Patch notes

Classes Shaman
1
  • SHAMAN
    • Elemental
      • Earthquake – Damage reduced by 25%.
      • Chain Lightning – Damage increased by 25%. (Elemental only)
      • Lava Beam – Damage increased by 25%.
      • Lightning Bolt – Damage reduced by 20%. (Elemental only)
      • Lava Burst – Damage reduced by 20%. (Elemental only)
      • Earth Shock – Damage reduced by 20%.
      • Elemental Blast – Damage reduced by 20%. (Elemental only)
      • Lightning Rod – Deals 20% of Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt damage (was 25%).
      • New Talent – Heat Wave: Casting Primordial Wave triggers Lava Surge immediately and every 3 seconds for 12 seconds.
      • Primal Storm Elemental no longer moves slower than other Elementals after engaging in combat.
      • Earthquake damage reduced by 40%.
        • Developers’ note: This is not intended to be a nerf, but a damage profile adjustment. Earthquake dominates Elemental’s AoE damage profile in Shadowlands. We’ve also added talents in Dragonflight that improve Earthquake’s output such as Unrelenting Calamity, Eye of the Storm, and Mountains Will Fall which would have continued this trend. The goal is to allow for abilities like Chain Lightning, Lightning Rod, Frost Shock (with Electrified Shocks), Flame Shock, and Lava Burst to contribute more towards Elemental’s AoE.
      • Rolling Magma’s Lava Burst and Lava Burst Overload damage now reduces the cooldown of Primordial Wave by 0.2 seconds/0.5 seconds (was from 0.5 seconds/1 second).
        • Developers’ note: The interactions are with Primordial Wave and Ascendance are intentional, but the cooldown reduction was initially tuned too high.
    • Enhancement
      • Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
      • Stormstrike now replaces Primal Strike.
      • Doom Winds now does some minor damage when you activate it.
      • Ice Strike’s Frost Shock buff now highlights Frost Shock
      • Alpha Wolf now works with Chain Lightning, rather than Crash Lightning.
      • Improved Stormbringer renamed Stormblast.
      • Unruly Winds chance raised to 100%.
      • Ascendance is now a choice node with Deeply Rooted Elements.
      • Thorim’s Invocation now remembers whether you last used Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning, and will use that spell instead of always Lightning Bolt.
      • Chain Lightning Rank 2 has been added into the Chain Lightning/Crash Lightning interactions and is no longer a talent.
      • New Talent: Crashing Storms – Chain Lightning jumps to 2 additional targets, and also increases Crash Lightning damage by 40%.
      • Forceful winds is now 45% damage per stack (was 35%).
      • Gathering Storms is now a 1-point talent (was 2). Value increased to 15%, and there’s a maximum of 10 stacks of Gathering Storms.
      • Hot Hand is now a 2-point talent (was 1).
      • Elemental Assault adjusted to be 10/20% Stormstrike damage (was 7/15%). Maelstrom weapon chance is now 50/100% per rank.
      • Lava Burst is affected by Enhancement mastery.
      • Primal Primer is no longer an option on the tree.
      • Hailstorm now gains bonus damage from up to 10 Maelstrom Weapon charges spent to work better with Overflowing Maelstrom. The bonus targets is still capped at 5.
      • Nature’s Fury now works correctly with the immediate damage from Ascendance.
      • Feral Spirits is now a 90 second cooldown.
      • Elemental Spirits no longer reduces Feral Spirit cooldown.
    • Restoration
      • Water Totem Mastery – Consuming Tidal Waves reduces the cooldown of Cloudburst, Healing Stream, Healing Tide, Mana Spring, Mana Tide, and Poison Cleansing Totem by 0.5 seconds (was 0.25 seconds).
      • Cloudburst Totem now converts 30% of stored healing (was 20%) and cooldown increased to 45 seconds (was 30 seconds).
        • Developers’ note: With some new talents that interact with Cloudburst Totem like Call of the Elements, Totemic Surge, and Totemic Focus, we feel its effectiveness needs to be decreased. We started with its healing effectiveness initially but after some feedback believe it’s more important for each totem cast to feel meaningful rather than having more uses of the totem.
    • Developers’ note: With the Shaman talent trees in Dragonflight, we wanted to hone in on some core concepts that are unique to the class. Totems have long been a special thing for Shaman, and we’re giving some new options to manipulate your totems position, radius, duration, cleanse poisons, or even potentially reset the cooldown. We’re bringing back Alpha Wolf for Enhancement Shaman, spreading some Stormkeeper functionality to Restoration Shaman, and trying out a new variation of Elemental Blast for Elemental Shaman, where it replaces Earth Shock as a more expensive Maelstrom Spender. All three of the Shaman specializations have a distinct style of play, and we’re hoping the new talents allow you to focus on your important totems, utility, and style of damage or healing you enjoy.
2

Could this maybe just be a 1 point talent instead? Spending one point for more RNG MSW stack generation feels bad and 2 points feels like a pretty heavy investment at the bottom of the tree for something we’ve all been treating as essentially baseline all expansion.

