Cataclysm from a Shaman perspective

[Teriz]

So Cataclysm is coming to an end this week. What are your thoughts of the expansion from the Shaman PoV? Did you enjoy the experiences you had battling against Deathwing, or did you feel that we went backwards as a class after the end of Wrath? Do you feel that the changes the class went through were a net positive or a net negative?

[Deleted]

If you look at where we were at the end of Wrath compared to now, we have progressed hugely. From an Elemental PoV at the end of wrath we had a completely stationary rotation that could be put into a macro if you wanted too, where as now we have a dynamic rotation with multiple procs, much better movement and actual AoE. At the end of Wrath our AoE was basically non-existent, it was Magma Totem, then Thunderstorm, then CL every 2 seconds, else it was just a single target rotation. Then we have the amazing Healing Rain, easily my favourite thing added in Cataclysm personally.

I think we have come on leaps and bounds mechanically, and coming from a completely personal PoV I loved Cataclysm. Wrath was a better expansion for me because I much prefered the content - and I was new to WoW in Wrath so I had the whole "New Game Wonder" thing going on, but from a shaman PoV Cataclysm destroyed Wrath.

[SenSayNyu]

Yeah, kiting trash packs in Firelands as elemental was really fun ;D

[Teriz]

I agree with most of what you said Underfetter. I also personally liked Fulmination, Healing Rain, and the Ancestral Healing change.

I felt one of the large disappointments was Earthquake. It was one of my favorite spells from WC3, and I really felt that it could have been a lot better.

[Deleted]

From an enh shaman, who played this spec for a few years now, I would say that enh in FL was by far the most interesting, and potent spec that enh ever had. Was also the most fun to play, at least for me, because of the sp weapons, interesting rotation with hard casts and all that.

[Barky]

Speaking purely enhancement PvE here:

Pros:
I think the changes at the start of Cata were great, The streamlined priority system when we weren't GCD locked was much better. A lot of shamans may disagree with me there, while i did enjoy always having something to press, I found if you had to move or it wasn't the ideal Deathbringer Saurfang / Patchwerk encounter with little / no movement, a little hiccup could screw up everything. Plus I also liked having a kind of combo esque system with Searing Flames to make an ability hit a lot harder. I also liked that they finally gave enhancement decent AoE on similar level mobs (be it a couple of patches later not on Cata release). Unleash Weapon is a nice ability given to us as well, allowing the double dip into FT and WF for nice buffs, and I even like healing rain, I use it occasionally with MW5's in certain encounters to take the sting off for the healers. Spiritwalker's grace isn't really useful for enhancement apart from the occasional running while hard-casting LB in a phase where you have to be ranged. I also loved being the best interrupt class in the game, I'm going to miss that SO much.

Cons:
Scaling issue still not good for the entire expansion, the fact haste was made next to useless for an entire expansion was very frustrating. The Searing flames mechanic while an interesting mechanic with the totem, it was clunky and made it very awkward while swpaping targets. The AoE mechanic is really awful when facing lower level mobs since it needs a Lava Lash to spread it and they usually die before the Flame Shocks spread. What I REALLY didn't like was the fact that our fire elemental totem has been utterly useless for pretty much an entire expansion as well. I know this is getting fixed in MoP but I just wanted to vent the frustration.

TL,DR: Pro: mechanics were better overall. Cons: Scaling issues and the odd mechanic not being as good as it should be. But overall Enh shamans are in a much better place than they were before, with nice things on the horizon.

[Radux]

For Restoration the expansion was kind of a let down, and I'm still not crazy at the direction things are headed for MoP (again, just healing perspective).

I totally understand wanting to get away from "CH ALL the things!" and try to get a bit more diversity in spell selection. I totally can get behind that. But as a whole, not a ton went 'right'. Really, they did a pretty terrible job tuning PvE/PvP for Restoration this expansion.

Here's my 'off the top of my head' breakdown of right and wrong --

Right:

• Mastery - Not a lot to add to that. I love the concept and potential of Deep Healing.
• SLT - I think it's a pretty good addition to the CD arsenal. Though I wish it was a Single target buff that just worked with the players around the buffed person.
• Ancestral Vigor - I know this is really stretching the list, but I really love the idea (not just Shaman, but class design as a whole) of classes/specs bringing a minor buff that makes them unique but not overpowered. AV does this pretty well.

