Stormbringer [Enh Runes to Blend DW and 2h]

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

I understand everyones flavor of enhance for classic is different. Some folks want:

  1. Two Hand Burst Enhance
  2. Dual Wield Physical Enhance
  3. Spellhance?

Why We Shouldn’t Push for Spellhance

Firstly I just want to derail any desire or push for runes towards #3. In this version of the GAME we do not have AP to Spellpower as a talent. So Spellhance would only be implementable as a rune. From a design standpoint this would be problematic since well, than that rune would just be overtuned for actual ele shamans and or resto shamans. I also feel that it homogenizes too closely elemental and enhance.

Also Crit and Hit rating do not work the way they do in Wrath of the Lich King nor does fire nova totem or flametongue weapon behave the same way or give spellpower per imbue. You won’t get spell crit or spell hit for hit and crit items. This leads to a very poor renditioning of a fun WRATH era playstyle.

[Stormbringer Rune]

Stormbringer as a rune with Stormstrike becoming available next patch will be a great addition to the shaman to help shore up its horrendous dps and add a fun RNG windfury focused build which fits the classic flavor of windfury chain procs and stormstrike.

What is the Stormbringer Mechanic?

Storm Bringer
Your special attacks have a 5% chance to reset the remaining cooldown on Stormstrike.
(Proc chance: 5%)
*My Personal Add: Reduce the targets Nature Resistance by 75(per rank of phase equivalence of SoD), and increase nature damage taken by target by 10%(relevant to phase)

For 2 hand Increase the Proc Chance:5% to somewhere between 7.5-10%.
Adding the nature debuff also provides a raid utility that helps boomkins and ele shamans.

Special attacks including: Windfury Proc, Lava Lash, Shocks, Storm Strike and…
SUNDERING!

[Sundering Rune]
With a lack of AoE and CC Sundering would be a great mechanic for DPS and Tank shamans to do damage to packs or burst/cleave with fire nova totem albeit still on a long CD of 40 Seconds.

What is Sundering?

Sundering
Instant 40 sec cooldown
Requires Melee Weapon
Shatters a line of earth in front of you with your main hand weapon, causing (150% of mainhand Weapon Damage) Flamestrike/Physical damage and Incapacitating any enemy hit for 2 sec.

With powerful Constant burst Abilities shuch as Divine Storm or Whirlwind already present I do not see this upsetting the balance heavily in any cleave environment or team fighting

This will simply do more damage with 2hander over dw so one being more burty to be inline with the 2h fanstasy while still being a fantastic pick for dual wield.

Balance Criticisms I foresee
Before I list what I would believe to be balance criticisms I would first want to dispell the myth of windfury weapon fixing shaman dps or making them more viable in pvp.

  1. In ERA there was extensive statistical analysis done over imbues, and it found they were all relatively balanced. Also ALL classes have access to windfury weapon. Shamans only generate an additional attack.
  2. PvP. Enhance in PvP is incredibly squishy without utilizing Way Of Earth (Which requires rockbiter weapon imbue) and Shield Mastery rune. They also are the ONLY melee DPS without a hard CC of any form, only a slow not even a root. The class is designed around being a risky class with burst and these runes provide that niche.

Balance Issues

  • Resetting Storm Strike is too OP, and will be too much damage

I am not entirely sure how this could even be remotely the case. A 5% chance to do an extra attack that costs you a global and mana… This is just SWORD Spec on arms warrior but worse…

As it stands Ret, the other melee hybrid has Cstrike, Dstorm, Exorcism, and judge. They also get Windfury procs that still work with seal procs for even more damage. I am not sure a resetting RNG extra attack will somehow make a class already 1 deviation below the mean over powered.

  • Sundering will make shamans do too much AoE

I am not sure this will even come close as it is a 40 second CD for 184% AP ( which this number can be tuned down to fit balance of era or swapped to %weapon damage)

In small cleave Paladins will get off 4 Divine Storms for 110% weapon damage for the cost 1 Sundering, and this ability also has a utility mechanic of healing 3 part or raid members for .25 of damage done.

