I really hate FoA.

[YanquiUXO]

I hate the buggy animation. I hate that it's not independent of the GCD. Can I take Sundering or CS instead?

[MisterBigglez]

Noone is forcing you to use it just have fun and pick whatever you want.

[Imnick]

Why does it matter if it is on the GCD when you press it once at the start of the fight and then that's it?

[mistahwilshire]

Agreed. I can't stand it. The animation is terrible and the spell feels like it has no impact whatsoever. Who asked for this retarded talent? Or really, who asked for our playstyle to change completely from 7.1 to begin with. We were so fucking good and now we're ridiculously clunky. Sigh.

Noone is forcing you to use it just have fun and pick whatever you want.

This wasn't correct when people said it 10 years ago and it still isn't.

[bloodwulf]

I guess I am one of the few that like it. I always felt that shaman needed more Wind Elemental representation, and this just makes us look like a whirling dervish.

As to can you take CS or Sundering? Yes, no one is stopping you. You will almost always perform better playing a playstyle you enjoy. I for one enjoy our new playstyle and love that Hailstorm is gone, i just felt that frostbrand and flametongue had basically no difference, you press your orange short buff, and you press your blue short buff. I don't feel that our new build is "clunky" at all. My biggest difficulty is finding out which talent I want to run row one, I like the burst of WS and feel I may stick it with, but HH is kind of fun as well having a second mole to whack.

[mistahwilshire]

I guess I am one of the few that like it. I always felt that shaman needed more Wind Elemental representation, and this just makes us look like a whirling dervish.

As to can you take CS or Sundering? Yes, no one is stopping you. You will almost always perform better playing a playstyle you enjoy. I for one enjoy our new playstyle and love that Hailstorm is gone, i just felt that frostbrand and flametongue had basically no difference, you press your orange short buff, and you press your blue short buff. I don't feel that our new build is "clunky" at all. My biggest difficulty is finding out which talent I want to run row one, I like the burst of WS and feel I may stick it with, but HH is kind of fun as well having a second mole to whack.

You press it one time at the beginning of the fight. It's not really a choice because it's effectively impossible to screw up. Pressing FoA one time in your opening sequence does more damage over a fight than those other choices you may enjoy more. You will not perform better with them because you cannot FoA incorrectly.

[Foxhoundn]

So I get it you never played the D3 monk?

[bloodwulf]

FoA does more of our damage than any other spell and it's not even remotely close. You press it one time at the beginning of the fight. It's not really a choice because it's our most damaging spell and effectively impossible to screw up.

And I know that, I was advising OP that if he hates the spell and has issues with it, he will probably be better off without it. It really is a fire and forget spell for free damage, so I can not figure out how people have issue with it, but to each their own. It is a game and you are playing it, so you should play the game how you want.

Also the highest enhance parse out of the 5 (lol) M Helya kills for yesterday/today was running the old prepatch build. Yeah way too small of sample size, but it just goes to show if you know what you are doing you can perform well. The same person was 2 highest enhance on M Odyn kills.

So I get it you never played the D3 monk?

I wanted to make that comparison but held back. I loved playing Monk in D3 and the spell is virtually the same (except no badass lightning tornadoes firing off to proc life on hit...)

[Creekz]

So I get it you never played the D3 monk?

Or D2 Druid.

[mistahwilshire]

And I know that, I was advising OP that if he hates the spell and has issues with it, he will probably be better off without it. It really is a fire and forget spell for free damage, so I can not figure out how people have issue with it, but to each their own. It is a game and you are playing it, so you should play the game how you want.

Well then no he really won't be better off without it. As we've both now said, it's fire and forget for the best damage in the tier. You cannot fuck it up. You're just doing yourself and your raid a disservice picking anything else because it's literally one button free damage with no possible room for error to occur.

The issue with it is that it's the most boring talent in our entire tree. It's the most boring active spell you have to press in the entire game. It interacts with no legendaries or passives. The animation is horrendously buggy and awful to stare at for entire raid rights even when it does work. It's just lazy beyond belief. Blizzard wanted us to have a nature based aura of AoE damage and never put any more thought in to it beyond that. At least Monks get to maintain their's despite it being super easy to do. That's still something. As is this is one of the worst spells I've ever seen design-wise.

