Not to mention you’re pidgeonholing people into Primordial wave, which had yall be paying attention since Dragonflight alpha, isn’t well liked by any of the specs. Sure they take it because it’s higher dps, but doesn’t make it fun or interesting.

The Latent wisdom node, there is no real choice here at all and both are lackluster to begin with. So you either get 20% every time for a whole 6s(wow! /s) or 85% of the time you get absolutely nothing. 85% of the time feeling like you wasted a point doesn’t feel great. Not to mention the balance issues this will present when people get super lucky and get back to back double procs or even a triple proc.

The rest of it is basically 5% dmg buffs or useless/niche/boring stuff that isn’t really going to change anything and definitely isn’t heroic. It’s top half of the class tree stuff.

The capstone, seriously? How on earth is this a capstone? We already have natures swiftness, making it a capstone but it summons an ancestor doesn’t feel “heroic”. On top of that you make Nature’s swiftness worse because now instead of using it when we need it, we need to use it on cooldown to maximize ancestor uptime. Then the salt in the wound is that you’re 100% forced to take Nature’s swiftness because otherwise that capstone is literally “your next spell does 10% more damage”.

Again, I mostly play enhancement, but even I know this is incredibly bad and not thought out at all. You need to do better. Actually listen to what people have been telling you over and over for literal years. The fact there is a “totemic” spec makes me think you aren’t listening at all. We told you in DF alpha totems bad don’t make our class tree about them, yet here we are with a garbage fire for a class tree where a good quarter of the talents are niche totem talents and on top of that the tree is split between 3 very different roles leaving each spec with very few viable choices. I REALLY hope each spec doesn’t end up with 1 viable hero spec, that would really make me think twice about playing the expansion.

5 Likes
96

Is anyone else disappointed Farseer is Ele/Restro?

Like, bare with me for a moment, but…

Warcraft 3, the Farseer Hero summoned Feral Spirits, cast Chain Lightning, and Earthquake.

Ok… so, why couldn’t the Farseer modify Fire Elemental/Storm Elemental (Ele) and Feral Spirits (Enhance), modify Earthquake (Ele) and Sundering (Enh), and Chain Lightning? Like a big summoner/AoE themed hero talent?

Totemic remains Enhancement/Restoration, and then Stormbringer becomes Ele/Restro, since they both share the Stormkeeper ability.

Leave Totemic to buff totems and the support/functionality of them, and let Stormbringer offer a more damage-based Restro vibe.

6 Likes
97

Please stop making Pet Abilities for Healers and non Pet Classes/Specs (rDruid Trees and now these Ancestors)… if i wanted to play/interact with Pets i would be playing a Pet CLASS/SPEC.

3 Likes
98

Overall, Farseer seems like a severe let down for what its intent seems to be (from an elemental perspective).

I can enjoy a Lava Burst centric build, and this may be unpopular but I like Pwave and the interactions currently with the S3 set. I voted for S3 again mainly because the visual gratification from seeing cleave Lava Bursts is amazing!

The Farseer tree appears to want to hit that same visual feeling with Ancestors and Lava Burst, the problem though is I am unsure if it will evoke anywhere near the same feeling. For all I know Ancestors will be really cool , we just don’t know enough about them yet that I can’t make that positive judgement.

Ancestors aside, having 3 minor bland “output” nodes, a small defensive node, and then having a node that interacts with our Elementals CD (which are already kind of atrocious) seems insane to me. The capstone also feels like it should just replace one of the output nodes! That along with just the RNG nature of procing more Ancestors leads to a tree that doesn’t need a Farseer to tell you how players will feel about this.

I think the idea of Farseer can work out, it just needs some more deterministic proc nodes and more thematic element(al)s. For example, keep the RNG proc of Ancestors but also add one that after X amount of Lava Bursts spawn an Ancestor, or even make it Lighting Bolts as well to allow Lightning builds to partake in this Hero tree.

Another suggestion is instead of reducing our Elementals CD, make Ancestors spawn Spirit Wolves/Ancestral Elementals, you could even tie it into our Fire/Storm Ele to make our CD do something. An example would be “Upon summoning your Elemental, spawn 2 Ancestors, refresh all Ancestors, and cause them to summon Ancestral Spirits to aid you”.

So I get the theme you are going for with Ancestors, but the rest of the tree simply doesn’t support that theme very well IMO. It needs more deterministic procs as well as better tying into the Elemental Kit as a whole.

2 Likes
99

I agree with this. The only place Ele could get worse is by becoming a pet class. There’s reasons that Frost Mage isn’t a perma pet class anymore. And MM/Destro has the talent to forgo the pet. Pet AI isn’t the greatest. Some classes have been just dealing with it for decades, so they put up with it…but forcing that onto a non-pet class/spec isn’t a good idea in my opinion.

