They forget about shamans again?

[rpdrichard]

Once some of you realize that I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your core arguments, but instead simply proposing some common sense and less toxic garbage, we might have a better discussion culture here.

You guys keep getting lost in your own bias. I've never tried to argue that Ele or Enh don't need significant attention. Just that some of you are so far gone into "devs are morons and Shamans are getting the shaft" territory that you can't discuss anything anymore. And that some topics of class design should be discussed quite separately from pure issues of number tuning in progression.

Balance for top % PvE progression in terms of numbers and good overall class design do not necessarily go hand in hand, or overlap. Especially when the goalposts of "what the spec needs to deliver in order to be competitive" are shifted depending on what type of encounter the current Tier is based around.

What you don`t get it's that people that play this class is so tired of the old "chill out guys it's alpha, give feedback and they'll fix it for beta", followed by "chill out guys it's beta, give feedback and they'll fix it for live", and once Legion comes live, we'll keep having the same problems with all our spec being subpar and hindering our casual/friends raidgroup, that devs refuse to acknowledge the 4th expansion in a row (no movility, no survivality, totems outdated system, bland boring talents, being walking dummies in pvp, 30-20% below the damage of other dps, being good in only 1 or 2 fights in the whole tier,...).
That's why you get so many people on this topic and class forum going for your throath when you say "chill out it's just x, give feedback and they'll fix it for y"

[wordup]

I've been a Shaman for 10 years too and I don't think it's fair to dismiss peoples' complaints. We need a proper look, a real overhaul, something we have NEVER received. Not since TBC. We, as a class, are a true vanilla relic. Stripped of what made us unique as a class, our support buffs... but we still exist. Blizzard need to decide what they expect Shamans to be and make it happen

As someone who wrote up a formal 8 page feedback post to Blizzard recently, I don't think it's in any way fair to say that we're still operating like we were in TBC, that is huge hyperbole. Wrath and Cataclysm both brought fairly big mechanical and rotational changes to Enhancement at least, and dismissing that isn't going to help the case of explaining to devs why we feel there is an underlying issue.

[Deleted]

It is true that blizzard did some work on how we dps. Wotlk especially.

That said, during wotlk, a big thing was actually that melee and spell stats were merged. Hit and spell hit, crit and spell crit, spell haste provided now also haste...etc.
It wasn't exactly all that much work to create a talent that converted aattackpower into spellpower. Throw in msw and Static Shock and you can recycle shocks, lightning bolt and chain lightning and fire totems. All that was really new was LL (which was underwhelming to say the least) and Feral Spirits (those were great!).

And while you could say we saw a big change (as half hearted as it looks under this PoV), it took them what? 6 years? to elevate us from Stormstrike on cooldown.

The new playstyle in wotlk proofed to be a fun one, but had big flaws (aside from low output) mechanically-wise, as it was not fun to refresh MT every 20s, or LS all the time. Blizz actually listened to at least some feedback, as I remember critisizing that part of our gameplay back then.
That said, they invented the new LL system which included Searing Flames...(/facepalm)...and their sad attempt at giving us aoe prior to firelands (shudders at the memory of multidotting with FS). Also, high cd Unleash felt underwhelming as a new ability, and with the raised cd on ll and a lot of lost haste, we felt much slower and had many open spaces in our prio, which they didn't fill until much later.

I'd say that bar some minor things, MoP was near optimal in terms of basic dps game play.
-LL was the hard hitter and felt rewarding to use when it came up. The cd reset pve bonus made it even better.
-SS was much stronger than in vanilla, but weaker than LL (where it belongs, imo). It provided additional wf/msw procs, static shock, (what made SS good in the first place) and during Ascendence it became a real beast
-WF was a shadow of it's original self, but still did meaningful damage. FT was sadly stronger though.
-Lightning Shield was actually having a use. Sure, it wasn't our strongest source of damage, but it felt way better to have than FT, imo. It added to the proccy part of shaman, which imo is a part of class/spec flair
-Elemental Blast was useful in pvp, and added even more colour to the spec
-SS debuff felt way more useful with Earth Shock, Elemental Blast, Lightning Shield and Stormlash totem around. It ment more synergy between our abilities. "Enhancing" themselves.

