Hello all! Here is the quote for all latest Shaman changes:
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SHAMAN
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Enhancement
- Stormbringer is now a part of Mastery for Shaman.
- New Talent: Storm’s Wrath – Increases the mastery bonus to Stormbringer and Windfury’s chance to trigger by 100%. Replaces Stormbringer.
- Lava Lash (Rank 2) renamed to Molten Assault.
- A bunch of talent nodes moved around on the right-hand side of rows 4-8
- Improved Maelstrom Weapon is now a 2-rank node. Damage increased by 10% per rank.
- Focused Maelstrom has been removed.
- Raging Maelstrom now also increases damage and healing by an additional 5% per Maelstrom Weapon stack.
- Lashing Flames has returned as a talent node on row 7.
- Feral Spirits and Elemental Spirits have been slightly adjusted:
- Each wolf type grants you 15% increased damage to the related element. Base wolves count as physical.
- Alpha Wolf now triggers from Chain Lightning or Crash Lightning.
- Alpha Wolf’s attack (Spirit Bomb) is now physical and ignores armor (was Nature damage).
- Spirit Bomb damage increased by 50%.
- Legacy of the Frost Witch has been redesigned – Every 10 Maelstrom Weapon stacks consumed resets the cooldown of Stormstrike and grants you 5/20% increased Physical damage dealt for 5 seconds.
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Enhancement
PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER
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SHAMAN
- Traveling Storms – Now available for all Shaman specializations (was Elemental only).
- Traveling Storms has been redesigned – Thunderstorm now can be cast on allies within 40 yards, reducing enemies movement speed by 60% and knocks enemies 25% further. Thundershock knocks enemies 100% higher.
- Tidebringer – Now available for all Shaman specializations (was Restoration only).
- Lightning Lasso – Removed as a PvP talent (moved into the talent tree).
Unnoted changes:
- Swirling Maelstrom (Enhancement Shaman tree) now additionally triggers from consuming at least 2 stacks of Hailstorm.
Feedback and suggestions:
Latest changes:
- Elemental Spirits upgrade seems very arguable now. You replace 2 guaranteed physical damage increasing wolves with 2 random element wolves, which might result in a dps loss instead of gain if you get the element you barely use (for example, if you play without Ice Strike and get Frost wolf(es) instead of physical wolves that buff Stormstrike, Windfury, autoattacks and Doom Winds.
Suggestion: Element for both wolves should be picked based on the element of last used elemental ability before Feral Spirits usage. For example, if you use Lava Lash and then FS, it summons 2 Fire Wolves etc. This would allow players to summon wolves fitting for their build and make Elemental Spirits more competitive. However, even then it might provide no dps gain over 30% physical damage increase (for Windfury, Doom Winds and Stormstrike), so Elemental Spirits should also provide X% damage increase to the wolves themselves to make it a clear ST damage increase option opposed to the AoE damage increase option Alpha Wolf. - Legacy of the Frost Witch change is controversial - as noted by other players, if you wait to getting 10 stacks to use it, you can get additional MSW procs that exceed the cap and are wasted.
Suggestion: Let Overflowing Maelstrom additionally increase maximum number of MSW stacks to 15. This would allow to prevent stack waste for both LotFW and 10 MSW spending builds. - Primal Lava Actuators and Lashing Flames being gated behind conditional, playstyle changing and 2 point investment Hot Hand is controversial as well - necessity to spec 2 points into Hot Hand makes these talents much less desirable.
Suggestion: Move PLA and LF one row up and move Hot Hand to the current LF position to make it more optional. Consider changing HH back to 1 point investment to keep its branch talent point investment balanced with Swirling Maelstrom branch (as currently Swirling Maelstrom branch requires 3 points and Hot Hand branch requires 4 points to reach Ascendance).
General tree:
- Frost Shock is being gated behind an AoE talent Chain Lightning and not auto filled for any spec, so a situation where Elemental / Enhancement could take Icefury / Hailstorm, but does not take Frost Shock is possible.
Suggestion: Make Frost Shock a baseline ability for all 3 specs. It is just as iconic as Lightning Bolt and Flame Shock and would complement them in baseline list, giving Shamans access to offensive abilities of all 4 elements alongside Flame Shock, Lightning Bolt and Earthbind Totem. - Winds of Al’Akir seems excessive as the 2 point investment (similar power ability Spirit Wolf is a 1 point investment) and its general movement speed bonus is very conditional.
