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  1. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    Since these cooldowns are not affected by haste (unlike Paladins and Warriors, in 6.x) and Enhance doesn't have a resource, an Enhance shaman will play substantially similarly at the end of patch 6.4 as they do when they first hit level 100 in 6.0. Maelstrom Weapon will stack faster and Flame Shock will tick faster, so you'll use Lightning Bolt and Lava Lash more frequently (and the latter is a small improvement over 5.x) but Enhance will still be casting Earth Shock every 6 seconds and Stormstrike every 8, etc, and melee abilities will all still create the same 1.5 second GCD.
    The new echo of the elements also fits here, since it's 1.5*haste RPPM.

  2. #42
    That's right, not only does EoE scale with haste but it's not passive, it offers real gameplay in 6.0. Another nice improvement.

  3. #43
    I really hope that EotE procs will be off the GCD.

  4. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by Refridge View Post
    Youre right, I misspoke, i meant if haste functioned with the GCD, the way readiness functions with CDs blah blah blah. Which isnt exactly what youre saying, but its close enough. I think lowering the CD on enhance is unnecessary. Thats just my opinion.
    Nothing is necessary; all 3 shaman specs could go into 6.0 completely unchanged. I believe Enhance gameplay would be substantially improved if both primary rotational cooldowns and the melee GCD were sped up by haste, similar to Ret and (in 6.0) DPS warriors.

    @Embermoon: No reason to think that they will be. Once alpha actually starts, people will get in, start playing around, and see how many free GCDs they have. Too early to complain about being GCD-locked now.

  5. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    Nothing is necessary; all 3 shaman specs could go into 6.0 completely unchanged. I believe Enhance gameplay would be substantially improved if both primary rotational cooldowns and the melee GCD were sped up by haste, similar to Ret and (in 6.0) DPS warriors.

    @Embermoon: No reason to think that they will be. Once alpha actually starts, people will get in, start playing around, and see how many free GCDs they have. Too early to complain about being GCD-locked now.
    Why do people on forums jump to so many conclusions, and read things into posts, that aren't there?

    Let me clarify:

    The alpha version of the new EotE talent "causes your next short cooldown or spell ability to not incur it's cooldown." The tooltip says NOTHING about incurring the GCD, however.

    As it is, currently, EotE fires off an instantaneous proc of whatever spell triggered it.

    If the new version doesn't trigger, say, an 8 second CD on SS, but yet still requires us to wait for the GCD to come available, then it would feel wrong, to me. IMO, that talent should make for instantaneous potential damage, where the only limiter is the enhancer's skill.

  6. #46
    Titan Grimbold21's Avatar
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    These predictions are getting too haste oriented to my taste.

    Let's see if the coming patch notes bring us anything to munch over

  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by Embermoon View Post
    If the new version doesn't trigger, say, an 8 second CD on SS, but yet still requires us to wait for the GCD to come available, then it would feel wrong, to me. IMO, that talent should make for instantaneous potential damage, where the only limiter is the enhancer's skill.
    Ahh I see what you mean. The tooltip is pretty clear. It doesn't reset the cooldown, so you can't hit Stormstrike immediately. What it means is that the next time the Stormstrike button is available, you can hit it twice. And yes, there's no reason to think that both button presses wouldn't consume a GCD.

    I actually think this is kind of a neat spin on procs, since nothing else works that way. My main concern is that the proc is random and doesn't stack, and since it doesn't reset the abilities' cooldown it can't be used immediately and thus could be wasted to double procs. Remains to be seen how it actually plays-- I think your criticism is completely valid. It indeed is not immediate.

  8. #48
    First of all, I will always be angry at Blizzard for not using Shaman's potential fully. The class is so open for epic feeling stuff, you just need to be a little less lazy and dream on.

    We are not Warriors. I can see how limited designing a Warrior ability can be.
    "I am a Warrior, I am angry, I have my weapon and I smash things." That's really all when you consider when it comes to Warriors. Even compare it to rogues, "I'm sneaky, I fight dirty, and I snowball through combos. Taste my poison!"

    Shamans and druids are very different from this approach, and I believe that Blizzard is not doing a good job for Shamans, but doing meh'ish for Druids. (side note, I don't play a druid)

    Azeroth is a place where spirits live, similar to humanoids. Shamans are unique people who has connections with them.
    In my honest opinion, shaman spells should have had an unique feeling, it is supposed to be somewhat different than the abilities in material world. We are special, we are rare. You wouldn't see lots of Shamans around in the world of Azeroth, or even amongst the Draenor clans, or in Warcraft strategy games. You wouldn't build an army full of shamans, but you would have a few of them in your army.

    Blizzard managed to do a good job with Witch Doctor in Diablo series. There is this "spirit world" they can interact while no other class can.

