I actually have always hated lava lash. Its just… Blah. Boring. Mediocre damage, mediocre visuals. Flame tongue boring too.
Sadly, they literally removed Searing totem early in beta when it was basically that (minus the longer CD and flame shock targets).
Searing Totem is being removed as a baseline ability for all specs. The feeling was that while it was added back to the class in Legion to try to evoke the feel of the iconic totems, it actually turned out to be just another cooldown to manage.
Not sure where they get this feedback from sometimes, but I guess the thought was another 30s CD was too much to manage…so they gave us a 15s AoE version based off Flame Shock and forgot to include Flame Shock spread instead XD.
IMO however, I’d sooner see feral spirits fixed as a baseline long-ish DPS cooldown. They have plenty to pull from there, but that’s a whole different issue and we’re still waiting on those promised Elemental Spirits changes nevermind the base ability.
It was never that. It was the same searing totem, just with a cooldown. It didn’t do anywhere near the amount of dps that a dps cooldown should do.
Right, I’m saying they seemed to go in the completely opposite direction for some reason. I can’t remember at the moment if they replaced it with Fire Nova or if Fire Nova was already there at the time.
for SL, anything instant range working like our current attack, short cooldown 2 charges, generates MW stacks
without something like that, gameplay is going to be really awful
I wish Forceful Winds was redesigned as an active ability kind of like that. Maybe 2-3 enhanced wind strikes making up the difference of random Windfury buffs on a 20s CD. It could have increased MSW generation on targets over 80% and function as an execute with +100% on targets under 20%.
Well wind is counted as Physical and it bypasses armor… So they could continue that theme of wind bypasses armor.
How about this insanity? WARNING: Long post ahead you have been warned!!!
Lava Lash base cooldown reduced to 8secs from 18secs, base damage doubled. Flametongue buff reduced to 50% from 100%.
Hot Hand reworked so that Lava Lash now no longer has a cooldown for the duration, and can now trigger off of Flame Shock ticks. Proc chance unchanged.
Lashing Flames reworked: Lava Lashing a target makes them take 100% increased damage from your Flame Shock, and spreads your current flame shock at half duration to up to 2 targets.
Fire Nova reworked: Each “nova” is now restricted to a maximum of four targets, damage is doubled, cooldown reduced to 10secs (further reduced by haste).
Sundering damage increased to 200% from 140% deals reduced damage to targets above six.
Frost Shock renamed to Frostbrand.
Frostbrand: 6sec cooldown reduced by haste. 30yd range. 45% of SP/AP. Brand your enemy with ice slowing them for 6 seconds your subsequent melee attacks have a chance to reapply this brand for 6 seconds.
Ice Strike reworked: Strike the target with an icy blade dealing 65% of AP frost damage resetting the cooldown on Frostbrand and increasing the damage and slow of your next Frostbrand by 50%.
Hailstorm unchanged, but now works with Frostbrand instead of Frost Shock.
Elemental Blast replaced with Freezing Blows.
Freezing Blows: Your melee attacks that reapply Frostbrand freeze the target with ice dealing 35% of AP as frost damage.
Crashing Storm replaced with Elemental Blast.
Forceful Winds removed replaced with Elemental Assualt.
Windfury reworked: Imbue your weapon with Wind giving your main-hand auto swings a chance to trigger two additional attacks for 50% of AP wind damage.
Crashing Storm reworked and replaces Elemental Assault: Your Crash Lightning’s Gathering Storm buff now also affects Chain Lightning.
Maelstrom Weapon stacks now increase the damage and healing of spells by 50% at five stacks from 100%. Passive 50% dmg/healing reduction removed.
Windfury Totem reworked: The additional auto swing that is procced now deals wind damage.
Elemental Spirits reworked: Summon either a Frost, Fire, or Lightning wolf that increases your Mastery by 25%, and your wolves now deal elemental damage and benefit from your mastery. The cooldown of feral spirit is reduced by 30secs.
Earthen Spike reworked: Impale your enemy with a spike of earth for 140% of AP nature damage and increasing the damage they take from physical, wind, and nature attacks by 25%.
Ascendance cooldown reduced to 2.5mins, removed from the GCD, buffed to 75% cooldown reduction of Stormstrike, subsequent Stormbringer procs now provide a stacking buff increasing the damage of Stormstrike by an additional 20% for the duration of Ascendance. Initial AoE burst halved.
