It’s no secret that having weapon imbues with literally no choice in which you use, or on which weapon you use them, is a hollow change meant only to aid the “unpruning” narrative.
To fix this issue and provide at least a little choice, I suggest making Windfury passive again, and adding Frostbrand as an option for imbue. You choose one of either Flametongue or Frostbrand, with Frostbrand being a slightly less damaging version of Flametongue that also slows. They would also not have a duration; you would simply activate one and it would stay active until you switched it. Lastly, it would be a buff to you rather than your weapon, allowing you to use a two-handed weapon with no downside.
3 Likes
idk man, if WF stays as strong as it just got buffed, i doubt they will make it passive but that would be nice
Keep imbues, bring in frostbrand, let you apply to which ever weapon you want.
There fixed and exactly how it should be
2 Likes
Windfury is already passive, you just have to remember to keep it applied every hour. Literally one button press per M+ doesn’t count as “active”.
3 Likes
yeah frostbrand needs to come back. Flametongue for PvE, Frostbrand for PvP.
Heck they could even bring back EarthLiving as a defensive imbue that we can use.
Also Flametongue should have spell power on it.
6 Likes
Frostbrand can compete with Flametongue as soon as Crippling competes with Wound or Deadly.
Until that happens just let Enhance snare on hits, ez.
For some reason blue players all have this weird thing where they give feedback and ask for things that are already compromises.
You don’t see DHs try to bargain, they’re just like “nah gimme what i want”
I don’t understand what Blizz was going for here at all.
They give us only one MH and one OH imbue?
What’s the point of even making us cast them every hour then? If there was at least an alternative option then yeah it would be fine but there isn’t one. So it’s just an unnecessary button we have to hit every once in a while to make sure it’s still on, they may as well made them passive if they werent going to give us anything else.
2 Likes
Crippling doesn’t do damage. My idea for Frostbrand would replace Flametongue with a very slightly reduced damage, in exchange for the utility of slowing on hit.
…Exactly?
They don’t have to choose between damage and snaring, they get to do both.
Why should Enhance?
All that would end up happening is Enhance would be missing a relatively significant amount of damage because LL would do half what it normally does, and they wouldn’t bother doing any PvP specific damage tuning, and it wouldn’t help the spec out as much as it needs lol.
But, frostbrand did damage?
It actually did more than flametongue if I remember right. Just no interactions with lava-lash
It was still a net loss. It has to be because of PvE. They also moved away from it into the set bonus and then into glyph.
I just don’t see why Enhance, the weakest melee in the game with some of the worst sticking power in the game, needs to be forced into making a choice between losing (relatively significant) damage and having better snaring capabilities when nobody else does. Some of them have to dump a GCD on a snare, but none of them have to give up anything close to what FT/LL would do, not permanently anyways.
That’s the only way it works out. If Frostbrand ends up doing more damage, then what does Flametongue exist for? It has to be a net loss.
Frostbrand should be brought in as an either hand imbue, that at least gives choice for PvP
Windfury + Flametongue, Windfury + Frostbrand, or Frostbrand + Flametongue
As it is, we are incredibly less sticky in pvp without Frostbrand. Ice strike doesn’t cut it.
here’s a lit bit of history for you folks, we used to have frostband applied by pvp sets, it was actually the set bonus
and to the guy who litterally say cripping poison is bad, i don’t have enough hands to facepalm
1 Like
WTB earthliving imbue (I think that was the name)?
It was significantly more powerful than flametongue. I had to look up Wrath’s frostbrand vs flametongue. X2 the damage. So if you stuck to the target the full time LL was on cooldown, you would out damage flametongue.
That’s the only way it works out. If Frostbrand ends up doing more damage, then what does Flametongue exist for? It has to be a net loss.
Flametongue would exist because there would be more interactions for in in a PvE senario. People crave that synergy.
The only useless imbue from vanilla to Warlords (when imbues were removed) was rockbiter. Cause rockbiter did nothing but increase our threat we generated with a tiny bit of damage (and then in Cata gave us a damage reduction).
Windfury for big damage.
Flametongue for PvE, talent interactions, and the spell power increase
Frostbrand for PvE
Rockbiter useless (well wouldn’t be if we ever got a tank spec)
Earthliving for the small HoT it applied to targets we healed
Heck, EarthLiving was even useful for enhancement before they made it restro only in mists. Casting healing rain with earthliving on the offhand was actually decent healing in PvP.
Also we have frost shock. 6 second cooldown slow that we usually apply the moment it is up.
All but rockbiter should return if they really wanna bring back imbues. Rockbiter too if they finally let shamans tank (come on we need a mail tank class, cloth too).
Edit:
Heck, they could even bring back frozen power as a PvP talent. Increase the damage our spells do vs targets affected by frostbrand weapon and causes frost shot to root. man that was such a good talent I miss it.
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That’s if you procced it every offhand swing. Frostbrand wasn’t guaranteed, FT was.
It’s also just not true. If it was, Enhance would have been running WF/FB in PvE. It wasn’t.
It was always a net DPS loss. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having to make a choice between pressing a snare and a damage ability in a given GCD, but nobody else’s snares require that kind of DPS hit to do (crippling, disable refreshes itself on melee hits, Law and Order exists, feral gets it via rake but zooms around anyways, etc). It’d be ridiculously uneven unless you took imbues off the GCD, when it comes to imbue (or just the weapon itself) swapping for snaring vs max DPS.
Having said all that, since weapon oils are back in Shadowlands, returning imbues for all 3 specs as a “hey this class has its own special weapon oils” is definitely a solid addition to the game.
I just don’t think the old choices people had to make in previous expansions fit with the choices anyone else makes in modern WoW.
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The downside being what it’s always been with weapon imbues: It’s a bonus for other classes, but it’s built into ours, and we can’t take advantage of the bonus other classes get.
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They’re all just small damage boosts.
All you have to do is make the effects the Shaman gets bigger to counteract that.
Earthliving gives more healing, or a hot or absorb or something, Flametongue gives you a small burn when you lava burst, Windfury does more damage than a sharpening stone + can proc MSW, and so on.
Imbues being a replacement weapon oil isn’t an issue if their effects are simply better than the profession ones. Then it’s your own special type and you not being able to use one of those doesn’t matter, you have something cooler (and you save money cause being a cheapskate is the best).
^ This I agree on. It won’t matter if our weapon imbues are a class specific example of weapon oil or sharpening stones. As long as those imbues are equal to or better than those other weapon buffs.
What it does give us a small advantage in situations like world pvp or regular random BGs, as most classes won’t have those oils or stones on all the time.
It DOES become a problem when they balance the whole class to be lower due to the imbues being apart of the class. They shouldn’t do that. It should be counted as an extra thing. So if they expect stones and oils to increase the healing/DPS of a class by 10%, then our imbues should also do that.
So the thing, as I see it, is that the Imbues are built to balance Shaman without additional buffs against other classes without weapon buffs. I’m going to make a laughable assumption here and pretend the devs have actually successfully balanced Shaman damage against, let’s say Arms warrior damage. In theory, both classes would do the same damage without additional buffs. Both classes can then receive battle shout, additional effects, and then sharpening stones, which will only provide the benefit to the warrior. Bonus points go to warrior.
The special mechanic of having the imbues be on our weapons means we lose an external scaling bonus, since we can’t take advantage of the extra boost other classes can. Instead, why isn’t it just a single buff on the Shaman themselves that cannot be purged? Mechanically it wouldn’t change anything except allowing the oils.