Suggestions on Enhancement Talents:
Regular Talents:
Row 1: Forceful Winds replaced with Echo of the Elements - Stormstrike and Lava Lash have two charges. Windfurry damage buffed baseline.
- Provides rotational flexibility,
- Helps avoid wasted CDs due to resets from strombringer/hot hand/legacy of the frostwitch,
- Synergy with elemental spirits talent - able adjust rotation to benefit from rolled wolves
- Helps fill single target rotation w/o button bloat,
- Helps recover DPS after uptime interruptions
Row 3: Earth Shield - each charge consumed has a 50% chance to grant the shaman 1 MSW stack (ele version could mirror its lightning shield version and grant maelstrom on stack consumption).
- Helps compensate for loss of lightning shield MSW generation.
- Allows shield generation of MSW stacks in environments where shaman is not taking direct melee damage which makes shield generation of MSW charges more consistent in varied content (e.g., casting earth shield on tank can grant the shaman MSW stacks).
- Improved talent functionality for group PvE content per above.
Row 4: Nature’s Guardian made baseline. Talent spot filled with Earthgrab totem .
- Makes essential survivability talent baseline, freeing up row to provide mobility oriented choice for greater playstyle diversity.
- Ability to select earthgrab or feral lunge talents help enhancement PvP viability.
- Ability to select windrush/feral lunge talent w/o sacrificing survivability helps enhancement PvE viability.
Row 6: Stormkeeper lightning spells cast as if MSW empowered (as if shaman had 5 MSW stacks) regardless of shaman’s actual MSW stack count.
- Removes requirement to have 10 MSW stacks to effectively utilize talent which is unnecessarily restrictive on a 1 min CD.
- Mirrors how elemental version of Stormkeeper automatically triggers overloads by baking an enhance function into the lightning bolts.
- Aligns with the fact that the Stormkeeper empowered bolts are instant and don’t consume MSW stacks anyway.
Row 7: Elemental Spirits buffs modified to address SL enhance design.
- Address fire wolf’s diminished impact due to inability to spam lava lash via lava lash CD reduction/increased lava lash damage/increased overall fire damage/fire wolf direct ST/AOE fire damage.
- Address lightning wolf’s diminished impact due to reduced ability to spam stormstrike via increase to SS/WF damage bonus from lighting wolves and/or additional interaction with lightning spells (bonus damage to lightning/chain lightning as well).
PvP talents:
Shamanism and Thundercharge off the GCD.
- Off GCD to account for short duration (10 sec). These buffs should either last 15 sec or be off the GCD.
Ride the Lightning - reverted to old ride the lightning chain lightning w/no forked component or, at the very least, made to not hit CC’d targets.
- Addresses biggest issue with this talent of breaking CC which unnecessarily restricts comp diversity and causes shaman to be a liability in all forms of PvP.
- Ideally talent is adjusted to always hit current target so it is reliable and useful in all contexts like the much beloved old ride the lightning was.
Ethereal Form revised to instead decrease CD of astral shift from 1.5 min to 1 min and allow it to be useable while stunned.
- Helps address a major issue with enhance which is lack of survivability and difficulty surviving/recovering from stuns.
14 Likes
Note: I didn’t look at the pvp section as I honestly don’t care BUT
This is one of the only “talent idea” change posts I think makes actual sense / is good. Echo for enh is an interesting take I haven’t personally heard before. (Edit: was in WoD I forgot) NG going baseline for the class and the return of EGT would be huge for all specs, especially if the Sephuz legendary works in the same way it did in legion. SK casts being treated as MSW-empowered also just makes sense.
Only thing I’d say is meh is changing elemental spirits. They addressed it already but I think that ability baseline just needs to be changed. Alone, it’s pretty much the single weakest DPS cooldown in the game. Change the baseline, then worry about talent edits. Other than that, I like this.
2 Likes
I generally like all of these changes, though I do think Echo of the Elements on row 1 would make it the best choice in nearly all situations; we’d be in the same boat as Elemental trying to justify the other two talents at that point. Depending on what they do with Fire Nova / Flame Shock, I’d sooner see it replace Lashing Flames with Forceful Winds reworked as a controlled Windfury boost and Elemental Blast tuned / CD reduced to remain competitive. Either way, some power creep would be induced if added on that row.
