After an initial rework on alpha launch and a beta cycle devoid of any functional changes aside from a very finicky healing surge change, enhancement has still seen absolutely zero iteration and the lack of any attention on the 12.0.5 has me deeply concerned for the spec. Enhancement, and most egregiously Stormbringer, has some foundational problems that simple numbers tuning cannot address. This has as much to do with gameplay as it is to do with output. Simply tweaking the numbers will not solve this.
Not everyone enjoys how Totemic plays, but Stormbringer has nothing to offer either numerically or more importantly in terms of gameplay. Totemic is clearly the hero tree that was designed with intent, however much I may not enjoy it. Stormbringer on the other hand offers almost no gameplay at all and you could realistically play Enhancement without hero talents and not notice a major difference in gameplay. Tempest is the only real gameplay element of Stormbringer and even then itâs only really a random chance to proc a glorified lightning bolt with no actual gameplay around it. Several Stormbringer talents seem like theyâve just been left in the tree with no real intention. While the rotation itself is no longer as spammy and one dimensional as it was in The War Within, it still feels like it can often devolve into just spamming Stormstrike until you can spend, with lava lash and voltaic blaze left as afterthoughts that you may get to press on occasion but they never feel particularly satisfying or impactful. Compared to totemicâs deeply impactful hooks into lava lash, Stormbringer doesnât really have any hooks into stormstrike or spenders outside of their chance to proc tempest. Numerically, Stormbringer has all of its power put into random procs of Tempest and has almost no discrete single target tuning knobs that can be used to balance its kit in any elegant manner. It has a significant design disadvantage compared to totemic because it is locked into a 2 minute burst profile while totemic gets a much more flexible 1 minute profile with a ton of built in passive cleave even in a full single target build, whereas stormbringer has to give up 2 points of its apex talent in order to have relevant cleave potential in mythic plus. Itâs damage swings heavily based on the timings of very rare doom winds procs, it has no flexibility, and no real control over its damage, making it particularly ill-suited to mythic plus and propped up entirely by the tuning of Tempestâs aoe component.
Iâd like to propose the following changes to Stormbringer (mostly) that I believe would provide more meaningful improvements to its design, gameplay, flexibility and identity:
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This isnât necessarily specific to Stormbringer but is worth mentioning regardless. The weapon enhancement from Crash Lighting splits its damage is a problem. This is inherently undesirable as a mechanic because it acts as a form of anti-priority damage where you lose damage on your main target when other targets are present. Given that this effect is now a very significant source of Enhancementâs damage in single target, this is proving to be a problem on encounters where a priority target is surrounded by minimally relevant adds that donât necessarily need to die quickly but effectively steal damage from your main target. On fights like Imperator Averzion, you just straight up lose damage when you have to stack on the soaks to break the shield and your crash lightning buff is splitting its damage off of the boss and onto the add that takes no damage and is killed by the soak mechanic. Given how far behind enhancementâs single target damage is, I suggest just making it so that the crash lightning buff always deals its full damage to the main target and only does the reduced damage to secondary targets. This would give enhancement some much needed priority damage in cleave while eliminating the awful feeling that comes with knowing that youâre doing less priority damage to an important target whenever additional targets show up. If some power had to be moved out of our aoe to account for this, I think that would be a fair trade.
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Buff the on-cast damage of crash lightning in order to make the full apex talent worth running in dungeons. Our full apex is relatively weak and the cleave in our base kit is sorely lacking compared to what the totemic hero talents and tempest provide. Increasing the on cast damage of crash directly buffs the first and fourth apex talent, the latter of which deals its additional damage based on the initial hit of crash lightning. On the topic of the 4th apex talent, consider making this a dot on the targets hit rather than a ground effect or at least making the ground effect larger? This isnât the most pressing issue, but I frequently see targets just walking out of the effect in various situations.
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I think Hailstorm should make a return in some form. Either as a replacement to voltaic blaze directly in the spec tree (if ashen catalyst and lashing flames are also reworked) or possibly as a hero talent in the Stormbringer tree that replaces voltaic blaze for stormbringer only. The latter may be more preferable as Totemic already has plenty going on while Stormbringer could use more. It doesnât necessarily need to function the way it did before in terms of relying on maelstrom weapon spending if the goal is to avoid complications (Ice Strike no longer existing already alleviates some of that). In that scenario Iâd suggest that it be a short (10 seconds give or take) CD, but affected by haste, generate maelstrom weapon and that it do increased damage to its primary target to ensure that it functions as a priority builder in ST as well as cleave. Iâll point out that the class tree does still have a node that buffs frost damage even though we donât actually have any abilities that do frost damage. Shocks are an iconic shaman spell and Iâd like to have one figure in the rotation more prominently.
