Will wait to test this, but from a Enhance Totemic view point this change may be pretty good when coupled with the new Storm cap. As of now, Totemic does not even need to use Lava Lash. We do not use two hero talents. (By this i am speaking on viable builds for content). So with Totemic, the change may bring back using the talent.
By using the new PWave, in a M+ situation, you are dropping totem, flame shock, (totem will spread) lava lash, Pwave. Now you have the PStorm up, and its blasting targets that are buffed by the Totem and wolves.
For Totemic, this change (on paper) may be a very good spell to use in a AOE situation.
Its a terrible change regardless for ele as you said, but you can see the tooltip on wowhead. They have 11.1 ptr tooltips to see. The flame shock application is gone but lava surge remains. Which doesnt really matter because the entire point of that lava surge was to get an instant Lava burst that will then cleaveā¦now it will just be a regular lava burst. Wont feel nearly as good.
Elemental:
Blast all targets affected by your Flame Shock for 50% of normal damage.within 45 yards with a Primordial Wave, dealing (150% of Spell power) Elemental damage, and granting you Lava Surge.
Yeah nah that just changed it to basically be just like enhancements. Nothing actually changed with it, just does a little more damage. Enhancements works really well like that because it generates 5 maelstrom weapon instantly, and then they can also path to Primordial Storm, making Prim wave even more interesting gameplay wise.
Ele didnt get anything like that. Really need to revert the Primordial Wave change for Ele to how it is on live and then ideally replace Liquid Magma Totem with a talent that bakes it in to Prim wave, making prim wave cleave up to 5 targets and spread flame shock to them. This lines up with simplifying Prim Wave Ramp that was stated in the dev notes while still preserving the really fun aspect of pumping out a ton of lava bursts. This would remove 1 button press (that doesnt really feel fun anyway) and simplify the ramp by having most of it come from prim wave, largely reducing button presses overall for prim wave ramp.
The current change on ptr is very bad for ele gameplay. It doesnāt actually simplify anything about the prim wave ramp, ele will still have to get out flame shocks for it which is the only thing it struggles with right now on live which makes it ācomplexā. Pushing lava burst is not the complex part, that should not be removed, it is the most fun and rewarding part.
Also, Prim Wave grants a guaranteed Lava Surge so removing Lava burst from Prim wave didnāt even remove that button press from coming after Prim wave, weāll still very likely be pressing Lava Burst right after prim wave since it will be instant.
yep, I already did because I have zero faith, especially now that they released new changes and nothing has been addressed, nothing added to compensate for ag in a meaningful way, totemic build nerfed for enhance, no comment on primordial wave for eles being a not insignificant nerf to maelstrom generation/damage/flame shock application etc.
Iām just not feelin it at all. The cherry on top is me not liking the new lightning bolt animation, crash looks cool but bolt is supposed to be an instant line from caster to target, now it has a travel time and while the particle effect is nice, it should chain from caster to target, ya know like lightning bolts.
Yeah Iām 100% with you on all the ele stuff (donāt play Enhance enough to have an opinion on anything other than the new Crash Lightning visual being cool). My main spell looks worse, my gameplay is worse, and I kind of want to have tanking available as an option. shrugs
not sure what the purpose of pwave anymore ? It really doesnt fit in the rotation, it feels super awkward to press in ST
If anything it should have been pushed further into flame shock than the opposite. Like replace flame shock all together when specced into it or a proc maybe but something else than it becoming just some kind of buff ?
I tried it out against training dummies on the PTR and it feels worse than I imagined. Iāve built up muscle memory all expansion of letting Pwave refresh my shocks and now when I press the button nothing happens.
I have been playing the new PWave and PStorm on the PTR and from an EHN Totemic POV itās wonderful. I am only afraid it works too well and Totemic players will slap so hard with the Nerf bat that we will never recover for season two.
As it stands, You can drop your totem, fs, pw, and perhaps a lava lash or stormstrike, hit pstorm, toss a lb or cl, hit tremor, and you are off to the races. You also have crash lightning doing serious damage in an Elementalist build now. Ascendance was last yearās talent lol.
PWave and PStorm is the new black. Well at least for Totemic.
Iām thinking about speccing out of Pwave in season 2 if they donāt revert the changes for Ele. Iāve been playing Stormbringer weaver build lately and find it quite enjoyable with plenty of buttons to press.
Iāll be going to a pet spec and storm elemental will fill in the missing haste from p wave. Again Iām just considering it. I do still like the lava surge from Pwave.
Agreed bc how is the hast buff supposed to work bc the extra haste is based on number of LvB going out. Iām assuming they just change that to number of Pwaves that goes out.
I agree that the prim wave change feels terrible for ele. IMO it was not a complicated spell at all as the devs stated and it feels really good to manage your LMTās and flame shocks correctly to get that massive burst of haste/cleave damage/maelstrom all at once for setting it up properly.
Losing the lava burst cleave aspect is a big maelstrom loss which feels awful.
It feels much more like a nerf than a QOL change in any way.
This change on top of losing Ancestral Guidance is def a mega feelsbad for ele.
They should at least get rid of the flame shock CD if theyre going to go through with this change, or let LMT flame shock up to 6 targets on cast.
We need at least SOME compensation for losing a big part of what made the spell feel good to press IMO.
I understand that this thread has basically become Pwave for Ele is bad. And thatās true. Itās a horrible change. But I stand behind that itās also bad for Enhance also.
When I orginally made this post I didnāt even realize they are removing Pwave for Resto Shaman also. Because it wasnāt even listed in the Patch notes at the time.
The change to Resto might actually be the worst of all three specs.
Just revert this change for all three specs entirely. Mark my words. This is a huge mistake for gameplay of the Shaman class as a whole.