How Does Everyone Currently Feel About Their Shaman Spec?

[shamantime]

I'd just like to see everyone's overall about opinion about Shaman or a particular spec and what you would like to see introduced or altered in future expansions or what you think might be a nice small change for 6.1 coming up. Be constructive with your posts please!

I' am currently maining Elemental, I haven't done anything serious PvP or PvE-wise, but the design is poor this expansion, I don't hate it completely but I'm not necessarily happy. I don't really like the direction they went with in terms of Elemental's damage. Slower base cast times and a tad more passive damage. They put some of our damage into passive damage seen in Molten Earth and some in Searing Totem. Besides the obvious low damage Elemental had before, it just didn't feel right for a majority of Elemental players that Lava Burst was justified for hitting low,even lower than LB crits at sometimes, because of Molten Earth's role in our damage. At first, I thought finally they are adding a something to help with our mobile and sustained damage but, it's not that great when you think of how bad Ele's damage on the move is. Earthquake was also reintroduced into our damage rotation very poorly. It's slow cast time, cooldown and targeting circle make it absolutely horrible for AoE fights. You can place it down and the tank might move the targets out of the AoE and they only way you can replace it is to wait for the cooldown while you spam CL or take Echo of Elements and hope you get a proc before the first EQ is placed. For Shaman in general, I absolutely hate the design. I feel like Shaman's mechanics don't flow together. It's about as smooth as an unpaved road. Not only are the mechanics crap but each specialization barely has any breathing room perk and talent-wise. Restoration itself, as a completely different role, has two unique talents and they were finally added this expansion, while Elemental and Enhancement, a ranged and melee, share pretty much every single talent. It could just be me but it feels like Shaman are and have been seriously lacking in the creative department as well as lacking anything unique or something that would better outline the themes and diversity of each spec.

First things first, bring more unique flavor to each spec, stop with the shared talents and perks and actually sit down and take a look at Shaman and see why the community isn't happy about it. Make totems fun again by removing these old restrictions. In a game where things are constantly being updated or altered, it would be nice for totems to be able to get a piece of those changes. Take away the element restrictions, let totems follow you around or be more easily adjusted, remove our Elementals from totems, and introduce some distinctive abilties to totems so that they aren't the weak, underutilized abilities of yesterday but a bigger part of the Shaman's identity.

[Mueller Greyhound]

For me, I would prefer if they can give us the ability to cast Lighting bolts on the move. Perhaps reduce lighting bolt damage by 10% - 15% and increase our Lava Burst damage by 10% - 15%.

Also I want them to make changes to our Unleash Element. It is so hideous since it does no damage anymore. So I want them to make change to Unleash Elements and Unleash Fury.

Unleashed Elements - Increases your next three Elemental, Nature, and Fire spell damage by 30% for 15 seconds.

Unleashed Fury - Grants you 15% additional damage bonus to Unleashed Elements and grants you bonus stats based on your spec.

Elemental - 5% Multistrike Chance
Enhancement - 5% Haste
Restoration - 5% Mastery

Things I want removed
- Searing Totem
- Magma Totem
- Frost Shock

Earth Shock can easily have slow debuff, since it has concussion force that can slows down players.

Give us Lava Surge that can hold up to two charges of Lava Bursts, I dislike that I get 2 Lava Surges in almost same time only that my Lava Surge goes to waste.

Give us two charges of shock that will alleviate the clunkiness.

Rework on cap totem, it is poorly designed. We are literally the only one that have charge time stun, which is bad because all other have instant stun. I want instant stun too, not charging totem!

Replace Molten Earth to something more meaningful, it is so bad and fucks Shamans in pvp. How about Lighting and Eruption, it was so good. But instead of making it rng-y, let me present how the new mastery will be.

Mastery: Fury of Elements

Grants you 16% increased damage to nature and fire spells. All of your nature spells generates a stack of Lighting Blast and fire spells generates a stack of Magma Burst. Upon reaching 25 stacks, your lighting bolt changes to Lighting Blast that deals equal to 250% of your spellpower. Your Lava Burst changes to Magma Burst that deals equal to 325% of your spellpower.

Just a thought and suggestions.

[Cameltotem]

We are a bit bad on movement fights but other than that I love my shaman, very fun to play as always (miss my chainlightning cast speed tho) and we do sick damage

[Santti]

Elemental - A bit low damage wise, especially if you have to move a lot. Otherwise, I like it.

Enhancement - Too messy. Not fun.

