[ENH]Shamans and mobility; a thorough analysis. What do we need, and why?

[Omanley]

The purpose of this thread is to get our opinions on the matter of shaman mobility to the guys who can bring the change.
It is impossible to know how much (if at all) mmo-c threads are read or even considered when doing class balancing, so I want to make our feedback be seen.
Since it is impossible to make an in detail post on twitter about what we need and why, because of the limited count of letters per message, this thread's link will be posted on twitter, as a means to achieve both: being read as well as doing justice to blizzard's desire to get as high quality feedback as possible, so that they can improve our class.

As such, I ask you, my shaman brethren, to share your thoughts on this matter, to show the developers how we feel about it.

thank you very much.

Warning: A lot of text If you're impatient, skip to Toolkit comparison.

p.s.: I've decided to narrow my post down to enhance mostly but not exclusively (at the bottom you others are included in suggestions), since that's all I have ever played shaman-wise. Feel free to add your points on ele/resto, as I feel that they are underperforming also.


Mobility
Basically, it is the ability to increase/optimize healing or dps uptime despite environmental obstacles.

It can be categorized by specialisation/role, and envirionment (pve/pvp).

This is just my individual POV, but here we go:
1) Mobility, and for that matter utility in general, has higher requirements to be competitive in pvp than in pve. Hence pvp should always be the meassuring stick for mobility/utility design. Many shaman spells functions okay in pve, but turn out to be at severe disadvantages when in a pvp scenario (examples for this are Hex,Capacitor Totem,Frost Shock,Totems in general). Because of this, This post will focus mainly on pvp.
In pve, it's mainly about moving out of bad stuff and back into position, and sometimes you've to walk a little between phases. Outside of that, most of the times consists of uptime for melees, regardless of tools. Bosses usually dont snare/cc and through that hinder you gap closing either.

In pvp however, there are a lot more requirements for mobility to be considered good, or competitive. For that, we have to ascertain the roles mobility has to fulfill and how it does it for the different roles, in my case, melee.

A: Roles of mobility:
1: actual movement enhancing mobility tools:
-Gap creaters => Thunderstorm, Disengage, Blink etc.
Their purpose is to instantly create a gap between the caster/ranged dps and an opponent, usually a melee, to get a breather for counter meassures to keep that distance and the enemy unable to deal damage, via kiting and cc.
-Gap closers => Charge, Heroic Leap, Shadowstep, Deathgrip (kind of reverse mobility when compared to the others, like thunderstorm, but eventually reaching the same goal) etc.
The counterpart to gap creaters, this ability instantly closes the gap of a melee towards his adversary and is the bread and butter in keeping uptime up, and through that, creating pressure by pushing back and interrupting spells, and dealing damage.
-Movement speed boosts => These do not require targets or positioning like the above usually do. A sprint can, because of this, be considered as both a gap closing AND creating tool, but has the downside that it does the job not instantly, but only shortens the time needed to accomplish the task; The higher the movement speed increase, the faster you can get into safety, the faster you can get back into range as melee.

2: tools that allow you, while moving, to help with keeping up pressure (damage/spell pushback/cc etc.):
-Melee/ranged dps Melee are able to dps while on the move, while casters do not have to move as much, because they have ranged abilities
-Instant casts (for enhance, that's shocks, Unleash Elements, Windshear and Purge. They are not sufficient in providing uptime though.)
-Spells that can be cast while moving or mechanics that allow doing so. (mostly relevant for casters)

3: indirect mobility enhancing tools:
- snares, roots, stuns, crowd control => the target is unable to move, hence easier to close/create gaps towards.

B: Toolkit comparisson:
Enhancement's toolkiz and how they hold up against other melee specialisations
- Ghostwolf (movement speed increase) 30% +speed, dispellable, makes additionally vulnerable against beast cc (fear beast, hibernate), requires a glyph to not be slowable below 100%
vs
- Travelform 40% +speed, undispellable, makes vulnerable against beast cc BUT immune to polymorph/hex, also usable during polymorph/hex to break it, removes movement impairing effects (snares and roots)

No question, travelform is vastly superior. Not being snarable below 100% with the glyph cant be compared to being able to break snares AND roots baseline. Additionally the glyph is hardly an option, since glyphs like Lightning Shield and (for enhance) Healing Storm have guaranteed places in our glyph slots. The new Glyph of Flametongue Weapon concept to give the imbue the effect of our current enhancement pvp set bonus is likely to become mandatory as well, for enh anyway, because FrS off the shared cd seems scrapped and Flame Shock will become so much more important with the improved Lava Lash perk.
The upside of using it indoors is neglectable in pvp and also neglectable in every open instance. In such cases, there is catform.

