It’s too late for this to happen in Shadowlands, but I hope the devs read this and give consideration as this chance would help the spec immensely (or feel free to argue that it wouldn’t).
TL;DR Stormstrike removed from active abilities and replaced with a Reworked Windfury. Stormstrike added as a baseline passive. Talents reworked to compliment new ability.
Windfury (reworked)- 12 sec cooldown
Instantly Strike your target and increase the attack speed of your main hand by 25% for the next 3 swings.
Base Abilities Stormstrike - Passive - Increase the next 2 sources of nature damage after using Windfury
Talents Forceful Winds (Reworked) - Your last swing of Windfury hits the target for 2/3 extra attacks at X% attack power
Stormflurry (Reworked)
Increase the attack speed bonus of your Windfury attack by an additional 10% and each swing of Windfury is guaranteed to generate 1 Maelstrom Weapon Stack
These changes would
Make Windfury active, allowing for its damage to be meaningful again due to being unable to proc off itself
Add a talent to allow Windfury to once again be a multi-attack, except on demand (and able to be balanced meaninfully because of it)
Keep Stormstrike relevant to the spec as baseline passive
Make Flametongue more relevant as the official imbue of Enhancement for both weapons
Open the door to 2h Enhancement being able to keep Windfury balanced while retaining Flametongue (and lava lash if reworked to be %dmg of the 2h)
Got my vote. The passive meter padding version of Windfury we currently have that somehow manages to generate resources without any player agency is not very interesting.
While there is still too much currently tied to Stormstrike to hope for this, they could probably still just implement a combined version of your Forceful Winds, Windfury, and StormFlurry suggestions without much else changing while they work on migrating Windfury into that concept IMO. There would be a fair bit going on in that ability at once making the effects a bit diluted before they can be separated into more distinct/powerful talents to make up for the lack of Stormstrike. A first iteration might just be Forceful Winds granting the moderate damage multi-hits (maybe with range or increased damage on targets under 20% to keep it interesting or test the potential spike damage on it?). These would be independent of the current low damage / primarily resource generating version of Windfury we currently have though each of those special attacks could have a slightly (~10%?) increased chance of generating a stack of maelstrom weapon. It would definitely be no contest between Forceful Winds and the current versions of Lashing Flames / Elemental Blast even if the total damage was only about one Stormstrike’s worth however.
Also, the lack of low cooldown ability (i.e. Stormstrike) does cut into the Crash Lighting AoE; the nature damage bonus would have to be pretty extreme to make up for it via Chain Lightning. Otherwise, I suppose Lava Lash could step up in that case with some tweaks or the next three main-hand attacks also trigger Crash Lightning’s effect.
They can tweak mastery to boost the nature damage. After all, wasn’t that the entire sell on mastery? It would be an easy tuning knob?
Stormbringer could still be a thing with Windfury resets, but would likely have to be a lower % rate to balance out speccing into the triple hit talent. That could also go a ways to solve issues — OR Lava Lash becomes the low cooldown melee ability. OR shocks unlink Cooldowns
There are tons of options, but I think to see any meaningful change to Enhance and its damage, Windfury needs to become active. It being a passive ability holds so much back.
The current Stormflurry talent is literally just the Windfury effect for Stormstrike, so why couldn’t we just combine Stormstrike and Windfury into the same thing…
I guess I just liked how Crash Lightning turned SS/LL into a cleave more than just cranking up the nature (and fire/frost) damage. Originally, I was commenting on the damage bonus of your revised Stormstrike effect that increases the next 2 nature sources.
You probably touched on something with balancing Stormbringer / Windfury though. Anything that enhances resource generation is tricky to balance. For example, Elemental Assault / Stormflurry feels really nice, and only something as significant as Hailstorm or Fire Nova (if they get it right) really makes you think twice about taking those two. They could make it work I’m sure, but the triple hit ability would likely have to replace Stormflurry in the tree and then push Stormflurry up to Elemental Assault’s position in the tree (which is basically what it is at that point) rather than just replacing Forceful Winds. Worst case, they come up with a new level 15 talent to take Forceful Wind’s place.
Problem is that Windfury is not a damage source. It just causes you to hit with your weapon extra attacks. And when we pop ascendance its windstrike is physical damage(it just bypasses armor) and makes your melee attacks and windstrike have range for its duration. So they would have to change it to do nature damage.
I like Windfury giving extra attacks. I just think we need to be able to force that to happen. So its not rng. They kind of have it done by Windfury totem… We just need an ability that will force a Windfury proc…
Then the other option is to add Windfury as a third baseline strike that immediate hits for 3 attacks with your main hand weapon.
Then you have Stormstrike, Lava lash and Windfury as your baseline melee attacks.
Less to change, but now you can tweak windfury to be meaningful as the cooldown prevents any chain proc nonsense, while no longer being an imbue 100% circumnavigates people trying to double the imbue it.