Things to critisize were Searing Flames, ST/MT feeling boring, Enh feeling to static and predictable as a class already lacking a recource, Earth Shock and Frost Shock feeling not really integrated in the spec, to many damage sources, low sustained damage...and maybe some others which I cannot think of atm.

What did they do come WoD?
+ They got rid of Searing Flames
+ Made the spec less static by making LL refresh pve bonus baseline...
+ ...and additionally introducing new EoE for SS/LL/FN not consuming cds
- They ruined a lot of the above by making LL damage unimpressive and giving a lot of it to SS
- They also ruined SS through that, and additionally screwed it by nerfing Ascendence
- They specifically ruined Elemental Blast for enh
+ They removed the WF gcd finally...
- And ruined it by nerfing wf to the ground, along with a nerf to msw proc rate, making wf the worst since it's creation...way to go ruining class flavor blizz
- FT stayed as the most senseless dmg source, along with ST and MT (justified by preserving totem flavor...ladies and gentlemen, pay honor to /facepalm the 2nd, heir to /facepalm the 1st)
- Lightning Shield becomes worthless, instead of a visually pleasing effect that made use of it, we get multistrike...yay
- The multistrike stat in itself feels like a ele mastery/enh wf rip-off, ruining class flavor further
- After the initial WoD EoE, they changed it again. People wouldn't wanna live without it, but it made the spec static again, which is a minus in my book. SS/LL usage feels to me like dk facerolling his stuff, except for lesser damage.
- Instead of reducing ability bloat, they expand on it with LM. ES is gone but replaced with FrS
- Horribly designed lvl 100 talents. Fusion doesn't work for enh since shock has a shorter cd than LL, SET is the worst talent and ability in history design-wise, and LM depends on a totem and fires randomly (good call on that one blizz, love it every time my totems ignores the group right next to me, and fires at uninvolved targets 30yards away instead, pulling adds. Awesome!)
- Frost Shock is even less integrated in the spec than Earth Shock was. Having a snare in our prio list was a flaw we pointed out from the beginning, but it fell on deaf ears. The suggestion to make SS benefit it at least was never looked into. Instead they said they would up it's damage to compensate. FrS turned out to be not even a half-way decent filler at the very end of our prio list. Way to go blizz to finally introduce some frost damage for shamans...

and there's more but I'll stop here.

Now remember this: MoP is fondly remembered by a lot of enh shamans (ele also I believe with old mastery and lb on move). It wouldn't have been all to much work to make it perfect even, by removing the right abilities, listen to common sense feedback and keep the good parts in.
Instead, they castrated the best parts, marginalized the few good things they implemented, went full retard design-wise on stuff like LM, Fusion or SET, ignored feedback concerning ST/MT and ES/FS, replaced shaman flavor with a flat multistrike buff, didn't improve on the LL/SS/FN mechanic as they've should (would've been easy to take either FS or LL out of the ramp up, or even both).


Now yes, they did work on us. They changed a lot. But now look at rogues. The way they play is for me most part how they played since vanilla.
It does appear a little bland and boring to me with my shiny elements and stuff versus just stab and slash, but the rogue design was designed 10 years ago, and still works without fault. Now look at us, and how many flaws we're ladden with. They didn't ever, seriously, sat down and thought through stuff when designing shamans.
Either that, or they did all those screw-ups on purpose.

[miffy23]

Now look at us, and how many flaws we're ladden with. They didn't ever, seriously, sat down and thought through stuff when designing shamans.
Either that, or they did all those screw-ups on purpose.

See you made a good post that I would, for the most part, agree with. And then you have to throw in this childish nonsense at the end.

Good constructive criticism followed by infantile armchair ranting over devs.
If you seriously think "no thought went in to this" or even worse "they're screwing Shamans on purpose" there's something wrong with you.

All that being said, I agree with most of what you say here - MoP felt pretty spot on, we did require a nerf to our Burst however. In the end the thing that really killed Enh from MoP to WoD was the horrible PvP/PvE balancing, they killed our burst and "oomph" abilities largely due to PvP complaints.

With Legion going the split route (FINALLY) it may be a fresh start for spec design.

