It really feels like Shaman mobility is a bit outdated at this point. Gust of Wind and Ghost Wolf feel mechanically out of place in the current state of the game. I love Ghost Wolf don’t get me wrong but things like Burning Rush exist which gives the Warlock more movement speed than Ghost Wolf gives and they can continue doing damage with it up whereas we cannot do anything worthwhile in Ghost Wolf form.
Specific Feedback on mobility spells:
-Ghost Wolf feels outdated when compared to spells like Burning Rush, Travel Form etc. Burning Rush gives more movement speed and you can continue attacking with it up and Travel form has no GCD. It would be nice to see an update to Ghost Wolf to increase its useability in the modern era of the game.
-Gust of Wind feels massively outdated. Its a fun spell to press (kind of), but its on the GCD and feels kind of flat/bland. Maybe a talent node that gives it 2 charges and makes it so it is not on the GCD would be nice, or just give Shaman a really cool thematic mobility spell like Fire Whirl from Plunderstorm but entirely mobility focused.
-Ele Shaman specifically lost a lot of instant casts going into Midnight with the removal of Icefury and guaranteed Lava Surge proc every 30 seconds. This has felt kinda bad on any encounter with a lot of forced continuous movement like Coiled Altar, Council of Tribes, etc. Good positioning can counter this a bit, but sometimes there is just a lot of movement required and Ele ends up suffering massively since outside of Spiritwalker’s Grace and NS every 30s as farseer it has nothing else, and usually having a lot of instant casts and/or baked in ‘can use while casting’ abilities end up being better than a 1m30s cd that lasts for 15s ie Mage, Lock, Hunter, etc.
I dont think mobility overall is awful or anything, but I do think it kinda feels bland/boring in general as our mobility spells are fairly basic outside of Ghost Wolf and feel somewhat mechanically outdated. Would be nice to see a mobility update that doesn’t necessarily add more spells but updates/improves our current ones, especially if we aren’t going to be seeing a mobility prune for highly mobile classes in the future. The delta between highly mobile and semi immobile has become a bit too large.
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Warlocks have to pay health constantly while using burning rush. They also have very few instant, so their DPS is a fraction of their normal DPS with it on. You also totally forgot to mention us having spirit walk ( root snare break and movement speed increase), and our speed totem. And honestly gust of wind has saved me so often it’s an amazing spell on a really short cool down. Not to mention every mobility spell of every class is on the gcd, as they should be. For our casting classes we also have an ability that lets us cast while moving for 15s. Shaman has some of the best mobility in the game. And that’s ignoring things like thunderous paws which add dr to ghost wolf. We don’t need buffs in this area.
That is definitely not true though. It has to stand and cast more than almost every other caster including Warlock. If Warlock mobility was a problem, you wouldn’t have seen it on coiled alter yet we saw 2-3 of them, both demo and affli. We didnt see ele because it has a huge mobility issue on that fight despite the damage profile being kinda decent for ele.
I didnt forget to mention Spirit Walk, I think its pretty good the way it is so I didnt need to mention it since this was regarding outdated spells.
Gust of Wind is just bland imo. I think its fine as a spell but it could be a lot cooler than it is. Gust is largely just a worse version of Blink which is okay except its also really bland. Master of the elements and the best we can do thematically to move ourselves quickly is a gust of wind? It isnt just about mobility being bad or good, its about the spells feeling outdated and/or uninteresting thematically.
To be clear like I said I dont think mobility is bad, but I do think some of it feels and looks outdated. For example, replacing Spirit Walk with Fiery Whirl from plunderstorm would be a very cool update, doesn’t have to do anything different. Gust of Wind maybe changing to a wind+lightning based mobility spell, maybe after landing you get zapped by lightning increasing your movement speed by a small amount for x seconds would be visually cooler.
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Personaly I don,t think that shaman mobility is outdated. We can’t give blink to everybody and wolf form fit the theme.
Also elem have so many instant cast that giving them better mobility would be OP.
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We lost a fair bit of that this expansion though. Both Icefury and guaranteed Lava surge proc every 30 seconds are gone. Spiritwalkers for mobility and NS/Stormkeepers are great but we did lose a fair bit of instants already. What we had last expansion wasn’t really OP and we had more instants that now by a fair amount.
Most of what I’m asking for is modernizing mobility spells in terms of their actual theme ie Gust of Wind looks really weak/bland and also sounds weak for what a Shaman is at this point. Same with Spirit Walk tbh, they could update Spirit Walk to be like Fiery Whirl from plunderstorm, can do the exact same thing as now no buffs included but the appearance would be way cooler. Can add glyphs to change the appearance of the tornado to water/lightning/air/etc.
Obviously I did ask for updates to Gusts useability and to Ghost wolf (maybe, still unsure it needs anything) but I would also be fine with visual updates only. However I do stand by Gust being off the GCD, I think that would actually feel a lot better to use in general even though it is a decent spell on its own right now.
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Mostly agree. Ele Sham certainly feels like it has lower tier mobility compared to ranged dps at large. I think a large part of that does come from a few specs that simply feel “unfair” in terms of mobility though.
With Farseer, AS and SWG + SM talent plus LS procs it feels pretty fair though. I think a few ranged specs could probably lose a little mobility instead.
There has to be a cost for ranged casters and Ele (At least Farseer) feels fair.
Current tier feels fine, but if heavy movement causes dps drops, I think I would just argue for base damage buffs over more movement/mobility personally as it’s better for gameplay.
So when I say I mostly agree, I would prefer a few other ranged specs get more properly punished for movement versus Ele getting mobility buffs.
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Yeah I do agree that would be the better/healthier approach. The only reason I don’t talk about that is because we just had a prune and they largely avoided removing any mobility at all. They actually gave locks more mobility and created Devourer which has disgusting mobility (and cc avoidance with glimpse baked into their rotation). Every time they make a new spec or class it gets ridiculous mobility and again best time to do this was during their prune this expac so I’m skeptical that they’ll actually go in the correct direction ie toning down mobility.