Enhance still needs work. Some simple suggestions...

[Protoman]

So, buffs in the hotfix were nice but we are still not doing as good as I hoped. I have a few quick and simple suggestions to help boost our damage.

First tho, I have to talk about our scaling. Enhance Shaman design is rather clunky and suffers from problems with scaling. Why exactly is Haste our main secondary stat when so few abilities are effected by it? Other classes who have resources and stuff get much more out of haste then we do. I used to think our simplistic rotation (with no real depth like a resource) was a positive point about the Enhance spec, but these days it seems to be holding us back as we can never have on demand burst by pooling resources, or our talents can't drastically effect our playstyle/gameplay like other classes with resources. We have lower CD's, but that is only so useful. Like Ret pally for example, haste does the same thing to reduce CD's but it also increases HP generation so they can get off more finishers. For us, its just more CD usage... and often times you will have abilities ready regardless of the lower CD from haste, like thru EotE those double attacks give plenty of time for your other abilities to finish their cd. This wastes some of hastes benefit.

Our other secondary stats are also not very impactful. It just seems like we don't get any bonus benefits off stuff like multistrike or crit. I'm not suggesting we should revolve around something like crit, cause then we would have problems like what fury warr or fire mage have with gear, but some bonus benefits would be nice. I see other classes have procs that work off multistrike, but not Enhance. And for crit, even something simple like our old Elem Devastation would work where a spell crit could buff our melee damage.


Maelstrom Weapon:

This is our other main benefactor of haste. More melee swings means more MW5 procs. One thing I have always hated is hardcasting MW when it is below 5 stacks. I don't find this fun or interesting at all, plus it goes against the whole idea of a melee class when you have to sit and cast a spell to do competitive DPS. The MW perk that gives 10% dmg per stack helps with this a bit, but its not enough IMO. I think they should add some bonus effect at 5 stacks.... like say you consume MW at full 5 stacks, you get a buff that increases the damage of your next SS.... or really any kind of buff for temp boost in stats or boost an ability's damage or proc something. Whatever it is, it would be a reward for using MW at 5 stacks and make you want to reach MW5 again as fast as possible to continue getting that bonus. This makes MW5 feel more like a finisher with a nice reward at the end.... kind of like how Ret gets a chance for a free Templar's Verdict after using Templar's Verdict, or can proc a free Divine Storm after using Templar Verdict.


Static Shock:

I personally think Static Shock should be brought back. Our LS is currently useless... and while this passive wasn't very fancy, it atleast utilized LS in some way by linking it to our melee attacks, and it was a way for haste to scale better as more haste = more melee swings = more LS procs. It does not have to be a huge portion of our damage, it can be very small infact.... but anything would be better then nothing regarding LS orb damage. I would suggest some variation on it tho, for example...

Static Shock - Has a 30% chance to proc a LS orb on your SS, LL (mebbe Shock spells too) and a 10% chance on melee swings.

The %'s can be adjusted. Not sure if shocks should be included but I added it anyways. This basically gives LS orbs a chance to proc off both your melee abilities or melee swings.... and since both are effected by haste, this will improve the value of haste. It also feels more "active" instead of passive since its not just melee swings but also your active melee abilities which makes the LS orbs feel more significant as it indirectly boosts the damage of your melee abilities. Could also make it work off multistrikes from SS and LL, which would improve scaling of multistrike.



Other suggestions:

• -Bring Earth shock back. This has good synergy with SS crit buff, and ES does more damage then FrS. This will give us more damage overall since ES will be hitting harder and critting more. It also keeps the shock trinity, with ES as our main direct damage shock and FrS for utility like snare/roots.
• -Make Ascendance scale with Mastery again, and bring back its old spell animation. This should be our main BURST CD.... currently it is just more passive damage. We already have Feral Spirits and Fire Elem for passive damage CD's, we lack a strong burst CD. Ascendance should be that CD. Since it was apparently too bursty before, just make it scale with only 50% of mastery or something like that.
• -Make ULE do damage again. Just like before, give it a 40yd range and based off weapon damage doing physical MH and fire OH. This was basically Shaman's version of a Pally Judgement, but better until they randomly ruined it by removing the damage component. It makes no sense that as a melee we cast ULE for just a buff, every ability/gcd we use should do damage. The damage should be buffed tho.... this is a 12-15 sec CD, so I never understood why the damage was always low. Make it do good damage that is similar to a SS or LL, so it feels good to use it as well as being a good source of damage while moving. If no target is selected, then make it self cast for the buff only... which will still let you use it whenever you want and get the perk for a sprint effect.
• -Revert the -50% nerf to EB damage for Enhance. I don't really know why this exists... but it should do normal damage. I feel like the other 2 talents on that tier put out more DPS and EB is just for the buffs which are too random while you should be able to rely on good damage, that it currently doesn't do.
• -Give Shocks and Windshear a 30yd range baseline. No explanation needed, this is long overdue.

