I have to agree and I see your point, even if we could build maelstrom via “ranged melee” (nice oxymoron lol) we wouldn’t be able to use them aside from LB but yes, I remember frozen power and it was amazing and baffling as to why we dont have it now.
2 Likes
Yeah it was part of the systematic gutting that enhance went though the course of the game where we lost pretty much everything useful and got worse versions of things to make up for it or nothing at all. And now we are in our current state =(
2 Likes
What if ghost wolf talents (pvp amd talent tree) was baseline, and the talent made it so the reduction was instant and added 5-10% reduction?
No…I don’;t want any defensives tied to ghost wolf period. It removes the ability to attack or cast, and we lack the DoTs and HoTs to make kiting it anything of an effective strategy to still kill something.
It’s a mobility cooldown, not a defensive. It’s not like a druid who can bleed you and dot you, or hot themselves and then run away and heal. Enhance/Ele have one DoT and no HoT, yet must sacrifice all dmg and healing to gain survivability.
It’s complete bullsh*t and unfortunately is a reason we don’t have another defensive alongside Astral Shift. Ghost Wolf healing is also disproporionately stronger for ele/resto than enhance.
6 Likes
Been lurking the forums for awhile here, and I see the same things being said over and over, about what is wrong with Enhancement, and ideas on resolution. What do we as a community need to do for Blizzard to give us acknowledgement? What will it take for a dev to communicate to us why things are the way they are?
At this point, I’m not even asking for changes, though they are much needed, but instead clarity as to why any of the development team things we are in a “balanced” state. What is it about Enhancement that screams balanced to them?
What does it take to get a response to our community?
7 Likes
Honestly, the last time we got any meaningful change was when we grouped together and literally hijacked a Q&A flooding it nonstop with Shaman questions. And even then we were mostly ignored.
Ghostcrawler was a million times better in regards to class concerns then Ion ever has been. Both in appearing to listen, giving insight to players on their own stance, and addressing both pve and pvp concerns.
4 Likes
Not looking good boys 
3 Likes
Ghostcrawler actually played the game, Ian clearly don’t (and he is a shaman). Ian is more concerned in wasting time creating new systems than balancing the core classes of the game.
5 Likes
I agree with everything. Insta hex, only if adjusted. Because a 8 sec insta cc (even if can be decursed) is really powerfull on a 30 sec cd.
Shamanistic rage and nature guardian should be baseline for enhance and elemental.
Another thing they could do is give primal elementalist to enhance, even if its not the best, the “harden” buff is a really welcome addition for a class that need any help to survive, and would be a nice bonus with the conduit for 40% bonus hp.
1 Like
Bump Bump Bump! 
1 Like
My personal theory is they need to create systems on top of the current game in order to do any tuning because the game code is so old and none of the original team is there so none of the current developers understand how to read/change the older code.
This is only amplified by them having needed to pull Holinka off another IP project just to unprune, as well as by the constant azerite/legendary/soulbind/conduit systems we see that essentially fix classes on top of the pre-existing game in a format that can be tuned independently from the rest of the game.
Also further amplified by their seeming inability to overhaul totems into somethin useful (also part of the old game code).
/tinfoilhattheoryoff
2 Likes
If we are talking conspiracy theories, I’m half convinced there some sort of legal restriction around implementing anything mentioned by players in the forums lol.
1 Like
Pride more likely.
2 Likes
We need this. Good job, Zezu. We need them to listen to us.
Now they’ll nerf Chain Harvest (and night Fae for Resto) - which is warranted, obviously - and we’ll still be stuck in the S(uck) tier. Give us tools to counterplay setup based comps, don’t give us raw numbers that makes it impossible for the other team to survive/kill us.
Being “balanced” around raw numbers (Healing Surge/Raw Damage) makes it so we are either too strong or too weak.
Maybe untie Healing with MSW. Make MSW only work on LB/CL/CH/Hex and leave our heals alone so we have to hard cast them, but make it so that they actually heal. Instant insane healing is tilting af for the opponent, which is why they nerfed us into the ground several times.
Also, Spirit Wolves is a joke. Our only baseline dps cooldown in pvp does basically nothing. 1 stack of maelstrom weapon on Fae Transfusion is also laughable, like we can cast a 3 second channel as enhance in arenas/bgs, and if we do we gain ONE stack of MSW, lol.
I dont necessarily like the idea of giving up instant heals but it’s not like we won’t be hard casting them anyways, so I agree to a point here. Really they could balance it and their half way there. They limited our instant heals down to 1-2 based on MW stacks so having the heals do about 25% of our health wouldnt be game breaking, giving up 2 globals for 50% hp which sacrifices dps anyways, both with globals and MW stacks. And maybe it should be percentage based so that it actually scales through the whole expansion rather than being op in the first season then as higher ilvl gear comes you could spam 4 instant heals and not get 25% health back! Glares at BFA
Why haven’t they tried just making MSW healing surges apply a (stacking?) heal over 3-4 seconds? Full power relative to hard casting on top of MSW and instant, but spread over 0.6-0.8 seconds per MSW spent at reduced mana cost? Hard cast 3-4 back to back at 1.5s per cast if you have the mana and really need the burst immediately or don’t have the MSW to spare.
