Enhancement Shaman PvP [WoD]

[Volitar]

I wish we could get spells that were spells instead of retard clunky totems like Capacitor.

I hate Capacitor so much

[Blithe]

I wish we could get spells that were spells instead of retard clunky totems like Capacitor.

I hate Capacitor so much

You and me both. :P

[Deleted]

Any news from last patch from Elemental and Enhancement shamans? Was smth better or worse? How are arenas doing? How are restoration shamans?

[Dundebuns]

This makes me a little bit better in the fact I will be playing DK mostly in WoD :<

[LTCrystallite]

Here are my thoughts on Shaman design going into WoD and in general:

1. I love that they baked in Glyph of the Healing Storm in with Maelstrom. I'm not sure, but is healing rain now instant cast? or did they revert that? The perk I'm reading for it (10% heal bonus to allies in healing rain) is pretty decent, even if Enhance's offhealing took a hit.

2. Shamans do not have the capabilities to be a control type class, Cap Totem NEEDS to go away. It's not just unreliable, dispellable, and easy to avoid, it also stops us from gaining another survival/utility effect because we have that 'one' extra skill that is 'supposed' to fill that role. We should be more focused into support, or at the very least, I would say swap Windwalk Totem with Cap Totem from talent to baseline skill and vice versa.

3. Number tuning worries. Our burst got nerfed, but I actually want to see our consistent damage do relatively well from what we normally do because of it. That was the whole reason for the damage allocation changes, and I don't wanna feel weaker during burst and still weak normally.

4. too much talent clash. This was already thoroughly explained late in this thread: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...and-Discussion!

5. Survival. The first tier of defensive talents are just not potent in my view.
-You have a totem on a minute cooldown that applies weak shields after the initial shield, lasts 30 seconds (earth totem clash, forced to get T.Persistence to make full use of it) and the shield it applies is magic (dispellable).

-Nature's Guardian can be useful, but is useless when you're doing a good job of -not dying-.

-Astral Shift. This is actually my favorite one, since it essentially is a slightly stronger Shamanistic Rage that can also be used during or after at your leisure. The cooldown is 1.5 minutes, so my only beef with this is it's not practical, it's very situational, and is what I call a moderate defensive (something you use to avoid taking more damage, not to avoid death). Shamans don't have an -OH SNAP- button, which is fine, but the buttons they do have for defense aren't that great.

6. Control. We have slows, talented roots and hex. We're not a strong CC class, so as said before, Cap Totem is not something we really need, we should be pushed more into what we're already good at: Utility, slows, and group support.

Probably still gonna play Enhance or Elemental. I'm sure blizz will do something like they always do and tweak a couple things as the expansion goes on.

[Deleted]

Cool. Thank you for your feedback.

BTW, how everyone is feeling about "avoidance". In my experience (in duel ofc) against any leather-type-armor user - I miss too much and they do dodge most of my attacks. Sometimes, against druids/rouges, and even against plate guys (like warriors/paladins/DK that are dodging and parry my attacks), I was unable to stack maelstrom 5 times, without popping feral spirits just to heal myself. Too many avoidance for me, if you ask. It should be fine, when on arenas target is stunned or rooted.

Had no issues with any cloth wearer.

[Deleted]

Any beta ele's done much PvP? Curious as to how frustrating it is against melee now you have to turret cast LB

[Velthari]

Can anyone test interaction of the new pvp set bonus with the new Feral Spirit Glyph that reduces the cooldown on Feral Spirit by 60 and reduces the duration by 15 sec, if you still have the PvP 2-Set buff still active for 30 seconds or will it only last as long as Feral Spirits are active. I ask this because if the buff is active for 30 seconds and 25% Readiness we can have a 66% uptime of the PvP 2-Set which is 50% CC reduction.

[Omanley]

Can anyone test interaction of the new pvp set bonus with the new Feral Spirit Glyph that reduces the cooldown on Feral Spirit by 60 and reduces the duration by 15 sec, if you still have the PvP 2-Set buff still active for 30 seconds or will it only last as long as Feral Spirits are active. I ask this because if the buff is active for 30 seconds and 25% Readiness we can have a 66% uptime of the PvP 2-Set which is 50% CC reduction.

Or combining it with the pve 2P set bonus (Stortstrike reduces the cooldown of Feral Spirits by 5 seconds).

