Ok def an ignore angle
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Spamming one or two spells is better design as long as you like the aesthetics more is all im hearing.
Ok.
End of s1 vs start was different.
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Just here to agree with so many others…I can’t stand the new version of Primordial Wave as Ele. Really hoping it gets reverted back to the previous version soon.
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I have to agree with the sentiments here about the PWave change. The ability is super clunky and doesn’t really add much to the spec other than “oh, I can force an immediate LvB proc! Whoopty-doo.” The haste buff doesn’t compensate in the slightest for the lack of impact the ability actually has.
This has been the MO of Ele Shaman for a long time. We get something that plays reasonably well for a bit (maybe a couple of expansions tops), then gets taken away and/or given to some other class for one reason or another. I can understand some changes when the gameplay feels degenerate or more “feast or famine” style (like the old LvB spam spec), but changes like this one - with feedback saying “please don’t do this to us” given out throughout the entire PTR phase - make me feel like nobody on the class balance team actually cares at all about this class, or if they indeed care, they have no clue on what they want the class to do.
In terms of how I feel about this change, I’d rather you reverted back to the DF Season 2 LvB spam degenerate build over this. At least that build felt playable, even if we were only hitting no more than a handful of buttons throughout a fight.
I’m just tired of having to relearn my entire spec every major content patch. It’s one thing to learn a new rotation - that’s expected based on the way tier sets or buffs/nerfs to classes work. It’s an entirely different thing to fundamentally change the spec. The former can be fun if the playstyle isn’t terrible. The latter is only fun the first time you do it - as part of learning a new toolkit in a new expansion. This falls into a third category: a mid-expansion, fundamental change to our toolkit that turned a very enjoyable experience into one of the clunkiest, unfun playstyles since Classic Elemental Shaman.
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Totally disagree. The new LB and PW are improvements.
You are objectively wrong.
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Elemental Pwave is TRRRAAAAAAAAAAASH!!
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Could you elaborate on this? I think this is the first opinion in the thread that is positive for the change.
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DF Ele literally wasn’t a caster. It was a melee spec with a 41 yard range. It’s not that a simple rotation is better if it has my preferred aesthetic; it’s that a simple caster that is actually a caster is better than a “caster” with a slightly more complex rotation, but with a vastly easier burden of execution that has completely sacrificed most of its identity. Its design was degenerate, which is far worse than boring.
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Figured as much 
but thanks for clarifying & confirming such contemplations 
Heck yes 
As evidently seen in this thread – The majority opinion from Shaman players is that elemental’s rework of Primordial Wave in Undermine(d) absolutely SUCKS — and almost all of us would desire it to be changed to the Season 1 version 
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I think I’m die-hard Totemic now. That shizz is the rizz. Now P. Wave for Totemic Enhance… I don’t love it I don’t hate it. But that follow up though… 
Since I don’t play Ele like that, I can only provide moral support to dedicated Elemental Shaman.
/cast moral support.
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Unless there’s a thread already in the Shaman forum, I’d suggest moving this there. I understand more people come here, but it might be seen more by the devs over there. They don’t often check GD for specific class problems.
Just a suggestion. Good luck on being heard! Shamans have been kind of a mess since Legion and the infamous, “We ran out of time to finish Shamans, but we promise we’ll fix them later!” 
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Yeah they’ve got about 15 threads in the Shaman forum upon this subject and counting more each day 
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Oh good! Hopefully between there and here, someone will finally say, “OHAY maybe we should take a look at this…” 
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it’s so horrifically bad. It’s disastrous. Fully quitting ele shaman until some change happens. This is completely unplayable. I can’t enjoy my main right now, it just sucks. I can’t do damage with it anymore.
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Yeah that’s the hopes 
I attached about 14 of the threads from the Shaman forum in the original post – You’ll see it in a drop down list But yeah, due to the repetative stream – Figured I’d make a Megathread on the subject 
Here’s to them changing it back to the season 1 variation for elemental
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Thanks to OP for trying to bring this issue to a larger audience. It pains me to see that this is needed. If the mage forums had even half our complaints, the issue would have been fixed a month ago.
