For a long time now, any time I had the inkling to get into enhancement and I try it im always let down or turned off by it.
The fantasy I’m always expecting and turned on by: dual wield lightning berzerker with satisfying windfury procs swinging weapons around like crazy and chunking things.
What I get: elemental shaman that melees to make spells instant cast.
I didn’t even bother with the ele build this time and tried to go for full storm strike builds and even if you try to juice up storm strike as much as you can it still doesnt do that much and is just filler/builder for lightning bolt/chain lightning spam.
I don’t have an issue with occasional giga lightning zaps, and crash lightning is always satisfying. But I want the meat of the damage and gameplay to be around being a lightning proccing fury warrior of sorts.
Even windfury doesn’t feel like windfury, I don’t really notice the procs at all, it’s just a high proc rate tiny dmg proc and not full swing resets that look cool. Practically the same as flametongue.
If enhancement continues to resolve around all 4 elements I think it’d definitely be cool to see a rework to make it similar to Gw2 weaver where you mix and match 2 elements at a time and the focus is on enhancing all your melee attacks with those elements instead of just outright casting spells like lava burst/ele blast/chain/bolt/shocks etc.
Enhancement already has some mechanics focused on offhand vs main hand attacks and specializing in 2 elements at a time with wolves. So I don’t think it would be too far off. Where maelstrom spells are now the enablers instead of the bulk of the damage and they enhance your main/offhand attacks with their element and you rotate through them. Might be similar to outlaw.
Lava Lash becomes a generic offhand attacks.
Icy strike becomes a generic mainhand attack (prima strike maybe).
Stormstrike becomes the dual weapon attack.
You temporarily attune main and offhand weapons to a certain element and it changes the above attacks to their elemental equivalent with dual attack being a unique combo of the elements.
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I use to main shaman a long time ago. The only thing enhancement has going for it for me now is that it is aesthetically pleasing. Seems like there are way to many buttons now.
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“I imagined it one way, but it isn’t that way, therefor, grrr”
But seriously, I greatly enjoy the way Enh plays, and except for the period of time it was “Warrior Lite” for a couple xpacs… it’s kind of always been “More spells than physical attacks”
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Hopefully hero talents fix this next xpac
Where did you get “Berserker” from a class fantasy entirely based upon spirituality?
That’s been a thing since Wrath, which is considered one of the “peaks” of WoW class design and the first time every spec in this game was “complete” or viable.
That’s called LEGION, and everyone agreed Enh was just a clunkier and weaker Fury Warrior back then.
It’s been like this since TBC, exactly what version of Shaman are you comparing the current one to??
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so… auto attacks? lol
that is not what the storm build is at all, this is getting good
no one tell this guy ele blast exists
you want Templar strikes with three buttons crammed in it instead of two, while simultaneously breaking a hell of a lot of other spell and passive interactions.
Yeah I think that passes with flying colors.
Anyway, classes sharing a lot of abilities across specs is what ties those specs to that class. Otherwise you end up having the legion situation they pulled back from where every spec in and of itself felt like a different class. I will never understand the complaint of sharing abilities when their use across most specs varies quite nicely. What LL, EB, and FS do for enh in terms of gameplay and spell interaction greatly vary from what those same parameters on ele.
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Well it used to be what I imagined last few times I tried it out lol
Because Shaman are first and for most channelers of the elements… it’s really that simple.
Finally, our specs just come down to how we go about channeling the elements. “Elemental” is all essentially the mage spec, “Restoration” is the priest/cleric/witchdoctor spec, and Enhancement is the warrior spec.
Also, DW windfury is done and over with. This isn’t the old days, and no one wants to go back to needing to track the speed of their off hand in relation to their main hand to optimize mainhand procs. I was there I remember the DW Windfury Meta.
Seems the issue is the OP is experiencing what I stated before this Tier Set of Season 3 was released which is placing the focus on PW usage will all but reduce our builds to one (Elementalist)
That’s great for us who love the Elementalist build but not so good for those who love the Storm build. They should allow TWO Options for our tier list for Season 4 – allow Storm/Elementalist Tier sets to be used instead of just the one that was voted on.