Edit: For those confused when I say “replaces” i’m refering to locations on the talent tree.
2 Likes
I like the Flame Shock ticks, but I’ve come to resent full CD resets on abilities without multiple charges or a dynamic charge; you are forced to spam LL in this case without feeling like you are wasting the proc if you weave anything else like SS, LB, FS in between. Spreading two 9s Flame Shocks on each hit here is probably too much as well; In a 6+ target fight I could easily see Hot Hand and Flame Shocks being self sustaining Lava Lash spam.
The reapplication is nice though it might need tuning on the added Hailstorm damage to keep it from getting out of hand. Hard to say at the moment if Frost Shock is insufficient to stick on your targets (druids being the usual exception).
Making Nature’s Guardian baseline / replaced with Earthgrab totem would potentially allow for Feral Lunge (ideally on a 20s CD) or another AoE root/utility.
The suggested changes to making Lava Lash a Flame Shock helper for Fire Nova and balancing Fire Nova around 4 at most targets does take away some of the purpose of Ice Strike so you are right it may need something beyond the double Hailstorm setups in that case.
I can see where you are heading with the fire/lightning/frost paths, but the effect of Elemental Assault is really noticeable as is. I’m unsure of what the required balance would be if you can pick both it and Hailstorm. Elemental Blast also doesn’t seem like it would hold its own against Stormkeeper or Sundering, but that’s kind of true on most rows.
Thematically, I like it, though the only issue I have with wind damage (which is still just a special case of physical damage) bypassing armor is that it will likely be tuned around it’s current performance since they seem so unwilling to increase Windfury damage in general (i.e. the same vs a warrior/PvE and weaker vs a mage). This like most other items above are likely subject to tuning, but that’s long overdue.
Looks good. I would say Frostbrand needs something where if the shaman doesn’t swing - they never apply the melee slow just the initial slow - the target freezes (like freezing trap, not frost nova). Then cut the initial slow to 3 seconds.
This places a control back in the kit with a delayed burst CC, something I feel shaman is sorely missing.
Enhance should just get frozen power back that roots the initial target (not the hailstorm extra targets) in ice for 5 seconds at 20+ yards.
It’s complete bs that this enhance talent was taken from the spec and given exclusively to elemental.
2 Likes
I feel like Ice Strike is practically begging for it to include an effect to that extent though it may need an extended range to be practical in that case; it could end up in hailstorm as well via a pvp talent which would probably feel amazing.
Actively swapping Frostbrand / Flametongue to control distance (either to kite or stick on targets) vs extra damage would actually be an interesting choice if Lava Lash had a 20 yard range and something like Primal Lava Actuators in place of Hot Hand to talent it down to roughly a 7 second cooldown with Flame Shocks running (similar to Rockbiter). With Frostbrand, Primal Lava Actuators, Hailstorm root, and a 20 yard Lava Lash with a lower cooldown potential that does decent damage, you’d have some decent sustained range pressure and situational defensive utility vs melee at the cost of reduced Maelstrom Weapon generation.
I know getting Primal Lava Actuators at level 25 doesn’t change much by level 60, but Hot Hand currently seems more like the “take it to 11” a legendary should be doing rather than the smoother gameplay that Primal Lava Actuators enables.
Noice. I do like this
I disagree lava lash needs increased range. Then It just feels like a 2nd flame shock except no dot.
Same as if ice strike was ranged, it’s feel like a better frost shock because of the shock reset.
Shocks already fill out ranged roll…and used to be 25 yd talented to 30 eventually becoming full range spells. Leave strikes to melee.
Frostbramd always had a place in PvP because it scaled with mastery and increased our uptime. The only interesting part about it was if you used it to replace windfury or flametongue.
Putting too many abilities into ice strike, which already has a reset on shocks makes the ability start to feel mandatory.
If anything, ice strike should just be baseline as a third strike that
- deals frost damage
- resets shock cooldowns
- has a better name that follows the alliteration of our other strikes (StormStrike, Lava Lash. Ice Strike – one of these things is not like the other)
This opens a spot for Frozen Power to make a return, or for them to move things around to bring back Stone Bulwark, etc.
It also gives enh 3 elemental strikes (air, fire, frost — I’d argue we should have one for each element but you know…)
Unpruning frostbrand is am entirely separate issue honestly because without frostbrand, searing totem, unleash elements our stickiness and kiting pressure are nearly non-existent.
