Its time for some talent updates.

[Omanley]

More mobility? Not sure how I feel about that. This smells a lot like the "these classes have it so I want it" argument, which I do disagree with.

If it were implemented in an interesting way that could make tier 2 choices interesting I might feel different about it. Tier 2 from a pve standpoint is just not interesting at all.

Well, shamans lack mobility in pvp.

Enhancement, except for rets, is the only melee w/o an instant gap closer. And rets have freedom to use together with their sprint. A shaman has his movement speed increases through gw, spiritwalk and uf:fb, but each of these is easily countered with snares and roots. Enh needs some attention mobility-wise, or it will remain easy to kite and the melee with lowest uptime. Need I remind you that we require actual uptime to regenerate mana? Not much using shocks, purging, ue'ing and what not without mana. While a rogue regenerates his recource when not on target, we deplete it with meh methods to close the gap.

As for elemental, except for thunderstorm, which is harder to use than blink or disengage and mostly the only thing they have (frs sharing a cd with ds and es blocks it, so it's down to earthgrab), so easy to counter with a charge/shadowstep/deathgrip etc.

Better mobility is needed, not necessarily through talents, but it would be a good option since each spec can just take what was designed for them.

And instead of "These classes have it so I want it" it's more like "All specs have it, so we're screwed without it".
My suggestion was about freedom effects mainly because wwt already provided that, and us being close design-wise to rets made it more probably imo that we'd get freedom to empower our sprints instead of separate instant gap creaters/closers.

And yeah, I guess talents generally wont be always useful or fun in pve, but that goes for everyone. Remember, blizz basically took all the stuff that before was cooky-cutter and backed it in baseline, and the varying stuff, like Frozen Power, Earthen Power and such, which would vary, was made into talents.
If you look at it like that, pve talents would then be stuff like old shield specialisation, or reverberation or crap like that.
It's hard to make pve talents good w/o making them mandatory.

[Protoman]

My basic thoughts....

I agree that Tier 2 WW totem should be baseline and replaced with a CC related talent....should be a CC oriented tier only.

Tier 3 should be scrapped completely, Totemic Projection made baseline, and the tier instead be a mobility oriented tier. Imp GW glyph should be baseline (not a talent option), but have 3 mobility related talents.....like one that gives GW a mini sprint or temp immunities to CC like prevent application of roots or other CC (intangible, ghost like)...... another that gives you an instant gap closer/escape (astral leap type deal).....and finally one that gives a more permanent/passive speed bonus like +20% run speed at all times plus something else like 15% less duration on roots/snares/CC.

Not much to say about the other tiers, I guess I agree that T5 HTT is the obvious better choice but in PVP AG can be seen as a decent alternative cause of how easy it is to kill HTT.

For T6 though...

-I feel that unleash fury is too obvious a choice for PVP (esp FB with Enhance, my suggestion would be to bake the 40%LL damage from FT into LL, and make our PVP 4set bonus allow ULE to give us a mini sprint...possibly also breaking roots/snares when first used to making application of those CC harder to do during the sprint.....and change the ULF FB bonus effect to something other then a sprint like more control or a debuff on the enemy that gives them slower resource regen or longer cd's.). I also think that the Earthlinving effect is boring and needs to be upgraded to something more interesting, like maybe convert a heal into an absorb shield or change how a spell acts when it absorbs the buff to give it new and different effects like wider range on chain heal, HS makes a bubble, and GHW copies the heal to another ally.

-EB is a cool spell but hasn't seen much use, it is getting more synergy with our other spells and buffs in recent updates so hopefully will be more useable in both PVE and PVP....I can see this being a good source of burst but I would like to see the buff be more predictable, also totally different effects for Resto (like option to heal an ally either directly or by converting damage>heals plus the buff be more healer oriented like bonus to spirit/mana regen), and also mebbe some execute mechanic to make it more useful for enh/elem in PVP as a burst ability.

-Primal Elem... Not much to say but it needs to be untethered from the totem and made a proper CD just like mage's frost elementals used to be when they were a temp CD.

[Aleksej89]

The current totem tier is not only boring and horrible, it is also just QoL issues that Shamans need as baseline.
Just slightly improve the current totem talents and make them baseline for all shamans - and then rework that entire level/row of talents into something interesting.

Conductivity is just HORRIBLE for DPS (both old and 5.4) and even HTT feels bad for DPS (might improve with 5.4).

Elemental Blast to be viable for Enhancement.
Unleashed Fury to be viable for Elemental.
Elemental Blast feels quite shitty for Restoration, and Unleashed Fury feels like it adds clutter to an already full Resto rotation/priority.

Restoration spread target healing - fix it properly, not by adding 2 yards to HR and lowering the Glyph CD penalty on CH.

Elemental's crit scaling, either through talents or baseline passives.
Shaman's overall lack of on-demand reliable CC, we need something like an instant stun or a disarm on a cooldown of 1 minute or less.

[zenga]

I am absolutely baffled by what I am reading in this thread. Really wondering if I'm playing the same class as you guys...

Well, shamans lack mobility in pvp.

Ele shaman has incredible mobility in PVP. The only caster that really has more mobility atm are warlocks, but then again that will get addressed in the next patch.
Resto shamans are fairly mobile as well, and definitely have the tools to be mobile.
Enhance shamans have 2 spells that require melee range (storm strike and lava lash, both on a long cd. A 15s 80s/45s with glyph sprint, another 4s 15s cd sprint from UE, ghostwolf, possibility to double freedom and use shamanistic rage to dispel and dispel-able slows. And have the ability to spec/use different slows and roots themselves.

