Feedback: Farseer Shaman

Classes Shaman
125

Hello fellow Shaman players and hopefully Devs. I will be talking about Shaman Farseer hero talent tree. I will be more focusing all on the Restro Shaman side of it since I am a healer.

Shaman Devs the Farseer theme is on point.

Ancestors only last 6 secs. The decay timer should not decay when not in combat. But should reset when starting a key so shamans aren’t stacking ancestors before a M+ key.

Pros
Final Calling node. (amazing) Hopefully Hydrobubble being a 10 sec shield is HUGE. Since it decays. This should also prioritizes Lower health players please.

Ancient Fellowship node. Is great please keep this.

Routine communication node.
Good idea. But I think the % should be a little more. Like 12% LB and 20% Riptide.

Elemental Reverb node. Is great please keep this.

Cons
Offering from beyond should lower a better GCD then riptide for Restro. Like Healing Tide Totem.

Redo Nodes- Nature Harmony, Primordial Capacity, Maelstrom Supremacy, and Spiritwalker’s Momentum.

Ancestral Swiftness capstone- At first I was like this is terrible on this capstone. But I thought Blizzard could fix this capstone. First make sure if you do take NS it changes it to a 45 sec cd like AS. I think it should keep the free mana. Lastly, the ancestors called should be 3. Yes that’s right 3. Here is why. If AS is a 45 sec CD. and Unleash life is a 15 CD. I can cast unleash 3 times for 1 AS. If changed to 3 I could see AS and the talent widely being taken and give a better positivity to the capstone.

I will say this for Ele making PW mandatory now. Is really sad and bad gameplay. Going more into fire build. Which some players might not like.

Latent Wisdom node.
Everyone will just take Ancient fellowship might want to rethink this node.

Heed my call Node. No redo this please.

126

The ancestors are cool! But just a damage buff to elemental doesn’t feel class defining or earth shaking. I think the ancestors should have pet spells, where they can put targets to sleep or fear/horrify or place a shield on a healing target. Then having an ancestor spawn in would not only add damage, but some unique utility as well.

127

I will be more focusing all on the Restro Shaman side of it since I am a healer.

First off, lets start off on a good note. Shaman Devs the them for Farseer is on point. Now for the pros and cons with hopefully wishes for Shaman.

Really quick an idea for ancestors as well since they only last 6 secs. The decay timer should not decay will not in combat. But should reset when starting a key so shamans aren’t stacking ancestors before a M+ key.

Pros
Final Calling node. (amazing) Hopefully Hydrobubble being a 10 sec shield is HUGE. Since it decays. This should also prioritizes Lower health players please.

Ancient Fellowship node. Good keep this.

Routine communication node. Good idea just up the % little more. Like 12% LB and 20% Riptide

Elemental Reverb node. Good keep this.

Cons
Offering from beyond should lower a better GCD then riptide for Restro

Redo Nodes- Nature Harmony, Primordial Capacity, Maelstrom Supremacy, and Spiritwalker’s Momentum.

Ancestral Swiftness capstone- At first I was a debbie downer on this capstone. Blizzard to fix this capstone this is what I would do. First make sure if you do take NS it changes it to a 45 sec cd like AS next it better be free mana and instant cast like NS. Lastly, the ancestors called should be 3. Yes that’s right 3. Here is why. If AS is a 45 sec CD. and Unleash life is a 15 CD. I can cast unleash 3 times for 1 AS. This makes AS worth pressing. So please Blizzard do this and make sure ancestors do the damage or healing and this capstone would be a whole lot better.

I will say this for Ele making PW mandatory now. Is really stupid and bad gameplay. Going more into fire build. Which some players might not like.

Latent Wisdom node. Everyone will just take Ancient fellowship might want to rethink this node.

Heed my call Node. No redo this!

Overall I like the idea and theme really hoping they polish out this tree. So highlighting couple things again. Hydrobubble make it worth it. Make Ancestors do something decent. Edit capstone hopefully what I suggested. Redo a couple nodes.

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Some additions to existing feedback.

  • Ancestors are an interesting concept, but them only imitating your spells might be too limiting. I don’t think your ancestors watching you die in CC and doing pretty much nothing to help would be thematic. As such, I think they should have some baseline spell that they use if Shaman does not / cannot use any spells.
  • Heed my Call might need a buff to be able to compete with RNG proc. For example, for Elemental it provides pretty much 2 additional seconds for 2 ancestors every 30-45 seconds and even one RNG proc of additional Ancestor would be stronger than that, especially since additional Ancestor would cast an additional Elemental Blast.
  • Call of the Ancestors should also proc from Undulation affected healing spell (with 15 seconds internal cooldown) to preserve options in its choice node.
1 Like
129

Make the capstone spawn 4 ancestors and give you and all active ancestors Ascendance for 12 s

1 Like
130

We need clarification if the healing from the ancestor feeds cloudburst totem.

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What about ancestral guidance, astral shift, spirit link, spirit walk, ghost wolf, etc.

Aren’t these all thematically farseer talents? I don’t understand why they chose not to include these as part of the tree.

I honestly still think this would’ve worked better as an resto/enh option considering enh has feral spirits and 2 points of the tree are regarding maelstrom. Totemic or totems in general feel too broad to the class.

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But resto and enh both have a totem they specifically cast on repeat.