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No, they’re talking as if this has been an issue for a long time, but used to not be.
Nothing to do with the tier lol
When I got around to playing my shaman again I was pretty surprised to see lightning bolt being my highest damaging ability as enhancement.
And stormstike is SO low.
It’s weird.
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What I mean is, enhancement doesn’t feel that different from ele (ignoring tier).
You just flame shock spread, ele blast/lava surge lightning bolt/chain lightning for almost all your damage. But now you auto and cast some weak melee skills as support.
I just don’t get why enhancement is essentially just an ele shaman that autos stuff.
Just doesn’t feel like there’s much difference changing specs.
It’s like if they gutted the damage of all feral abilities and feral now uses moonfire/Sunfire/wrath/Starfire/star surge/star fall in cat form and using combo points to make those do all your damage. Just melee boomkat. That’s how enhance feels to me and it seems lame.
I want to the focus to be primarily on the elemental melee strikes and windfury. Lava Lash/storm strike/icy strike. I honestly believe gw2 weaver style would fit enhance so perfectly.
I think primwave giga forked lightning bolts are fine, those are once in a while and are satisfying, I feel like that should be what maelstrom is. Not every 2 globals or whatever.
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It was here for me:
Admittedly it’s not much. But couple that with the fact this shaman chooses to dual wield and fight face-to-face and I kinda imagined a berserker as well. Or something akin to it compared to resto and ele.
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berserk on a shaman??? go for a warrior a mele mage its the fantasy of enhanced
Right, melee with some mage, not mage with some melee.
This is just objectively untrue. Elemental Blast will generally be one of your biggest total damage sources, but Lava Lash should also be right near the top. Your melee attacks should still be the majority of your button presses, because those are what generate your MSW stacks. Even with optimal play and top end gear, you won’t be generating MSW so fast as to be firing spenders back to back with fewer GCDs spent on melee attacks than on spellcasts.
If having the same spells on our action bars outweighs the stark difference between being up in mobs’ faces smashing them with lightning cleaves and imbued axes before shoving a fat instant cast down their throats, versus standing 30 yards away watching a cast bar fill for you, then I don’t know what to tell you. Legion gave us some of the worst designs of all time by trying to force differences for the sake of differences on cross-spec spellbooks.
It is frustrating that our most iconic attack – one with a unique attack animation and incredibly satisfying audio sting – has been relegated to such low priority in our rotation. Especially when the UI still throws up flashes and special graphics for its resets that were implemented when it was still our heaviest hitter.
I don’t need Stormstrike to be the only thing worth pressing (I did my time playing Storm in Aberrus, and no friggin’ thank you), but I’d like it to at least not almost always be the wrong thing to press.
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This is a hot take. But I miss legion enhance. I wouldn’t hate if storm builds were like legion with doomwinds . But I’ll just play SoD shaman in p2 and rest my tired old man hands.
I wouldn’t hate mixing in some msw mechanics for lava bursts … but miss me with lava lash hot hands. Always hate lava lash since wrath.
And
Are two entirely different things.
The class fantasy is there. The expectations of potential output is not. Just gotta figure out which one you enjoy more. My rogue doesnt follow the cookie cutter builds, because i prefer to play him a little differently for my own class fantasy. He does respectable damage still and usually tops the dps meters still, but hes operating at about 80% efficiency.
And it works for me. Hes my “dont feel like stressing” character that floats arouns the 15 key area and doesnt push any higher because hes there for fantasy and not throughput
No, it really isnt untrue. I read his post and could identify with everything he said. You can nit-pick or be obtuse, but what he said isnt wrong.
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I’m not sure why people are trying to discredit you OP. It doesn’t help that tier this season shoe horns enhancement into an elemental build. I do agree with the other commenters that it’s a very “busy,” spec.
I’d like to see more frost stuff. BFA enhance played like a proc based WAR to me, though.
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