Shaman: a rework (long read)

[Azalar]

Hi!

This is an article for my blog that I've had pending for a loooong time and I've finally found time to finish it.

Well, the idea was reworking all what felt odd for shamans, in all specs and talents, and that's what I did. The changes are based on my own experience playing Shamans in all 3 specs and on the opinions of a number of high-end shamans colleagues of mine. The changes include some suggestions on awesome minor glyphs at the end :P

Since the article with all the changes is too long to be posted here, here's the link to my blog, where you can read it better.

http://wewant4specsnow.wordpress.com...aman-a-rework/

I recommend not jumping to the part you're more interested in because it's been written generally as a whole and not part by part.

I hope you enjoy it and comment

[Bllets]

[Explosive Totem (new)]: summons a Fire totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster that concentrates fiery power and then explodes after 5 sec to knock back all enemies within 8 yards. 30 sec CD.

This would give elemental two knockbacks and seems like an odd totem as enhancement.

[Warmth Totem (new)]: summons a Fire totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster that reduces the duration of all silence effects on you and your party or raid members by 75% for 6 sec. 1.5 min CD.

Makes somewhat sense, but seems like a watered down version of devotion aura.

Elemental

[Water Surge (Elemental)]: blast the target with a pressuring surge of water dealing X% damage, and increasing Haste, Critical Strike or Mastery by x for 8 sec. Deals x% more damage on targets affected by Flame Shock, but reduces its current duration by 3 sec. Water Surge is affected by Mastery. 12 sec CD.

This just is too much like elemental blast and will most likely in the same dilemma, where the benefits to haste/crit/mastery aren't worth the cast.

Removing unleash elements and earthquake

Makes somewhat sense, though I much rather see unleash elements be more interesting to use, i.e. usable in a high burst situations. Not all spells have to be used all the time.

Removing fulmination and reworking elemental shocks

Fulmination pretty much forces the use of earth shock and it does make sense in the elemental spec, at least to me, it is also very good at killing targets with some hp, like totems on Galakras. I'd rather see something in the line of our current set bonus, where it also increases the damage of other abilities, though more in a way where it matters when to use it, and not just a small % buff.

spell_nature_earthshock [Overloaded Earth Shock]: apart from its other effects, Earth Shock deals x% more damage and will cause an Earthquake beneath the target, dealing 50% of Earth Shock’s damage every 1 sec over 6 sec to enemies in an 8 yard radius, with a 10% chance of knocking down affected targets.
spell_fire_flameshock [Overloaded Flame Shock]: apart from its other effects, Flame Shock deals x% more instant damage and x% extra periodic damage. Deals x% extra instant damage if the target is already affected by Flame Shock.
spell_frost_frostshock [Overloaded Frost Shock]: apart from its other effects, Frost Shock deals x% more damage, freezes and stuns the target in place for 5 sec.

To me this smells like earth shock is being removed from the single target rotation, making an already simple rotation even more simple. Adding earthquake to an existing ability however seems like an interesting ability, but the simplifying of the single target rotation seems unneeded.

However if an overloaded earth shock is more beneficial in a single target situation then an overloaded flame shock, then there is absolutely no change to the current situation and that seems to go against the "Fulmination did not really fit at all in this spec" idea, since this is just adding AoE to earth shock instead.

Also the overloaded frost shock seems really overpowered for PvP.

[Concussion (new, passive)]: Chain Lightning now deals 15% more damage to enemies within an Earthquake and slows them by 50% for 6 sec

Is 15% increased damage to chain lightning enough to make earthquake worth it? The earthquake can't proc our mastery or EotE (Compared to what I can read). To me it seems very doubtful that it would be worth it, tough obviously that is just changing some numbers, but I don't really see the appeal to keep up a 6 second earthquake in AoE.

The rest of elemental seems reasonable enough or does not really have any impact what-os-ever (Icons, etc.)

Resto

[Healing Dew (new, active)]: envelops a friendly target in healing drizzle that heals all nearby allies in 4 yd range for x every 2 sec for 10 sec. There can be up to 3 active Dews at once. 3 charges, generates 1 charge every 4 sec. Replaces Healing Rain (costs less mana, heals less, but can be used more frequently).

This seems inspired by the Zen Sphere that monks have, and it seems much more overpowered than healing rain, seeing it heals all nearby allies, it can split up the raid in three groups and still heal them all. The 4 yard range annoys me though, since that require some very tight stacking, and I like that at least have a little freedom when stacking.

Dance of Healing Rain (new, active)]: calls forth healing rains on an ally unit, healing all friendly units in 12 yd range of the target. The rain moves with the target. Replaces Healing Rain (costs more mana than HR and has 4 sec increased CD).

This would require less effort than healing rain and gives even less creative thought into using it, makes no sense compared to your comments about healing rain.