    I would love to get a new resource supporting this, maybe like a Spirit Power with a cooler name. It could be between Demonic Power and Druid Eclipse.
    Shamans do not possess the raw power like many other classes do, they simply "ask" for it when they are in need.

    So, health points could be a resource which have influence on this Spirit Power. When you are low on health, your Spirit Power for Healing Spirits would be high to ask assistance from them.

    You could tie many spells to this Spirit Power; Feral Spirits, Ancestral Healing, even Elementals.

    Although it would bring some limitations to the class, it could be arranged in gameplay and bring such depth to the class.

    ---

    I would also love some diversity between specs. Different roles don't just cut it.
    I'm still dreaming maybe one day I could see:
    - Elemental Shamans being the master of totems, making full use of them compared to other two, and unleashing the destruction of lava to their enemies,
    - Enhancement working on Al'Akir themed windy stuff and wolves with less tied to totems, bloodlust and splitting earth in their favor,
    - Resto Shamans fully connected to spirits and water, bringing the rain and healing tides where they are needed and buffing allies more.

    ---

    Well, compared to what I have in mind, of course I always feel disappointed with Blizzard the way they approach Shaman.
    This "jack of all, master of none" thing is still destroying the whole fun and purpose of the class, particularly after the gigantic class homogenization.

    I wish we could see times where our strikes wouldn't feel like cheap, under-tiered Warrior abilities. But untill then, I will keep dreaming on.

  9. #49
    You're spot on about shaman's potential not being nearly exploited. It's a shame so few has been done in term of new abilities over a period of 10 fricking years.
    -Shamans are the masters of the four elements, yet seem unable to do much with frost/offensive water spells, nor do they much with earth, for that matter. Even the wind element is mostly lightning, all we have in terms of wind itself is windfury, which existed since release. It's also laughable that now that Stormstrike finally does lightning damage as it name would lead to believe (with the help of ascendence) and with WoD is changed to windstrike, to no longer do that...ummmm...what? Wind's effect of dealing damage seems to mostly consist of enhancing melee attack speed. Why are there no knockbacks (or rather, why does thunder knockback instead?!), why are there no suffocating abilities (denying the enemy air to breath), windcutting strikes or throwing them in the air for fall damage... So many potential untapped also in terms of fire...The elements alone make for a bottomless barrel of ideas. The cartoon avatar told us as much. All the more does shaman design feel kinda lazy.

    -Shamans are spiritual mediums, not only with the elemental spirits, but also with the ancestors and nature (shamans have a lot in common with druids here). Yet both parts are rarely represented. Especially having the spirits fight for you only existing in form of feral spirits feels kinda sparce.

    -Shamans still being unable to weild swords. Really blizz? Really? After you've enabled everything for both rogues AND monks? Well, if weapons will be AP based again, we'll maybe see less swords we cannot use, though I fear the opposite. After all, warriors have no limitations whatsoever, and death knights can use everything except fists, so we may even see a drop in fist weapon drops and an increase in swords (call me a realist, pessimist or "experienced", I dont care). Anyways, there are enough shamanistic swords around and they fit us better than battleaxes and warhammers will ever fit rogues, that much for sure.

    -What about dark shamanism? Wont we ever see more of that? Blizzard touched on the subject with the kor'kron dark shamans, will they drop it just like that? In WoD, we will see dark shamanism (at tleast I think that it was mentioned (dark rituals and that kinky stuff )), soooo any chance we'll see some of that in our toolkit? Shaman's potential seems kind of limitless with the whole dark shamanism/shadow magic/acid/slime/corrupted life/shadow hunter stuff.

    I must say though; I see shamans as warrior graduates or something. I mean, they grow up as powerful tauren, orcs and trolls. The traditional hunt and the long wars with ogres/gronn and later humans (orcs), centaurs (tauren) and all the myriad of enemies trolls had over the millenia have most certainly made it necessary to be capable fighters at the base.
    Those not having any aptitude on anything else remain warriors, and focus on it. Those who have some expertise with more difficult to master ranged weapon combat and some link to nature (befriending pets) become hunters instead.
    The most exceptional will have the ability to become leaders or advicers to leaders of their tribes, by devining the future, consulting the ancients and getting magical support for their people through nature itself (elements/spirits of the wild). They exceed the faint link hunters have by being able to link with the spirits, not just by bonding with single animals.

    So basically I see shamans as the most special of the bunch (like you said), though I see them still as fighters and huntsmen at the core (though not as steeled in either as their less favored brethren). The latter would even open up the spirithunter theme more, and ranged weapons. And ranged weapons being used by more than just hunters wouldn't be a bad thing either. Being able to enhance projectiles doesn't seem out of place either, nor does shamans being able to use ranged weapons, as the archtypical shaman race is traditionally als a hunter, as I stated. Well, it's more of a potential the class has, I'm not asking for it.