Summed up, Ghostwolf is a strictly inferior ability when compared to Travel Form, and no, I do not say that because of a outdated model or something.
Ghostwolf is also the most centric shaman mobility tool. It is avaiable for every specialisation, has no cooldown and can be used for both fleeing and chasing, hence versatile by design.
It is with 30% extra speed to slow to quickly create or close gaps, is easy to counter, has no protection in any form, safe the glyph that only diminishes snares and all in all, offers no advantage that can really hold its ground.
Taking all of this into account, I think Ghostwolf deserves buffs, as it is insufficient in helping shamans in pvp to get where they are supposed to be (away from enemy melees as a caster/healer, or in caster/healer's faces, as melee.

There are not many "no cd movement speed bonus" spells. There's also rogues' burst of speed. Burst of speed is comparable both to GW as well as Spirit Walk, so I'll go into detail about it below.

Enhancement:
Spirit Walk: 60% speed, breakes movement impairing effects, 15s duration, 1min cd
Dash: 70% speed, breaks movement impairing effects, 15 s duration, 3min cd
Here, Spirit Walk seems vastly superior, despite the slightly lower speed increase. The glyphs lower the cd by 25% (-15s for enhance) and 33% (-1m for druids) respectively, so druids catch a little up when glyphs are considered. How affordable/important the glyph is for druids, I dont know. Spirit Walk glyph for one is VERY good (since SW is enhances' best gap closing tool, but has a to high cd), but unaffordable due to LS/HS glyphs being to important, leaving not enough room for real customisation.
Another point to consider is that Dash is avaiable for ALL druid specialisations, where Spirit Walk is enhancement only. Through this, druids are additionally ahead as non-melee specialisations are concerned.

Spirit Walk can be summed up as a movement impairing breaker plus sprint. Aside from druids and Dash, rogues have this with Burst of speed (except that it has NO FRIGGIN COOLDOWN at the expense of not breaking roots). Since it has no cd and breaks snares, it is kind of GW and SW in one ability. The only downside is that it is a talent. For this one talent though alone, rogue mobility trumps that of enhancement's.

As far as melee snares are concerned:
Crippling Poison
Feral:Infected Wounds
Warrior: Hamstring (does not even need to be spammed anymore (which you could do up till now)
Frost: Improved Death Grip (new perk) => automaically adds Chains of Ice after using Death Grip, not incurring it's cooldown
Monk: Disable, spammable snare (like old hamstring), which self applies if you're able to keep close to the target, you can even put a snare on top
Retribution: Seal of Justice
Enhancement: pvp set bonus (gone) => glyph of Frostflame Weapon

So enhancement is, basically, the only specialisation without a 50% baseline melee snare, we have to GLYPH for it.


So you might say: "You have Frost Shock, you dont need a melee snare!". BUT:
1) According to blue posts, it appears the seperate Frost Shock cooldown perk was replaced by a 30% sprint for 4s when casting Unleash Elements.
Because of this, Frost Shock will be on cooldown when we use other shocks. Utility prevented by damage. Flame Shock will become more important for enhancement pvp in WoD, because it's DoT component will reset Lava Lash cooldowns.
2) Except for Paladins (which have Seal of Freedom in combination with a very strong movement speed tier) and rogues (if they decide on Shadowstep over Burst of Speed), everyone else has instant gap closers. So, where others close gaps unbothered, we have to snare on range, at the expense of damage abilities, to slowly close the gaps with a 1m cd sprint, or GW.
3) Also to consider, with the demise of the improved Frost Shock perk, is the demise of elemental shaman pvp, since the perk was the only bigger compensation for their loss of Lightning Bolt on the move.
4) Death Knights can use their Chains of Ice on range as well (in addition to their new perk), so enhancement is not really unique in the regard of ranged snare.

Overall, a ranged snare and weak sprints without freedom to go with it cannot make up for strong sprints WITH freedom (ret) or instant gap closers (the rest), both of which have almost entirely passive snares, all baseline, where enhancement has to spend a glyph it cannot afford.

As for enhancement cc:
Hex is the weakest crowd control spell in the game, besides maybe Capacitor Totem and Remorseless Winter, one of which our other CC spell. Wether you label it
-a silence that breaks on damage and has a cast time
or
-a polymorph that is removable by all druid specialisations, not just resto, and additionally has a cooldown and does not take away control, at the little plus side of not healing said target

Hex has so many disadvantages from so many other spells, it cannot really boast a strenght.
Even worse: In WoD enh will no longer be able to make it instant, not with Ancestral Swiftness and not with Maelstrom Weapon.
A melee with a cc that needs casting, to my, knowledge, exists only for paladins (and theirs at least does not have a cooldown) and for ferals (from WoD on, where they fall subject to the same rule and will have horrible cc outside of their stun).