How about adding another one point talent instead that gives stormstrike 2 charges?

3 Likes
3

Doom Winds Strike your targe for (65% of Attack power) Physical damage, increase your chance to activate Windfury Weapon to 75%75.0%, and increases damage dealt by Windfury Weapon by 25% for 8 sec.

Was really hoping for a more meaningful on-use effect if this is going to remain on the GCD.

6.5 seconds to build FFW stacks is really short.

Can we get some FFW stacks on cast or have the initial cast proc WF if this is going to remain on GCD?

65% AP single target physical damage is really negligible.

4

Damn… how much damage was earthquake doing to get nerfed by 40% and then another 25% in the same patch
???

2 Likes
5

Nah the real joke is no improvement to defensives while CC’d in the main class tree. And spending 4 points to get an overnerfed Gust of wind

1 Like
6

Does the +40% damage to crash lightning from crashing storms just affect the on cast damage or does it also affect the ss/ll buff damage?

If it’s only the on-cast damage, then this talent is really only useful for 4+ target AOE.

If that’s the case, can this be switched with stormflurry so that the major connecting node to the right half of the 20+ talent tree isn’t through a 4+ target AOE node?

Really, regardless, can this be switched with stormflury? Stormflury is a generally useful talent that everyone would probably want and is a good talent to put in a key spot like the major connector node to the 20+ tree.

7

CAN THEY NOT. seriously, can they go a SINGLE TUNING PATCH W/O GUTTING ELEMENTAL?

3 Likes
8

Surging shields and Gust of Wind gutted as well

9

Is this maybe just neutralizing an aura adjustment?

Enhance got its aura reset this patch but it was only +3% before. Did ele have a negative aura that they could be resetting to O?

10

and i think astral shift too.

tons but not attached to everything

mostly on stormkeeper lightning bolts and lava bursts and earth shock. i dont think theres any more than that but almost every button got the hammer.

11

actually now CL does more ST dmg than LB :smiley:

12

The blue post actually missed this:

Surge of power now affects CL, making it +1 target.

The tooltip on wowhead talent calculator is updated.

1 Like
13

Seriously?

Blizzard needs to fire these devs

1 Like
14

At the very least, could the “Strike your target” be amended to “Strike nearby targets?” Feels bad that something considered one of our only uncapped AoE tools has no effect to groups of enemies when pressed.

And while we’re at it, something similar for Lava Lash in its corner of the tree? Maybe instead of the Cooldown component of the Flame Shock spread talent, give Lava Lash a second charge, and make LL’s CD be 12 seconds baseline? 18 seconds is absurdly bad for a rotational ability, even if it’s immediately followed by a talent that improves that.

15

Seems like elemental shamans got a nerf bat taken to them for no reason at all and we arent even in the expansion yet.

1 Like
16

This seems like the most concerning thing about the ele nerfs if true. Keep in mind that ele will also likely have a 20% buff to LB from the general tree to get to thunderstorm and lightning lasso and there may be other buffs to LB in the spec tree.

General damage reductions is just tuning that presumably is needed because of how much damage the spec is putting out with the new talent tree.

What’s concerning is if the changes are messing up fundamental gameplay like prioritizing chain lightning over lightning bolt single target.

1 Like
17

These look the same as last build.

Same with astral shift. Same as last build as far as I can tell.

All of those were nerfed in an earlier build though. Looks like this build had some minor number tweaks because a formula was changed to round up rather than down so 7s changed to 8s, 2s to 3s, etc. Which is a buff for the halfway point nodes.

18

I have mixed feeling about the latest updates as well. I like most Enhancement tree changes, but so many nerfs to Elemental Shaman damage are confusing. What testing are they basing these nerfs at?

Here is my feedback about Shaman trees based on latest changes.

