I just leveled my DK a bit in TWW and let me tell you it was bad ***. Very cool. The Pale Rider talent tree is one of the coolest things Ive seen in this game period.
So I was super hyped to move over to my shaman and see what was going on for the new stuff on that.
I figured oh wow. On my death knight I’m literally riding around on my mount in combat fighting people while still on my mount. That is so cool its insane. And I get to summon the 4 horsemen. Literally named huge lore figures to come fight for me. Like this is the peak of gaming. Clearly since DK had such cool stuff shaman had to have some pretty cool elemental themed stuff. Theres so much cool stuff that could be done.
Then I am greeted with a bunch of really boring passives, and an entire spec tree dedicated to totems in the most boring way that could possibly ever be made. Like you are telling me the people designing shaman cant figure out anything cool at all to give shaman. Being able to spec into storm strike and windfury a lot during dragonflight was really nice. I’m really glad that was done its super fun. But These hero talent trees and the general shaman talent tree on left side. Is just all boring garbage. Stop giving talents to buff totems if totems are not going to be a huge aspect of shaman. I literally have 1 totem on my action bars as enhance right now. If every single talent in the hero trees were replaced with “wind fury does 5% more damage” I would just take that because that at least buffs something I use.
They need to delete the hero talents for shaman and pretty much the entire left side talent tree and just start over from scratch. And the thought process going forward should be “Is this ******* bad ***?” and “Does this buff something ******* bad ***?”. If the response to either of those things is no don’t put it on the talent tree. At least for Enhance.
Give me some cool **** like “Wind Fury sends out a huge tornado that destroys everything in a line in front of you” or “Your lava lash makes a huge volcano that explodes after x amount of time”. Give me some cool ****. Stop with this boring “15% totem range” and “totem relocation” garbage. Give me some **** that makes other people look at it and go “oh wow thats cool as hell I wish I had that”.
TL;DR stop making boring totem **** and make some cool ****.
P.S. Remove ascendence form from the game its the single ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in gaming period. I’d rather get turned into a Trogg. Do better. For now I’m going back to my Death Knight.
Thrall exists , and its what we should be imitating, still impressive to watch how Thrall manipulates the elements …but nah , summon grandpa that last 6s
I love totems in classic wow. It feels cool to just set up all of this stuff that makes you really strong. I loved going on all the totem quests all over the world to discover them as well.
It was really fun and very thematically fitting for what I wanted when I picked a shaman.
But modern totems at least for enhance aren’t like that.
If I’m playing resto its actually fine thats really on point for what I want to see with totems. They are useful and powerful and are buffing what I want to be doing as resto which is healing.
But for enhance like what do totems even do for me. Basically nothing. Which is weird because you think you know. Enhance. I would be putting totems down that enhance my combat ability.
I really miss strength of the earth totem because that felt nice to use. But I think the game is just too fast to justify that kind of style of setting up before you fight every time. They would have to think of some really cool ideas to come up with to make it worth doing.
It would be cool if Shaman had an ability that was like throw a totem down at a location and then press it again to turn into lightning and fly towards the totem. Kind of like a heroic leap but shaman themed.
I like how shaman talents are just such a buffet of choices, making multiple playstyles possible until they press their thumbs onto the scales with the seasonal tier set bonuses.
In terms of power, I’ll have to see on Tuesday.
At the moment it feels like Hero talents may not really add a lot of power, since they basically scaled back the base kit. Drawing down from 85% to 35% is huge. Elemental’s mastery at a nerf to make room for Farseer Ancestors to do the same thing. The Ancestral Guidance changes for Restoration supports the case even for healing. The initial sense remains that they are doing this to smooth out the scaling and normalize stat preferences, which might make more gear more broadly acceptable. So it’s a lot of wait and see.
people have been testing it since beta came out. Outside of tuning, the class dynamics are set (minus totemic, which is hot garbage) and it puts shaman in a great spot for all 3 specs for m+ and raid, enh bad in pvp. The nerf to proc and increase in damage actually felt great to anyone who didnt want shaman being a lavaburst fidget spinner, and the changes to tempest actually work nicely.
It’s because they rushed the expansion out the door for profits. If I had to guess I’d say the original launch target was November and the suits decided it needed to be out sooner and pushed it up 3 months. Given that stormbringer and Totemic were put in at the very end of Alpha and weren’t even fully implemented shows how far behind they were. They had to rush specs out the door with no design iteration at all, hence enhance totemic is an utter mess. I mean Rogues have one that is just flipping a coin, it’s so laughably bad class fantasy wise.
Idk about Resto (I have heard good stuff) and not an avid Enhance player, but Ele feels bad. Don’t know how Lavaburst spam is bad but Lightning Bolt spam is better, this certainly isnt it, at least for me.
Stormbringer might feel better if more Lightning Conduits got spread via Tempest, or if Maelstrom wasnt gutted so Tempest could be used more often. Lightning Conduit animation is amazing, to not compound on that is a tragedy.
Farseer is on trajectory to be the same build as Tempest but just with passive helpers (which btw felt neat even if it wasnt the greatest Hero tree out there). That seems like a gross failure on Blizzard.
I at least am hoping for some 11.1 changes, but seeing as how we are an accelerated expansion pace I guess this is just how Ele is going to be. Don’t get me wrong, Shaman in general is still my favorite class and the only class that does Lightning themed spellcaster so I will stick with it even if I want changes.
Friend, maybe you’re the only one who hasn’t read Blizzard’s statements about reducing the development time for expansions. Of course, there’s a big difference between saying and doing, but if they don’t follow through, it’s going to be a big problem for them. After all, they’ve only given us 2 maps, and the second one is just one map divided into 3 parts… If they intend to keep that going for 2 years or more, well, good luck with that…
Wise words. Stormbringer and Totemic were added at the end of the alpha, and alpha was supposed to be the window for feedback rework and iteration. When they launched the closed beta, they openly announced that changes would only be for the talents, and that’s what we got. I have a lot to say about that as well, because it was a rushed rework, just like the expansion itself—everything was put in as a placeholder with minimal value for us players.
At least there’s a thematic idea for Stormbringer, but in terms of gameplay, I find it depressing. Being a fan of a full Lightning build and not just one that leans towards Lightning, this was the opportunity. Especially since they openly said that Elemental Shaman should have three distinct playstyles: Fire, Lightning, and Weaver. As of today, only Weaver truly exists; Fire is a mirage, and Lightning is a joke in terms of gameplay—I’m not talking about numbers.
Hi you’ve won the dumbest post on the forums today. I’m guessing you didn’t play shaman back when shamans were awful or you’d be extremely thankful for what we now have. I am absolutely loving every aspect of enh shaman. The visuals are awesome, the rotation is manageable, and the DPS numbers are on par with other classes. If you like dk play dk but don’t sh*t on shamans because you don’t like playing one.