Capacitor Totemis one of two stuns with a charge up timer, and with that one of the two worst ones. With 5 second charge up it is quicker than RW, and it does not require to stack dispellable charges, but you can outrange CPT easily (unless Totemic Projection) or one shot it with its 5hp.
No decent pvp player gets hit by this, unless the player goes out of his way to at least glyph it OR talent PJ.


So to sum up:
-Ghostwolf is weak
-Spirit Walk (1m cd), Windwalk Totem (1m cd (talent)) and Ascendence (3m cd, doubles (prime use) as dps cd) => to rarely avaiable
=> Enhancement is the only melee specialisation without access to an instant gap closer or freedom sprint
-Enhancement is the only melee without a baseline melee snare
-Shamans have the weakest non-stun CC
-Shamans have, together with DKs, the weakest stun
-Frost Shock disables other shocks (especially taxing for ele, but also increasingly for enh come WoD)
THAT is why enhancement needs mobility improvement. Homogenisation is here slapped on almost every class in terms of almost every type of mobility help, so unique class design isn't gonna excuse this. Enhancement needs competitive ways of closing the distance and keeping o targets with other melees. Likewise, Elemental/Restoration need ways on par with their caster/healer counterparts to keep the distance and run while doing their thing.


Now, for the most important part of the thread: What needs to be done to bring enh back in line with Windwalkers, Rogues, Warriors and Druids (Rets and DKs are also slightly undertuned, but not as much as enhance)

SUGGESTIONS
1) Make Hex instant cast baseline for enhancement. I think it cannot hurt to remove the cooldown for at least elemental shamans at least, looking at how their mobile casting took such a hit
2) Lower Capacitor Totem charging time to 3 seconds baseline. The glyph will make it instant and lower the stun duration by one second. Three seconds is still "removable by quick minded players, and glyphing is supposed to make an ability more interesting/alter it in a meaningful way, not fix a broken spell.
3) Keep Frost Shock on a seperate cooldown, at least for elemental shamans. Perk or whatever. If a so frequently avaiable instant ranged snare on its own cd proves to strong, you can always raise the cd (8 or 10 seconds) to rebalance it.
4) Make FT snare baseline, perk or pvp set bonus if enh does not keep FrS perk.

With cc and snares back on a competitive track, all that's left is gap closer/creaters and sprints, for which there'd be multiple options:
Enhancement as melee needs either a low cooldown sprint with a short freedom effect attached to it, OR an instant gap closer.
Whichever we'd get, it would need to be frequently avaiable, with at best a 30 second cooldown for an instant gap closer, or at best 12 seconds for a sprint, lowerable through glyph (rets can get 45% for 3sec once every 6 seconds(!)).
Either
5) Instant gap closer: Feral Spirit's Leap ability would work nicely. If the enemy target requirement were to be removed, it would work like Heroic Leap and would be usable by ele/resto as well, 3 birds with one stone. It could get an additional audio effect (Feral Spirit's Twin Howl sound would be awesome, I miss that ) and turn the user into GW upon impact. With Feral Spirits (enh only obviously) it could additionally order your pets to jump to the same location, for flavor .
6) Freedom Spint:Reduce Spiritwalk's cooldown to 12 seconds, lower the duration to 4 seconds and speed increase to 50%, and give it freedom for that time frame. Freedom uptime would be 33%, lower than paladin's Hand of Freedom, and lower sprint uptime than Paladin's long arm of the Law.

As for ele/resto: (mainly ideas as I've never really played them)The freedom sprint would work for them as well, same with a freely aimable leap. Other options could include:
Elemental: Thunderstorm should remain on its ~20ish second cd it currently has via pvp set bonus, further lowerable through glyph/readiness stat. So if the bonus is planned to be removed, lower TS's baseline cd to compensate. Furthermore, the knockback could be, instead of hitting the enemies, be applied to the shaman instead, working like a disengage.
Glyph of Thunderstorm now, instead of removing the knockback, now applies it to enemies, instead of the caster. This will allow elemental to retain TS's current awesomeness in certain battlegrounds, but baseline will be a more reliable gap creater for Elemental pvp, reliant not on the enemies positioning, but one's own. Could also be nicely combined with good Earthbind/grab placing (and totem placement is an accepted skill factor, right )
Resto: With enh and ele getting their own specialisation specific mobility improvements, Ghostwolf could be vastly improved for restoration usage. Faster speed, able to cast Healing spells with a cast time while in GW and on the move and such could be traits of the new GW. A little cooldown (10s or so) would then maybe be in order, since dispelling would be important to counter resto mobility heals (just a thought). GW could be made resto only as well. With GW improving cast on the move for some spells, GW could turn into a very iconic ability for resto, and give resto a VERY unique healing experience.