Warriors will have 4 whirlwinds in that same window for 100% weapon damage (mainhand only in classic I believe as well) as well as proccing sword procs, mace stuns, and deep wounds; all of this on top of the fact that they can cleave as well A LOT more as they get more rage (even more so with the rune introductions of haste, rage gen on gloves, or even rage gen on bleeds to chest which proc off of deepwounds)

  • Shamans having an AoE CC on a 40 second CD will be too powerful in pvp

I am not sure this is true, we have howl of terror, intim, psychic scream, and AoE seal of Justice plus divine storm (although I am not sure if its worth dropping a damage rune for this.

Also its a 2 second incap that breaks instantly on any damage taken.

Our Hybrid Counterpart has both HoJ and Repent to stun as well as multiple Immunities. I really don’t see this being broken almost more…
balanced

Outro Metrics

WCL removed all greench parses. We can finally see how the classes truly perform now. Below is ALL bosses DPS at a 95% Performance Level.

Class Spec DPS
Warrior DPS 192.49
Rogue DPS 190.02
Hunter Melee 172.7
Druid Feral 165.22
Paladin DPS 156.18
Shaman Enhancement 133.76

How Shaman measures up.

Class Spec DPS
Melee Mean DPS 168.395
Melee Standard Deviation 22.025
Enh Shaman Percent damage to the Mean 79.43%
Enh Shaman Percent damage to the Max 69.49%
Enh Shaman Deviations from the Mean -1.572

Next tier shaman is getting 1 extra attack every 20 seconds right now, and similar dps talents to everyone else and a statistically similar imbue. Currently they are no longer the best tanks either. Their buffs are party wide unlike blessings and are a pain to manage. The class needs real help.

3 Likes
2

So much effort went into this post that I feel bad my reactions are:
“But I’d quite like to see spellhance,” and: “We’re level 25, chill out.”

3

thats fine I like spellhance in wrath I just dont see a way to implement it without the runes being entirely too strong for ele/resto.

1 Like
4

That’s fair, unless they introduce runes that provide the scaling that came with Wrath. I have no idea what they’re doing with the “minor” runes.
I also wholeheartedly agree that a huge part of what made Wrath enhance fun was having an RNG element on a priority basis, rather than having a set rotation. I can’t stand repeating set rotations ad nauseum.
You also didn’t point out that Divine Storm provides healing. I think a Shaman rune that can make a heal an instant cast conditionally wouldn’t be amiss. If the hybrid tax is going to be a thing in SoD because of the ancient game design philosophies, it’d be nice if the hybrids could actually perform as such.

5

I posted really in a subset post in regards to balance in regards to an AoE ability with attached utility. I couldn’t agree more with the healing point you just made. I think they could add MSW into the shaman toolkit to allow us to instant cast heals and use chainlightning as well.

6

Apologies for missing it.
I think another potentially wonderful addition would be giving shamans some serious buffing power. Maybe make it a single target, to give groups a reason to bring more than one or two.

7

I want to start by saying this is very well-written, and it seems you’ve brainstormed for this quite a bit, rather than the idea being a random thought that just snowballed as you typed. I applaud you for doing much better than most people that post things like this.

Now, to respond to one part at a time:

Spellhance: I agree that this shouldn’t be pushed for. Not just because it’s “not in the spirit of Classic,” but, as you said, there are multiple issues from the design point of Classic compared to WotLK - heck, even compared to TBC - that makes this extremely messy. You’d need gear with stats spread across almost every stat, which would probably end up being so low, as to not invalidate gear choices for any other class/spec that’s not a spellhance shaman, that you’d be gimping yourself horribly by doing so. If the gear were anywhere near decent enough that it would make spellhance worthwhile, you’d likely end up invalidating a lot of gear, with other specs & classes rolling on the same gear.

Stormbringer: Stormstrike is MASSIVELY mana-intensive, even more so if you’re trying to stack for melee damage and forsake intellect to do so. From this perspective, a 5% chance to reset the CD on Stormstrike - especially if this procs off Windfury, Lava Lash, Shocks, and Stormstrike itself, instead of just attacks - sounds like you’ll OOM faster than you can type /oom. One could argue “just don’t Stormstrike every time it pops, forehead!” Then I say: What’s the point of resetting the Stormstrike CD in the first place, then?

