Why is the new change for Primordial Wave not good for Elemental?
-Currently the new change to Primordial Wave does not align with the stated Developer goals for making it less complex. If anything it may make it more complex due to losing a Flame Shock application from Primordial Wave itself. The complexity comes entirely from having to spread flame shocks before pressing Lava Burst. That is how we set up lava burst cleave and now how we will set up Primordial Wave cleave with this change, so nothing regarding the complexity is getting reduced. Gameplay will also feel worse.
Here is the suggestion/ask from a long time Ele player:
-Make Primordial Wave cleave on up to 5 targets and spread Flame Shock to them. This is essentially baking Liquid Magma Totem into Primordial Wave, just with 2 more flame shocks. This reduces complexity in setting up Lava Burst cleave immensely.
-Make Primordial Wave work with Mastery: Elemental Overload. This would allow Primordial Wave to feel very good to press. It would slightly increase Maelstrom generation from it and it would just look very cool, overloading is a core part of elemental fantasy/gameplay and Primordial Wave looks awesome. It would feel less like a button just for Lava Burst cleave and more like hitting something powerful and cool to set up for something else powerful and cool.
-With those changes, we could keep the Lava Burst cleave that we currently have. This is the best part of current Primordial Wave, it feels so good and losing it would just feel bad for the spec regardless of what numbers look like. Also, without having Lava Burst cleave, talents like Erupting Lava lose a ton of value.
How do these suggestions align more with the stated developer goals?
-Realistically, right now with Primordial Wave, Liquid Magma totem is a required talent but kind of just feels like an extra button that’s sole purpose is to spread flame shocks before activating Primordial Wave. The goal here is to reduce 1 button for the spec overall that doesn’t feel necessary and bake its use into Primordial Wave itself. These changes could replace Liquid Magma Totem in the spec tree. This would reduce complexity in priming Lava Burst cleave while making Primordial wave itself more fun to press.
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if this change goes through its going to make playing aoe as farseer beyond annoying. Forcing LMT usage was also annoying and this would fix it.
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Yeah, really hope the devs listen to this feedback. Fixes multiple things at once while also getting rid of a problem they didn’t talk about which was Liquid Magma Totem. Fairly weak for a capstone, also very unexciting as it’s basically just there to help prime primordial wave. Replacing it with a talent that contains the above changes would be so nice, and it would also make more sense since we path down from primordial wave to that capstone.
These changes also solve the complexity issue in every form of content. In raids where cleave is involved we will now have access to our LB cleave much faster if not instantly, and will have slightly more cleave from overloading Prim wave. In m+ same deal, can just Prim wave>LB on packs of 2-5, and on larger packs the set up will be far less. In pvp it would be a huge QoL change as Liquid Magma totem is very annoying there, and as with m+ and raid feels like a talent that only exists to serve prim wave rather than an upgrade to prim wave itself.
Haven’t even logged in since we saw the change on ptr. Haven’t had this much fun on ele since Mop and this change would dramatically lessen that so much so that I don’t want to dedicate any more time unless I know this won’t go through.
It’s also very clear to me that this change was largely made with Enhancement Shaman in mind rather than Elemental.
There’s two problems with that though.
First, Enh shaman have a much better way to spread Flame Shocks consistently (Lava Lash), you press Lava Lash way more often than Liquid Magma totem (ele), and Lava Lash spreads 5 flame shocks now too. So while Enh shamans will have no issues cleaving a ton with Prim Wave, Ele will just like it does right now.
Second, Enh shaman got a new talent called Primordial Storm that makes Prim Wave gameplay more interesting. Essentially turns it into a combo spell, which is really cool. Ele got nothing.
I really hope devs don’t just leave this change like this for Ele. It didn’t reduce any complexity. All that happened was the most exciting part of Prim Wave (pressing Lava Burst) was removed, but you still have to spread flame shocks the same way as before. So it’s less exciting and functionally just as challenging.
Please listen to feedback on this. I’ve talked to a lot of Ele shamans since we got the developer notes and every single one agrees and likes the suggestion listed in this thread and in the ptr forum. From casual Elemental players to rank 1 pvp and m+ers.
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