Too Many of our Baseline Utility Abilities Were Made Into Talents IMO

Classes Shaman
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Hex, Purge, Wind Shear, Capacitor, Tremor, Decurse, Frost Shock (double whammy if you want frost shock in PVP as you need to take chain lightning), Earth Ele, Earth Shield, Spiritwalker’s Grace, Astral Shift. 12 talent points total if you want everything we have baseline in Shadowlands, 11 of which must be invested in the first segment of the tree.

As a result, the Shaman general tree is, in my opinion, overly restrictive in situations where we want/need to utilize all of our utility, and at least as resto, means sacrificing a significant amount of throughput, defensive power or new utility abilities further down the tree, which is not something other healers have to do much of. (Not that I’d like it even if other healers had to talent into iconic abilities like Hammer of Justice or Leg Sweep.)

I also do not find it fun having to make decisions for taking niche utility abilities like Tremor or Decurse before every single M+ dungeon. Do I really want to take Tremor for that one mob with an interruptible fear? Or Decurse for that one pack that sends out curses? Not to mention, having to change your entire build for every matchup in PVP/Solo Shuffle.

There is also the issue of keybinds. As someone who has mained Rsham at a CE/HoF level for the last 6 tiers, keybinds like Wind Shear (and all of the aforementioned abilities) take up a permanent hotkey on my bar due to years worth of muscle memory. While this practice may not be very main stream, I’ve found this has lead to a lot of ability bloat.

I have few complaints about the Resto specific tree, but the General tree has me wanting to reroll for the first time in 4 years.

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While tedious, I feel like this is a first-time-running-this-content-issue. Once you know what the content has, you will have a loadout for each specific thing.

The time it takes to change between spec loadouts is minimal, as we can have a bunch of talent loadouts.

Not saying it isn’t an issue, but I think once we know what each content has, we’re not gonna be sitting there repicking all 31 pts. We will just have different loadouts depending on what we are doing — which isn’t really different from now with specs that use a different loadout for PvP vs. PvE.

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The scope of it makes a pretty significant difference, though. Switching loadouts between entirely different modes of gameplay is pretty easy to keep up on because there’s a much clearer delineation between going from PvP to a raid. But dungeon-by-dungeon talent loadouts are a lot more frequent switches, especially if you’re like me and have a designated M+ night with a regular group each week where you’re running 4+ back to back. I foresee a lot of people needing to run out in the middle of keys because they forgot to switch builds to pick up that one niche talent that’s actually crucial to this one specific dungeon before entering.

That’s to say nothing of how obnoxiously cluttered our build lists are going to get if we’re actually saving individualized builds for every dungeon. Wait, make that two builds for every dungeon, because we may be switching between ST and AoE/Cleave builds depending on Tyrannical/Fortified weeks.

it’s not even like these are interesting, through-provoke choices. As you say, as soon as we’re familiar with what the mechanics of each dungeon are, that’s it. We’ll move a point into Tremor for this one dungeon that actually has a Fear mechanic, and out of it for everything else. We’ll move that point into Cleanse Spirit for the two dungeons with a curse to dispel, and out for everything else. Etc, etc. There’s no thought or decision-making involved, it’s just a dummy check whether you remembered to move that one point before entering the dungeon. It’s spell reagent and ammo restocking 2.0.

And for what? Because we’d be OP if we could have Tremor and Cleanse Spirit at the same time? In content where the things they cleanse never overlap in the first place?

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It was done so that leveling feels meaningful, the literal only difference is that now instead of it going directly into your spellbook, you have to place a talent point.

It’s actually even better, because now in content where you dont need to cleanse any curses, you can take something more beneficial.

And yes, its exactly the same as people that right now swap talents between fight for single target vs. 2 target cleave vs. aoe.

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Going to have to hard disagree. Losing something you used to get for free only to have to reinvest talent points that could be spent on actual power is 2 steps backwards, two steps forward at best, but worse in situations where all of your utility is needed, like pvp.

Having to invest so many talent points compounds already existing tuning issues further in situations where you must take these abilities.

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Yesterday doing dungeons with friends and this was our discord conversation.

Whole party gets feared by mobs

“Wheres tremor totem”

“Pruned”

My dk friend: “yo can you help interrupt casts i cant kick everything myself”

“Nah windshear pruned too”

Eventually yeah ill actually have specific talent trees tailored to each fight in each dungeon but it feels really really really really really really incredibly, stupidly bad to have to spec for things ive had for 20 years. The very idea that these fundamental are now something additional to the class sucks.

I thought our trees were supposed to be good? The best trees in dragonlands? This is another icefury design mess

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There are very few talents that are pure throughput in the class tree. And you can take all of them and still have points for utility.