It seems like it’d be a very strong rune that would be worthless more often than not.

Sundering: It’s Shockwave from Prot Warrior in WotLK, with a higher AP coefficient, shorter stun, longer CD, and does magic damage(which, btw, I don’t like “Flamestrike” damage; I don’t know if this already exists in Classic, but I’d prefer it to just be Fire or Nature damage, just my two cents).

I’m not a fan of it doing magic damage, especially if it’s based off such a considerable amount of AP.
To make a comparison, Shockwave for warriors in Wrath is (75 / 100 X AP).
To make a comparison in SoD, Avenger’s Shield for Paladin does (366 X/ 100 + 0.091 X Spell power + 0.091 X Attack power) to (448 X/ 100 + 0.091 X Spell power + 0.091 X Attack power) Holy damage.
Last comparison, SoD shaman, Molten Blast: (X 72 / 100 + 5 / 100 X Attack power) to (X 108 / 100 + 5 / 100 X Attack power) Fire damage.
(All the above have Xs for multiplication because asterisks are causing italics.)
I may just not understand the formulae, but it seems like 184% AP is massive in comparison to any of these.

It’s also not a great comparison with Divine Storm or Whirlwind as these are based purely off weapon damage. Other than doing a massive amount of Fire damage purely off AP, it seems like a decent way to work Shockwave into Classic, even if it’s on a shaman tank instead of a warrior tank.

Balance Criticisms/Issues: Resetting Stormstrike: already mentioned above; it doesn’t seem massively viable because of how fast you’ll OOM.
(Side note: Wild Strikes does not proc off anything but auto-attacks for ret. Windfury procced off SoC in TBC and TBC Classic, but Wild Strikes is currently not proccing on SoC, nor is it proccing off Crusader Strike - don’t remember if it did in TBC - or Divine Storm.)

Sundering doing too much AoE damage: Comparing it to Divine Storm or Whirlwind and Cleave doesn’t really make sense. The first two are capped at 4 targets, and Cleave only hits a second target. As you wrote out Sundering above, it would be uncapped. Aside from that, it really doesn’t seem like something tailored to dealing damage, first and foremost, with it having a 40 sec CD. Which leads into…

AoE CC on 40 sec CD: You specifically wrote in a line, rather than a cone. It’s a lot less likely that you’ll get nearly as many enemies in a line than you will in a cone. Doesn’t seem like it would be a massive issue, though I may not be thinking through it fully.

Outro Metrics: I’m not a fan of using 95% performance level from WCL, as most people will never hit that level. I prefer 75%, as this is much more reasonable for most people. That having been said, my post is already getting way too long, and 75th percentile vs 95th percentile only slightly shrinks the gap between the top at (warrior at 95th, rogue at 75th) and enhancement shaman from a 28.75% difference to a 23.15% difference, so I’ll just say: Yeah, the class probably needs some help, but they’re by no means alone in that sector.

8

Just make the ele/resto runes more enticing on the same rune slot.

9

First I want to say this was honestly such a well thought out response I wanted to wait to respond until I got back to my desk to show you the respect you did in this.

I struggled with this thought a lot but wasn’t sure how much of an issue it would be.

  • Currently Shamans Enhance DPS have a Time To OOM of Never. This is likely do the shamanistic rage paired with double rock biter. Which obviously when we get windfury our Mana returns will decrease quite a bit. Also since our main melee spammable is essentially free for me at 5 mana. So maybe it would not be as OOM inducing as it may look with a current TToom of 0 but I have an inkling you are closer to the truth on this than I am.
  • I thought about maybe putting Mana return on cast similar to crusader strike, not sure how much it should be, or if it would be overpowered?

Sundering is a shaman burst spell introduced in I believe MOP.
Its essentially a burst AoE tool and I actually am not sure if flamestrike damage exists in classic. They Could just code it as “Physical Damage” since its earth and fire hitting the target and could thematically be like an earthen attack.

