Ghost wolves, too much hulk-out?

Classes Shaman
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So the 270% ghost wolves … it gives me a bit of a shiver reminding me of the the original form.

It was strong and healed us, it was (sort of) an i-win button that when on cooldown we became sort of an i-lose spec/class. Generally weak. The hulk-out was too much and base damage suffered.

On top of that, the strength of ghost wolves got peoples attention in pvp very quickly. Gameplay was structured around dealing with it and it was mitigated very quickly. When wolves would get popped players would instantly deal with them (fear, trap, defensive, run-away) until the wolves were done and then they’d walk up and kill the shaman.

Yes, it (ghost wolves) was part of the big post-vanilla nerfing I talk so much about. I don’t mean to hammer that nail again bringing it up because overtime ghost wolves has evolved into something that’s a mostly good. LL and crash lightning fall into this category as well. They are “new”. They are part of the post-nerf damage diversification and they have evolved into “mostly goods”. Today, net positives and “cool”. I acknowledge that.

I just get little slips of fear of the old problem with ghost wolves when I see +270% though. Like … hey, how about throwing a little more of that damage our way instead?

EDIT: but … … given our zero midrange setup … … maybe this is the right thing. I don’t know really.

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These are the enchancement changes listed yesterday, for reference:

  • Windfury Weapon’s proc damage has been increased by 240%.

  • Healing Surge healing has been increased by 50%.

  • Maelstrom Weapon spending abilities have had their damage or healing increased by 30%.

  • Feral Spirit’s pet damage has been increased 270%.

  • Hot Hand additionally resets the cooldown of Lava Lash when it activates.

  • Ice Strike damage has been increased by 75%.

  • Forceful Winds Windfury damage bonus per stack has been reduced to 35% (was 50%).

  • Lashing Flames duration has been increased to 20 seconds (was 12 seconds).

  • Elemental Blast damage has been increased by 25%.

  • Hailstorm’s Frost Shock damage bonus has been lowered to 15% (was 35%).

  • Fire Nova damage has been increased by 75%.

Wolves are definitely going to be scary but there’s a lot to unpack here. The self healing changes are going to be bonkers. Earth shield + swelling waves might make shaman an absolute terror in 1v1. Well deserved, shaman friends. :hugs:

2 Likes
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This whole post sounds like you appeared from thin air with a cryptic message before retreating back into the mist. Anyway -

You mentioned “big post-vanilla nerf,” yet I’m almost certain wolves weren’t in the game until they were the penultimate ability for the enh tree in wrath.

The buff is absolutely warranted, as wolves were inherently the worst DPS “CD” in the entire game. Their damage isn’t insane even after the buff, but more damage and (hopefully) better scaling is nothing to fear.

4 Likes
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Lol, even with the buff and elemental spirits and the leggo that makes them a 30 second CD, they account for like 5-6% of your damage. No need to fear, it’s just they were that bad before the 270% buff.

Without the leggo and ele spirits, they’re back down to 2% of your overall

3 Likes
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Nothing to worry about. 270% more of not much is still not much.

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Marks hunters out there before the Trueshot change like “ours is the worst!”
i sit here with wolves like “oh…”

Anyways I’m crackin up at everyone looking at all the giant number changes for Enhance freaking out.
Like, that’s how absurdly low everything was.

Windfury hits for like 60 damage, buffing it that much does nothing without Doom Winds, big big nums man

5 Likes
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This.

I’ll be excited when I see that we can mana battery again to actually stay up long enough for our dmg to mean something.

2 Likes
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That’s what they are now. In fact our feral spirits would leap to our target and stun it. Then they would heal us for the damage they did to our target. And their damage was good damage and wait they were useable while we were stunned. Then blizzard nerfed the damage saying we do not want shamans being considered a pet class, then they removed the stun and healing from our wolves turning them to what they are now.

So yes this buff was warrented but I want our wolves that stunned healed and had good damage also useable in stuns.

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Without doomwinds WF is accounting for 10-12% of enhances damage breakdown which is fine, it was 1% before the tuning cycle on it. Doomwinds gives it a significant bump but not absurd like it was prenerf.

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Wut. WotLK/Cata Enh could easily win most pvp fights without using wolves. Was it an I-win button? Yeah if you used it with the right timing it’d make an L a W, and a W even bigger, but if you played like crap not even wolves could carry you.

I think you’re mistaking it for Ascendance in MoP->beyond where in it you’re the primary CC target that could easily chunk someone for almost their entire healthpool (or you just RNG rolled a natural dodge/parry bc Enh will forever be ruled by RNG) and outside of it you were literally not capable of putting out any pressure. This was made even worse 5.2 and beyond when they gimped EB by giving it a “When picked as Enh does -50% damage” hidden modifier.

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The healing buff is not gonna last .

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Nothing about Shamans ever does.

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It probably will. You sacrifice alot for the heal. You can get 3-4 in a fight depending on other utility used and enhance mana regen isn’t great