Does the statement ring a bell - “You think you do, but don’t”? Blizzard KNOWS better than those playing the game in terms of overall enjoyment.
For elemental: I like the removal of electrified shocks, and I like the new thunderstrike ward and the return of earthen rage. Other than that I’m disliking the changes.
I suspect that icefury is still gonna be mandatory which sucks because I personally find that playing around flux melting is even worse than playing with electrified shocks. The most fun I’m having with elemental right now is in M+ with the current 4 set bonus and no use of icefury/frost shock at ALL. It feels great, just tons of fast lava bursts and earth shock spams for single target. Hoping that we see some more changes.
Also the lack of animation updates is so sad. I really thought this would be our chance at finally getting new lightning bolt and ascendance animations at the very least, and tempest is still so bland. Cries
I won’t miss the maintenance debuff from electrified shocks, but I will miss frost shock cleaving. Icefury on the beta is already contributing a lot of damage, but I wish they could bake in frost shocks empowered by icefury to cleave again.
After reading your responses and taking another look, my scores are even lower: Enhance C, Resto D+, Ele F.
While Feral Lunge and Windfury Totem being baseline were my initial reasons for a higher score for Enhance, the class tree really really sucks, especially for Enhance, so much so that realistically I think every spec would just be better with the original class tree. The placement of Tremor Totem and Spiritwalker’s Grace in particular are terrible for everyone, but Enhance in particular. Also, having to run Totemic Projection if you want to be able to minmax the Totemic Hero talents as Enhance is again, just more evidence that whoever made these changes doesn’t play Shaman at a high level in all content, if at all.
Same for Resto, I personally never run Healing Wave, and I only use Healing Surge maybe once per dungeon, and maybe once per boss fight in raids, and I’m talking 12’s+ in S4 DF, as well as 90+ parses as Resto on Mythic awakened raids, WITHOUT full gear, or doing degen overhealing Cloudburst strats, so why are base versions of Master of the Elements, Improved Earthliving Weapon, and Whirling Elements only able to be procced by Healing Surge? Terrible.
Ele, I could type it all up again, but people complaining about Icefury, which I didn’t even mention, really does just cement the changes as F, like honestly, even worse than Druids losing Claws of Shirvallah, which I get was for “lore” reasons, but honestly, if “lore” reasons make your game terrible, you should just ignore them and do what’s fun, period, end of story, and I’m sorry, these changes? Having to hard cast more? NOT! FUN!
They are ok. wouldnt go as far as saying fantastic there is still huge amount of work to do. Healing wave shouldn’t be a talent. All other healer got their big heal baseline why cant we.
Still too many 2 point node.
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EX, ACT, LY, BASELINE! BOOM! That would allow people who want to use it the option, and it solves my issue of having it connected to Spirit Link.
It would also allow me to pick up Master of the Elements without having to sacrifice something more valuable.
I mean Holy Priest got Greater Heal baseline.
Pally got Holy Light baseline.
Druid don really use a big cast heal.
Disc doesnt also.
Dractyr doesnt also.
The last one is us shammy and we the only one who has to taent into it
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Well sure but with Blizzard you gotta take your wins or it becomes too ridiculous and some of these new talents are very high quality ones so ill take it.
I mean I like a mix of both builds but I’m so sick of the “QQ I like pushing 3 buttons only” crowd for Ele. I don’t see a way for them to implement that as an actual build without keeping you still at a low target cap. And last time I played Fury warrior was in Legion but the rotation felt similar in a minimal button rotation that you smash mostly the same keys. Maybe go download a private server if Fury isn’t like that anymore and you can go play that or stay in S3/S4 of DF.
How can you say that a build that abuses a tier set is the best? Your spenders didn’t even mean much of anything because of this build and you didn’t touch your other CORE abilities almost at all. How is that fun? You can also check out SV hunter w/ Wildfire Bombs.
Well Enhance is dead unless Pwave is the core spec build and it cranks since Silken Court 2 target spread cleave fight with add sets.
I dont disagree with that its a little win for sure.
Still hope its not defenitive tough. Most other class got their 2 points reduces by ALOT. I’d like to see a bit more of Legion Artifact effect added to our tree like majority of other classes.
Queens Decree or Tidal Pool back
Shaman : Dead On Arrival.
Let’s hope the devs got some Ankh’s left.
Thunderstrike Ward and Earthen rage probably need some tuning because the damage of it is so low, but I guess if you’re activating it a lot it’s not too bad. More of an overall damage at the end of the dungeon than something impactful in the moment.
Icefury, even in M+ is really only gonna be used in more Single Target situations than in AoE. Trying to weave in Frost Shocks during DRE windows or Ascendance isn’t really great so the times you actually use Frost Shock feel impactful and prevent you from needing to cast a lightning bolt which would do less damage than an Icefury Frost Shock anyway.
