This is my worry so I’m trying to be very reserved now while they cook until I see what they have done, I don’t want to get my hopes to high to be very disappointed on what actually happens.
I’ve honestly set my bar so low that anything outside of a few defensive alterations and maybe some visuals will be more than what I expected 
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Couple days left anyways till we see what they’ve come up with but I’ve been burnt by Blizzard before.
I think there are some things we know for sure are going to be changed given longstanding complaints (forums and beyond) and what they’ve done for other classes. I think we can assume some specific class (not spec) changes for sure given how these latest M+ changes addressed some specific concerns expressed by the community. I think sure fire class tree changes will be more pathing options off every node, 2 point nodes getting turned to 1 point nodes, some new type of defensive alongside improving current options, improvement to our utility.
Spec related changes are what I am more concerned because people play the class/specs for different reasons, in different types of content, and at different levels of engagement (Shaman tourists, casuals, midcore players, hardcore players, “He Who Has No Life” hardcore players) and leds to a wide variety of opinions/preferences that often clash with others expectations/preferences so our feedback is/was pretty split. 100% I expect Ele will get some type of unique raid/party buff and making flameshock easier to spread for Enhance and especially Ele.
I’m no ele expert, but there are a couple major things I would like to see for the spec.
Another charge of astral shift or earth elemental being a more substantial defensive CD. 15% hp on a 5 minute CD is underwhelming. Perhaps it needs to be a choice node in the class tree that increases the power of the defensive at the cost of removing the soloing power of the elemental in the open world. Another charge of Astral shift may just be easier and more effective though.
Rather than separate the fire and lightning builds, have them be better suited to aoe or single target. Fire can be geared towards single target and lightning talents can improve aoe.
Improve maelstrom generation and spending. Right now it feels like I just alternate between lava burst and a spender because I generate so much maelstrom, often overcapping. Perhaps it’s a gear scaling thing and I dont want to turn the dial too much, but spenders should be more impactful to press and should consume all maelstrom for extra damage. In turn, lava burst can do more damage again because you will have fewer resets and lightning fillers can actually be used for maelstrom generation.
Remove Icefury. I get they want all elements to be used but resto has water covered. Ele should focus on storm, earth, and fire. Frost shock still exists for utility.
Uncapped Flame Shocks. Flame shock can still only have 6 contribute to lava burst resets, but remove the 6 target limitation.
Because it has no cooldown.
Yea, neither does druid switching into bear form or cat form and they can do a lot more with their shapeshifts other than just run around like a shaman in ghost wolf.
Probably because having an on demand 20% DR with the only cost being a GCD/staying in Ghost Wolf would be incredibly powerful in a lot in both Mythic + and Raiding content. If you’re tracking damage events pretty closely you can just pop in to Ghost Wolf mere moments before a huge damage event so it hits within that GCD window and go right back to DPSing.
I’d imagine if they decided to front load the DR they would balance it by having it work like Thunderous Paws (active for a short duration then doesn’t trigger until a set amount of time) or they would front load it upon entering Ghost Wolf and have it decay slowly over time.
Speaking as Elemental:
I feel like the only shaman in the world who loves pwave so I selfishly hope they don’t get rid of it. I do think that they need to make it more of an auxiliary CD rather than the bread-and-butter requisite talent it currently is. Clearly people don’t like being forced into it.
Ultimately my biggest ask is that they make our AoE make some sense. If you don’t want us to be able to spread Flame Shock to 8 targets and throw Lava Burst at all of them, fine, make Earthquake good. If you don’t want to make Earthquake good, fine, make us able to spread Flame Shock easily and reward us for doing so. The way AoE works right now (and for seemingly forever) requires so many different cooldowns and buttons for an unwieldly and clunky result that only occasionally impresses damage wise.
My biggest frustration throughout every expansion I’ve played has been the incoherent and sloppy implementation of our AoE capabilities. Earthquake desperately needs modernization (for what, the 3rd time? 4th time?). If Earthquake has to be gatekept damagewise because of the knockdown effect, get rid of it, make it a talent, SOMETHING. Flame Shock desperately needs to be more flexible/less rigid. It would be nice if Chain Lightning had a bit more identity or utility outside of lightning builds, and I think making Lava Beam more impactful would be a good start. More importantly, when they do figure it out, can it please stick?
