Making windfury weapon baseline was the one good thing that I thought had been done for enhancement shaman in TWW. =(
Kind of ridiculous how the elemental build in PvP has to weapon swap to put flametongue on both because windfury weapon costs more talent points than the build can afford…
Primordial wave’s cool down still needs to be reduced by feral spirits. The cool down being so long and not reducible by any other abilities makes it too predictable for pvp. As soon as you use it, you’re telling the enemy team cc me now
As much as I’m against having to use Lightning in Ele, I am also against people who like to use Lightning build being forced to use Fire/Frost.
Blizzard needs to work on this.
I have played elemental since I first started this game in Shadowlands, and am concerned about elemental shaman’s lack of appeal in raiding content. For other raiders to be excited to have me (for reasons other than just high damage), I need to bring something to the table that is impactful.
The most obvious solution would be to give shamans a raid buff. Alternatively, some kind of sweet utility could work, as long as it is helpful on many fights like death knight’s abomination limb.
Also please consider how to create parity between enhance and elemental. If you let enhance keep windfury totem, elemental shamans should receive a similar totem for casters. How about a totem based off spiritwalker’s grace that lets the whole raid cast while moving for a short time? I would like to see elemental shamans be invited to raids just as often as enhance shamans.
Finally shamans need more damage reduction abilities which are activated and prevent damage before it happens.
Nature’s protection from the stormbringer tree is ineffective as waiting on tempest can significantly impact your damage rotation
Ancestral’s Guidance helps too late after the damage event in some cases.
Re-applying Earth Shield as a DPS and using a global cooldown feels really bad.
Earth Elemental usually is only available once a raid fight.
My recommendation is for Astral Spirit to receive a second charge. There is precedent for this with evoker’s defensive.
Finally I would like to see talent trees and hero talent trees that encourage more mixing of different elements. When I think of Thrall in the latest cinematic, he is thinking about four different elements. That is the class fantasy! There is nothing wrong with making something like farseer where the focus is on fire, but there should be nodes present that encourage weaving lightning, ice, etc. into the rotation. I want to cast lightning bolts that then make my fire more powerful in a build like that.
Thank you for considering these suggestions. I absolutely love the class fantasy of elemental shaman but am discouraged that we have not received any updates as of yet regarding any talent changes for our class for the War Within.
Maybe I’m just reiterating what has been said (and by others now gone, hallowed be thy name) but a bit of communication stating “Hey Shamans! We have some changes coming to both class and spec trees that is a build or two out but stay tuned for them!” or “Hey Shamans! We think the trees themselves are fine and just need a bit of tuning to put them in a better place” would go a long way. At least in telling us something instead of generic “thx for feedback” when nothing has really been followed up on as far as I can see.
That said, the class tree and elemental trees could really use some tweaks. The capstones for the class tree just are so boring and do not feel like a capstone. 10% physical damage reduction from stoneskin totem is just nothing. Why not 20% physical or 10% all damage? Make it a capstone.
I play all 3 specs and while I do find resto and enhance fun I am finding elemental NOT fun lately. Lightning build while flashy is just clunky as all get out with Ice Fury just not being fun. Juggling electrified shocks and lightning rod just doesn’t feel right. The lava burst build (especially with DF tier set) has damage but it just feels wrong to prioritize Lava Burst over everything.
Elemental AOE is whole other bag of problems. Earthquake isn’t rewarding for a spender and does noodle damage even when stacking them and spamming them with Aftershock and Mountains Will Fall. Trying to spread flame shocks is archaic at this point but that was solved fairly well with enhance but elemental was left behind.
Then there’s the heavy push of Primordial wave in all 3 specs. While I like it in enhance, I despise it in resto and not a fan in elemental. I miss chain harvest and even vesper totem from shadowlands.
I am not a theory crafter, just a player trying to have fun and elemental isn’t it lately. Please look into elemental seriously.
Also, how about a node-share for Disease Cleansing totem with Poison Cleansing totem? Make it a choice for us. Simple things like this would be a little interesting.
One final thing - please throw us a bone in the visuals department. Ascendance is just so badly outdated yet you have a good template on how to update it - Dathea from DF Tier 1. It’s even in her name - Dathea, Ascended. Make it a glyph. Doesn’t have to be as flashy as the boss. Resto could be watery look, Elemental can be fiery and enhance airy (like the class mount).
Our elementals could use updates too - plenty of new Dragonflight models that could be thrown in as glyphs. How about a Bakar ghost wolf glyph? Druids got a smorgasbord of stuff with DF Tier 3 yet Shamans didn’t get anything with Tier 1.