Wrong:

• HR - Good powerful heal, but ended up causing far too many restrictions than it helped fill in the gaps. I like the overall theme of the short duration, HoT style AoE heal to diversify a bit from CH. But they just added one clump-up AoE to an arsenal that already had one. More Fail than Win here, imo.
• UE - Good idea trying to get us to buff our heals. It's good for movement, and can definitely give you a minor boost for knowing an encounter. However, I would have preferred something with a bit more excitement (like getting TW stacks from Riptide) outside of 'oh yay, saving a bit of mana for a marginal healing output gain! yay....'. Had potential, but fell a bit short.
• TC - Yeah yeah, I know it's powerful (too powerful). But really disliked having to dps for my mana. Perhaps I just liked the idea of being smart with my heals/mana (like TBC 5 second rule, or maximizing Rapture returns for Disc) that felt rewarding. Not 'oh I have 2 seconds, let's get some mana return by dpsing!'. I'm all for doing some dps to help the boss die quicker, or even having said dps somehow alter your healing (think Dream of Cenarius or FI) slightly. But I don't want it to be so much of a crutch that it's hard to stand without it. Definitely think the MoP version is a step in the right direction.

Things that are meh and bother me:

• Tidal Waves - As a whole, love the idea. I specifically like the Hasted HW/GHW portions. What I dislike is having A.) CH activate it and B.) the Crit portion of HS. My proposed solution would be to have CH and Riptide activate TW, but alter the buffs.
  
  • Riptide activates - Reduces the mana cost of your next 3 spells by 15%/10%/5% (lowering it to the next after each spell).
  • CH activates - Reduces casting time of your next 3 spells by 30% (does not affect HoT ticks or softcaps or whatever).
  Mostly the idea is that it doesn't limit your spell usage under TW, unlike now.
• Earth Shield - It's a fire and forget buff. I would've loved if they had somehow incorporated a single target tank CD into having ES on someone. Something like "Reduce damage taken by 30% and heals target for X, based on how many stacks of ES are active - Lasts 6 seconds". I dunno. I just want it to be something more than "oh, ES is down. gotta refresh to keep my 15% single target buff going".
• AA - Actually love the concept. I just wish (and would actually help alleviate a lot of spread AoE) it would work with CH; even if they did have to tone down the % a little bit.

That's my list/gripes/praises for Resto specific stuff (off the top of my head), but I'm not going to push any more effort by compiling my entire class/all-3-spec lists here.

[Eliot123]

From restoration PvE point of view, Cataclysm was... so-so, at best. At times it was fun but mostly it was just really frustrating, having many very stupid mechanics that other classes don't have to deal with and unfair trade-offs. Compared to WotLK, it was nice to have Healing Rain and Telluric Currents (loved weaving in LBs with heals for extra mana) so I liked that part but other than that, not much was different (other than mana regen, obviously). In PvP, it was kinda fun.

From off-spec elemental points of view, PvE was loads of fun but PvP was torture at times, after being slaughtered (read: outclassed) by rogues with half a brain for months upon months now, I'm not even sure I want to play a shaman in MoP anymore, but we'll see.

All in all, it was nice, but compared to what other classes had a lot of the time in Cataclysm, I feel shamans were behind in many areas... not saying they still weren't fun to play, though. After playing a shaman as main whole TBC, whole WotLK and whole Cataclysm, I might change for something else for MoP.... thinking between a resto/moonkin and holy/ret.

Yeah, kiting trash packs in Firelands as elemental was really fun ;D

Oh yes, that was fun. Made hundreds of thousands of gold with that! Got Vials of Sands, Tundra mammoths and choppers for 3 characters. xD

[Opolus]

Elemental:
Tier 12 had the best tier bonus for elemental shamans and specially the timing of the unleash lightning glyph on to that set was just amazing, I was really happy with the changes made that time, though the 4 piece set bonus is a specialization with MoP is really decent.. However I did not really enjoy the non brain Chain Lightning spam, it is good but kinda boring (cool animations tough ) the flame shock spread mechanic was pain in ass and was more of a challange altough low dps..

Resto:
Mastery is lovelly, pvping as resto is kinda fun due to that, 100k heal crits gotta love, healing surge is decent'ish, telluric currents is great specially on nerfed content gaved us something to do, the focused insight was an intresting change also.. Healing Rain is decent yo. Despite that good changes I kinda miss the haste we had in WoTLK that was a hard change for me overall.