[Deleted]

it's crazy though, isn't it? Blizz keeps saying they don't want us to be using fire-and-forget spells. they overnerf Boulderfist so we definitely won't be using it for convenience sake. and then 1 week later they force us to use this other fire-and-forget spell instead. it really makes you wonder how Blizzard ever comes up with decent designs when they are this oblivious. it must be sheer luck everytime it happens.

[Deleted]

shaman in 7.1.5 feels like : you there, you did geat damage and you had a really good rotation / priority list.
we, as blizzard, think that our opinion of your class is way better. we will nerf your hailstrom so that your bis ring legendary gets not a 25% nerf, it gets a 50% nerf. your legendary wrists are as useless as no item equiped at all.
we also think that you should have more stormstrike proccs, but we want you to not use them all.

please say thanks and be fine!

[Deleted]

Who ever is the class dessigners for Shaman have no clue what to do with the class.

[Murderdoll]

I dislike it because it takes almost zero skill to use. Its just there. You set and largely forget all about it. Because the animation disappears you need to make a WA to make sure its still up because youve forgotten all about it.

[Spirthealer]

Noone is forcing you to use it just have fun and pick whatever you want.

I love when people that don't raid or even try to do good numbers in raids tell people to pick what is fun... if FOA does more dps it gets picked easy as that... Its a boring clunky talent yet its the best talent which forces us to pick it. so plz if ur going to try this pick what is fun troll, maybe remember raider have to pick numbers first.

[MisterBigglez]

I love when people that don't raid or even try to do good numbers in raids tell people to pick what is fun... if FOA does more dps it gets picked easy as that... Its a boring clunky talent yet its the best talent which forces us to pick it. so plz if ur going to try this pick what is fun troll, maybe remember raider have to pick numbers first.

I like how you assumed that I don't raid. All I said was that the op could play whatever they wanted, if the op wants to take an inferior talent, that is their choice and they will have to accept that they won't deal as much damage. Also look at my logs and then say I don't do good numbers cause id beg to differ.

[ehxy]

I think the problem is the shaman rotation is no longer a two phase type of rotation.

1. maintain FT
2. throw up windsong on cooldown
3. use doomwinds on cooldown
4. use feral wolves on cooldown.
5. never zero out your maelstrom else you lose FoA
6. use stormbringer procs while leaping the hurdles of everything else
7. use lb on cooldown
8. every 5 seconds prepare to have more than 60 maelstrom so you can LB and rockbiter again to continue with ss spam


Unless the 2p/4p change what we do(40% crit chanceon stormstrike from stormbringer? Changes nothing)(20% more chance to gain stormbringer proc from LL, hey don't we have a skill that feels like that already in CL? just sayin!). We've now got this 50 maelstrom hitter that if we aren't using on cd is a loss so we have to be constantly spamming rockbiter and hell ignoring stormbringer procs to build enough maelstrom every time it's about to come off CD.

while before it was, put up and maintain your buffs, go to town with stormstrike while using your two cooldowns spaced out by how much maelstrom you needed on cooldown? no stormbringer no problem hit CL and hope for a proc. More than one target? two you say well that just double your chances for a proc! and so on.

It just feels like stormstrike is just the thing we do so we're not completely shit when lightning bolt is on cooldown.

[Jaese]

They really had something good with the 7.1 rotation. It was engaging. It was fun to go on a Stormstrike bender when the stars aligned. Sure, there were wild variances in performance, but it was fun all the same. This new setup is just not fun to me anymore. Rockbiter spam is just awful and with the SA nerf, this spec is just a shadow of what it was.

[Imnick]

You guys are aware that you don't use Overcharge on any boss with more than one target right? And that you also don't take it when you have the 4 set? And that Tempest is even sometimes viable in single target fights with just the 2 set depending on your gear?
There's only 2 single target fights in nighthold, jsyk.

[Emophia]

I like it, it's earth biter I have a problem with.

I also miss using hailstorm.