I honestly don't see how you can even argue that shamans lack mobility in pvp.

My basic thoughts....
...Tier 2 WW totem should be baseline
...Totemic Projection made baselineI
...Imp GW glyph should be baseline

Sure ... any more stuff that needs to become baseline?

The current totem tier is not only boring and horrible, it is also just QoL issues that Shamans need as baseline.
Just slightly improve the current totem talents and make them baseline for all shamans - and then rework that entire level/row of talents into something interesting.

I realise that boring is a subjective matter, but how can the current totem tier be horrible?

Call of the elements is a preparation/readiness/cold snap like ability that finishes the cd on very powerful totems that can mean the world.
Totemic restoration is generally considered to be one of the most OP shaman talents in PVP throughout this expansion. Maybe this patch it's less in the picture due to resto healers being less prevalent/dominant, but halving the tremor/freedom and grounding totem CD is beyond insane vs certain comps.
And totemic projection allows you to relocate totems. How can that not be good/useful?

Conductivity is just HORRIBLE for DPS (both old and 5.4) and even HTT feels bad for DPS (might improve with 5.4).

It's not different than if you were to cast healing rain on cd as a dps to help heal your raid. That is actually a strength of the shaman classes for your raid, and role you can fulfil. It's not a talent that works on every boss, but it can be incredibly good on certain boss for certain raids. It's exactly designed for buffing your healing rains. Healing tide is the drop and forget about healing CD for when you can't cast as dps, and AG is the healing cd you can use for when you can actually cast.

All 3 are viable and have their use. Werther you chose to fulfil a hybrid dps/healing role is your choice, but conductivity allows you to so, on certain bosses. And it does a good job.

...

Really to me it looks like a lot of people just complain for the sake of complaining. Shamans have interesting choices they can make in their talent tree, and pair certain talents as well. Take a good look at other classes and see if they can all do the same. On top of that shamans, both pve and pvp are in a really good spot this patch, bar pve resto's I guess (ele is a dominating pvp specs atm, enhance is more than very viable in pvp, resto is still a strong healer although a bit prone to hard swaps, ele is doing ok in pve, enhance is at the top of the dps charts. ....

I don't get it, honestly.

[Teriz]

I realise that boring is a subjective matter, but how can the current totem tier be horrible?

Call of the elements is a preparation/readiness/cold snap like ability that finishes the cd on very powerful totems that can mean the world.
Totemic restoration is generally considered to be one of the most OP shaman talents in PVP throughout this expansion. Maybe this patch it's less in the picture due to resto healers being less prevalent/dominant, but halving the tremor/freedom and grounding totem CD is beyond insane vs certain comps.
And totemic projection allows you to relocate totems. How can that not be good/useful?

Call of Elements is weak because the CDs it works on are so short that by the time you can properly utilize the CD, most of the CDs will be over with anyway. Also since you mentioned Preparation, Readiness, and Cold Snap, we should point out that all three of those abilities are better than CoE in many ways. Every Rogue and every Hunter gets Preparation and Readiness since they aren't talents. Cold Snap allows you to restart less abilities, but it allows you to do two Ice Blocks back to back, heals you for 30% of your health, and it can be used while stunned, feared, sleep, etc. All on an equal CD time.

Totemic Projection is the Hunter's trap launcher, but worse. Yeah its useful, but it shouldn't be a talent.

I can't comment on Totemic Restoration, because I never really used it.

[zenga]

Call of Elements is weak because the CDs it works on are so short that by the time you can properly utilize the CD, most of the CDs will be over with anyway.

Do you realize how powerful any combination of these totems can be, and then being able to reset the cd on all of them?

Capacitor totem 45s
wind walk totem 1 min cd
grounding totem 25s (and glyphed 1 minute)
tremor totem 1min

A lock team going for a kill ... grounding tremor fear, call of the elements, ground tremor next fear. It saves your healer his dispel.
Playing against a melee team that pops cds? Windwalk CoTE windwalk ... and you basically save a team mate.
Playing with a frost mage against a frost mage? You have 2 shots at reflecting the actual deep. Big fun ...
Play against a rdruid who is casting cyclone, but fakes his cast and your grounding gets randomly killed? Reset and ground next cyclone.
And these are just random examples, since if you have the talent you can actually get really creative with your totems at countering the enemy team, e.g. maybe you want to save windwalk totem for later use but you just tremor a fear, since you want to reset the tremor fear you might as well just use windwalk to get rid of any slows on your team, and then reset tremor.

Really there are so many situations where this talent is so useful and gives many opportunities to save your team/protect your attack.
Claiming that it's weak because of the short CDs is just nonsense.

very Rogue and every Hunter gets Preparation and Readiness since they aren't talents. Cold Snap allows you to restart less abilities, but it allows you to do two Ice Blocks back to back, heals you for 30% of your health, and it can be used while stunned, feared, sleep, etc. All on an equal CD time.

It was not designed to be the same as prep or readiness. The shaman version is just different, it resets the cd on abilities that have a raidwide effect whereas the aforementioned are more individual oriented. Saying that raid wide abilities are inferior to individual abilities is bullocks.

Totemic Projection is the Hunter's trap launcher, but worse. Yeah its useful, but it shouldn't be a talent.

Why not?

[Barrun]

I don't get it, honestly.

Walk in a resto shaman's shoes in PVE for a day. You'll get it.

