We want Vesper totem baseline. We want to feel like the avatar the last airbender. Where are the elementals? Where are the customizable elementals? We want to not have cookie cutter builds forcing us into mainly using one element? This chance on proc ancestors are cool but that should just be built onto soemthing else… not what the full tree is based around. Give us more elementals please.
1 Like
We play this class because we like all of the elements. If we wanted just one, we would play a mage or warlock. We need more elemental everything for every spec. Not just aspects of it by using certain shields but actual abilities that use all elements no matter what spec.
5 Likes
How is this creative? We summon pets that may or may not be good and that only proc off certain spells, Now the DK one is oozing with flavor and actually tells you what each Rider does.
But alot of elemental players dislike having a wedge between the Fire and Lightning build. Meaning Fire more of a Single Target and Lightning being the AOE spec.
But this tree is extremely uninspired. I’m guessing you like this tree, which you are more then welcome too. But alot of feedback has been the same.
After a few reads of the Farseer hero tree, I like the theme of the tree. I also like that the tree has a focus on our spellcasting ability. Unfortunately, the specifics of the tree leave much to be desired.
As echoed from many above, I would like to see more elemental aspects in our kit. As a main resto player, I am envious of the elemental shamans that get to summon elemental beings as part of their visual kit. I would greatly love to see resto have some ability to see elementals related to our spells.
I am very concerned about button bloat, and I already think resto shaman is pretty bloated now. I am one of those players that opts out of spells like Unleash Life because I have no room for it. With our current spec tree in mind and this hero talent tree, it is possible I could add 3 more spells to my bar, in addition to what I already have. These spells are also rotational, and it gets to be too much. Additionally, the activation of the ancestors requires a choice node that is pretty impactful between raid and m+. It feels like this hero tree is taking away my choice to build towards the playstyle I want, and instead forcing me to play a specific way to get the most out of it.
I am also concerned regarding the recent emphasis on Riptide. I do not like the mult-HOT playstyle, and I am a fervent disliker of Primordial Wave (Chain Harvest with the Riptide legendary was my all-time favorite). This tree seems to focus very much on spreading Riptides to the group, which can then be combo-ed with Primordial Wave. I do like the spell Riptide and how it can be used as a decent instant cast heal, as well as provide healing over time. I don’t want to cheapen the feel of the spell because the idea is to spread out as many as possible, as its main purpose is to make another talent feel impactful.
Along the same thoughts in the previous paragraph, I also don’t like spells that exist to just buff other spells. Shaman has too many of these spells available to them, and if you don’t combo them correctly or in the right order, I don’t get the feel of the payoff. Spells like Unleash Life, Primordial Wave, Cloudburst Totem, Nature’s Swiftness, Riptide (when used with Flow with the Tides talent), and the Deluge talent all take away from the feel of the base spells a resto shaman relies on. Rather than having more buttons to buff other buttons, I’d rather our trees focus on altering the core spells we have to be better at what they do, or change how they do it. A good example of something I would like to see would be Healing Rain versus Downpour. Both spell have nearly the same HPS potential, just different in how they achieve it. Healing Rain delivers the healing over time and Downpour provides it immediately. I would prefer Downpour be a talent that changes Healing Rain to provide all its healiing upfront, rather than be a separate button.
I do like the talents in the tree that buff spells which are currently viewed as “bad”. Straight buffs to Downpour and Wellspring are good, but I think these buffs should just exist in the talent itself. I would rather this choice node change something about the spells it is effecting, rather than flat percentage increase. To tie in with my thought above about talents altering spells, something in this spot would be “your single target heals add a stack to earth shield on your target” with the other choice being something like “your Healing Wave and Healing Surge casts on targets in your Healing Rain (or recently healed by Downpour) are echoed to another player standing in your Healing Rain (or recently healed by Downpour”. I used these ideas as an example because I really enjoy when our spells have interactions with each other. As it stands, even with buffs to Downpour or Wellspring, they don’t have any interaction with any of our other tools (save for Cloudburst).
Overall, my feeling toward the tree is very neutral. I am not excited for it, nor do I hate it. I enjoy the summoning of the ancestral spirits aspect (even if I wish they were elementals) and the emphasis on spellcasting. I am currently unhappy with the strong emphasis on Riptide and the forced requirement of Unleash Life and Nature’s Swiftness.
