Its time for some talent updates.

[Teriz]

I'm really surprised by the lack of significant talent changes in the Shaman class. Outside of some minor tweaks, the talents have largely remained the same since the start of the expansion. Some talents really need to get changed, or removed completely.

Here are my thoughts;

Tier 1: This tier is functional, and fulfills the desperate need of the class for a defensive CD. I don't have any issue with this tier.
Tier 2: This tier bugs the hell out of me. I dislike having both CCs in this tier tied to existing abilities. I also dislike WW totem being in this tier, since its not a CC, but a CC removal ability.

Changes: WW should really be baslined, and replaced with Repulsion Totem, or even Undertow Totem due to the lack of Water Totems. Frozen Power should remove the damage component from Frost Shock and have a separate CD. Earthgrasp is fine.

Tier 3: Terrible tier IMO. I would scrap these talents and just start over. However, a lot of people enjoy CoE and TR, so I would keep them just because there really isn't much else you can do with totems.

Changes: Reluctantly keep the existing talents, but Totem Trap Launcher should be baselined, and actually function like Hunter trap launcher. Reolace Totem Projection with Elemental Harmony.

Tier 4: I'm fine with this tier. Though Druids supposedly getting Nature's Swiftness baselined makes me think Shaman should get the same thing with Ancestral Swiftness.

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.

Changes: This has been discussed to death. Either baseline HTT and AG, or bring Conductivity up to the other talent's levels of usefulness.

Tier 6: This tier is boring and dull. Its like Tier 2, but worse, and what makes it worse is that its our level 90 talents. Talents that should make our eyes pop with amazement and satisfaction. Instead, they're just "there". We use them because we have to use them. On my Monk, I was quite happy to finally unleash Xuen, or zip around a room with Chi Torpedo. When I got to level 90 on my Shaman, I literally looked at my talent selection and sighed.

Changes: Primal Elementalist should grant an Elemental pet based on spec. So yes, Shaman become a pet class, and the Elemental pet is permanent, and assists the Shaman in their role. Elemental Blast should have an AoE component, and FINALLY have a healing component to make it worthwhile for Restoration Shaman to pick up. Unleashed Fury can stay or go. I don't care either way.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, post them here.

[Recom]

Here are my thoughts on the matter :

Tier 1 : SBT should be even stronger. The +33% in 5.4 is nice but the ticking shield should be stronger as well. AG and NG are fine imo.

Tier 2 : As a PVE player I agree that this tier is a complete waste. Earthbind is nice for solo content but is useless or dangerous in a raiding environment, Frost Shock is plain and simple useless, I've never even specced it once since the launch and WW is very limited (and goes against the CC orientation of the tier).

Tier 3 : Very underwhelming tier again, all 3 talents have their use here and there but you mostly don't rely on them. Not every tier should be good and useful every time so I'm fine with it.

Tier 4 : Good tier overall, I still believe that EotE shouldn't be here since it's a "haste" tier but it's also an "output" tier so that's ok I guess. Imo AS is underwhelming and could use a slight buff.

Tier 5 : As an ele shaman I find this tier OK, HTT is getting a major buff for dps specs which will make it a valid choice. Conductivity (both the old and new version) is weird and I don't see a lot of opportunity to use it, this is also due to the way encounters are designed, if bosses were more like Ra-den P2 then we (dps) could use it more.

Tier 6 : Some good and bad here.
UF is definitely terrible as Ele, buffing a weak spell to empower an other spell is just not fun IMO, if it boosted UE damage to something worth using I would start looking into that but in the current form I'll never take it. I didn't spend a lot of time playing enha but I found it ok, not terribly cool and whatnot but still ok.
PE is fun, I love seeing the empowered elem and I love FET's burst, I don't think they should change this talent.
EB is awkward, it's terrible to use as enha (and I don't dislike hardcasting) and Resto but it fits ele's rotation perfectly. I think it should be baked somehow in ele's core kit and replaced by a new talent that fits the tier idea of empowering 1 of you spell (as opposed to giving you a new spell like it is now).