The reason feral charge didn’t have a root/stun rider was because we had frostbrand to automatically snare on melee hits. We don’t have that anymore which in turn makes feral lunge feel even worse.
I feel like Frozen Power makes more sense as a PvP honor talent in retrospect; rooting an enemy in PvE as enhancement is usually kind of pointless. As an honor talent it has to fight off a lot more interesting alternatives, but does grant more flexibility to be added onto Frost Shock or elsewhere as needed per composition. That opportunity cost also allows it to maintain a relatively low cooldown. You can compare it to the (now removed) Warlocks honor talent Entrenched in Flame which caused Conflagrate (on an 2 charge 13s base CD) to root the target for 3 seconds. I assume it was removed due to redundancy with the now universally available Curse of Exhaustion and more flexible Amply Curse honor talent.
As for Lava Lash having range, the idea was to shore up the difference from the loss of Rockbiter and really double down on this concept with something like Primal Lava Actuators that actually gets it to a point where you could potentially kite or maintain ranged pressure with it. A lonely Flame Shock is not going to do that, Maelstrom Weapon generation at range is non-existent, and I guess Blizzard has it in their mind that Searing Totem would just be a physical manifestation of Flame Shock DoT that would feel mandatory in PvE.
Besides, as you said, one of these (alliteration aside) is not like the other; just call it Lava Whip if you must and let strikes be melee lol. This kind of sidesteps the stickiness issue with a fire build, but I agree some alternative options for maintaining melee uptime should exist for lightning/frost builds.
If that’s the case I’d rather they just add rockbiter as a ranged attack back. We don’t need a spammable though…we needs peeps to learn the priorities.
I’ve talked to people in my server and some don’t even realize to use their shocks and are legit just auto attacking and using we and ll.
Habit a ranged spammable isn’t what piano shaman needs and won’t make the spec feel anymore fluid.
Not to mention lava lash has a conduit to reach 50% crit chance so good luck getting that at ranged and spammable.
Pulls should be done with flame shock as your approach or a hard cast lb/eb, or just yolo on with crash lightning.
Piano shaman has always been punished for not having uptime (being unable to keep on target for white hits) and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. It’s one of the specific weaknesses they want with the playstyle (sad that we have so many others due to poor dev management…ie. not undoing previous nerfs that were meant for legion/bfa enh)
Lava lash might get the flame shock spread treatment but that’s about it.
As for frozen power, I agree it can be an honor talent. Enhance still needs a lot of stuff to make pvp work. For frozen power to be over it needs a dmg component like ice strike now does an additional X dmg to slowed targets in additional to the frost shock rider.
Oh I never suggested making it spamable. In fact I didn’t really suggest changing the cooldown at all beyond swapping the already existing Primal Lava Actuators Legendary with Hot Hand to make it more accessible.
As long as Flame Shock is running, this would drop it down to maybe 7 seconds with haste down from 12 with two flame shocks out or 1 with Lashing Flames changed to tick faster instead of harder. They can limit the cooldown proc frequency from there if necessary.
Hot Hand as a legendary that also procs off Flame Shock ticks (tuned accordingly to maintain the current proc rate), would be icing to occasionally get the same feel of busting out some Lava Lashes even when you are struggling to connect. The 50% crit conduit is going to be there regardless.
Adding Rockbiter back would just be another button to press.
PvE doesn’t need the range, but it’s there if you have to sit out a mechanic for a while.
I agree that the lava lash legendary and hot hands need some work. I just don’t see the need to a ranged lava lash.
It’s more an outside the box concept to addressing melee uptime. There are definitely other ways, but it seemed thematic to me. To be fair I probably have the concept of Lava Whip stuck in my head at the moment.
I understand…I just know that blizz won’t do anything to address the uptime punishment for the spec. It was this way when we needed uptime to generate Mana…we need uptime to generate maelstrom weapons…and it was why they were super reluctant to give us a baseline charge. Back when Enh actually worked properly (had defensives, actual healing, and Mana regen on auto attacks) uptime was largely what your tried to maximize, being punished outside.it…because we are missing so many things still it feels bad.
No sham rage or bulwark to help soak and maximize uptime. No searing totem/flames to keep pinging while moving. No mana regen to offset self healing, etc. Etc.