Solution: Reduce it to 1 point investment and change general movement speed bonus to 5% per each active totem, up to 15%. - Shamans would still be extremely vulnerable to dying in stuns in Dragonflight (especially with 7 combo point Kidneys mass coming soon) and Thunderstorm in general tree would barely help that - most stun based classes either can quickly re-engage or have ranged damage and Thundershock effect is quite short.
Solution: Let Planes Traveller make Astral Shift usable in stuns in addition to current effect. This would allow Shamans to pick between a more powerful defensive and stun usable defensive and allow to adapt to different situations better. - Enfeeblement is hardly competitive with 50% CD reduction for Hex, so should be buffed to last longer and maybe even have additional temporary damage done reduction similar to current Crippling Hex conduit. As other players suggested, it could also snare while Hex is active as well to make it harder for enemy players to run into damage and break its effect.
- Greater Purge needs CD reduction and / or cost reduction to become more competitive with Purge.
- Nature’s Fury should affect critical strike stat in general, not only for Nature spells, which would bring it in line with other classes similar passives. I also suggest to reduce it to a 1 point node, as you did with tome nodes for Mages, so that Shamans both have slightly more freedom and can access their mobility / root break ability easier.
- As suggested by other players, Thundershock should become a choice node with Thunderstorm instead of Lightning Lasso. If needed, it could become a separate ability with 25-30s CD opposed to normal Thunderstorm. This choice node would be more logical (as Thundershock alters Thunderstorm mechanic in a way that is not always beneficial for the player) and allow players to pick its mechanic they would like / need more.
- Thunderous Paws seems undertuned compared to abilities of other classes - some of them have snare breaks and mobility increase on 25-30s CD, while this effect has 60s internal CD.
Suggestion: Reduce internal cooldown of this effect to 30 seconds to make it more competitive with both Spirit Wolf and other classes effects. - Poison Cleansing Totem could be buffed - it might remove all poison effects from selected target on application and then additionally remove 1 poison effect every X seconds for Y seconds from allies, preferring the selected target when it was cast if there are multiple allies with poisons. This would make it more useful in the niche it tries to occupy, especially considering that other classes poison cleanses instantly remove all of them and have 8s CD opposed to its 45s CD.
- I suggest to create a talent that increases damage of Lava Burst based on your critical strike chance and put it into general tree. This would allow to make one of Shaman’s major abilities more compatible with crit builds for all 3 specs.
- Lightning Lasso is a good skill, but it is easily disruptable in XvX fights and does not allow to use other abilities while it is active, so has reduced synergy with Enhancement Shamans, who would prever to stun enemy and use their melee weapon attacks with Windfury procs to burst him instead.
Suggestion: make Lightning Lasso a choice node with Boulder Fist - 4s duration melee range stun with 30+s CD (duration and CD are based on Warrior’s Storm Bolt). This would allow all 3 specs to pick a stun they would like / need more, keep amount of CC available to Shamans the same and solve the aforementioned issue. - I suggest to move Water Shield to general tree and make it available for all 3 specs. It would have usage in both PVE (as a second defensive shield, as more mana means more healing, especially for Enhancement) and PVP (allowing all 3 specs to get access to a conditional mortal strike effect via Unleash Shield and enable some new interesting comps with classes that would be able to keep enemies inside the whirlpool, like Feral / Moonkin with Ursol Vortex or DK with Abomination Limb / Death Grip). Optionally, I suggest to increase its number of charges to 5-9, so that both Resto and non-Resto Shamans would need to spend less amount of time and GCDs to reapply it when it expires.
Elemental tree:
- Earthquake should become an optional talent that can be avoided by single target builds, just as Restoration Shamans can avoid Healing Rain. If the latest nerfs to Earthquake are planned to be kept, even more so.
- Tumultuous Fissures could be buffed to become more competitive with lots of Maelstrom generation from Inundate. This could be achieved for example by it applying a snare / damage reduction / attack & cast speed reduction etc. to enemies affected by Earthquake in addition to current effect.
- Flames of the Cauldron talent position should be swapped with Improved Flametongue Weapon. This would allow to put IFW as a crossroad talent between Lava Burst and Flame Shock branches and allow to put all Flame Shock related talents to a separate branch that is not mandatory, so that people do not need to take a Flame Shock related talent to access IFW, but can still upgrade and customize Flame Shock if they want to.
- Electrified Shocks should affect 5 targets again. It is strange as 4 target cap, when even its synergizing talent Chain Lightning hits up to 5 targets.
- Elemental Blast should just be a choice node with Earth Shock. It already has dowsides of cast time that when kicked locks all your schools and bigger Maelstrom cost compensated by bigger damage and a secondary stat boost, no need for it to also require an additional talent point investment.
