13 days since the last form of any communication and it’s not even anything of significance. A post saying “we just don’t #*$&ing care” would be better than absolute silence.
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The absolute silence shows us nothing is being worked on. IMO, other that some small adjustments, Shaman will see nothing before the release. Those adjustments will leave us in the normal spot of circling the drain.
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At this point, I really want to believe Blizz has something hidden up their sleeve. Emphasis on hidden. It’s immensely discouraging to see all this feedback which takes so much time and passion to test/write be ignored by seemingly everyone at the company. It’s disappointing as a long-time shaman main. There’s so much potential for this class to shine. It has a passionate player base. Not to mention, Thrall, basically the face of Warcraft, is a dang shaman! How is it this bad?
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So what raid buffs are we getting as shamans? And where is the resto talent rework so we can actually use some points on left and right, and not 1-2 points on the class tree only.
Reposting as I had the wrong character
I think right now, they’re still thinking we have raid buffs because we bring heroism and super micro utilities like wind rush totem, or poison and tremor totem. Resto has spirit link but it’s more of a raid defensive cooldown than a utility. Enhancement has windfury totem, but I’m not sure why that’s still party specific only, like half our other totems or why only enhancement can get it since that would be a nice utility for all specs to bring.
We used to have a sky fury totem for pve as an equivalent but it got axed and moved to pvp, now our utility is kind of dated and outpaced by every other class who brings something similar. And at this point, us bringing heroism is no longer a huge thing since 3 other classes can do it and drums exist.
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Our class tree needs work really badly. They need to remove the totems and make them baseline or reduce how many we have because they just aren’t good enough anymore and give a a good class tree that couples with a good reworked spec tree for all 3 specs.
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I believe totems in the class tree are fine. Other classes also need to spec into utility in their trees for cleanses, stuns, niche CCs, etc.
However, a more critical issue is the inclusion of core rotational abilities like Frost Shock, Lava Burst, and Chain Lightning/Chain Heal in the talent tree. These abilities are fundamental to the class’s rotation. In other class trees, similar spells are merely filler.
Chain Heal should be baseline for Restoration, and Chain Lightning should be baseline for all specs. Lava Burst is the core of Elemental’s gameplay, and when specced into Elemental Blast, it becomes a significant part of Enhancement’s damage. Similarly, Frost Shock, when paired with Hailstorm/Ice Strike, is a crucial part of Enhancement’s AOE.
Freeing up talent points from abilities like Frost Shock and Lava Burst would already provide two extra points for more flexibility. Additionally, abilities like Flurry and Maelstrom Weapon should not be in the class tree as they are never picked for anything other than Enhancement. Removing these would free up another two points, significantly improving the class tree.
Gust of Wind and Spiritwalker’s Grace should be higher and more accessible in the tree. Currently, all class tree capstones are quite weak, except for Totemic Recall.
Stoneskin/Tranquil Air is a nice addition, but as capstones, they are very weak. Nature’s Swiftness is so underwhelming as a capstone that it’s almost laughable.
An excellent capstone for the Shaman class tree would be Ascendance or DRE. This change would remove them from the spec trees, which would be a net win for all three specs.
Other talents like Mana Spring need to be reworked/buffed, and things like Ancestral Defense are so weak and lame they just feel like a waste of points.
Enhance:
More on Mana Spring: Blizzard needs to change other totems like they did for Mana Spring or searing totem for totemic. Imagine if they changed Windfury to be like Mana Spring. Imagine making Windfury a passive instead of an annoying button you need to manage. When Windfury Weapon procs, you have a 15-20% chance to drop a Windfury Totem at your feet for 10 seconds that does the same thing, or they could buff it since it’s RNG. That would be so nice.
Elemental:
Now imagine if they made a Spellfury version of this for Elemental. There is your raid utility: when your spells overload, you have a chance to summon a Spellfury Totem at your feet for 10 seconds. Spells cast by your party have a chance to be duplicated at 25-50% value. Now everyone wants Enhancement and Elemental in WoW.
Restoration:
Take it a step further and make one for Restoration for their raid utility. Dropping water totems has a chance to drop another Rising Tide/Crashing Tide (water shaman-themed name) totem at your feet for 10 seconds. Healing spells cast by your party have a chance to duplicate for 25% effectiveness or make it a HoT. Just ideas, but they could work.
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The funniest one to me is that we have nature’s swiftness as a capstone talent at the very end of our tree for our talents. Resto druids get literally the same named spell, but better, one node down on their talent tree and not only does it make a spell instant it increases it’s effectiveness by 100%.
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Stormbringer Tree still has two talents named Tempest.
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How about this: every maelstrom builder for enhancement has a cooldown. Some of these cooldowns are variable. So to play this spec I have to stare at my bars or install weakauras to track when to press what. Group content is tough for enhancement bc I am always glancing down and miss what’s happening on the rest of my screen.
Stylistically I love enhancement, but I cant get into it bc of this reason.
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On the Farseer side of things they changed the icon so it wasn’t a placeholder for ancestral swiftness. And tempest can now have it’s cast time reduced by something that wasn’t impacting it before.