[Omanley]

Ele shaman has incredible mobility in PVP. The only caster that really has more mobility atm are warlocks, but then again that will get addressed in the next patch.
Resto shamans are fairly mobile as well, and definitely have the tools to be mobile.
Enhance shamans have 2 spells that require melee range (storm strike and lava lash, both on a long cd. A 15s 80s/45s with glyph sprint, another 4s 15s cd sprint from UE, ghostwolf, possibility to double freedom and use shamanistic rage to dispel and dispel-able slows. And have the ability to spec/use different slows and roots themselves.

Enhance:
Two spells that require melee range, but also the by far strongest hitting abilities.
Imbues, that only proc on weapon strikes, hence requiring melee range
Static Shock, which only procs on those two strikes (which require melee) and (if you specced UF) from melee hits
Mana regeneration? requires melee range
Sure, we can now cast lb on the move, but it hardly does any damage and costs us a lot of mana if not used with msw, which requires MELEE range, wether used for damage, healing or cc

As for mobility:
GW => snared/rooted
Spiritwalk? => snared/rooted
UF:FB? => snared/rooted

You speak of double freedom, but what enhancer takes both WWT and COT? Right, no one. TR and FP are usually preferred, as enh relies on this short cd root to gap close to get the whole chunk above going, and TR lowers the cd of all totems, not just the lower cd ones.
SR dispells magic effects when glyphed, but it is still also our best survival cooldown, so chances are you're using it to dispell dots and stuff when pressured, not when kited.

Elemental: I've never really played it, but what do they have except for gw and thunderstorm? Yes they can cast lb on the move (which does count as mobility, maybe I've should called it the ability to run away/chase instead), but it can still be interrupted by melees who cannot be kited properly, because ele is down to TS and gw, not having FrS avaiable due to ES/Fulm and FS/Lvb.
Maybe I'm just gone from the game to long, but I've not seen any changes that made me think as a melee "gee, ele's gonna be hard to pin down and tunnel" yet.

As for resto: This is a hard one, because it's usually the reason enh/ele take nerfbat beatings. It would also be a good reason to make such mobility buffs spec specific, in which case, I'd admit the above suggestions to be op, regarding resto.

However, It still think enh is easy to kite, while being heavily dependant on being in melee range, with ele being easy to chase, while being more dependant than others to be left alone to cast uninterrupted.

- - - Updated - - -

Do you realize how powerful any combination of these totems can be, and then being able to reset the cd on all of them?

Capacitor totem 45s
wind walk totem 1 min cd
grounding totem 25s (and glyphed 1 minute)
tremor totem 1min

It was not designed to be the same as prep or readiness. The shaman version is just different, it resets the cd on abilities that have a raidwide effect whereas the aforementioned are more individual oriented. Saying that raid wide abilities are inferior to individual abilities is bullocks.

CPT? => destroyed => CoE => CPT? => destroyed And even if your enemies were totally retarded and would be in numbers in CPT range (to make its aoe effect even matter) AND ignore it during its long ramp up, there'd be diminishing returns. In reality it simply does not work. CPT is a brain fart design-wise, it's not worth picking a talent for, wether it is TP or CoE.
WWT? A 10 second aoe freedom effect sounds awesome on paper, but popping a 1min and 5min cd (which both require talents at the expense of more useful ones) for it doesn't. It's 10 seconds, hard to land a kill in that time, esp if you just get cced or the totems stomped. Also: putting freedom on an immobile totem? what was blizz thinking?
Grounding? Popping a 5minute cd for a 25s totem? Awesome... with TR, you can reduce that cd to like 15s, which is MUCH better. And nobody glyphes grounding, the reflect just isn't worth it, even back to back.
Tremor? Doesn't work that well anymore aoe-wise. It has a cooldown now and very low duration. It is to be used when feared and that usually means you wont free others, so it should mostly be self only.

Rogues and Hunters get baseline cooldown resets to let them use powerful abilities back to back to DOMINATE others.
We get to reset low cd ones, which hardly benefit from it. Either they are stomped or to short a cd anyway or simply not required often enough to make it feasable.

[zenga]

You speak of double freedom, but what enhancer takes both WWT and COT? Right, no one. TR and FP are usually preferred, as enh relies on this short cd root to gap close to get the whole chunk above going, and TR lowers the cd of all totems, not just the lower cd ones.

SR dispells magic effects when glyphed, but it is still also our best survival cooldown, so chances are you're using it to dispell dots and stuff when pressured, not when kited.

That entirely depends on the comp you run and the comp you face. That is exactly why I praise our talent tree, we can respec every game. There are comps where glyphing SR is not needed (either because you want to use SR as a pure defensive tool rather than as a free dispel, or because there is little to dispel at all). Every game again you assess what the best talent/glyph choices are, there is no cookie cutter spec atm. And that is exactly what the talent tree is designed for.

Yeah if you want to land stuns you most likely want to glyph it and use TP, but it's not like there are not good alternatives (if you play with a rogue/pally/dk/warrior who have reliable short cd stuns for example that dr with capacitor). As for ele or resto, windwalk totem is a very viable option vs a lot of teams.

You make it sound as if there is only 1 way to spec/play, reality is that shamans in general have the tools for different situations. The fact that the majority ain't using those tools means very little.

Elemental: I've never really played it, but what do they have except for gw and thunderstorm? Yes they can cast lb on the move (which does count as mobility, maybe I've should called it the ability to run away/chase instead), but it can still be interrupted by melees who cannot be kited properly, because ele is down to TS and gw, not having FrS avaiable due to ES/Fulm and FS/Lvb.
Maybe I'm just gone from the game to long, but I've not seen any changes that made me think as a melee "gee, ele's gonna be hard to pin down and tunnel" yet.

