MSW maximum stacks use to be 10, this was a great change that the majority in the community agreed with. It allowed us room to manoeuvre and gave less risk of wasting MSW generation.
Today in the latest build they’ve nerfed it back down to 5 maximum stacks.
Exactly one week ago they said this,
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feedback-shaman-class-changes/490695/422?u=razaron-herod
Previously the stack values were bugged, but like Blizzard said, this was a bug. Instead of fixing the bug they’ve reverted us back to 5 maximum stacks. I believe this is taking the spec backwards, can Blizzard please give their thinking behind this reversion?
4 Likes
I imagine this is in light of the xpac shipping in 4 weeks. Rather than continue to hammer away at the coding, it was probably easier/faster to revert to 5 stacks then to continue spending time to figure out how to make 10 stacks work with the benefit capped at 5. They have to start making calls that will allow them to ship the most “complete” product at this point.
It really does suck though, because having that overflow was going to be super useful.
2 Likes
I can’t wait to be balanced around more RNG instead of stormstrike just hitting hard by itself.
1 Like
At least revert the 50% nerf to baseline spell casts then. #(%!#)(%*_!)#(%
1 Like
I agree, I think this was a easy fix for them to perform. In my mind raising the maximum stacks of MSW was one of the greatest changes they made to Enhancement shamans in Shadowlands. Now they’ve taken it away and I’m really questioning their thinking behind this?
I’d also like them to address our survivability, posts are littered all over the forums and yet nothing has been said about it. Please be more open with your changes Blizzard, in fact Heroes of the Storm do a amazing thing with their Hero changes and actually provide feedback on why they did what they did. Every week I seem to see the most random of changes and I’m scratching my head thinking, why?
Sadly this is an overall nerf then in our damage as we now just do base damage/healing when we use five stacks instead of 150% at ten stacks. Because as I’m sure you saw they didn’t make any mention of reverting the hidden -50% damage/healing modifier for all Maelstrom Weapon related abilities.
Was legitimately looking forward to seeing if this build had answered any of the issues mentioned on these Forums only to see that Blizz threw out the spillover portion of Maelstrom Weapon because they didn’t want to code it properly, and we randomly got Stormflurry back??? Why? Who even asked for this to come back? No one.
As a side note while everyone is getting major cooldowns taken off the GCD Ancestral Guidance for ele got removed the GCD as well! Not Ascendance, Wolves, Fire Ele, Name a resto totem. Nope just a talent no one uses!
1 Like
Stormflurry is basically just a 10% buff to stormstrike damage but with a big dose of RNG. I guess to throw a bone to the 2-H WF crowd that want to randomly hit harder?
edit: if your proc stormflurry and you are spec’d into elemental assault, do you get a MSW stack for each hit?
I doubt it would be 100% per hit with the talent, but i can see every additional hit being able to proc a stack.
Edit: Now if only they’d just give us the simple things we asked for… Hell they could even take the Ancestral Guidance talent, make it leech, and give it to Enhancement/Elemental as a baseline ability that would be a nice defensive.
Still currently bugged in the latest build, getting two MSW buffs. One stacks to 10, the other to 5.
When you take the one that stacks to 10 down to 5 they combined, so both buffs will be at 5 MSW and when you use the next 5 stacks they both are depleted.
1 Like
MSW seems to be fixed for me. Still stacks to 10 on beta but no longer benefits from more than 5 stacks.
1 Like
Haven’t got round to beta yet, if that’s the case then this thread should be closed. I do hope it is.
Also, Blizzard. Really need to do better job on your patchnotes. 
That was a jedi mind-trick to make us feel grateful for what we have. ;p
1 Like
Blue post confirmed that it’s a tooltip error (the tooltip is pointing to the second MSW buff that only goes up to 5 stacks, that will be hidden later):
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feedback-shaman-class-changes/490695/552?u=raigor-turalyon
Still, I really hope they look at the tuning.
Death to the hidden -50% damage/healing modifier they added when they put in the scaling damage/healing increase!
MY FELLOW SHAMANS DO NOT BE FOOLED THE DAMAGE YOU DO AT 5 STACKS OF MAELSTROM IS JUST THE BASE DAMAGE YOU WOULD HAVE DONE BEFORE!
Blue Post quote from mmo-champion when the change was put in.
- Each stack of Maelstrom Weapon now grants increased damage and/or healing to the abilities Maelstrom Weapon effects in addition to the cast time reduction.
- Abilities that are altered by Maelstrom Weapon have had their baseline damage or healing values reduced.
www mmo-champion com/content/9192-Shadowlands-Class-Changes
Where I got the quote from add “.” where needed.
4 Likes
Unfortunately for pvp leech isn’t what a shaman needs. I think even in pve if its high m+ you’ll get one shot anyway so leech would do nothing. Not sure on raids though. Sounds good for world play!