Flametongue gets put on both weapons, offering higher appeal to Hot Hands.
You can keep the Stormstrike talents as is, and instead change forceful winds to act like classics flurry.
Forceful winds
increase your attack speed by X% after using Windfury for 5 seconds
Or have it increase windfury damage
Forceful Winds
increase the attack power bonus of your Windfury attack by an additional X%
So I would do this but remove LL and make another wind attack or lighting attack. But I like Windfury procing off of itself. That was fun in vanilla watching people just drop because windfury got a triple proc off of itself. We would want the weapon imbue as is…But this new strike allows us to trigger windfury when we need or want it This is a good design…What I would do remove the forceful winds talent and have it already baked into windfury itself. So windfury makes you strike 3 times with both weapons while it increases your dps or attack speed.
Now that you have removed forceful winds we can make a better talent to go there.
I think forceful winds talent we have should just be baked into wf at max dmg. This would give them a spot to add a new talent.
For windfury to ever do meaningful damage again it must lose the RNG element and no longer be passive. Otherwise it will either be high damage with an ICD to prevent chain procs, and still uncontrollable for when it bursts…or low damage with no ICD like it currently is and do 2% of our total damage.
Windfury needs to be overhauled and be an active strike, that either increases attack speed with a talent to triple hit, or be a strike that triple hits…both on cooldown. Flametongue becomes the only imbue Shaman deal with.
Personally I think it should stay as is just increase its damage. We just need a way to force it to proc every so often. And to increase its proc chance otherwise I like windfury as it is.
Windfury did good damage but it was so rng. What blizzard should have done was reduced some of its damage but increased its proc chance. Instead of what they have done by nerfing it into the ground and making us take a talent to make its damage some what non garbage.
And if you look at my gear with the Thunderaan’s Fury az trait and forceful winds Windfury will do good damage. We just need to have the system of forcing wf to proc. And inc its proc chance…Again this is just my opinion.
You are missing that you don’t get a forced proc because you can increase it’s damage and it has no icd.
15 years of data show that Windfury damage is only high when it’s unable to be on demand and has an icd.
When they decided to remove the icd, they ran the dmg into the ground and even the talent and trait dont bring it back to where it used to be…it still sits below 10% of total damage done from out abilities.
The only way you get meaningful damage AND on demand use is if it has a cooldown. This is just how blizzard operates.
I would love to have the classic version and have our gameplay focused on totem maintenance but that will never happen in retail. It would also be unhealthy for the spec compared to the way others have grown more active over the years and given more control on how they deal damage.
The original post isn’t about what I necessarily want for the spec, but something that is needed to make the spec healthier in general moving forward and build towards a point where we can compete with other melee playstyle dps.
As long as windfury is a passive rng, it will never do meaningful damage and just be a contributor to all abilities feeling like garbage because we have so many abilities that all do dmg (which is one of the main problems with piano shaman in the past - not adding back searing totem is an effort to stem this).
Just to play devil’s advocate here. What you described sounds an awfully lot like the Shadowlands iteration of Storm Strike with Elemental Assault / Stormflurry in terms of on demand / GCD regulated / high damage / resource generation. I could argue you basically renamed Stormstrike as Windfury and shifted a few passives around to replace the old Windfury damage/MSW generation overall.
So Windfury is dead, long live Storm Strike? It’s a sad way to look an iconic ability even if there’s some truth to it, and at this point I think there’s enough of a following behind both Windfury and Storm Strike that it would be difficult to completely replace one or the other without raising some eyebrows about what exactly it accomplished.
I am on record for openly acknowledging that stormflurry is legit just Windfury for stormstrike and uninspired design.
Windfury is iconic to the point people still talk about it…still want the old animation…and is the driving factor behind enh shaman popularity in classic (2h windfury hits).
You could absolutely get rid of windfury and just back that damage into stormstrike for meatier hits and extra proc attacks…but stormstrike isn’t as iconic, in my eyes.
It’s not what made shaman infamous. But you could argue with stormbringer and stormflurry, it’s desperately trying to be windfury. The problem is the ability reset. That alone prevents it from being meaningful damage because when you get rng proc strings dmg adds up fast. But when you get famine, single stormstrike feel like garbage.
The design should be an active windfury that takes the role of multiattacks on a cooldown, with stormstrike being a strike that augments sources of nature damage (the way it was for most of its lifespan).
Instead they try to wrap the multiattack gameplay into stormstrike through resets, which leaves stormstrike feeling garbage when you don’t chain proc…and Windfury being garbage because it’s passive crap.
