Anyone who’s played shaman since vanilla knows the history of shamans relationship with the expansion beta’s and ptrs… Since Bus shock, we’ve been the red headed step child of WoW.
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APT should be Resto spec baseline OR have a mechanic where if nobody dies the CD goes down to 3 mins where you can reset it with Totemic Recall.
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It really does need some kind of way to reduce it’s cooldown when it fails to save someone, 3mins would be a good middle ground. And it can’t save people from insta death damage anyways so I’m not sure why it can’t be a bit lower.
If they don’t want to make new abilities, enhancing some old ones would be great, like, giving wind rush totem the ability to grant everyone gust of wind jumps while under it’s effects for example. Or combining the function of poison cleansing totem and tremor totem perhaps.
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Continuing on from my previous post since people seemed to agree with some of the ideas there…
Previous Post on Theme and Stormbringer (Archive)
Elemental Shaman Feedback
Overall, I echo the disappointment at the lack of news regarding some of the reworks from Shaman. Having spoken to many Elemental Shaman mains (friends, guildies and Elemental Shaman discord), it seems clear that Shaman is lacking a niche. Besides the obvious lack of a raid buff, they also lack a theme.
Trying to tie Elemental Shaman to this theme of controlling all elements has turned them into this “kind of good at a lot of things, but not as good as the specialists” sort of class. What I mean by that is that in theme, Lava Burst will never be as cool or explosive as a Fire mage pressing Combustion, using Meteor, etc. Similarly, Frost Shock and Icefury will never beat a Frost Mage’s Ray of Frost or Glacial Spike. As such, they are thematically viewed as inferior to mages.
The only exception to this thematic weakness is the element of lightning. They are the only caster class in the game that makes use of lightning spells, and they feel explosive and powerful when you do (mainly during Stormbringer). Unfortunately, Blizzard has been trying continue this trend of “you must be good at all the elements”, which has barred a lot of new players from playing this spec that would otherwise because the only lightning caster in the game. This is huge disappointment because I know a significant portion of my WoW friends would play Shaman if they had the option of being a lightning mage.
Furthermore, I feel like this lack of commitment to 1 element is preventing Blizzard from creating cool new spells, as they fear adding new spells would tilt the balance of what elements are used where (i.e. 2 fire spells, 2 frost spells, 2 Earth spells, and 2 main lightning spells [not counting cooldowns]). I would recommend focusing on making elemental shaman lean towards one element (ideally lightning since that’s the only one that has no other caster of it) and make cool interactions with this.
Stormbringer Elemental Shaman
Problems With This Hero Tree
Damage and Secondary Stat Scaling of Tempest
Feedback: There are some significant issues with Tempest (the spell, not the crit talent); not only in damage output but in interactions with secondary stats and what spells it replaces and how it triggers. Let’s start with the damage component in Single Target:
- Lightning Bolt= 114% SP x 1.03 (Elemental Aura Buff) x 1.15 (from Call of Thunder) = 135% SP per cast (confirmed in testing)
- Tempest = 198% SP per cast (confirmed in testing)
- Note: Wowhead says 180% SP but my testing showed this is actually 198% SP
Given that Tempest does not scale with Haste (cast time is fixed at 2 seconds) or Mastery, and that Lightning Bolt does AND benefits from Unrelenting Calamity (reducing cast time by 0.25 seconds) and Echo Chamber (Elemental Overload does 100% damage), we see the following DPS:
- Lightning Bolt DPS = 135% SP / 1.75 sec cast x (1 + Mastery%) = 77.1% SP/sec x (1 + Mastery%) — note: this is w/ Echo Chamber talented
- Tempest DPS = 198% SP / 2 sec cast = 98% SP/sec
With a measely 30% Mastery (note that you start with 15% Mastery and Elemental gets 1.875% Mastery per Mastery point) and 0% Haste, you get the following DPS from each spell:
- Lightning Bolt DPS = 77.1% SP/sec x (1 + 0.3) = 100% SP/sec
- Tempest DPS = 98% SP/sec
Meaning that with only 30% Mastery, 0% Haste in single target, an unempowered Lightning Bolt currently does more damage than Tempest. Note that both Tempest and Lightning Bolt both scale equally with crit and vers, so those secondaries don’t need be considered here (only Haste and Mastery since Tempest scales with neither). This doesn’t sound correct at all to me. Note: to get that same exact DPS for Lightning Bolt without the Echo Chamber talent, you need to have 35.3% Mastery instead, which is still extremely easy to get.