The above suggestions for enhance/ele/resto ideas for instant gap closer/creater or freedom sprints could very well be incorporated into a talent also. The place it would take would be the current totem tier, adding totem thrower baseline to work like trap thrower and replace Totemic Projection, and removing the 1totem/per element rule for all but fire totems, baseline (superior form of Totemic Persistance).

If the tier would include specialisation based talents, it could look like this:
talent 1(all specs): Spirit Walk: Instant cast, 12 seconds cooldown. Increases your movement speed by 50% percent for 4 seconds. Also removes all movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them for the duration of the spell.

talent 2(all specs): Spiritual Flight: Soar in the form of a Spirit Eagle towards your targeted location. Instant cast. 30 second cooldown.

talent 3(spec specific)
Enhancement: Spectral Leap: Borrow the power of the spirits of the wilderness and roar, leaping behind your targets, accompanied by your Feral Spirit minions, if present
Elemental: Volcanic Upwinds: Replaces Thunderstorm. Instant cast, 25 second cooldown. A volcanic fissure opens beneath your feet, releasing super heated steam to carry you backwards (disengage range) and root your target for three second in magma slag.
Restoration: Aidance of the Elders: Increases movement speed by additional 10% while in Ghostwolf form and makes you immune to beast related crowd control. While in Ghostwolf form, your instant healing spells are disabled but your Healing Rain, Chain Heal and Healing Wave can be cast 15% faster, while moving and without breaking Ghostwolf.

Thank you very much for reading

edit: If you can look at my two posts directed towards celestalon here, as well as remain updated on eventual replies.

[Deleted]

Making Hex instant, even for Enh only, seems to go against their current design philosophy.

The new implementation of giving shamans +30% MS when using UE seem ill thought through, didn't they learn anything when they tied up all those CDs in the Spirit Wolves? Not as big of a deal, but tying a movement speed boost to a DPS increase. Why? When I need to move I'm most likely not DPSing, either trying to reach my target or getting the hell out of dodge.

If a proper movement tier of talents ever was implemented though, I'd hope they either make some lightning rush ability (charge-like) or magnetize (death grip-ish). I don't see it happening though as A) Blizzard doesen't seem to want shaman to have such an ability and B) there's already a movement/anti movement tier.

[Deleted]

A few thoughts on shaman mobility from an elemental/resto viewpont.

Why do we need a change in mobility?

Shamans feel outdated. If you play other classes and come back to your shaman we feel extremely slow/sluggish and basically just behind the times. We currently have ONE movement speed ability which is ghost wolf, 30% speed buff at the cost of a GCD and no ability to cast any spells. Here's a look at other class movement abilities from Tiberria in another thread:

Boomkin/Resto Druid - Baseline cat form is 25% movement speed and is only slightly slower than Ghost Wolf (with all the same limitations). Druids can talent that up to 40% cat form run speed/15% baseline run speed, or a charge or a leap. On top of that, they have Dash and Stampeding Roar.

Warlock - Demonic Circle: Teleport, Demonic Gateway, on top of the ability to talent Burning Rush (which almost everyone does in PvE).

Mage - Blink and the ability to talent Blazing Speed (150% run speed/1.5 secs/25 sec CD).

Hunter - Not only do they have Disengage - Aspect of the Cheetah is better than Ghost Wolf in every way because it's the same run speed and doesn't silence you (yes it's a 25% AP hit, but 25% is a lot better than 100%).

Shadow Priest - The Body and Soul talent is about twice as good as anything Shaman have and Angelic Feathers give you near unlimited 80% movement speed

Mistweaver - Roll (and a movement talent tier that buffs it), Transcendence

Holy Paladin - Choice between 15% run speed, a 70% sprint on an 8 second cooldown, or a Judgement talent that's about 200% better than the proposed ULE thing - without a real rotational penalty.

This isnt even a problem of having mobile DPS, this is an issue of having no mobility period. The game has evolved, its time we as a class do too.

Suggestions/thoughts

Celestalon recently asked this in a tweet:

Ghost Wolf is iconic - it just needs to be brought up to the level of mobility that other classes offer
Discussion: Other than wanting buffs, why do you feel that Ghost Wolf should grant the same mobility level as other classes? (Celestalon)

I assume here he is addressing the ever present issue of 'homogenization' in WoW where all classes are granted the same abilities. In my opinion we don't NEED to have the same mobility level as other classes. We just need better mobility. A 30% speed increase at the cost of a silence is almost NEVER useful.

