I’ll be honest, in my opinion Primordial wave is the worst shaman mechanic to ever be introduced into the game. I believe it should just be out right removed. I won’t touch a lava burst or ancestor hero talent build ever again until Primoridal wave is so bad no one touches it or outright removed. At least ele shamans have tempest and lightning builds to avoid such a unfun, difficult, and punishing mechanic to use.
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That’s why this feedback is directly aimed at making Prim Wave far less complex to use and more fun. If you read the feedback, it makes it so you can basically just press Prim Wave>LB in 90% of situations rather than set up for Prim wave like right now. If you have to set up at all, you’d only need to press 1 or 2 single flame shocks at most (pulls of 7+).
Baking Liquid Magma Totems functionality into Prim wave also removes 1 button we use right now to set up for prim wave, making the rotation a bit smoother because LMT only exists to set up Prim Wave. Replacing it with a talent that makes Prim Wave cleave onto 5 targets and apply flame shock to them is a huge step in making Prim Wave gameplay much better. Then making it overload in that same talent would make Prim wave feel good to press as a button in general.
These changes make it easier to cleave in raid with prim wave if there’s adds, instead of prepping you can just cleave 5-6 targets right away. Same with m+. Same with PvP. Cleave would also get stronger due to Prim wave overloading.
Doesn’t need to be removed at all, they just need to take this feedback into account because their current change doesn’t reduce complexity at all, and it also makes the button boring. The changes suggested here not only make it less complex, but also reduce button bloat by removing liquid magma totem and make Prim Wave fun to press by overloading.
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i mean if it was easier to use like Prim wave then lava burst with lava totem up then i guess i would be fine with it existing and even being meta pick. I support your feed back 
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Bumping this, @Dev(s) please read the feedback here and give Primordial Wave the help/changes it needs to actually work well for Ele.
Current changes do nothing for making it less complex since we still have to get the same amt of flame shocks out. Gameplay gets worse due to losing a flame shock application+this button no longer works with mastery in any way (lava burst does, prim wave itself does not)
The suggestions here kill two birds with one stone. Makes Prim wave gameplay less complex, reduces button bloat by baking Liquid Magma Totem into Prim wave (can be a talent that replaces Liquid Magma Totem) and if prim wave can overload that would make it fun to press.
There is a lot of feedback on this change including on YouTube. It is a very disliked change.
not a great change. not excited about it.
feels like ele was more like an afterthought. pwave got changed for enhance shaman along with a new talent for it, so they applied the change to ele as well to keep it uniform but ele does not spread flame shocks easily like enhance via voltaic blaze and lava lash. pressing lava burst from pwave was fun because it worked with mastery, now pwave will not have any overload benefit like lava burst did. the flame shock spreading is the worst part of this but did not get changed for ele.
i like idea of removing liquid magma in place of a talent that upgrades pwave to aoe spread flame shocks like said here, liquid magma feels unnecessary as it’s own button. want lava burst cleave to stay too. losing lava burst cleave sucks regardless of how hard pwave hits, it’s just fun to hit and watch the overload cleaves, lot of meatballs lol.
Gonna keep it real: Pwave as it is now isn’t complex and doesn’t need anything else done to it outside of LMT just spreading to 5 targets or just making the Pwave bolt apply it to 5 other targets; even if they don’t do either of those things, Pwave is literally fine since its not the end of the world if you’re consuming Pwave with 4 targets vs 6. Them changing it off of LvB is the dumbest smooth brain thing they could do since LvB has more interactions in our kit than Pwave does, even while playing Farseer. It’s good to have it function with LvB because LvB has specific interactions with our kit. Even if they make it overload or whatever it would still lack a large number of interactions with our kit.
I said this to you before in another thread: if the first thought when reading a change is “oh they need to add XYZ to make work” its a bad change. We’d literally be better off it was changed. Just add it as choice node: Primordial Wave vs Primordial Storm, much like how Enhance got a choice between Tempest Strike and EB rather than pushing us all towards this dogwater change.
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I fully agree that it is not complex, but obviously they think it is or maybe have data showing people struggle too much with it or something like that so I am going off of the basis that we will not convince them it is already not complex, doesn’t seem worth arguing that. Ele itself is not a complex spec at all, so even if we view prim wave as “complex”, i think its fine because its really the only complex thing about the spec if anything at all.
In terms of the change, what I’m pushing for is a change that lines up a lot more with what they said they want to do. The current ptr change does nothing but make prim wave gameplay worse without reducing the ‘complexity’. If they want to reduce complexity, they can remove LMT and replace it with a talent that lets prim wave do the cleaving and spreading, reducing 1 button we have to press while making spreading flame shocks easier. can make prim wave overload in that talent too just for a little extra power behind the button itself. This would include keeping Lava burst cleave, essentially it would work how it does on live now but with a new talent that lets it cleave+spread FS to 5 targets and lets it overload. This also just makes sense to me in general since we are pathing down from Pwave there, it would make more sense to path to a prim wave capstone rather than LMT randomly.