Another problem we see for Restoration is Mastery, but don’t get us wrong, we love how Deep Healing works, but not the amount of overheal it causes, especially from criticals. This is an issue we addressed with Blessing of Hydraxis, but we’ll try to go a bit further. This might also make single target heals more popular again.

The real problem with the resto mastery is that it generally is not worth its weight, generally because you do not want target below 70% and absorbs are very common, making our mastery even more worthless. There is a place for mastery builds out there, and deep healing is actually a nice bonus to have, it just should not be our mastery.

Further more this is the only place you mention "Blessing of Hydraxis"

Calm Waters (new, passive)]: x% of all overhealing caused by critical Healing Waves, Healing Surges and Greater Healing Waves is divided to heal to up to 2 nearby damaged allies.

Crit is already very powerful and this is simply just going to push crit over the edge, further more you started the resto part with: "AoE healing is too effective, too powerful, and the worst thing, too passive." Resto generally seems a bit inconsistent.

[Life Arc (new, active)]: draws a healing arc between you and the target. If the target is an ally, it will heal him for x; then all that healing is converted to Nature damage to a nearby enemy target. The inverse happens if the target is an enemy: it will damage him for x Nature damage and then deals that much damage as healing to a nearby ally unit. In addition, grants 1.5% total mana. No mana cost. 2.5 sec cast.

This just seems odd, healing a target, damaging an opponent and give mana back? Why cast anything else? This will either be too good or to bad due to the cast time, which makes it useless.

[Focused Insight (new, passive)]: after casting any Shock spell, your next heal’s mana cost is reduced by x% and its healing effectiveness is increased by x%, this effect stacks up to 2. In addition, your Shocks get additional effects:

I do not see how this would make resto more offensive, it would just make us use shocks if its worth it, but shocks barely hit for anything and if you increase the damage to much, it would definitely be a problem in PvP.

[Chain Heal (reworked)]: is now Restoration only. In addition, increases the distance Chain heal jumps by 50% and now affects a maximum of 5 targets, but heals for 10% less. Chain heal is now also usable on enemies, damaging them for an amount equal to what it would have healed. Chain Heal’s priority continues being lowest health ally units and should not jump to enemies if there are wounded allies. Replaces Chain lightning.

Resto: 557, Ele: 560 - Chain lightning and chain healing pretty much hit for the same, obviously elemental has mastery and so on, but they just seems like way to much AoE damage from a healer-

[Fertility (new, passive)]: tics from Earthliving now have a chance of causing the next Earth shield you cast to ignore the target limit.

Seems interesting.

[Neptulon's Gift (Restoration)]: soothe a target with a gush of water that heals for x or damages an enemy for x and increases Haste, Critical Strike, or Mastery by 3500 for 8 sec. In addition, 2 water orbs will swirl around the healed or damaged unit for 6 sec, gathering each 75% of all overhealing produced and 100% of all healing from Riptide pulses. When this time is over, the orbs will travel to the 2 most injured friendly units or enemy units and heal/damage them for that amount. 12 sec CD

More passive abilities? And it seems rather OP and very random.

[Grace of Water (new, passive)]: pulses from Riptide now have a chance of resetting the cooldown of Neptulon’s Gift.

Increasing the effectiveness of a passive ability doesn't seem that interesting.

Again Resto generally seems a bit inconsistent.

Did not comment enhancement, since I haven't spent more than an hour playing it in MoP.

[Deleted]

So i'm not going to dwell into Elemental or Restoration but I will say I agree with Bllets in that removing Fulmination from the Elemental toolkit is uneeded and makes a already easy rotation alot more boring. Extra points for the EQ and CL changes tho.

Lets start from the top.

Magma Totem Removed - I'm ok with this, not sure why I even have it on my bars since I use Earth Ele much more often.

Searing Totem now a small CD - Your making Searing more annoying than what it already is for both Ele and Enh, might aswell keep the current model and add a spec specific proc every time it hits something, like has a chance to add a MSW charge or extend Flame Shock duration (empowered mind you).

MSW reworked - I really don't think you want this as a active spell. If you look at your toolkit you have SS, LvL, UE, 3 Shocks and now Frigid Assault (FA for short). With the chance to reset CDs on SS/LvL so I'm sure we will be GCD capped as is. 3 charges would be best especially if you consider my thoughts on Searing Totem effect above. (this would be good for pooling resources into a burst at the cost of less sustain).

Frigid Assault, the melee version of EB - I get that its supposed to add spec flavour and another active rotation spell but not sure what its place is. Taking a look at your CD reduction of SS and LvL and the huge 12s CD of this ability, I'll suppose its FA>LvL>SS in terms of damage per ability. This would make it the "Lava Burst" equivalent of Enhance except more OP because Frost Shock + EMP-FA is essencially a snare combined with a HUGE crit AND a gap closer AND the extra stats on you.