I’m going to start out by apologizing for the sheer size of this post. It’s almost more of a dissertation than a forum post. But this is a class/spec I’m passionate about and I’d like to fully express my opinions rather than make a few short and snide comments. There is a TLDR at the bottom. I am writing this because I used to be a DK main but after so many bad changes (primarily turning UH into a BM hunter and refusing to move into the modern era of gaming and allow any of the specs to do AoE damage while also moving their feet) I moved over to shaman and found a new main that I truly enjoy. I don’t want to see another class, playstyle, and theme that I like get ruined like DK.
I am the author of one of those posts linked in the original thread. I have been commenting on every thread I can find related to this issue because despite being complained about since week 1 of the PTR, we can’t seem to get a response from anyone at blizzard and I am naively hoping that if we complain enough, maybe someone from the dev team will notice the posts on accident.
General Complaints
I have several complaints about the change to PWave, but also for the changes made to the spec in general this tier. First of all, ele played great last season. We’re on the squishy side, which I don’t love, but the rotation was satisfying and felt fantastic. We are ELEMENTAL shamans, not lightning shamans, not fire shamans… Every 30 seconds we got to have a real pop-off moment for the fire portion of our kit. The visuals and sound effects of this moment were unmatched in WoW. There is something innately satisfying about the visual of lava burst and the impact sound of the ability. What’s more satisfying? Doing it to multiple targets.
Rotational Impact of the New Primordial Wave
Ignoring everything else about new PWave, I want to talk about the impact this has had on our AoE rotations. Last season, we would begin pulls with stormkeeper, flame shock, prim wave, LMT, lava burst and watch our character turn into a meatball cannon. Immediately after we blasted all the mobs with fire, we would give them the Sith Lord treatment with a juiced up instant chain lightning. We followed that with earthquakes. We then used icefury because it cleaved and procced elemental equilibrium. That felt great. We were masters of the elements. Given the changes, we no longer play PWave and instead our rotation is, stormkeeper, chain lightning, chain lightning, chain lightning, chain lightning, earth shock (or ele blast), chain lightning, chain lightning, chain lightning, chain lightning, earthquake, chain lightning chain lightning, chain lightning, chain lightning, earth shock, ad infinitum.
It is now objectively wrong to press any fire or frost abilities the moment a second target enters the fight. Just look at this shell of a rotation we’re now left with. Where is the flavor? Where are the elements? This new rotation is beyond monotonous and immensely unsatisfying to play.
The New PWave Solves Problems For Elemental???
This change to ele PWave was supposedly to make our rotation less complicated and more intuitive. I suppose they were right about having less complexity, seeing as it now effectively removed four buttons from our AoE rotation, including PWave. But I must ask… Who was complaining about the complexity of elemental shaman? Who complained that PWave was unintuitive? One thing I can tell you is that this change is anything but intuitive. Now you have to ask yourself, at what target count is it even worth pressing this button? How many flame shocks do I have to have out? At what point does the number of flame shocks–and therefore haste gained from splintered elements–coupled with the criminally low damage of this spell, make it worth actually pressing it?
- If it’s only one target because the ability’s only value is in providing us 10% haste, but is otherwise so bad that it’s not even worth applying to multiple targets for an additional 4% per target, that’s terrible design and an awful feeling button.
- If it’s more than 4, you can’t even press this button until 6 seconds into the fight when you have a second application of flame shock. This also feels awful.
- If it’s 6, you can’t press it for the first 12 seconds of a fight. Somehow, this is even worse.