Lava Burst, Earth Shock/Elemental Blast and Earthquake
Feedback: Besides the problem of Tempest’s damage, there remains the thematic problem of Stormbringer still being reliant on elements other than Lightning (i.e. Lava Burst) for it’s damage. Even if Tempest did 10x the damage it currently does, I do not believe that spells like Lava Burst, Earth Shock, Earthquake, Elemental Blast, Icefury and Frost shock should fit within the rotation for Stormbringer. This hero tree if very clear set on bringing in the Storm, meaning the only elements that you should be using are wind and lightning. This is currently not the case and should be addressed since I believe it to be a fundamental failure of theme implementation in this tree.
Imagine how awkward it would be if Colossus Arms Warrior’s big damage focus was Heroic Throw? To me, having to cast non-Storm (i.e. non-lightning or wind spells) as a Stormbringer is just as much of a thematic failure as the example given above.
Suggested Changes
Important note: these changes are specific to Elemental Shaman, not Enhancement.
Tempest (the spell)
- Current version: Every 400 Maelstrom spent replaces your next Lightning Bolt with Tempest. Deals (198% of Spell power) Nature damage to your target, 70% of that damage to other enemy targets within 8 yds of your target. 2 second cast time.
- Suggested change: Deals (300% of Spell power) Nature damage to your target, 30% of that damage to other enemy targets within 8 yds of your target. Instant cast. Costs 60 Maelstrom. Replaces Earth Shock and is affected by talents that modify Earth Shock.
- Feedback: This is a no-brainer for me: Tempest should be a Maelstrom spender, not a generator, and it certainly doesn’t do enough damage to even come close to Earth Shock currently (and doesn’t scale with Haste (i.e. GCD cast time) and Mastery like Earth Shock does with the Mountains Will Fall talent). This is meant to address all of these problems at once. Note that by design this will mean that Tempest will place a Lightning Rod (if talented) on the main target hit.
Tempest (the crit talent)
- Current version : Increases the critical strike chance of your Nature damage spells by 10% and the critical strike damage of your Nature spells by 5%.
- Suggested change: Renamed to Tornado. Unleash a torrent of violent winds that buffet your target, dealing (25% Spell Power x 6) Nature damage to all enemies within 8 yards of your target over 6 seconds. This tornado follows the position of your target. Additional Tornado casts increase the duration of Tornado. After the 3rd cast of Tornado on the same target, the winds violently buffet all targets, dealing all of the stored damage in the tornado instantly to all targets within 8 yards and slowing them by 30% for 3 seconds. Costs 60 Maelstrom. Replaces Earthquake and is affected by talents that modify Earthquake.
- Feedback: Similar to Earthshock above, Earthquake needs a Stormbringer-appropriate replacement. Tornado (as a replacement to the Tempest talent that normally gives crit) can neatly fit the bill of a wind spell that follows your target around and deals ticking damage. Additional casts of Tornado will instead increase the duration of Tornado, and the 3rd cast will “detonate” the Tornado, dealing all of the stored damage instantly and providing a meager slow as utility. Note that the damage of the ticks is meant to be stored similar to Ignite with Fire mage, where getting a proc of Echoes of Great Sundering will increase the damage stored in the tornado and be spread across each proc dealt (and later detonated after the 3rd Tornado cast). Also note that by design this will mean that Tornado will place a Lightning Rod (if talented) on the main target hit.
Conductive Energy
- Current version: Tempest makes your target a Lightning Rod for 8 sec. Lightning Rods take 20% of all damage you deal with Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning.
