make it do 3 seconds of flame shock’s damage instantly but also make lashing flames apply to target before in consumes the time.
also have frost shock put a debuff on the target for extra frost damage on your next stormstrike. like a mini shatter mechanic.
^bump. Shaman class designer failed to give enhancement windows for burst in their rotation besides ascendance which is another no brainer choice. That’s why we can’t use anything other than doomwinds for viability.
Or maybe make storm strike increase nature damage and its crit? That way, lightning bolts feel more meaningful, and before storm strike had interaction with lightning bolt anyway.
now as for Lava Lash I have no idea what’s the purpose of this spell specifically as it does nothing but deal fire damage and acts as a weak filler on a 10 second CD. I agree it should have some sort of interaction with flame shock.
Enhancement definitely feels like it’s missing something, the spec doesn’t feel very good outside of stormbringer procs.
Legit exists to pigeon-hole us into dual-wielding and using flametongue on the off-hand.
Everyone saw first hand they still can’t balance windfury on both hands.
It serves as an aoe.
After crash lightning your lava lash and stormstrike hit all enemies in your crash. If you have spread flame shock before hand, it does twice as much damage. If you have hot hands and the conduit, and fire nova totem, you “should” do a beastly amount of fire damage.
Unfortunately, even if you could spread enough to make it work, it’s a massive setup before doing damage. It makes unholy dk seems simple, and the setup will ground your single target so much that you won’t be viable for any content.
It has a use, it’s just severely handicapped and undertuned.
Fire nova is not a viable build atm by any means, and hot hands isn’t taken over stormflurry at any situation either. During AOE u avoid using lava lash as much aa u can unless u have no stormstrike, crash lightning, or chain lightning to use or hell even frost shock if u are running hail storm.
This doesn’t change the fact that the baseline lava lash is absolutely useless and underwhelming looking at its damage, CD, and interaction with the spec.
Imagine that u need to pick a talent to justify the viability of an ability… Doesn’t sound right no? Enhancement overall is missing something outside of stormbringer procs, the fillers we use are there to fill the downtime between procs, and notice when RNG is against you, downtime starts becoming a problem and your dps will greatly suffer.
Just going to put one of my other posts in here detailing how the game would be if Blizz just removed Lava Lash and replaced it with Lava Burst. Which they should do.
Giving Enhancement Lava Burst would just promote a flame shock and kite playstyle, waiting for lava burst procs.
Lava Lash damage just needs to be competitive. There is nothing else wrong with it.
Enhancement having RNG lava surge procs would be redundant to MSW.
If you aren’t going to copy it from elemental than it makes zero sense to bring to enhancement as the spec already struggles with it’s melee identity.
Fixing lava lash dmg fixes lava lash. It doesn’t need to be ranged. It doesn’t need to have crazy base mechanics added on. It just needs to hit appropriately hard for the length of cooldown that it has.
It’s damage is the only thing people complain about.
You are asking for a melee spec with only 2 melee abilities to lose one of them.
Have you seen the layers upon layers of dmg increasing effects that have been in the game anytime Lava Lash’s damage was ever “good”? Blizz seems to have this weird affliction where Lava Lash can’t just be a "do damage every x seconds* nah man can’t be that. They feel compelled to make us have set up before Lava Lash can do something other than “barely better than a frost shock” lol.
Edit: To that point I’m pretty sure even over Windfury and Stormstrike which had 2 xpacs on Lava Lash. Lava Lash is the highest “constantly changed” ability of Enhancement.
Edit #2: I’m all for Lava Lash just being a good button to press its just that I know blizz doesn’t understand how to do that without tacking on 4+ damage increasing effects along the way.
I am aware, but blizzard also wants there to be some form of synergy between abilities as seen by
Flametongue + lava lash
Lava Lash + searing flames x 5
Lava Lash + spreading flame shock for Fire Nova
Lava Lash + Primal Primer x 3
Lava Lash + Hot hands
I am aware. We just need to make it known that the synergy of doing more damage with flametongue active is all we need, rather than convoluted abilities.
Things like hot hands gimp its damage because hot Hands (+lava actuators) CAN crit for 11-12k, which bypasses armor. This is rare, but it exists, which I think is the current reason its damage is kept low baseline.
If they just got rid of the fluff, made it decent baseline, double dmg with flametongue — that’s enough for every Enhance.
With the current expansion, they shot themselves in the foot because doing anything that makes Windfury look lucrative will guarantee players go to that, because Windfury is the reason so many of us rolled enhance to begin with. Doom Winds makes it hard to want to play anything else (including lava actuators hot hands lashing flames even if its damage WAS good) because Windfury is iconic and awesome.
Oh trust me its been pointed out many a time by myself and others how convoluted it is to get Lava Lash to do “good” damage. With double fire dogs/primal act at max stacks/hot hands/on use PvP trinket I’ve crit a person for 16k you add in the dot that ticked for 2.8k every second after that (Fire wolves dot effect stack so with 2 you deal 70% instead of 35%) was pretty busted.
The set up to do that though was so loooooooooooooooooong.
I’m legit thrilled to hear that there’s someone out there rocking Primal Lava Actuators and making it work for them!
With Lava Lash getting a 40% buff, Primal actuators might be a solid alternative to do winds on pure single-target only. The Lava lash buff is a step in the right direction, it’s good that Blizzard realized that LL is currently underwhelming looking at its damage and CD.
I feel like lava lash should be something similar to Icestrike! although ice strike isn’t competitive atm, regardless it hits hard and it resets your shocks.
Lava Lash should be our second hardest hitting ability behind Sundering. It should feel bursty and satisfying to press. Like it used to be before legion.
Rising sun kick does 4K damage easy with a lower CD and applying a mortal strike. Lava Lash should hit at bare minimum the same.
That’s the only thing Lava Lash needs.
40% is nothing when LL crits rarely hit for much more than 1k. The ability needs to be buffed about 600%, this would make hits without flametongue about 3k, hits with flametongue about 6k, and crits with flametongue about 12k, or something like that. Being that it’s on a fairly long cooldown and has no synergies with anything except crash lightning for aoe, and our aoe is already pretty terrible, this would likely only increase our overall dps by 300-500.
40% is basically a slap in the face, it tells us “yes, we know it’s really not good at the moment”, but it also says “and we don’t really care, be happy with what you got”.
they don’t need to remove lava lash, it just needs to be buffed more, spread flameshock, or/and Hot Hand made baseline.
been hitting 15k lava lashes since the update using elemental spirits & mastery proc soul bind (Theotar, Venthyr). the build can get ludicrous with the right rng.