The UE elements change was a step in the right direction and here's why:

If you compare it to ghost wolf, we suddenly have an ability which grants a movement speed boost, provides us with a form of mobile DPS and give us the ability to still cast other instant abilities such as shocks and procs.

However this is far from a fix and has a number of issues, namely:

This perk isn't available to resto? Resto need a movement speed buff just as much as any other spec.
UE is tied to the UF talent which is a rotational ability, meaning we wont have much control over when we can cast it or leading to a situation where you trade the usefulness of the ability for the movement speed it supplies. An ability like this needs much more freedom.
30% speed buff is still barely a speed increase and a 15 second CD for an ability like this is weak.

My suggestion would be talents that affect the way Ghost Wolf works. Ghost Wolf is our signature shaman movement ability and can easily be altered to provide us with some up to date, much needed mobility. That is not to say giving us a leap, roll or blink which is EXACTLY the same as other classes.

Something like a talent which turns ghost wolf into an 8 second, 60% speed boost with a 30-45 second cooldown.

Pursuing changes like the recent UE change could definitely provide an interesting form of mobility but has to address the issues above much more so than the current iteration does.

[Tiberria]

A few thoughts on shaman mobility from an elemental/resto viewpont.

Why do we need a change in mobility?

Shamans feel outdated. If you play other classes and come back to your shaman we feel extremely slow/sluggish and basically just behind the times. We currently have ONE movement speed ability which is ghost wolf, 30% speed buff at the cost of a GCD and no ability to cast any spells. Here's a look at other class movement abilities from Tiberria in another thread:



This isnt even a problem of having mobile DPS, this is an issue of having no mobility period. The game has evolved, its time we as a class do too.

Suggestions/thoughts

Celestalon recently asked this in a tweet:



I assume here he is addressing the ever present issue of 'homogenization' in WoW where all classes are granted the same abilities. In my opinion we don't NEED to have the same mobility level as other classes. We just need better mobility. A 30% speed increase at the cost of a silence is almost NEVER useful.

The UE elements change was a step in the right direction and here's why:

If you compare it to ghost wolf, we suddenly have an ability which grants a movement speed boost, provides us with a form of mobile DPS and give us the ability to still cast other instant abilities such as shocks and procs.

However this is far from a fix and has a number of issues, namely:

This perk isn't available to resto? Resto need a movement speed buff just as much as any other spec.
UE is tied to the UF talent which is a rotational ability, meaning we wont have much control over when we can cast it or leading to a situation where you trade the usefulness of the ability for the movement speed it supplies. An ability like this needs much more freedom.
30% speed buff is still barely a speed increase and a 15 second CD for an ability like this is weak.

My suggestion would be talents that affect the way Ghost Wolf works. Ghost Wolf is our signature shaman movement ability and can easily be altered to provide us with some up to date, much needed mobility. That is not to say giving us a leap, roll or blink which is EXACTLY the same as other classes.

Something like a talent which turns ghost wolf into an 8 second, 60% speed boost with a 30-45 second cooldown.

Pursuing changes like the recent UE change could definitely provide an interesting form of mobility but has to address the issues above much more so than the current iteration does.

Homogenization is one of the most overused arguments in class balance discussions that people use to lazily shoot down valid arguments when they don't have an intelligent argument to make against it. Homogenization in terms of movement abilities would be giving every class an ability that increases movement speed by X% for Y seconds with a Z second cooldown. That isn't how it is now; Blink feels and looks distinctively different from Roll which feels and looks distinctively different from DC: Teleport and so on and so on even though all of these abilities accomplish a similar task.

Homogenization is NOT saying that it's OK for Ghost Wolf to be inferior to the movement toolkit of every other ranged class and be the only Shaman movement speed option (outside of taking engineering as a profession of course). That isn't homogenization; that is using the word "homogenization" to justify lazy and inept class design.

[Gromthak]

I would be satisfied with just changing spirit walk to be completely off gcd. I don't quite understand why it isn't right now anyway. Afaik every other sprint is completely off the gcd.

[EruptorNZ]

Elemental Shamans need this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxyeU2de1g8

[Omanley]

Making Hex instant, even for Enh only, seems to go against their current design philosophy.

They do not seem to be in the process of giving Sap, Intimidating Shout, Blind and other melee cooldowns a cast time though. Their instant cc cooldown philosophy is mostly aimed at crowd control with no cooldown, like polymorph, or fear. Hex has a cooldown though, hence shouldn't have a cast time.
Hex being instant would be one option, the other would be to have no cooldown. As a melee I'd prefer the former though.

I agree with the rest you said though.