Yeah I actually 100% agree with this. I ripped the spell text right from retail as it exists now. I think they could make it 150% or something like weapon damage. A bit higher CD for a niche uncapped burst ability, or they could simply lower the cd and cap the targets to 4,6,8 which ever. The AP portion could be a bit overtuned when converting it into Spellpower I fully agree since it would simply bypass all armor.

Honestly, I think this should be fixed and is a bug or atleast not with the design of the abilities. I think making wild strikes work for CS and DS would help put paladins above the mean and closer to warriors and rogues but not too high and still maintain their strong hybrid identity.

I am not sure how many UNCAPPED fights there are where sundering would pull ahead with large numbers, but I definitely considered utilizing
[Crash Lightning] Rune instead but that would more greatly favor dual wield and pigeon hole the user more into lava lash with how it works. But it would likely be a more balanced 3-5 target cleave option. Also crash lightning would shore up cleave damage without providing the raw shock value and burst of sundering that would exist in PvP which could be a problem?

Thank you much for your feedback you brought up a lot of good points that slipped through my initial thought process and also some ideas I also struggled with when posting.

I think there was so much more posted on this issue that it feels bad faith to just grab this line. To be completely honest Bald actually provided the better feedback to your post.

1 Like
10

Shamanistic Rage definitely would help, especially being on a 1 min CD. I haven’t played a shaman on SoD, but I ran some numbers when the runes were revealed and found Shamanistic Rage at level 60 can pretty easily replenish more than your total mana pool over 15 seconds. Though, that was with a rather small mana pool, as I was looking at gearing for damage, more than sustainability.

Either way, Lava Lash replenishing a bit of mana like Crusader Strike might help a bit if using Stormstrike kills your mana pool, but this is reliant on dual-wielding, since Lava Lash is an off-hand attack. This eliminates it as an option from 2H and tank enhancement.

I wasn’t aware of the current state of it on live. I don’t really remember it in Legion, to be honest, but I mainly played elemental in 7.2 and 7.3, not enhancement.

Anyway, I don’t think benefiting from AP and doing magic damage is the primary issue, rather just how much damage 184% of AP would be, especially with dual Rockbiter, and doubly so if it’s ignoring armor. I mentioned Molten Blast and Avenger’s Shield doing Fire and Holy damage, respectively, while benefiting from AP, but with far lower coefficients.

If it’s being used as a DPS ability in PvE, though, instead of a tank ability, a 40 sec CD on it feels like it’s really long. Something more akin to Overpower with Dreadnaught talented for Arms Warrior on live feels like it would be a better fit, if the goal is to increase damage in PvE.

Crash Lightning would probably be useful for a cleave situation in PvE, though IIRC, it was useless on ST when I was playing between Legion and Shadowlands. Being a rune ability, though, that can be hotswapped eliminates this being an issue for the most part.

Looking at it on the DF talent calculator, it could pretty easily be tuned in a way that didn’t give a far bigger advantage to DW over 2H. The first thing that comes to mind is having it be focused around your MH only, as a lot of abilities in Classic on classes that can dual wield already do. This would make it preferential to 2H, though if it affected Lava Lash as well as Stormstrike, DW wouldn’t be completely left in the dust, especially looking at it with Stormstrike on a 20 sec CD with no way to reset it.the design point of Classic compared to WotLK - heck, even compared to TBC - that makes this extremely messy. You’d need gear with stats spread across almost every stat, which would probably end up being so low, as to not invalidate gear choices for any other class/spec that’s not a spellhance shaman, that you’d be gimping yourself horribly by doing so. If the gear were anywhere near decent enough that it would make spellhance worthwhile, you’d likely end up invalidating a lot of gear, with other specs & classes rolling on the same gear.

11

I never liked spellhance. Tbc was very meticulously designed.

Gave them dw to make proccing flurry and windfury more consistent and unleashed rage procs were added in the same vein of thinking.

