So what are we hoping to get?

Classes Shaman
41

I kinda want the same but a little different. I think it would be cool if ankh was a mini burst cooldown as well. Like after you die there’s a moment before you come back with ascendance popped or something. Make it so you WANT to die. They’d have to code it so it doesn’t actually count as a death in M+ and reduce its CD so it’s actually useable though. I’m not sure if that would be fun in practice but the idea sounds awesome to me.

I want lava surge taken out back and shot and for lava burst to be a monster again. I remember the wrath days of the 5k shaman BS and I want that back. I’d even keep prim wave in and give us burst moments with the instant cast lava bursts. They could just swap the volcanic surge pvp talent with lava surge and that could work. PvP likes its instant casts so they can keep them. A stacking buff to the next lava burst would turn lava burst into a nuke, rather than a machine gun

Next I would add in a raid buff in some way. I’m not super stuck on this since it only really matters if you’re pushing super high mythic, but the community perception around us missing one sucks, and I want to be seen as cool. We don’t need a % increase to a stat buff, but maybe something cooler, like hero? Hero was the big shaman raid buff for ages and it will always be a crime that mages have a better version of it than us. They get to use it twice every fight and the OG lust class just sits on the side lines like a loser watching the other kids beat us at our own game. Torghast had a power that gave the party lust for 10 seconds when you dropped a totem, on a reasonable CD. Bring this back. Out buff could be us constantly giving the raid mini lust windows throughout a fight. Once per minute our next totem dropped gives the entire raid hero for 10 seconds. The numbers here could be tuned in any way to balance it as long as the effect remained. They could give us a minute long debuff that stopped people from spamming shamans to have perma lust up.

I may be the only shaman alive that doesn’t hate icefury, and I think more people would agree with me if it simply looked better to cast. I want it to have a massively cool animation and deal big damage. Maybe the maintence buff could be scrapped but I think it has a place in the spec still. On top of a new IF animation the whole spec could us a visual update. This has been said a billion times, and now its been said a billion and one times. Please make time for this and just do it.

Lastly I would make our big cooldowns better. Tossing lava surge naturally makes ascendance matter again so no changes needed. Maybe buff the crit scaling on it so crit doesnt feel so useless when casting lava burst, but overall it would be fine. The big one is the elementals. They suck right now, they really, really suck. I think the base ele should spread flame shock for us and do more damage and that would be enough, but the primal ones should do way more. I think they should be permanent. That doesn’t mean I want a hunter pet bar kinda deal but I do want them to follow me around forever and fight with me. They would only target my target and could be swapped freely. Fire ele would spread flame shock and drop meteors on packs. Lightning ele would cast lightning and summon tornados for us, and earth ele would be our new defensive and give us on demand DR and split our damage taken.

42

Healing Surge and Ancestral Guidance are enough. Chain heal is iconic to Resto. Nothing in either dps tree makes it good to use, as far as I know.

43

It can be alright with Enhancement if you take the pvp talent ‘Stormreaver’. Especially if you combine this with ancestral guidance. Enhancement shamans have decent off-healing in pvp with this combination.

The thing about chain heal that sucks in pvp is you just burn through mana with it rapidly. Especially Resto. Most of the time Restos dont use it much in arena. I hope they do something with that in ‘TWW’.

1 Like
44

Never understood this, they did update the visual. It’s basically now a bolt of Fire, Water, and Lightning. The Icon is still the old SL one.

45

It does look like a low rent elemental blast now. I didn’t play SL but others have mentioned some of the other powers were better

46

VIsually sure but gameplay wise kinda stinky compared to updated DF Pwave.

2 Likes
47

Healing Surge is single target, and Ancestral Guidance is functionally a HoT. I have saved more than a few near-wipes in an M+ by throwing out a high MSW Chain Heal at the right moment.

Chain Harvest was nothing but a combined Chain Heal/Chain Lightning on a moderate cooldown. People liked it because it was flashy and mindless, you just cast it on CD.

Fae Transfusion felt absolutely godawful to use as Enhancement. A channeled, reticle-targeted spell on a high APM melee spec? Get the heck out.

Vesper Totem was a favorite of Resto shaman for keys because it double dipped on being a healing cooldown and a DPS burst, but neither Elemental nor Enhancement had the tools to get that same versatility out of it without sacrificing a ton of DPS because all it did was echo the healing/damage you were doing yourself.

48

Loved Fae Transfusion on Enh, super fun. Not really cohesive to the rest of the kit but was fun to use nonetheless. We also had Earth Spike back then to make it hit even harder. Sucked that the damage split making it bad for AoE though. I always wondered what would a spell like FT but rather than the follow-up heal, it enhanced our weapon strikes for a short while afterward instead would play like.

