In one week blizzard nerfed elemental shamans to the dumpster tier. Our single target currently stands second to last in raid logs only ahead of fire mage, which has 2 other viable caster specs. Our AOE has received massive nerfs, even for accounting all boss fights we are one of the worst specs in the game with a now more complex rotation.
The nerf was completely unjustified because of the ascendence bug that is now fixed. There is no excuse for this level of incompetence. I chose elemental this expansion because it was fun, fast paced, not too cool down reliant. You change all of that a couple months into the expansion.
1 week… You make me relearn the class twice mid season 1. Change my gearing to the point where I need to retool almost everything to get mastery up. And to top it off even if we do all that we are are t remotely competitive…
My sub runs out in 5 days. I don’t have time to reinvest in another character just to be drastically changed seemingly at random from clueless devs.
What an absolute joke and horrible way to treat customers.
12 Likes
The elemental nerfs are insane, I’m having a hard time logging in at this point. Its funny to it was fun for one week, the class felt really good within our burst window. But there was a huge decrease to burst during that window because of a lot of factors with maelstrom resource. Really sad honestly. BUFF classes, nerfing is stupid. Just buff everyone to a point that their fun again. Stop with the constant nerfing its a dumb overall strategy
2 Likes
Marksmanship Hunters had a mastery bug that allowed 2-3 absolutely try-hard sweatlords parse some crazy numbers, so Blizzard nerfed their damage like 30%… then fixed the bug…
First time?
Edit: This also happened to Affliction in beta. Damage was way too high due to some bugs, they blanket nerf the entire spec then fix the bugs.
You guys are really having that bad of a time? My damage is still pretty good in Nerub’ar Palace.
2 Likes
They overdid it. Especially on Single Target damage.
3 Likes
I can’t claim to be an expert. I got my first normal kill of Ansurek today and the first boss of heroic. I’m not pushing harder content yet, so my perspective is more casual.
yea ur perspective isn’t very valuable unforunately. Im talking mythic keys 11+ and mythic raiding is really rough on shaman ele right now.
3 Likes
But how viable are you in a real world application? I bet you’re still pretty good compared to those around you.
Ele is pretty used to being a bottom-tier spec, honestly.
I think the complaints are more about the timeline of things…
- Tier starts and we’re fine’ish
- We get a remake (YAY!)
– Defensive CD’s effectively halfed
– PCT brought from 45 sec to 2 min
- But our damage is “more than good”
- Get a hotfix nerf within a day
- Get another nerf the following reset
- Along with bugfixes
- End up dumpster tier.
3 Likes
Well said. It was the order of what happened and the timeline. If this was spread over multiple patches it would be more stomachable and understandable.
The fact that it happened within a half patch cycle is what is irritating. And the fact that most of the original 11.0.5 rollout changes that gaves us busted damage was intended…not because of a bug like Rogues (even factoring in Ascendence). It just shows a complete lack and care for testing. Ele being that far ahead the previous week and needing that big of a nerf is a big fail on their end and us as players are ok to be baffled and unimpressed by it. The nerf was too hard done on the Single Target side of things, especially for shamans rolling without a Spymasters trinket.
2 Likes
TLDR:
-Ele rework feels great gameplay wise, most fun I’ve had pressing buttons on ele since MoP. I love the rework to icefury and ascendance
-Ele got hit way too hard with nerfs in PvE. Got absolutely owned. Not sure why we didn’t just fix the Ascendance bug first and then wait to see what that did before nerfing anything else, but Stormbringer got hit really hard at the same time as this bug fix and it really hurt Ele.
-Really needs ST buffs (in pve only) and Arc Discharge should go back to 2 charges instead of 1.
Longer thoughts:
I think the ele rework feels amazing, I like that there is a lightning build with stormbringer and a lava burst build with farseer, ideally they’d both be viable maybe lightning for aoe and lava burst for ST or vice versa but I think this is the most fun I’ve had on ele in terms of just pressing buttons since MoP, that was the last time overload was so relevant.
However, ele got absolutely owned in pve. It needs some buffs to make up for the nerfs it took to its single target. There are other classes that always remain meta, but I feel like whenever ele comes near that it gets hit hard and fast historically. I’d really like to see some buffs to ele in pve.
I feel like if there are major bugs affecting class performance like the Asc bug, no nerfs should ever come until thats fixed and data shows where the class/spec will sit after it is fixed. That was 9% of Eles single target damage gone, and then a bunch of Stormbringer nerfs happened at the same time.