EMPowered Abilitys - Reading your Eye of the Storm passive, which I think is somewhat overkill on buffs/cds to track, the EMP-SS is ment for ramp-up AE, EMP-LvL is ment for Burst AE and EMP-FA... 100% of the time for ST increase/gap closer? I think Enh surviability will drop ALOT because of the new EMP-Healing Surge, putting us next to retri pala healing right there. Otherwise I think its a neat effect and sort of acts like a Shaman version of Blood Tap, altho you might want to make it a buff that changes SS/LvL/FA on the spot rather than activate MSW and then use something else to avoid button bloat and reduce stuff to track.

Question: Does EMP-SS apply to Stormblast? Because if so that is one hell of a sick burst cleave/animation going on in my head.

Fulmination - See, we don't need this. You took FN and CL out of my bars but I don't use neither in single target and you place Elemental blast in the form of FA which is fine, but with the double charges on shocks Earth Shock should stay as its current version for filler ability when you have absolutely nothing to do (which will be hard). This should go back to Elemental.

Feral Spirits - Increase healing done, reduce damage done. Now we have a survival CD and not a lame 2m CD to track. Also would work well with your new lv75 talent for self healing.

Talents!

Nature's Guardian passively increase self healing by 10% in addition to your current effects would be nice.

SBT is dandy.

AS needs to be a huge CD as its the only thing missing from this row. Mitigate 3 attacks, the first by 90%, the second by 60% the third by 30% and keep the duration, CD and silence imunity as is.

-

Electromagnetic is cool but doesn't need the snare, earthbind combo with it and its good to go. Enhancement could use Frozen Power as a passive and remove the EMP-FA charge thing to balance it out.

The rest of this tier should be left as it was since it was probably one of our most well designed talent tiers of MOP. The sprint from windwalk isn't needed and steals some of the spotlight of druid Stampede.

-

Totemic Persistence baseline is a big no no, especially with fire totems. Its clunky, our UI doesn't like it and I dont either.

Call of Elements adding charges instead of a extra button with a CD on it is a great improvement and welcomed change.

Ritual Totems and Projection are cool if you consider Fire Ele and Earth Ele, but both talents kind of do the same thing.

-

Elemental Mastery is OP lol. I propose it increasing your highest secondary stat (Mastery/Haste/Crit) and leave it at that to promote clever gameplay. Remove the crit thing and add it into Swiftness, altho not exactly sure where you see Enhance spending Swiftness on now that we don't have LB/CL.

Echo same thing as Swiftness (other than shocks I guess).

-

Elemental Harmony is a ok passive, considering healing stream/tide and feral spirits. That Ank CD <3.

AG is my precious don't touch it. BBV is .... weird. A raid wide channeled CD that leaves the shaman vulnerable and stops the cast if the shaman gets hit aswell... TBH I would just place SLT here as I think its the only thing that actually competes with the other 2 choices and provides Enh and Ele a good CD on top of Tide.

-

Master Ascendant might make Ele more dependant of Ascendance than what it already is, like it was in ToT. If this worked like the double Dark Soul talent from Warlocks it would be fine I suppose.

Primal Elementalist could use a update for Ele, its scaling is OP with Enh haste and underpowered with the lack of it as Ele.

Convection... ehhh.... something related to empowered abilities (shocks for ele and ss/lvl/fa for enh would be cool) since it acts as a passive DPS increase without rotation changes.


Overall I like some of these spells even tho some are stupid OP (EMP-FA). 7.5/10 would at least like to try these to see how it feels.

PS: Dark Shaman Tmog is a pita to farm, dont do that to good glyphs in old content bosses.

[Hursey]

For the most part, some interesting ideas. I do agree with Bllets on the resto comments though. There does seem to be a few contradictions there. You say AoE healing is too strong and too passive, but what you are proposing here, in my opinion anyway, makes AoE even stronger and more passive. I would also propose that this ins't a shaman problem that needs addressed, but a healing problem. AoE heals for all classes are just too good in to many situations. because of this I'm not sure if you are trying to fix problems with the existing tools, or just make a whole lot of new abilities for the sake of change.

Some points
Explosive Totem - Haven't we had this before? (or something very similar) wasn't it dropped because it was too awkward to use reliably

I think forcing so many damage abilities onto healers though could have some serious implications for PvP balance though

Your comment about Healing rain not being any good for Elemental, I'm honestly not sure what the point of that is. So what. Every class in the game has some ability that is probably not optimal for some specs. Shocks are near pointless for Resto, yet rather than just remove them from the spec you've chosen to bake in other healing passive effects making them viable. Why not doe the same for Healing rain?

Why make Hex a shadow spell? Is that so it can still be cast while nature school is locked out? Add a new school to the class just for one spell seems a bit over the top.