    Maybe make resto into a ranged weapon healer, shooting allies with blessed projectiles? :O Man, that would feel awesome and be super unique as well.

    And with the "warrior foundation" and protective earth magic, we all know, being able to tank would be a given (warden).

    So yeah, so much potential, so few new stuff over the years.
    Last edited by Omanley; 2014-04-18 at 06:06 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Angoth
    I'm sorry that Blizzard won't just gift wrap awesome in a cup and let you drink your fill.

  10. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by Omanley View Post
    The cartoon avatar told us as much.
    Oh boy, I hate it when you exactly know how I feel.
    We have seen Pokemon in the past, and I watched the Last Airbender with ultimate joy as a shaman.

    However I have never thought about Dark Shamanism, however it could have been so awesome if Blizzard even considered going for subspecs.
    What if specs could be spec'd into some specsepcion?

    Imagine as you pick your spec, you would confirm your role; then by picking a subspec, you would pick how you want to perform it.
    Spirit Hunter Elemental Shaman or Dark Enhancement Shaman would be awesome. But Blizzard is so far away from such improvements since they can't even get straight out specs right.

    It feels like we are always being punished because Blizzard just can't make their mind up.
    I don't have many positive ideas about WoD Enhancement since they are going to insist on the same gameplay which they tried to patch it up through years. However, I feel sorry for Elemental more than Enhancement.

    I know it's just Alpha and everything, but I really doubt the release will be better since it'll be this year and there's little time.
    They couldn't even impress me with new last tier talents yet, and I've seen many comments around backing this up. And Elementals are surely disturbed a lot for losing their movement-cast, while Warlocks are able to keep theirs.

    So overall, this expension feels like "how much we are going to lose?" instead of "oooh what new toys/improvements we are getting!".

    ---

    On a side note, I hated perks. I can't still see the point and they are all absurd straight buffs to classes.
    I can't see why they are being added, and can't understand why they are adding them as we level up.

    It's also sad to see Ghost Wolf model change being our best wishes. That's how digested we became after the silence totem nerf. I'm just scared to hell to make suggestions on official forums, fearing I'll get more unjustified nerfs because their Frost Mages and Warriors are too lazy to target an immobile stick and hit it once with autoattack.

    It's just Blizzard being Blizzard, Metzen pumping us all with FOR THE HORDE cries, but secretly having an affair with Bubble HS + /dance'ing blonde human Paladins.

  11. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by Omanley View Post
    -Shamans are the masters of the four elements, yet seem unable to do much with frost/offensive water spells, nor do they much with earth, for that matter.
    Earth based abilities were always tanking/threat related. That's why they've been gradually phased out. (except for lolquake)

    I liked everything you said though.

  12. #52
    Titan Grimbold21's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Futhark View Post
    Earth based abilities were always tanking/threat related. That's why they've been gradually phased out. (except for lolquake)

    I liked everything you said though.
    Our defensive cooldowns could be earth related.

  13. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by Grimbold21 View Post
    Our defensive cooldowns could be earth related.
    Or we could get some buffer/debuffer mixed back into our class. I sort of imagine that each of our shocks could have several effects. A passive effect, like a buff that stacks until you use the ability. An active effect when cast on a hostile target. And maybe even a separate active effect when cast on a friendly target.

    An example:

    Earth Shock, 6 second CD.

    Passive: The Shaman gains 1 stack of Grounding every 2 seconds, 5 stacks maximum. Grounding reduces the damage of the next physical attack taken by 5% per stack OR has a 5% chance per stack to deflect the next single-target spell cast on the Shaman.

    Active (Hostile): Does X damage. The Shaman's stacks of Grounding are consumed and Grounded is applied to the target. Grounded increases the damage taken from the Shaman's next special ability by 5% per stack of Grounding.

    Active (Friendly): Consumes the Shaman's stacks of Grounding to apply a Minor Earth Shield lasting 1 second per stack of Grounding consumed. Minor Earth Shield absorbs the next spell interrupt used against the friendly target.

    It's a hastily thought out example, but gives the class abilities that, you know, enhance allies.
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  14. #54
    @ Mithgroth: Hehe, great minds think alike. I didn't think of subspecs though, I must admit. It's easy to think of ideas concerning shaman subspecs, though I'd imagine it being hard for many other classes, like your mentioned rogue/warriors, but also hunters (which lack diversity between specs already), death knights (all about death...ice only fits because northrend happens to be cold, blood...feels made up on the spot (blood nova, really?)), mages (I can even begin thinking of subspecs...spellbreaker maybe? but what would he do?)...
    I could see subspecs for druids and shamans, as they have such wide-spread talents, would be kinda unfair though, to limit it to only the two. Interesting Idea though. With time they could probably expand on the identity of more bland classes.