I also really like the S3 & S4 tier sets of Ele right now, but that build currently doesn’t exist in TWW because they are removing Windspeaker’s Lava Resurgence which gives of Lava Surge procs after our spenders, and they are removing Rolling Magma which gives us a lot of CDR on primordial wave.
The ascendance animation definitely needs an update, I’ve said it before, it just looks like the Mage tier set from Bastion of Twilight. Lightning bolt is fine to me, especially with it activating thunder strike animations with other talents like lightning rod.
Tempest? Yeah I haven’t played Stormbringer enough to even care. I just want my Primordial Wave + lava burst spam back 
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Well I think its a bug but The 20% Imbue buuf dosnt seem to affect Thunderstrike Ward at the moment which I reported cause it be dumb if Shield imbue arenbt considered ‘‘weapon’’ imbue
Overall I like the changes to elemental. I’m by no means an expert on this spec but I do like to push when I’m playing.
I like that they’re trying to reduce the lava burst spam and bring the other half of the class back into the spec. I am a little worried about their goal of maintaining three seperate playstyles and builds though. That seems like a massive tuning problem and at least one of these builds will probably be unviable in any content. My question would be whats the point of making three builds then? I would personally just do the two and try to balance them into unique, fun builds themselves.
It seems like blizz is trying to keep everyone happy with these changes and I’m worried its going to end up with nobody happy. I wish they would just pick a direction for elemental and go all in on it. Either we’re a storm caster, a semi fire mage, or an elemental weaver. Personally I want the weaver direction to win. I imagine an spec where weaving is our “core” build, and branching into fire or lightning only enhances that part of the spec, instead of it taking over the spec
So the things I like:
-Our elementals are actual cooldowns now! They’re not amazingly cool, but the 10% dmg buff is still appreciated
-Axing the horrible lava burst spam build! that was the worst iteration of this spec I have ever seen, and I can’t wait to spit on its grave
-Icefury seems much more fun in this iteration. The electified shocks talent wasn’t super fun, and with the other changes added weaving in icefury should be pretty cool
-The raid buff is everything we asked for! Sorry enhance, but you have to share that raid spot with the rest of us now
-The mastery change could possibly be the reason our spenders become useful again! the overloads made it so our builders were always our top priority and hopefully the spenders can be tuned more agressively now
-the new lightning talents visually look good and its fun to see my enemies consumed by lightning. Many of the talents that do this need tuning though, since the damage is pretty bad
-earthen rage rocks and I want it in all my ST builds
-Lightning shield isn’t useless anymore!
-Getting lots of smaller elementals all the time is great, Visually they make me feel more like a commander of the elements without making me feel like a demo lock
Things I don’t like/am worried about:
-With the mastery change our overloads do way less damage. There are currently many talents in the ele spec tree that buff overload damage. This seems silly to me, why waste multiple talents to buff part of the spec that at this point, is only there for the cool visual rather than the damage? I’d rather see these be reworked into something that interacts with more important parts of our kit
-maelstrom generation was maybe hit a bit to hard. Unless our spenders are doing 5% of a raid bosses HP with each cast, the build up to them may not feel worth it at this rate
-This may be addressed already, but with the three builds our desired stats need need to be focused on heavily. In DF our lava burst builds want nothing but mastery and our lightning builds want crit. With the addition of a third build we need to have our abilities tweaked in a way that makes one stat universally needed for all of them. It’s totally fair to ask two different specs to hunt down different gear and stats, it’s unfair to ask a single spec to hunt down different gear and stats to play the whole spec well. I want to be able to swap builds at a moments notice and have my gear still be BIS for whatever I’m doing
-DRE wasn’t taken out behind the shed and shot. I would rather DRE be changed into a CD reduction ability for ascendance rather than keep it as its random proc. Every lava burst used reduces the CD of acendance by 1 second or something. I want to have full control of my burst CD and I hate seeing this proc at the end of a pack
-our new defensives seem overly complicated. The totem is good but it needs serious tuning in order to deserve its two minute CD. The 5% DR on our eles is a little odd, its such a small amount tied into a burst CD. I’d rather not have to think about holding a dmg amp ability in order to survive a future mechanic. This also goes for the healing stream totem DR. It’s a tiny amount and only lasts 3 seconds. I wish you’d remove these and instead take a look at ahnk instead. MoP remix has an ahnk ability on a two minute CD that any class can use. It feels like an actual defensive in remix and I wish that could be ported over to the real game also. I get that you’re worried about adding in another cheat death, but that can be solved. “taking over double you’re max HP in a single hit will not trigger ahnk” would work to stop shamans from solo soaking mechanics, while still keeping it usefull for most damage a healer or dps would normally be taking. The wind shear DR is great for M+ but in raid its almost useless. This may end up being fine but it is something to keep an eye on