- Suggested change: Lightning Bolts and Chain Lightning hits are guaranteed to crit on targets affected by Lightning Rod.
- Feedback:
Lightning Bolt Nerfs (to account for Conductive Energy change above)
- Current version: Hurls a bolt of lightning at the target, dealing (114% of Spell power) Nature damage.
- Suggested change: Hurls a bolt of lightning at the target, dealing (91.2% of Spell power) Nature damage.
- Feedback: This 20% nerf to lightning bolt is meant to account for the fact that lightning bolt would now be guaranteed to crit on targets with Lightning Rod. If this damage is too high then it will no longer be worth it to cast Tempest and Tornado, which is not the goal here. This is still a massive net positive, as Lightning Bolt would now do 270% Spell Power (given crit) on targets with Lightning Rod (up from 135% Spell Power w/ Call of Thunder)
Storm Swell
- Current version: When Tempest only strikes a single target, gain 30 Maelstrom
- Suggested change: When Tempest only strikes a single target, gain 10 Maelstrom
- Feedback: Given the change to how Tempest is cast (now with Maelstrom), it wouldn’t make sense for this spell to recover 60% of it’s cost immediately after being cast in single target, so I would nerf this talent.
Awakening Storms
- Current version: Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning have a chance to strike your target for (50% of Spell power) Nature damage. Every 3 times this occurs, your next Lightning Bolt is replaced by Tempest.
- Suggested change: Tempest can now trigger Power of the Maelstrom and Master of the Elements. In addition, Ascendance now transforms you into a Lightning Ascendant, gaining 1 stack of Stormbringer upon activation and 1 stack of Stormbringer for every 50 Maelstrom spent. Ascendance no longer affects Lava Burst.
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Feedback: Finishing this up, we have the problem of Ascendance tying Elemental Shaman to this Lava Burst and Lava Beam, as well as the talents leading up to it requiring Lava Burst. This capstone is meant to address all of these talents in one go. Tempest will gain significant benefit Power of the Maelstrom and Master of the Elements, and Ascendance will fit the theme of Stormbringer while also provide synergy with Tempest, Stormbringer and the Further Beyond talents.
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Here is the spec tree that I would expect with the changes above: https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc/shaman/elemental/stormbringer/DAAANVVVEQRGoBIKBFDUFAEFVVUBA
General Shaman Suggested Changes
Lack of Defensives
The shaman class currently suffers from the fact that it holds only 2 major active defensives, one of which is good (Astral Shift) and the other being unacceptably bad (Earth Elemental), as well as a slew of weak passive defensives (2% leech/avoidance, 4% magic DR, 20% heal on 45 second cooldown, 10% max health boost (which is better than the rest)) .
While I wouldn’t suggest any changes to Astral Shift, I believe Earth Elemental’s staggering 5 minute cooldown is completely unworthy given its mediocre effect (longer cooldown than Ice Block, Aspect of the Turtle, Divine Shield, same cooldown as Cauterize).
Furthermore, Shaman are currently lacking in both passive and active short-cooldown defensives, the most notable of which are Nature’s Guardian (a measly 20% heal every 45 seconds) and Spirit Wolf (which requires you to AFK in Wolf form for 4 seconds to gain the benefit).
Lastly, there are some vestigial remnants of Classic WoW that I believe currently hold no place in retail; namely Lightning Shield, Earth Shield and Water Shield. I will focus my discussion of defensives on these given their current lack of effectiveness, as well as talents that currently affect them and Earth Elemental as well.
Suggested Changes
Lightning Shield
- Current version : Surround yourself with a shield of lightning for 1 hour. Melee attackers have a 100% chance to suffer (15% of Spell power) Nature damage and have a 100% chance to generate 5 Maelstrom
- Suggested change: Surround yourself with a shield of lightning (unlimited duration), decreasing all damage taken by 5%. You can activate this shield every 30 seconds to increase this damage reduction to 12.5% for 5 seconds (increased to 25% with Surging Shields). Activating this effect also puts your other elemental shield on cooldown for the next 30 seconds.