[shammypie]

make totemic projection baseline
new talent: Totemic Ghost, 1 min cooldowin that extends your current totem's duration by 50% for any toten with a cd less than 3 minutes. harmony is pretty good for the tier but the other choices are too much qol solutions that they should be more baseline. or have things like totemic vigor baseline.

also UF is a good pvp talent so don't hate on it. EB is good for ele in both pve/pvp and is difficult to master but can help boost enhance greatly especially with 2pc. would like to see better resto options though.

tier 2 is a pvp utility tier and is not a complete waste like many believe. furthermore windwalk and earthgrab have several uses in raiding. you aren't suppose to have all the cc in the world and your suppose to make a competitive choice. for instance cc removal might be better than rooting an enemy if persay your fighting a rogue and the speed reduction on you makes it impossible to get away. this tier is very good as is.

Conductivity ..... yeah

[Taalyn]

EB empowers all of your spells through the stat boost buff.

[zenga]

I think (and pretty much been thinking since the start) that the shaman talent tree is incredibly interesting. In PVP I pretty much swap talents around every other game (both as ele and as resto). That is an indication that it's a smart tree, it gives choices. In PVE most talents have been proven useful sooner or later as well for elemental (i.e. freedom on the stone guards hc, astral shift to mitigate dmg on grand empress hc, conductivity as ele has it's niches as well).

Really if anything the shaman talent tree is very interesting, fairly balanced and allows the player to make smart choices.
Tier 3 for example is a great example for this: TP for relocating capacitor totem or roots, but you can also chose to cut the grounding/tremor CD in half (any clue how good this is?). And call of the elements is a prep light vs. This tier is so good in pvp and allows you to do different things. Same for T2, chose between a freedom, an aoe root or a single target root on a 5s cd.

And what makes the talent tree even more interesting to me is the interaction between different tiers.

[mrinvisable2]

T1 seems decent now
T2 boring 2 of them old talents and could improve it a bit with secondary effect (after frost shock gain sprint/ EG slow immunity in area/ ww repulses ppl in area)
T3 SCRAP and rework
T4 AS baseline and elemental mastery turn in to previous version like it was in ele spec
T5 HTT baseline for resto ( htt could be replaced with SLT ) or ad new go and forget type cd(Overcharged grounding when placed randomly absorbs full spell impact for 6 sec 6charges, not debufs so put in raid it will intercept spell that would hit random raid member)
And ofc conductivity scraped they have tryed to make it work for so many times.
T6 Unleashed furry OF GCD and improved earthliving unleash and unleash flame could boost something for ele like EQ)
Primal elementalist make it perma pet or ad water elemental for resto it would replace fire one but also could do dmg
AND ELEMENTAL BLAST baseline for elemental spec as its useless for resto / and clunky for enha

[Teriz]

EB empowers all of your spells through the stat boost buff.

And it's not enough to make it a worthy lvl 90 talent. It should be instant cast at the very least, and grant a healing component at most. A 2 sec cast time with a 12 sec CD is a bit ridiculous compared to similar level 90 talents.

[Omanley]

Make AG baseline for enh and ele, and HTT baseline for resto. Blizz has problems with designing conductivity anyway, and dps takes AG and resto htt always anyways.
Also a healing based tier on a class with only one healing spec is bogus anyway.

Replace the entire 5th tier with something different. My suggestion: Mobility. Swap WW totem into this new tier, and introduce to other abilities that grant freedom.
-Make WW totem the aoe version, useful in raids and big bgs/rbgs or when running an arena comp heavy on pillar humping and sticking together
-Add one talent that lets your unleash (regardless of which imbues are used) grant you 3 seconds freedom and a 6 second sprint. This will replace UF:FB's effect, and either give UF:FB a different effect (stun, reduced casting/attack speed debuff), or remove fb entirely and add that snare into ft (we lose far to much damage using fb over it anyways)
-The 3rd talent is a freedom effect that can be cast on a select target, with a cooldown somewhere inbetween the unleash, which is self only, and the totem, which is aoe

For SBT to be a real option, they have to scrape the one-totem-per-element thing. It requires 30 seconds of uptime for full effect, which blocks other totems. I see no point in the over time effect unless blizz does something about all the obstacles in its way. They should also allow the absorb to stack. Let enemies be punished for ignoring the totem, and users be rewarded for hiding it well. An SBT ticking all its way should provide a serious survivability boon, or what would be its advantage over the other, more reliable talents in its tier?