On a related note, I don’t think the Resto Spec tree needs a full rework, but a good reorganization of the tree would be greatly appreciated. The tree feels too top heavy and too rigid to provide any meaningful choice of playstyles.
2 Likes
WE WANT VESPER TOTEM BASELINE. Period.
5 Likes
Very excited to summon random dead Orcs to help my Draenei shaman.
Honestly its kinda silly that blizz spent 10 years making shamans all about elementals and suddenly they are supposed to be Orc priests again.
5 Likes
Oh I think the trees are boring because they are based on RNG bonuses which have no effect on rotations. You wont always get the benefit when you need.
But saying things should only be designed around what is absolutely baseline will absolutely diminish creativity.
Unless the S3 tier returns, I expect the rotation to go back to being a little more balanced.
1 Like
First off, my opinion is that farseer should be a talent that ele/enh can choose.
From a class fantasy point of view, I see wolves and ranged dps and CL used in warcraft3. In any case, if the devs are bringing in a class from the past, shouldn’t it have at least some relevance? If not, they should rename it.
From a play perspective, the farseer talent as it is currently revealed doesn’t really change anything and doesn’t have a lot of characterization from the perspective of someone playing resto.
Currently resto has a choice of totemic and farseer, but it would be interesting to see Stormbringer become a resto talent and have the option to use LB and SK to heal, which would make it a more contextualized and interesting choice.
Secondly, the approach to utility is disappointing - it’s underpowered and pointless overall, and it’s sad to think that a talent like that, which could just sit there and do nothing, would be helpful. devs need to give shaman a strong bonus.
I’m someone who thinks the class fantasy of shaman is to be backed up by a strong utility, and I think it should be a stronger choice.
I thought about it… and you know what else could have worked instead of using ‘Farseer’ as the title?
Spiritwalker. You can keep EVERYTHING in the current Farseer talents, but change it to be thematic to the Tauren Spiritwalkers. Sure, you run into the issue of non-tauren flavor, similar to Dark Ranger. BUT, it keeps Farseer being what it was in Legion, the catchall term for ALL shaman, not just this weird ancestor-pet class for Ele/Res only.
Granted, I still want to see Farseer change a bunch, >_> but bare minimum, change the name to Spiritwalker, its right there in terms of flavor and theme with ancestors!
2 Likes
I made a post awhile ago regarding this.
WC3: Feral Spirits, Chain Lightning, and Earthquake.
WoW: Feral Spirits/Fire or Storm Elemental, Chain Lightning, and Earthquake/Sundering. BAM, easy. It writes itself.
2 Likes
After a whole xpac of being forced to play Prim-wave (the worst of the covenant spells by far) and tier after tier of boring/bad tier sets, reading these talents is heartbreaking… forcing us now to play Prim-Wave AND unleash life? I’m sorry but these talents or not even mid? They are legit bad.
7 Likes
Resto shamans already gear with low haste, making Prim-Wave horrendous to play. Now they bake talents around useing Prim-Wave AND Unleash life (which also feels horrendous without haste) like… what? If a Dev reads this, please OBLITERATE Primwave and unleash life.
2 Likes
Would Farseer be more well liked if A. They renamed it to something like Spiritwalker, and renamed Stormbringer to Farseer instead, and B., swap the effect of Call of the Ancestors for the effect of Routine Communications?
Keystone has a 10% chance to summon Ancestors, and it lets you optionally go into Primordial Wave/Unleash Life?
Or why not start the tree with Ancestral Swiftness, and give us some Nature’s Swiftness buffs, etc.
-Edit: Probably buffing the duration buff of Heed My Call if they went that route. +2 sec or a guaranteed Ancestor seems… poorly balanced.
The name isn’t the issue, it’s the uninspired talents and just plain buffs to spells and pigeon holding us in talents that are lackluster and that alot not all dislike using.
3 Likes
Community: “We don’t like tier sets that force our talent trees”
Blizz: “Well, here’s an entire hero talent tree that’ll do that for the entire next xpac”
11 Likes
Better hope you get to carry the current tier set forward, otherwise this hero tree feels dead for Ele…
1 Like
Hi,
This will be a long post but hopefully it is worth it.