- Feedback: Like I mentioned above, this change is meant to provide both passive and short-acting active defensive utility, allowing this completely useless shield to provide Shaman players with some survivability. If a bigger hit is coming, they can always pop Astral Shift and survive hits that way or use Earth Elemental (changed; see below).
Earth Shield
- Current version : Protects the target with an earthen shield, increasing your healing on them by 20% and healing them for [(58.4% of Spell power) * (1.2)] when they take damage. This heal can only occur once every few seconds. Maximum 9 charges.
- Suggested change: Protects yourself with an earthen shield, increasing your health by 5%. You can activate this shield every 30 seconds to heal yourself and up to 4 nearby party members for 7.5% of your current health (increased to 15% with Surging Shields). Activating this effect also puts your other elemental shield on cooldown for the next 30 seconds.
- Feedback: The group-utility defensive cousin of Lightning Shield, Earth Shield is meant to provide group-wide healing similar to Mass Barrier, although significantly weaker given its much short cooldown (30 seconds vs 96 seconds for Mages).
Water Shield (Restoration only)
- Current version : The caster is surrounded by globes of water, granting XXX mana per 5 sec. When a melee attack hits the caster, the caster regains 2% of their mana. This effect can only occur once every few seconds.
- Suggested change: The caster is surrounded by globes of water, granting XXX mana per 5 sec. You can activate this shield every 30 seconds to reduce the mana cost and cast time of your next 1 healing ability by 100% (increased to 2 abilities with Surging Shields). Activating this effect also puts your other elemental shield on cooldown for the next 30 seconds.
- Feedback: Given the healing-focused nature of this shield, I gave it an emergency Presence of Mind-like healing flavor to allow Restoration Shaman to reactively use this defensive to heal others rapidly. This shield is only available to Restoration Shaman.
Elemental Orbit
- Current version : Increases the number of Elemental Shields you can have active on yourself by 1. You can have Earth Shield on yourself and one ally at the same time.
- Suggested change: Increases the number of Elemental Shields you can have on yourself by 1 (2 for Restoration).
- Feedback: This talent now allows you to have all Elemental Shields active at the same time, allowing you to choose which defensive utility to select depending on your role. I suspect with the above, the decision will be Lightning Shield activation vs Earth Shield activation (for DPS) or Water Shield activation (for healers).
Surging Shields
- Current version : Increases the damage dealt by Lightning Shield by 100% and causes it to generate an additional 5 Maelstrom when triggered. Increases the healing done by Earth Shield by 25%. Increases the amount of mana recovered when Water Shield is triggered by 25%. (2-point node)
- Suggested change: Increases the effectiveness of your elemental shields’ active ability by 50%/100% (2-point node)
- Feedback: This talent now allows you to have all Elemental Shields active at the same time, allowing you to choose which defensive utility to select depending on your role. I suspect with the above, the decision will be Lightning Shield activation vs Earth Shield activation (for DPS) or Water Shield activation (for healers).
Earth Elemental
- Current version : Calls forth a Greater Earth Elemental to protect you and your allies for 1 min. While this elemental is active, your maximum health is increased by 15%.
- Suggested change: Calls forth a Greater Earth Elemental to protect you and your allies for 1 min (does not taunt targets unless they are targeting you). While this elemental is active, you cannot die. If you were to take lethal damage, your elemental is instead slain and you are returned to 35% maximum health.
- Feedback: It is an insult to the Shaman community that a 15% health buff that lasts 1 minute has a 5 minute cooldown. By comparison, any of the mage shield grants 20% health (24% for frost), also last 1 minute but instead have a 25 second cooldown (which can be reduced via a variety of talents like Barrier Diffusion and Accumulative Shielding). By comparison, Ice Block (Mage’s 10 second immunity) has a 4 minute cooldown, Cauterize (Fire mage’s cheat death) has a 5 minute cooldown), Divine Shield (Paladin’s 8 second immunity during which they can still do their rotation unimpeded) has a 5 minute cooldown (which can be reduced by 30% with Unbreakable Spirit talent). Earth Elemental simply has no business being a 5 minute cooldown. You can either do one of two things: make it a short cooldown (somewhere on the order of 1 minute cooldown) or make it actually be worth a 5 minute cooldown, as I have above by turning it into a proactive cheat death, similar to Holy Priest’s Guardian Angel, but only applicable to themselves.