I personally have few problems with any of our single target builds and have a lot of fun with both meatball and pasta builds. However, Elemental Blast does not feel as impactful as it should. The buffs are meh, the damage is meh, it feels like it should be a big spell but it really isn’t. We’re sacrificing an instant cast spell for a hard cast one, and it more often than not doesn’t feel like a particularly worthwhile trade.
I personally like Icefury as a concept (I like when we utilize all the elements!) but the execution really only works on mobile fights. It also suffers from not feeling as impactful as it should be. I like the suggestions to make it a passive or otherwise less intrusive to rotations.
Let ank reset on boss wipes.
And let us keep the stone or fire elemental out like forst mages had their water elemental. Mainly for solo play so we aren’t so squishy.
There is a pretty big anti permanent pet crowd but yeah having earth elemental up a lot more than 20% of the time would be a huge help for solo PvE type stuff like delves
isn’t death and decay interaction and breath of sindragosa being the most important part of the rotation what is ruining frost dk? not the 2h?
Reincarnate changed to a reshape ability.
A blow that would kill you instead encases you into a boulder (idk rock grabby hands?) and after a couple of seconds you emerge full health and x mana.
This is more of a defensive because you keep your buffs and its more thematic to the class.
I hope they get rid of earth shock and make elemental blast instant like our maelstrom spender, earth shock feels outdated, i feel like im not doing nothing pressing it, it has no good animation, feels boring
I want a fourth spec so zappibois never have to take fire talents. It would really let lightning and fire eles get talent trees meant specifically for them.
Subjective honestly. Earth shock animation needs to be improved for sure but the audio is pure ASMR.
Elemental blast is more of an elemental “whoosh”
One could make a strong argument that 2h vs dw is the root of most of Frost’s problems. Because of the way the spec is designed it is more or less impossible to balance them against each other. The angle the devs have taken is to set up the spec tree in such a way that part of the tree supports dual wield (Breath builds) and the other part 2h (Obliteration).
This leads to players being locked in with no options. Even people that like the Breath playstyle will admit that it isn’t viable for all content, but once they are dual wielding they are locked in. Players that go the 2h route are locked in to Obliteration, even in situations that Breath might be better.
If the devs would pick one weapon type and go from there they could set up the spec tree to allow people to freely swap between the playstyles and people would complain a lot less about Breath.
As far as Cleaving Strikes through D&D goes, the devs’ hands are basically forced. There isn’t room in the spec tree for much in the way of aoe centric talents because of all the space devoted to the two weapon types. This forces the devs to build an aoe on/off switch into the class itself. This is what Cleaving Strikes is doing.
Again- if the devs were to pick a weapon type and stick with it most of Frost’s problems would go away. Note how Blood and Unholy don’t have these problems. They use Cleaving Strikes, but that is forced by Frost.
Going into TWW the devs are trying to make a dw non-Breath build viable. This is the playstyle that made Frost so popular for so long. I hope it works out for them, but I am dubious at best. The spec that can’t balance two playstyles is trying to implement a third to bridge the gap instead of just ripping the band-aid off. We’ll see how it works out for them.
DnD cleave became apart of Frost DK due to long term effect from adding 2hand to Frost and how they HAD. Because of how powerful Night Fae 2hand Oblit was gapping
I will never understand the fixation some players have on reducing each spec to a single element.
This isn’t the ATLAverse. We should never be restricting ourselves to only one element. If you want a one-element spec, other classes have that for you.
In sod, maelstrom generation etc is doubled while wielding a 2 handed weapon. Lazy rebuttal to lick the boots of lazy devs
And DW Enhance still gaps the ever loving hell out of 2hand. Turns out that still didn’t fix 2hand Enhance in SoD. Are you huffing glue?
Ahh but p4 testing has 2 handed pulling ahead with the buffs.
One will always be better than the other, but having both gives people options!