But moving beyond that, why do we even care to have that many flame shocks out anymore? It is not a significant contributor to our overall damage. In fact, it’s really only applied to make sure our lava burst crits and we can generate lava surge procs. If we can’t cleave our lava bursts, we don’t care about lava surge procs. So now, the new PWave either forces us to delay our rotation significantly into every AoE pull just so we can have enough flame shocks out to hit each mob for checks tooltip 109,148 elemental damage. Meanwhile, those flame shocks I so painstakingly applied are ticking for checks tooltip again 181,943 damage over 18 seconds. Alternatively, if it isn’t worth putting out all those time-gated flame shocks, we put out one flame shock and watch as our PWave does its little animation on one mob so we can get 10% haste. This button is literally anti-synergistic with every portion of our kit and so deeply unsatisfying.
Again I ask, what problem is this fixing? The only significant problem that ele had at the end of Season 1 is the same problem that ele always has, we are hard capped on applying flame shocks. What did this “fix” accomplish? It took away an application of flame shock. So much for fixing something. Instead, they took our most pronounced problem and made it worse. This decision is puzzling at least, and infuriating at worst.
Interaction With Farseer
PWave spawns an ancestor and is therefore a mandatory spell to play Farseer. The problem is that PWave was designed to function around AoE. This is evidenced by the fact that it’s core component has always been cleave. Splintered Elements doubles down on this by providing stacking haste for each additional target hit. But as discussed above, PWave is now a terrible AoE button and spreading multiple flame shocks is never worth doing. Which means that Farseer, a hero talent that has only seen use in strict single target (and ST with negligible add cleave), is now forced to use an ability designed for AoE, that does not work in AoE, for single target. It’s cyclical nonsense. The reason Farseer is better in ST is that ST values lava burst far more than AoE (at least when lava burst can only hit one target). The Farseer tree buffs lava burst and spenders, but not lightning spells. PWave used to be about incorporating lava burst into AoE. The old PWave was the one opportunity Farseer had to be useful in AoE. Now that’s completely gone and Farseer will NEVER see use in AoE.
Even though the old version of PWave was also an AoE ability at its core, it had a place in the ST Farseer rotation. It also applied flame shock. In that sense, it had value because you used one global to spawn an ancestor, apply a fresh flame shock (something you would already have to do), and guarantee a lava surge proc for an instant lava burst (plus splintered elements haste). In essence, we received all of this in exchange for the flame shock global you would have had to apply manually. It’s a complete win with no downside. This was one global that did more damage than flame shock and had beneficial downstream effects. Now, you have to still use a low damage global to apply a flame shock, then follow it with a second low damage global to hit your target for a whopping 100k damage PWave to spawn your ancestor. Instead of one great global, we now have two bad globals. Seriously, it’s hard to imagine designing something to have such a poor and anti-synergistic relationship.
Redesigned Lightning Bolt
I, for one, would just like to go back to season 1. PWave was fun, impactful, and a wonderful break from the monotony of spamming chain lightning and earthquake. But more than just the PWave change, they ruined other aspects of the spec FOR NO REASON. Why did they redesign lightning bolt? It was one of the best looking abilities in the game. It was cohesive with our chain lightning. Thematically, it makes no sense at all. Lightning doesn’t only exist in the fictional world of Azeroth, it’s the only spell effect in the game that we have a real life comparison for. For all intents and purposes, lightning is instant (sure, it might actually take a few milliseconds for the whole chain, but that’s splitting hairs). Beyond the impracticality of this new spell design, it now is completely disjointed from chain lightning, which does not have travel time and looks different (and better). Why are our only two lightning spells so drastically different in looks and application? I’m sorry, but this is just silly. And again, it’s unneeded and no one asked for it. If you want to update some shaman visuals, how about our shields or our elementals? Our fire elemental is straight out of molten core. It is literally a recolored warlock voidwalker. Same model. The earth elemental model is the same one dating back to classic Darkshore. These models actually look dated. Our spells do not. Please use your development time for things we have actually asked for instead of nerfing our abilities in the name of art.
The Loss of Ancestral Guidance
Another unneeded change was the removal of ancestral guidance. The stated reason for its removal was that it was just packaged with ascendance for resto and was too strong for the dps.