[Nebria]

i'm not a big fan of giving enhancers a gap closer. I play ele in arena and I have to say when I see an enhancer I would like to use my self kill dagger sometimes. he is one of the few melees where using thunderstorm has still some effect. if you see warriors which his many charges and jumps thunderstorm sometimes feels soooo useless. so giving another gap closer to some melee seems dull.
Sprint, FrS, low cd interrupts seemed for me enough to be a really strong agains casters. don't forget the absurd burst damage from cds. is it really so bad from your pov?
Don't understand me wrong I am for you in giving enhancer the same mobility as other melees have but I think we have to much gap closer stuff in arena currently.
Perhaps it is so horrible only from ele pov where you have also a huge mobility issue. I would like to see reduced instant gap closing (huger cds). If a melee sits in my face I can't do very much anymore thanks to interupts, slows, stuns. And in the rare case I can get some disctance they use instant gap closer. yeah what a fun.

[Blithe]

A great read Omanly, I hope it gets some recognition and we're heard over at Blizzard, it's great that we have such a person to take the time to voice our concerns and try and see about getting something done about them.

My thoughts:

• Spirit Walk - Is now baseline for all specializations.

• Ghost Wolf - Glyph of Ghost Wolf is now baseline for all specializations.

• Frost Shock - Frost Shock no longer shares a cooldown with Earth Shock and Flame Shock, and no longer deals damage.

• Frostflame Weapon - Is now a baseline passive for Enhancement.

• Capacitor Totem - Reiterated, removed or replaced.

• Improved Unleash Elements - Removed from Elemental and buffed to 50% movement speed for 4 sec. up from 30% for 4 sec.

• Unleashed Fury - Reiterated, removed or replaced.

Spirit Walk is the only one I don't 100% agree with, as I don't know how strong Elemental and Restoration would be with it.

[Deleted]

Homogenization is one of the most overused arguments in class balance discussions that people use to lazily shoot down valid arguments when they don't have an intelligent argument to make against it. Homogenization in terms of movement abilities would be giving every class an ability that increases movement speed by X% for Y seconds with a Z second cooldown. That isn't how it is now; Blink feels and looks distinctively different from Roll which feels and looks distinctively different from DC: Teleport and so on and so on even though all of these abilities accomplish a similar task.

Homogenization is NOT saying that it's OK for Ghost Wolf to be inferior to the movement toolkit of every other ranged class and be the only Shaman movement speed option (outside of taking engineering as a profession of course). That isn't homogenization; that is using the word "homogenization" to justify lazy and inept class design.

I completely agree that homogenisation is the lamest excuse for not giving us better mobility, I just wanted to address the issue in case this is something blizzard is using as a reason not to change things, and to point out there a lot of buffs which can be made to our mobility without putting us on par with other classes. Cause were that far behind

[Deleted]

They do not seem to be in the process of giving Sap, Intimidating Shout, Blind and other melee cooldowns a cast time though. Their instant cc cooldown philosophy is mostly aimed at crowd control with no cooldown, like polymorph, or fear. Hex has a cooldown though, hence shouldn't have a cast time.
Hex being instant would be one option, the other would be to have no cooldown. As a melee I'd prefer the former though.

I agree with the rest you said though.

I was actually thinking maybe Blizzard would consider removing the CD or cast time from Hex for Enh if they made it melee range. Kind of stupid but the only time Blizzard seems to be willing to give something is if they take something in return. Anyway, Hex seems weak in comparison to other CC (just a little). Why do we have a CD but mages don't? Is it because we bring more utility? I don't think that is true anymore though.

Another thought on snares. They removed Flametongue for Resto and it now works a little different for Ele/Enh. Could they not just replace it with a slightly buffed/remade Frostbrand for Enh only? Provided they made the necessary changes so it provid +7% spell dmg (or is that removed by the Mental Quickness passive?) and bonus dmg to LL.

As a minor, personal note, I'd like them to change LL to a frost attack. Rename it with something with "Avalanche" in it. Boom. Snowy shaman. Or atleast a glyph to make the animation icy? Plz.

[Omanley]

i'm not a big fan of giving enhancers a gap closer. I play ele in arena and I have to say when I see an enhancer I would like to use my self kill dagger sometimes. he is one of the few melees where using thunderstorm has still some effect. if you see warriors which his many charges and jumps thunderstorm sometimes feels soooo useless. so giving another gap closer to some melee seems dull.

How about buffing Thunderstorm then, so that it actually is useful against more melees? It's not really a valid point to keep a weak class weak because it is the only kiteable through Thunderstorm. It would make more sense to buff weak mobility, or nerf strong mobility, to bring the overall curve into a more even line.

Sprint, FrS, low cd interrupts seemed for me enough to be a really strong agains casters. don't forget the absurd burst damage from cds. is it really so bad from your pov?

