Shadowlands Enhancement

Just posting my feedback here as I am not in the alpha.

IMO as a previous shaman main and with enhancment being my main alt in bfa they are in a good spot (in pve). However I am not against the fundamental changes being made in shadowlands.

This is huge- Maelstrom weapon NEEDS to have its stacks increase the healing and damage of the next spell by 20% per stack again. That was a fundamental part of that passive before Legion and it needs to exist for this rollback to not be a straight nerf. Honestly they could just keep the Legion and BFA iteration and add chain lightning and this would be a better spec.

Searing Assault- This should spawn the totem and cast flame shock on your primary totem, it should not have 2 interactions with abilities you have to use before it. Otherwise it will feel clunky.

Spirit Wolves- these are a joke without the talent. Buff them or make ascendance baseline again.
Lightning shield- I prefer the BFA version as it has a cooler interaction building up to the lightning damage as otherwise since we are not tanks it is useless. I would say keep the BFA version or people are just going to use earth shield since lightning shield is useless when not getting attacked.

Survivability- This is an era where dhs can full heal just doing their dps rotation and have a 1 minute cooldown defensive, enhancement needs something more than astral shift and capacitator toem while good in pve is a joke in pvp. IDK what it could be, earth shield is not strong enough especially now that you can not have it active with lightning shield. But they need more mitigation, preferably passive.

WIndfury- this proc is a joke, far from its classic days where now it does no damage without Forceful winds talent. Buff it or make forceful winds baseline so it feels useful.

Weapon Enhancements- I am fine they are making a return but remove this silly thing forcing you to have flamebrand on your offhand to use lava lash.

2 Likes

Would love to have shamanistic rage back.

Or make healing totem give a burst of healing when destroyed (problematic since random).
Earth shield gives damage reduction
Spirit wolves heal
MW gives bonus healing on stacks, etc.

There is so much they could do.

6 Likes

I would absolutely love it if they brought back shamanistic rage, maelstrom weapon buffing spells with each stack, and spirit wolves healing.

Also maybe make it so that if capacitor totem is destroyed it instantly stuns for half duration instead of doing nothing. It would make it so enemies have a choice of trying to out range the area and have it do nothing or accept they’re getting stunned but be able to still be able to interact with it.

6 Likes

Shamanistic Rage worked well because you could use it during CC and it helped to survive getting train wrecked.

In my opinion they need to figure out their squishiness. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a matter of active mitigation through abilities, it could be a playstyle were it is easy to kite players until ready to use burst through slows or roots etc.

Howhever, the main thing is that Enh needs to have more survivability

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This. It should be worthwhile to cast a heal with 5stacks. Dunno why somewhere along the way they decided to gut Enhance’s strong healing that was always a stable of Enhance’s utility in PvP.

They really should go with MoP’s defensive utility. Shamanistic Rage and an option between Bulwark Totem & Nature’s Guardian. There was also a glyph that reduced damage by 10% passively while lightning shield was active.

Again, don’t know why they decided to gut this without any replacement. Astral Shift has been a garbage talent ever since it’s implementation in MoP

Really they should gut Legion’s design of Enhancement entirely. Enhancement went from a renowned anti-caster spec to a gutted fury warrior with a range interupt. It’s a empty shell of what it once was

2 Likes

Another option is make the totem HP scale per enemy in the initial area of effect, up to a cap. If it’s on 4 people and they all turn to destroy it before the detonate, they should avoid the stun. But if it’s on 4 people, one player shouldn’t be able to burn it down while the other 3 ignore it (at least as long as skills like Leg Sweep and Chaos Nova exist).

I too want to see the wolves heal again. That was really what made shaman feel okay to play in PvP because you could spawn wolves and go from almost being two shot to staying alive until wolves die.

I believe Astral Shift is very strong and people don’t give it credit. It would be nice to see a defensive talent row that gave it multiple charges, wolves heal, or a nice damage reduction buff after using 5 stacks of Maelstrom on self-casted heals.

That could work, too. There just needs to be some way to either dissuade people from immediately killing our totems or to make it harder for them to do so.

Astral Shift, however, is pretty bad. I know demon hunters are rather overpowered but Blur is just so much better it’s insane. Even if you ignore the 50% dodge chance they get from it, having 5% less damage reduction but gaining 30 seconds less of a cooldown and 2 seconds longer of a duration is a no brainer. And not only that but then they also have Darkness and can talent for insane lifesteal or a 5 second invulnerability.

Shaman has awful defenses and is a massive reason why we are considered one of the weaker classes for high end content. Not to mention leveling as a shaman is a pain in the butt due to how squishy we are.

I was on board until here. Do you really feel that’s true? I’ve leveled a lot of characters and never felt leveling was better or worse on any particular class - it was an annoying hump to get over on all of them.

Something I was doing wrong early on as enhancement was trying to heal myself when I was below 50% only. I learned, especially as I did more arenas, that I wanted to pop heals early enough that my mana had a chance to regen. The healing gives incredible sustain, on par with that of a feral druid, but you can’t try and burst heal from a bad spot. Enhancement can’t play catch up with it’s self heals because then it’s already behind.

