No, they haven’t. They changed the main talent, and in an incredibly boring busywork way. Everything else – which priests were also very unimpressed with – is essentially unchanged, including two nodes that are literally empty but for placeholder text.
And the grand rework of holy talents is, like, one tuning change in the spec tree, and one in the class tree.
We’re a weird group of dudes man. Some of us just want the class to flow well, Some of us want to function as a class in a competitive way. Some of us want both PVP and PVE to work good but totems and weapon enhancements are tough to balance around both. I want to play with a 2h. Some people still want to tank. The old helper class idea kind of got taken hard by evokers.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a real big class rework that someone has in mind for Blizz but its wildly different from how things are now or were before and they know we will complain hard.
But also I wouldn’t be surprised if there was no change at all and it releases without enhancement hero talents.
It’s funny because theres a non-zero chance of that happening haha. But I doubt it.
@OP I feel like they are doing a lot of the easier re-works first to get them out of the way. Shaman historically has always been last in the reveals. Which is only good news for us. It does take time to make ground breaking changes. I’ve heard of how they have improved a lot in the tree (specifically) for other specs. So I think they are fully aware of the work ahead of them for Shaman/Enhance in particular.
I suspect that they are attempting to bring the power of insane specs/classes (especially in terms of defensives) In life with shaman instead of trying to figure out how to bring shaman up to the level of everyone else. As mentioned before is a very different beast.
So now you got me thinking. I wonder… (tinfoil hats please)
Do y’all suppose the Devs intended to turn one of the shaman dps specs into a full support class like Augvoker, but because of the general negativity surrounding aug they are now having to backtrack and do a last minute change to the class?
We’ll never know, but its interesting to think about. I don’t hate the idea of a second support spec in the game, and shaman makes sense. I actually kinda like it- assuming its done correctly.
I cannot fathom the insane amount of negative feedback this would unleash from every corner of the player base. This is regardless of how Aug was received.
A new/fourth spec perhaps, but not one of the existing specs.
I think they need more time with Aug (delete it from the game) before they try support anywhere else.
Yeah, I’ve played other games that had a support role in the party. Its fun if done correctly, but its tough to balance. There also needs to be more than one class capable of the role.
I strongly disagree. I think Aug was great for the game (in concept) and most of the negative feedback was literally just because it was the ONLY support in the game. They should consider making fourth specs for a lot of classes who’s job is to support.
Not sure. But I do believe they stated they wanted to add more specs to the classes since adding the first support role. I think this coupled with the sheer amount of shaman tanks in SoD (as I am told, which I believe SoD is a free way for blizz to test new ideas) it’s in the realm of possibility that we COULD get a 4th tanking spec. Trust me, they know we want it. Hahaha.
Support may or may not have a place, but the negative feedback was in how extremely powerful Aug was upon release. It was a livelord insane throughput monster with ridiculous externals. Where Aug is at now is fine, but balancing it is nothing short of a nightmare I can imagine. Would more support specs have helped? Maybe with the hate directed at Aug, but if they were all similar in execution, it would’ve just been negative feedback on support specs as opposed to Aug itself.
It would help in that having more support specs in the game would enable them to carve Support off into its own dedicated group role separate from DPS. The biggest roadblock to balancing Aug right now is that it’s taking a DPS spot while not exactly being a DPS, so it has to be balanced against having a normal DPS in its group spot in addition to being balanced against DPS itself.
That said, I’m highly skeptical of how many Support specs Blizzard could actually make before having to start copy/pasting themselves in playstyle.
If they want to go the support role then two is plenty. Allows the devs to ensure the playstyle is different while the outcome is similar.
The key is in the balancing. You want the support classes to be desired but not required. Its a difficult line to maintain- particularly in five player content. You also have to decide if they overlap in raids.
Support classes are one of those things that a game either needs to go all in on, or not touch at all. This one spec, wishy-washy, maybe you want it and maybe you don’t stuff causes more problems than it solves.
Complete conjecture. People do that a lot with balance. Maybe it is maybe it isnt hard, but they got it tuned pretty quickly without nerfing it into the ground, so it couldnt have been that hard. I get what you are saying, but assumption is no grounds for saying something shouldnt be done. They just need to release new support specs slowly, one at a time so they can tune each individually like with Aug. One or two more would probably be about what they need.
Same as every other spec type. They all step on each other’s toes. Theme, and how it feels to play, is usually more important. We have how many dps? How many healers? How many tanks? I don’t think it would be as difficult as you might think.
Little side note to that, I think shaman and warriors are the perfect classes to get a support spec. Shaman getting a earth focus that MAYBE can use two handed melee weapons. Finally bringing that back for those that want it without cutting into the balance of Enchance. And for warrior, a gladiator/battlefield commander, giving them war horns, banners and new shouts plus a none tank spec that uses sword and board.
A rollercoaster that settled down in less then a year. It’s still assumption. Feel free to dismiss me all you want, but it will remain assumption until we see a longer track record for it’s stability or instability in performance.
(Or if the devs come out and say. “This is hard guys.”)
Both of these are true and not independent of each other.
I get that, and realistically they could design windfury to do predictable damage. Get rid of its ability to proc of itself, or limit it to 1 additional proc. Keep Stormstrike, make crash lightning not only spread/refresh flame shock, but also make it so if the mob has the CL debuff, your lightning bolt becomes chain lightning. Its possible, but they would have to be very careful.
This is me. I love the idea of being a tank. I’ve argued for it for years and years, and I will never give up hope.
This is fake. They tried to make storm better by added BLP into DRE (it’s still a big problem in a tree). They changed a talent position in Elemental Blast / Tempest Strikes to be easier to access. Then they reworked Elemental Assault by give more MSW and increase the % of base MSW generation which solved the issues of MSW generation. They tried to improve Enhancement Shaman over time, but we still have some issues such as Molten Assault (Fire Nova / Hailstorm is gated by that talent), DRE, WFT and Feral Lunge.
Not big on the idea of a support spec but an earthy tanking spec would fit quite well with the expansion theme and we have shaman tanks now in SoD so…