Lack of Raid Buff
The lack of raid buffs for Shamans have created a sensation of failed opportunity cost when inviting an Elemental or Restoration Shaman. Enhancement Shaman has Windfury totem which currently buys it a spot in raid and proves to make this discussion difficult because any discussion of raid buff must therefore segregate Elemental + Restoration in one corner, and Enhancement in the other, since giving Shaman as a whole a raid buff will likely default to still bringing Enhancement over the other two Shaman given enhancement has this new raid buff AND windfury totem.
Therefore, the following raid buff should only be available to Elemental and Restoration Shaman. If Enhancement Shaman want to have access to this buff, they should lose access to Windfury totem to compensate. I will let the player base decide which they want in this regard.
Regarding the specifics of this buff, I thought about a bunch of different boring ideas: a 3% crit or haste buff, a 3% chance to apply damage dealt a second time (i.e. similar to Windfury but for all attacks/abilities), etc. The problem with all of these is that they’re all really boring, and I think Shaman deserves a raid buff that is no stronger that the others but makes them shine (because they have been ignored for so long they deserve it). Here’s the idea I came up with.
Suggested Change
Storm Capacitor (raid buff)
- New Ability (baseline): You store 2% of damage dealt by all members of your party or raid within yourself (unlimited cap). You can activate this ability to discharge all of the stored damage onto your target. 3 second cast. 5 minute cooldown. Multiple bearers of this effect will split the damage stored evenly (i.e. 1% damage stored per Shaman if 2 Shaman present, 0.67% if 3 Shaman present, etc.)
- Feedback: This is how I would make Shaman’s raid buff cool. At nearly all times, buffs like Mark of the Wild, Battle Shout, Arcane Intellect or Chaos Brand provide more damage than the raid buff above, but this damage buff is distributed to all raid members. With this raid buff, the damage buff is funneled into the Shaman itself. Furthermore, it allows Shamans to have some incredibly unique utility, giving them the option of discharging this damage on a high-priority add (as an example), if needed, or simply save this for the boss’ execute phase. By design, this buff gains value the longer the fight goes, which means it is more valuable in execute when fights tend to get more hectic. Additional Shaman players in the raid would simply split the stored damage so as to avoid one Shaman getting the benefit over the other. Please consider a buff of this nature because I firmly believe this raid buff would be wholly unique and very interesting to play around. You would likely see some very interesting tech from RWF players with something like this.
- In Mythic+, this could have absolutely crazy utility, where you could use this to deal significant damage to the last boss in a single blow (i.e. 2% of the damage dealt in the dungeon up until that point). Once again, even though this seems too strong, this is actual less damage than something like Mark of the Wild (3% damage) or Arcane Intellect (5% damage for casters). The only difference is that this buff deals its damage all at once.
- Obviously, this buff should reset when pulling a raid boss or starting a mythic+ key.
- Note: for mythic+, looking at logs, the damage dealt by this ability comes out to ~ 33-37% of the final boss’ health), so if you save all your damage for the last boss, you get a neat execute. And once again, this is less total damage than Arcane Intellect
Lastly: I put a significant amount of work into this knowing full well that I will continue to main Arcane Mage. I am not writing this post from a position of conflict-of-interest. It would truly change nothing in my WoW experience if Shaman were to be deleted tomorrow. I wrote this post because I firmly believe Shaman players deserve attention, and even though my ideas seem provocative, I believe they deserve changes of the magnitude that I have shown above to compensate for nearly 2 years of being completely ignored.
P.S.: No need to post in other classes’ Feedback posts, I’m fairly confident this won’t help with your situation.
28 Likes
Thank you for your help
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Keep this post alive fellow Shamans, we need to keep trudging, we cannot give up now!
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.