I’m also inclined to agree with Faminex about the Feral Spirits baseline. I’d rather see the damage bonuses built in to the base ability and elemental spirits add utility such as increased MSW generation rate and additional Lightning Bolt damage / Chain Lightning target count per lightning wolf or CD changes, such as triggering the effect of a hot hand proc when summoned, as you suggested for fire.
As for Ethereal Form, I agree Shamanistic Rage needs to return in some form. Ethereal Form is a good contender, but I wonder if it the usability while stunned (and CD reduction) really justifies the talent slot; it’s not like you get a second defensive ability with Ethereal Form replacing Astral Shift.
Everything else is good stuff.
1 Like
Sounds good to me. I’m all for making the whole row better. Right now the whole row feels really boring and unimpactful.
Echo as the model and then figuring out how to juice the others up (and what the other two should be) sounds like a good problem to have.
Totally agree that feral spirits could use more damage. Post was just focused on talents and right now, elemental spirits needs something because it has not been adjusted (other than gaining MSW generation from baseline feral spirit) to take into account the shaman rework with reduced ability to spam SS and LL.
Particularly after the AOE buff to ascendance, I’m not sure when you would ever take elemental spirits in its current form other than maybe if you’re running wolf doctor’s bones legendary and even then it feels like you should be getting more out of the interaction and talent selection than is the case right now.
2 Likes
Particularly after the AOE buff to ascendance, I’m not sure when you would ever take elemental spirits in its current form other than maybe if you’re running wolf doctor’s bones legendary and even then it feels like you should be getting more out of the interaction and talent selection than is the case right now.
The legendary actually has potential for reasonable uptime on feral wolves if your MSW generation is around 5 per 10 seconds on average (about 37% or every 40 seconds). Of course, that relies on a legendary and what’s the point if they don’t do much in the first place?
it literally had echo in wod
genuinely don’t understand why they haven’t made it baseline for the entire class at this point
it’s not that powerful to where it can’t be and it makes playing feel so much better
3 Likes
Yeah WoD is absent from my brain I forgot but you’re right lmao
I added a row 3 section to my original post:
Row 3: Earth Shield - each charge consumed has a 50% chance to grant the shaman 1 MSW stack (ele version could mirror its lightning shield version and grant maelstrom on stack consumption).
- Helps compensate for loss of lightning shield MSW generation.
- Allows shield generation of MSW stacks in environments where shaman is not taking direct melee damage which makes shield generation of MSW charges more consistent in varied content (e.g., casting earth shield on tank can grant the shaman MSW stacks).
- Improved talent functionality for group PvE content per above.
2 Likes
I’d say just making Lightning Shield proc off damage in general instead of only melee hits is a fine middle ground if a bit of a stretch thematically. We still take damage in PvE scenarios, just rarely melee damage. Doubling the source of passive MSW / maelstrom generation might not be a good idea from a balance perspective. You can still put Earth Shield on the tank to help out in this case. Otherwise I could see them implementing something like only one shield out at a time rather than one per type.
Point is to make earth shield more viable across the board. For the shaman, the loss of lightning shield when picking earth shield for solo/pvp content hurts earth shield’s viability.
The change I’m suggesting addresses that while also leaving lightning shield as is (w/o worrying about what procing off everything would do), and encourages use of earth shield in PvE environments by allowing a means of generating MSW generation in PvE content by being selfless and using your earth shield on the tank (which is what you should be doing if running ES in dungeons).
1 Like
I guess in retrospect, it’s probably only about a passive 1 MSW or 10 Maelstrom per 6 seconds on average in that case. I was originally concerned that would lead to resource nerfs, but that isn’t so bad. They could extend the Earth Shield procs to once per 6 seconds from 3 and increase the healing if that’s too much (it would also cut down on the maintenance by indirectly extending the duration of the buff to 54 seconds).
y do they keep going back and forth on shields being one at a time or both every other expansion lmao
1 Like
Once again, I am going to use HotS as a base for my argument. This time using Reghar who represents the restoration shaman playstyle in the game.