Further, I learned how to maximize the range of Thunder Crash (I always get the name wrong), use Earthbind to melee kite, Ghost Wolf to create distance and safety, and Incap Totem in hairy sets for PvE. Overall, the defense is in a good mix of mobility, self-healing and crowd control that other classes don’t get. Havoc Demon Hunter has the AoE stun but it can’t melee kite a pack of 5 mobs and not take any damage as easily as enhancement can…

It’s true that the defensives of shaman require a lot more proactive thinking. I believe Astral Shift is good in itself - you even note that it’s a higher DR than Blur. But that said, I recognize where it’s lacking too. As far as DR goes, the shaman kit is sparse and you have to think of your other options as damage mitigation - range, mobility, control, and sustained self-healing.

I think multiple charges on Astral Shift would go a long way, competing with a Feral Spirits healing effect talent, and change the healing buff on Earth Shield to flat damage reduction for enhance/ele if cast on the shaman only. Those 3 talents would close the gap significantly for the spec.

Lastly, I don’t believe you should compare any class to Havoc Demon Hunter, the universally recognized ‘best’ melee spec. It’s always going to seem like something is short because that’s the guy up top. Compare enhancement to some other specs, like feral druid or survival hunter, and the gap closes substantially…

Im only talking about M+. To get invited in M+ you have to have survivability, dps, and utility.

Defensively: bring Stoneclaw totem and shamanistic rage back to be invited into M+ and not get one shotted by level 1 critters.

Offensively: make spirit wolves baseline, less buttons to press/setup, bake flame shock in lava lash or something, lava lash needs a rework - enhancement has more buttons than any other setup other than uhdk just to do mediocre damage, this hinders us in M+.

Even though now we do good damage, we still laughing stock when we want to go into M+ as enhance unless you got a guild and even they ask ‘you got something else you want to bring’

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blizz really needs to listen to this man, we have been asking for survival ability for 2 expacs. they have this idea of a enhance being a spellblade class and that just not it. u want a spellblade? add it as another class. we want to be brusiers who weild the elements not class cannon mail users

2 Likes

Maybe I was being a little hyperbolic. Leveling isn’t that hard on any class. I just see a lot of people on the forums and reddit complaining that shaman is more difficult than what they’re used to while leveling. Most classes don’t need to use their entire toolkit to survive in the open world.

I was comparing to demon hunter because it, hunter (not MSV), and shaman are the classes I’m most familiar with in BFA. I did say that demon hunters are overpowered in my post but as long as there is a best class I feel like others should be compared to that one since the playerbase is already doing that (not to mention Feral and Survival are also considered to be on the weaker side). Also, a demon hunter doesn’t need to kite a pack of 5 mobs, lol. I leveled a new one on horde a few weeks ago and was pulling as many enemies as I could before they would leash and still obliterated them every time no problem.

A second charge on Astral Shift would be really good but I think I would still prefer Shamanistic Rage back instead. Being able to use it while stunned is amazing in pvp (and still pretty great in certain pve situations). However, a second charge on Astral Shift, or even just lowering the CD, would be pretty nice. Definitely agree on healing Feral Spirits and shield spells having a DR component, either Earth or Lightning. I think i’d prefer it on Lightning because it feels more Enhancement than Earth but that could be a little over tuned if it’s the offensive and defensive option.

2 Likes

“There is so much they could do”

That’s the thing that hurts the most. We’ve been squishy for so long and it just keeps getting ignored.

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A guiding principal on alpha appears to be reducing the power of defensives/self-sustain. DPS druids lost the second charge of survival instincts, demon hunter self-healing and blur damage reduction nerfed, rogue pot healing reduced, etc.

So I don’t know if we will see a straight out buff to our defensives like a second charge of astral shift or the return of sham rage since that seems to run counter to the current design philosophy.

If reduced defensives is the name of the game, then how about if they just gave us back +10% damage/healing per maelstrom stack and gave us more ways to reliably build maelstrom stacks. Like make rockbiter generate 1 stack and make feral spirits generate one stack per second so that we can generate stacks on demand.

Feral spirits generating stacks would essentially bring back healing wolves since you could use the stacks they generate to heal but it would also just make it a very flexible CD that you could alternatively use to do damage or heal others. It would also create more player agency since it wouldn’t just be passive healing but would require the player to decide what to do with the stacks.

Overcharge should also be off the global CD so you can pair it with a cast like old nature’s swiftness so you don’t automatically lose the first stack you build.

I think if we got the above: +10% heal/damage on MSW stacks, stack generation from wolves (and ideally also from rockbiter), and overcharge off the global CD, then I’d be happy from a defensive standpoint (assuming our healing is no longer nerfed in pvp).

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You know what this is? Legion and BFA Shaman. Also pretty sure it was 25% a stack.

I disagree since your mana will limit you severely so they should just make them passively heal again.

It would probably be fine (assuming 25% not 10% increased per stack). I’d still like to see ascendance back and some things fixed I mentioned above like having searing assault apply flame shock and drop the totem.

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What if wolves also made maelstrom stacks reduce mana cost of spells by 20% per stack while they are active (or this could be made a baseline part of maelstrom stacks like it used to be).

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What I would love to see returned to Enhancement Shamans is Earth Shock. I want that spell back.