I’ve played Shaman since Wrath, and I personally dislike some of the changes that have occurred in the past few expansions.
Ice Fury - This is not a fun button to press in rotation and seems off to weave in a movement filler and make it a main button when main buttons already aren’t feeling the best they should. Bake it into a passive instead that has a cooldown on Frost Shock and it may make it a bit better feeling overall.
Lightning vs Fire - This is a terrible split of the whole Elemental theme in general. Having to pick which side and then having your Tier Set say, Nah you should only be using this side is pretty bad. Being forced to use Fire for S4 isn’t fun nor is it suitable for the elemental theme. I wield the power of 4 elements and yet you force me to basically use Fire as much as possible instead of weaving through most of them or all. Its sad to see that Lava burst went from a spell to be afraid of in PVP to, oh, its just some medium damage that will occur and be reduced to lightning bolt spam.
Spenders - Earthquake feels okay, its AoE with a knockdown/interupt/stun mechanic, feels balanced for what it is, as you spam Chain lightning into the group flailing around. ES and EB though feel like they shouldn’t exist at how they hit like a wet noodle after beating someone with a water gun for a bit. They either need to be a big blast of damage like old Lava Burst to make them meaningful, or they need to be a weaving like spell that gives not just us but the group buffs with either a rotating cycle or amount based on maelstrom spent on it.
EX. 25 Maelstrom, 3% Crit boost for 5 seconds, 50% Crit Boost is now 6%, and has a small haste buff of 3%, etc… or Buff 1 = 8% Haste, Buff 2 = 8% Mastery, in rotating order with a 15 second window of them for the group. Makes use of all the elements.
Totems - I sadly miss my old totems that I placed each time I went into combat, with each one applying different effects that either helped me or hindered my foe. Those were what made Shaman stand out amongst the other classes, now it just feels like an odd type of mage/lock/druid with similar themed spells. Especially being built around the Fire Aspect more than anything. Would be nice to get the old Totems back, otherwise, it isn’t worth putting any effort into race totems anymore since you aren’t really looking at them longer than a couple seconds, compared to minutes on end. Even the MoP personal totems would be fine to have again in my books, cause it would feel like I was channeling the elements through them into me.
Those are the things that I would like to see addressed more than anything. Its hard to keep playing shaman, when I can just go Boomie and get better results for less effort, or even play Destro / Fire for that Firey feel compared to Elemental. I’m not a melee type players, nor am I a healer anymore as I can’t keep up with the constant damage like I used to when I was younger. Elemental is the last sliver holding onto my Shaman love but even that is dwindling with how rough it feels to play.
I’ve been the biggest fan of Meatball for the longest time, but season3 and 4 are really killing it for me. The more I think about it the more I actually enjoyed Season 2.
Sure Icefury can be annoying and I hated working around Ele Shocks but at least I used all my elements
Reading all this definitely seems to be a common feeling that a more weaving/elementally diverse style is preferred. I hope Blizz reads this and takes it into account.
I’ve long liked the idea of Elemental Blast being a contextual spell that takes different element forms based on some form of player input. So instead of just being one spell that does Elemental damage and procs a random secondary buff, you’d be somehow purposely rotating it through its different distinct elemental forms.
Like, in Earth form it could raise a boulder out of the ground and hurl it at your target, dealing heavy Physical AoE damage around them.
Fire form could be Lava Burst, cranked up to actually pack a damn punch again because you’re not spamming it as a builder anymore.
Water form could be Ice Fury, retooled as something a little more interesting than just our umpteenth spell that buffs Frost Shock.
Wind form could electrify your target and make Chain Lightning capable of bouncing to it multiple times.
Haven’t played a ton of ele due to it being kinda weak and squishy for m+ most of the expansion but from what I’ve played I’d love to see a lightning focused build with earthquake applying multiple lightning conduits and the removal of icefury. That would probably be my ideal ele shaman design.
Maybe throw in summoning a storm elemental when you use stormkeeper.
We can sit here for weeks and come up with cool thematic takes on what elemental shaman could be, but it’s pretty clear at this point that blizzard isn’t interested in reading any of it. Hell, we have over 500 posts on the Farseer feedback thread and not a whisper of acknowledgement from blizz. They seem contented to let the spec die. Maybe next expansion we’ll finally hit the point of 0% ele presence in top content and then they’ll notice?
I’d rather it being some kind of passive like each time you cast lightning bolt you have a chance to empower your next frost shock, stacks 4 time.
The buff are also a pain to deal with.
One sub node should make the frost shock cleave (no debuff), the other one should increase its damage somehow but not create some kind of burst window.
Correct me please if you think im wrong but they cant design Shaman correctly because the Lore for the Elements has been screwed to absolute hell and back.
Theyre not on the cosmological chart
They dont have a powersource
They give shaman powers, but they cut a deal with Farseer Nobundo, so whats the aim here?
The shaman is supposed to mediate fights between elements
But the elements only fight because Azeroth ate the Spirit on the planet
What do the elements fight over?
