I mean that’s easy, it’s because PWave’s basic functionality is inherited from SL when alternate builds weren’t really a thing. It keyed off Lava Burst for Ele because that was supposed to be Ele’s big gun, and off Lightning Bolt for Enhance because Enhance didn’t have access to Lava Bust.
yep, dumb spell on a class with inherent button bloat…
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Agreed. SL was absolutely terrible but unfortunately it did even more damage to shaman gameplay than it did the rest of the game 
Especially as enhance. It is so far from the gameplay that enhance players want… Give me back stormstrike and windfurry 
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Nightfae was fun in PVE and Kyrian was fun in pvp but blizzard somehow chose the worst one out of the four convenant to our tool kit.
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I mean for Storm it was bad, but playing Elementalist Pwave solved a huge issue with Enhance and circumvented issues many classes have with needing to choose between AoE/cleave and Single Target for raids.
Chain Harvest was good for Cleave but the value it lost under 5 targets made it lose a lot of power, especially on single target. Meanwhile, Fae Transfusion having the meteor effect meant some AoE capabilities but its ridgedness meant it was realistically good in a single target plus the channel. They were both pretty simplistic in their use which is good to have fire and forget but it also did allow you to play with it in a way to get benefits out of it.
Pwave’s function especially once they made the bulk of the haste benefit come from hitting a single target let it be good in a single target and cleave which is why its damage profile was well favored in high-end raiding. Again, The biggest thing is just making it easier to get flame shock out on multiple targets to reduce the GCDs for cleave burst.
Hot take, WoW players have no idea what button bloat is. Go play FF14 where most DPS classes need to have about 14 to 20 mandatory abilities bound for just for your single target dps rotation that you are unable to ignore in addition to other binds for like movement, utility, and defensives and then you’ll actually understand what button bloat is.
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Honestly I’m not talking from a “strength perspective” as for the most part that is kinda of just a numbers tuning kind of thing. They just turn a dial.
For me it’s the gameplay. It doesn’t match anything what enhance shaman in particular has ever been about. Chain harvest matched the esthetic and feel a bit better but still wasn’t a huge fan…
Pretty few sl themed stuff I liked honestly. Abom limb for DK maybe? Lol
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What has it been about then? MoP and WoD have a completely different feel from BFA and Early Shadowlands. How it was in Vanilla, TBC, Wrath, and Cata is honestly very irrelevant given how much the game has fundamentally changed.
I don’t get the aesthetic argument because it was just aesthetics then there wouldn’t be an issue at all what it looked like. People making the aesthetic argument makes me think that they are people who are more focused what their spells look like in the middle of a fight rather than focusing on the actual fight. It’s like judging a keyboard based on how the LEDs look rather than how does typing on it feel.
Honestly for me tbc-wod felt very similar. Legion/BFA and after didn’t play a ton.
Much more cd based rotation around storm strike, lava lash, windfurry and bolt/chain.
Felt a bit more melee based if that makes sense? Now it feels much more Sudo caster esque… A bit like ret has a lot more range now. Does that add up with you?
Gotcha. Honestly, I particularly like this style of using melee attacks to enhance spells. But again, whats more important are do the buttons make sense gameplaywise, the damage decent, and gameplay expression is neat. That leads to better health of a class rather than “it was like this for x years”. I’m also a person that would be perfectly fine if they made totems just ground effects and auras.
I could care less if it was Stormstrike and Windfury at the top of details provided the damage profile was good, works in all environments, and makes sense how to use. Storm doesn’t do that one bit, Elementalist does so that’s why I like it. Primordial Wave is a large reason for that because its use is much better.
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A single example of a game with much worse button bloat doesn’t mean WoW doesn’t have a button bloat problem.
I could list my entire Steam collection with over 100 games across multiple genres, and none would reach the amount of buttons WoW (or FF14) have. So, maybe you are right… WoW players that want 30+ keybinds have no concept of what button bloat is because they equate inconvenient gameplay with skill.
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Yea ele in particular seems to have it bad with PW, maybe having a talent that made CL spread it if they used it on target that already has it on it, or maybe make it PW also work on targets that have the FS slow? As resto I think PW feels really good and flows with the spec really well, but riptides supporting talents and the way a healer plays helps that in ways the dps specs don’t have and cant do. Things like 2 charges (3 for farseer), wavespeakers blessing for longer duration, and being able to cast it on people before a pull all come together to make it feel good.
Well yeah it’s apparent there is no class fantasy for Shaman PW and Farseer Casper Ghosts are dumb and I’m paying $90 it so yeah we can complain a little bit
Who cares as long as the gameplay is good? Are you going to be staring at the Farseer Ancestors in the middle of a dungeon?
Except you don’t need 30 key binds. Stop being hyperbolic and realistic. And if you do, you’re predominately hitting a fraction of them in a fight. Are you sweating about hitting Bloodlust once in an entire fight? Or your damage pot which you’re only hitting twice in a fight provided it’s longer than 5 mins and you’re potting on pull?
Enhance’s PW mostly flows well minus Lava Lash spreading Flameshock to 4 targets. Ele however…seems really off. It’s linked to a buff that is incredibly annoying to spread and it’s activator and benefits clearly pushes you towards one build. Don’t get wrong, Enhance’s version favors Elementalist but it still works with Storm.
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I like it mechanically for enhance but I don’t think it fits the theme - it has that shadowlands stink to it. Give it an elemental effect and animation and I bet people would like it more.
That’s good to know, glad its not bad for enhance. At least on paper it looks like it would at least be a lot less clunky if they changed the CD on magma totem so they lined up better.
They changed the animation to look like an elemental bolt and changed it to elemental damage already. All the Covenant abilities got animation and sound changed into something that fits their class mindway through 10.2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGqfbMHurLw
And some people are still not a fan despite this…
It still looks non elemental to me 
maybe rename it and give it a nice wind earth fire or water look?
Fair, I think it matches in a way. It contains Fire, Water, and Lighting which corresponds to each spec’s version essentially (Ele, Resto, Enhance respectively).
Sorry that doesn’t work. FF has completely solved rotations that are just memorization. Wow has multiple rotational choices that must be made (more or less depending on class) so the number of buttons cannot be compared.