[Nisala]

I thoroughly enjoyed Elemental in cataclysm so much so that I rerolled from a discipline priest to an elemental shaman! I love the increased mobility sourced through the UL glyph, I love the fulmination mechanic and the small amount of management that underpins the FS/ES cooldown usage. Removing the cooldown from chain lightning was a fantastic move and I thoroughly enjoy the spell now - as do most of my teammates who celebrate the animation and just the cool factor it possesses! :P Of course, spell animation for lightning bolt was updated and I feel they did a great job - I really feel good seeing this stream of lightning bolts coming from my character - it looks fantastic. Adding onto that was the mastery, which is just absolutely brilliant. Duplicating spells is a wonderful mechanic and I know it existed in a bit more of an underwhelming form in WotLK but it's really taken off with mastery this time.

I feel we've still got a way to go (and certainly, Blizzard have taken several steps in the right direction in MoP, it seems) in terms of defensive cooldowns. It would be good to see our rotation be made a little more complex as I still feel too much time is spent lightning bolting - and obviously with the onset of level 90 talents we potentially have 1 of 2 new spells in the rotation - UE & EB.

[Blitond]

Elemental PoV

PvE- Pretty happy with what they did with elemental in Cata. More dynamic rotation, actual AoE, Lava Surge, and Fulmination. Mobility was a huge improvement with GoUL and SWG. I think UE and Earthquake could have been better, but overall I was pleased with Elemental.

PvP - Not so happy. Blizzard didn't seem to focus on what Elementals core problems were in PvP. A few things were added, but not enough imo. Sadly MoP looks like it's going down the same path as Cata. I was really hoping when they forced you to pick a spec that they could better address some of these issues, but it didn't happen. Not very pleased with Cata in the PvP regard.

[Deleted]

From an enh shaman, who played this spec for a few years now, I would say that enh in FL was by far the most interesting, and potent spec that enh ever had.

Totally agree with this guy. And Barky too.
Cataclysm as an x-pack was pretty mediocore tho (content, story etc....)

[woopytywoop]

From an enh shaman, who played this spec for a few years now, I would say that enh in FL was by far the most interesting, and potent spec that enh ever had. Was also the most fun to play, at least for me, because of the sp weapons, interesting rotation with hard casts and all that.

I agree with this. Coming from wrath to cata, the gaps were annoying and i also enjoyed the hard casting in FL (which the majority of enhancers disliked as melee).

[Barky]

I don't really agree with the sp weapons though. I'm very glad that we don't use them as enhancement now. got sick and tired of them being BiS in early WotLK haha

[Deleted]

lore pov.

I played a paladin and DK in Wotlk. I felt that I was really a part of the whole environment and lore. In cata, as I main a shaman, I missed that feeling. All the attention went to Thrall and Malfurion. Druids got their flaming cat form, where as shamans got nothing specific. Now this isn't a QQ for not being Flavour of the expansion. But I really disliked it. Although I liked the elemental bonds Questline.

Enhancement PoV.

It was a good experience, I didn't feel underpowered nor overpowered but I knew how to shock players in both PvP and PvE. Knowing your class has its perks eh?

Elemental PoV.

I went Elemental in the last patch, got my legendary staff, then switched back to enhancement. Elemental feels like an uncompleted spec.

Overall.

Cata was an average experience and was a disguised slap to the face to shamans. But gameplay wise it was satisfying.

[zenga]

Ele:

PVE

Tier 11: By far the most challenging rotation elemental had, and while the spec was behind I enjoyed it a lot.
Tier 12: Ele was really good & enjoyable thanks to the 4p set bonus & moving LB glyph. The skillcap got dumbed down a lot compared to the previous tier. The flame shock mechanic was very interesting but not very realistic for the type of boss encounters in the game.
Tier 13: I didn't really enjoy playing ele with the chain lightning w/o CD. The more because we were set back when going into DS due to a nerfed T12 set bonus, making it quite frustrating as long as we didn't have a 4p T13 bonus.

I don't like how they kept shoving Earthquake through our throat. Started to hate the spell gradually more and more to an extend I'd rather have it removed.

PVP

S9: It started out ok, with purge, blood lust and ok healing. After all those nerfs, it was a real drama in arena. Even in rbg there was no reason to take an ele over another class.
S10: needed changes came into play, to an extend where I was 1 shotting T2 geared players with dragonwrath to get 1 shot myself one game later by melee cleave. Ele was viable (actually good) in RBG's.
S11: the damage every spec could do was way too high compared to ele's defensive abilities & health pool. It's somewhat OK in 3s if you are a masochist and your peers don't mind playing with you, but far behind the majority of the specs. Ele is really good in RBG's.

