So how do folks feel about shaman and what do you hope for in Shadowlands. Dreading anything? What covenant are you going to roll with?
Personally I hope they fix enhancement to some degree. I’v enjoyed the spec in the past, but I do feel it has a bit too much rng. The rotation also doesn’t feel as good as some specs.
Elemental feels pretty good in my opinion. I love the instant LBs after getting flame shock spread on everything.
Enhancement just needs so much tweaking to make it less obnoxious to use. You know a spec is busted when you need to use Weakauras to do well at it in order to keep track of mini debuffs that last 15 seconds.
It is a Mail wearing melee spec…it needs some defense boost. Something as simple as a spell called “Earthen Bulwark” which provides a defense for 60 mins of increase resistance would go far.
The rotation needs to be less obnoxious. It feels like they are trying to tick every ‘elemental’ box to fit a theme. They shouldnt have to. Resto does beautiful emphasis water’s healing energies. They can just put a primary focus on lightning and wind if need be.
Truth be told I love Enhancement for its uniqueness in theme and style and I use it now. I can definitely see why so many would be frustrated or against it though and they are not wrong.
Honestly, my only gripe with enhance is the number of GCDs required to start doing DPS.
If we had cooldown that activates all of our weapon enchants at once, Rockbiter for maelstrom, Flametongue enchant, Frostbrand enchant, and next melee swing procs Windfury. I think enhance would feel so much cleaner.
You know man, I use to feel that way but enh really is a slow starter and in raids it really takes off as the fight goes because enh really is sustain and if you have to switch targets all your enhancements are on you so there is 0 penalty to switching to a new main target.
In mythic pluses our damage was always good and we brought rock boy for wipe protection, purge and kick. The only real problem is to be king in there on the damage meters you need like 2 raden weapons and a rank 1 or 2 twilight or 1 raden weapon and a rank 3 twilight.
Hopefully we are one of the classes who got a resource rework. Especially after how we got ignored in BfA beta, got told we were going to be fixed in 8.1, and then got told no reworks mid expansion. That and Shadow priests, I hope they get worked on as well.
I dont really like any of the enh changes
As it is right now, most of what I’m doing as a melee shaman is using special melee attacks to enhance my weapons and spending the maelstrom I generate doing that with big damaging magic attacks, that all feels pretty good to me
Shadowlands enh, with the removal of builder/spender design, adding multiple ranged spells, totems and reset/proc based power feels like on paper is over-complicating the core rotation and pulling away from the “magic-based melee fighter” that I’ve enjoyed from legion onward
I think a middle ground where the return of the flameshock>lavalash to spread dots design from pre-WoD would work, but giving all these ranged spells seems redundant, chain lighting especially when crash lightning effectively replaces it and makes the spec more about close encounters
I would have hope, but I really feel that maelstrom of all the new legion era resources, was such a perfect fit for enh that i’m sad to see it go, and adding all these extra superfluous buttons that serve the same function as the new attacks defeats the point, why frost shock when you have frost brand?
Flame shock and Lava lash was so fun.
As an Enh shaman from Vanilla -> WotLK, then Legion -> BfA, I couldn’t be happier with these changes. I absolutely hated all of the waste baked into the Maelstrom resource design. Juggling weapon enhancements instead of having them be imbues made button presses feel less meaningful. We get at least a couple totems back, and with Stormkeeper as an option we get to feel like a Shaman again with lightning bolt/chain lightning.
Overall, it sounds like Maelstrom charges are going to provide options for spending them based on the situation, and that excites me. If this plays anywhere near what I’m imagining, I think it’s going to be far more fun and engaging than the current design.
This is wrath style enhance and i couldn’t be happier. Now just give shamanistic rage back
NGL I am torn, I don’t fully understand what this means for resto shamans.
It looks like now they still can’t buff allies and now they get a gimmick shield? I’m not sure how I feel really.
Enhancement was always a “magic base melee fighter.”
How is going up to some one and smacking their face in with stormstrike and lavalash then casting shocks and instant lightning bolts NOT a magic base melee fighter?
Enhancement is going back to Priority base rotation.
Enhance removing resource playstyle is a nice change as it felt kinda pointless anyway but it looks like it could be a cluttered mess with too many abilities, buffs and debuffs in the rotation. It sounded like they’ll have to use most the same abilities they did before but also managing a bunch of elemental spells on top (flame shock, frost shock, stormkeeper, lightning bolt, elemental blast, chain lightning all mentioned in the Enh section) and searing totem as well… I’m not sure I need 10+ buttons in my rotation with tons of buffs and debuffs to track, it’s too much on paper but guess we’ll see how it actually plays out.