Restoration - No experience on them. They seem very rare when it comes to healers. In fact, I haven't seen any in 5 mans since the release.

[Headayke]

I'd like it if totems meant something again, you drop a totem. It does what you want it to do, and then it disappears back to a one minute cool down. While the elemental shaman hurls balls of lightning and lava from the distance, enhance uses empowered weapons with ghost wolves to bend the elements to his will while resto seems fine, just needs a lot of tuning and balance to get up to other healers level

[Txiv]

Resto shaman, managed 6/7 heroic so far:

A little hard to tell but ultimately I feel pretty good. I say hard to tel because we ran 30 people heroic mode so conductivity and high tide are pretty much his every fight ( with that many people never a moment at least 5 ranged could spread out in it, and melee is to easy). Mana regen with every slot having spirit so far is working better than eb and more thouroput stats. The key to good healing is maximizing echoe of elements and unleashed life ( super charged with unleash talent as well) it heavily buffs chain heal on group and turns healing wave into a tank healing bomb.

Weaknesses seem to rest around snap healing; surge just isn't strong enough. And that's ok, every spec has to have weakness but it really showed on a fight like butcher. People think that's a great fight for resto shaman because everyone can stand in healing rain but the damage is in these sudden huge spikes, not constant smooth damage rain counters so well. and resto does not really have a good response to those spikes other than slt

In terms of improvement I see 2; make cloudburst have 15 second cooldown or it will never compete with tidal. You can't make it heal for more because scalping wise it would become too good. So let you have it down all the time is a better buff. Second has to be a chain heal buff. This one is more complicated because our upcoming set bonus is heavily chain vested. But for highmaul it needs to come up a bit ( maybe 10% at max)

[Luke Skywalker]

Elemental is very good in PVE right now. Anyone who says otherwise is really just bad.

Our scaling is going to be INSANE with the 2pc and 4pc, and multistrike makes everything better.

If you guys are an Alchemist and have troubles finding trinkets use the philo stone. I did the math and it comes out to 97 mastery 105 spirit(if using mana potions) and 208 INTELLECT. Very good


Only other spec I play is Resto PvP and I'm somewhat happy with RBGs, 3s arent terrible but so hard to get peeled

[Qaletaqa]

Enhance:

UE is bad. Rest feels fine, just needs number tweaks.

When they make the next changes, if they take 5% off fire nova and bump single target by 5%, we'll be in a pretty good spot.

[Migrin]

I mainly play Resto in dungeons and I am enjoying it. So far i felt very well equipped for every encounter, including Achievments. The only negative points I could bring up is that in very tight situations, I feel like I can not afford to throw in a Riptide as both the direct healing and the hot seem neglectable.

Even though I like the spec, I am not overly happy with all of the talent choices. Primal Elementalist is one of the talents where I can see how it is useful, but gameplay wise, it is not very interesting. Just pop an elemental and channel it on to you... nah I don't know man. Elemental blast is strong but again, I just don't think it suits us very well. 1k Spirit is huge at early levels but whats the point if I spend a gcd on a damage spell, which gives me increased regen and throuput, if I lose so much hps by casting it? I would like an offensive healing style like attonement priests but elememtal blast, even with TC doesnt provied that experience.

Long story short, resto needs some redesigned talents but overall I am happy

[Deleted]

Elemental is very good in PVE right now. Anyone who says otherwise is really just bad.

Our scaling is going to be INSANE with the 2pc and 4pc, and multistrike makes everything better.

If you guys are an Alchemist and have troubles finding trinkets use the philo stone. I did the math and it comes out to 97 mastery 105 spirit(if using mana potions) and 208 INTELLECT. Very good


Only other spec I play is Resto PvP and I'm somewhat happy with RBGs, 3s arent terrible but so hard to get peeled

Yes, doing 99 percentile and 1-5 ranks with 5-20 ilvl more than the hunter/monk/retri alt char in my guild hc runs and still being 5k behind in dps. Elemental is fine.

[Cai]

In general:

1. lvl 100 talents kinda boring imo.
2. Blizz admitted Totem Teir is crap, fix in 6.1!!
3. I like Liquid Magma, but make it so it doesn't target cc'd adds and we are golden.

Enh:

1. UE not doing damage is pretty crappy.
2. Feels like overall damage could use a bit of a buff, outside Burst I am near bottom of charts.
3. I like always having a button to press.
4. Give me back some off healing! I can barely heal myself let alone help the healers when they need it. I don't want to be back to SoO healing when I could pop AG and everyone was magically at 100%. Now when I pop AG everyone gets 1% HP back, what it feels like.
5. Searing Totem barely does enough damage to warrant dropping it.
6. Doesn't feel like we are scaling with gear as well as others.