- If the former is a problem because dps are helping the team live too much, then why aren’t we also removing vampiric embrace, nature’s vigil, rescue, darkness, zephyr, sac, bop, magic bop, or any of the other utility that other dps classes can bring to help their team survive? Ret paladins and enhance can drop truly meaty (in the ballpark of 50% of a health bar or more) heals on themselves or others and they’re instant cast. My healing surge takes 1.3 seconds and heals for 480k or less than 7% of my health bar. Do those specs have to sacrifice damage to give those big heals? Certainly. But I’m sitting around hard casting 8 healing surges in a row to achieve the same healing, am I not sacrificing far more damage?
- If the latter is an issue, why not change the talent to simply amplify ascendance and provide the benefit there? It removes a button and keeps the utility. Instead, we lose out on a major defensive ability, one which our class sorely needs. We are one of the squishiest classes in the game, despite having access to mail armor and shields (spec depending).
We had to fight so hard for so long to finally get our bulwark totem. After receiving that, we were STILL one of the squishiest classes/specs. But now we get the totem and they immediately remove AG. One step forward, one back. Good news though, we can spend a global to drop a healing stream totem that heals someone for 83k every 1.7 seconds. It doesn’t even prefer the shaman. You know what enemy hits for 83k every 1.7 seconds? Nothing. I literally flew around TWW searching for a mob that healing stream could outheal. I could not find one. I’m pulling neutral Limestone Falcon mobs in Dornogal and the healing stream can’t even outheal this trivial mob hitting me. Now, if I’m in a party and my totem is healing 5 separate targets, it’s doing essentially nothing. There were moments last season where I could pop ascendance and AG and tell my healer I was going to top the party up for him. Imagine his reaction this season when I tell him not to use a CD because I’m dropping my 80% buffed healing stream totem… Over it’s 18 second duration, it will heal for approximately 1.1 million hp (61k hps). Last time I checked, I’m pretty sure healers need to do 2-3 million healing per SECOND when a damage event is happening. Who on earth thought that this was adequate compensation for AG?
Recap/TLDR
- Mastery was redesigned in Season 1.
- PWave was redesigned in Season 2 to no longer work with our brand new mastery.
- Without old PWave, we lose half our kit in AoE. It is now a damage loss to use our cornerstone abilities like flame shock, lava burst, lava surge, and icefury.
- Pwave was designed for cleave but is no longer useful for cleave at all.
- PWave will now only see use in ST because it is a necessity for Farseer.
- Farseer used to use PWave as an improved flame shock. Now it needs to still press flame shock AND PWave. After flame shock, PWave is our weakest single target ability by far. We swapped one great global for two awful globals every 30 seconds.
- We lost maelstrom generation.
- We lost rotational variety.
- The new PWave actively fights against the previously existing synergy of the elements in our spec.
- We now have two lightning spells (three with tempest). Two have zero travel time and look great. One has travel time and was changed visually for … reasons?
- One of our powerful defensives/utility was removed. We were already squishy, and this only exacerbates the problem. But at least our healing stream totem can heal our whole party at random, one member at a time, for slightly less than 1% of a shaman’s hp bar per second.
How Do We Fix the “Fix”?
What is the solution to all of this? Just go back to season 1. It was perhaps the best iteration of elemental we’ve ever had. It was fun, thematic, and it just felt good to play. The button presses were rewarding and varied without being overly complex. It was in that sweet spot of having enough things to keep the rotation varied while not requiring us to perform calculus on the fly. Now it is bland and boring. Our flavor is gone. We went from masters of the elements to masters of curiously slow moving lightning and dirt. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, just turn back the dial to last season and everything is fixed. Then go focus on some classes that want and need changes.
