Also just wanted to mention, this Shaman was going to go Night Fae, I feel the theme was perfect for a Shaman, but Fae Transfusion seems so anti synergistic with literally every spec… Enhancement channeling??, Elemental getting close to channel?? Don’t even get me started on Resto… I think a major rework needs to happen…
Personally Fae Transfusion should be a fire and forget spell, cast it, once it’s done your able to re cast for the heal.
Or
Fae Transfusion works differently with every spec.
Enhance - With 5 maelstorm stacks it becomes an instant cast burst.
Resto - Allies standing within the circle receive healing as you channel possible add a damage reduction to it aswell.
I tried macroing Transfusion to Spiritwalker’s Grace so that I can always use it while moving, but ultimately it’s a waste of Spiritwalker’s UNLESS the situation specifically needs you to move + damage the boss while people aren’t dying.
Making it ‘fire and forget’ sounds fun, if I do say so myself; kinda like the warrior’s Kyrian ability. Might be too good, but…well, after watching AWC and PvP highlights, maybe I don’t know what ‘too good’ is anymore.
If you’re enhance, it’s fantastic single target DPS. I main resto, so the pathetic heal range/targets is what largely does it in for me.
Plus, Chain Harvest is super fun as enhance, and it heals your group a ton when used with full maelstrom as well.
If I didn’t dislike how Venthyr/Revendreth look, it wouldn’t have been as much of an issue to just pick them off the bat…but the same issue would still occur to those with different tastes.
Enhance one seems standard, so I like it.
As for resto, I think I’d like to keep the control over when the heal bursts, so the top priority would be to increase the range of the heal whether it stays as is, or heals as it’s channeled.
As for ele, just let it cast while moving tbh.
Blizzard probably won’t do any more function changes outside the maelstrom, though. (if they even touch balancing it)
But yes I 100% agree with you. Each spec usually has 2 viable ones, one meh one, and one trash covenant. I don’t get why they aren’t doing more active tuning.
I went through this whole process when deciding my covenant prior to shadowlands… I felt guilty for wanting Night Fae for the aesthetic knowing that Kyrian was the right choice for content and also my guild.
I decided Night Fae but after struggling for weeks to feel comfortable healing I decided I needed to go Kyrian to feel good about playing my class. Divine toll just feels necessary to the Holy build.
At the end of the day I felt extremely happy with my choice because once I started in Kyrian I knew that was the place I liked more anyways and should have started with in the first place but sadly not a lot of people can say that.
Overall I really enjoy covenants and have had a more pleasant than not experience with them however, I 100% see the frustration for some people.
I’ve suggested this before in a different way, so I agree. My version was simply making the combat version our level 60 talent choices, and as you said, the covenant would give the utility spell.
If Night Fae had a blue Chain Harvest, I would never switch.
Just saying that is almost depressing. I’m about to quit a game because of something so small, yet I still feel it’s justifiable due to how much the devs have ignored these things.
Which is a reason I decided to try switching to Venthyr. The gameplay feels better, but I still dislike not being able to be Night Fae.
I’m conflicted due to the good/bad of my decision.
It definitely isn’t small, covenant abilities make a huge difference between best and worst pick… so I feel you… just try stay strong, we already are lacking healers in this game it be a shame to see another one go
Chain harvest does some crazy crits sometimes. I haven’t used it with Resto yet as I’m building that gear set, but I’d think it’d still put out some great damage for pvp
Hey, 2 months remaining. Low chance they will actually do anything, but I’m not a shaman IRL, so…
Glad to see others have similar thoughts on NF ability, though.
I suck at PvP right now…like a lot…but I also haven’t tried very much. That said, yes, it’s nutty in the few (and first in like 8 years) 2s I did today.
If I were Venthyr from the start, I’d be much better practiced at this point most likely.
Before switching, I watched a YT vid of a Rsham doing +21 with it. The player himself is amazing, but I kept pause-spamming when he used it to see things like: healing done, damage done, cloud-burst storage, CD reduced by crits, etc…
It’s incomparably better to the other one, but I’ve already gone over this lol.
Yep, this annoyed the snot out of me. By pure aesthetics alone I wanted that Maldraxxus Aesthetic on my Warrior but good god the ability is just terrible. Just… so bad. Same deal with Hunter also.
My 2 cents, but IMO Blizz should’ve just done 1 new ability for every spec ala Artifact Weapon abilities. Then the particles/visuals of the ability could be themed based off of the covenant you chose.
That way you always knew what ability you were dealing with based off of the spec, the same way we did based off of Artifact weapons, and whether that Warrior’s condemn was a blood red sweep or an angelic white and blue, you still knew it was the same ability because the only change were the particles and not the character’s animation.
My 2 COPPER. Feels bad having to choose a covenant you don’t give a crud about for an ability you know will just make your life easier. Or the frustrating juggle between alts and getting as much spread as possible WHILE getting the best abilities for them all that you can WHILE having an aesthetic you enjoy
Condolences my brother. You were strong enough to do what I could not
As a guy who worked in the games industry, I can reassure you it’s a very valid metric. Especially for service-based gaming, which most MMO/MOBA/Mobile games use. In WoW’s case? More time spent in this game likely means more commitment and loyalty which means you’re more likely to keep your money within the Blizzard machine, and spend things to enrich that experience (toys, mounts, pets, transfers, merchandise) that you already hold to a high regard.
YouTube/Netflix and virtually all subscription based forms of entertainment are also designed to keep users on that platform. I know that YouTube keeps track if you leave the website after watching a video vs watch another video afterwards. The algorithm then promotes videos more likely to keep people sticking around in your suggested and watch next.
Spotify records BPM averages as well as which parts of the song people listen to the most, how often they repeat, etc etc etc.
Shadowlands has made me tempted to go back to PoE, and that game is neverending for me…but never really felt like a chore.
I mean, leveling through the campaign can feel like one, but they are always building off the success of the game rather than reinventing wheels to tac on. WoW has a few wheels in places that never touch the road, but I may be getting a bit vague in my criticism as this point.
So yeah, pick-up-and-play games have become more appealing to think about recently.
I’d trade my fleshcraft for door of shadow’s in an instant. Hell I’d trade my fleshcraft for pretty much anything I could use in combat.
I like the overall feel of maldraxxus the most out of the covenants, but hot damn they are just a mess overall in terms of combat power. Every-time I wipe or miss timing a key, even if I made personal mistakes, I’m also wondering if being another covenant could have made up for it, cause necrolord is just so ridiculously weak compared to the other covenants.
If you can make it work though with a worse covenant, at least you’ll know it was all you who made it happen, not having an overpowered ability to carry you.
Indeed, I have healed +7, +8 and +9 without relying on my old covenant ability much at all. I mean, it’s easy since I tend to do better without focusing on it, but yeah…Rshams are pretty good regardless.
That said, I’ll potentially go higher in keys before my time runs out, and I love big crits; my covenant change is both for effectiveness and satisfying big numbers. >:{D
They don’t care.
Nobody on the design team touches the game so they don’t care about the issues the game has.
They’re riding this out doing the bare minimum. If they get downsized, they’ll just ask one of their buddies at another company to get them in and HR there will hire them because “world of warcraft” is on their resume.
The moment their friend got them a job on the balance department at blizzard, they were set in the industry, regardless of how poorly they did their job.
