They gave all the unique spells to resto and enhance.
lasso
thunderstorm
ele blast
and now lightning rod.
Are the trying to merge all three specs into one or something LOL
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“Thrall has left the group”
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Because the thread is getting repeatedly flooded just going to repost current bug problems here, because they do need attention before launch even if the class isn’t going to get any.
Also, for each section there’s a couple of things that I consider mission critical to being addressed even if we aren’t staring down the barrel of anything big. These are quick, high-impact low-risk implementations to make the flagship feature functional if we potentially have to wait for another patch.
Spec / Class Tree
Based on the defensive creep elsewhere, irrespective of any potential plans, Astral Shift at least needs to be dropped to a 1-minute cooldown (even if it’s via the followup talent) for us to have any reasonable chance at upcoming content. There’s a lot more we need, but this would do a lot instantly.
Molten Assault and/or Improved Maelstrom Weapon need to be dropped to 1 point to accomodate hero talents, will mention more under Totemic.
Bug List
- Flurry currently reduces Weapon DPS while active, proportionally reducing ability damage with the attack speed increase
- Flurry stacks are consumed by Windfury Totem procs
- Flurry stacks are not consumed by Windlash (Ascendance) auto-attacks
- Primordial Wave direct damage doesn’t scale with Mastery despite being Elemental damage
- Earth Elemental HP buff can be cancelled while the elemental is active
- Lava Burst tooltip doesn’t update with Maelstrom Weapon damage bonus modifier
- Stormblast deals an extremely high amount of damage to certain target dummies, making it difficult to test (assumed it’s the accumulator bug)
Stormbringer
Tempest needs to fire its event after the spell is cast rather than before, as this is causing an unnecessarily high amount of procs to fizzle without any way of avoiding it overlapping. Allowing for 2 stacks to be banked would be greatly appreciated.
Either, or both of the Maelstrom Weapon counter for Tempest and Awakening Storms need a UI tracking element to indicate how close they are to activating.
Bug List
- Conductive Energy’s Lightning Rod does an unusually low amount of damage (roughly 3% of abilities that trigger it, not 20%).
- Conductive Energy’s Lightning Rod deals an extremely high amount of damage to certain target dummies, making it difficult to test (assumed it’s the accumulator bug).
- Awakening Storms does not trigger from Stormstrike / Windstrike
Tempest is currently not cast or GCD hastedTempest doesn’t highlight on the action bar when above 5 Maelstrom Weapon- Rolling Thunder & Feral Spirit buffs cancel each other out when both are active, causing the buff to fall off when Elemental Spirits is not taken See this post.
Rolling Thunder grants Enhancement Stormkeeper every 50 seconds (Elemental aspect of the talent)- Storm Swell / Arc Discharge are both always active regardless of talent selection
- Tempest (Crit Bonus) isn’t hooked up to most of our spells
- Supercharge always generates 3 regardless of spend
Shocking Grasp doesn’t slow from Crash Lightning splash damage crits.- Tempest unintentionally interacts with Primordial Wave if the Maelstrom Weapon spend requirement is met on the Lightning Bolt that consumes it
Totemic
Totemic still has a few issues, chief among them as mentioned in the class tree. The quickest and dirtiest fix to get this functional for release is that we need the spec tree talent pinch to be alleviated. The least impactful way to do this is reduce Molten Assault and Improved Maelstrom Weapon to 1 point. This definitely doesn’t fix everything but it at the very least removes the biggest barrier to entry with this tree being playable with a variety of builds.
Bug List
- Reactivity doesn’t work on target dummies (not a priority but it does make testing more awkward)
- Surging Totem Tremors don’t work on target dummies aside from Earthsurge (same as above)
- Wind Barrier has something (I don’t know what) causing it to chain refresh every .1 seconds when totems are active. This isn’t consistent.
- Windfury Totem passive aura is applied via Windfury Weapon even if you don’t talent into the totem itself.
- Windfury Totem passive aura is not affected by Totemic Focus, unlike the totem itself
- Totemic Focus does not confer any benefits to Surging Totem
Earthsurge bonus tremor cast only deals bonus damage to the first target hit.
Obviously, I share many of the concerns that we haven’t seen any work and I understand that could be for any number of reasons (including it being deemed not necessary, which is fine). I choose to hope it’s because committing partially finished changes isn’t something you want to do, but if that’s the case then please consider fast tracking some temporary fixes to at least make the first tier of the expansion more playable.
36 Likes
I want to give a thanks to the team who created the season 3 / 4 tier set for ele shaman. This has been my favorite iteration of ele shaman I have ever played. I really enjoy how my class has access to funnel, and cleave at targets counts that shaman has never been able to. I feel like the gameplay across m+, raid, and open world content is incredibly dynamic, especially when you come across situations where there are various target counts (different m+ pulls, adds coming in on bosses). It really has been a treat putting the puzzle pieces together to figure out how I can maximize my lava burst cleave to reduce my primwave cooldown.
