Shaman: Primordial Wave MEGATHREAD

Community General Discussion
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This thread is regarding the Patch 11.1 Undermine(d)
Particularly in correlation with the changes made on ‘Primordial Wave’ for Shaman.

Now, I know I obviously don’t speak for “All” (as such a thing is impossible, especially on the forums) — However I’d wager this thread comes from the voices of quite a significant amount of the shaman playerbase …

From the many players I’ve spoken to, either from within my guild, on discord, trade chat and heck even from what it appears to already been seen expressed on these forums, along with myself – That the class-changes made to shaman in the:

  • Patch 11.1: Undermine(d)

In regards toward our spell ‘Primordial Wave’ – Especially for elemental — has been rather ill-received & not particularly enjoyed :grimacing:

Overall? Honestly, many of us want for the game to change Primordial wave back to how it was – BEFORE.

Especially for Elemental :bangbang:

Like ugh, it feels like absolute garbage now, whereas before - it ecstatically felt like it truly rocked the core vibes of ‘Shaman’ class-fantasy and felt immensely empowering – Not just in the literal sense, but in the emotional sense too, it was such a cool & fun spell … Just doesn’t feel the same anymore :pensive:

  • The change to the spell just feels so blandly useless and makes the spec feel tremendously less fun to play.
  • Whereas prior, it was immensely satisfying especially when there was to see lava burst cast multiple times to every target affected by flame shock :star_struck:

Personally, I’m not too bothered about Primordial Wave in the other two specs — but as for elemental? Maaaan, it just feels like Elekk Poodoo now :sob:

Now the reason I’m making this thread here – In the general discussion — as opposed to the ‘Shaman’ class thread section, is due to the fact that I had already made a thread on such then shortly after realised there were already several other threads on the matter already … Some from almost two months ago.

And from what I’ve been told, there was more threads on the PTR forums … But those aside, there’s obviously been a negatively received outcome on the changes made to the shaman class with ‘Primordial Wave’ — Especially to the spec of Elemental.

:clap: Ultimately:

I’d wager Blizzard wants the players to have the utmost enjoyment when playing their classes, so I’d like to rise a voice on behalf of the great shaman out there and plead Blizzard into changing the spell back — For the sake of playing and enjoying great content, with enjoyable gameplay.

For non-shaman players :heart: Thankyou for taking the time to read.

86 Likes
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I didn’t even get to see Primordial Wave. Lightning Bolt change turned me off so hard…

EDIT: Yeah, this is garbage. The old Primordial Wave looked and felt SO much better. …then again, so did the old LB.

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+1, good post, thank you

These changes suck HARD and it needs more exposure, so bringing it to GD seems like a good idea. I’m not sure how much discussion it will attract though since I imagine most people don’t play Shaman let alone Ele. And even fewer will bc they made it 10x less fun to play

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Whats the diff? I play enhance. Do you guys not have prim storm?

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It use to be that PWave applied FlameShock instantly and gave you an instant cast Lavaburst to use which (when cast) would also cast Lavaburst on anything with FlameShock on it.

The change now makes PWave hit all targets with Flameshock on them for some small amount of spell damage and doesnt cast LavaBurst (it no longer gives an insta Lavaburst free cast either). It is much worse to use and requires FlameShock be on target(s) before PWave can even be used on them. Requiring FlameShock spread in order to do any kind of decent dmg was/is alwasy among Ele sham annoying problems when working with LavaBurst.

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Yes, and it was very fun/satisfying (fatisfying? satisfun?) having the lava burst split between enemies.

Imo this is a big reason as to why the change feels so bad. Primordial Wave now is grayed out at all times until you apply a flame shock.

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1000%!!! I can live without ancestral guidance (though I’d prefer to keep it) but as a long-time elemental main, this primordial wave change is TERRIBLE. Why’d they have to mess with it?

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Can something be a mega thread with only a few posts in it?

Something isn’t a thing just because you want it to be.

Maybe consider changing the thread title down the line if it does become a mega thread.

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Not sure if it’s possible to edit the title of the thread after making it. I think OP wants this thread to be the place where all the discussion of it occurs, instead of on the shaman forums, thus the mega thread idea

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Ele feels bad, Enhance feels fine.

I really like Enhance’s primordial storm though. Looks great, feels fun to press. Things melt when I use it.

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I’m not happy with the change either… if feels tbh clunky, half-baked and terrible… just when playing elemental shaman was fun… it was detected and changed.

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I think my primary issue with P.Wave, whether its new form or the previous form, is that Blizzard… for whatever reason… wants to make spreading Flame Shock for Elemental frustrating and clunky.

Enhancement gets it easy. Flame Shock > Lava Lash. Boom. It’s been spread as part of the normal rotation.

For Elemental? Tab-target each time Flame Shock comes off CD… or drop LMT, which has a 30sec CD and only hits 3 targets at random. Before the change, you also had P.Wave to apply FS as well.

I just don’t understand why it has to be this way. If spreading FS wasn’t frustrating as Elemental, I probably wouldn’t hate P.Wave as much as I do.

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Here’s one from reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/1iz292h/elemental_shaman_got_completely_shafted_this_patch/?rdt=44237

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I don’t get the purpose of the change for ele.

Initially, not minding it for enh.

But ele, it’s garbage.

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That’s how I feel about it too. Fun detected lol

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Not only is the new Primordial Wave more complicated for Ele than the previous version, the intended result of “making Primordial Wave do damage” was a complete failure because that button previously accounted for something like 6-7% of our damage in Single Target, thanks to the extra Ancestor casts and free Lava Bursts. Now, Primordial Wave does something like .2% of our damage in single target.

It is not fun to use, it is unintuitive, and it does no damage. Not even to mention the loss of maelstrom generation. This has been a complete failure in implementation, please consider reverting or drastically changing how this spell works.

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I agree with the thread. The new Prim wave Feels clunky at best. I think the change is fine where you want it to not require another ability to be used to activate it instead up front damage but if it doesn’t apply flame shock to the target its just harder to use. Not to mention flame shock spread is already a problem for the class. While I think the negatives as stated above are correct I think at a minimum it MUST apply flame shock

If anyone who matters ever reads this thank you for your work and effort.

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I never speced into it as resto and they removed it entirely for resto so I expect it wasn’t popular in general.

I don’t play elemental except occasionally when soloing maybe so I don’t really have an opinion about the ele change.

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The fact that Primordial Wave went through like this and doesn’t interact with our mastery is a huge failure.

We also lost an ability that applies Flame Shock, when elemental is already struggling with this in AOE.

Please reconsider reverting the change or MASSIVELY buffing the talent and provide more ways to apply flame shock.

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Seems like Blizzard just found PW unhealthy for longterm class design so they just soft deleted it