    The funny thing is: I rarely ever think much about neglected shaman themes, because I prioritize actual gameplay shortcomings, such as outdated totems, mandatory glyphs (got, so disapointed level-learned glyphs are not turning baseline, LS and HS are among them and could've freed up space for Spirit Walk/Ghost Wolf, to make compensation for low mobility/uptime in pvp at least affordable at the cost of other interesting glyphs, instead of just plain out unaffordable)
    ...or Hex...still hoping its turning instant for enh now. With no way of making it instant, a cooldown and a cast time, not taking control over the target, breaking on damage, not working on druids... worse than ever
    ...what about survivability in WoD? We'll lose HTT, the MSW perk will ask for more dps related usage than heal, even with msw out of the system, HST got dumbed down, literally...I'm not sure we'll be alright as is.

    And I completely agree with your sentiment over perks. Making leveling fun again through perks only granted within 9 level ups? And some are straight up percentage buffs, what's the point? FrS is the only one I think is really exciting from a general POV, the other nice changes are about enh dps gameplay/rotation/priority, and dont feel as anything else than baseline improvements we needed in any case. I think its just packed into a new name to make changes appear more new and innovative, and /woo people back to the game through that deception of sorts.

    And yeah, nothing new with shaman requests. At least we got less static dps gameplay though.

    @Futhark: Well, we're not intended to tank since before launch, only that blizz was to lazy make any appropriate changes in that regard. What confused the hell out of me was the introduction of tanky abilities later on, through EET, Feral Spirits (Twin Howl), Rockbiter redesign + Unleash Effect, and how long SCT survived as a taunting stick. It kinda kept people's hopes up for years and felt like an endless trololol-campaign to distract us from other stuff. As much as a tanking spec would be cool, it would/could take attention from the other specs, or negatively impact them otherwise. I can live without, and with them getting rid of RB now we can at least get a piece of mind now, something final.

    @Grimbold: Well, EET kinda is a defensive cd, although rather useless in pvp. EBT is another one. Something like a rock shield cd (a bubble making us immobile as it encases us shooting from the ground up) would be more exciting though.
    Quote Originally Posted by Angoth
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  15. #55
    Titan Grimbold21's Avatar
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    I just reckon that the elements should be a more active part of our offensive toolkit as well.

    We have Fire and Wind as the most active ones(?) with earth and water being the ones least used. It seems that the certain elements are specific to individual specs, well not really, only Resto really has anything specific (Earth/water).

  16. #56
    I am Murloc! Usagi Senshi's Avatar
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    You guys are trying too hard to make enhance something it shouldn't be. We're melee magi (battle mage archetype) and that's all we really need to be. Elements are woven into the spec enough as is.
    Tikki tikki tembo, Usagi no Yojimbo, chari bari ruchi pip peri pembo!

  17. #57
    Can anyone explain how the new echo of elements works better than what the tooltip says? Confuses the hell out of me.

  18. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by Omanley View Post
    @Futhark: Well, we're not intended to tank since before launch, only that blizz was to lazy make any appropriate changes in that regard. What confused the hell out of me was the introduction of tanky abilities later on, through EET, Feral Spirits (Twin Howl), Rockbiter redesign + Unleash Effect, and how long SCT survived as a taunting stick. It kinda kept people's hopes up for years and felt like an endless trololol-campaign to distract us from other stuff. As much as a tanking spec would be cool, it would/could take attention from the other specs, or negatively impact them otherwise. I can live without, and with them getting rid of RB now we can at least get a piece of mind now, something final.
    Oh, so I shouldn't be pining for a super-secret in development Earth-based Shaman 4th Spec Tank spec? I'm sure it's on its way!

  19. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by uhskippy View Post
    Can anyone explain how the new echo of elements works better than what the tooltip says? Confuses the hell out of me.
    If you spec for Echo, your abilities will occasionally proc a buff that allows you to use a short cooldown ability without actually putting it on cooldown.

    For Enhancement:

    (0.0s) You cast Lightning Bolt, but there's no proc.
    (1.5s) You cast Lava Lash. You proc Echo of the Elements.
    (3.0s) You cast Stormstrike. Echo of the Elements is consumed, and Stormstrike does not go on cooldown.
    (4.5s) You cast Stormstrike again. Stormstrike goes on cooldown.
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  20. #60
    EoE is going to be such a great talent and i for one can not wait to try it out. On top of no icd for wf, really excited. Now, if they would just bring old wf animation back wooooo.

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