Deeply Rooted Elements has to die. Ideally across all specs, and for Enhancement certainly. The talent is a poison pill that means Ascendance can never actually be worthwhile as a cooldown because being able to trigger it constantly would be too powerful by comparison, and reduces any DPS build that runs it into single-spell spamming its activator.
DRE should be changed to be a follow up talent to Ascendance that – instead of proccing Ascendance activations via one specific spell-- builds stacks that buff your next Ascendance based on general activity.
Fire Nova is a dead talent because it has no single-target application, and Lashing Flames is an annoying talent because it requires individually hitting up to 6 specific semi-random targets in a bunched up melee riot with a single-target spell with a cooldown. Solve both problems by making Fire Nova apply Lashing Flames to all targets with an active Flame Shock.
Hailstorm will need its own alternative to the Fire Nova/Lashing Flames combination above, but as it’s already stronger than Fire Nova, probably not a huge one. Moving Legacy of the Frost Witch to be a choice node with Lashing Flames might be all it takes.
Primordial Wave is powerful and satisfying, but the sheer number of GCDs required to set it up is annoying at best, and so long that everything we wanted to cleave is already dead at worst. Trim it down by changing the spell to cast an expanding ring of Elemental damage (ala Halo) from the caster that applies Flame Shock to its target cap of enemies based on proximity to the caster. This reduces the GCD count to set it up, gives it a more unique visual than the mini-Elemental Blast it’s currently using, and fits way better with the “Wave” name.
Playing an Enhancement shaman in Pandaria Remix has only reaffirmed my feeling that Enhancement without Elemental Assault is absolutely miserable to play. This talent needs to be moved to an earlier tier, or at least make the Stormstrike portion a baseline effect.
I’d rather not have to get all the LL talents to be able to reach a SS talent.
A frontal cone like Wellspring could also be cool.
I genuinely wonder, should Ascendance even still exist? The spell itself is quite bad but is held together by effects they keep duct taping to it. Should they just delete it and make something new? Would love for a utility spell to give us SS at range on a cd like what survival has should they get rid of it.
100% agree, I strongly believe you can’t fix storm build as long as the current DRE is in a tree because it devolves into 1 button mash rotation.
Fire Nova is a dead talent because you lose ST and cleave too much. The gameplay with Fire Nova on bosses feels bad and you are sitting on the boss waiting for abilities to glow up without Hailstorm. No one is taking Fire Nova as long as Hailstorm exists and even you still take Hailstorm over Fire Nova in S2 Freehold. That was how bad Fire Nova was.
Probably move Hailstorm below Ice Strike and Ice Strike will replace Frost Shock. Fire Nova needs a big change or rework because Hailstorm is doing the same things but much better.
Yeah, LL spread Flame Shock doesn’t make sense. For example, 1st boss in AV and you want to spread Flame Shock to slimes but it just doesn’t spread due to proximity to the caster. It probably should be fixed like Feral’s Primal Wrath and Double-Clawed Rake.
Yep, Elemental Assault makes up around 30% of MSW and Elemental Assault is the talent that makes the whole specs function. It should come up to gate 1/2 and make it 1 point node.
I actually really like Deeply Rooted Elements and Ascendance. I don’t think that the fix is to remove DRE completely, but rather give us both the CD (preferably reduced to a 2min to line up with our other CD’s) and allow us to proc DRE. Plenty of other classes have mechanics that either proc their big CD’s. This would let us manage when we use it for burst phases and alleviate the crappy feeling when you don’t get a lot of procs. I also kinda do agree with you about Asc feeling spammy, and would love it if in Asc we had two buttons instead of just one, maybe windstrike stacks 4 times and then you get a big storm button while thorim’s is blasting LB/CL.
I like this a lot better honestly. My biggest gripe with PWave is that it just feels clunky as an ability. I think giving it a cone like wave like Primarch mentioned that applied Flame Shock to all targets and gave haste would make it feel a lot better than having to spread the flame shocks, then cast pwave, then cast LB for a derpy looking CL. I think this would also make for better visual feedback, as right now PWave just looks underwhelming.
They should do to ENH what they did to Destro last week. Put the Ghost wolves closer to the bottom, all ENH shamans get those talents.
Primo wave and it’s buffs should be consolidated in to fever talents also either somewhere where all ENH shamans can take it or just throw it in to the Shaman tree since literally all shamans use this spell.
Fire nova should be the AOE option for Windfury builds since they scale of physical damage, but yes they need to make Windfury spec viable in ST or make it bonkers in AOE. It still needs good ST for mythic + bosses.
I’ll tell ya what should not exist…the graphical decade-old look of Ascendance. Most players don’t even care to take this talent anymore because of its hideous look.
Beyond all that I hope they make our builds worthwhile again. In seasons 1-2 we had good storm and elementalist builds. Season 3 and currently we only have Elementalist. That counters the whole idea of having talent trees.
The more I think about it, even though I think enhance plays really smooth right now, the entire talent tree is kind of a mess. It could really use some re-shuffling of talent locations, splitting multi function 2 point talents into two 1 point talents, and also some changes to the entire capstone section.
My thinking was primarily on the Frost damage portion. The SS reset portion could stay where it is in the tree as separate talents.
Thematically, Ascendance is a very cool and appropriate ability (or, would be if it weren’t using the model of a gibbering doomsday cult we wiped out 12 years ago). While it’s been left to fall further and further behind the game’s power curve in those 14 years since its introduction, I think it’s both salvageable, and worth salvaging, but needs some dramatic redesign, starting with DRE.
My meaning was that Lashing Flames would now be applied solely by Fire Nova, and not by Lava Lash anymore. This would give Nova its ST value via buffing Flame Shock’s DOT.
The visual redesign on PWave truly was disappointing. It just looks like Elemental Blast’s baby sibling, which is wild for an ability with 3x Elemental Blast’s CD and vastly larger impact on our flow.
Dunno if it needs to be an expanding ring unless it’s doing like elemental damage to all targets hit (which would be neat. Mostly it just needs to apply 5 Flameshocks to targets around your main target.
If it is a wave, then the wave needs to be instant given the tight windows you need to do your spread and setup.
That seems like a big ask given Legacy is core to how Storm works the placement would need to be moved to make it easier to get. And An ideal situation would be to have Legacy AND Lashing Flames for Elementalist builds.
This is the one thing I will agree with about PWave.
Makes the spec very difficult when you are trying to survive on a glass cannon mdps and are trying to spread this. I like the ability, would like it to be reworked to spread Lashing Flames easier.
Disagree.
Elementalist build is far better anyways. More fun too (subjective). I like that we have a casino proc game ender for PvP tbh. I like DRE. Needs to proc more often.