Ele shrug. If it’s just spamming lava burst more and Earth Shock/Lightning Bolt less, like they kinda hinted at, it could be resident sleeper. Also, sounds like it will be clunkier/rampier to switch between ST and AOE as you have to build Chain Lightning stacks to Earthquake now and require more ramp up to aoe, instead of having 1 resource to dump into EQ or ES.
Resto… idk… seems like they get not much except having to maintain Earth Shield baseline, which is a bit of a chore with how quickly it gets eaten up on a tank. Would like to see Downpour and Wellspring actually get some synergy with the spec (don’t benefit from Resurgence, Unleash Life, Deluge, Tidal Waves, etc…) so there’s more options than just spamming Chain Heals and getting phat Cloudbursts. Searing Totem I guess is okay a bit of extra damage but Resto needs some boost to Chain Lightning or something to make their aoe less awful compared to Holy/Druid. Flametongue Weapon, if it’s just a 1 hour spell dmg maintenance buff, is just pointless to even talk about as well it makes literally 0 difference if that spellpower is just baked into your spells or you have to click a button once a hour for it.
Healing Rain needs to be insta cast… it’s too annoying and underwhelming compared to Efflo. Just compare the two abilities… both are a ground aoe hot that offers buffs to your other heals through talent or druid mastery, one is insta cast, no CD so you can move it when the group moves, 30 second duration which means way less GCDs (and no cast time) spent on this maintenance which means more time to DPS or do other stuff… the other has a long cast time, 10 second duration, 10 second cooldown, takes a ton of your GCDs/cast time to keep it up which means it’s not even worth using much in mythic+ …
Please bring back Gust of Wind for the love of god, and give all healer specs a combat rez for mythic+.
So here’s how I broke it down:
That means that at the moment, we’re actually down a button to press, with only 1 DoT to maintain instead of 2 buffs. Lightning Bolt will be a MW proc consumer on single target, Chain Lightning will likely be the equivalent on multi-target, so those are pretty much the button that replaces Frostbrand Weap at the moment.
Elemental Blast will be a talent, so who knows how that’ll sim. It honestly seems like the priority will be something along the lines of:
There’s also the question of Lava Lash, since currently it’s just raw Maelstrom filler to not overcap. Without resource, I wonder what function it’ll have.
Anyway, I don’t think the rotation is getting especially bogged down, we’re just getting classic Shaman-style tools back, and I’m all about it.
Rockbiter is probably what primal strike is replacing
You are in luck, our resource has been removed =D.
whoooo!
I actually wonder if we will be doing a a Flame shock -> Frost shock style rotation in a similar vain to the old days in how we used to do a Flame shock -> Earth shock rotation, to not interrupt the dot.
Doing a Flame shock -> Storm strike -> frost shock could also provide some nice burst thanks to hailstorm, depending on just how much damage Frost shock will do.
Another nice burst combo would be 5 stacks of mealstorm -> Storm keeper -> lightning bolt -> lightning bolt.
there’s still lots of info to come obviously, but what they’ve shared so far for resto is essentially trash.
a shadow chain heal, a stack heal totem, and a talent that everyone skips because it’s bad is coming back as a standard ability. /yawn
also couldn’t care less about frost shock or fire totems being baseline for all shaman. I don’t really pvp, so there’s no use for them.
I don’t think shaman need much in the way of change - it’d just be nice to have something useful like gust of wind come back, or a CD from the covenants that helps fill in for a weakness. We don’t need chain heal 2: shadow boogaloo, or another stack heal…
I would love for gust of wind to make a comeback.
With so many classes getting the choice of Two-Handed or Dual Wield back, I honestly feel like this is the best chance to make reality the idea of Two Handed Enhancement Shaman.
Its a powerful aesthetic and class fantasy I would love see become reality once more!
Imma level here… Vanilla Enhancement isn’t the best, but man oh man does it have a really powerful fantasy to it. It had an impact and there is a reason there have been so many threads in here over the years on it. I think it would be really cool to see Enhancement Shaman among the ranks of specs that have the choice.
There would certainly be design hurtles to jump through such as “How do Weapon Buffs work on a Two-Hander? Can you put both on a Two-Hander or just one? If just one would its power need to be greater than if applied to a One-Hander? How would Lava Lash work? Could it be ignored while using a Two-Hander or would it be adapted to work with a Two-Hander as well?”
Lots of questions that would need to be answered, but I think its a venture worth exploring.
The one argument that I feel has the least validity is people saying gearing would be a problem. With the advent of Personal Loot as well as systems in Modern WoW where a singular item has multiple stats (IE One-Handed weapons already exist that have both Strength and Agility or Intellect and swaps depending on which class/spec gets the item) I really don’t see itemization being a problem in terms of Two-Handed weapons.
there is a use for everything you just mentioned. Maybe not in YOUR preferred type of game but in PvP and OTHERS PREFERRED, there most definitely is a use for them and a welcomed addition.