Regular Feral Spirits => 120s cd/30s dur => ~10+ Stormstrikes/minute, assuming high uptime/EotE procs/Ascendence (I know, utopical) => 50s+ cd reduction ~1m cd/30s duration => 50% CC reduction uptime

Glyphed Feral Spirits => 60s cd/15s duration => ~5+ Stormstrikes in 30 seconds (again, utopical) => 25s+ cd reduction => ~35s cd, and either 15 or 30s duration, depending on wether set bonus requires Feral Spirits up, making it...
~35s cd/15s dur => ~43% uptime, if set bonus is affected by glyph
~35s cd/30s dur => ~86% uptime, if set bonus is absolute 30s dur, not affected by glyph


It would be soooooo cool, if the pve set bonuses could make it baseline at some point We'd be fighting with wolves and as a wolf all the time =p

[Deleted]

Well, we're going to have a lot stronger hits (most of our passive damage was moved into our active damage) and utility-wise, nothing's really changed besides Hex no longer interacting with Maelstrom Weapon so you can't make it instant, but that's about it... Ascendance was normalized over its cooldown, and Fire Elemental's damage was given to the Shaman.

Overall, expect to feel like you personally deal a lot more damage outside of cooldowns as well as while using them. With the changes to crowd control, we've been indirectly buffed so that's a good thing.

Ascendance was nerfed to the ground. LB hits nearly 3 times harder than storm blast and Ascendance has nearly no dmg boost at all besides having more range for auto attacks and SS. That's it.

On live, Stormblast was 100% stronger than SS, now it's only 10%. That was a huge nerf.

The new glyphs really help survive a little longer (though at some costs). Self heal is a lot weaker than on live, i got kitet sometimes, but had no support anyways. We are definitely no burst class anymore.

Currently i felt very weak in BGs so far. I fear that in its current state, enhance will be really bad in Arenas, since we lost our only strength (burst). I've been duelling also some players and it felt like others still have the same burst we are now lacking (e.g. warriors). Don't know yet if this was a bug or failure from my side.

[Teddybearavenger]

Overall we lack mobility, finisher and a good "oh shit" ability. Its not terrible, since our burst is beyond godlike, which kinda balances it out - That is MoP

Going into WoD, i see no huge change so far, so, as usual, i'm pretty skeptical overall.

wolves still hit for 12, ascendance got mega nerfed, stormstrike mega nerfed, our shocks still hit for childrens books, we got a buff to lightning bolt damage which is whatever because we have to wait for malestrom procs for it to actually be meaningful, off heal mana issues still exist, we need a lot of glyphs baseline on enhancement. defensives still suck. We depend on throwing every healing cd to survive because of our lack of defenses. So no they need to buff us a lot in the pass tuning.

[Omanley]

I will hold my tongue on damage distribution, since the number pass is yet to come, but I feel that we wont see many further changes in survivability, mobility and utility.

That selfhealing will suck: duh! with HTT gone for enh, HST made dumb, AG nerfed hard, ASC-burst nerfed (to increase AG benefit), I really dont see where it would be good. I really dont see how blizz screw up like this esp in terms of water totems. HST is a cd, and cds are supposed to be reliable, that's what the cd restriction is there for (either that or HST heals would have to be insanely high, to make up for HST being destroyable, on 1m cd, AND random). Healing Totems provided a nice way for dps shamans to support outside of pure damage, something I felt was the point about being a hybrid. God blizz got it wrong with this. Obv if off-heal is insanely high, that's another thing, but castrating it like this...
That mobility/uptime will suck: Duh! The big problem I see here: Our mobility is fractured into a dozen tiny, weak ones, that wont cover it summed up. Others have one or two or even three super strong ones that cover it nicely.

GW: weak effect (30% movement speed) that needs an additional glyph for the iconic "cannot be snared below" part, and even then it is just us moving at regular speed, without being able to cast anything without breaking the form. Druid's cat form for feral easily trumps this, as they can fight in it, and break snare/roots. They are also immune to poly/hex and cannot be affected by repentance, and scare beast/hibernate no longer exists, so they have advantages as not being CC targets as well.
The advantage is that it has no cooldown and unlimited duration, but that does not cover a weak effect. Wotlk GW bas better than this.

Enhanced Unleash: Our new "Trolololol, take this crap and shut up about mobility" tool. It's only upside is the low cooldown (with flurry it could be down to ~10s), but again, as a super weak 30% +speed for as weak 4seconds. EU replaces Unleash Fury:Frostbrand, which had 50% speed increase, same duration. Why they thought they had to reduce that number is beyond me. Again, mobility we had access to before, but nerfed.