And then for some reason whoever did wrath shamans decided to make them less windfury based. As if anyone ever asked to not have to use windfury.

Stormstrike having a chance to reset stormstrike is probably the best thing designed for shamans for a long time. We do have much higher mana regen compared to era. I do think a rune of that nature still needs another form of cdr for SS. For reference tbc cut the cooldown in half.

12

Oo very nice change. I could see this being really nice, also in single target you could use it in SL if nothing else to proc doomwinds if everything was somehow on CD.

Yeah I contemplated CDR to 10 but thought maybe it would be too strong if it’s 10 cd and can reset on windfury shocks lava lash?

13

I remember you screaming at me cause i had an idea that would be better for dw than 2h (in you opinion) and here you are with stormbringer smh not that id hate this

14

Likely I was upset that I didn’t feel your post was well thought out, but I also could have just been on one.

15

You didnt like 1 of the like 8 rune suggestions i made and were very rude about it.

16

Oh was yours the grimtotem rune? And windfury weapon turns AP to spellpower, yeah they were pretty trash if so.

I looked it was windfury to AP. It was not that ideal. I’ll explain but first here was your rune.

“ Rune of way of storm: when your main hand weapon is imbued with windfury weapon your spell damage is increased by 30% of your attack power, in addition your storm strikes cooldown is reduced by 12 seconds and you have a chance on hit to gain a stack of maelstrom weapon 20%1h/50%2h which reduces the cast time of your next spell by 20% each stacks 5 times”

The main two gripes I had on this rune:

  1. Ele shaman main handing windfury weapon off handing a rockbiter would gain so much spell power that it would honestly just make a better ele imbue.

  2. Not physical focused. I also had an ENTIRE thread on why spells for enhance over more physical attacks are less than ideal (even baldrush had a very well detailed post on why this would further be bad.). I would like to see MSW in the game but likely make it so you only get the spell power applied or a flat % effectiveness to the spell when casted using maelstrom, not passively. Otherwise bring an ele and use your rune you suggested for more spellpower.

17

Sounds very interesting and fun to play, the issue here is that we cant split the enhacement shaman in 2 weakers versions.

I dont think blizzard will add new runes for chest, legs and gloves (1h focused), so new runes focused in 2h enhacement will be waste the 3 initial runes.

I thought next phase runes will decide a lot of the shaman future for SoD and i know a lot of people that are thinking in reroll if the very bad shaman treatment continues by blizzard.

18

Honestly if they want to make 2 enhance viable they would addd additional 2h runes to those slots but they won’t.

Personally I’d like to see stormbringer rune for stormstrike resets, sundering or crash lightning , and a doomwinds cd rune wouldn’t be hated either and them leaning into dualwield.

They can’t do what’s necessary to make 2h enhance viable without pvp cry babies moaning about unbalance while
Some sword spec warrior rolls up and globals them as unstoppable killing machines with warbringer at 60, endlessrage, and frenzied assault or cbr.

19

A lot of good stuff here however some considerations

  • Pretty sure Windfury currently does not work with seals, there was a thread about it earlier where a ret paladin was asking for it to, however when you actually look at seals, only seal of command is an actual physical attack though it still supposedly wont proc wf. In fact the only attacks I can confirm WF works on for ret is auto attacks, as it might not proc off of crusader strike, or any of the other attacks, however maybe a ret play could comment.

  • As for the current DPS calculations, Enh is currently showing worse then it would simply based on Spec, Talent, and Runes due to horrible weapon options for it, while warriors/paladins both have access to an epic sword which has a huge impact on damage, rogues and hunters also have good options, while druids are druids. Enhance got stuck with a poor 2h weapon as its only option and one which wasn’t even as good as the paladin quest hammer, with a comparable weapon enhance probably would have been closer to Ret, though still low and both will likely get worse in P2 as neither have good talent trees and scale horribly.

  • Another good rune option for Enhance might be windfury weapon, they did some great things with the rock biter weapon enhance. This could be used to fix some of the problems allowing it to work better main hand/off hand, stack with wildstrikes/windfury totem, add +hit, reduce threat or buff enhance as needed.