I want to see the Storm build reworked. Cracked take: Bake Unruly Winds into base WF, replaced with new talent that lets Windfury have a 10-15% chance to proc Windfury(can’t proc on itself), uncap Forceful Winds and make each stack’s timer independent, make Legacy of the Frost Witch proc on spending 5 or more MSW stacks, Doom Winds refreshes Forceful Winds stacks, Overflowing Maelstrom becomes a choice node with a talent to replace Lightning Bolt with Earth Spike (Tempest gets effects from Earth Spike). Return Frostbrand somehow.

Dunno what to do with Ascendence/DRE. I don’t have issue with DRE itself but as long as Thorim’s is as impactful as it is then it will always be the go-to just for better uptime. Best solution I think would be to replace Thorim’s.

49

I’d like to see Enhancement change with fairly low expectations:

  • Delete/rework DRE and do something with Ascendance, you can’t fix a storm as long as the current DRE is in a tree. It should be the number 1 priority
  • Feral Lunge and Windfury Totem become the baseline
  • Many 2 points node to 1 point
  • Raging Maelstrom, Improved Maelstrom Weapon and Overflowing Maelstrom should be combined
  • Elemental Assault needs to come up badly, that talent makes the whole spec functional
  • Rework Doomwind
  • Completely rework Totemic
  • Completely rework class talent tree
50

Man.

Yall need to calm down on your expectations.

They arent going to revinvent each spec from the ground up.

1 Like
51

New Lightning Bolt animation at minimum, i know it’s not a gameplay change but it’s an animation change overdue

Conductive Energy hero talent to spreading Lightning Rod to multiple or all targets. Wasn’t going to buy beta because was confident so if I am wrong on how it works now excuse me. That said, Lightning Rod is a cool animation that should be expanded upon, even if Lightning Rods damage takes a hit per target effected I think it’s worth it for the aesthetic of a “Storm ringer”. Conductive Energy would be the only way to feed into this aesthetic the best.

I think Ankh is more or less “ok” in terms of usage since it recharges faster now. It should set you to at least 50% HP though, 20% is easily death sentence range to even tick damage.

Removal of electrified shocks. This is a personal opinion more than anything, but I hate the maintenance buff every few casts. Don’t know what I’d replace it with (if at all), but maybe something that buffs your next Lightning Bolt cast by 20%, similar to flux melting but just for lighting. Would at least drag the buff away from maintenance and move it to something akin to Power of the Maelstrom buffs. Ice Fury itself is fine.

Additionally, Tempest should benefit from Lightning Bolt buffs if it is going to replace it. If it’s a separate button or replaces something like Lava Burst, then that might be a lot better.

Take out primordial wave from spec trees and put it in the class tree with something else like chain harvest. I’m personally a big Pwave fan but I can get why people dislike it, putting it in the class tree and offering an option could be the best course of action.

Wind fury made to be a 100 yard buff to reduce the need to replace it. Imo, it’s very easy to forget about in the midst of combat, and the solution of “get a weak aura to track it” doesn’t fly well with me. Increasing the range it gives its buff seems like a “fix” to make it less annoying.

Healing Stream totem to be a competitive option. Cloudburst can be the “big” heal version but Healing stream should be similarly powerful but in a more HoT kind of way. To that end, I think it would be helpful if healing also buffed Healing Stream totems ticks, even if to a lesser degree.’or maybe even the rate at which it heals. Nothing will probably make to compare to the Burst heal potential of CBT but it should bring more power for what it does.

Ascendance should make us into actual elementals. After watching the primalist get all the fun I really want to be able to share in on that, and I don’t want it to be from a toy I can use every hour.

Those are some of the changes I would like to see, or at least a couple of them at least. The anticipation is killing me :sob:. I hope whatever happens that the changes we get give us all a little bit of what we are looking for.

1 Like
52

It just applies it to the main target. It’s basically a useless talent for elemental since you just used ES/EB on the target so they already have Lightning Rod.

And if they do this, which they 100% should, Tempest would already benefit from Lightning Rod so that part of the talent would also be useless.

53

Correct me if I’m wrong but I think you’ve posted before talking about 5 point spenders and not wanting to play Overflowing Maelstrom. I’m curious what your preference with 5 MSW spenders versus 5+ MSW spenders is.

In AoE it has big festermight vibes which has its ups and downs. I think if doomwinds was an oGCD and either increase the duration or make it a 1 minute CD I think that would be pretty neat for Storm, especially for storm cleave.