Ele's defense is more than allright at the moment relative to other casters. Glyphed ghostwolf alone is really strong, earthgrab/bind and frost shock, Ancestral Swiftness/earthquake, windwalk totem, thunderstorm (on different cds), SWG to run and cast a few heals... all tools to escape/survive training melee. (I hear the comments again about earthquake, but say you face feral/x/shaman, the opener is gonna hurt. You can't hex the druid and they have double decurse. NS/earthquake can totally screw the ferals opener for example).

However, It still think enh is easy to kite, while being heavily dependant on being in melee range, with ele being easy to chase, while being more dependant than others to be left alone to cast uninterrupted.

Yeah enhance is probably more kiteable than other melee, but they have tools that other melees don't have to use while being kited. As for ele I disagree that an ele is easier to sit on then most other casters (frost mage is obviously a different matter).

CPT? => destroyed => CoE => CPT? => destroyed And even if your enemies were totally retarded and would be in numbers in CPT range (to make its aoe effect even matter) AND ignore it during its long ramp up, there'd be diminishing returns. In reality it simply does not work. CPT is a brain fart design-wise, it's not worth picking a talent for, wether it is TP or CoE.
WWT? A 10 second aoe freedom effect sounds awesome on paper, but popping a 1min and 5min cd (which both require talents at the expense of more useful ones) for it doesn't. It's 10 seconds, hard to land a kill in that time, esp if you just get cced or the totems stomped. Also: putting freedom on an immobile totem? what was blizz thinking?
Grounding? Popping a 5minute cd for a 25s totem? Awesome... with TR, you can reduce that cd to like 15s, which is MUCH better. And nobody glyphes grounding, the reflect just isn't worth it, even back to back.
Tremor? Doesn't work that well anymore aoe-wise. It has a cooldown now and very low duration. It is to be used when feared and that usually means you wont free others, so it should mostly be self only.

FYI call of the elements is a 3min CD.

Really, saying that you don't see the value of double grounding/double tremor totem vs a affliction lock team is not very credible. It can mean the difference between a kill or not. Call of the Elements can be godlike in such situations. It's not like you would use call of the elements to just reset 1 ability. It becomes really strong in situations where you combine them (since windwalk is off the gcd), which means that you can weave in an extra (as in otherwise you wouldn't have used it) grounding and windwalk to eat a spell and to cleanse your team from slows while you were going to reset tremor to stop a back to back fear on another team mate. That is the real strength of CoTE.

Yes there are plenty of situations where Totemic restoration might be more desirable, but that doesn't mean that CoTE does not have its use.

And that is a key point in this whole discussion. People consider a talent as bad just because another talent is better in more situations. I mean, in this thread someone was saying 'make unleash fury viable for elemental shamans'. UF is pretty much the standard talent for resto and enhance, and it's very viable for ele in pvp. And the sims from bink show it being in a 1-2% range from the best ele pve combo.
Again, the whole idea of the talent system was to offer choice, And man does shamans have choice with the talent system ...

[Barrun]

UF is pretty much the standard talent for resto

UF is garbage for resto in PVE, PE is the only viable choice.

[zenga]

UF is garbage for resto in PVE, PE is the only viable choice.

I was talking pvp in that line, though it might not have been totally clear. Doesn't change the point I was making.

[Deleted]

Tier 5: This tier is simply a mess, and its because HTT is so overwhelmingly better than everything else that nothing can compete with it.

Can I have a precision on this one ? Is the OP only talking about restauration Shamans, or is HTT globally considered better than AG ? Because in this case, I would strongly disagree. As an enhancement shaman, I think that AG is kinda overpowered. With Healing Storm glyph, a 5 maelstrom stack HR and my current dps, I can reach absurd healing numbers while AG is triggered.

[Pitkanen]

Can I have a precision on this one ? Is the OP only talking about restauration Shamans, or is HTT globally considered better than AG ? Because in this case, I would strongly disagree. As an enhancement shaman, I think that AG is kinda overpowered. With Healing Storm glyph, a 5 maelstrom stack HR and my current dps, I can reach absurd healing numbers while AG is triggered.

Yeah, it's totally a spec thing. HR for an enh w/ 5stack MW is as good or better than a resto's HR (minus ELW unless you do the thing..), and your single target dps is about double the output of CH/single target healing spam. And AG isn't a dps loss for Enh unlike HTT.
For resto it an issue of having a CD that can be used while moving and while the raid is spread out, vs having a CD that requires the raid to be perfectly stacked and the shaman to turret for 10 seconds in order to match the average output. Not to mention the issue with interrupting jolt / other CC impacting resto AG but not HTT.

[Omanley]

That entirely depends on the comp you run and the comp you face. That is exactly why I praise our talent tree, we can respec every game....

I have no problem with certain talents/glyphes being better against certain comps, or having to decide anew constantly. Rather, I welcome it.