I just hit (not crit, hit) a lightning bolt for 3,924,281 as enhancement.
we are so back.
What rework and design changes
Enhancement- Totemic Feedback
Had a brief 1hr window to test some spec stuff
Having to maintain the surging totem every 24s is just a miserable play experience, no real reason it can’t be zero cooldown and last 5 minute or at least 2 mins like Windfury. The only good reason I see is the capstone and that can just “regen” every 24s. The bad reason I see is to make the otherwise mostly useless totem talents in the class tree useful. It’s not going to make me take them because having to track and plonk down a totem every 24s is a non-starter, I can’t/won’t play totemic if that’s the playstyle. Only way I’d even attempt it is just tossing it in a macro so I don’t ever have to monitor it, which doesn’t say much for it’s design.
Having to take windfury totem to even be able to place it is very very VERY bad. Is there any other hero spec in the game that requires a talent to even use it’s main feature? I honestly thought the “Replaces windfury totem” was in reference to it giving the windfury aura so you couldn’t double dip. Knowing that you NEED windfury totem to even use the hero talent leaves me speechless. I cannot emphasize enough how awful this is. Idealy None of the hero talents should require any talents to function, totemic requires more than a few.
As expected it feels bad having 1/3-1/2 the totemic talents essentially worthless in either build simply because we don’t have the talent points to spare or because we never use those abilities in that build.
Surging totem only ticking every 6s feels like molasses. I’d rather it tick faster and do less damage. Having 6s ticks is just giving us more inconsistent damage and that is not what you want in PvE. You either want burst or fast consistent damage. Afterall 3s can be the difference between something dying or getting it’s cast off. You want things to die as fast as possible and 6s ticks ain’t doing that. Sure it makes for big tick numbers, but overall/avg damage is what gets things done.
I did not like Searing totem & Reactivity as much as I thought I would. I imagined shooting out lots of little fire balls, but that isn’t the case. The searing totems just don’t last long enough given the abilities that interact with reactivity. I mean Lava Lash, which you use to even spawn searing totem, is a 18s cooldown. This means that storm build will NEVER be able to use lava lash to activate reactivity because they don’t have Ashen Catalyst or hot hands to reduce it’s cooldown. Fire Nova is a 15s cooldown so you can use it once every 2 searing totems. The best bet is hailstorm and frost shock, best you can do is ~5s so once per totem. The only way to get multiple casts is Hot Hands, which further pushes us into RNG damage territory. So overall it’s really useless for storm and only useful for elemental when in hot hands. Otherwise it’s completely unnoticeable.
The rest is mostly passive stuff so it’s boring and not fun and comes down to tuning if it will be useful or not. If it were up to me a lot of these would get scrapped, especially the capstone.
Where are the Shamans changes they really need it. This radio silence from you guys is not good.
Pretty sure they meant those other classes.
We Ele shaman, just dont get the love.
I am currently concerned with the current state of Shaman, particularly Elemental, as I do like playing that spec. There were no changes to Elemental Shaman on Alpha. It is currently in a pretty bad spot on retail and in beta as well. The spec tree has a fair amount of 2 point nodes, and makes builds pretty rigid.
Two Builds, Two Hero Specs: No Choice. The Spec tree is cut in half between Fire build and Lightning build. Each has its own playstyle. Which is a good thing. There are some pathing issues, and an abundance of 2pt nodes that need to be addressed.
I just hope everyone understands how clunky this Spec/Hero Talent Combo is. You Cast Icefury Then frost Shock to activate a 9 sec debuff on the enemy. Then you cast 4 lightning bolts, then frost shock again. Then ele blast when you have the maelstrom. Or Focus on Aftershock, and Cast Earth shock then Lightning bolt for extra OL Procs. But thats pretty much it. No offensive CDs. Tempest doesnt change anything about the rotation. Just Keep up the Icefury Maintenance buff and spam LB and Dump Maelstrom.
Now that out of the way, these two Hero Talent Trees were moved to the Alpha very late in the alpha cycle. They were two of the last. Other Hero talent specs saw full reworks before these two went to the alpha. And with the Alpha being over and moving to beta very shortly after these were released, and the blue post letting the Shamans know that the design phase of these trees was done and they are moving on to tuning, it leaves a really bad taste. There was very little time to offer feedback on the trees. Limited testing time. And no iteration from the version that went to alpha to the version that went to beta. With some talents not yet implemented. It does not feel good.