Fundamental Issues
First and foremost, as a Elemental main, I would like to echo the concerns of the community that is caused by long time negligence, as well as lack of acknowledgment from your side about our design issues. Every season, there is a bunch of feedback produced to try address issues that plague Elemental and none of this has ever been mentioned or iterated on.
It is incredibly frustrating to see such thematically-apealling spec being completely abandonded.
In my opinion, it will be very hard to receive positive feedback on Hero Talents for a spec that has fundamental design issues. That is because you double down on those issues which creates more problems and frustrations.
Farseer Hero Talents
Harness your spiritual magic, improving your spell casting capabilities and empowering you to call upon ancestors to aid you and your allies in combat.
Flavor
I think calling ancestors to aid you in battle is thematically on point. I really enjoy this idea. You’ve got a great potential here please don’t let it go to waste!
Farseer Keystone
Call of the Ancestors: Primordial Wave (Elemental) or Unleash Life (Restoration) calls an Ancestor to your side for 6 seconds. Whenever you cast a healing or damaging spell, the Ancestor will cast a similar spell.
Feels underwhelming but we don’t know much yet about the Ancestors. There are many questions revolving around that which people asked in this thread. Some of them include:
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What is considered similar spell?
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Are they replicating our spells casted, with modifiers from talents/procs etc. ?
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Does their casts affect give us maelstrom?
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Does their casts affect our talents like DRE?
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And many, many more…
As you can see, it would be great to get some clarification of mechanism of the Ancestors.
Farseer Row 1
Choice Node: Latent Wisdom and Ancient Fellowship
- Latent Wisdom: Your Ancestors’ spells are 20% more powerful.
- Ancient Fellowship: Ancestors have a 15% chance to call another Ancestor when they expire.
Latent Wisdom - sounds like a reasonable choice. Once again, it is hard to assess the power of this talent as we do not know much about Ancestors mechanics.
Ancient Fellowship - doubling down on RNG is not a great design. It would be better to introduce a way of spawning them reliably, maybe after spending X maelstrom?
Choice Node: Heed My Call and Routine Communication
- Heed My Call: Ancestors last an additional 2 seconds.
- Routine Communication: Lava Burst casts have an 8% chance to call an Ancestor (Elemental). Riptide has a 15% chance to call an Ancestor (Restoration).
Heed My Call - again it is really hard to asses if 2s more on Ancestor is good.
Route Communication - once again, adding more RNG on top of RNG is not good idea. Please introduce more reliable way of spawning Ancestors.
- Elemental Reverb: Lava Burst gains an additional charge and deals 5% increased damage (Elemental). Riptide gains an additional charge and heals for 5% more (Restoration).
I am not really sure how I feel about this one. Elemental is already overflowing with Lava Burst casts and Lava Surge procs. This talent doesn’t change much since you are almost always able to cast Lava Burst nowadays.
Maybe add some new functionality to Lava Burst instead? Some AoE cleave or Flame Shock spread?
Farseer Row 2
Offering from Beyond: When an Ancestor is called, they reduce the cooldown of Fire Elemental and Storm Elemental by 10 seconds (Elemental) or Riptide by 2 seconds (Restoration).
Fire or Storm Elemental feels barely like a meaningful CD at the moment. Therefore, this talent doesn’t seem very good.
It would be good to add some power into our Elementals to make this hero talent powerful. Otherwise, maybe add some interaction with Ancestors here like giving us a buff or changing our next Lava Burst into Ancestral Burst or Elemental Blast into Ancestral Blast etc.
Primordial Capacity: Increases your maximum Maelstrom by 25 (Elemental). Increases your maximum mana by 5% (Restoration).
Very underwhelming. Maybe good for resto?
My idea would be to give us a talent that helps us manage maelstrom (Balance of All Things talent). Alternatively, give us maelstrom gain when we spawn Ancestors.
Spiritwalker’s Momentum: Using spells with a cast time increases the duration of Spiritwalker’s Grace and Spiritwalker’s Aegis by 1 second, up to a maximum of 4 seconds.
From PvP perspective, this is completely useless. You barely cast in PvP and usually spec out of Spiritwalker’s Grace.
From PvE perspective, is not that impactful either. With evokers being almost in every raid group. You get more than enough resources to deal with movement in raid fights.
Choice Node: Nature Harmony and Earthen Communion
- Natural Harmony: Reduces the cooldown of Nature’s Guardian by 10 seconds and causes it to heal for an additional 5% of your maximum health.