I will agree, this is the most fun I’ve had hitting buttons in the game.
There are many viable talent choices for a lot of the content too.
Like in M+ i’ve been running Ele Blast…it’s just so much fun.
No, why would you lie in an attempt to make a class not even functional?
1 Like
feels like the only actual talent choice u could make going into keys is echos or lmt
if i had ANY way to not choose ascendance and still do damage in keys that would be cool
years and years of ele sham not having a CD and now ascendance is too good to avoid/we’re balanced around the assumption of us looooving it
1 Like
imo if we had echoes and lmt the rotation would actually be sufficiently interesting/met the goals of the rework and not still feel like were spamming lightning, but then we’d be having too much fun
Grain of salt… I don’t do anything on my Shaman alt other than world quests. It’s hilarious how it feels like almost everything in the kit makes it feel like I’m throwing pillows at things. Certain spells hit hard like Tempest, but it takes forever to build that just running around by yourself doing world quests. Earth Shock hits hard, but again, it takes forever to build enough Maelstrom to cast that if say you’re only hitting one thing at a time. It’s kind of a problem that the resource build takes so long because it means you’re stuck generally with Lighting Bolt and Lava Burst and those feel like you’re throwing pillows at The Rock.
When you’re generating Maelstrom through AoE and you’re in a group and don’t have threat on you, things feel fine, but good lord is Elemental absolutely miserable to play solo. Sure, you have Nature’s Swiftness and Stormkeeper to get you some instant casts, but Lightning Bolt generates 6 Maelstrom and you need FIFTY FIVE Maelstrom to cast a single Earth Shock on something. Again, Nature’s Swiftness and Stormkeeper with Chain Lightning in an AoE situation is completely fine but solo, Elemental is so beyond broken in class design. Like ooh, I spent a cast timer on Stormkeeper to instant cast 2 Lightning Bolts at 150% damage. What’s 150% of nothing? It still feels like nothing.
It feels like you’re either missing a spell or two in a single target rotation to help move things along with your Maelstrom generation, or it feels like Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst should be generating at least twice as much Maelstrom as they do. When you’re not procing much of anything, it feels wrong. Maelstrom decay when you’re out of combat sucks too… I’d be tickled if you either generate or lose Maelstrom out of combat to land on say 30-50 Maelstrom if you’re out of combat long enough. Starting from 0 is pretty miserable.
It isn’t a lie, it is extremely good in pvp still. Keep in mind ele didn’t even play stormbringer in pvp, it was playing farseer, so those nerfs didnt matter. The other nerfs to asc and echo chamber got reverted, so all we got was a nerf to asc in pvp modifier and the bug fixed. Ele still slams, especially if you go full mastery, can even still one shot if you get a big earth shock crit which will guarantee overload during ascendance.
In pve its quite bad of course, but in pvp it is still good. Decent mobility, good utility, decent survivability, very good damage.
Oh sorry realized you were responding to the m+ guy. cant comment on that obviously i pvp only but from what I have seen ele is quite bad now in all forms of pve content, i like the rework in terms of gameplay but the numbers are no longer there in pve.
Nerfed or postponed? Cause apparently they’re live and in the notes for the PTR.
It seems to be in a pretty good place to me. I blow packs up quickly, undergeared and without any pots or other consumables. The only gripe is that lightning bolt cast time (and chain) is too long. It’s generally a spell cast as filler when everything else is on CD and it’s rather annoying to have to move and cancel cast when your burst and singular move cd’s are expent. Especially in Pvp. It’s never going to be S tier in Pvp, but cutting lb cast time in half would make it attractive to a lot of pvp’ers. LB casts take forever and I’ve played every caster spec in game.
I don’t think anybody doubts that it still cranks on AoE and M+ (for overall). Even if you don’t have Ascendance you still can pipe packs if you pool correctly and play optimal with CDs. It’s actually pretty neat that theres now 4 talents points you can flex around to play with different talents like opting to drop Charge Conduit in low pull count dungeons like DB, opting to not play Echos for LMT + Pwave, EB vs ES and still be pretty near to each other DPS.
It’s the single target loss that I have gripes with. Current feels bad sometimes in Keys going on bosses without Ascendance. Especially a boss like Skarmorak where you want good ST. In raid we luck out with 3 of the last 4 bosses (read: the 4 hardest bosses) having an importance on Add damage but Queen and Court still need good single target damage. I feel like if we get some single target buffs we’ll be in a pretty good spot. Not the same place we were last week but deff a pretty strong place.
2 Likes