Why does flame shock even have a cooldown?

Why are shamans literally the only class in the entire game who’s main castable dot has a cooldown?

It’s already incredibly punishing misplacing a flame shock, this is compounded so much worse by flame shocks’s cooldown.

Elemental shaman already suffers from so many minor annoying playability issues, and liquid magma totem for some reason only applies 3 flame shocks too. Playing ele sham to start the season I legitimately believe that half the battle of the difficulty of ele sham is navigating all of the graphic/nameplate/visual clutter to apply/reapply flame shocks throughout a pack. There’s several QoL buffs (that won’t even be direct buffs) that could be made to fix this.

Are the class devs still fully MIA on shamans?

6 Likes

There used to be valid reasons I think, but in modern wow with lava burst functioning the way it does, it absolutely should not have a cooldown.

2 Likes

Yes. And based on some of the comments ive read about other classes, im not hopeful. Elemental is bad design, bandaged over with “do lots of dps”

If I were to guess why flame shock has a cooldown it would be that the devs want being forced to move to hurt shamans. By that logic having a ranged spell that can be spam casted gives them an out in situations where they have to move.

I don’t agree with it, but I’m pretty sure that is the logic behind it.

I would largely consider ele sham to have some of the highest moving while dpsing utility available.

Either way, it should go. Or be a ton easier to spread.

Because ion looked at the spreadsheet and came to the conclusion that flame shock needs a cd

Flame shock has a CD because it’s ALWAYS had a CD. Almost every aspect of Shaman class design is stuck in the past, especially elemental. Blizz appears to have no interest in bringing Shaman up to modern standards of design.

5 Likes

Make it haste! and maybe riptide too

I have been playing Shaman as a solo player for a little while now. I have been a Warlock Main for years and decided to branch out a little. I find that playing Elemental has some very glaring drawbacks to it. There is a lot of cooldowns to powers that have long cast times. It has other powers with a cast time and very little damage behind it. Mealstrom takes a lot to build up and starts to deplete really fast. If I have a break between fights, I will most likely have to rebuild Mealstrom before I can use Earthshock or Earthquake. The playstyle feels real weak even though I’m wearing Mail and Earth Shield, I’m still taking a wallop on the health bar. I’m only in my level 30’s, but still, this just feels slow & clunky.

If you went from warlock to shaman… its gonna take some getting used to. You’re going from one of the tankiest specs in the game to one of the squishiest. Make sure you’re using a 1h and shield over a staff (makes a big survivability difference) and always throw down an Earthbind totem between you and the target to give you more time before it reaches you.

It’s why a lot of people beg for a relook at the class while other people playing the class for 20 years get extremely defensive.

Is way it is mate. Fingers are crossed.

I’m almost of the opinion that the whole shaman dev team was taken out at the knees by the layoffs