I also disagree that resto don't have enough tools. This I would say is your completely subjective opinion. Mine is that resto already have too many tools and because of this some get under utilized, although that could be because of the state of AoE

About some of the talents that I picked up on:
Electromagnetic Totem - I really like the initial idea, that said though, the exploding after 5 secs seems a bit odd. Most people would probably just destroy the totem in the 5secs before it exploded

Basilisk's Gaze Totem - Again, something that I like the sound of. Math is a bit out of whack though.

Master Ascendant - Might be too op, I'd probably pick it over the others any situation I can think of

[miffy23]

I'm only commenting on Enh, since I've played this as my main spec since Vanilla, before it was even viable.
The suggested changes are terrible in my opinion - not only are you removing archetypical shaman spells such as lightning bolt (seriously, a shaman without lightning? for shame), you're also severely simplifying and dumbing down the Enh rotation, effectively limiting it to 3 main abilities, making it akin to Frost DW, a spec I loathe for it's "spamminess". If i'm not mistaken, a lot of your philosophical ideas are pretty much directy taken from Rift's shaman concept - passive AoE armor, simple melee ability/shock cycle with 2h. All-in-all, it would turn Enh from one of the most challenging and also rewarding specs right now into one of the most underwhelming and boring. Not to mention you are taking away several ranged and AoE abilities and replacing them with...PvP utility. Just no.
I commend your effort though.

[Eliot123]

A lot of pretty cool ideas, imo.

Healing Dew sounds a lot of like Renewing Mist though, and I absolutely hate that part of Mistweaver healing (i.e. ''push-this-button-on-cd-which-is-very-short-anyway''). Dance of Healing Rain seems rather cool, though. ^^ Love Big Bad Voodoo.

[Swiftninja]

Interesting idea, however aoe damage spells tied into single target spell passives is worse than the current aoe rotation, as it is not active and wasted damage if your spells are on cd during aoe phases. The change to searing totem and searing flames would def be a good change. Elemental Blast as baseline is cool, not sure about it converting to a melee attack itself but id would be nice to have a 3rd melee ability. Fulmination as enh bring back good memories of static shock in wrath with our fun and button mashed rotation. The new MSW is interesting as it affects our other abilities, but im not sure id want to exchange the current form. I would like for the current MSW to stack up to 10 at least. Thats all i got, thx for the good read.

[miffy23]

Interesting idea, however aoe damage spells tied into single target spell passives is worse than the current aoe rotation, as it is not active and wasted damage if your spells are on cd during aoe phases. The change to searing totem and searing flames would def be a good change. Elemental Blast as baseline is cool, not sure about it converting to a melee attack itself but id would be nice to have a 3rd melee ability. Fulmination as enh bring back good memories of static shock in wrath with our fun and button mashed rotation. The new MSW is interesting as it affects our other abilities, but im not sure id want to exchange the current form. I would like for the current MSW to stack up to 10 at least. Thats all i got, thx for the good read.

The main change that needs to happen to MSW that is totally obvious is to simply allow MSW to stack to 7, but leave max LB at 5. Similar to Ret's Holy Power issue, this would eliminate the odd "wasted" MSW stack due to unlucky procs. Why this isn't in the game is beyond me tbh. Not that were doing badly without this change, but it would be a welcome QoL change.

[Azalar]

Hi! I'll try to answer all your comments

@Bllets: the first two "new fire totems" were just examples to see which one you like. Water Surge IS Elemental Blast, as stated. The problem with Unleash Elements is that it never made sense in Elemental nor Resto. I don't see how Overloaded Shocks make our rotation simpler, when it gives 3 times more possibilities than old Fulmination. Overloaded Frost Shock can't be overpowered when you can't rely on it 100% due to its proc nature, and freezes share DR with another lot of CCs. In an AoE scenario, it's very likely that you'll keep getting Shocking procs often, the nerf to Chain lightning is to add some complexity and synergy with other skills so as to get additional damage, as well as increasing the limit target window (chain hits up to 5, but Earthquake from Overloaded Earth Shock hits all).

With regard to Resto, Healing Dew requires strict positioning as well due to its range, but is more flexible since you can place 3. Dance of Healing Rain allows you for more freedom in positioning, with a longer CD and mana cost. The intelligent use comes when you have to place yourself properly to get the max of it, and it is always more comfy to stay at a safe range when healing. I agree with what you say about Calm Waters, and I've realized that it's not needed because Ancestral Wakening already works that way. Life Arc is just Lightning bolt reworked to be more appealing to use during low damage phases. I don't really think Shocks' damage would be an issue here. Chain heal working as a pseudo Chain lightning sounds like a fun idea to me, but remember that it will always prefer friendly harmed targets rather than enemies. Fertility can make fun combos when used with Earth Shock. Neptulon's Gift isn't a passive skill, so Grace of Water makes sense then.