Considering the the talent tempest increases critical strike chance and damage I’d name it something like, high voltage, or if they want to stay in the stormy area, burnt ozone, or petrichor which doesn’t get used very often. Granted petrichor is the smell after rain falls but it feels pretty stormy still.
Also, I wouldn’t say like, congrats about this, but our shaman feedback posts finally caught up and passed the hunter one when we were almost two hundred behind previously lol.
Haven’t read up on this thread but would like to comment on Resto Shaman. While I think a lot of the way that resto plays at a very basic level is good there’s a lot of nuance and unneeded complexity to what is a rather straight forward healer that makes it unnecessarily difficult to unlock the specs full potential. While it might feel second nature once you’ve played it enough I believe that the general amount of talents and interactions lead to too much maintenance when the whole picture is put together and would be nicer if some of these multipliers and buffs were somehow removed for a consolidation of power into base skills even if it were to mean just straight up pruning of talents/interactions.
Really all you even need to do to visualize the amount of things coming together in the talent tree is just to search something like “Chain Heal” on the talent tree and then realize there’s also interactions beyond that with Tidal Waves, talents that don’t even expressly interact with the spell or Tidal Waves consumption like Master of the Elements/Undercurrent/Tide Turner, and to top that all off there’s active spells and cooldowns that all take some amount of consideration like Cloudburst, Unleash, Ancestral Guidance, and Ascendance and the things that may interact with those like Totemic Recall and the interactions of those cooldowns back into Cloudburst itself.
It’s not really a lot if you simply just play it and know a lot of those just happen when you play right but it would be good if just some of those steps to make it all come together maybe just weren’t there. It doesn’t just end at Chain Heal like that either. To go further suddenly we will also need to consider Primordial Wave setup and interacting that with Cloudburst and potentially other CDs along with doing the right sequencing of things with perhaps Unleash + Healing Rain or Master of the Elements which is adding in DPS spells for healing rotationally in M+ and up until this point that took no consideration of any Hero Talents which don’t necessarily add a lot of complexity or buffs but they still do to some degree.
This is all a lot to say that maybe with some of these things there shouldn’t be so much setup to get all the healing out. Maybe Primordial Wave shouldn’t be a sequence of maintenance HoTs into Prime Wave into an Unleashed Healing Wave under cooldowns in your Cloudburst window. Maybe we shouldn’t need to keep on top of Tidal Waves, Tidebringer, and High Tide for consideration of just Chain Heal in isolation. Maybe it would be good if Healing Stream was truly competitive or Cloudburst wasn’t so all encompassing of total healing done in a window requiring all the proper things trying to fit in that window. Just prune back a little bit of it and let some of these spells just work better on their own.
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Someone mentioned this earlier in this thread, but you could rename the ability Electrified Waters. Have it deal Nature damage, but otherwise operate the same.
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I’d love to see that replace or take the position of Nature’s Swiftness, all 3 specs enjoyed using it, and it would be nice to have an end capstone talent for shamans that wasn’t just a QoL talent, not to mention super helpful for 5 man content.
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I think they should rework the class tree like they did for monks (sort of). Instead of Statues for each spec, the 3 capstones would be the 3 good covenant abilities (renamed and damage type changed ofc). With Primordial Wave hitting the ol dusty trail like it needs to.
I highly enjoyed all 3 of the other covenant abilites and were said that NONE of them made it over, but instead the 1 that was actively horrible to play with.
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Also, I find it really disheartening that we’ve passed Hunters; who have gotten SIZEABLE changes to their class, on the amount of replies to the feedback (at the time I posted this we’re at 559, hunters were at 556).
We have the least amount of changes, the least amount of communication, and yet the most amount of work needed to make the class playable.
Everyone here has given good, genuine feedback on how to make the shaman class feel good, look good, and do well. Yet, radio silence. It’s truly demoralizing that they are actively ignoring the class we all love, when we’ve provided MORE than enough ideas and feedback to make this class enjoyable again.
A SIMPLE “Hey ya’ll, there’s some major changes on the horizon, be patient. It may come 11.1, but know we see the feedback and are taking it all in.” WOULD DO THE TRICK, or explain why you think shamans are fine as they are.
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That would do it, we’re all suspecting we’re going to get pushed all the way back to a .1 patch but at least if they’re transparent we know what’s going on. There have been so many good lovingly crafted posts of feedback, even multiple TLDR’s to try and make it more digestible, and nothing.
Trying to remain optimistic as a whole but when I saw the prepatch notes and the lack of changes with the beta builds all I could think was.
“Look at the hundreds of posts in response to the shaman feedback thread and ask yourself if the balance team is listening. The patch notes are your answer.”
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Enhancement is currently able to spread 6 Lightning Rods with Conductive Energy via their Primordial Wave interaction. Considering that Elemental Shaman will already have almost constant Lightning Rod uptime, the difference in power and level of engagement in terms of gameplay between Enhance and Elemental is frankly staggering.
I do want to say that it’s great that Enhance has these kinds of options. But Elemental Shaman is losing unique identifiers among the Shaman speccs rapidly.
Seeing an Elemental Shaman talent like Lightning Rod be significantly more powerful on a different specc takes away another part of the feeling of being an Elemental Shaman.
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One hour with no shaman feedback?
Not on my watch.
You know what also doesn’t happen on my watch?
Dev communication.
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