The changes I’ve listed are changes I’d actually want to prim wave gameplay, would be a bit more fun and I really dont think LMT is an interesting button to press I’d rather it just get baked in. Even if they reverted to live Prim wave, I’d still prefer they bake LMT into a new prim wave talent that lets it cleave personally.
Every once in a while, I think it’s fine to say that a change being done to change a spec shouldn’t happen. The pwave change in its current iteration is bad on several levels, and I’d rather they brought it back in a usable state in a .2patch rather then force it in and make ele feel worse to play in the next one. Or even better yet just not change primordial wave for ele since ele primordial wave can be better served being flame shock+. As it is we’re dangerously close to having to use flame shock a whole lot more often, and that entirely invalidates any good this change could possibly have because flame shock as its own button is lacking.
As a standalone change this change is a net negative for ele, bring it back when its got talent support and gameplay to justify it.
As one last bit of feedback. I feel like farseer has in a glacial but steady pace been made worse as this expansion has progressed. And I don’t mean in damage, but its a factor. Initially We had stormbringer which was a lot better in aoe, and farseer which had strong consistent damage and it felt good to have two situational and useful hero talents that worked with the kit. Then we got the changes to ascendance and lost our massive nature cdr and farseer hasn’t felt right since.
Let me just recount how ancester summoning worked and how it’s going:
start of expac->primordial wave+ancestral swiftness instant cast usually goes into lava burst, both spells are at around 15-20 second cd due to cdr. We use storm ele/stormbringer before this process in the common situation that storm ele is up. It feels good and provides a strong consistent damage profile with cooldowns always up while also having solid potential for small bursts of damage.
Mid patch ele rework Primordial wave+ancestral swiftness both on a hard 30 second cd and the swiftness instant cast will happen eventually because we already have a free instant cast proc. New ascendance exists with the farseer stuff but doesn’t interact with it giving a feeling somewhat like kyrian shadow priest in shadowlands where you had several Non synergistic but powerful enough to use modes that sometimes clashed. Ele is now a big cooldown class, but the design of farseer doesn’t match it and indeed despite being the closer tree to fire it has nothing to do with ascendance. Farseer also required large buffs to stay competitive as the single target pick for a time.
.1 ptr ele. flame shock/ascendance/lmt->primordial wave+ancestral with the above nuisances and 30 second cd. The rationale for this change is to make it less complicated but you added a global to our 30 second rotation. Why does farseer have to play worse as the expansion goes on if its being pushed as the de facto raid choice due to stormbringer being inherently better in aoe by not being limited to 3 targets?
I dont think it is bad to say this Prim Wave change shouldnt be made, it is definitely an awful change for ele and I’d rather it be reverted than go live the way it is 100%, but I am of the mindset that they can actually make Pwave gameplay better than it is right now on live if they literally just replace liquid magma totem with a talent for prim wave that lets it cleave 5 targets+apply flame shocks to them. I dont think LMT contributes anything to gameplay, it just exists as a button to use right before prim wave, I’d rather it just get baked in to prim wave.
If they do that, and then leave prim wave how it is now, it would already feel better than live imo because in most scenarios you can just Prim wave>flame shock x1>Lava burst for cleave, basically removes the step of pressing LMT. The reason I also want Prim wave to overload/work with mastery is so it can do a bit more damage on its own without actually getting buffs and it will look cool.
what Im saying is: Keep Prim Wave the way it is on live right now, get rid of Liquid Magma Totem and replace it with a talent that lets Prim Wave cleave up to 5 targets, overloads and spreads flame shock to the initial 5 it hits. I think this would be better gameplay than what we have on live right now and also obviously far better than whats on PTR (which is worse than live by a lot).
That lines up with their stated design goals of reducing complexity, it wouldn’t make prim wave a “high damage activation” button on its own like they want but it shouldnt be. However it would let it do more damage via overloading, cleaving, and spreading flame shock so should feel good to press. Pressing a prim wave that can cleave and overload would feel and look really nice imo esp with lava burst cleave right after.
Yeah literally CBA with whatever garbage the Devs said or whatever their expectation is. Pwave RIGHT NOW is pretty much drooling idiot levels of complexity. If they want to change it, make LMT spread to 5 or make Pwave apply Flame Shock to multiple targets. Either that, or don’t touch it.
Useless change. It does piss damage so it overloading means nothing and right now with how our sequencing works with rotations you’d never capitalize on it overloading. It would be like a .01% increase if anything.
Useless inline with that suggestion sure, but if the changes go live as in the notes PWave absolutely NEEDS to overload/ give all the same synergies lava burst does. I’m of the opinion they straight up forgot / don’t understand how elemental shaman functions, that’s the only explanation. That, or they plan on pwave still giving lava surge, because pwave for enhance still gives maelstrom stacks after all, but if that is indeed the case, then what is the point of any change to begin with? We’d be pressing lb after wave anyways. The whole change is stupid and they should feel bad.
