Reliable CC
Damage(burst or constant damage)
Survivability.
Shamans tend to be on the bottom end for all of these which is why the number of comps you can see an ele/enh shaman at top tier of play is low or zero most patches/expacs(top tier of play means that the class is fairly strong and viable for the average player in most cases).
Reliable CC: we have always lacked in this department historically but made up for it in other areas, although this is no longer the case ill expand on this later)
Capacitor totem: aoe ranged CC. This spell is ranged and while you may think that this is a strength, it used to be dropped on the player but the devs were forced to make it ranged because the delay and lack of mobility on the shaman class made it mostly useless. Most classes have extreme mobility now(monks, warriors, rogues, dh, mages, druids are all able to use an ability to just rapidly move out of it). I cant believe with the delay IT STILL HAS LOW HEALTH AND IS -KILL-ABLE BY EVERY CLASS INSTANTLY. Imagine DH or monks taking a few points of damage and that made it so their aoe stun went on CD but didn’t do anything?!?!?
RECOMMENDED CHANGE: Make thunderstorm baseline for all specs. Change it to a ground targeted ability(I hate ground targeted abilities as a general rule but I think this is a good and thematic change) and change it too also stun; remove capacitor totem(removing the totem shouldn’t be a big deal the devs removed OVER 20 totems so one more shouldn’t be a problem). Yes for resto too they have Healing rain, time to make give that rain some THUNDER!
The utility of this change would be awesome. It would also help with enh being kited as they could knock people towards themselves with careful placement. You would have to choose to use it defensively or offensively(eg use is while getting bursted/stunned) give the shamans a reliable ability to help peel their team mates. And assist with the problem of r-shaman being swapped to or trained down easily. For ele this would mostly be a quality of life and reliability change although it would help somewhat with survivability with thrunder storm being usable while stunned.
I think its time for shaman to get a change that is strong thematic and NOT JANKY or half-baked(less good versions of other classes abilities or another classes ability but with a drawback),like a lot of their other abilities.
Damage: Historically and thematically shamans where about powerful on demand(with a small cd) burst spells. The last few expansions have moved away from that to turn us in a wet noodle throwing builder spender class that just feels bad in pvp especially in 1v1/2v2 situations since our damage is so low till we cast a million abilities while also having the least/worst survivability CDs in the game.
The recently announced change away from builder spender to builder spender with maelstrom into new old maelstrom is kind of a joke. Announce we are moving away from that but then put it back in under a new(but familiar name) that does almost the same thing but feels worse? In PvE we definitely need something to make our rotation more interesting. The problem is this makes shaman, who do not have on demand burst anymore(our pvp burst rotation is 9+globals and still does less damage than many other classes do in half the globals) need a way to create more reliable and faster burst for pvp without negatively impacting PvE rotation.
RECOMMENDED CHANGE(S): The lightning shield change was a move in the right direction but I still feel earth shock is the wrong direction for shaman. I would like to see Lightning Shield cause the shaman to get a massive damage increase to Chain lightnings first target in pvp after being stunned. Thematically and historically chain lightning was a huge damage CD but was moved away from in favor of instant lava tickle procs.
Move shaman back to having impactful hard casts. In pvp halo jumping around while waiting for instant lava burst procs that do anything BUT burst just feels pretty bad. To top that off we feel like we are shooting noodles and meat balls rather than lightning and lava because the damage is sooooo low per cast. I would rather go back to 8 second CD LvB hard casted that did ACTUAL burst.
Recommended change: Add a new effect to our mastery that makes haste increase the damage of our spells instead. (would stay the same for CC and healing) We would have longer casts but each cast would be more impactful overall. So we would have bigger spells but less of them. I feel that this would make casting feel far more satisfying.
Make LvB damage scale with crit chance. Shamans used to be OBSESSED with crit it was our 100% most important stat. With lava burst having auto crits(that really don’t do much damage) this needs to scale I feel like this was just an oversight that has been around for WAY TO LONG. Is there any other class that has abilities that don’t scale with getting better gear? let me know down bellow if there is.
Shaman had less defensive’s because they had high on demand burst and high utility over the expansions BUT the utility has been nerfed or removed over and over examples:
Grounding totem changed from 15(or 14 second CD with set bonus) and 45second duration to 3 second duration with 30 second CD and only usable in pvp
Tremor totem changed from 2 min duration no cd to 10second duration 1 min cd(this is a somewhat okish change IMO)
4x resistance totems(nature fire frost and physical(stoneskin)): removed and stoneskin reworked renamed and given to resto as a talent.
Fire totems: mostly removed and the ones we have a extremely niche or terrible.
Windfury totem: with less reliance on auto attacks this totem lost its glory and with ENH WF doing not even 1% of their damage now days RIP WINDFURY. Its literally a animation that just randomly plays on enh but has no noticeable effect and the new animation is hard to see most of the time so if blizz removed windfury(one of my favorite abilities) from current enh shaman I probably wouldst notice/even feel the difference sadly that is how gimped this iconic ability is(sorry for rant).
Grace of air totem :removed
Strength of earth totem: removed
Disease/poison cleansing totem: removed
Earth bind: CD increased, was overall so weak they added the same totem again but it roots and the animation WAS EXTREMELY LAZY its literally just druid roots not even earth/rock that binds.
AND MANY MORE.
DEFENSIVES. Franky Speaking Enh/ele need some love in the defensive realm. Some people might argue that shamans have healing. While that is true its hard casted low amounts interruptable and you have to stop dpsing to do that. There are a number of classes that use healing to keep them selves alive too. DKs and DH’s But their healing only requires them to just do damage to heal and is not interruptable without hard CC. The utility of healing is fine but it heals for a negligible amount in pvp as both ele and enh and is more of an excuse than anything.
Astral shift is a nice start but frankly it doesn’t reduce damage by enough. I see in pvp all the time people just die strait through it like it was not even there. Most classes have a significant DR ability or immunity. 40% would probably be fine for arenas if it was a 45-1min CD, but this also means that in PvE WPvP and 2v2s shamans are just gimped compared to every other class.
Its supposed to shift us into the astral plane but it only reduces damage by 40%?
We need another CD for elemental and one for Enh.
Giving us more max life in shadow lands on a conduit when we summon our 5min ele is…well frankly just bad. Its not good for PVE or PVP.
How about for enh we give them a ability that calls the earth elements to cover their body significantly reducing damage and making them immune to CC for idk say 8 seconds?
Ele I am still working on a thematic Defensive. Maybe turning them into lightning or swirling wind and water that stops damage and heals them for a bit?
IDK but something needs to change
Every expansion I see other classes getting unequivocally strong abilities with little to no downsides added utility smoother and stronger burst easier to land CC etcetera but shamans feel left out in the wind. Its time to that wind to become a storm and come back with a vengeance!