[Elemental] Earthquake idea.

[Cynical Person]

Hello Shaman community,

Made my own thread.

Today I'm here to talk about our favorite AOE spell, Earthquake.

At the moment it feels really clunky and inconsistent to stop what you're doing, use the targeting reticle, and then finally placing the earthquake.

It stops us dead in our tracks and makes it less enjoyable (for me at least) to AOE effective and efficiently. Not to mention wasting all the GCDs to do this as well as setting down LMT...

The Maelstorm gain is very spiky with our current "AOE" spec and I have some ideas to change Earthquake for the better.

They should make EQ into a CD or a toggle buff like a combination of Stormkeeper and Enhancement's Fury of Air talent.

The buff will gradually drain MP similar to Fury of Air.

(Example) "Your chain lightning overloads have a chance to cause an earthquake at the ground of the enemy dealing x amount of damage and knocking down enemies blah blah blah costs 25 MP per second" (Example)

This way we can provide a more constant flow of DPS without having to stop, look where to put EQ, and pick it back up wasting GCD time.

I really, really, really wish they would do this. Please let me know if you think this change would help or if I'm just a big goofball?

Thread posted in WoW Shaman forums, please bump if you support - https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20758965796#1

[Sikplays]

#showtooltip EarthQuake
/cast [@cursor] Earthquake

[Rezhka]

#showtooltip EarthQuake
/cast [@cursor] Earthquake

^^pretty much this

[freddy090909]

I don't really like the idea of just passively draining maelstrom, it would make our AoE rotation even simpler (you compare it to Fury of Air, which is an incredibly boring talent). If they were to switch to this model, it would be because CL is more interesting to press than EQ, in which case it would likely be better to either scrap EQ (allowing for more power in the "interesting" ability) or to address why EQ feels bad to press.

If they were to switch to a "drain"-based model, it would be important to make sure that it could eventually drain you out (a la insanity) and it would likely need to cost a GCD on activation. That said, I honestly prefer spending GCDs, it makes us more mobile and allows the ability to be more powerful than it could be if it were simply toggled. My only real complaint with EQ, now that they've made it actually usable, is the frequency at which we need to hit it.

[Zulatomten]

#showtooltip EarthQuake
/cast [@cursor] Earthquake

The fact that you are required to have the macro to use the ability effectivly(aka not wasting time) is exactly why it's badly designed. The visually and audio wise it's pretty dull aswell...

Since current version of Earthquake doens't feel like a powerful move at all in any way. You have built up some resources, click the button. Then your character just stands there, doing nothing. To then when you click the green circle, you raise your hand into the sky and a rather dull looking visual appears on the ground with a rather weak sounding effect which already gets dulled by all of your other spells visual and sound.

Take an example like Chain Lightning, CL is a much more appealing spell compared to EQ. When you cast CL you see a ligthning strike crackling in the sky jumping from target to target, it has a great sounding sizzeling soundeffect and sounds like you're delivering a real punch to whoever is on the recieving end of CL.
The new animations for (LB)Lava Bursts also reinforces this, while your character casts LB, it looks like they are pulling up the heat of slag and magma out of the ground into a ball which you then launch at the enemy. The feel of the sounds are amazing, feels like you're throwing sledgehammers onto your target. Nearly All of the Elemental Shaman spells have great sound effect and visuals. Earthshock feels heavy and "meaty". Icefury and Frost shock while they arn't very visually stunning but they an icy brittle sounding effect.

What i think could be done to improve it, mechanically, visually and by sound.
First remove the clunkyness of using the ability in your rotation. Either by making an option where you can make all spells with a target area(Earthquake, Blizzard, Death and Decay, etc) is either directly under your current target or where the mouse is located, to remove the need to have the macro.
Second, while what OP suggest might be a bit narrow, to just merge the Shadow priest insanity drain and and Enhancements Fury of Air. It could be a step into the right direction. If it instead was something like Affliction Warlocks Alpha talent Soul Effigy(made a target you could multi dot to do more damage on your main target) and have the ability instead be have the player throw out a totem which the player charge by channeling maelstrom resources into it. One way of charging the totem could be to use earthshock on the totem, transfering all the resources put into the totem which then deals damage.


TL;DR Earthquake kinda sucks, mechanically clunky and both visually and audio wise it's pretty lackluster. It could be much better.

[Deleted]

Why not just have EQ cast on a target location?