And why would the elements give a shaman power if theyre stopping that fighting?
Consider other casters like Shadow Priest/Mage/Warlock/Boomkin
Their entire tree is useful to their core gameplay. With shaman you really can only take one side or the other. Sure the other specs have optimal builds, buts it not a different theme. Half of their tree’s are not gimped by tier sets
It really gimps elemental shaman to only have half a tree to work with
I think we need elemental shaman to be themed more like primalist NPC’s of this expansion. That would be a great change.
Fire and frost is covered by mage.
Earth could have been cool but is now covered by dracthyr.
I always thought it would have been an interesting mechanic to have something like what moonkin had where they cycle between lunar and solar…but moving between all 4 elements, and you have abilities empowered when you are in each element — so that you use all of your kit.
We need the person who reworked mage to check out elemental.
The person who reworked holy pally to look at resto.
I think those are great examples of fun, fresh, theme driven gameplay.
Here are some of my thoughts on the current state of elemental:
I really dislike Fire Elemental and Storm Elemental as a major cooldown. Once again a choice split on elements, and causes disharmony for the class. Haste with Lightning, Crit with Fire.
Ascendance is alright, but again its weighted to lava play, and it doesnt last long enough. You are so locked into to cramming in as many lava bursts as possible it sucks when you have to weave in a stormbreaker or icefury.
Buff micromanagent is outta control. At least it was with Icefury tier.
No Buff - this is so stupid. There is no reason to bring a shaman to a raid. You can bring a mage or evoker they can buff the group and provide lust. You cannot have middling RNG damage output AND bring no buff.
RNG + Mastery Overload: I love the concept but as a mastery it just sucks. It does not give you any MASTERY of the class. Its just RNG. Meaning some pulls you will do better than others. That’s not mastery, thats called luck. Mastery should allow the player to perform better if they demonstrate their… well… mastery of the class.
Take Resto Druid - More HOTS on target equals stronger healing. So a druid can juice someone up with a ton of hots before bombing ST heals to eek out that extra throughput. Thats a good mastery.
WindWalker Monk - Plus damage for each ability you press that is different than the last one. This is an AWESOME mastery. It really allows for some skill ceiling without being too complicated for new players to understand.
I propose something similar for Elemental shaman - Plus damage for each ability you cast with a different element than the previous cast. Something engaging.
Overload would be a great talent or baseline for thematic purposes
As far as mastery they could do a dual thing like enhance where there’s an rng mechanic (windfury/stormbringer) w/overload and a non rng one (% elemental damage) with something like tal Tasha’s from Diablo empowering 1 cast of each element ramping with each cast and resetting on duplicates or just empowering a non repeated casts in a weaving style.
I still want to see a focus on using all elements but your “sub spec” (nature fire frost build) determines what your SPENDER is. Move ele blast back to a generator (or instant spender either works) and have an option to have a fire or frost spender take earth shocks place. They can do different things that fit different niches but should make use of all generators.
Icefury isn’t fun and seems really clunky rotationally. Yet it is pretty much mandatory to unlock some of the important talents from the lightning side oft he tree.
Elemental Blast is great if it is a generator with a casting time or an instant spender in place of Earth Shock. It sucked in Season 2 that it was a spender with a cast time.
We need a way to get a second charge on Astral Shift since it is our primary defensive cooldown. It is terrible on a long fight when I have to time out exactly when to use it.
Fix the appearance of Ascendance. No good shaman wants to look like a Twilight’s Hammer abomination. Either give us a nimbus of smoldering flame, rushing winds, and flowing water (depending on spec), or make us take on the appearance of an elemental during the cooldown.
Remove the cap on Flame Shock and make it easier to spread the DoT. Also, bring back the old glyph that healed for a percentage of Flame Shock damage dealt.
Give elemental shaman a raid-wide 3% haste buff either while Flametongue weapon is used or while Lightning Shield is used.
Personally I didn’t have an issue with the cast time Ele Blast, it was a trade-off from Earth shock by giving buffs. The buffs could be more consistent or the cast time a little faster, but overall it’s not terrible but I also know that’s not everyone’s opinion of it.
Yes. Season 2 builds had Flash of Lightning and it was probably the only time I felt actually tanky because of having Shift up for almost everything. In lieu of that we need another defensive that isn’t burning a 5m CD, a 30m CD or sacrificing a trinket slot for something like Ire.
Probably the biggest issue with Season 3/4. I think this build would have felt fine to run if we had a consistent way to spread flameshock to more than 6 targets. We aren’t even kings of 6-target fights, there’s no reason it should have been capped
Shaman need a proper raid buff and elemental shields need a rework. Earth/Water shield having charges is bogus, they already have internal CDs. Lightning shield only working on melee is bogus, revert it to work on ranged and spells again.
Weapon buffs need to be more core to shaman gameplay. I find it more thematic to use Flametounge and Earthliving over some random stat rune I toss on my weapon because I need to for damage.