@Jecht: to be honest, I was tempted to remove Searing totem, but just couldn't. I agree that in spite of everything, Searing totem is an annoying skill to use. Yes, I want MSW as an active skill, the current system is just very old fashioned and simply adding the so called 7 charges wouldn't make it any better, I opted for a rehash, also 3 charges of MSW could be ok, but being able to chain 3 empowered skills could be overwhelming. You're right with Frigid Assault, but remember that bosses cannot be snared, its utility would shine when lvling or in PvP though. There's no need to track Eye of the Storm, as you can't force criticals from SS nor MSW, its design is to add flavor to the spec while adding some sustained AoE damage. Yes, EmpSS applies to Stormblast, and yes, I've thought of the sick animation when in Ascendance \o/. I'm convinced that Fulmination needs to stay as Enh ability, this would make using Earth Shock more meaningful (it isn't nowadays, you just use it because there is nothing else to use = not fun). I love Feral Spirits, but as I said in the post, I'm not sure how to deal with it: dmg cd or healing cd? Wolves seem more as a damage cooldown if you ask me, but could be both, so it is ambiguous. I like your idea on Nature's Guardian. I prefer AS as it was back in LK/Cata. Totemic Persistence adds flexibility in placing totems, and you could place more than one totem of the same element in W3. Totemic projection and Ritual totems are both about totem placement, which why they are similar, but projection can prove more helpful in many more scenarios (capacitor projection). I agree that maybe I went too far with Elemental Mastery, but I like the CD reduction on criticals (more than I like the +5% in damage/healing, so I might just as well remove it and keep the CD reduction). You caught me with Swiftness, duh, I'll see what I can do. Echo of the Elements can copy Emp magical effects (chain and nova) and MSW (not giving a double charge). I'm glad you like Ele Harmony, Ankh CD reduction was needed. I thought of giving 2 charges to Ascendance, but that would be too Dark Soul like. Primal Ele may need a change, indeed, but also not sure how to do it. Convection may alter your rotation with high haste and can allow you to multidot FS or nuke low mobs with ES.

@Hursey: Shocks are iconic, Healing Rain isn't, that's why. Hex animation is Shadow, not the school. And yes, Resto does need a more varied toolkit imo.

@miffy23: Lightning hasn't gone anywhere, reread EmpSS. Enh needs more weapon skills and less magical spells to be more different from Ele. I'm sorry, but I've never played Rift. The problem with spamminess is that it's passive with Windfury and you don't see it, I want Enh to be active, not to wait to MSW to proc or LL and SS to come out of cd. Waiting isn't fun, there needs to be things to do. I don't recall getting rid of ranged abilities, if you mean by standardizing the range of UE, the new MSW and Shocks to 30, I see no problem there.

@Eliot123: I'm glad you like them. Healing Dew and Dance of Healing Rain are just two examples, pick up the one you like most. Big Bad Voodoo was a must

@Swiftninja: I've removed Calm Waters already. I'd like to try both systems (7 charges and my MSW as active). I'm happy you've enjoyed reading it!

Thank you all for the long feedback, it's highly appreciated <3

The main change that needs to happen to MSW that is totally obvious is to simply allow MSW to stack to 7, but leave max LB at 5. Similar to Ret's Holy Power issue, this would eliminate the odd "wasted" MSW stack due to unlucky procs. Why this isn't in the game is beyond me tbh. Not that were doing badly without this change, but it would be a welcome QoL change.

It will eventually be that way. I bet for WoD.

[Hursey]

Shocks are iconic

What makes an ability iconic? Would you not consider Chain Heal iconic?

[Swiftninja]

Id say iconic are abilities that existed pre-wow in WC3: Healing Wave(chain heal), Serpent Ward( searing totem), Hex, Farsight, Bloodlust, Purge, Lightning shield, lightning bolt, Healing Ward(healing stream), Stasis trap(capacitor), Earthquake, Chain Lightning, Spirit Wolves, reincarnation, sentry ward(sentry totem), ancestral spirit and spirit link.

[Omanley]

Iconic in my mind would be something people think of when you mention something.
Another interpretation which I also see as true would be things you couldn't picture playing without (like, it wouldn't be the same anymore).

When someone asks: What do you think of, when I mention shamans?

As overall themes, totems, spirits and elements are the things popping into my mind.

There is to say, the spiritual aspect is overall neglected, especially after resto heals got the "toilet-flush treatment", to make them less spiritual and more elemental based.

As for totems: They're likely the most iconic mechanic/overall theme. The sad thing is: They're bad. They haven't seen any improvements on how they work (and you may say:"Rightly so, that's what makes them iconic", but sadly, it's not that easy). Totems originally were designed as long duration/no cd buff sticks, and required all their drawbacks to not be OP. Buffs got homogenisized and finally ours got turned into auras to stop being the worst buffs. As I hoped for a long time, totems turned into cooldown based abilities, but sadly, no changes to their abundance on now out of place drawbacks.

Which leaves the elements, where there's not much to say about. They are slapped on shocks, shields, imbues, damage spells, healing spells and totems. They're everywhere...maybe it's a little to much focus on them, and to few on the other aspects on shamanism, dunno.