T17 4P: 25% +speed while Feral Spirits are present. It's weak (another weak sprint), only avaiable with 4 pve pieces, and assuming a ~50% cd reduction through the 2P, it'd have a 50% uptime only (yes, that sounds like a lot, but for a 25% speed increase, it's actually not that much). How it would work in conjunction with Ascendence and GW is still an unknown, also.

Spirit Walk: Low cd for a sprint with 1m cd (good) which can be lowered to 45s (even better) and with it's 15s dur a nice 25% (33% with glyph) ratio of uptime (good), also with 60%+ speed it is actually an acceptably strong speed increase. It also breaks snare/roots!
While for a sprint that's beyond awesome, for a frequent use gap closing tool the cooldown is to high still, and just being snare/rooted after activating it will be a big counter... Another 15 or 20s cd reduction (through pvp 4P or otherwhise) would actually make this a viable enough mobility tool to adress shaman pvp mobility, but alas...

Ascendence: With the hard nerfs to it's bonus damage, it'd be more of a mobility tool (attacking at range, when kited), rather than a dps one. It'll probably contribute to a higher uptime, since we'll use it more in situations where were kited, rather than thjose where we're already close but need the damage, but it has a friggin bad cd/dur, or uptime ratio to fulfill our needs.

Windwalk Totem: IMO, the key to good gap closing/uptime/keeping up the pressure is either a), an frequently avaiable instant gap closer like everyone else besides rets has them, or b) frequently avaiable +speed coupled with a frequently avaiable freedom (like rets have it with their hand of freedom/Long Arm of the Law combo).
Enhance is the only to have neither, and blizz apparently thought a 1m cd immobile aoe freedom for 6s would fill that gap (which it doesn't, to high cd, duh, plus it requires a talent (similarly bad of as rets there).
It's not as badly designed as many other totems, since the main point of it is as a snare/root break anyway, and killing the totem is hardly worth it due to low duration so most of the time the freedom makes it through 100%, but adding freedom to a immobile totem makes as much sense as tieing elemental pets to them :X

Eye of the Storm (Primal Storm Elemental): Long duration, strong enough effect, but tied to a very long cooldown (5 minutes). The totem can also be destroyed, cutting uptime even more short. The Elemental in question is not a melee like it's fire/earth counterparts either, but a caster. This is beyond stupid in that the effect is an aura around the elemental, which will remain on range, even if you order it to attack your target, means we would have to disallow it using it's damage ability (plus the heals from it), to have it move towards the target in actuality. The immobility of the totem, and that SET will block GT/WWT for it's duration comes also into play. Horribly thought through, blizz. They should redesign FET into a caster, and SET into a melee, and unlink elementals from totems. Even then tohugh, the low uptime would not fix mobility issues, esp as it requires two talents.

Frost Shock:To make up for shamans having to casually walk up to their targets, they can snare/root their targets from afar (not much consolation, esp with root being hardly avaiable due to WWT and DR and FrS bercoming a dmg ability for enh dps usage)

Wether to give us...
-The ability to leap to our target as GW (activates GW) => druid treatment
-The ability to leap in our regular form ~Astral shifting/windwalking behind them or something => warrior treatment
-A low cd Spirit Walk
-A higher +speed EU sprint
-A higher +speed + unaffected by snare/root for x seconds as GW
-A MUCH lower cd for Ascendence
-A Windwalk Totem as a mobile (following you), lower cd/higher uptime, only affecting yourself (maybe make WWT baseline, and introduce this as a glyph)
-A sprint to Frost Shock

...there would be many ways of giving us a frequently usable, potent enough mobility tool. Blizz for some reason think we should get more and more lacking mobility tools, instead of buffing those we already have. I dont understand why. With their increased focus on our sustzained damage, uptime becomes much more important in pvp, and we lack the mobility tools for it, simple as that. MSW plays into this as well, since we will heavily rely on it for survivability now, as SR and 1st talent row wont be enough to meet our needs there.

And totems... Dont know what more to say about that one other than repeating my manthra for the past couple of years. They suck in so many ways. Talent clashes through totem clashes (Elemental totems are main perpetrators), without exception immobile, destroyable, unuasable while silenced just because, no thought given to the individual totem and against which abilities they compete against...

Hex/CC Please for the love of god, blizz, make it instant, at least for enhancement. It has a cooldown already, and doesn't even incapacitate as you now try to claim it does. Try to be at least a little bit fair. It is so horrible it's unreal. Add CPT to the list, make the glyph baseline at the very least, people should be actually fast in their reactions to avoid it.

[Velthari]

They could just give us Clash (Monk ability) and cut capacitor totem and call the ability Lightning Rush that also gets us out of roots.

