Anyone still fall for the shaman hopium? Shaman always do fantastic numbers pre-patch. Youtubers hype them to the moon with big damage videos. Everyone and their dog levels one in anticipation…
Then a few weeks of straight nerfs and a crappy tier set that will force a single build and they will be back to bottom 1/3, mopping the guild house floors week 1 while the real specs go raid and M+ .
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Not many I suspect
EDIT: Shaman’s fine, the ‘nerf’ isn’t too big a deal
IIRC we got buffed by 30% weeks ago and then nerfed by 25%
Hopefully that concludes the nerfs and stops us from being Flavor of the Month
I still think once (whenever) the Enhancement changes go through–I’d give us an A rating overall for all 3 specs
Tier set benefits all versions of Ele. It does not bind us in to any one build by any stretch.
I’m going Lightning/stormbringer build with a focus on haste and crit. I play PvP and that’s my preference in TWW. I’m playing it now in PvP and it’s working well for me before any of the buffs to it that are in beta and before access to hero talents.
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Numbers will be adjusted. Every class should focus on whether the builds are smooth to play and fun.
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The lava surge proc rate changes make elemental not “smooth” to play
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Absolutely not me
Nope
If you aint S tier, you’re F tier
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I’m not making a declaration either way with Ele’s power. I’m advocating to not doom over numbers and worry about actual gameplay for now.
Shhhhhh. Be quiet.
As long as the general public think it’s bad they’ll stay away from it. I don’t want my class/spec polluted with fotm rerollers. Shaman has always been the under represented underdog.
I will always moan about shaman when they are doing poorly, but I will always main it. Every time I try to play another class, I get sad when I can’t shaman on it.
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Could care less honestly but I am definitely upset that they weren’t given their TWW talents yet.
I’ve always wondered if the FotW crowd, always chasing the META is the reason why classes get “nerfed”. Meaning: A bunch of people who love a class, for instance Shaman. So they learn it. They play it. They master it. They get realllllllllllly good at it, and because they spent time with it, got the best stuff for it. They dominated with it.
It becomes the META.
A bunch of scrubs show up, wanting the easy path to awesome. They suck at it. They don’t excel at it. They have gear issues. They have skill issues. Everyone screams that its been nerfed, or requires the 4 piece to be good, or blah blah blah.
Claims of it being nerfed fill the forums.
Not sure where you’re going with this. Just because people play a spec at it’s highest optimal level doesn’t make a spec meta necessarily. If the kit is garbage then it will be garbage. Ele just happened to have a banger kit.
Not to mention that most of the people that were blasting on beta were long-time ele shaman players.
I mean got nerfed. People dooming that it’s dead in the raid are completely overreacting. But nerfs plus the Searing Flame fix effect on Lava Surge has massively hampered it’s M+ damage profile.
This is the most important thing.
I don’t understand why some people in the Shaman community seem content with the current state of the spec. It feels like they don’t want it to thrive outside of raids. The nerfs to Lava Burst and Earthquake were excessive, making our 2-piece bonus useless. However, the real issue is the Lava Surge proc rate, which makes the class clunky. Playing the class in pre-patch compared to the beta with current tuning is like night and day. Blizzard should revert the Lava Surge proc rate to how it is on live servers to improve the spec significantly.
The thing is, based on their statements regarding the Ele talent revamp when it was announced on the 2nd, this is what they wanted from the start. They want to disincentivize chain-casting Lava Bursts in AoE. This wasn’t a change or adjustment; it was a bug fix. I guess that they want us to cast Chain Lighting to CDR Primordial Wave to use it more frequently, which is why they nerfed its effectiveness because they assumed we’d be using it on some 15-20 second cycle instead of the static 30.
I very much want it to play well in M+ given I will be in there multiple hours a week outside of raid. The nerfs are indeed too steep but you’re out of your mind to think we weren’t going to have some of our numbers lowered. The biggest issue is that is was a bump down in our raid performance and shot in the kneecaps in M+/AoE/Cleave.
This x1000.
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I understand that the devs might have intended for Lava Surge procs to occur less frequently, but this negatively impacts gameplay. It’s similar to the mage arcane spec situation. When the community indicates that a spec plays and feels better in a certain way, developers should consider maintaining those aspects, just as they did with the mage community.
I totally agree that our numbers need tuning. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. The nerfs to Lava Burst and Earthquake were excessive; a 15% reduction would have been sufficient, similar to how Warlocks’ Rain of Fire is currently managed. The devs nerfed it slightly and will monitor its impact for future adjustments. This incremental approach is how it should be done, rather than making drastic changes that significantly disrupt gameplay. Gradual tuning allows for better balance without making the class feel bad to play.
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Ageed. It just feels bad that they go with this tunning pass while simultaneously going, “btw your specs have been bugged and it’s been causing you to overperform and not play as intended”. It would be like if they went up to Storm Build Enahnce players and told them “actually you’re not supposed to spam stormstrike” despite crafting a build that relies on it. It’s just mind-boggling at this point. I wish they had fixed this early on giving us time to test and provide feedback and THEN went on to tuning. It’s just another tally on the board for how borked they have handled Shaman as a whole throughout alpha and beta. There is still time, and hopefully, some changes could come to alleviate this.
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I hope Blizzard listens to feedback, but I understand your concern. The Shaman community does seem fragmented, which can make it challenging for clear and unified feedback to reach the developers. A united approach would help ensure that our voices are heard and that constructive suggestions are considered. We need to come together, highlight the key issues, and propose balanced solutions to improve the gameplay experience for all Shaman players. Unity and clear communication are essential for driving positive changes.
That is the hope. I will admit I am very bitter, having mained Enhance the whole of DF and constantly having to butt heads with those that want Elementalist deleted from the game because Stormstrike doesn’t hit as hard as Elemental Blast. Moving over to Ele, I see the same patterns emerge in a very similar manner.
Another significant issue is that people are very beholden to their ideas of what a Shaman spec in terms of aesthetic (i.e. fire vs lightning for ele) and that very much influences what they believe the gameplay style should be. Ask one person and it should be only lightning spells with a few other elemental abilities, ask another and they believe Shamans should utilize all of the elements with maybe leaning towards one or the other. Hell, another might not care at all provided it gets results and the gameplay loop is intuitive despite spamming one ability. One Enhance player thinks we should only hit Stormstrike and hope for RNG like the old days, while another enjoys the “melee attacks enhancing our spells” style that it has fallen into. A large portion of the beta feedback thread is demonstrative of this.
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