Remember the one tier in last xpac (sotfo) we had a perma fire ele. He would get stuck on stuff, and we’d have to unsummon him and just nuke our dps for that entire fight sometimes. If he bugged out when fire ele was close to being off cd again, it didn’t matter. But if he bugged out right when we respawned him and the remaining cooldown was high, that was just the end of it for that fight.

The issue is - ele just needs a rework - and then Hero Talents on top of it. The problem is we’ve been ignored and cast aside for longer than any other class has. We also get zero feedback or even any indication that anyone reads any of our concerns.

The worst part about this - I can go live in discord or have a friend watching me play and it’s always “omg ele looks so fun” - then they get into it with an alt…and quickly realize the problems, and shut that door quickly. People LOVE ele…just the inherent problems that have been accumulating for far too long are too crippling to its actual gameplay:

  • Five globals before you can start AOE’ing, so the other classes have started killing the stuff you did have flameshocks on already (this arguably matters much less in a +24, but it’s crippling in a +21 or lower).
  • How much downtime in a raid encounter hurts it compared to others (that being mechanics or even intermissions),
  • Getting one shot by mechanics with your only weak defensive on cd when you know your main would shrug it off with ease
  • No unique buffs. We used to bring bloodlust. Now that’s given to everybody. The spell exists in the game (Skyfury Totem)…just give us something unique.
  • The fact that a Mage (pure dps class) can outheal us group-wise with one mass shield…We couldn’t match their healing if we spammed heals for 30 sec straight…but we’re the “hybrid”?
2 Likes
100

Fairly meh talent tree.

Not impressed.

101

I honestly think Farseer should be scrapped entirely and replaced with something different.

I’ve been a shaman since TBC. I’ve always loved the gameplay fantacy of the Battle-caster healer. Weaving in Flame Shocks and Lava Bursts into my healing rotations was a core feature of the class fantasy. There were two times when this fantasy was realized: BFA where as a Resto you could wear the Elemental Igneous Potential Az-Armor; and in SL season 3 where we had Vesper Totem and Chains of Devastation.

I’m absolutely devastated that our Crossover Hero Talents for Resto+Elemental ended up being a milktoast Riptide spam build!?

Please Devs, I’m begging you, delete Farseer, open an new word doc, type “Master of the Elements” at the top - and go! Our Ele-Resto crossover should buff the talents uniquely shared between those too specs: Lava Surge, Storm Keeper, and Master of the Elements. Use those talents as the build around.

4 Likes
102

I feel like I’d want to play around with it before deciding if I like it or not. It could have potential, but it does worry me that a lot of these hero talents are mostly minor changes.

I think my main issue is primordial wave. I feel like because of the way flame shock works, and how difficult it is to spread, primordial wave feels pretty bad. I didn’t like it in shadowlands, and I feel like keeping it in Dragonflight was good but I don’t really want to build around it.

I feel like the ancestor’s have potential, but the class fantasy is a little underwhelming. There’s a bunch of things you could do with Farseer like making elementals more prevalent, or making all of the elements important. I like how important elemental blast is though, and I’ve always loved that ability.

Shaman’s got some major issues atm, like flame shock and Icefury (An ability that I also loved in Legion, but deals such low DPS the frost shock damage increase is barely relevant). And Earthquake is really bad as an AOE ability. But I get why this seems to lean into a fire build, since with the stormbringer tree you’ll definitely be going with a lightning build.

1 Like
103

Even as a longtime Elemental player who actually enjoys the current Primordial Wave/Flame build, this is a very mechanically uninspired tree. Farseer is one of the foundational class fantasies lifted from WC3, and this tree does little to evoke that legacy.

Thematically, focusing on ancestor spirits is… fine, but the implementation is, essentially, a rough copy of our mastery. It adds absolutely zero noteworthy impact or flavor to gameplay - which is the point of the hero talents. I agree with the majority that this needs a complete rework from a flavor and mechanical perspective.

3 Likes
104

If you’re going to double-down and ignore the pre-existing feedback about the incessant focus on PW and LB being the center of the Elemental spec, why even bother?

We want variety. We want to see something other than meatballs flying at our target. I hope to Christ that Stormbringer brings back actual lightning builds.

Specifically, I want to see the old BfA setup of using your elemental to speed up your casts of Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. Also, random procs of Stormkeeper are always welcome in a lightning build, IMO.

Besides what I want, what I don’t want is being severely limited on targets because I don’t have an effective way to spread Flame Shock. Either make it spread on its own, or make CL spread it up to 10 enemies.

Elemental is one of my favorite specs in the game. I don’t want to have to put it on the back burner because it feels so bad to play. If I weren’t so close to KSM this season, I’d have dropped it for something else. Y’all seriously need to start listening to spec feedback. Stop insisting y’all know best on what’s fun for the players.

8 Likes