As for specific iconic abilities (and that's just my personal (enh player)POV and completely up to debate):

Chain Heal, Earth Shield, Purge, Ghost Wolf, Wind Shear/old Earth Shock, Frost Shock, old Feral Spirits, Ascendence, Thunderstorm, Hex, Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning, Windfury (imbues in general), Bloodlust/Heroism, Grounding Totem, Tremor Totem, rip Cleansing Totem, Stormstrike, Lightning Shield, Lava Burst, Healing Rain, Waterwalk...

Stuff for me I'm not so sure about is abilities like Earthquake, Searing Totem, Fire Nova, Flame Shock and so forth. They have their roles for the most part, but never felt like they did much. They are either weak, unimpressive or passive in their behaviour and just dont feel iconic.

I think it doesn't have to do with lore, but relevance during considerable amounts of time during the game. Earth Shock for example is considerable iconic by many, because it was a friggin' ranged interrupt on low cd during a time interrupts where not homogenisized as they're now. Warriors needed to stance switch to pummel, feral and ret couldn't interrupt...it came down to rogues, mages (which had much longer cd) and shamans then.

So basically being iconic can change, depending on the circumstances. Abilities which once were iconic, may no longer be that later on, at least not by the standards of some. Someone playing during wotlk may consider Feral Spirits iconic, someone starting during cata/mop likely wont. BL/HERO started out with infamous shaman stacking in tbc and OP cleaves in wotlk, but it turned into just another raid cd nowadays.

There is to say, (again, POV) I think there are abilities that are just so central to a class/spec and it's identity/feel/image and what not, there's no way they could ever be removed without causing an identity crisis.
So there's to ask: When you consider iconic, do mean stuff that pops up quite fast, or stuff that is essentially mandatory. Enh w/o Windfury and Stormstrike? Never! Enh w/o LB? sure, why not. The latter is iconic only to elemental really.

On topic, I saw myself agreeing/not disagreeing with the totem changes. There rest...meh. That's just me I guess, but I rather not see to many completely new things, but rather lots of QoL improvements (i.e. cutting back totem drawbacks, adressing ability bloat, improving hex and CPT, better baseline enh gap closing (lower Spiritwalk to 5sec duration/15 cd maybe) and ele kiting (Frost Shock on its own cd), stuff like that. Not new stuff, but tweaking details, easy to implement, easy to balance/change.

The only bigger change, which I'd consider optional (no high prio for me), would be to improve on the recource department. Having more control over Searing Flames and/or Maelstrom, maybe procs to reset cds to make it more fluid and unpredictable and challenging and less static. It would also allow for more interesting scaling with haste than just more auto hits.

[Azalar]

What makes an ability iconic? Would you not consider Chain Heal iconic?

I think our friend Omanley has explained what an icon is. Pretty well actually.

And yes, Chain Heal is iconic to me. I agree it's not a real needed change, it's just another possibility, but how it works shouldn't change at all in the end.

[Anzen]

I may seem abrupt saying this; why does Elemental need to be changed? I mean I read threads everyday about how you could change X ability to do Y, add a new ability that does this, remove Z ability, etc.

Are you guys really that disappointed with the current Elemental state that it needs such drastic changes or are you just bored of the class and want something fresh? I fear making too many changes would either:

A) Homogenize a game that already has too much homogenization.
B) Make the class less iconic and classic.
C) Making too many changes will discourage current shaman players if they feel overwhelmed.

I personally am happy with how shaman is currently.

[miffy23]

I feel the same way about Enhancement. Been playing it as my main since Vanilla and I feel Enh has been in a very good spot since Cata in terms of feeling and actual power in the raiding game. I don't feel it needs any significant changes at all except QoL changes.

[Teriz]

Eh, I think you have some good concepts in general, but I don't agree with a lot of those changes. What caused me to give up my Shaman in MoP was more design and mechanical issues than anything else. I think for the most part our abilities are fine. My problem is how those abilities interact with each other during gameplay.

For example, Why is Primal Strike not upgraded within Enhancement as a primary melee ability? Why isn't Earthquake better incorporated into the Elemental spec, or simply made into a class wide ability? Where is the Ghost Wolf talent(s)? Why does Elemental Blast not have a healing component for Resto shaman? YTF are we still unable to use 2h weapons despite our ability to equip said weapons? etc.

Just using my Monk as an example; Invoke Xuen, the level 90 Monk talent has components that work with every other spec. It provides healing for the healing spec, it taunts for the tank spec, and it does damage for the DPS spec. Chi Brew talent gives brews that benefit each spec pretty equally. Black Out kick heals others in the healing spec, increases mitigation in the tanking spec, and applies a DoT in the DPS spec. Way of the Monk allows Monks to wield 2H weapons or 2 1H weapons equally. As a Monk, if a 2h drops that I can use, I can use it without worrying about a significant DPS loss (unlike Enhancement). On and on and on.