54

[Disclaimer: Mostly coming an Enhance PvE perspective]

That seems somewhat convoluted to have it Pwave (or Pwave/Chain Harvest choice node) in the Class tree since the specs have different interactions with it alongside some differences in associated talents. Like for Enhance it would be weird for Primal Maelstrom and Splintered Elements to just be hanging out in the spec tree while Primordial Wave is chilling in the Class Tree.

Hypothetically, Chain and Pwave would have to be a choice node in the spec tree with the each of the two talents pathing off of them being a choice node, each choice favoring one of the abilities (ex. For Enhance Primal Malestrom would be a single point choice node between Primal Maelstrom and Elemental Conduit). Chucking 3 more nodes into the Class tree seems like a bad move unless they do a major reshuffling of the class tree. And for that example, what are those follow-up talents going to be? Pwave outside of making a specific spell also hits targets with a specific buff/dot is similar between specs but additional effects are vastly different.

I doubt they will do any of that though. Most likely (I pray) they will look at pain points for PWave + Talents to improve it like reducing the number of GCDs for its setup, say by making it easier to getting Flameshocks out quickly for Ele and Enhance.

55

There’s also the matter that putting Primordial Wave in the class tree would make it the single biggest throughput talent in there, making it a completely mandatory selection for every build in existence, and forcing pathing to it.

Keeping throughput talents in the class tree to a minimum was literally the only reason everyone thought shaman had the best class tree in the game going into DF, because what we do get in there isn’t all that impressive. Making the same mistake as every other class tree and migrating more throughput talents into it is absolutely not the rework we need.

1 Like
56

I do find it odd that so many classes have such high throughput options but it seems like some of those are changing like how they removed the procs generated from Aboms limb for each spec (bone shield, sudden doom, rime).

But I always though it was weird just having talent nodes for raw throughput is lazy. I still fume about the Season 2 change they did to Elemental Weapons for Enhance to force people to take WF weapon since thats what we were dropping in a lot of cases to grab stuff like sundering in M+ and crash for some fights in raid like Kurog and Broodkeeper. I get they need “filler” for the trees but I really wish they just had that stuff baked into the spec itself and had more interesting options for those nodes.

57

Never played Shammy, is Sky fury only a pvp talent?

58

I’m a huge fan of keeping throughput spells out of the class tree.

Based on these forums and the beta feedback I may be in the minority, but I love the shaman class tree and feel that it is a far better model to follow for what a class tree should be than most other classes. It definitely needs a refresh as far as pathing, 2 point nodes, and maybe removing and adding some stuff, but overall I think it’s good that the tree has little throughput.

I don’t even think it’s a problem that capstone talents aren’t super powerful. It’s nice not feeling forced to spend 10 points in the capstone area. I agree some abilities could be tuned or made more appealing.

59
  • Icefury staying
  • Prim Wave staying
  • Vesper Totem
  • Another defensive CD
  • New visual for Ascendance
  • Stormstrike dealing stormstrike damage
  • Enhancement’s complexity remaining intact
  • Option to disable elemental shield visuals
2 Likes
60

Here’s my list of things that I think would help considerably, are reasonable given the time crunch, and would focus on not adding any additional buttons. This has some enhancement focus, but most of it would carry over to elemental and resto.

-Make Astral Shift a 1 minute cooldown with 2 charges (this would mirror hunter’s SotF)

-Make Earth Shield last an hour when self cast

-Buff the snot out of AG and the healing totem- if our desirability to groups is to come from something other than a buff then let us be strong off healers

-Delete DRE and lower the cooldown of Ascendance and have it just turn us into an elemental

-Make flame shock a meteor effect like Howling Blast-hits your target for small damage and applies the dot to your target and all targets within 8 yards (same with pwave)- to keep this reasonable with ele fire and enh pwave just give those abilities a target cap (ie the pwave LB and pwave LvB hits your target and up to X additional targets)

-Make Earth Elemental a choice node with a talent that builds an absorb shield for 2% max health every 2 seconds up to 10% (just like WW has in Yulon’s Grace)

-Move the FN/HS choice node to the top left of the enhance tree where they currently are dancing between Refreshing Waters and Windfury Weapon so all builds can pick it up

-Buff mana stream so its worth picking up

-Smooth out the class tree a bit- there is no reason to have 2 nodes and 2 points devoted to hex, it is silly to have 2 nodes and 3 points devoted to the healing totem

-Take totems off the gcd- they all have a cooldown anyways

-Let Ankh have us rez with the same amount of health as every other brez

-Reduce some of the class trees’ 2 point nodes to a single point

There. These changes would be easy to implement as everything listed is already in the game and can be copied over, no new buttons are added, many of the pain points are smoothed out, our survivability would be buffed considerably, large scale aoe would be improved, our utility would be improved, and the stuff that makes people like the class would be unchanged.