Then there are the class and spec trees. Both have seen little to no iteration or updates during Dragonflight. Most other classes have gotten updates and full reworks. In some cases, a couple reworks. I wont dig into the disparity between Mage updates, changes and reworks and shaman. And it is radio silence on if anything is coming. Waited all alpha for something. Now we are to beta and it was just announced that Hunters are getting significant class/spec changes next week. This leaves Shamans with nothing. Nothing on the horizon. Especially Elemental Shaman. Their gameplay revolved around tier set bonuses, which forced you into one side or the other. The Hero talents change almost nothing about their gameplay and really just act as more mastery in both cases. And with the utter lack of AoE and Cleave on Farseer, that spec will have to do crazy single target to be worth anything.
And then there is the elephant in the room. Elemental Shamans are the only spec in the game, that does not bring a meaningful raid buff or raid CD to the game, by virtue of spec or class. And there has been nothing said on a development end to address that, or any other part of what I brought up.
It honestly feels like they are just punting the Shaman class to a later patch because they either, A: Ran our of time to do an overhaul. B: They dont have a clear direction they want the class/spec to go in. C: Both A and B.
Hello,
are there any expected tree changes coming for Shaman, like what was announced for Hunters?
I don’t think it’s unreasonable that someone take 15 seconds out of their day to type 6 words to let us know if anything is coming or not.
This will be fully from the perspective of Elemental.
Farseer:
I will start off with admitting that I am personally not a fan of the playstyle accentuated by talents like Primordial Wave (specifically Rolling Magma) or Deeply Rooted Elements. I think the gameplay these talents (and borrowed power like the tier set bonus for Amirdrassil or the Farseer tree) promote is unhealthy for the game and possibly the worst iteration of Elemental that I’ve ever played. I will be as unbiased as possible.
I’ll start off with some elements I like about the tree.
Now the bad parts, I’ll list them in order from most to least egregious.
Now, on to Stormbringer. I was excited for this one, because I enjoy the gameplay of Elemental’s lightning build. But from my testing on the beta, it’s disappointing in single target. I do find it quite fun in multitarget scenarios.
The good parts:
The bad parts:
All this being said, I think Stormbringer is the one tree that does have actual potential behind it. The bones are good, but the problems are very pronounced. Also, I’m fairly sure it’s a bug, but the cast time of Tempest is unhasted, which makes it feel even worse to press.
All of these problems are accentuated by Elemental’s outdated spec tree. Deeply Rooted Elements and Rolling Magma combined are simply no longer sustainable. Something has to change there, and I’m definitely in the boat of just removing Rolling Magma entirely. It’d also be nice if we could rework at least one of our DPS cooldowns so that we have at least one useful one. Ascendance has been weak for years and will never see play as long as Deeply Rooted Elements stays as is. Our elementals barely contribute, especially Fire Elemental. I’d like if we could get another defensive button as well. Hell, reskin Fleshcraft and give us that back. Pretty sure every shaman enjoyed that button in Shadowlands.
All things said and done, can we get any communication? At all? No notes or blue posts the entirety of alpha and next to no iteration on Ele/Resto spec trees for all of Dragonflight. It’s gotten to a point where shaman players have given up on the class due to no expectation for changes while better performing and more desired classes continuously get improvements (which, don’t get me wrong, they should. They just shouldn’t be the only ones.) There’s currently no reason to bring an ele or resto shaman outside of the player just being better than the competition. I understand this doesn’t really matter at lower levels of content, but the playerbase still thinks so regardless. While enhance will always have a spot, giving shaman as a class representation in raid content, it still feels bad that the other 2 specs fall behind and seem forgotten.
I hope we see something for shamans in the upcoming builds; we as a community have certainly provided enough feedback.
I posted this on the Shaman forums, but I’ll post it here too since it’s also a relevant spot for it.
Look… Blizz… The Stormbringer hero talents should let me summon and throw tornados at people.
We have so few wind based abilities in the game. Sure, we have windshear and windfury weapon. But Windfury procs on your own character and it’s just kind of a puff of smoke more than anything.
I love air as an element, and even though it’s highly represented as lightning in the game, we don’t have any real wind abilities. Windstrike from Enhancement’s Ascended form is really cool, but if you’re in melee range you never see it. And often times it’s drowned out by lightning effects anyway.
So, Blizz. Let me summon a tornado or two. Let me use the Tempest ability from the Stormbringer hero talents to summon a few tornados at my target’s location that “follow” the target for a few seconds.
D4’s Druids are a great reference point for what I’m thinking of.