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disagreed. theres literally a talent that says “increases lightning bolt damage by 10%/20%”

tremor provides nothing 99% of the time. theres 2 mob pulls in 1 dungeon and thats it right?

its a matter of how pedantic do i want to be when i dungeon. am i going to switch to a spec with every talent the same except with the addition of tremor totem mid-dungeon for just those two pulls then swap back before the boss? can i swap loadouts mid dungeon? does that waste more time than just eating the 6s fear or using someone else’s fear break?

its garbo and im not gonna listen to dev sympathizers on this.

IF devs wanted to make tremor a talent node instead of a baseline ability they should have just made it some thing that improves on tremor totem… longer duration, can be used while feared, shorter cd, something like that, but left tremor totem itself a baseline ability.

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theres 10.

lava burst
chain lightning
frost shock
maelstrom weapon
fire and ice
flurry
nature’s fury
improved lightning bolt
surging shields
Nature’s Swiftness

idk where or who the orignator of the “the class tree doesnt have throughput talents, its just utilty” lie came from/was, but they were on something when they were handling blizzards PR campaign

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TL:DR - As Enhance, you can take all the group content throughput talents and still have space to take or not take Tremor Totem

NS is not taken by Enhance. Maelstrom Weapon and Flurry are not taken by Ele/Resto.

Surging shields is pvp/solo content.

So, let’s say I am an Enhance player that is running Elemental Blast, in group content. Of the things you’ve listed, I would take:

  • Chain Lightning/Maelstrom Weapons Baseline
  • Flurry - 1 pt
  • Frost Shock - 1 pt
  • Lava Burst - 1 pt
  • Fire and Ice - 1 pt
  • nature’s fury - 2 pt
  • imp lightning bolt - 2 pt
  • thunderstorm - 1 pt
  • thundershock - 1 pt

So that’s 10 pts of throughput for group content. Let’s go ahead and add Healing Spring and Ancestral Guidance as well because that’s healing throughput for group content - 2 more pts

So that’s a total of 12 pts, but to get all the way to ancestral guidance, I need to spend a total of 26 points.

26 - 12 = 14

14 points of utility that I can place along the way – picking up things like purge, tremor totem, wind walk totem, earth elemental, etc. (all great for group situations).

Here’s the build:
BcQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIEhkIElAFRSBQJRSA

To say that we can’t pick our utility is simply not true. Maybe if you are going into group content with your solo leveling build, you’d have things like surging shield which eat up a bit more places. Oh wait, that’s just 2 more points on top of the build I posted above.

Build with Surging Shields:
BcQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIEhkIElAFRSBBlEJBA

so 14 throughput, 12 utility — I don’t know what to tell you, Shay. Also, I know you aren’t an idiot and have been playing shaman for a while. If you are going into group content without what we consider traditional toolkit items, that’s on you. New players might have a harder time, but that’s still 12-14 points of utility they get to place and play around with depending on what they are doing.

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Im not saying “we cant” im saying its ridiculously stupid that we have to.

It should just be baseline. With talents to enhance our iconic, fundamental utility.

What is simply not true is saying the class tree doesnt have throughput talents. It absolutely does.

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Niche utility that is sometimes really important and otherwise useless like tremor and decurse should be baseline.

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Unfortunately it seems that the 10.7 general talent tree changes don’t really tackle this issue, which is pretty disappointing.

Purge was moved so that you always select it if you want Nature’s Fury (4% crit), which helps some. But otherwise, none of our niche utility has been moved back to being baseline.

Being pinched between taking utility and throughput felt absolutely terrible on some fights this tier. Mythic Raz (as resto) is a prime example where you need purge+gusts, but cap totem, spirit wolf, wind shear and thunderstorm are also extremely useful at select parts of the fight, but every single point spent on one of these talents comes from a throughput talent.

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Some of the issues with shaman can be solved if they made some of it baseline. Some of it is just stupid to need to spec into.

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why should niche utility be baseline?

if decisions of what to get in the tree are easy, the talent tree is only an illusion of choice and everyone plays the same build

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You answered your own question:

The choices being made here are not difficult, they’re just annoying. These trees are already 90% illusory, with the remaining 10% being the “choice” of ST vs AoE (which, Blizzard, is barely a choice either: it’s almost entirely predetermined by what content you’re doing).

The only thought involved in needing to drop one generic talent in order to pick up a hyper specific one when facing its content niche is remembering that you need to before the key starts. It is not strategy, or theorycrafting, it’s just a dummy check if you remembered to swap from the generic cookie cutter to this dungeon or boss’s specific cookie cutter.

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