But there are things which should be avaiable baseline.
-Enh need reliable gap closing baseline, because it is a melee and therefor needs to be in the enemies' face. We have shocks and UE, but are just as dependant on actual melee range as any other melee spec. Scrambling for each and every mobility addition in form of UF:FB, GW glyph and WWT totem because our base mbility toolkit sucks in comparison to everyone else's, it's not right.
-Whatever skill you design, it should be reliable. CPT is not. I dont get the idea behind making easily counterable stuns specifically for shamans, where others have reliable versions. Again, nothing against enhancing our stuff through glyphes/talents, but making them actually work with them is crappy design. It makes using the ability unglyphed A.P.I.T.A., and people taking TP and CPT glyph will sacrifice precious talent/glyph slots just to increase the chance of it actually going of.
-WWT is a nice option for resto, yes, because resto does not nearly as much rely on mobility as enh or resto. Rooting/Peeling is a nice thing to have, but not a important for resto. An enh not managing melee contact is screwed, often enough even with FP taken. Again, a mobility tier should improve on a already working mobility, not create one.
-There isn't/shouldn't be just one way to play the game, I never said otherwhise. BUT: enh/ele still need the basic requirements of being able to kite/chase/escape without having to take several talents AND glyphs, and still be worse than others baseline.

-Ele defense vs
-Mage: Iceblock, Blink, multiple aoe roots, snare on their main spell, cc without cooldown, instant 5sec stun, spellsteal, invisibility, an absorb shield...yeah, I think that's better than ele
-Warlock: demonic gateway, demonic circle, fear without cooldown, additional ccs (felguard stun, succubus seduce), life leach/healing, unending resolve > shamanistic rage... And that's just baseline abilities, dont get me started on the talents, which to me, look awesome.
-Hunter: deterrence, disengage, completely unhindered by movement/cant be oom/cant get interrupted/cant get silenced, readiness, widow venom, ice trap, freezing trap (better than ebt easily), fain death, scatter shot, concussive shot (essentially frost shock without shared cooldown, recource cost and dmg), fear against shifted druids and gw'ed shamans as well as hunter pets, master's call...all of that, not even including pets, glyphs and talents
-Druid: travelform beats the living shit out of gw, cyclone >>> hex, ursoc + barkskin vs SR, dash, entangling roots, also w/o cooldown, aoe snaring mushrooms (they can place up to three at different locations at the same time, not attackable/invisible, do aoe damage and the detonate has only 10 sec cd >> ebt, reju > casted heals... again, without talents (which are ridiculously good pvp-wise, but only icing on the already delicous cake) and glyphs

grew to lazy for s-priests, but from looking through spell lists, other casters seem to have better mobility, cc, survivability and general utility

Yeah enhance is probably more kiteable than other melee, but they have tools that other melees don't have to use while being kited.

Enhance has to use a combination of frost shock, wind shear, sprints, freedom(if wwt chosen)/snare breaker and gw to accomplish what other classes manage to do by hitting just one button. Little consolation.

As for your last part: CotE's cd, my bad. As for its use: Yes, it has one, but it is far to situational. In pve that is to be expected, since talents tend to be heavy on utility, and that comes in handy more often in pvp. However CotE is even very situation in pvp, and even there not taking TR can prove to be a mistake, as it allows ~50% more tremor uptime overall. Now look at druid talents and tell me how many of those are as situational.

Finding a use for sentry totem or windwall was not enough to keep them. CotE is such a case. Though in some rare cases it can be of use, It's hardly good enough to take a talent slot. That said, the totem tier overall looks pretty meh.

[zenga]

I have no problem with certain talents/glyphes being better against certain comps, or having to decide anew constantly. Rather, I welcome it.

But there are things which should be avaiable baseline.
-Enh need reliable gap closing baseline, because it is a melee and therefor needs to be in the enemies' face. We have shocks and UE, but are just as dependant on actual melee range as any other melee spec. Scrambling for each and every mobility addition in form of UF:FB, GW glyph and WWT totem because our base mbility toolkit sucks in comparison to everyone else's, it's not right.

So you basically want a charge/deathgrip/blink ability for enhance? On what cooldown? And keep all the stuff you can do from range at the same time (purge/dispel/flame shock/totems/unleash elements/offheal/hex/etc)? One of the things that is nefast for pvp is that every spec gets the same tools. An enhance has tools to do while he is sitting in a root, much less than other specs. It becomes a rat race really: all melee want 100% uptime, and casters want more defenses to escape melee.

To me it feels like enhance has enough 'mobility tools' as is:
- 15s cd sprint
- 1min cd free dispel (sham rage glyph)
- ability to break fears through tremor
- ability to use windwalk totem
- slow/root through frost shock
- long sprint through spirit walk
- snare/root through earthgrab
- the ability to catch up through ghostwolf

Those _are_ mobility tools.

Whatever skill you design, it should be reliable. CPT is not. I dont get the idea behind making easily counterable stuns specifically for shamans, where others have reliable versions. Again, nothing against enhancing our stuff through glyphes/talents, but making them actually work with them is crappy design. It makes using the ability unglyphed A.P.I.T.A., and people taking TP and CPT glyph will sacrifice precious talent/glyph slots just to increase the chance of it actually going of.

I completely agree with this. It would be acceptible for me if CPT had a 3s base charge time and for example a 1s through the glyph. Then you could decide yourself which one to use. Now if you don't use TP and the glyph it becomes pretty useless in pvp.

WWT is a nice option for resto, yes, because resto does not nearly as much rely on mobility as enh or resto. Rooting/Peeling is a nice thing to have, but not a important for resto. An enh not managing melee contact is screwed, often enough even with FP taken. Again, a mobility tier should improve on a already working mobility, not create one.