Just let me throw tornados at people. It would be super cool!
Enhancement-
Two things to add as I think about them.
Stormstrike needs to be stormstrike damage base or at the very least nature damage. It’s kind of ridiculous that it isn’t even the damage type that shares the same name.
Stormbringer Arc Discharge has a bit of dissonance in that you want to use the 75% increased damage with maelstrom stacks(200%). If these were just instant cast with no damage increase it would be just fire away, but the interaction with maelstrom weapon makes it unoptimal. To further complicate this you don’t know when your next tempest will be, could be in 40 maelstrom or could proc right away, making you lose 1-3 free chain lightnings if you’re waiting on stacks or just haven’t used them all up yet. Just a weird interaction that doesn’t feel good either way you play it because if you use them up and don’t proc tempest then you wasted damage and if do hold and proc tempest then you wasted damage.
This, 100%.
From the enhancement perspective, an incredible amount of effort has been put into testing and feedback from Rusah, Wordup, and Surge, along with great deal of others.
Plenty of feedback has been given, we just need some acknowledgement (like what was posted for hunters) that things are either being worked on, or even if they aren’t. It’s very much needed.
For Resto:
Totemic hero talents feel pretty good to play with. I’m not a huge fan of adding another button to the spec, as it already feels like I have plenty. I wonder if Surging Totem could replace hst or cbt, and combine their functionality? But otherwise, it’s fun dropping a Surging Totem and seeing so many green numbers popping off.
Farseer hero talents were okay, I guess. Not very exciting, and it would be cool if the ancestor’s Riptide HoT wouldn’t overwrite our own. I likely won’t play this tree unless it’s significantly better in raid and m+ than Totemic, because I’ve never enjoyed Unleash Life and avoid it when I can.
Additionally, it feels bad being one of the only specs left in the game that doesn’t bring a raid buff of some kind.
As ele, for the storms hero talents, I really feel like tempest should be a direct replacement for lava burst. and that it should combine all of it’s current functionality with those of lava burst and that flame shock should be replaced with thunder shock which would be a nature dot that auto spreads. That, would be a fun play style, don’t tie it to maelstrom spending because the entire right side of the talent tree is worthless then, we even end up with useless talent points that we have nothing to do with em. because we’re not casting flame shock or lava burst anymore. we don’t do any non-nature damage anymore
honestly i really think that it would have been a lot cooler and made a lot more sense for ele and enh to swap farseer and totemic. farseer would fit extremely well into the ele-build of enh and i think totemic would be a lot easier to balance/create a well suited tree for the ele spec. obviously this isnt going to happen at this point but just some thoughts as we wait for some feedback
I will write up a comprehensive list of feedback for ele shaman in general but one thing I wanted to point out in its own note is the lack of true fantasy of Stormbringer.
It was noted they wanted to take their time with Stormbringer and really do it right as a love letter to the only lightning based caster, but it seems very uninspired.
Multiple reused mechanics, and somehow we are now left with 3 different abilities/ talents with the name “Tempest”
Tempest #1 is obviously the name of our new ability, the ability itself does not feel good to use. It does not interact with anything Lightning Bolt does and it being locked to a 2 sec cast makes it awkward to use. The animation itself isn’t great. Stormkeeper cast is more in line with something I would expect. The actual bolt itself is hard to notice and lightning rod animation does a better job in my opinion.
Tempest #2 is the talent in the same tree which buffs Nature crit chance and damage. Nothing wrong here. It is trying to make Lightning bolt a better button which can be tough to do.
Tempest #3 though is tied to the sometimes forgotten Primal Storm Elemental. To this day I will stand on the hill that Primal Storm Ele Tempest ability is the coolest spell animation in the game. The spell this elemental cast is what I envisioned we would have or something similar. It truly embodies the mastery of lightning spells.
In short, I say the coolest animations for Ele are tied to abilities we already had. Balancing and playstyle aside, which there are many I will get into in another post, the fantasy isnt there for me. Im not surrounded in lightning, I dont feel like I am casting any extra lightning based spells, I am just a normal ele shaman who sometimes cast his hands in the air for minimal effect.
Id honestly be happy with the Primal Ele Tempest Animation but theres other stuff you could do. Some lightning Aura around the shaman during certain procs or extra animation for overloads, changing lava burst to a lightning based spell, maybe some tornado or windstorm around the shaman.
I am a shill for any lightning based things in video games and really just want to fully immerse myself in that and I feel current Stormbringer after all the development hype misses the ball by a large margin.