- Liquid Magma Totem as a main AoE Flame Shock tool for Elemental should have shorter CD, somewhere between 30s and 45s. This would make it more useful and bring closer in line to Enhancement Flame Shock spread ability, which has 12s CD. If needed, reduce damage of its totem after the blast to compensate.
- I suggest to unnerf Roiling Magma to 0.5 / 1 seconds cooldown reduction, but make it not affected by Lava Burst overloads. This would still keep Mastery builds in line, but would make this 2 point investment more and equally useful for non-Mastery builds as well.
- I suggest to turn Primordial Wave back into Elemental damage instead of Shadow. Shadow damage does not fit Elemental Shaman and that change would also make Primordial Wave synergize decently well with its neighbour talent Elemental Equilibrium.
Elemental PVP talents:
- Seasoned Winds is too conditional - it is mainly useful only if you are fightning a caster 1v1 or are the major target of a caster cleave comp.
Suggestion: Make it reduce damage done by affected enemy instead of reducing damage taken by the Shaman. This change would make it more generally useful. - Tidebringer should additionally reduce mana cost of Chain Heal to make this talent more appealing for non-Resto Shamans, without that casting Chain Heal might be too expensive for them.
- If Shaman has 2 shields active, Unleash Shield should provide effects of both shields simultaneously and in logical order - knockback and then root for LS + ES, knockback and then creating a whirlpool for LS + WS, rooting enemy inside the whirlpool for WS + ES. This would make this talent much more interesting, competitive and usable, as for example enemies currently can easily leave whirlpool of Unleash Water Shield or can often easily re-engage after being knocked back by Unleash Lightning Shield.
Enhancement tree:
- It still lacks a short CD Earth based attack, so I suggest to return Rockbiter as a ranged damage short CD attack that can also proc WF. However, as Enhancement might already have a button bloat in Dragonflight, it could become a choice node with some other active ability to address that, for example a choice node with Windfury Totem.
- Sundering needs a buff, as it is inferior to most other classes similar abilities. Increasing its incapacitate duration to 4 seconds or reducing its CD to 30 seconds might be helpful. Also, as Sundering affects Hex diminishing returns, it could become a disorient effect instead, making it more compatible with Hex.
- Feral Lunge could use a buff to make it more competitive and more in line with other classes gap closers. Reducing its CD to 20 seconds or adding some decent damage to it could be helpful.
- Elemental Weapons, which are a generally useful talent, are accessible only from Crash Lightning and Storm’s Wrath, both of which could be not needed for example for single-target damage non-Mastery builds.
Suggestion: Make it accessible from Refreshing Waters choice node as well to provide bigger choice variety. - Splintered Elements could receive the Elemental treatment and become a choice node with an effect that would proc Stormbringer immediately and every X seconds for Y seconds after using Primordial Wave. This could give Primordial Wave a last upgrade choice option that is more suitable for single-target damage situations and can provide a stable and reliable source of Stormstrikes, which could be helpful to make Enhancement rotations smoother, especially after the Legacy of Frost Witch Stormstrike reset nerf.
- Doom Winds as a 60s CD is desynchronized with all other Enhancement CDs - 45s CD Primordial Wave, 90s CD Feral Spirits and 180s CD Ascendance.
Suggestion: Consider reducing its CD to 45 seconds to make them all synchronized, especially since its effect was already decently nerfed.
Enhancement PVP talents:
- Shamanism Bloodlust effect could use a buff to make its PVP talent more competitive, especially since Doom Winds are on GCD now and Enhancement burst rotation already has enough ramp-up. Making it off-GCD and / or reducing its mana cost could be helpful.
Restoration tree:
- Wavespeaker’s Blessing needs a buff to make it more competitive with other talents.
Suggestion: Buff it to 6 seconds duration increase. - Undercurrent could use a buff to make it more competitive with other talents, for example to 1 / 2% healing increase per active Riptide.
- I suggest to implement Earth Ascendance as a choice node with usual Water Ascendance (and make Deeply Rooted Elements pick Water Ascendance if none is specced and according Ascendance if one of them is picked). It could provide additional shields instead of healing, affect only the major targets and instantly shield the target instead of instant healing. This would allow to achieve 2 goals - implement fourth element Ascendance that is currently missing and allow to adapt Resto major CD better to different situations - for example, they could take Water Ascendance for split / AoE healing and Earth Ascendance when only tank healing is needed in group or against Mindgames comps in PVP.
Resoration PVP talents:
- Electrocute is underutilized and could use a buff. Making it deal its damage instantly, so that it is more compatible with frequent Purge usage could be a solution.
