Animation is fine for what it is, but what it is isn’t a lightning bolt. To me it looks like a lightning spear, not very shaman like. Lightning bolt should be almost instant and not be a projectile. Even if they wanted to make it a projectile with travel time for whatever reason they could have done a much better job and made it like actual lightning. A small electric leader zaps towards the target, connects the two, and then blamo big lightning strike. The key is that both the target and shaman should be connected, that’s what makes it a lightning bolt and not ball lightning.
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No kidding right?
I’m still pissed they reverted Chain Lightning because of whiners so I made a preemptive thread on the subject.
Get over it. People can use a glyph if they want the 2d crap.
Original Lightning Bolt was a ball of electric. I welcome a massively updated version of it back.
As for what you said Blorfus. That’s why so many of us Shaman players are going to be dismissive to people saying “We don’t want this!”. Because we did in fact have a Chain Lightning update, until a certain simpering clod over on Barthilas kept making threads and whining about it until Blizzard finally reverted it.
We do in fact want this. Maybe not all, but more than don’t. The minority can ask glyphs if they want to live in the past.
honestly I kinda like that its a lightning spear, not a fan it has a travel time I would like to see that gone or heavily reduced, but playing Stormbringer enhance or ele already kinda gives me a ‘zeus’ feeling, and that dude is always pictured throwing lightning spears/orbs. This just makes me feel like zeus even more it looks powerful.
Zero chance a glyph gets added since that would be more than just a cosmetic change, since current lightning bolt has no travel time and PTR lightning bolt has a travel time.
Man, I don’t understand why Blizzard has such a hard time designing Lightning spells.
I will say I prefer the new one over the current ramen noodle, but only slightly. It’s still bad.
NVM - it has a travel time now? This is mechanically and functionally worse than the live version because on live it deals damage instantly! Come on!
Why can they make awesome looking spells for NPCs like the Sethrakk in Voldun but not for players?
Blizzard has a history of not doing this, unfortunately, as glyphs have been largely dead for years.
If they actually provided the glyph option then completely fine.
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I personally like the new lightning bolt, but I really hope they carefully listen to feedback, and maybe we could get an improved lightning bolt “possibly 7.3 V or close” and at the same time we get multiple glyphs like how they did with the Ascension form feedback, that way everybody is happy, and everyone has their own version of Lightning bolt.
Yea, its completely illogical for a lightning bolt to use the old firebolt animation with some half-baked lightning sparkles attached to it. The only good think they did was make it look as if it was coming from thr groun when you channel it.
Blizz could have updated the old spell and made it look great in 3d without completely ruining the realism of a ligthning bolt, or making players wait half the span of the game’s life to receive it.
I honestly give it 1/10 just for the channeling part. Outside of that, its copy/past animations, illogical and unrealistic, it has little orbs of fire on it… which makes ZERO sense at all. Not mention they made the spell itself it have a travel time attached to it so they turned it into a blob.
Just… no. Maybe if the lightning had continuously reached towards the ground and there was no blob. Maybe it would be higher. But know how MUCH hatred the entire wow population has to show b4 blizz changes anything, ie shaman ascension forms (imagine that, another shaman visual update while classes like warlocks still have to use decades old purply sparkly 
for shadowbolt), they wont be changing anything now.
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I’m not understanding how adding a very short travel time is somehow a nerf to the spell. Can someone explain that? Is it just due to Farseer ancestors casting their lava burst on spell hit? It doesn’t seem like that could really impact all that much unless we’re talking milliseconds when the ancestor de-spawns during travel time.
If that is the case, just change farseer ancestors to cast when your cast ends.
The new animations are contributing to the growing problem of visual clutter in warcraft.
Just make them cool, like a lightning bolt or something.
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At least make it look like lightning. It looks like a damn projectile… With all the way other games have come up with how lightning bolt loos this has to be the worst of them all.
What’s going on with this company and visual update for spells.
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i like the new lightning bolt animation. the current one is old and everytime i see it i imagine i’m spiderman shooting a whitish blue web at people
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Lightning bolt back then used to be a projectile, however in 7.3 Lightning bolt was going to get a rather better version of the spell, and it got reverted.
Then people who want to keep old LB are IMHO, SoL and can cope. New Lightning Bolt on the PTR is superior. Yeah because of a whiner from Barthilas who continued to make chaos on the forums and spam variants of the same thread. Should of been squashed like it seems Talonel has.
Fixed that for you. 
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Yes I like the new animation…
Please keep it
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Everyone who likes the new Lightning Bolt animation and doesn’t want the people griping to screw this up as they did Chain Lightning, would you do everyone a favor and post your preferences of it here so Blizzard can see that it’s a vocal minority rioting about the Lightning graphic? I just don’t want their crying to cause it to be reverted like last time.