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I wish our capstone would change to involve Bloodlust somehow. Make it spawn a couple of ancestors every few seconds while we are under the effect of the buff, or maybe an instant spawning of tons of weaker ghosts in a similar way to DK Army of the Dead.

Remember how in Return of the King, Aragorn shows up with a gazillion ghost friends to turn the tide of the battle? I want to feel like that whenever I play Farseer Shaman instead of just a revolving door of 1-2 ancestors at a time. More ghosts = more fun!

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There are many callbacks to ancestors in our spellbook/talent tree: Ancestral Spirit/Vision (res), Ancestral Guidance, Ancestral Protection Totem, Ancestral Awakening, Ancestral Reach, Ancestral Vigor - probably a few others as well. Was a little shocked the tree had absolutely nothing to do with any of those things

4 Likes
135

Exactly, this tree felt uninspired and half baked. They wanted to pigeon hold us Ele players into using Pwave which if thats what they want then they need to make it baseline and not a mandatory talent.

5 Likes
136

Yeah that’s a good point, that I hadn’t tied together…

Primordial generally means “Before Life” or at least “Origins of Life” Our ancestors didn’t come until way after that. I dunno what a mess…

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I like that idea. Specifically, if it were a mini-Bloodlust that either happened periodically when an ancestor is summoned, or every time a totem is dropped. One that didn’t give the Sated debuff, but only lasted like 10 seconds or so, and only for the Shaman themselves.

These are similar to Deathseer’s Whip from Torghast and the Evoker 4 piece tier set from season 1. That could go a long way to fixing Farseer.

1 Like
138

Just a random thought, is it possible if “Farseer” could augment the ability “Farsight” to be almost like a cooldown?

Instead of have the Natures Swiftness capstone change it it to “Ancestors Vision” and change Farsight to a CD of some kind that summons Ancestors. Might be controversial, but make it like a Tranquility channel 30 yards around the Shaman that summons Ancestors every second for 10 seconds that either Damage or Heal based on spec.

Would bring life to an incredibly unused ability, make the capstone at least more thematically in line with a “Farseer”, double down on the ancestor mechanic, and potentially give the capstone the excitement it needs.

Just an idea since I don’t know if Farseer would get a major overhaul but at least targeting the capstone could be a priority. Even though we shouldn’t settle for worse as shamans, I dont think it’s unreasonable to assume that not every node will be “good”, the capstone though should make us want to pick Farseer.

2 Likes
139

I’ve been toying around with mocking up my own version of the various shaman hero paths while waiting for any of them to be previewed, and that was the approach I took. Casting Farsight in combat caused it to reveal nearby spirits that you could interact with to gain benefits, with a cooldown on how frequently this effect could occur.

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Or maybe they only want pwave to be important to the fire specific build.

And the lightning build it wont be.

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The worst part is that, priests have a similar talent to our ‘hero’ talent called Divine image with very similar wording on what it does. The roots of that talent come from the legion expansion and it was initially so underpowered that no one thought much of it and it has undergone several reiterations.

Shaman also had a tier set a while back that summoned a spirit that did atrocious healing. It seems we keep getting old boring ideas thrown at this class while the things that make us unique get shared with other classes. We are still begging for a new ascendance visual since the one we have is from cataclysm. Let that sink in. Cataclysm.

You would think there would have been a follow up post like other classes get that fleshes out what vague descriptions like ,‘the ancestor casts a similar spell’ actually mean.

I believe DKs have a concept similar to this and notice how each rider they summon has a clear description of what it brings.

I hate to be that guy but the pattern is quite disturbing.

2 Likes
142

But that is the the current issue with Elemental, driving a wedge being Lighting and Fire making us choose which one we want to go with, and with the current tier set, it’s been centered around a PWave/Lava Burst spammer. But if they want it to be important or mandatory then it should be included in baseline so we could have different options for our trees.

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I think the flavor of this hero talent is great, calling on your ancestors to aid you in battle. However, I have some concerns about the execution of it:

  1. I don’t think you are really going to be changing your rotation in any way because of these ancestors. When I get a Deeply Rooted Elements proc right now, it can feel powerful to not lose charges on lava burst and just spam your way back to the next primordial wave. But I’m not sure these ancestors will make us feel powerful in the same way.

It matters that when Deeply Rooted procs, I am changing my rotation - if a second ancestor procs randomly, will I notice? Will it change my rotation in a way that makes me feel powerful?

  1. This hero talent tree is all in on fire, which I think is an issue in the standard talent tree as well. Part of the shaman fantasy is tapping into all the elements. I would like to see this revisited in a full tree rework honestly.

I don’t think any hero talent trees should have a first node that requires you to pick a specific talent way down the regular talent tree. It locks a lot of choices in your regular talent tree right away just by doing that.

  1. The defensive choice node feels lackluster, especially since shaman is seen as being so squishy. I understand the fantasy of shamans using healing as a way to deal with damage, however in practice there are raid and M+ fights where the damage must be mitigated in the first place. I would like to see more support for astral shift, or maybe even a change to earth shield to block a small percentage of damage?

Also earth shield should not incur the global cooldown in my opinion as it is so rarely refreshed mid raid boss because of that. It can have a regular cooldown to compensate.

3 Likes
144

But we are going to have different options, since we have more than one hero talent choice?

The alternative is just making everything so bland you dont get anything creative?