One of his main abilities is in fact lightning shield, except it can be placed on anyone or even his totems. The ability to place lightning shield on other people would instantly help rectify Restoration’s lack of passive dps in mythic+.
Furthermore, Reghar has a talent called earth shield that lets your lightning shield heal people for the dmg it does. This could be the base idea for the new earth shield talent and ability for all shaman that combines the current earth shield and lightning shield into one ability via the earth shield talent.
This allows enhance to not lose either shield, but still require the talent. This helps offset the loss of maelstrom weapon charges currently found by simply running earth shield.
Furthermore, it allows all shaman to have another group utility by placing the new lightning earth shield combo on tunneled targets, and not losing the dmg or healing from running one shield.
In a nutshell, baseline lightning shield and talent it to get the earth shield benefit on top of the lightning shield effects.
3 Likes
I’ve always known SK / MSW interaction was wonky, but I took a moment to test this again and maybe someone can confirm. The spellpower multipliers I am getting for lightning bolt relative to the base damage are roughly as follows:
- Base: 0% more
- 5 MSW: x2 (100% more)
- Stormkeeper Only: x2.5 (150% more)
- Stormkeeper used at 5 MSW: x3 (200% more)
- Stormkeeper used at 10 MSW: x5 (400% more)
I am not quite sure how the math for the last case works out. The following works:
base * [2 (MSW) + (1.5 (SK) * 2 (MSW))]
but it’s not quite intuitive; you’d think x4 (300% more) for both 5 and 10 MSW would make the most sense (1 + 1.5*2). That being said, going for 10 stacks does appear to reward pooling beyond 5 at the moment for me at least.
1 Like
The way it is working now is just that stormkeeper gives you an extra 150% (total of 250%) of whatever a lightning bolt would do based on current MSW.
So at 0 MSW, since lighting bolt only casts at 50% effectiveness, if you cast stormkeeper it would cast at 250% x 50% of a normal full strength lightning bolt = 125%.
If you cast at 5 MSW stacks then its casts a 250% x 100% of normal lightning bolt = 250%.
If you cast at 10 stacks, it just calculates damage off the first five and casts at the same 250%.
I just tested it to confirm.
I’m guessing you had something else going on like you proc’d a trinket or the legendary cloak buff which caused your stats to go up which buffed your lightning bolt damage.
I had to run the test a couple times to confirm because the same thing happened to me (cloak and trinket procd and damage shot way up so I had to do it again to not get a proc to see the damage buff just from stormkeeper and MSW.
That’s very odd. The numbers I was getting were very consistent and very close to those exact multipliers I mentioned on each test. For absolute values, a level 50 PTR shaman was doing 560 lightning bolt with 46% mastery and no other trinkets / buffs and build to the indicated stacks before stopping to remove any significant temporary procs. This went up to roughly 1120, 1400, 1680, and 2800 for the above tests consistently for me. I am not including the effects of auras in the spellpower multipliers; just the relative damage increase in each case over a hard cast lightning bolt.
Not seeing it on beta.
Did you take off the neck to rule out azerite?
I suppose that’s a possibility, I can re-test later, but still pretty far off from your observations in beta.
2800 for 5/10 MSW stacks w/stormkeeper would be right. 560x2= 1120 for 5 msw lightning bolt. X2.5 for stormkeeper is about 2.8k.
But it should be 2.8k whether its 5 or 10 stacks. Which is what I’m seeing.
Assuming you have 5 stacks left after casting stormkeeper. The SK lightning bolts look to how many MSW stacks you have when you cast them, not when you cast SK itself. Which is why you need 10 stacks to cast SK followed by full strength lighting bolts.
If you cast at 5 MSW stacks then its casts a 250% x 100% of normal lightning bolt = 250%.
I think this part is where my observations don’t line up. This is what I would see if I hard cast SK with 0 MSW and do not build any MSW before using LB (a x2.5 multiplier).
This bumps up to x3 for me if you use MSW to instant cast SK followed by a lightning bolt at 0 remaining MSW. Then x5 if you previously had or build to another 5 MSW after the instant SK before using LB.