Burst damage will be nerfed in WoD. They confirmed they want to lessen FET's damage contribution for enhancement, and the change to Ascendence removes a lot of damage as well as it wont scale with mastery anymore. Add to that that Stormlash Totem is gone and there isn't all that more cooldown stacking anymore. EotE will be MUCH more interesting with double Stormstrikes/Lava Lashes, so Elmental Mastery probably wont be taken that often either. There's also a loss of profession bonuses (engineering gloves/tailor capes being a dmg cooldown as well), so there are losses there also.

Perhaps it is so horrible only from ele pov where you have also a huge mobility issue. I would like to see reduced instant gap closing (huger cds). If a melee sits in my face I can't do very much anymore thanks to interupts, slows, stuns. And in the rare case I can get some disctance they use instant gap closer. yeah what a fun.

This is because of shaman's overall low mobility. Elemental needs as much improvement as enhancement, I'm afraid.

- - - Updated - - -

Spirit Walk is the only one I don't 100% agree with, as I don't know how strong Elemental and Restoration would be with it.

Well, Paladins have a 45% sprint on a 6s cd, with 3sec duration. This includes holy paladins, so comparable to resto/ele, I'd say. Paladins' freedom lasts longer (10 seconds) and has a higher cd (25), but it could be lowered in both to like 5/12s duration/cooldown. Would be a sek more duration than shaman talent with same cooldown. Uptime percentage would be the same. And hand of freedom is usable on allies as well, sooo.

I dont really see a problem with Spirit Walk ele/resto-wise, but of course WoD pvp would give us a more accurate picture. Anyways, the talents at the end were a spontaneous idea

Glad you enjoyed my post, and thanks to you guys for providing feedback.

[Darksoldierr]

I think its rather the other classes having too much mobility than shamans needing any more. I disagree that any serious buff is needed here, the others have to be tuned down.

[Omanley]

I think its rather the other classes having too much mobility than shamans needing any more. I disagree that any serious buff is needed here, the others have to be tuned down.

I guess you could balance it either way, but I think it'd be very unlikely to nerf everyones' mobility instead of buffing just one class. For one, it'd be less work. For another, you'd have a lot of raging going on, with the blame directed toward "whining shamans".

[Refridge]

Take Ghost Wolf off of the GCD?

[uhskippy]

I really liked the old talent (correct if I'm wrong) that allowed everyone 100% movement speed when you put down earthbind totem. On top of that with what Refridge suggested with ghost wolf off gcd would definitely help shaman movement woes.

[Omanley]

I really liked the old talent (correct if I'm wrong) that allowed everyone 100% movement speed when you put down earthbind totem. On top of that with what Refridge suggested with ghost wolf off gcd would definitely help shaman movement woes.

You are confusing things. Old Ghostwolf had the 100% speed when snared thing baseline, and required affordable points spend into early enhancement talents for instant cast.
The Earthbind Totem talent you are thinking of (Earthern Power) made in it's short lived, original form, immune to movement impairing effects as well as removing them, while being affected by it. The newer version was just removing things, without the immunity.

[Deleted]

This presents a oportunity to solve 2 problems at once by redoing the totem talent tier for a mobility tier, which is arguably the worst offender when it comes to lack of talent switching over the course of MoP (the second worst being the Healing Tier, since the Healing Tide being made Resto specific, AG will rule over the other 2 even with the nerf).

I reckon that everybody would love Projection baseline for all 3 specs since it is the most engaging talent of the 3 choices.

Going by Blizzard's talent process of a passive, short CD and long CD, I came up with these:

1) Energizing Shocks: Your Shock Spells increase your movement speed by 45% for 3s. - Passive talent that doesn't need micromanagement. All around synergy with Ghost Wolf and the Lv30 Tier.

2) Sentry Totem: Summons a Air Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 5 min that connects the spirit of the Shaman to the element of Air, allowing the caster to teleport to the Totem. 90s CD, 40 yd range. - Double clicking the totem will teleport you, provides synergy with Totemic Projection.

3) Elemental Bounds: When you summon a totem, you get a 25% speed increase to Ghost Wolf, stacking up to 2 times, for 60s. Does not work with Fire Totems. - Since all our totems are short CD based, a possible interaction with Ghost Wolf and the totems would be nice, even if it requires a small micro management.



I think the general consensus is that: Nobody likes the UE perk, because its a 4s GW or that we are forced to hold it for a boost (which actually unfavors UF talent).

That frostflame glyph isn't not going to be picked. Would actually prefer this as a perk specific for Enh over the other one since it's the only spec that can use it. (Or a spec specific passive, either way)

I liked the Frost Shock perk but I can see how OP it could be, 6s CD (not counting glyph) 8s duration snare. If it stays for Ele/Resto, it would need tinkering regarding CD increase/ Duration decrease and/or adding charges.