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It really is bad. But even if they have it overload, it still would need a stupid buff to its damage since it’s only 150% spell power vs the 130% spell power of LvB which always crits. Not to mention no MotE which is massive for a SK empowered CL and no Power of the Maelstrom procs.
This change needs to die in a fire period. Overloads wont fix this and it having Lava Surge doesn’t either. People just need to learn to use their brain a bit. Pwave > LvB or Pwave > LMT > LvB isn’t rocket science.
So the point of having it overload is mostly just for a bit more maelstrom gen and slightly more damage, but we would also be getting up to 5 flame shocks from it as well, so it would be contributing a lot more than live overall. And also so it looks cool when you press it which will also make it feel good to a lot of players including casual players. Overloaded pwave cleave into overloaded lava burst cleave is like peak fantasy for ele imo, it would feel and look really good.
But realistically yeah the solution to the Pwave issue is literally just baking Liquid magma totem into it like we said, make pwave cleave onto 5 targets and spread shock+work with elemental overload.
I don’t disagree that it is not complex, its very simple imo just tedious if anything. I think they copy pasted what they said for enhance shaman (it was word for word) just swapped out Lightning bolt for lava burst. However yeah if they make pwave cleave and apply shock that makes it “less complex” by removing LMT so it reduces a button press during the pwave set up.
And I’d definitely prefer that over just adding 2 targets to LMT because I dont really care about pressing LMT, doesnt do anything for my enjoyment of the spec. I’d rather pwave just get that power.
And also what you said here is exactly what I have been saying, its what I said in the post you responded to. Either make Pwave cleave flame shock (while working the same way it does on live) or just revert this ptr change and don’t touch it.
The change is not bad in itself, and it addresses the unnecessary setup. The main problem still persists - Elemental does not have enough ways to spread Flame Shock.
Alternatively to OP posts, Liquid Magma Totem could be updated to apply Flame Shock to 6 (max) targets, since it’s CD lines up with PWave.
Also, since Enhancement has one talent to apply Flame Shock to multiple targets at once (Voltaic Blaze, VB) and a way to spread it to nearby targets (Molten Assault, MA). LMT is sort-of equivalent to VB Elemental deserves their own, but MA doesn’t have Elemental equivalent - we could have Lava Surge buffed LvBs spread Flame Shock to a nearby enemy.
The change is very bad in itself what do you mean? It does not address the unnecessary set up at all. You will be doing the exact same set up as right now.
Like, nothing is changing at all. The set up is entirely spreading flame shocks, nothing else, and that still remains and even gets worse since Primordial wave does not apply flame shock according to 11.1 tooltip. And it still gives a guaranteed lava surge which is nice, but also means we will still very likely press Lava burst right after we hit prim wave, meaning we do the -exact- same rotation as now, but prim wave just plays worse.
Also going to throw it out there. Firing a “lava burst volley” is one of the visual highlights of playing elemental. I don’t even know what pwave looks like and I’m not sure I will even if it fires off 5 times.
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I meant that the spell does practically the same thing with one less button press (you don’t need to follow-up with Lava Burst). You’re right that it does not address the unnecessary setup, it just “simplifies” it by removing 1 spell from it, which really achieves like 1% of the issue. I still think that in order for Primordial Wave to be an exciting talent Elemental needs more ways to easily apply and spread multiple instances of Flame Shock.
im sorry for my shaman brothers who like it, but honestly, i wish they just removed primordial wave and pretend it never exist.
I already have elemental blast, lava blast and lightning bolt, why would i need a “primordial” wave - thematically and mechanically - as a separate button is beyond me
Yeah but the thing is, we will very likely be following up with Lava burst anyway since Prim wave gives a guaranteed Lava surge proc, and Lava burst buffs nature/frost/phys by 15% which we’d use for an earth shock or ele blast or lightning bolt after. So it essentially changed nothing, even by eliminating ‘having to’ press lava burst, we still will because it’ll be instant right after.
They just didn’t make the right decision here. If they want to actually simplify it, they need to bake Liquid magma totem into Prim wave, reducing 1 actual button press (LMT), so prim wave can cleave 5 targets and apply flame shock to them. That reduces 1 button press guaranteed, and makes applying flame shock easier, and they can keep Lava burst cleave if they do that.
I’m not sure how Prim wave is similar to any of those spells mechanically. Thematically it looks different than all of those, but its similar to ele blast in appearance I guess.
Prim wave mechanically doesn’t work like anything else we have though, its not similar to anything. Ele blast is a spender so they can’t work it into that, prim wave is essentially a builder and ‘cleave’ spell that you set up for decent burst every 30 seconds.
I think its just yet again another elemental shenanigan that you throw at people that gives you a buff/effect, not exciting differently or unique when you already have elemental shenanigan to throw at people.
I much prefer Voltaic Blaze, in thematic and feels since it also is a proc for flame shock, they could tail this spell to be the cleaver one and nuke primal wave. But that just me and my dislike by the skill speaking louder, if they are able to make more fun to use i would not see a problem
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