For the now open tier2 slot, It'd be cool to have another cc talent. Hex and CPT need to be looked at baseline (hex being instant for enh, no cd for ele and generally causing the target to hop around uncontrollably like it does in pve, with CPT having lower charge up time),
=> the talent could then enhance hex to cause an epidemic, "frogging" aother nearby target 3 seconds after the first. This effect cannot occur more than twice for a hex spell casted.

Tier3: TP is replaced by:
Totemic Artillery(replaces TP from tier3): Turns your Capacitor totem into a Thunder Bomb and your Magma Totem into a Fire Bomb.
Thunder Bomb: Your Capacitor Totem can now be thrown and explodes on impact, additionally snaring targets for three seconds after its stun expires
Fire Bomb: Your Magma totem can now be thrown and triggers a fire nova on impact

Totemic restoration replacement
Vengeance of the ancestors: Destroying a totem with a cooldown of 30 or more seconds will stun the target for 2 to 5 seconds, depending on the totems' cooldown.
(30 seconds => 2 seconds, 1min 3sec, 2min 4sec, 3min+ => 5sec

Call of the Elements (stays but changed)
Now also works on higher cooldown totems, but adds 50% (or 100%, dunno) to their cooldown after being used with the talent.

To lazy to write something about the t6 ones :P Numbers ofc up to discussion, came up with these on the spot

[Teriz]

I think a good mobility talent would be the combination of the Ghost Wolf glyph, and a slight speed increase.

[Deleted]

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.

[Teriz]

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.

I agree that we shouldn't make the argument that class x has this in their talents so we should to. I think a better argument is that Shaman talent tiers should be filled with useful and interesting talents. I don't believe we're seeing that in the current talent set up. Some entries just don't make sense.

[shammypie]

remember that not all tiers should have both a pve and pvp benefit or at least a direct benefit for every fight/encounter. every talent tree is like this and to demand otherwise is folly.

[Deleted]

Yes, as someone said before T2 and T3 need a total rework maybe the whole theme of those two has to change. It is just not interesting at all. Some smaller bonuses like a few seconds of increased mobility could be a start.

[kaikoraimi]

I'm with Zenga on this; I agree that the existing tree is very interesting. There are a few notable problems (needing to know how to game Totemic Restoration to make it more beneficial than Call of The Elements; UF for Elem & EB for Resto both need some adjustments to be slightly more attractive), but they aren't major. I would argue that the interactions between tiers and talents is more interesting for shaman than any other class.

I'm also very wary of wanting to make a number of existing talents baseline. We already have enough (but not too many!) baseline buttons to push, and the supplemental buttons that talents provide mesh very well with the baseline.

[xpolockx]

Personally, I'd most love to see them rework the third tier of talents. Projection should probably be baseline, and restoration is rather awkward in implementation (since it's not intuitive to clip off the last tick of a totem.) A few of the other talents could use some tweaking (I like EB when playing as elemental, but hardcasting it as enh is clunky and the cast time is a little too long for me to use often as resto), but I don't think a massive overhaul is needed.

Considering that resto/balance druids will be getting NS baseline, I'd also like to see resto and ele get the same treatment.

[Mormolyce]

I can't say I'm super hyped about the Shaman talent trees. The third tier is probably the worst... micromanaging totems isn't my idea of fun. I'd probably replace the whole lot.

Tier 2 : As a PVE player I agree that this tier is a complete waste. Earthbind is nice for solo content but is useless or dangerous in a raiding environment, Frost Shock is plain and simple useless, I've never even specced it once since the launch and WW is very limited (and goes against the CC orientation of the tier).

Talents are supposed to be utility and you're supposed to have a real choice, which means a lot of them aren't necessarily relevant in PVE (by which I presume you mean group PVE, likely raids - this tier is useful in questing, brawlers guild and other solo PVE for example... even scenarios to an extent).

---------- Post added 2013-07-02 at 05:44 AM ----------

Considering that resto/balance druids will be getting NS baseline, I'd also like to see resto and ele get the same treatment.

No thanks, really not a fan of that kind of ability.

