GREAT changes on beta patch!
Baseline nerf to enhance spells reduced from 50% to 35% and no longer applies to healing surge!
First talent row balance addressed with buffs to elemental blast and lashing flames and nerf to forceful winds
AOE talent row balancing via nerf to hailstorm and buff to fire nova
Ice strike damage buff
The EB buff looks pretty beefy. Wonder what the move’s gonna be for PvP then, with the FFW/windfury/doom winds changes.
The Healing Surge change, I don’t expect to stick around, honestly. The moment Turbo starts to rear its head again and Enhance has even somewhat okay offhealing, it’s getting slammed again. Also, mana issues, doesn’t save you from big bad bully rogue players, that kinda stuff.
I really wish they’d just go for some generic damage reduction or something (lightning shield glyph). Something to stop that constant doom from everyone w keying you.
Wolves are also doing like 2-2.5x more damage now? Still kind of boring, still might be one of the weakest dps CDs, but it’s still better I guess.
Didn’t see the feral spirit change in the patch notes.
Guardian summon changes don’t show up in mining sometimes, apparently. There’s logs and screenshots in the discord about it though.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see them reduce the bonus of MSW for heals.
I just don’t think tying most of Enhance’s survivability to healing is going to work out that well, based on what happens every time it gets increased. It gets slammed almost immediately after and then it’s right back into the same cycle.
I kinda like the wolf legendary, wonder if it’ll be any good now.
I feel happy
Holy crap, I may actually have a new main once the patch goes live. Enhancement shamans is one of my favorite and just felt so horribly squishy since Prepatch. This definitely makes healing yourself a better choice over doing damage if in danger.
Hit a dummy on beta for 2 mins and 45 seconds, wolves doing 1.5% of my damage, POG!! Big buffs 
Hey man, the last time you posted screenshots, wolves did something like 130 DPS for their duration? And somewhere around 15 DPS over their whole 2 minute CD.
Not counting the MSW gen that is.
Now pump that up 250%, BIG NUMBERS
Dogs are blasters now???
i saw a hunter that same day say that trueshot was the objectively worst dps cd in the game and it cracked me up, cause while it feels pretty bad it’s not wolves
They should just make ascendance baseline, and have the wolves provide healing and MW stacks.
Don’t need ascend baseline, it’s pretty clunky with new enh I find anyways
Wolves healing would be cool, I’d ask for sham rage or stone bulwark or lightning shield 10% DR first though.
Lava lash spread FS and dmg buffed by 200% and the class would actually feel good to play
These people have no idea what they are talking about. Hailstorm nerf is HUGE. Hailstorm is doing about 60% of our damage in dungeons. -50 to -35, so now our MSW-charged Chain Lightning will hit for 650(x3) instead of 500(x3).
OK.
But my hailstorm is going to hit for 600(x5) instead of 1350(x5)
YAY. GOOD CHANGE.
Elemental Spirits will do 2.5% of my DPS instead of 4%
AMAZING
They just gutted what remained of enhances AOE ability, and single target is still a joke compared to so many other classes.
Give is our AOE back
Trying the math again because I misread the adjustment. If you were hitting for 500 before with Chain Lightning instants, you should now be hitting for 650. If you were hitting for 1350 before with Hailstorm, it should now be hitting for 860 (not 600). You’re going from 275% Frost Shock damage to 175% Frost Shock damage with Hailstorm. 34% is a big hit, but not a reduction of 56% throughput.
Hailstorm increases dmg by 35%/stack (up to 5) for total of 175%.
It’s being reduced to 15%/stack (up to 5) = 75%
Being cut more than in half
Maybe net 25% dps loss
It’s not unusual for Frost Shock to account for 60% of my damage in any given dungeon (not exaggerating)
and to give you an idea, we are casting a full 5-stack Frost Shock every cooldown (6s) if played right.
Mine hits for about 1350x5 every 6sec.
Its gonna be hitting for lets say 650x5 to be generous.
Losing 3K damage every 6 secs, aka 500 dps by this change alone - not counting crits
It’s an absolutely HUGE nerf to our AOE. Mythic plus viability, gone.
You’re leaving out the base damage of Frost Shock, which is why it’s not being hit for as much as you think. Frost Shock hits for 100% of its damage by default. It hits for 175% with the new version, and hit for 275% previously. This means you’ll be hitting for 64% as much damage as you did previously. If Frost Shock currently deals 60% of your damage, it should be dropping to about 40%.
It won’t be hitting for 650, it should be hitting for 860 if you were hitting for 1350 previously (which I showed the math on above). Yes, it’s a big hit, but it’s not a >50% reduction to the ability. To be clear, I’m not saying it’s not a big nerf… I’m just saying it’s not as big as you’re stating. Accuracy is important.
So that’s like an overall 12% loss to DPS, for our only AOE build, and a build that already suffered massively in single target.
I don’t understand
Was happy…now sad…
I’m definitely not max level on beta on my Shaman - I set him aside while I tried to figure out the spec on live, and ended up spending my time on other characters… If I’m right about how the numbers read for us, my previous CL damage would have been 233 * 2 = 466; my current CL damage on beta is 303 * 2 = 606. My Frost Shock is 466 base - should have hit for 1282 before, should hit for 816 now.
I just went and whacked a target dummy to see what would happen, and the numbers just about match up (they’re actually a little higher, which means I’m probably getting a damage boost from the Azerite gear I’m still wearing). If the numbers before nerf were accurate, I should have seen an increase in damage from CL of 420 damage every rotation and a decrease from Frost Shock of 2330, for an overall change of 1910 damage per cycle. I’m not denying that it’s a significant hit. I’m saying check your math.
My Feral Spirits hit for about 2.9k while up - not entirely sure what they hit for before, but just dividing by 2.5 gives 1160 - They’re still pretty terrible DPS-wise, at 14.5 (over 2 minutes), and this almost doesn’t put a dent in the frost shock nerf.
Flame Shock + Nova is now hitting higher than Frost Shock + Hailstorm with my current gear/level if you take Ice Strike along with it. If you can get Flame Shock up onto 4 targets (with Ice Strike), you’ll be hitting for 4 * 427 * 6 damage every 15 seconds, or 683 DPS, compared to Frost Shock’s 816 * 5 every 6 seconds, or 680 DPS. That doesn’t include the DoT effect from keeping Flame Shock up on 4 targets, which should be providing 326 DPS on top of that, which would bring Flame Shock + Nova up to 1009 DPS - still below the old 1068 DPS Frost Shock would have been doing for me, but actually pretty close. Without Ice Strike you lose 1 target, which will bring you back down to 757 DPS, which is still above the current Hailstorm DPS, but well below the old Hailstorm’s 1068. Note that the Flame Shock + Nova effectiveness drops off faster with fewer targets, since it balances around 6 instead of 5.
Bizarrely, Ice Strike is far more beneficial to Flame Shock + Nova than to Frost Shock + Hailstorm, unless you can consistently fire off 2 Maelstrom enhanced Frost Shocks in a row every 15 seconds… I wouldn’t have thought the ice ability would be that beneficial to the fire spec.
Cool changes at least so I’ll give them that. I think they should look into how the forums have talked about mixing hailstorm and nova as the same talent. After spending 5 mw u can either use flame shock to spread it around 5 targets or use frost shock for the damage.
Btw has anyone checked our healing? It says that the healing nerfs were removed but exactly how much are we healing for now in beta?
A Healing Surge with no MSW stacks gives me ~6k of my 30k HP, and a 5x MSW Healing Surge gives me ~12k.,
This is with 20% Versatility, but it ends up being around 20% HP heal with no MSW and a 40% HP heal with 5x.