-With the removal of the lava burst build our combat mobility has dropped a lot. I love that lava burst isn’t the entire spec! but losing the mobility does hurt. I’m not sure how I’d fix this but its still a pain point in the spec that I think needs to be adressed
-with the removal of the lava burst spam the farseer tree has been nerfed massively. The ancestors spawn off of our LvB casts and reducing those, reduces our ancestors. Both hero talent trees have been in desperate need of a second look even before the rework, but now they need one more than ever, Farseer in particular. I’ve never been more hopeful regarding eles future and I hope updates to the hero talents are coming soon
Things I would like to see happen:
-Flame shock spread needs to be updated. When I look at fire elemental and ask “what makes this fun to play?” spreading flame shock isn’t it. Watching lava bursts fly everywhere is the fun part, but the annoyance of spreading flame shock first does take away from it. Liquid magma totem is an amazing ability that with a few small tweaks, could fix everything instantly. Reduce the CD so we don’t have to path down the class tree in order to get a CD reset for it, it just makes it complicated for the sake of complication. Make it last longer and constantly spit out flame shocks instead of only three. I don’t care about the target cap, I just want to make it more fun to reach that cap
-Update the visuals for ascendance and lightning bolt. This has been wanted for so long I can’t remember a time before the begging. Wow is a video game that’s designed to be fun. Can you please just do the thing that that’s fun? You may have dev time restraints, but literal years of asking makes me think that time can be made for this. This is the issue where I feel physically tired talking about it because the refusal to do it makes no sense and it feels like I’m asking a brick wall to answer me
I look forward to dev notes again! I hope our feedback is still useful and we continue to see improvements to the spec over the next few weeks
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Good insights. Thanks.
I don’t have beta so no opp to check out how the rotation feels or the different combos available, but I am really liking the design ideas they are putting out. Excited to main shaman again.
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I don’t like the changes. they say they wanted people to be able to focus on a lightning build but icefury requires lavaburst now and so fire is still a requirement. All the changes did was make sure we had to waste talent points if we wanted to do a lightning only build. There is no longer a way to remove lavaburst from our bars. That makes me angry. lightning is my jam and this is the only class that uses lightning and yet they added lavaburst in wrath, shaman has been bad ever since. at lease with the dragonflight talent layout you only had to burn like 2 talent points to make a real lightning bolt build work and it was nearly as strong as normal builds, but thats not possible anymore. Tempest should have replaced lavaburst and functioned like it, not be a change to lightningbolt based off maelstrom use. I really wish they would give us a glyph that allowed us to change lavaburst into a lightning spell of somekind, or give us a choice node about lavaburst vs lightningstrike or something. change flameshock into thunder shock, drop the earth and ice stuff too.
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I’m sure the 2h/tank/delete-pwave crowd will have something oh so well thought out (absolutely stupid) to say about it, but I’ll leave this here for anyone who hasn’t seen it:
Sad when the people who comment know more than the one writing the article. Scroll down and look at what Panseluta1 typed out for instance, or Seniaa. DCCXVIII also raises a good point about more trinkets needing both Intellect and Agility. The article itself is just typical Blizz dk scking behavior: https://www.wowhead.com/news/first-impression-of-the-elemental-shaman-rework-in-the-war-within-guide-writer-344746#comments
Blizz is hilarious. I’m a Lava Burst spam, Windspeaker’s Lava Resurgence enjoyer, but even the pure lightning crowd hates the Shaman changes. I had a really solid post that was getting likes, but apparently you can’t insult Blizz, or the people who defend Blizz’s silly decisions, AT ALL.
Literally everything would be better if you could put all of the trees, class tree included, back to how they were, and simply reduce certain nodes from two points of investment to one. Any new talents should realistically be off to the side, kind of like how pvp talents are, since apparently Blizz’s ability to create talent pathing is even worse than their ability to create good story/cinematics during Dragonflight. (I still have multiple live in-game cinematics saved where “characters” are blue or purple checkered cubes; not that that really matters though, since all they really do is threaten, brag, cry, or talk about friends/family. The lack of cool cinematics, like swords being plunged into planets, or Illidan lasering a Naaru/blocking a sword with his bare hand is readily apparent.) Anyways, speaking of new talents, Ele needs a more reliable way to spread Flame Shock than Liquid Magma Totem, and Resto needs every ability that is “Healing Surge dependent” to proc off of Riptide/Chain Heal either in addition to, or instead of, Healing Surge.
Enhance specific tree is the least bad, just please put class tree back to how it was, except again, with zero “two point” nodes, and the new talents off to the side somehow, since again, Blizz, you suck a** with talent pathing.