Yet another alternative would be to make my suggestion of Energizing Shocks for a general class perk and then see how it plays out in the expansion.

This is just my opinion but for the love of god, if we are going to have the MSW perk, can we PLEASE have glyph of Healing Storm as a passive and glyph of Lighting Shield on Nature's Guardian to favor PVE use?

At any rate. Good thread, would love to see the community bringing the dev's attention on this.

[Nebria]

1) Energizing Shocks: Your Shock Spells increase your movement speed by 45% for 3s. - Passive talent that doesn't need micromanagement. All around synergy with Ghost Wolf and the Lv30 Tier.

2) Sentry Totem: Summons a Air Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 5 min that connects the spirit of the Shaman to the element of Air, allowing the caster to teleport to the Totem. 90s CD, 40 yd range. - Double clicking the totem will teleport you, provides synergy with Totemic Projection.

3) Elemental Bounds: When you summon a totem, you get a 25% speed increase to Ghost Wolf, stacking up to 2 times, for 60s. Does not work with Fire Totems. - Since all our totems are short CD based, a possible interaction with Ghost Wolf and the totems would be nice, even if it requires a small micro management.

well you were really creative. however I don't like any off your ideas.
1) moves the buf to another offense spell. you will have the same issue you have with ue. but now you have to hold off a shock. remember they have a shared cd.
it might be better than movement speed on ue however still not the best solution in my mind
2)great idea again. you also added totems which are a signature off shamans. but imo it is to complicated. so to get away from something I have to put a totem on ground, teleport it away with projection and then double click on it? if the totem would last a while, say 1 minute, you would have the warlock teleport model. put it somewhere and later teleport to it. but with one totem per element you lock an element which would also be bad while playing.
I dislike that it is to complicated to use. with have enough of that stuff (capacitator totem compared to warlocks aoe stun for example)
3)again some nice idea to bring ghostwolf into the game. but I dislike you bound it to a totem. so if I'm forced to run I have to waste 1 or 2 utility totems first?
the only good thing is the buff could be have a huge uptime if you regulary set non fire totems. for me that is not that often as ele to be honest. for pvp it would be ok but not for pve.

overall I'm not a fan of putting some speed increase on a damage skill you use in your rotation and has a cd. I would prefer an own skill for the improved speed. I'm also not a fan of combing such effects with ultility spells you have to waste to get the effect.

that's why I like the idea of spirit walk for ele/restro much more.
another solution would be to change spirit walker grace to a short duration/short cd and change the glyph to make it longer duration and cd. so you do not have to waste a glyph for the imo better setup for 6.0. this would at least give me something to use while moving.
also if they add some kind of teleport I like the style shown in eruptors video. you turn into lightning and fly to your destination. could deal damage to all enemys you fly through^^ woudl be the gap closer for omanly too^^

what else I would change
- lower capacitator front loading
- baseling projection and working like hunter trap launcher (that would mean I can't teleport 4 totems anymore but that isn't really needed imo)
- gw glyph to disable snare below 100% beked in
- buffed speed for gw, make it equal to travel form of druids
- unbind elementals from totems and allow them to be out at the same time I already have a totem of the same element

[Omanley]

I liked the Frost Shock perk but I can see how OP it could be, 6s CD (not counting glyph) 8s duration snare. If it stays for Ele/Resto, it would need tinkering regarding CD increase/ Duration decrease and/or adding charges.

I dont think it would affect neither enh nor resto really. Resto did not use ES/FS much up till now, so the shared cd was no hindrance. Enhance was not much reliant on ES/FS either, unlike ele with Fulmination and Lava Surge/Lvb crit/damage. And I cannot picture elemental suddenly becoming OP just with having a high uptime ranged snare. After all, they have no mobile dps besides shocks anymore. And if ele is snared itself and the melee already in range, there is no running away either.

This is just my opinion but for the love of god, if we are going to have the MSW perk, can we PLEASE have glyph of Healing Storm as a passive and glyph of Lighting Shield on Nature's Guardian to favor PVE use?

I agree that we need some of our glyphs baseline. Healing Storm, Lightning Shield, Frostflame Weapon and Ghostwolf, as well as Capacitor Totem are basically mandatory, or "fix" a otherwhise useless/broken/bad ability. Stuff like Hex, Shamanistic Rage, Purge and so forth, these are okay as glyphs.
That is to say, glyphs are not the focus of this thread. Mobility by itself provides enough to talk about .

At any rate. Good thread, would love to see the community bringing the dev's attention on this.

Not just you . Please guys, if you want this thread read, ensure that celestalon and whom ever else gets plenty of requests to look into it. Maybe one of them gives in at one point.