Losing this tier set is going to be rough for the fire side of the tree. The ability for skill expression and equivalency to other specs in the previous mentioned types of content will be greatly diminished. No longer can you play around reducing your potent cleave cooldown by about 20ish seconds on 1 target, 30ish seconds on 3 targets, and even higher amounts depending on target count.
The niche that I have grown to really enjoy and thrive in is being removed from my favorite spec and it honestly makes me kinda demoralized to play moving forward. I really hope that the playstyle/damage profile that ele currently has can be carried forward.
The current Farseer hero talent tree does not do so. The ancestors do not fill the niche that I so greatly enjoyed playing ele.
Ancestors only interact with our kit in 2 ways.
The player himself can “force” ancestors to spawn through ancestral swiftness (45 seconds) and primordial wave (40-35ish seconds). Farseers can also opt into an 8% chance to summon an ancestor via choice node as well.
This is somewhat interesting to play around with through timing ur cooldowns for a single target or aoe burst, but ultimately something to not play around with due to the lack of ancestor damage tuning, guarantee of ancestors (8% while meaningful is just too much variance) and interaction with the rest of our rotation and kit.
Fire elemental cooldown reduction. Currently at 10 seconds per ancestor, this is honestly a fairly meaningful reduction in cooldown, where combined with surge of power, probably can bring your fire elemental to 1 min, or 1.5 minute cooldown. This is very important for m+, but very unimportant in single target due to the actual damage contribution of fire elemental and its flame shock haste buff at only 1 target count.
I compare what the Farseer tree does for the fire talents within the elemental spec tree, to the current tier set, and without the aura buffs to abilities, it is a complete downgrade in my eyes.
My ideas on fixes.
This is just some thoughts I had on how the gameplay of the hero talent tree could be altered.
Greatly buff the ancestors’ damage. If ancestors were so meaningful to your dps that you were greatly incentivized to maximize casts and buffs during an ancestor, there could be some interesting gameplay.
Make them work with the ele kit a bit more. Some player stat buff, rotation changing spell effect, borrowing of effects from other shaman specs, a resource generation effect, an alternate or different cooldown reduction effect, are all potentially interesting opportunities for more synergy with our kit.
A functional change to how they work. I have seen suggestions making them more similar to our mastery overload effect. Other ideas could be: a one time burst similar to the current tome of unstable power trinkets, a cloudburst totem like effect where your dps is stored and can be released, it could also be something as simple as guaranteeing a 2nd or 3rd overload for a few casts.
Cy
6 Likes
The issues I have is that I LOVE the idea of Totemic, but as of right now it feels like it’s only a good option for soloing in the open world and/or doing Delves, and with Stormbringer being the ‘raid/dungeon’ bit, it still feels underpowered.
A lot of things need to be baseline for Enhancement, including: Windfury Totem (Do the Mana Sping aura), Hex, and Feral Lunge.
I DO want totems to come back, even think the idea of a Searing Totem just popping up every once in a while as a good FEEL as we don’t need to babysit it nor futz around with (Looking at you, Surging Totem).
Stormbringer feels a bit one note, but maybe give us a chance to use Lava Lash and Ice Strike/Frost Shock should give something, I dunno, maybe a Hero Talent called Frozen Lightning or some such.
Not letting this post die, we NEED to keep fighting…
2 Likes
there is a bug with the wind shield given to you by totems. It will constantly refresh itself on you, making you unkillable in PVP as long as your totems are active healing you. this is for totemic hero talents
Lava burst currently hits like a ball of dandelions blown at your face as ele.
This expansion looking pathetic
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Raid Buffs incentivizes class diversity and the feeling of being more powerful when you are in a group. We’ve seen more classes get raid buffs in Dragonflight with Paladin getting a second and Hunter’s Mark, leaving just DK and Shaman. Is there a reason that these classes don’t bring anything specific buff to the raid?
Ion Hazzikostas said:
Ultimately our goal is broad spec representation and class representation across the different roles. I think we’re hesitant to add still more raid buffs that might risk feeling redundant and yet another thing to manage or that might too heavily force less choice in composition forming. Ideally though, if you’re a PUG leader, if you’re putting a raid or Mythic raid group, you should want one of every class and then once you have that covered, you should look at who’s available and how you want to fill out the rest of your roster based on your people and the content that you’re facing.
We need to look at diversity and want to make sure that classes like Shaman and Death Knight are bringing tools to the raid that make them valued members of a raid group or valued in dungeon groups. That’s not to completely close the door on a new raid buff ever coming to them, but our hope continues to be to use the other knobs that the team has at its disposal to get them to a place where they feel equally valuable without just needing a raid buff.
1 Like
Super low priority request, as shamans desperately need gameplay changes…
– I would like a cosmetic toy for shamans that lets us drop all 4 totems.