In short, Blizzard needs to apply their design principles from the Monk class into the Shaman class. As of now, the Shaman class feels like an unfinished design concept.

More interesting totems wouldn't hurt either.

[Luqt]

Looking at your Enhancement stuff, I liked the basic ideas behind it which are: the spec feels a bit monotonous with a boring searing totem, lack of synergy between abilities and there needs to be a clear gap between the two dps specs which is why you cut LB / CL / FN.

I originally thought of a Maelstrom Weapon that granted some sort of secondary resource for an Ascendance that would have a reduced CD, so it would be similar to how demo locks use their Metamorphosis, but really I love your idea and it would be awesome for allowing the player to make some interesting decisions on when to use his MW stacks. This leads to a greater differentiation between a good and bad enhancement shaman; which is exactly what the spec needs. I was wondering, instead of having a max of 2 MW stacks, if you could build it up to a max of 5 (or more) and each stack would increase the duration of your Maelstrom Weapon. This would encourage more intelligent play from the shaman as to when you should use it and it would be less subject to RNG since if you're aiming for a max of 2 stacks at a time then I can imagine that each auto attack must have a really low chance of triggering the effect as we won't be using MW that often as it would become a significant DPS cd (assuming that MW uptime is intended to be relatively low say less than say 40%?).

Once again, I have to mention that I like how you're chucking out a lot of spells that don't have much purpose in the current enhancement toolkit, and how you're attempting to emphasize enhance's main spells: Lava Lash, Stormstrike and Earth shock. A spec doesn't need a lot of abilities and buttons to be complex or fun (take windwalker as an example which is simple in design yet it takes good management to play to its fullest IMO). However, I feel that with the removal of FN and the addition of Eye of the Storm + Empowered Lava Lash you're simplifying enhance AoE (which is a good thing) but you're also making it situational and possibly too passive which really is the opposite of what enhance needs for its current AoE. On the other hand, I loved the theme behind Eye of the Storm and if you could perhaps bake Eye of the Storm into Empowered Stormstrike that would allow the player to plan his AoE. The problem with this is the fact that your AoE is completely tied to a sort of DPS cooldown (again, it completely depends on what kind of Maelstrom Weapon uptime we're looking at) which is why I would suggest having Eye of the Storm as a new ability and an Empowered Eye of the Storm could be the idea you thought of, as a passive during MW.

Good work, I enjoyed the read and I honestly hope Blizzard will hear all these creative and interesting ideas from the playerbase to improve the game.

[transorD]

I'm not sure I really like your recommendations for changing shocks. If they only have two charges, doesn't that mean we have to cast them a lot more often? Or am I missing something with that?

[miffy23]

Once again, I have to mention that I like how you're chucking out a lot of spells that don't have much purpose in the current enhancement toolkit, and how you're attempting to emphasize enhance's main spells: Lava Lash, Stormstrike and Earth shock. A spec doesn't need a lot of abilities and buttons to be complex or fun (take windwalker as an example which is simple in design yet it takes good management to play to its fullest IMO). However, I feel that with the removal of FN and the addition of Eye of the Storm + Empowered Lava Lash you're simplifying enhance AoE (which is a good thing) but you're also making it situational and possibly too passive which really is the opposite of what enhance needs for its current AoE.

See, this is exactly what I DON'T like about the proposed changes. No, you don't have to have many abilities or button bloat for a spec to be challenging or complex - however that is what i've loved about my spec for years and years now, and I don't want it to go away. Someone in another thread once equated good Enh play to "playing the piano", and I concur. It's satisfying to have to deal with so many situational abilities, and I don't want my spec reduced to emphasized abilities with more shared synergies and interplay. That's just not the Enh style, in my opinion.

[Azalar]

A) Homogenize a game that already has too much homogenization.
B) Make the class less iconic and classic.
C) Making too many changes will discourage current shaman players if they feel overwhelmed.

I personally am happy with how shaman is currently.

I could live as well with how Ele is at the moment. I understand your concern with A), but all DPS specs need ways both to AoE, single target and slight support. That's not homogenizing imo. About B), classic does not mean old fashioned, Ele will still be thunder, lightning and lava. I agree with C).

Eh, I think you have some good concepts in general, but I don't agree with a lot of those changes. What caused me to give up my Shaman in MoP was more design and mechanical issues than anything else. I think for the most part our abilities are fine. My problem is how those abilities interact with each other during gameplay.

For example, Why is Primal Strike not upgraded within Enhancement as a primary melee ability? Why isn't Earthquake better incorporated into the Elemental spec, or simply made into a class wide ability? Where is the Ghost Wolf talent(s)? Why does Elemental Blast not have a healing component for Resto shaman? YTF are we still unable to use 2h weapons despite our ability to equip said weapons? etc.

Just using my Monk as an example; Invoke Xuen, [...]