Reducing the enemy his mobility is basically improving your own. You make a choice in that tier between improving your own mobility or by reducing the enemies mobility. From a philosophical PoV the outcome is the same. [/QUOTE]

There isn't/shouldn't be just one way to play the game, I never said otherwhise. BUT: enh/ele still need the basic requirements of being able to kite/chase/escape without having to take several talents AND glyphs, and still be worse than others baseline.

I agree with the idea that classes should have the tools, but I feel like ele and enhance do have the tools this patch. Definitely ele.

Ele defense vs
-Mage: Iceblock, Blink, multiple aoe roots, snare on their main spell, cc without cooldown, instant 5sec stun, spellsteal, invisibility, an absorb shield...yeah, I think that's better than ele
-Warlock: demonic gateway, demonic circle, fear without cooldown, additional ccs (felguard stun, succubus seduce), life leach/healing, unending resolve > shamanistic rage... And that's just baseline abilities, dont get me started on the talents, which to me, look awesome.
-Hunter: deterrence, disengage, completely unhindered by movement/cant be oom/cant get interrupted/cant get silenced, readiness, widow venom, ice trap, freezing trap (better than ebt easily), fain death, scatter shot, concussive shot (essentially frost shock without shared cooldown, recource cost and dmg), fear against shifted druids and gw'ed shamans as well as hunter pets, master's call...all of that, not even including pets, glyphs and talents
-Druid: travelform beats the living shit out of gw, cyclone >>> hex, ursoc + barkskin vs SR, dash, entangling roots, also w/o cooldown, aoe snaring mushrooms (they can place up to three at different locations at the same time, not attackable/invisible, do aoe damage and the detonate has only 10 sec cd >> ebt, reju > casted heals... again, without talents (which are ridiculously good pvp-wise, but only icing on the already delicous cake) and glyphs

Ele is quite tanky at the moment, with ancestral swiftness that can proc every 30s, shamanistic rage glyph and lightning shield glyph (and other circumstantial tools as well). Ele's survivability is definitely up to par with most casters (bar maybe destruction warlocks).

grew to lazy for s-priests, but from looking through spell lists, other casters seem to have better mobility, cc, survivability and general utility

they dont really, they dont ...

[Teriz]

Do you realize how powerful any combination of these totems can be, and then being able to reset the cd on all of them?

Capacitor totem 45s
wind walk totem 1 min cd
grounding totem 25s (and glyphed 1 minute)
tremor totem 1min

A lock team going for a kill ... grounding tremor fear, call of the elements, ground tremor next fear. It saves your healer his dispel.
Playing against a melee team that pops cds? Windwalk CoTE windwalk ... and you basically save a team mate.
Playing with a frost mage against a frost mage? You have 2 shots at reflecting the actual deep. Big fun ...
Play against a rdruid who is casting cyclone, but fakes his cast and your grounding gets randomly killed? Reset and ground next cyclone.
And these are just random examples, since if you have the talent you can actually get really creative with your totems at countering the enemy team, e.g. maybe you want to save windwalk totem for later use but you just tremor a fear, since you want to reset the tremor fear you might as well just use windwalk to get rid of any slows on your team, and then reset tremor.

Really there are so many situations where this talent is so useful and gives many opportunities to save your team/protect your attack.
Claiming that it's weak because of the short CDs is just nonsense.

Useful doesn't always translate to good. Think about it; You're excited about a talent that allows you to stop fear an extra time, or reflect a spell back to back. That's not that great. Sure its useful, but compared to Cold Snap, its a joke. Cold Snap heals Mages for 30%, restores their control CDs, AND can be used while under the influence of status effects.

Don't get me wrong, CoE is a solid ability. However compared to similar talents, it can be a crapload better.

It was not designed to be the same as prep or readiness. The shaman version is just different, it resets the cd on abilities that have a raidwide effect whereas the aforementioned are more individual oriented. Saying that raid wide abilities are inferior to individual abilities is bullocks.

If you spec into Wind Walk totem sure. However, what if you don't spec into Wind Walk totem? I don't have to spec into anything for Cold Snap to be awesome. For CoE to be worth talking about, I need to make all my stars align.

Why not?

Because a baseline Hunter ability shouldn't be better than a level 45 Shaman talent.

- - - Updated - - -

Can I have a precision on this one ? Is the OP only talking about restauration Shamans, or is HTT globally considered better than AG ? Because in this case, I would strongly disagree. As an enhancement shaman, I think that AG is kinda overpowered. With Healing Storm glyph, a 5 maelstrom stack HR and my current dps, I can reach absurd healing numbers while AG is triggered.

Well HTT is now going baseline for all 3 specs because it was too good.

[Omanley]

So you basically want a charge/deathgrip/blink ability for enhance? On what cooldown? And keep all the stuff you can do from range at the same time (purge/dispel/flame shock/totems/unleash elements/offheal/hex/etc)?...

An instant gap closer like that would be a possibility, a freedom attached to our uf:fb (or spiritwalk changed to shorter cooldown/duration and a short freedom attached to that instead) would be another. We can dispell, well so can ferals and rets, which have better gap closing. I'd rather have shocks limited to melee range for enh and be up in the enemies' face more often to actually use ss/ll more often. Death Knights have icy touch, but also death grip. It's not like we're totally unique with our few ranged abilities here and there. We can hex from range, but not instant w/o msw, which requires melee, a rogue can cast blind instant from range, a feral can cast cyclone from range, instant too with a certain ability.
Your points aren't really problems. Problems would at best be the mobility enhancing stuff we already have IN ADDITION to getting a freedom effect or instant gap closer. In that case, we could get rid of the sprint attached to uf:fb for a start, and replace it with something else. GW witohut glyph isn't worth much anyway, and with better base utility, less would glyph it. There's still frost shock, but death knights also have their chains of ice, which work similar to a talented frost shock. Overall, enh wouldn't sky rocket to overpowered just through getting freedom-sprint/insta gap closer.

