how is it backwards? that’s how ele works right now with 3x IP
I much prefer lightning bolt being the primary damage dealer and lavaburst being supplementary.
It is backwards and I’ve held me tongue a bit re: the Elemental changes.
The idea behind the Legion rework was to make the only Lightning caster actually cast Lightning regularly instead of look like a knock off Fire Mage. Now, there’s nothing wrong with reinforcing the IPx3 playstyle, but it does feel like a massive reversal to pre-Legion with no net change to the spec.
Ironically what’s backward is suggesting the spec play like it did in classic. In 8.0 before IPx3 when we took primal storm ele and just spammed LB was the worst and most boring the spec has played in the entirety of this game imho.
The people who constantly whine about us not being a “lightning based caster” need to stop actively trying to butcher the play style of the spec and instead just ask for a glyph to change Lburst from fire to lightning visuals.
I would like to have to not machine gun out lavabursts to be relevent. I dont want lightning bolt to hit like a noodle and have to rely on things like stormkeeper to make it instant +100% damage and 100% overload and still feel worse than a lavaburst. I want lightning bolt to be relevent.
The game just isn’t like that anymore. Fireball, Frostbolt, Wrath and shadowbolt are all just filler/builder spells for their spec/classes. The only caster spec that has 1 spell doing most of the damage is arcane.
If you make LB stronger then you have to take damage away from other spells. If LBurst does less than LB, then it’s not worth using like how it was in 8.0. If you take damage away from earth shock, then our build up is even less rewarding than it already is (which it isn’t). Lowering Surge procs reduces our mobility and we’re already a slow class because of that mobility we get from it (and icefury).
It’s just not as simple as “make LB do more damage”. We would basically need a complete redesign to make that work and the main question to that is “why?”. The spec has been one of the few to be in a good spot rotation and damage wise. We don’t need or should have resources wasted on a redesign.
I totally agree with this. I liked 8.0, 8.1 ele shaman. Yes it was a spammy build, but it was the first time lightning bolt actually felt useful. Ideally, as a mastery of the elements, lava burst and lightning bolt do similar damage. Then it doesn’t feel like all your damage is in one ability that you are constantly having to spam with procs–sounds pretty similar to lightning bolt spam.
Make them both even so it feels good to cast both of them.
Their are plenty of spells they can pull from, I personally say Fire elemental.
I believe how you gear and what talents you choose should shift you game play between a heavy lightning focus or a heavy lava burst.
The problem with that is there isn’t much damage to take from fire ele. Looking at my logs it only does around ~5% of my damage.
I agree with the talents but this is blizzard we’re talking about, they can barely keep current talents balanced let alone allow us to have 2 different builds from them lol. I feel like there’s a few specs that could benefit from that like MM hunter having an old surv build but yeah, I wouldn’t trust blizzard to put in that level of work. One build is always going to be better as well, but I assume you mean if they were both close enough that it didn’t matter.
All you have to do is look at the April fools joke patch notes to know how they feel about Shaman.
Yes.
That does remind me there was talk about a build where you take visions of perfection and primal storm ele and it was close or even better than IPx3 if you built around it. I imagine that’ll go away though next xpac though.
Agreed. I like flinging instant lava burst as much as anybody. But I rolled an elemental shaman for their lightning powers in the first place.
Warcraft3, Orcs shaman, lightning galore. Always loved that theme.
I think they’re completely missing the mark here. There should be an option to focus your build around LavaBurst if you want it. And there should be an option to focus on lightning as well.
I mean, it’s almost as if they dont know there are talents in the game, that could be used for just that.
But this is exactly why they’re reverting. The whole ramp-up to cast a strong overpowered instant nuke is what makes casters feel so awful to play nowadays.
Lightning Bolt doesn’t have to be stronger than Lava Burst, but it doesn’t have to be miles behind it either. Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning should just deal good damage. They shouldn’t be filler resource spells, they need to feel powerful like they did in the past.
Things like Icefury and Master of Elements add flavor to our spells which makes the spec feel less spammy. I’d rather not have to rely on unnecessary ramp-up and procs to deal any damage.
I like it … I hate the whole build - spender style of playing . Give me consistent damage and a smooth rotation .
I only picked up ele around mythic jaina prog so I don’t have the same experience that you all do with Ascendant, Primals, etc. I haven’t played ele prior to now since MoP as an off spec.
“Lightning based caster” doesn’t really strike me as fun gameplay though if it’s going to be the Primal Storm ele type of gameplay we currently have. IPx3 aside, the Earthshock (lava shock) reliance made Arenas feel like trash, and eye of the storm is as fire and forget as things come. There’s nothing to do but stand and spam 1 button, you BOTE & EOTS on a timer, your not even refreshing dots during your lb window …
MoE & Icefury is probably the most enjoyable build for me. I’d like to see more happen around chain lightning though personally.
I mean, if anything, Ele will become more of a lightning caster now, since due to not being limited by being resource builders Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning will be able to be buffed and actually feel powerful without overshadowing Earth Shock and Earthquake.
This is the other extreme which is also not okay. When I say “Lightning spam” I don’t want to go back to TBC either, where the only thing you ever cast in raid was Lightning Bolt, and sometimes Bloodlust and Lesser Healing Wave.
With enough Haste and in endgame content in Legion/BfA, it feels that the spec turns into a LvB machine gun because Lava Surge keeps proccing when there are multiple, durable enemies in an encounter, something a lot more common today than in the past.
It feels like 40% of your casts are Lava Burst or Flame Shock, whereas 40% is Lightning/Earth and 20% is utility. If these numbers are accurate, I would prefer if the split was more like 25% Fire / 50% Nature / 25% utility, that’s all. But, perhaps the loss of Igneous Potential will be enough to move things in this direction.
I agree with this completely.
Especially regarding Chain Lightning. I would love if Fulmination and Seismic Thunder were merged – this way you can choose to use ES or EQ as the situation calls for it, like with Maelstrom today – but otherwise Chain Lightning doesn’t have any interesting effects or enhancements in the toolkit.
I do get wanting to cast LB more frequently, but it just feels so slooooow and underwhelming to me. Unless they can change that, I’m pretty happy with the balance between fire/earth spells that I cast now, and I particularly enjoy playing with Icefury in the mix as well.
It sounds like they’re trying to revert back to a more MoP-style gameplay, where lightning bolt still did decent damage, but lavaburst hit extremely hard and it felt really good to get a surge proc and fire another one. You could choose to Earth Shock at any time and spend your fulmination stacks for extra damage if you felt it was necessary.
I welcome any changes that bring lavaburst back to its former glory, especially in pvp.