Feel like Kyrian is the selection but few problems
Phial of Serenity is on a 3 min CD and can only be used once in combat? Please correct me. Feel like it should be half that CD or at most 2 min matching Stoneform. Also it should remove Magic effects too, matching Stoneform. Misinformation about whether it shares CD with health potions/lockrocks, need answer and the answer should be that it does not share CD with potions. Should also be to use it as many times as we want and not based on dropping combat.
Vesper Totem, meh. More impressed by the nuance of Primordial Wave but Necrolord Soulbinds are beyond questionable after the recent changes. My biggest gripe is that Vesper is going to be oneshot in PVP.
Final problem with Kyrian is Mikanikos Soulbind. 120 spells or abilities to summon a NPC that does reportedly negligible or even no damage from kiting? He’s supposed to damage and heal your targets? Are his heals ranged or is going to spend half his uptime running back and forth from targets? I think he might have the potential to be the PVP Soulbind for Kyrian if not for Bron. Knockback from Serenity sounds useful, but how far is the knockback? Driftglobe stun nearby enemy for Enhance or Soulsteel Clamps for Elemental. Another question, Forgelight Filter does this trigger if Phial is already on CD or if it’s available does it use up a CD? Would this trigger at same time as Driftglobe and Nature’s Guardian? Could you reach 35%, stun nearby enemies then heal for 40% Phial + Guardian? What if I use a Phial before at 36%, do I heal to 56% then get dropped to 35% then back to 75%? Will there be a buff counter for Bron or will I need an addon? Final note, Resilient Plumage sounds fun to finish off targets you knockoff LM.
tldr; Just make Bron not suck, more clarity on interactions, and don’t let Vesper get oneshot
If you ONLY PVE then Kyrian
If you PVE and ONLY do non competitive PVP then Kyrian
If you want to both competitively then Venthir
PVP only Venthir
This is all subject to whatever change comes before SL drops
For me definitely Venthir.
I’m fairly new to Shammy so admittedly I don’t know a ton but at a glance none of the covenant abilities seemed to jump out at all. They all feel like a generic AoE or healing spell and don’t really fit in any special way with shamans.
Thematically not too keen on Venthyr. Vampires, gargoyles, sin, and pride don’t vibe with Kul Tiran or Dwarf Shaman. Also I truly struggle to see myself hosting a tea party every week. Mog is ok, don’t care for the mount or pet. I’ll probably have a better picture RP wise when I play through the campaign.
Does Chain Harvest single target? 1v1 will it bounce heal me 5x and hit target 5x?
For what spec ? For people who have not been on beta it seems confusing…
I run enhance and have no clue what covenant to pick yet.
This is a really good look at covenant abilities and enhance shamans
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This seems premised on vesper totem staying at 5 hp. Hopefully that will get adjusted. WF totem is currently the full health of the shaman which makes it essentially just a placement limited buff. I think they should do the same with vesper totem.
Either that or you should be able recast it regardless of whether it is destroyed during the 30 second duration. Right now, you can recast it to move it during its 30 second duration. Just make it so you can recast it regardless of whether it was destroyed so you can still get your buffs to 6 spells. Since the recasts don’t incur the GCD, people will figure out that it’s a losing battle to try to kill it.
As is, It’s not balanced in a way that makes sense that it can be killed (buff that takes 6 casts to do what other covenant abilities can do in 1 and has a long CD).
And they wanted people to pick covenants based on flavor and not for bonuses etc…
Every time I look at the covenant and soulbind calculators I get more disappointed tbh because first of all this is all more borrowed systems I wont be able to get attached to ( x ability that might help us greatly or is fun will be gone end of shadowlands ), second Id love nothing more than to pick whichever covenant for story reasons but none of them are heavy shaman-ey to begin with ( the Fae have a redundant ability too ( the vulpin/fox one ) and the other 3 are heavily vampire, bone or light themed ), third you can easily see which Cov abilities etc will be better in x content but they wont be letting us swap between them…fun.
Should be an overall broken expansion of them trying to balance all these systems.
…Rip anything shaman themed again this expansion…
For any PvP even WPvP and BG’s it looks like Vesper Totem will be a big waste .
Venthir is the way to go for any PvP .
Although every shaman would love to see our meaningful totems not have 5 HP. Especially when
DK
Mage
Lock
Hunter
All have temporary summons that have have significant HPs. Yet historically all of our totems have had 5HP except for a few times here and there, especially in PVP.
I do not see them changing this now. Be lucky HST for ele/enh doesnt get the 5 HP treatment.
That may have been their intention but it just shows how detached from “game reality” that the developers are. What i mean about this is that they perceive how in game changes they intend to make are gonna be used or looked upon by the player base. The you have the reality of what usually happens with said changes.
This game is designed around getting gear (PERIOD). All of the gear is based on team play (PERIOD). So unless you are with friends/community/guild that doesnt care about optimal performance then how you perform to get said gear will ALWAYS dictate EVERYTHING you choose.
The only true free choice players are the casuals who only do minimal content to gear. Then they typically whine and cry about having to COMPETE with hardcores from time to time and feel like their experience is ruined.
Our Covenants suck compared to other classes and have zero thought put into them. Our DPS conduits are pitiful and if you plan on doing any PVP you will be stuck not choosing DPS ones which will effect your PVE/PVP performance which will effect your ability to GEAR.
This is all exacerbated by the shaman stigma that unless we are OP we suck.
I agree however it will depend on the individual and what is more important to them and what they dictate as fun. I know you do a lot of PVP so I can see how this fits you. However for me; I realy don’t PVP outside of Randoms and WPVP meaning that most of my gear upgrades will come from Mythic+ and (H) Raids so my choice is not so crystal clear.
While I am still heavily leaning on Venthir I have not full made upmy mind yet because I can and Have made CST work so making Vesper work would be right up my mindset.
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You could say the same about counterstrike totem. Yet in BGs, world, and low rated PvP, it can end up doing a tremendous amount of damage. In all but the most highly skilled environments, totems, even really strong ones, get killed alot less often and alot less quickly than they theoretically could be.
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Right CS works very well in BG’s in team fights …but not so much in WPvP where it is easily killed and is pretty useless against ranged classes. But CS can be swapped out for something else at any time … unfortunately not that easy with covenants
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Exactly. Every aspect of the covenants should have been cosmetic and story telling, heck even if they gave decent gear the stats could literally be the same across the 4 covenants just have mog/gear look good and unique ( something they forgot to do in BfA as it seems as all the gear looks horrible and bland. )
With blizzard’s track record of balancing stuff ( they suck at it and are very slow ) they kinda just screwed themselves over and gave themselves tons of work. Theyre gonna be trying to balance these abilities that people are already min maxing ( hello vampire door everyone will be taking unless another cov really offsets the weaknesses the devs ignore like for holy priests etc ), theyll be nerfing and pruning them the whole expansion and people are going to be frustrated the whole time.
Bad design choice. People literally just wanted another talent row, return tier set bonuses, add nice looking gear and make the covenant stories compelling.
I wonder how many other borrowed power systems they will be adding on top of this to fix the issues covenants will bring. ( issues the devs are currently ignorinh on the beta pages and from feedback )
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