To me it feels like enhance has enough 'mobility tools' as is:
- 15s cd sprint (requires a talent and picking a big dps loss imbue, also easily snare/rootable)
- 1min cd free dispel (sham rage glyph) (though it can be used for dispelling certain snares/stuns/roots, it's no actual mobility tool, also requires a glyph and is tied to our most impormtant dmg mitigation cd)
- ability to break fears through tremor (no mobility, it's a cc counter)
- ability to use windwalk totem (at the cost of of enhance's bread-and-butter gap closing tool: Frozen Power. 5 seconds once a minute are not enough)
- slow/root through frost shock (snares become redundant when you're snared yourself and the target able to run and cast while moved. everyone nowadays has snares and ways to counter them. w/o freedom to counter snares/roots on oneself, it is easy to counter your own snares/roots for others)
- long sprint through spirit walk (while it breaks root/sprints, it does not provide freedom anymore, hence you just get snares/rooted after using it. the long duration is wasted as requiring 15 seconds to close a gap is far to long anyways)
- snare/root through earthgrab (tied to an immobile totem, it is only useful for enh when pillar-humping, not saying it has no uses, but to situational when compared to Frozen Power)
- the ability to catch up through ghostwolf (except it makes you even more susceptible for cc, unable to cast anything without breaking gw, is still dispellable and still snare/rootable. even glyphed it cant hold a candle to a druids travelform)

It would be acceptible for me if CPT had a 3s base charge time and for example a 1s through the glyph. Then you could decide yourself which one to use. Now if you don't use TP and the glyph it becomes pretty useless in pvp.

100% agreement here, a 3 second base charge requires very quick reactions on the enemies part, making it viable for everyday use. glyphed, it would be virtually impossible to counter at the cost of a glyph, which I'd find acceptable.

Reducing the enemy his mobility is basically improving your own. You make a choice in that tier between improving your own mobility or by reducing the enemies mobility. From a philosophical PoV the outcome is the same.

I agree to some point, but: If we had, say FP baseline as enh, we'd still have a harder time gap closing than a ret with his freedom + sprint.
Paladins have a hard time deciding in tier2, and to my knowledge, the tier also contains their only avaiable snare. That said, taking the snare, they'd still have a often avaiable stun superior to cpt and still a good cc even w/o repentance. With the exception of the snare, paladins are not actually giving up already sufficient tools, but really, enhancing those even further. While a snare on range as a talent may seem kinda meh when compared to our root additional to snare (and at this point, I'd like to point out rets as the second worst gap closer class), together with tier1, which in any case provides them with a sprint, and having a baseline freedom often avaiable, rets are better in gap closing, while also having ranged spells like judgement, holy shock, cc, dispells, hand of xx and so forth.

Now back to what it's at: everyone has both good ways to hinder their enemies' speed AND good gap closing (the letter part we're excluded).
So while additional rooting is nice, it does not replace actual gap closing if you are rooted yourself.

I agree with the idea that classes should have the tools, but I feel like ele and enhance do have the tools this patch. Definitely ele.

Ele is quite tanky at the moment, with ancestral swiftness that can proc every 30s, shamanistic rage glyph and lightning shield glyph...

As said, I've never really played as ele, so I may indeed be wrong on that account, just speaking from my experiences against them tbc-cata. Nature's guardian (what I think you meant with ancestral swiftness, as that does not proc) seems like a very nice talent indeed, though even with sr and ls glyph I kinda still doubt/ed that it'd be enough to make ele really able to stand their ground. And I guess there's the rather new pvp4pc which halves ts cd to 22sec, which I guess helps a lot.

That said, I still think enh needs either an instant gap closer or mini-freedom attached to a low cd. I could imagine uf:fb giving you a 2-3sec freedom after unleashing it in addition to the current effect. Though I'd see that as a little meh as it would make uf even more pvp mandatory, it'd be easy to implement. Attaching a leap to uf:fb (and removing the sprint) would be another way.

[zenga]

An instant gap closer like that would be a possibility, a freedom attached to our uf:fb (or spiritwalk changed to shorter cooldown/duration and a short freedom attached to that instead) would be another. We can dispell, well so can ferals and rets, which have better gap closing. I'd rather have shocks limited to melee range for enh and be up in the enemies' face more often to actually use ss/ll more often. Death Knights have icy touch, but also death grip. It's not like we're totally unique with our few ranged abilities here and there. We can hex from range, but not instant w/o msw, which requires melee, a rogue can cast blind instant from range, a feral can cast cyclone from range, instant too with a certain ability.

An enhancement shaman can do more more stuff from ranged than a typical melee just because he has no gap closer. When you are stuck in a root as a warrior you have to scratch your nuts or drink from your coffee, as an enhance you still can do something. It's a different approach. If you want to make enhance into a pure melee class you basically going to have to change a whole lot of spells.

Because ...

Overall, enh wouldn't sky rocket to overpowered just through getting freedom-sprint/insta gap closer.

They are already in a really good spot. Giving them more uptime is gonna be problematic. I can see though why as enhance it's useful to get a spell like emancipate like rets have backed into ghostwolf (probably at a high mana cost).

