***Visual Animation Updates Needed***

Please update the visual animations for Shamans. Years have passed and the look of most of our animations has not been brought up to par. Lackluster, outdated, and just plain boring or unnoticeable.

Ice Strike - Animation unseeable during combat. (barely noticeable during training dummy interactions) Make our weapons ice over/frost to indicate their use.

Ascendance - Needs to resemble its use - The Air Ascendant needs to look more menacing. The character should resemble the embodiment of Air to some extent. It should be fluid moving (like air). Not this stagnate torn-clothed wearing thing.

Lightning Bolt - Should be updated to mimic the destructive power of a lightning bolt (more veiny and scary like when you see one in real life)

Lava Lash - Nearly the same as Ice Strike - Only noticeable during training dummy activity. Update to show more lava interaction/animation.

I am sure there are other ideas out there when it comes to these abilities. What are yours? Hopefully, somebody is reading. We need this to be updated really soon! Thank you.

53 Likes

I super agree Enhance abilities are not really that cool looking as they should be for some.

  • make LB brighter or shock the hands when casted.

  • Ice strike would be cool if it shows an ice blade on ur character’s hands.

  • I really dont like ascendance look I wish they looked at the tauren in the drakthyr starting zone and gave us that for enhancement

  • Lava lash would do good with a fire elemental whip imo its like in the name and such

Wow would do good with an update to its inconsistent visuals all across the board. I do wish they started off with class abilities tho now that they dont have to spend time on crappy systems no one likes I hope they give more time to the base aspects of the game.

8 Likes

Shocks could use a better animation too.

13 Likes

We need this lightning bolt https://youtu.be/-ffY0ufgXHY

8 Likes

Here is the hideous thing we are talking about. It looked “ok” for about a month or two when it 1st came out years ago then quickly became an unwanted sight on the display screen when playing.

10 Likes

Eh disagree on that one, old ball lightning was a little goofy and this is just HD goofy (IMO).
Personally I prefer the lightning bolt we should have gotten in the 7.3 visual update. It’s alot like the zaps the Sethrak use in BFA

7 Likes

No. Keep lightning bolt instant. We already have travel time on ele blast and lava burst.

4 Likes

Ascendance is quite literally a placeholder model that we’ve been stuck with.
Originally in Cataclysm alpha, the model even had the stupid Twilight hammer cultist belt.
They lazily edited out the hammer sigil and continued to leave us with this horrendous ascendant model which does not fit shamans AT ALL after spending the entire expansion fighting evil ascendants.
It’s pathetic at this point really, I main shaman but i refuse to use this ability since they removed our minor glyph.

11 Likes

I personally think we are long overdue for a new Stormstrike icon.

1 Like

All character transformations and visual animations should be updated every expansion to look better based on the storyline at the time. —I am not sure why WoW is always years behind in something as simple as this.

6 Likes

Yeah ascendance is so bad. I can’t even tell when I’m earth shocking. He just stands there


11 Likes

while I like the ascendency model we def need glyphs for our class they hate us

3 Likes

Indeed I +1 this.

Ascendence is the number 1 offender. I will not take that talent not because it’s not good but 
 becuase I look like someone from stranger things after all their bones have been broken. It needs to instead just be YOUR character with elements swirling all around or something cool like that. or even one of the new elemental models!

Lightning bolt would benefit from being a little more random and ziggy looking. maybe make chain lightning thicker to tell the difference? Or make lightning bolt just a quicker animation that then fades like real lightning 


For ice strike 
 maybe make it kind of a sideways swoop with a louder swooshing sound followed by ice breaking against your opponent. (And a nice satisfying sound, something different than frost shock)

3 Likes

Ice Strike sounds ok (if you listen to it while on training dummy it sounds like a Frost Mage Blizzard spell or Frost Bolt) – But definitely not original to Enhancement Shamans.

Frost Shock sounds like what happens when you drop a bag of chips on the floor

Both abilities animation and sound need updating.

2 Likes

My biggest downside with Dragonflight so far is that we haven’t had any visual improvements to vastly outdated models.

For Shaman, that largely means Lightning Bolt / Chain Lightning / Ascendance form.

It’s a pity too, because there are some absolutely beautiful new models and lightning animations in-game. Some of the elemental creatures of DF would make perfect Shaman forms.

Likewise, some of the lightning animations would be way better for us than what we have. Why do I shoot lightning from my hands like a pathetic Mage? I should bring it down from the sky!

3 Likes

it’s sad that a random npc monster has better animation and FX than your actual character that you plays

11 Likes

Ascendance model is terrible, ugly, and strange. Would love to see something else.

5 Likes

Yes this has been the case for too many Xpacs. NPC’s or other Computer controlled characters have better spell animations than the actual playable characters.

Its a huge oversight in a video game being played in 2022 (almost 2023).

With all the great things about Dragonflight so far I think they have a real opportunity to make the game far more appealing visually.

I mean a really good fix would be to allow glyphs to be a natural thing for updating the look of your character every Xpac or even seasonal/storyline-type glyphs. All characters I am sure are suffering some sort of outdated visual effect or something that just doesn’t look good visually.

3 Likes

A-freaking-men, I’m in the exact same boat. We don’t even have so much as a female alternate form for the thing.

Elemental Skeletor is not my idea of the pinnacle of spiritual enlightenment.

Enhance has the problem that we’re casting spells whose effects are meant to be appealing from range in melee. Probably the most economical thing for the devs to do would be to give us a unique casting animation for whenever we’re spending Maelstrom Weapon.

For that matter, a visual effect as we’re building MSW would be cool, too. Ice mages get their icicle wreath building up over their head, it would be very cool for us to have lightning crackling along our bodies in growing intensity as we stack Maelstrom.

This one may be unpopular, but I think it would also be cool if our weapon imbues switched from instants to having short cast times with an animation. Something like the Legion artifact weapon pose where we raise our weapons overhead, and then call the elements down from the heavens to imbue them.

4 Likes

Ascendance - Needs to resemble its use - The Air Ascendant needs to look more menacing. The character should resemble the embodiment of Air to some extent. It should be fluid moving (like air). Not this stagnate torn-clothed wearing thing.

100% this.
Blizzard, please at the bare minimum make a glyph that lets us look barely different or maybe a glowy transparent version of ourselves like how the Druid has as an alternative to Boomkim form. It’s a janky looking model and most shamans on the forums prefer an alternative.

3 Likes