General tree:

  • Frost Shock is gated behind an AoE talent Chain Lightning and not auto filled for any spec, so a situation where Elemental / Enhancement takes Icefury / Hailstorm, but does not take Frost Shock is possible.
    Solution: Make Frost Shock a baseline ability for all 3 specs. It is just as iconic as Lightning Bolt and Flame Shock and would complement them in baseline list, giving Shamans access to offensive abilities of all 4 elements alongside Flame Shock, Lightning Bolt and Earthbind Totem.
  • Winds of Al’Akir both seems excessive as 2 point investment (similar power ability Spirit Wolf is a 1 point investment) and its general movement speed bonus is very conditional.
    Solution: Reduce it to 1 point investment and change general movement speed bonus to 5% per each active totem, up to 15%.
  • Shamans would still be extremely vulnerable to dying in stuns in Dragonflight (especially with 7 combo point Kidneys mass coming soon) and Thunderstorm in general tree barely helps that - most stun based classes either can quickly re-engage or have ranged damage.
    Solution: Let Planes Traveller make Astral Shift usable in stuns in addition to current effect. This would allow Shamans to pick between more powerful defensive and stun usable defensive and allow to adapt to different situations better.
  • Enfeeblement is barely competitive with halved CD for Hex, so should be buffed to longer duration and maybe even additional temporary damage done reduction similar to current Hex conduit.
  • Greater Purge needs CD reduction and / or cost reduction to become more competitive with Purge.
  • Nature’s Fury should affect critical strike stat in general, not only for Nature spells, which would bring it in line with other classes similar passives. I also suggest to reduce it to 1 point node, as you did with tome nodes for Mages, so that Shamans both have slightly more freedom and can access their mobility / root break ability easier.

Elemental tree:

  • Earthquake should become an optional talent that can be avoided by single target builds, just as Restoration Shamans can avoid Healing Rain. If the latest build nerfs to Earthquake are planned to be kept, even more so.
  • Flames of the Cauldron position should be swapped with Improved Flametongue Weapon. This would allow to put IFW as a crossroad talent between Lava Burst and Flame Shock branches and allow to put all Flame Shock related talents to a separate branch that is not mandatory, so that people do not need to take a Flame Shock related talent to access IFW, but can still upgrade and customize Flame Shock if they want to.
  • Electrified Shocks should affect 5 targets again. It is confusing as 4 target cap, when even its synergizing talent Chain Lightning hits up to 5 targets.
  • Elemental Blast should just be a choice node with Earth Shock. It already has dowsides of cast time that when kicked locks all your schools and bigger Maelstrom cost compensated by bigger damage and a secondary stat boost, no need for it to also require an additional talent point investment.
  • Liquid Magma Totem as a main AoE Flame Shock tool for Elemental should have shorter CD, somewhere between 30s and 45s. This would make it more useful and bring closer in line to Enhancement Flame Shock spread effect, which has 12s CD. If needed, reduce damage of its totem to compensate.

Enhancement tree:

  • It still lacks a short CD Earth based attack, so I suggest to return Rockbiter as a ranged damage short CD attack that can also proc WF. However, as Enhancement already might have a button bloat in Dragonflight, it could become a choice node with other active ability to address that, for example a choice node with Windfury Totem.
  • Sundering needs a buff, as it is inferior to most other classes similar abilities. Increasing its incapacitate duration to 4 seconds or reducing its CD to 30 seconds could be helpful. Also, as Sundering affects Hex diminishing returns, it could become a disorient effect instead, making it more compatible with Hex.
  • Feral Lunge could use a buff to make it more competitive and more in line with other classes gap closers. Reducing its CD to 20 seconds or adding decent damage to it could be a solution.

Restoration tree:

  • Wavespeaker’s Blessing needs a buff to make it more competitive with other talents. Buffing it to 6 seconds duration increase could be a solution.
  • Undercurrent could use a buff to make it more competitive, like 1 / 2% healing increase per active Riptide.
  • I suggest to implement Earth Ascendance as a choice node with normal Water Ascendance (and make Deeply Rooted Elements pick Water Ascendance if none is specced and according Ascendance if one of them is picked). It could provide additional shields instead of healing, affect only the major targets and instantly shield the target instead of instant healing. This would allow to achieve 2 goals - finally implement fourth element Ascendance and allow to adapt Resto major CD better to different situations - for example, they could take Water Ascendance for split / AoE healing and Earth Ascendance when only tank healing is needed in group or against Mindgames comps in PVP.
2 Likes
19

Hmm i thought astral was 30s off cd or +20% damage reduction maybe that was the patch befroe

20

Did they remove the “earth shock becomes elemental blast” that was in the first patch notes for Ele?

I don’t see any talent in the new talent tree and I don’t see anything in the tool tip for elemental blast?

If they did that’s gonna suck: it was the one thing I was looking forward to for my shammy in DF.