- Earthen Communion: Earth Shield has an additional 3 charges and heals you for 25% more.
This is really bad. Shamans are struggling with surviving in all types of content and this is what you give us? It is pale in comparison of what mages, DKs or other classes are getting in their defensive nodes.
Maybe give us second charge of Astral Shift or make Earth Shield give us 6% DR when active.
Maelstrom Supremacy : Increases the damage of Earth Shock , Elemental Blast , and Earthquake by 8% (Elemental). Increases the healing done by Healing Wave , Healing Surge , Wellspring , Downpour , and Chain Heal by 8% (Restoration).
This is fine but our spenders at the moment doesn’t contribute to much damage. We also have this problem that Elemental Blast will always be better in PvE single target making Earth Shock completely useless.
Final Calling: When an Ancestor expires, they cast Elemental Blast on a nearby enemy (Elemental). When an Ancestor expires, they cast Hydrobubble on a nearby injured ally (Restoration).
- Hydrobubble: Surrounds your target in a protective water bubble for 10 seconds. The shield absorbs incoming damage, but the absorb amount decays fully over its duration.
Few points here:
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Is Elemental Blast going to trigger our talents for example Surge of Power?
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Are we going to receive Elemental Blast stat buff from Ancestor’s casts?
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Potential problem with Ancestors casting it to random mobs in a dungeon.
Farseer Capstone
Ancestral Swiftness: Your next healing or damaging spell within 10 seconds is instant and deals 10% increased damage and healing. If you know Nature’s Swiftness , it is replaced by Ancestral Swiftness and causes Ancestral Swiftness to call an Ancestor to your side. Active ability. 45 second cooldown.
Anticlimactic. Lazy. Underwhelming.
I expected something more epic as final capstone for Farseer if I am to be honest. This forces us to pick Nature’s Swiftness which in a class tree that has very limited talent points.
Please, we need a new capstone. Something more shamanistic, spiritual and ancestral. Let us spawn an army of ancestors or let us draw from Ancestors to ascend into a spiritual plane and become powerful for a short period.
Summary
Idea of spawning Ancestors to overpower your enemies is a great idea. Personally, I love Elemental’s mastery and doubling down on that echo/multistrike mechanic is fun to me. However, the way it is achieved is not very satisfying at the moment and we are hoping for something more.
At the moment, underlying design issue is Lightning vs. Fire which, unfortunately, Farseer accentuates. We want this gone. Let us be Elementals not Lightning mages or Lavamancers.
To me, there are three paths you could take with the design of the Farseer:
- Ancestral path.
- Primordial Element path.
- Elementalist path.
Ancestral
This feels like a current direction you want to take Farseer which is a great direction.Here are some of my ideas:
- Change our existing spells (Lava Burst / Lightning Bolt / Spenders) into Ancestral/Spirit type with added functionality.
- Capitulate on fantasy of summoning army of ancestors to aid us.
- Give us more reliable way of spawning Ancestors. Get rid of RNG.
Primordial Element
Primordial elements, elements formed before the Earth came into existence .
We are already using Primordial Wave. Why not give us more Primordial Spells? Primordial Blast or Primordial Bolt sounds pretty fun.
- Capitulate on Primordial Wave: lower its CD and change functionality to empower next casted spell with Primordial element.
- Give us meaningful way of resetting/lowering CD of Primordial Wave.
- Let us summon Primordial Elemental.
Elementalist
Originally, Farseers were masters of all elements. Here are few ideas:
- Ancestors are spawned based on what type of spell you use (Nature, Fire, Frost etc.) and they have different abilities to aid us.
- Give us incentive of mixing different spells and not only pressing Lava Burst.
18 Likes
I think it is time to really look at what having 2 maelstrom generators that players get so attached to has done to elemental shaman. I don’t think it is working. Please consider the idea of flame shock + lightning bolt as builders and lava burst as the spender.
Since we like earth shock and elemental blast as hard hitters please consider design where lava burst the spender grants stacks of fulmination which can be used to cast earth shock infused with lightning or instant elemental blast.
We like lava burst being impactful but it seems it either takes over completely as builder when it is impactful or disappears completely when lightning bolt takes center stage in the rotation. When we cast too much of something, it loses its impact.