But if for some inexplicable reason–perhaps you’re too proud to admit that these changes were a mistake–and you instead need to fall back on some different iteration of PWave so long as it’s new and you don’t have to admit your error, I have some suggestions. Make primordial wave a 30 second ability that applies flame shock to your target and up to 4 other enemies within 20 yards of the target and immediately grants lava surge. The next cast of lava burst hits all targets with flame shock. The ability generates the same maelstrom and is affected by mastery like the old version. Remove liquid magma totem. This accomplishes many things. First, it actually eases the age-old flame shock application problem–the only rotational problem we actually had. Second, it removes a button. We no longer need LMT to apply flame shocks. This new PWave applies one additional flame shock to account for the fact that we no longer get the pulsing damage from LMT. Third, it maintains the theme of being an elemental shaman, not a lightning and dirt shaman. Fourth, it gives us back our maelstrom generation. Fifth, it makes our mastery matter again. It doesn’t make sense to rework our mastery in season 1 and then redesign an ability that worked with our mastery in season 1 to no longer work with it in season 2. How did anyone think that was a good idea? Sixth, it requires us to use lava burst in aoe. Which means that we get to keep using a core shaman ability in all pulls. It also interacts with the master of the elements talent. Technically, new PWave gives us a surge proc, but why would we use that in mass aoe when it will only hit one target? It is literally better for us now to not even apply a single flame shock at just 2 targets even if we only used it to generate surge procs. Even the instant cast is a damage loss. Seventh, and most importantly, it’s more fun. Look at all the other comments here that agree this new PWave is bad. It’s not visually or auditorily satisfying. It also does truly laughable damage. As much as I hate to admit it, if the new PWave hit like a truck, people would care less about its bad gameplay and the obvious decision to depart from the elemental theme of the spec. But for the love of god, please don’t read everything else I’ve said and decide that the answer is to just make the new PWave hit harder. It’s a stupid bandaid fix to a larger, fundamental problem. The new PWave doesn’t need to be buffed, it needs to be reverted.
Final Words for PvP
And lastly, I will mention PvP. I saved it for now because I’m aware that most people in WoW don’t engage with it. Ele shaman is already a spec that relies on dampening to win. Sure you can cheese out some ascendance kills against less experienced players that don’t react appropriately. But playing against even moderately skilled opponents, ascendance loses its teeth. It lines up perfectly with the enemies’ big defensive abilities and everyone knows it’s coming every 2 minutes. The one nice thing we had was the ability to generate some pressure every 30 seconds with a PWave. This was the only way we had to generate pressure outside of our ascendance windows barring an RNG proc of ascendance that doesn’t wait until you have adequate cc to land a kill. PWave was also our way of generating maelstrom to get off earth shocks and guaranteeing a lava surge proc. Now we lost our maelstrom, our proc, and our pressure every 30 seconds. We are left with a 2-3 minute cd that lines up with defensives and hard casting spells. You keep buffing lightning damage, but you seem to not understand what every elemental player in PvP is trying to tell you. WE DON’T WANT TO PLAY A HARD CASTING LIGHTNING BUILD IN THE ARENA. Our lack of mobility is exceeded only by shadow priest. We rely on instant cast damage because we have to keep running at all times or we will get destroyed. We do not have the tools to generate enough space to plant and start casting lightning bolt. So unless you want to give us 2 charges of blink, displacement, alter time, frost nova, ring of frost, and a spammable CC to go along with our thunderstorm, the lightning build isn’t going to happen. And again, without the real PWave, we lost another flame shock. Which means that if an enemy healer is diligent, and dispels flame shock on cd, it will be nearly impossible to maintain on all targets in the arena unless fighting stacked melee. This is exacerbated by enemies like: other shamans with grounding, dks with ams, rng proc ams, priests with double dispel, mass dispel, and monk revival, to name a few. We rely on having our flame shocks out and the ability to hit all three targets with prim wave every 30 seconds to do respectable damage. We can no longer do that.
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I got on and played patch day, elemental felt so clunky i played for maybe 30 minutes and just logged off. Havent been on since, dont even care if they nerfed the damage but like you said OP its not fun to play right now.
Solid job blizzard whatever AI that you listened to to make this chain made this part of your game worse to play … by far.
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One of the worst parts of the new, worse Primordial Wave is that you can’t use it to cast/refresh Flame Shock any more. >=-(
I really wish they wouldn’t do sweeping changes like this mid-expansion…
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