If this is the goal the knobs for shaman need to be turned up. There is currently no tool that shaman has that makes it a comparatively valued member of a raid group or valued in dungeon groups. The only exception is windfury totem, and even then it is tuned low enough that if enhance shaman dps is tuned even a little too low you would just want to bring a higher dps instead.
So Wowhead finally gets Ion to mention shamans, but fails to follow up with, “Speaking of shamans, WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THEM?”
I am so disappointed.
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I agree, 100%.
I stated in a previous post on here that, back in the day, the tradeoff from having so much utility is that things were weaker than other classes. This day an age, I don’t think that mentality can exit as pretty much every tool we bring, someone WILL be able to do it better… AND Evokers have basically all of our tools already plus A LOT more on top of that while all being better than Shaman. Because of this, Shaman tools need to be significantly buffed to the point where they at least compare to other classes or others need to be nerfed to our level. The ONLY thing of value that Shaman currently provides is Windfury Totem. Additionally, our damage isn’t exactly blowing everyone else out of the water… there should be at least SOMETHING to warrant Resto or Ele a raid spot.
I have 3x ideas that I feel would be fair and/or appropriate:
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Buff Bloodlust for the raid when triggered by Ele or Resto by 5%. Nothing crazy but enough to make them the de-facto choice for raid progression. I feel like this is fair since Mage, Hunter, Evoker are all stealing this ability from what originally defined a Shaman. This 5% also wouldn’t completely ruin a raid group if it weren’t present.
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Place Windfury Totem in the class tree and make it affect all abilities so that spells can benefit too. That way, it could still be restricted to one party but wouldn’t discriminate against Ele/Resto being brought to raid.
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Probably an unpopular choice but just remove all current raid buffs and replace them with a 1% raid-wide Versatility buff for every unique spec in the raid.
I gotta say it feels pretty awful that we have THE most active thread on the beta forum and we’ve heard nothing but crickets from the developers.
Really doesn’t inspire much faith. 
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Last time i used tremor totem was at Necrotic Wake or MoTS.
Cleansing at Afflicted, indeed. At BH didn’t works. At HoI.
Its pretty much why I am looking at playing a different class come TWW unless we get something stellar for shaman
Good thing those are coming back LMAO
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Tornadoes please! Less lightning, more wind!
Take the Tempest hero talent and repurpose/reskin Fury of Elune for Shaman to send 3-5 tornadoes at people.
Thanks.
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There is something happening behind the scenes. Small things are being changed without any word, or communication, but things are being changed.
- Tempest now works with modifiers. For Enhancement, if you take a modifier that affects lightning, you see the damage change for tempest.
- The Totem icon for surging totem changed. It now resembles an ancient-looking totem.
- Other modifiers are working for hero talents.
So there is movement. I just wonder why nothing is being said. It could be that the devs are now in a “Whatever we say or do for Shamans will never be enough” position, so they are making changes and coming here to hope someone is still testing and seeing the changes.
For Elemental, Tempest has not changed btw. So IDK? I guess we will see what happens. I’m hoping something comes good from this. I will still run and test what I see. Maybe, just maybe it will work out in the end.
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It is because stormbringer was designed for enhance. You can tell by most of the nodes interact with enhance talents. Ele is a abandoned child.
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Ugh… that is TERRIBLE
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Pretty bad that the only thing they said was they aren’t going to give shaman a raid cooldown.
Shaman even getting memed on in the T&E podcast this morning.
“There are tons of class changes going on all the time… unless you’re a shaman” - Tali
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Mana spring still showing as restoring 150 mana and mana shields tooltip still saying its 239 mana per five is so piddly of a bonus. Windfury is so you can buff all the classes that benefit from it more than the shaman lol its such a meme
Edit: This was actually updated since I last was on beta. I just logged in. Mana spring now restores 2625 mana. Riptide costs 40k and lava burst costs 12.5k though. You would still mostly just take this to make the healers around you better.
Mana shields regen appears to be unchanged.
wasn’t tempest already working w. modifiers for enhance? I thought in my testing it was… it was just for elemental that it wasn’t.
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