Now back to what it's at: everyone has both good ways to hinder their enemies' speed AND good gap closing (the letter part we're excluded).
So while additional rooting is nice, it does not replace actual gap closing if you are rooted yourself.

That is the whole point: enhance has tools to deal with slows/roots. Be it baseline, through talents or through glyphs.

As said, I've never really played as ele, so I may indeed be wrong on that account, just speaking from my experiences against them tbc-cata. Nature's guardian (what I think you meant with ancestral swiftness, as that does not proc) seems like a very nice talent indeed, though even with sr and ls glyph I kinda still doubt/ed that it'd be enough to make ele really able to stand their ground. And I guess there's the rather new pvp4pc which halves ts cd to 22sec, which I guess helps a lot.

Yeah I meant NG and not AS. But eles are 'standing their ground' at the moment.

They are the best caster in the game this season. Ridiculous damage and really good survivability (which is partially because rogues and warriors are not OP, if everyone was to play those specs it would tone down ele by default). A lot of topics pop up on pvp forums demanding nerfs for ele (somewhat justified). The cool thing about it is imo that you have multiple ways to be viable as ele. In most tiers you have multiple talents to pick from, depending on the situation. Before every game I switch talents / glyphs around, much more than on alts. Which is a good indication about how good the toolkit is imo.

[Omanley]

An enhancement shaman can do more more stuff from ranged than a typical melee just because he has no gap closer. When you are stuck in a root as a warrior you have to scratch your nuts or drink from your coffee, as an enhance you still can do something. It's a different approach. If you want to make enhance into a pure melee class you basically going to have to change a whole lot of spells.

Warriors have charge, a talent tier to improve on it (lowered cd to 12sec, twice used before cd applies or knockdown) as well as their leap. There's also Avatar, a 30y stun (storm bolt), safeguard (breaks movement impairing), spellreflect and its aoe version, 30y shattering throw, heroic throw... I'd not call that scratching ones' nuts and drinking coffee

They are already in a really good spot. Giving them more uptime is gonna be problematic. I can see though why as enhance it's useful to get a spell like emancipate like rets have backed into ghostwolf (probably at a high mana cost).

Surely you can provide me/us with a arena ranking showing them up there with rogues/warriors and other melees if that's the case? Enhancement is to the biggest part brought because of the burst they are capable of. But outside of Ascendence, which basically screams for cc, they are completely reliant of being in their enemies face a lot. Unlike a warrior or rogue, who can pool his recources and prepare for onslaught, a shaman has very linear damage in form of set cooldowns, which takes the ability to pool damage for a kill outside of being in the opponents' face consistently.

That is the whole point: enhance has tools to deal with slows/roots. Be it baseline, through talents or through glyphs.

Sprints dont "deal" with enemy snares/roots. Talented gw does not really deal with them either. A snared glyphed gw is still to slow for gap closing. Really the only means we have against enemy snares are ascendence (if left un cc'ed), one or two snare/root breaks in form of glyphed sr (which pulls double duty, just like ascendence) and spiritwalk and wwt, requiring a talent and just like the three before, has a high cooldown.

Enh has no short cd means of proper gap closing, it relies on 1-3minute cooldowns, and that's not enough.

edit:
Dont know if it's accurate, but here
arms warrior (6%), uh dk (5,1%), ret (3.8%), sub (3.7%), feral(3.4%), frost (3.3%), windwalker(2%), assa(1.7%), enh(1.4%), making enh the lowest represented melee dps spec in 1.8k+ teams (all brackets)when you consider combat/fury warriors having the ability to go for the more pvp focused alternatives.

In 2v2, we come after uh, feral, ret, arms, ww, sub, frost...
In 3v3, we come after uh, arms, ret, feral, sub and just before ww, with frost a little further down
In 5v5, we come after uh, sub, ret, arms, and feral, a little before frost ww and assa

Now I now close to nothing about monks, never bothered since I quit before they made their appearance, but isn't their gap closing a roll? Wouldn't surprise me if it was part of their low presentation in high ranked team.

[zenga]

Dont know if it's accurate, but here
arms warrior (6%), uh dk (5,1%), ret (3.8%), sub (3.7%), feral(3.4%), frost (3.3%), windwalker(2%), assa(1.7%), enh(1.4%), making enh the lowest represented melee dps spec in 1.8k+ teams (all brackets)when you consider combat/fury warriors having the ability to go for the more pvp focused alternatives.

In 2v2, we come after uh, feral, ret, arms, ww, sub, frost...
In 3v3, we come after uh, arms, ret, feral, sub and just before ww, with frost a little further down
In 5v5, we come after uh, sub, ret, arms, and feral, a little before frost ww and assa

Now I now close to nothing about monks, never bothered since I quit before they made their appearance, but isn't their gap closing a roll? Wouldn't surprise me if it was part of their low presentation in high ranked team.

Honestly the enhancement representation is not really a good indicator to determine it's viability. Yes it will be to a certain extend. Historically enhance is a spec that is not played by the masses. Not to mention that ele is really good now that this might influence the enh representation. Point being, even if enhance would have god status, it would still not be the most represented spec. This season for example, UH, feral, ret are all in a good state (for a good part thanks to hunters), but so is enhance. If you have 4-5 viable melee the spec spread will be more natural. Look at pve, enhance was/is one of the top dps specs, yet far away being the most played spec.

Either way, I agree that enhance can use 'something' to improve pvp, be it emancipate or a buffed ghostwolf. But the last thing this game needs is another gapcloser for enhance, which will lead to more counters for other specs. Not everyone should have the mobility of warriors.