[Teriz]

Personally, I'd most love to see them rework the third tier of talents. Projection should probably be baseline, and restoration is rather awkward in implementation (since it's not intuitive to clip off the last tick of a totem.) A few of the other talents could use some tweaking (I like EB when playing as elemental, but hardcasting it as enh is clunky and the cast time is a little too long for me to use often as resto), but I don't think a massive overhaul is needed.

Considering that resto/balance druids will be getting NS baseline, I'd also like to see resto and ele get the same treatment.

Tier 3 was supposed to get a rework in PTR. It hasn't happened yet.

Conductivity change is also pretty awful. I hope it gets fixed asap.

[EruptorNZ]

Tier 1 - No issues with this tier
Tier 2 - Somewhat fine with this tier, as people mentioned earlier windwalk totem should be removed to keep up with the crowd control theme
Tier 3 - Should definitely be scrapped, and a movement tier should be put in place.
Tier 4 - Echo of the Elements should be removed, this talent does not enhance gameplay in the slighest - like in pve unless you're using scrolling battle text, you don't notice the spells getting duplicated - I really want to see this talent removed for 5.4 and a new talent created, and if its another passive at least make it enhance gameplay like druids soul of the forest does.
Tier 5 - Not sure on this talent tree to be honest, like if they made HTT baseline, resto shamans would have access to that + ascendance + spirit link totem + whatever talent is in this tree eg, guidance. It would make them insanely strong cooldown wise almost overpowered.
Tier 6 - Only thing I don't like in this tree is unleashed fury, the other 2 are fine, but I would prefer to see them baseline - elemental blast for elemental but get rid of the stat increase and make it a bit more interesting.

From a player perspective I felt they really dropped the ball on the shaman talents, compared to other classes talent trees that are so well designed eg. druid talents that every spec gets benefit from - whereas in shaman talents resto got screwed a lot of the time - especially in tier 6

[Barrun]

Tier 1 - Good for the most part, I'd like to see the periodic increase in absorb provided by SBT to be a little more substantial, even if it means less of a shield upon placing it.

Tier 2 - Windwalk should be made baseline for all shaman. Earthgrab Totem is a great choice to have, Frozen Power is lame, it should be replaced with Repulsion Totem, and Undertow Totem - between Earthgrab, Repulsion, and Undertow all the options in this tier would have a similar theme but each get used under certain circumstances.

Tier 3 - Totemic Projection should be baseline and its place in the talent tree replaced with Elemental Harmony. It would be a bit lackluster of a tier, but all three options would be suitable for certain circumstances.

Tier 4 - Echo of the Elements should work differently for resto, it should have a 100% chance to proc from all single target heals but for a less amount overall. This change would make this tier a little more interesting. I'd like to see Ancestral Swiftness made baseline for resto and something else implemented in its place, but EM has its time and it's place so at least this tier offers use viable choices even the way it is.

Tier 5 - Healing Tide should be baseline for resto and SLT should take its place in the talent tree. For all three specs AG and SLT would be viable depending upon the fight. Conductivity is could be salvaged, offering something vastly different mechanically, if weated a little it would then have its time and place where it would outshine AG and SLT, if it caused HR to be instant cast that would be a step in the right direction while not making AG or SLT obselete.

Tier 6 - Total mess, EB should be made baseline for elemental, some tweaking to the numbers and it could adjust elementals single target damage, and also decrease the total percentage of their damage done by Lava Burst. Primal Elementalist is nice how it is, its viable for all three specs under the right circumstances. I'd like to see this tier have a theme of increasing the potency of already existing abilities as PE does currently. Unleashed Fury apples to that theme but it needs some serious help, it should modify unleash effects in a much more significant way.

[Nebria]

it is interesting what pov some people have of some talents.
a lot of talents some people would made baseline or simply remove and replace by some other stuff are talents I like to use quite often.
I play elemental and sometimes I use HTT. So making it resto baseline would be bad for me and slt is not a good replacement as cd as it requires positioning and HTT I can drop if I can't deal damage and it doesn't matter where the people are they get their heal.
frozen power and ancestral swiftness are really good in pvp. a single target root every 5s is really strong.
also I don't know why a lot of people would make eb baseline for elemental. perhaps some buff for resto is missing here.

for me what they should change is conductivity, merge current live with current ptr version, make totemic projection baseline and give EB some healing aspect like heal all allys within 10 yards of target by x% of damage dealt.