Extrapolating this design to this farseer tree, and changing one of the talents to read, “After casting X lava bursts, you summon an ancestor for 6 seconds” for example would be much better for this rng plagued spec.
8% chance to summon an ancestor sounds like the current plan is for more lava burst spam and rng fishing which is a very tired unfun design.
3 Likes
I’ve always liked the idea of changing Elemental Blast to be a contextual spell that turns into a different form of itself for each of the 4 elements depending on conditions. In that case, Lava Burst would be the fire form of Elemental Blast.
tl;dr: skip to recommendations.
Okay, so Max has kept saying how detailed the mage responses were to spell slinger, so I’m back to redo my post in a more clear and actionable feedback format.
To be more clear on how I’m evaluating the trees, let me explain what I think Hero Talents should be. Hero Talents, should do at least one of two things:
- Bring in some themes of hero characters from Warcraft 3 or WoW history.
- Expand on an underutilized theme in specs.
Given that, let’s look at the Farseer hero class from Warcraft 3. It is a unit that has 4 abilities:
- Chain Lightning
- Far Sight
- Feral Spirits
- Earthquake
Obviously, this was the major inspiration for the Shaman class in vanilla. Given that both Feral Spirits and Earthquake are abilities, it seemed like it would be more of an Elemental-Enhancement tree than Restoration, but that’s fine. Let’s look at the Farseer tree that we’ve been presented. Does it interact with any of these abilities? No. Okay, so this tree isn’t doing the first thing. Let’s look at emphasizing an underutilized theme.
This tree attempts to use summoning ancestors as an underused theme that can be emphasized to make Farseer shamans feel like spirit callers and… hot/dot managers apparently. I think summoning ancestors is definitely appropriate for the theme, but only 4 of the talents interact with this mechanic. Everything else looks like good ways to improve gameplay for the P-wave and Riptide builds of Ele and Resto. There is no theme in them.
Leaving the lack of theme throughout the tree aside, I don’t think that it is wrong of the devs to focus on spirit aspect of the class. It is very underutilized. It is then strange that Farseer doesn’t interact with any of our spirit abilities. In terms of Farseer-related abilities, here’s what seems thematically possible.
- Ancestral Awakening
- Astral Shift
- Spirit Walk/Spirit Walker’s Grace (noted that it was included)
- Reincarnation
- Far Sight
- Ghost Wolf
- Ancestral Guidance
- Ascendance (the modifiers are called Oath of the Far Seer and Further Beyond)
- Ancestral Vigor
- Ancestral Protection Totem
- Spirit Link Totem
- Astral Recall
- Ancestral Spirit (our st resurrection button)
I know that the totems will probably be addressed in the Totem tree, but I included them here for completion. Any of these abilities could have been included to improve the theme and make the interactions more fun, but somehow only Spiritwalker’s Grace made it in? Ancestral Awakening actually summons ancestors, and that doesn’t interact with the tree at all? The tree seems very slapdash and not at all like some of the other trees that are more thematic and consistent.
Besides lack of theme, I find an issue that the mechanics in the tree would augment the “wildfire” build of ele at all. The Elemental community is very divided right now about being pigeon-holed into fire or storm builds based on the seasonal tier set. Most of the complaints have to do with Primordial Wave, and it is wild that this is in the keystone position of the tree. Making Farseer the wildfire tree and Stormbringer the storm tree doesn’t bring any new flavor to the game. It just further divides the already divided spec tree into two hero talent trees, too.
My expectations when I heard about these names were that Farseer would emphasize our spirit abilities. I had hopes that Stormbringer would be between Resto and a dps spec, and that it would give Restoration a more dps build and introduce water-based damaging abilities, like the Proudmoore shipwright had in BfA. Currently no abilities in the game let you do water based attacks, except for Acid Rain and Mage’s Water Elemental. It appears that will not be the case, and I don’t know what new themes could possibly be introduced with Stormbringer being Ele and Enh.
Recommendations
- Firstly, I would completely redo this tree.
- Do not exacerbate controversial mechanics and binary game play choices with these trees.
- Build trees that introduce or emphasize novel or underused themes.
- Almost all of the nodes should refer to the theme.
- Give us a real defensive node. Preferably something to do with Astral Shift and/or Reincarnation.
- Make the choice nodes give us meaningful choice.
11 Likes