[Kralljin]

that devs refuse to acknowledge the 4th expansion in a row (no movility, no survivality, totems outdated system, bland boring talents, being walking dummies in pvp, 30-20% below the damage of other dps, being good in only 1 or 2 fights in the whole tier,...).
"

1.Elemental was OP in PvP during Wotlk
2.Elemental was the most mobile Caster after Hunters from Mid Cata to WoD
3.Elemental was strong during mid-late MoP in PvP
4.Elemental was overall fine in MoP in PvE

Oh yeah, Elemental is actually quite tanky in PvE, thanks to PE, Astral shift and Sham rage (w/Glyph) you can survive stuff which usually only Immunity cd's survive. (Obviously applies to Enhance as well.)

At the end of the day, you can only give constructive feedback, if the devs ignore it and you remain disstatisfied with your Class you have to suck it up or re roll.

Being a whining bitch about doesn't help to get the things you want, trying to be the loudest when there's an ignore / mute option is pointless.

[Deleted]

In another thread I proposed to turn elemental into a type of geomancer. But I would like to back away from that.

Elemental is the only spec in game that uses electricity as it's source of damage, which is just supercharged matter through perhaps the heating up process of fire spells.

Instead, i would like to propose turning enhancement into an earth/wind based spec and removing earthquake and earthshock from elemental and instead giving them new spells that fit the electrical theme. (no fire spells, because we are not mages in mail)

[Murderdoll]

Good constructive criticism followed by infantile armchair ranting over devs.
If you seriously think "no thought went in to this" or even worse "they're screwing Shamans on purpose" there's something wrong with you..

If you thought the final tier of our talents was thought out for more than 5 minutes before lunch youre kidding yourself.

We said the exact same thing during Beta. It was a uninspired, lazy tier. It screamed "oh fuck it lets just give them another totem" and compounded the feelings and issues with our class.

[Ninthelora]

I hope they are fixing shamans, since I still love shamans design/lore wise the most.

[Deleted]

I PvP wise just switched to a rogue just to give it a spin, playing against a Shaman is even more ridiculous than it feels from the Shamans perspective. You can do naught but auto hits, slice and dice and burst of speed to remove those pesky slows and just running around like a chihuahua on esctasy while fighting him and most of the time you will easily win.

[Professor Expert]

You were one of those not pvp'ing, right? I'm pretty sure we argued about that in the past as well, you ignoring a big aspect of the game and defending shaman design based on it.

I pvp almost exclusively on my enhance and have >2K ratings in 2s, 3s and RBGs. It's a very potent spec with some gaping weaknesses, but if you want a truly bad spec then take a look at elemental. Ele does NOTHING effectively, except maybe replicate those new target dummies that deal minor damage when you hit them.

Right. Not worth commenting on as I perfectly explained why mobility is bad. Many weak, not frequently up mobility abilities compared to few, potent ones (warrior, druid, monk and rogue say hallo, demon hunter soon to join them as new mobility monster). To take up wow commercial phrase to answer your question: I play WoW, what's your game? (apparently something else)

You're correct that many classes in the game have better mobility than enhance, but to flat-out say that mobility is a major issue for enhance is false. Between frost shock (talented), spirit walk and ghost wolf glyph, our mobility is pretty good.

What I would like to see is that enhancement's base movement speed gets buffed by 15%, and tweak the ghost wolf glyph so that it keeps you moving at nothing less than base speed, or 115%. With no snares and the 10% cloak enchant, our normal speed would be 125% - and for me that would be fine.

Enh had close to nothing in both classic and tbc, so it's no inherent shaman flavor in the least. Next I'd like to point out that a lot of what we "use" is just recycled elemental stuff, because blizz couldn't be arsed to properly design our spec as seperate. Shocks and Lightnings and Fire Totems, to much shared.

Class design as a whole was pretty disjointed back then. It wasn't until TBC until they really tried to "optimize" classes and rein some of the outliers...i.e. 1-shot specs like pom-pyro and rogues that could insta-gib you with ambush.

Enhancement's "flavor" has always been fast-paced and entropic in nature.

Also I dont know if you noticed, but having tons of abilities to press LEADS to many damage sources. So you say you dont like splintered dmg either, but many active abilities. Doesn't make you very credible.

We can do about 90% of our DPS with SS, LL and MW5 LB/EB. If you want to chase that extra ~10%, that comes from dropping ele totems, wolves, fire totem and shocks as well as any DPS CDs or trinkets you may have. I do not consider that it takes a bit more effort to get close to 100% DPS output than the 3-button derp classes like DKs or warriors. We can have ONE class in the game with a bit of a skill cap. Just one.