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Make descending skies apply to doom winds as well as ascendance. There is no good reason that this should only apply to ascendance other than to force ascendance as a choice. This itself is highly problematic as ascendance as it currently works comes with significant problems such as locking stormbringer into an inflexible 2 minute profile, creating massive damage variance due to doom winds procs, and being a generally boring cooldown that has us spamming one (now 2 with apex) buttons.
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Change Ascendance so that it no longer replaces doom winds and doesnât have a chance to proc doom winds. As noted above, these interactions only cause problems. The option to spec into a more flexible one minute profile is one step in making stormbringer better able to function in dungeons.
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Add a discrete single target tuning knob. My primary suggestion would be to remove the second part of the spec tree talent Stormblast (Stormsurge causes Stormstrike do deal 50% additional damage as nature damage) and put it directly into the Stormbringer tree, but make it apply on every cast of stormstrike. This not only adds a hook into Stormstrike but also provides a pure single target knob that can be adjusted up or down to tune stormbringer single target without affecting aoe at all.
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Stormbringer needs a way to deterministically generate tempests so that its not completely reliant on rng. I believe it also needs something to prevent the rotation from devolving into stormstrike spam, particularly if stormstrike is further emphasized by talent hooks such as the one suggested above. Iâd like to suggest the following change to the Awakening Storms hero talent as a way to address both of these: Stormstrike, Lava Lash, Crash Lightning and your Shocks (i.e. hailstorm) build stacks of Awakening Storms. At X stacks of Awakening Storms, your next Lava Lash is empowered and becomes Lightning Lash, dealing additional damage as nature damage and grants a stack of Tempest. This charge of tempest ignores the 2 stack cap. This provides enhance a way to guarantee tempests simply by doing the rotation while also creating moments where Lava Lash becomes a high priority builder, providing moments of impact in the general rotation outside of just getting random procs of tempest and breaking up the monotony of stormstrike spamming. It creates the feeling that youâre building up to something, which currently does not really exist at all for stormbringer. While this might sound uncomfortably close to how Tempest generation worked in the war within, its different enough to avoid the same problems. For starters, it doesnât require any additional tracking. You will be generating stacks of Awakening Storms passively and consistently just by pressing your builders. You will know when youâre able to generate this guaranteed stack of tempest because lava lash will light up/icon turns blue and lightning-y or whatever. You donât need to account for getting it because it ignores the 2 stack maximum. You canât really game it like you could in TWW because almost all of your abilities contribute to it and getting the Tempest is triggered by casting the empowered lava lash. You donât really need to because rolling thunder no longer exists as it used to. At most you could hold onto the empowered lash briefly to ensure you had a tempest ready for a priority target spawning or when moving to a new pack in a dungeon. Maybe this requires some additional iteration but I think itâs a good idea and would go a long way to making stomrbringer more interactive and enjoyable to play. Itâs certainly more interesting than Stormstrike having a small chance to proc tempest, as it currently functions.
In order to add some of the above suggestions as hero talents, theyâd need to replace or be added to other hero talents. Here are a few that have lost their place and could serve:
1. Arc Discharge: This talent barely serves any purpose at this point. It is almost always just passively consumed by casting stormstrike or lava lash due to ride the lightning, and when doing so it applies its buffs to an incredibly weak chain lightning that only deals base damage without any maelstrom weapon scaling. The only scenario in which itâs actually relevant is when you get a maelstrom weapon refund on a cast of tempest through thunder capacitor.
2. Rolling Thunder: This talent is a shell of its former self, the gutting of which without any replacement is one of the primary reasons why Stormbringer is both numerically weak and feels like it lacks gameplay. Make no mistake, the gutting was warranted, but at this point it provides a relatively minor buff every 2 minutes and could easily be replaced
3. Lighting Rod: This talent doesnât really have a point anymore. Itâs now spread passively through Ride The Lightning and there are no gameplay considerations involved in either applying it or interacting with it. With the removal of elemental blast it no longer even has any impact on efficient priority damage. Itâs just there as a ramping cleave buff that could just be baked into the power of crash and chain lighting. Between it and ride the lightning proccing a chain lighting on every stormstrike and lava lash cast, it also adds a ton of visual clutter that isnât really necessary.
4. Awakening Storms: I think the above-mentioned incorporation of Stormblast into the Stormbringer tree should be added to this node in addition to above-suggested rework to Awakening Storms, to emphasize that although all of your builders are contributing to generating a Tempest, Stormstrike is still the highlight.