I realize it sounds almost like making Swelling Waves baseline for MSW, but this sounds like a middle ground to keep healing strong while hard casting, balanced with MSW to allow room for counterplay, keep the rest of our toolkit strong(er) due to the potential counterplays (purge? extra burst to finish the shaman off? swap targets and waste the HoT?), and would not interfere with the melee play-style (outside of the damage trade-off). It could also make Swelling Waves less of a default pick if some of the power is baked into MSW heals but incompatible with that honor talent.
I think 2 globals for 50% hp is too much depending on how frequent you can do it. If you can do it every 1 minute, maybe that’s ok. If you can do it every 15-20 seconds, it might be too much.
We need real defensives though. Healing should be similar to what ww monks have, where they can somewhat spam it and heal but only if they are able to keep casting without getting kicked/cced.
I wish they would give real defensives kind of like Anti-magic Zone. Think something like Wind Wall, where you would put a Wind-zone around you (exactly like AMZ) but it had a chance to reflect spells back to the caster (say 50%) and increase your chance to dodge by 50%.
We need actual buttons to press to counterplay the enemy. Spamming heals is too easy and it gets nerfed way too fast when it’s strong because the enemy doesn’t understand what’s going on (why is that shaman’s health going up so fast every time?). Nobody complains when a DK drops an AMZ and saves his whole team from a MLx or RMx go.
I love enhance, but it’s so frustrating having no way to counterplay the enemy because of a lack of buttons to press (and the ones we have get instant killed like grounding and cap totem). I think shifting our survivability to instant heals is what got us to where we are.
I definitely agree, and really to your point 50% with 2 casts does sound a little overpowered and halving it seems underpowered when casting twice to get 25% ergo making it hard to balance but yes the healing would be ok where it’s at if we had better defensives, I like the ideas, could even be like their anti magic shell and be a swirling wind just around you redirecting dmg or even water with the maelstrom swarming around you it slows down all incoming projectiles or attacks and reduces the dmg by a certain %. Theres so much that could be done, so much flavor. Again I agree, our defensive shouldn’t be healing but here we are probably going to have to end up stacking endurance conduits and healing legendaries to do just that
1 Like
This is a wonderful post thank you for putting so much time into it! I honestly don’t know what other class to play if Enh Shaman is as bad as this in shadowlands…honestly, i may request a refund if they’re launched in such a way. I am fed up with all these systems that are waaaaaaaaaay to difficult to “balance” that obviously take the dev’s away from what should be their main focus, THE CLASSES WE F’ING PLAY!!! Who the hell cares about Covenants if your class sucks? Who the hell cares about legendries if your class sucks? Who the hell cares about (insert 200 IQ bliz idea) if your class sucks? From what i can tell, people do not like borrowed power systems and if blizzard was truly listening then they wouldn’t be implementing a minimum of 4 at launch of this exp…I appreciate their efforts to keep a 15 year old game “exciting” and “new” i realllly do, but i feel for 15 dollars a month since launch, I deserve more and so do you.
So what can be done about this?
- Delay the launch 3-6 months. Give the dev team time to lock down all the issues (well a bunch at least). You won’t lose ANY money.
- open the beta up. We need more hands on this to provide them the feedback they reallllly need.
- Do more real conversations with players. Not these canned interviews where all the questions are planned out and safe. I understand they want some shelter from a very negative community, but we also deserve to hear the response to these tough questions.
- Change their perspective of PvP. Bliz does not SEEM to care about PvPers. I cap seem because maybe they don’t and they just don’t know how to express their feelings toward pvpers, i understand that! I used to play with 20+ people I knew personally (not to mention the number i played with i that i didn’t know), now i play with 1. Why? PvP is joke! It’s the best MMORPG PvP system out there, making it hard to branch out, but it’s been long forgotten about. These people are important to your bottom line. Want more money?
So, this post was written in frustration and I think that’s obvious. I really like WoW and want it to succeed but I have felt frustrated for years and years as i see the choices they make. I think it’s clear that bliz will not be reading these posts but I hope that somehow they’ll learn of our troubles through internet osmosis.
2 Likes
to your point 50% with 2 casts does sound a little overpowered and halving it seems underpowered when casting twice to get 25% ergo making it hard to balance
This is compounded when it comes to hard casts without MSW. Now you are looking at 12.5% per hard cast (weak) while at the same time having 25% per MSW cast (too strong).
Making the MSW heal a variable HoT as I suggested above would let it stay balanced in all cases and potentially allow room for a new defensive if needed.
1 Like