They would just be cosmetic, as stated above.
Basically this: https://www.wowhead.com/spell=210643/totem-mastery
but no buffs.
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They don’t and they aren’t. They could lean into what is already there for those classes and make something worthwhile, but they aren’t.
Shaman have Windfury and Manaspring. LET those things be good. Let Manaspring provide a real mana restore. Let Windfury just be a 3% haste raid buff.
Let DKs REALLY negate alot of magic damage. Lower AMZ’s CD to 1min. Let AMS actually be a full group dispel. Make DKs the class you want to have when you are doing things like Halls of Infusion and you want Mass Dispel on a short CD. Give them a Leech aura that really made people consider them.
So many ways you could make those classes wanted that isn’t “just make them deal more damage than everyone else”.
As it stands, they have neither.
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A simple “We’re working on it” would be nice instead of leaving all of us in the dark.
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They don’t do that… outside of that one time they did it…
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I agreed we got nothing
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DKs have grip and they are bring tools to the raid that make them valued members of a raid group or valued in dungeon groups.
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I mean it’s sort of obvious shamans are going to receive a talent tweak rework it’s all the community’s been crying about since beta drop. If you think they’re just going to ignore all that you’re surely mistaken.
You underestimate the shaman way. We’ve needed help for a few expansions. Get told “HEY, we’re working on it.” Then they work on it, implement it in beta/ptr, then revert it and scrap it. Or more likely, they think shaman is fine as is and just let’s us roam free as a shell of a class, bugs and all, then they fix them with hotfixes when live.
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Maybe they look at all our situational totems - Poison Cleansing, Tremor, etc. - and assume that’s where our utility comes in on fights where those mechanics matter.
Except boss fights in raids are rarely designed with these mechanics nowadays and when they are it’s typically a “special” ability which ignores the totems. I can think of one place where Tremor Totem mattered this expansion: Core Hounds in Amirdrassil. Brackenhide doesn’t count because the Cackles are easy to interrupt. And Cleansing only really mattered as backup during Afflicted M+.
If Blizz wants us to be the utility knife class with special use totems, they need to include those mechanics and let totems actually counter them.
Here’s an idea: How about a choice between Poison Cleansing and Bleed Cleansing totems? A bleed removal would have been useful for us in Aberrus.
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I don’t think that many people think it is obvious. At this point, unless this magical rework shows up REALLY soon, then it will be very difficult to get any sort of back and forth before the prepatch like other classes have been getting.
So, what is obvious to me is that unless something is coming VERY soon, they will likely just push off any type of work to the classes they haven’t touched yet until later into S1 or S2 of TWW.
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No shaman is the only class they did not touch lol like aways.
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Thinking more about the wanting every class to be brought to the raid, and then bringing more to fill in as needed. I’m like, why would you bring shamans at this point if you’re looking to make the best raid group for pugs or anything else? We very rarely as a collective break past the middle of pack in most situations in terms of dps or healing, so let’s talk about utility.
Heroism/Bloodlust - Can be brought by mages, evokers, hunters, or just having some drums.
Windrush totem - Can be brought by evokers two separate ways, druids with roar and warlocks can give a gateway that’s faster and can be set up in advance.
Poison Cleansing Totem - There’s a few classes that can cleanse poison and the only time I used this all of DF was in halls of infusion when I remembered.
Tremor Totem- I think we had one fight or trash pull this was worth considering for, but really nobody has it.
Capacitor Totem - There’s a plethora of classes who brings aoe stuns
Damage reducing totems - Most of these totems require that your tank or anyone else stand in one place and don’t move, where as other classes can provide damage reduction from existing near you or just casting spells on you at a distance.
I think the one real unique utility or special thing we offer that other healing cooldowns don’t cover is our Ancestral Protection totem because it offers a battle rez if someone dies that doesn’t take up charges, and everyone always just takes earthen wall totem because it doesn’t have a whopping 5 minute cooldown to it.
Windfury totem is great for enhancement shamans, but it still only applies to a party of melee at all and it might be better to just bring dps with more utility and better tuned damage anyways.
And everyone crows about spirit link but everyone has to run into it and you have to time it well to make it worth it. You know what works better with no positioning requirement that you can use when everyone’s health dips instead? Rewind, and everyone is stable again, even after the nerfs. Revival works great too, or, to counter the damage, Disc priests got this awesome ability to just fly into the air and do a tremendous amount of healing over time that they can cast spells to gain back faster.
So when they say, you should bring one of every class, I’m like, what exactly do they think shamans bring that no one else can that people feel like they should (gotta catch em all) with the raid comp when they could just bring something better?
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It’s becoming a meme that we appear even in Hunter videos. The frustration is spilling into every class discussion. Just today on Venruki’s video talking about how the “Dev’s are cooking with these pvp changes” but he’s talking about the love child of WoW, The Mage. Shamans are all over that video venting too.