Resto:

1. Overall doesn't feel horrible. Feel like I am in alot better place than at beginning of Cata and MoP.
2. Would like some healing buffs. HST feels pretty meh free heals though.
3. Healing Wave feels weak.
4. High Tide feels mandatory.
5. Same with Ele Blast +1000 Spirit is a no brainer.

These are my opinions, no numbers/percentages are facts.

[cirdanx]

Yes, doing 99 percentile and 1-5 ranks with 5-20 ilvl more than the hunter/monk/retri alt char in my guild hc runs and still being 5k behind in dps. Elemental is fine.

^^ this. Looks like Skywalker doesn´t understand the force yet...sry couldn´t help it ^.^ also rest pvp is still behind the others, AND the only spec you can even try it. I lost any interest playing my shaman for now. Worthless.

[Fallen Angel]

EH, I feel ok at best with enhance. We really need some love, especially with scaling.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Resto is fine, im usually top in healing, but if they think we need a little buff then by all means, send it my way. I do think we need better healing for high mobility fights, idk maybe nerfing something and buffing riptide would fix it. Druids seem to be top healers when it comes to fights with high mobility and it is because rejuvenation(which is the same as riptide) doesn't have a cd, i tried the riptide glyph but it makes it worse.

[Lothrik]

Resto: Without Rushing Streams, HST feels like trash. I'm kind of annoyed at how vastly superior Wild Mushroom is to Healing Rain mechanically. It would be awesome if the Riptide HoT effect lasted longer, something like 24 seconds. The riptide-jumping High Tide effect should be baseline, and High Tide should just add 1-2 possible jumps.
Elemental: Really wish Blizzard would give us some sort of self-healing. Even just "Lightning Bolt heals you for 0.5% of your maximum health on hit" would be lovely. Other than that all of the changes I would want for Elemental have 0% chance of occurring this expansion, so I'm not going to waste any effort explaining them. I really hate Earthquake and our new Mastery. Stationary long-lasting AoE is a horrible niche to fill, and auto-turret Mastery just blows.

[Putin-Chan]

Elemental's okay so far, but I haven't had a chance to raid yet due to RNG issues and Queue times for HC dungeons (I've gotten like 10 bracers but no gear for most other slots)

[TrollShaman]

I use elemental mostly for challenge modes (will consider him as a raid alt in the future), and after the hotfix before this one (the one w 20% chain lightning, 35% LvB + extra multistrike on crit %) they are much much better numbers wise. Mechanically they're still ehh and I dislike the lv 90 and 100 talents.

As everyone has said, Unleashed Fury is really bad on the move, especially since before I use Unleash Ele as a mini sprint and with ghost wolf if I have to. As for lv 100, liquid magma is great for CM but often I have to be careful with it such as using it on Teron'gor as our druid roots the infernal for the rest of the fight. Elemental Fusion, while effective, is extremely boring to me. I leave storm ele out since the last thing I kinda need is another offensive cooldown, but frankly I haven't tried it yet in CMs.

We're gonna practice gold today and I look forward to try my newly buffed Ele Shaman again

[Deleted]

i feel freaking strong now, especially if we dont have to move much. butcher !! so nice for ele with the glyph. and if the movement fixes should come, we become top in the others fights too.
i feel like on non movement fights, we might be one of the strongest atm.
even on the other fights we are def strong after the buffs. we prob lack in spread cleave, but yeah we cant be strong in everything like monks

[Blithe]

• Lightning Bolt can now be cast while moving.

• Frost Shock no longer shares a cooldown with Earth Shock or Flame Shock.

• Elemental Fury no longer increases your critical strike damage by 50% but instead causes your critical strike rating to increase your damage.

• Lava Burst's damage has been increased by (somewhere between) 25-50% but it is no longer guaranteed to critically strike.

• Molten Earth has been replaced with Plasma - Your damaging abilities and their multistrikes deal an additional (16% + 1% per 150) Elemental damage over 6 sec. If this effect is reapplied, any remaining damage will be added to the new Plasma.

Bam, done. Elemental's fixed for another expansion.

[Deleted]

Playing enhance is overall fun but i can kinda feel like I'm gonna get carpel tunnel syndrome on my hands with all the spamming going on. So overall a bit low damage and quite few too many rotational spells - yet I like it.