Lightning Rush: Charge to an enemy, and then stunning all targets within 6 yards for 3 sec. 30 second cooldown

[shaman132]

they can do a lot of things , but at the end they will say "enhance are fine"

[CID-77]

Yeah with the LB change I was looking at Enh as my PvP spec this xpac instead of Ele but currently in Beta it feels very underwhelming. Especially with ability pruning it feels weird to have so many different mobility CD's. Shamans however need only just a few tweaks to feel right, and most have been mentioned here.

GW Glyph baseline.
Totems while silenced (I get why some ppl dislike the totem mechanic but it defines the class, and I love them)

And then the mess with so many different CD's. Enhanced Unleash, Windwalk, Spirit Walk. I honestly don't know what the best solution would be to sort it out. Adding a new gap closer seems like more CD clutter. Lightning Rush sounds cool of course. Or a gush of wind propelling us forwards. Cool stuff for sure. Maybe Gushing Winds as a new gap closer talent instead of Wind Walk, and then scrap the Enhanced Unleash sprint effect. At a 30-40sec cooldown it would be perfect in combination with Spirit Walk and GW with baseline glyph effect.

[Omanley]

And then the mess with so many different CD's. Enhanced Unleash, Windwalk, Spirit Walk. I honestly don't know what the best solution would be to sort it out. Adding a new gap closer seems like more CD clutter. Lightning Rush sounds cool of course. Or a gush of wind propelling us forwards. Cool stuff for sure. Maybe Gushing Winds as a new gap closer talent instead of Wind Walk, and then scrap the Enhanced Unleash sprint effect. At a 30-40sec cooldown it would be perfect in combination with Spirit Walk and GW with baseline glyph effect.

Well, I've mentioned a couple of possibilities. if we applied shamanistic iconic abilities as the preferred way of getting things done:
1) Get rid of Enhanced Unleash. UE is meant for dps, keep it that way (even if it is now buff only). Having any ability pull double duty is bad design.
2) Get rid of Eye of the Storm, and give Storm Elemental something that actually fills it's role as a ranged dps pet, and makes up for EotS
3) Add a mobility talent tier instead of the totem one (as many have asked for). The tier could grant one of the three:

- Spectral Leap (works similar like druid's beast displacer, only with Ghostwolf instead of Cat form, and it's a leap, like warrior's) => sound: Twin Howl (from wotlk times)
- Spirit Walk (25 second cd, 8 second duration, 3 second freedom) Either make SW only avaiable trough the talent, or the talent modifies it
- Lightning Steps => dunno, blink maybe

4) Maybe make WWT baseline, with an increased cd (2-3min), and introduce a more fitting ability to match the rooting options.

[BreSmit521]

Can anyone test interaction of the new pvp set bonus with the new Feral Spirit Glyph that reduces the cooldown on Feral Spirit by 60 and reduces the duration by 15 sec, if you still have the PvP 2-Set buff still active for 30 seconds or will it only last as long as Feral Spirits are active. I ask this because if the buff is active for 30 seconds and 25% Readiness we can have a 66% uptime of the PvP 2-Set which is 50% CC reduction.

Did you not get the memo they removed readiness? =P

[Velthari]

Yeah sorry i missed that then but still then we are going then to have a 30 second cd on the 2 set buff

[whyabadi]

Let's not forget how hard Lightning Bolt hits now.

[Deleted]

Any news from last patch from Elemental and Enhancement shamans? Was smth better or worse? How are arenas doing? How are restoration shamans?

Really really bad.

I've been doing 20 duels, lost 19 of 20 (on live it's more like 60-70% won due to burst).

There are some crazy burst classes out there with nearly no way. You're getting kitet all the way.

BGs looked really bad, but that was a general problem. You can't kill anything, especially with a healer on their side. We're also not so easy to kill, but still. We're getting pretty easily cc'd, burst doesn't work right now (for us!).

Would try some 2vs2, but enhance doesn't make any fun right now.

Self healing really sucks, especially compared to other classes (have to sacrifice our ranged damage for small heals where as others really heal up very fast). We're getting kited more than ever. On live, burst helped us a lot, it gave us the one chance to justify an enhancer. With burst damage gone, we are somewhat useless.


Will have to try elemental or resto for now, but i suppose, not a lot to hope for as enhancer.

- - - Updated - - -

Let's not forget how hard Lightning Bolt hits now.

Another point. It's not castable on the move and the lack of gapclosers and mobility just leaves us a very low uptime on the target. In the end, we have some damage potential, but the others simply don't let us...