If I could make the most interesting pve rotation for myself:

- T12 flame shock mechanics with fire nova, though a much wider area of effect
- No more fire elemental, just searing totem with a CD we can activate to boost the numbers
- Instant earthquake
- no more glyph of moving lightning bolt
- T12 4p set bonus (lava surge proc makes LvB instant, like in mop)
- spirit walker's grace duration & CD cut into 3 through a glyph -> shorter duration and shorter cd
- cd on chain lightning is equal to the cast time or gcd (so you can no longer spam it)
- glyph of elemental mastery that mitigates 90% of all incoming damage (instead of the live 20%), just like shadow priests, but unable to cast; lightning bolts/lava burst/chain lightning still reduce the cd by 3s. I really like the mechanic of that glyph: an ability that you can use offensively and defensively. It should just be paired with another spell (spirit walker's grace?) that activates the defensive mechanic.

Summary

In PVE it was so so. Definitely got a higher skillcap to be a good ele shaman compared to wrath.
In arena: absolutely terrible, a disgrace for the game.
In rbg: ele has it's place in every rbg team.

[Omanley]

I quit just before Fl, so I guess I cannot say all to much about cata as an x-pack, but it kinda pissed me off that enh got cheated out of the 2nd legendary, which could've perfectly included enhance as well. Was kinda a slap in the face, them making a unique for one(!) single class, to the point of making daggers workable for combat, but not getting the idea of, dunno, making a dual-fist set that includes enh.

For the first time since enh became an actual raiding spec we'll be able to get a legendary in MoP, only that everyone else will be able to get one as well. Kinda dumb, as it destroys the flavor of legendary and blizz with dragonwrath mess didn't appear to me to make such a mistake again. Even more dumb since rogues now have two legendaries in a row now.
Plus legendaries will likely be distributed to tanks first, then healers, then best dps specs, then us :-/ (assuming you dont attain the legendary as the whole raid, which would cheapen it even more).

But I digress. I dont think legendaries are that important an aspect of the game, and I wouldn't have uttered a single word over a tanking legendary either, but the daggers were kinda insulting to me still.

[Deleted]

I quit just before Fl, so I guess I cannot say all to much about cata as an x-pack, but it kinda pissed me off that enh got cheated out of the 2nd legendary, which could've perfectly included enhance as well. Was kinda a slap in the face, them making a unique for one(!) single class, to the point of making daggers workable for combat, but not getting the idea of, dunno, making a dual-fist set that includes enh.

For the first time since enh became an actual raiding spec we'll be able to get a legendary in MoP, only that everyone else will be able to get one as well. Kinda dumb, as it destroys the flavor of legendary and blizz with dragonwrath mess didn't appear to me to make such a mistake again. Even more dumb since rogues now have two legendaries in a row now.
Plus legendaries will likely be distributed to tanks first, then healers, then best dps specs, then us :-/ (assuming you dont attain the legendary as the whole raid, which would cheapen it even more).

But I digress. I dont think legendaries are that important an aspect of the game, and I wouldn't have uttered a single word over a tanking legendary either, but the daggers were kinda insulting to me still.

The daggers were completely unique. After Dragonwrath and the 'basically everyone can have one lololololol' they decided to try out making it utterly unique because by far the most epic part of the Dragonwrath chain was working out how your class could beat the Nexus quest. They made the quest completely tailor made for rogues, with the whole chain involving stealthing past things and through dungeons. Heck the first part of the chain in the raid involved pickpocketing a boss. It wasn't a fuck you to Shaman, it was them trying out single class legendaries. Whether that was a good decision or not is a different issue. Obviously they decided the everyone gets it option is better than the 1 person gets it option, hence EVERYONE gets one in Mists.

[Sarevokcz]

ele:
+
Fulmi mechanics was an improvement.
GoUL made the shaman fun again for me.
Finally we got some decent AoE/burst AoE capabilities.
-
totems AI.
we sucked in competitive arenas whole expansion

resto:
+
UE
powerful in pvp
-
Healing Rain - IMO broke more than fixed, didnt help with the issues we had, instead reinforced our already strong points.
mastery - IMO the main reason for resto OPness in pvp and still one thing I would completely redesign from scratch if I had the choice.

[Cai]

I actually really enjoyed Cata as a Shaman, we started out really weak and now we are strong. From Wrath til now I think the class in itself has progressed forward. Enh has actually gotten a lot better since Wrath days, I enjoy Enh more now than I did in Wrath. Resto in Wrath was pretty dull spam Chain Heal, keep Water Shield up, and throw Riptide of Tanks. Resto now is something I would not trade for the world, kind of hate Telluric Currents getting nerfed for Mists, I liked spamming LB's for mana it gave me something to do during a phase where healing is minimal. I have barely played Ele to have an opinion about the spec. In all I have been very pleased with the Shaman class throughout Cata and I can't wait for Mists.