I feel like these changes are not very big or complicated, and most are actually things we have already had but tweaked in some way. But it would increase our overall damage and hopefully improve our scaling. There are ofcourse alot of PVP issues too... but for now I would atleast like to our PVE damage to be solid and well rounded and I think these changes are a good way to go about it.

[Lavindar]

I don't like the Idea of bringing Static Shock back, as it is just a passive, I'd rather prefer if they made Lightning Shield work like the one Rehgar has in Heroes of the Storm, cast the shield in an ally or in himself, and the shield do damage to anything nearby, losing one charge each time it deals damage, with a cooldown so it doesn't became a rotational skill.

[Deleted]

So it's just reverting enha spec back to MoP. It would made our spec even more clunky that already is and as added bonus, our damage would still suck. For some reason lot of players think that class mechanics have something to do with dps.

[Deleted]

Lol you basically ask to revert nearly all changes made.

[nazrakin]

- What makes you say so few abilities benefit from haste? After all the WoD adjustments I'm not sure we have a damage ability that doesn't benefit from haste, even our totems now inherit haste scaling.

- If LS is useless then remove it. Adding more passive damage sources is exactly what we wanted to move away from.

- I agree that I hate hardcasting MSW. However, rather than tie even more of our damage into MSW, I'd rather they just buff FrS so that there is never a reason to hardcast LB over it.

- FrS does more relative damage than ES did in MOP. If anything, I'd like them to remove the FrS snare and give us a proper snare that doesnt have to make any sacrifices. Also, the less shared spells between Enh and ele the better off both specs will be.

- Why doesn't UE make sense as a melee? We're certainly not the only ones with a "buff skill" in the rotation. In either case, nothing has changed about how we use the ability in group play so I'm not bothered by the change nor am I against it going back to what it was.

- Even if they buffed its damage its still such a cumbersome and boring skill for Enh. Its just lots of hardcasting for a yet another skill that procs a buff. What I would love to see happen with EB is for the Enh version to become a melee execute. That way it adds something unique (relative to our other talents) to the spec and fleshes out that tier such that UE become the choice for sustained output, PE for front loaded burst, and EB for backloaded damage (and pvp).

- I absolutely agree that those should be 30yrd baseline.

[TenDance]

Scaling is "just" number tweaking, the rotation itself does feel good to me - except one thing: I hate our AoE. If you got longliving adds which numbers three or more, it's good. But if stuff doesn't live that long, I have to hold back one of my hardhitting abilities to spread FS or risk that I can't AoE at all. And the thing I "enjoy" the most is the part when you apply FS to a target and it dies the moment you used LL. If myriads of small critters hump on you, the mighty shaman stands and weils on every single one of them, because magma doesn't do damage at all and you can't spread FS because the critters die too fast.

I would rather have Patch 3.x back, with Magma being our proxy for nova. If searing does increase our singletarget-DPS higher than using magma with nova, everything is fine. Make it so that magma with Nova-usage will pull ahead if the targets hit exceed the number of three, and everything will be fine.
Being in the niche of "goldike AoE if enemy numbers range from three to five" is more often frustrating than enjoyable.

[Stand]

For some reason lot of players think that class mechanics have something to do with dps.

This.

I'm seeing so many posts right now about how Enhancement needs to be "reworked" or "Enhancement issues". Shit, I've seen some posts on the wow forums pop up about how the spec "lost its feeling", about how we lost our "identity", like seriously? If Enhancement was at the top of the meters, no one would be complaining about our mechanics. But for some reason being low on the meters = having bad mechanics.

Look at your spec without the meter on and tell me what's wrong about Enhancement? I can tell you that it doesn't even come close to what people are proposing.

(All of this is based on the fact that I'm not watching my meter right now)
1) Getting Static Shock back, why? You put Lightning shield on and it even stays on you when you die. You don't even notice it, not even waste a GCD for it, why even care?

2) Hardcasting LB. Really? You'll do this maybe once every 20 seconds if you're unlucky with Maelstrom procs, as MW1-4_LB is about where Frost shock dps is at. We don't have a lot of Haste right now, but going well into highmaul, with the reduced GCD and more flurry procs, you'll rarely be hardcasting, or at least rarely at 1-2 MW procs.

3) Ascendance scaling with mastery? Ok, I'll have to look at my meter right now: no. This change was made especially because it made Ascendance stupidly OP for us. If you played pvp in MoP, you'll understand. Yeah man, I loved the lightning bursty feel of Ascendance. Yeah, I miss it. But I understand Blizzard's philosophy of toning down our burst for pvp purposes and we won't get it back. Get used to it.