Example of the desires gameplay
Stormstrike - 9 sec cd - instantly strike the target with both weapons and increase the damage of your next 2 nature spells by X
no stormbringer resets
cd affected by haste
Windfury - 12 sec cd - instantly strike the target with your main hand weapon for 2 extra attacks at X increased attack power
forceful winds increases haste after using Windfury ( old flurry)
Stormflurry adds a third attack to windfury
Elemental Assault guarantees maelstrom weapons charges for your first two windfury attacks
cd not affected by haste
Windfury takes the multiattack role away from Stormstrike and becomes active, while Stormstrike remains as a weapon attack that synergizes with the kit by boosting nature damage. Stormbringer mastery is instead changed to be Windfury attack power increase.
Honestly, I don’t recognize the class you’ve made. One of the primary functions of a strong windfury is to get the gamblers risk/reward aspect of the class. I get it, blizzard is bad at math. But making the class a not-shaman as a solution (which is kind of what they are doing for SL right now) is a “not good”. They have needed better math for more than a decade and prior to corruption I thought it was a system limitation. But with all the calculations they did for that system, they clearly have the capability. They should use it.
I understand the conciliation but as things are with the class/spec now, nothing should be deemed too late. It’s (seemingly) very not good.
Hammering things out point by point quote by quote seems … ad nauseum. It’s nice to see some thinking going on and it was interesting. But simply because blizz doesn’t seem to want to deal with the heart of the class in a productive ay doesn’t mean they can’t or shouldn’t. Meaningful windfury self proc is completely valid with diminishing (chance, power, or both) returns.
If there are no shaman in arena then it’s too weak. If people make degenerate teams with one shaman and four heals well then it’s too strong. It’s not an infinitely complex problem.
So maybe just some salt/pepper. SS as main attack with additional windfury chances is a very good thing. Feels awesome and is core. LL by comparison is essentially heresy but … over time it’s morphed into a decent bypass-armor filler.
Currently, as things are right now, I don’t have much hope for the spec. I also hope to be proven wrong but I do know how the MW instant cast scheme goes. It’s boring as crap and when we get instant casts it hits like a wet noodle. But usually, since we have crap defensives we have to spend that instant cast on self heals anyway.
Later on, when the instants stack up a bit we just end up GCD capped spamming wet noodle attacks all the while trying to stay in auto-attack range. Outside of using a couple of foot pedals for the lightning bolts I don’t see how managing sore achilles tendons is going to be fun. And we also have to keep redropping windfury totem every how-many yards too. Boy, pvp is going to be fun. (no)
Sorry to derail-gripe, I liked reading your post. If anything, they need more ideas.
I just think too much is coupled into Stormstrike. It needs to not try and be everything. Taking windfury for passive to active and be the multiattack option solves this.
As for losing the rng gambling aspect feeling less like a shaman, I guarantee you it doesn’t. Playing Thrall in HotS who uses an active windfury button to burst when you need it feels consistently more rewarding than my classic shaman, because I’m regularly able to make use of it. Huge crits are definitely rewarding and fun in classic but the times where it procs and I already won the fight and it was unneeded, or it doesn’t proc at all…or it just does poop dmg (retail wow) outweigh that feeling.
You could bake stormbringer into the new windfury ability to gamble that to reset, but then you run into the same issue of needing to ton dmg down because you can get random chain procs (which was bfas issue with stormstrike feeling like a wet noodle and then good when you feasted on procs).
That is an interesting idea. It can be very fun when they improve abilities with macguffins but when they go overboard on one thing, less good. I might say not enough is coupled there … but I don’t know exactly how it’s going to end up yet.
Again with this nonsense. Vanilla is not a viable base for retail shaman.
You ignore that vanilla has no maelstrom weapon generators, Stormstrike is an entirely different spell (just resets attack swing timer), no flametongue with a 2h, and no lava lash.
To do as you suggestes they need to
add a specific aura that adjusts maelstrom weapon proc rates specifically for 2h (seeing as they already struggled with getting 5/10 stack to work properly and had to add a second maelstrom tracker that is hidden from the player I doubt they can pull this off cleanly)
add a specific aura that changes windfury output dmg for 2h
overhaul lashing flames because it becomes a dead talent to 2h since no lava lash
overhaul hot hands because it becomes a dead talent to 2h since no lava lash
overhaul primal lava actuators legendary because it becomes a dead legendary to 2h since no lava lash
overhaul lava lash soulbind conduits because it becomes a dead conduit to 2h because no lava lash
OR
overhaul weapon imbuements in the code so two can be used at the same time
overhaul lava lash to work with a 2h weapon
Classic enhancement is not a viable model to build anything on. 2h Frost DK is the closest thing in retail to classic enh, and they were given control over their burst for a reason.
Would be nice to have doomwinds as an actual DPS cooldown either baseline or talented (yes i know theres a lego for it in SL but it should be part of the spec).
Considering Feral Spirits is our only real base dps CD having Doomwinds on a 1min CD with a 5-6sec duration would make me happy.
Even with just adding in something like that id be fine with WF staying how it is.