In short, Blizzard needs to apply their design principles from the Monk class into the Shaman class. As of now, the Shaman class feels like an unfinished design concept.

More interesting totems wouldn't hurt either.

I like abilities to interact with other skills in one way or another, what I suggest is just an example, there could be more :P

Primal Strike is replaced by Stormstrike, the same way Mangle replaces Claw for Feral.

I agree with the monk design part.

Looking at your Enhancement stuff, I liked the basic ideas behind it which are: the spec feels a bit monotonous with a boring searing totem, lack of synergy between abilities and there needs to be a clear gap between the two dps specs which is why you cut LB / CL / FN.

I originally thought of a Maelstrom Weapon that granted some sort of secondary resource for an Ascendance that would have a reduced CD, so it would be similar to how demo locks use their Metamorphosis, but really I love your idea and it would be awesome for allowing the player to make some interesting decisions on when to use his MW stacks. This leads to a greater differentiation between a good and bad enhancement shaman; which is exactly what the spec needs. I was wondering, instead of having a max of 2 MW stacks, if you could build it up to a max of 5 (or more) and each stack would increase the duration of your Maelstrom Weapon. This would encourage more intelligent play from the shaman as to when you should use it and it would be less subject to RNG since if you're aiming for a max of 2 stacks at a time then I can imagine that each auto attack must have a really low chance of triggering the effect as we won't be using MW that often as it would become a significant DPS cd (assuming that MW uptime is intended to be relatively low say less than say 40%?).

Once again, I have to mention that I like how you're chucking out a lot of spells that don't have much purpose in the current enhancement toolkit, and how you're attempting to emphasize enhance's main spells: Lava Lash, Stormstrike and Earth shock. A spec doesn't need a lot of abilities and buttons to be complex or fun (take windwalker as an example which is simple in design yet it takes good management to play to its fullest IMO). However, I feel that with the removal of FN and the addition of Eye of the Storm + Empowered Lava Lash you're simplifying enhance AoE (which is a good thing) but you're also making it situational and possibly too passive which really is the opposite of what enhance needs for its current AoE. On the other hand, I loved the theme behind Eye of the Storm and if you could perhaps bake Eye of the Storm into Empowered Stormstrike that would allow the player to plan his AoE. The problem with this is the fact that your AoE is completely tied to a sort of DPS cooldown (again, it completely depends on what kind of Maelstrom Weapon uptime we're looking at) which is why I would suggest having Eye of the Storm as a new ability and an Empowered Eye of the Storm could be the idea you thought of, as a passive during MW.

Good work, I enjoyed the read and I honestly hope Blizzard will hear all these creative and interesting ideas from the playerbase to improve the game.

Thanks for the support!

Your idea on MW is also an interesting idea, I think I've used something similar in some other works, but I fear that it may go too far and cause overwhelming burst, that's why I think 2 charges seems sensible. I also want the shaman to spend MW charges, not store them (which ofc still can do, even with 2 as limit).

Yes, Eye of the Storm could be within EmpStormstrike, but I wanted to keep some feeling of Chain lightning there. It would be too similar to Emp Lava Lash, though, which likewise, I wanted to keep the feeling of FN.

MW would proc frequently, and would be the first priority on the rotation, as it emps most of the toolkit except shocks. It seems I'll have to go over Eye of the Storm again ^^

I'm not sure I really like your recommendations for changing shocks. If they only have two charges, doesn't that mean we have to cast them a lot more often? Or am I missing something with that?

Yes, they'll be used more often.

See, this is exactly what I DON'T like about the proposed changes. No, you don't have to have many abilities or button bloat for a spec to be challenging or complex - however that is what i've loved about my spec for years and years now, and I don't want it to go away. Someone in another thread once equated good Enh play to "playing the piano", and I concur. It's satisfying to have to deal with so many situational abilities, and I don't want my spec reduced to emphasized abilities with more shared synergies and interplay. That's just not the Enh style, in my opinion.

Well, that is your opinion. My feelings to Enh do indeed differ.

I like the piano quotation, so well, if we count the skills you'd use frequently, we'd have LL, SS, MW, UE, FA, ES, FlS, FrS (situational) and Searing Totem. That would be 9, which is a fair amount imo. Right now we have LL, SS, UE, FN, CL, LB, ES, FlS, FrS (sit.), Searing Totem, which make 10. You'd lose 1 button. It's not that I have to keep the same number of buttons either in a rework design, but there's not a real difference in the end. You'd still be playing the piano in a way :P

I think synergies and interplay are needed nowadays, you wouldn't want to have to use button 1 just because everything else is on CD, and that ability doesn't really do anything else but provide a minimum increase in DPS. Skills have to be used for a reason, or they'll eventually disappear for underuse. Even if I'm actually talking about Earth Shock mostly here, I'm also including in some way LB and CL, which feel really weird in Enh.

Ty again for all your comments! ^^