4) Agree with the ES change.

5) UE do damage? Eh. They changed it for a reason too, man. It was because they toned down "on the run" damage and UE was part of it. We could do half a rotation with that and LB on the run, was too good in their opinion and they toned it down. I'm fine with it as you can pre-cast it as you don't require a target for it.

6) Not looking at the damage, but the worst with EB is just that it's another skill entirely. We're already running with 6-8 spells in our regular rotation, adding another is definitely not the way to go. I understand it's good for Elemental, but I'd rather have them remove the CD on it (for us, Enhance) and make it replace LB or something like that. Tone down its stat proc and I guess that would work.

7) Agree with the shocks/Wind shear range

---
Anyways, that's mostly it. I don't have a lot of problems with the mechanics of Enhancement. If anything I'd like if they brought back the Searing flames mechanic. I understand it's good not that have it back for pvp purposes, but in PvE it at least gave a reason for Searing totem to exist. Now it just stands there for nothing. Like a dps stick. Yeah ok once every ~50 seconds you replace it and you're done with it, but I'd like for it to play a bigger part since I do feel like I waste a GCD on it.

Other than that, our opening rotation is freaking huge (with AS and LM). They said they would remove CDs from people, but we kept all of us (ok no stormlash). Yet they added Liquid Magma. So our whole opening is pre-pot, UE, wolves - boss pull/ FET - stromstrike - AS - stormstrike - LB - FS - LB - SS - LL - FrS - SS. And with Bloodlust, it makes all your spells come back faster, so you're pretty much spamming SS - LB - SS - LB, yet you want to put your FS on and make use of your UE, so you just kinda hit them when you feel like it.

I kinda preferred the MoP version of our opening. EM/PE was the way to go and LB wasn't that "master spell", so you could go ss-ss-LL-LB-FS and have the best opening.

Otherwise, our spec feels great at the moment. No idea why people want to change it or doesn't feel "enhance". With liquid magma, the new UE, and the new flurry, I feel as enhance as I've ever been!

[wordup]

I actually feel a lot of the suggestions here are useful, but Ascendance scaling with Mastery is really big for bringing back the CD feeling like it actually does something. I honestly cannot feel the difference between me pressing stuff in ascendance or out of. It also, obviously, increases scaling on mastery, and what we need right now at this moment, is more scaling from something somewhere, and this is an option.

Realistically, the issue is not the feel of the class or the spec, there's not really many complaints around about that given we've probably kept our "feel" the most out of any other spec in the game, the issue is that our gear scaling is atrocious, and our abilities simply don't feel rewarding when we press them.

[miffy23]

I actually feel a lot of the suggestions here are useful, but Ascendance scaling with Mastery is really big for bringing back the CD feeling like it actually does something. I honestly cannot feel the difference between me pressing stuff in ascendance or out of. It also, obviously, increases scaling on mastery, and what we need right now at this moment, is more scaling from something somewhere, and this is an option.

Realistically, the issue is not the feel of the class or the spec, there's not really many complaints around about that given we've probably kept our "feel" the most out of any other spec in the game, the issue is that our gear scaling is atrocious, and our abilities simply don't feel rewarding when we press them.

I don't feel that way for all abilities. Liquid Magma, talented Unleash-buffed LB, Elementals, AS, I feel they all "oomph" when used. There are some that feel like a wasted GCD sometimes though such as Feral Spirits, Frost Shocks and yes, Ascendance. It used to be my absolute favourite ability in the game, now it's starting to feel like a cosmetic change. Easiest way of fixing us would definitely be to fix our scaling for Ascendance and to either buff or rework Frost Shock, ie cause it to do 20-30% more damage on targets with FS active on them, etc.

- - - Updated - - -

Scaling is "just" number tweaking, the rotation itself does feel good to me - except one thing: I hate our AoE. If you got longliving adds which numbers three or more, it's good. But if stuff doesn't live that long, I have to hold back one of my hardhitting abilities to spread FS or risk that I can't AoE at all. And the thing I "enjoy" the most is the part when you apply FS to a target and it dies the moment you used LL. If myriads of small critters hump on you, the mighty shaman stands and weils on every single one of them, because magma doesn't do damage at all and you can't spread FS because the critters die too fast.

I would rather have Patch 3.x back, with Magma being our proxy for nova. If searing does increase our singletarget-DPS higher than using magma with nova, everything is fine. Make it so that magma with Nova-usage will pull ahead if the targets hit exceed the number of three, and everything will be fine.
Being in the niche of "goldike AoE if enemy numbers range from three to five" is more often frustrating than enjoyable.

I agree for the most part, but I don't want FN tied to totems seeing as how mobs still spastically single out our fire totems atm (which is incredibly annoying at times).