A druid's team sprint and a hunters frost trap are superior versions, and I am not raiding as enh anymore so I dont know, but Grounding lost more and more relevance in raiding as far as I witnessed, over the years.
And they are not useful if it is not worth wasting a gcd on them, in a pvp setup.

Raiding has lost relevance. In fact, it has arguably been irrelevant since TBC and almost certainly since wotlk, when PvP took over PvE as the main end-game activity for most players. Add to that the fact that I and many others only raided to get items to use in pvp, not because we wanted to raid or enjoyed it.

Hex is the only "cc" spell (technically it is no true cc even as it takes no control over the target) with both a cast time AND a cd. It is very wrong that enh, a melee who at least had the option to sacrifice damage for the same privilege of instant cc on a cd, can no longer do that, for no fair reason what so ever. Other melee got to keep their instant cc, except for rets, which at least had the cd removed.

CC is definitely one apsect of enhance that is weak. Losing insta-hex was a big nerf, and unjustified. It wasn't even directed at enhance, many of the nerfs to shaman are blanket nerfs made because of resto...I don't see why enhance cannot have a better-optimized version of abilities that resto does not.

For instance, frozen power should be a baseline ENHANCE ONLY ability, not a talent. Wind shear should retain 6 sec CD for enhance only...being the anti-caster was a niche we used to fill well, and still do decently today. Purge removing 2 buffs per GCD should, again, be an enhance-only thing. The other two specs can have the regular purge that removes only 1 per GCD.

I've seen a lot of classes VERY often and VERY long on the top of the food chain. Not shaman. Once, in MoP, enh had it's first brief visit. Balance involves more than "Once in ten years, you get to feel great with the numbers you put out."
I'm not even asking for top dog. With the great flux of dmg performance in WoD, you can be absolutely killing the meters in a certain scenario, and in the next, adifferent class/spec leaves you in the dust. Yet, afaik, even in sustained dmg, enh wont leave anyone in the dust, only competitive. Again, there's no balance.
And dont forget how WoD started off either. How enh was treated in WoD beta speaks volumes.
And their awesome solution to our scaling problems...yay, SS and LL buffed again...

True, and I think this has more to do with money than the game itself. The most popular classes tend to be the ones that get the best treatment. Enhance has always been middle-of-the-road in that it does a lot of things well, but rarely gets one thing it does exceptionally well. In MoP when we had that awesome version of ascendance, we did something very well - top burst in the game by far, but even that was not enough of a draw to up the enhancement shaman population.

So, even when enhance is pretty good it doesn't result in players dropping their mains and making a switch. Some do, most try it out and then revert back to their hunter/dk/warrior/lock/mage. These classes tend to be dominant in pvp and pve simply because that's what most of the player base plays, and if they were made terrible it could increase the rate of subs that WoW sheds.

What would you deem as "core shaman gameplay", prey tell? So far, we've been completely different in our core strenght each and every x-pack.

Been playing for years and the core abilities feel similar. The extraneous things change, often drastically, and usually not for the better. I really miss the removal of earth shock, and I think enhance should get a perk where shocks are on separate CDs...or maybe an enhance-only shock.

-All utility we ever had has either been subject to at least one considerable nerf, complete removal or weak initial design (of newer abilities)

True, but it's also true that we still bring utility in the form of purge, powerful off-healing, AoE and respectable sustained damage & burst.

-Is it core design to fart into your enemies faces as ascendant?

LOL windfarts...and yea, I hate the change to ascendance. It was awesome in MoP...but that party is over.

The only plus side is that the gaseous version of ascendance + the minor glyph makes it so subtle that you can pop it and unless your opponents are using some lame CD-shouter add-on, you can slip under the radar while doing about 30% more dmg for 15 sec.

-Is it core to the spec to not support anymore, and leave that to others who are noch much more useful, such as hunters (even without fox), or warlocks?

Agree that we should have a few more niche abilities, but I wouldn't really call hunters a "support" class. SV has vastly overpowered CC abilities and high damage, and the same with locks...we don't need to be more like them, rather, they need to be toned down in both damage and CC ability.

-Is it core to the spec to not actually enhance anything anymore? Our weapon imbues are weak as hell, our buffs got reduced to three, heavily homogenisized and made passive (dont get me wrong, it is the correct decision over wotlk state, but made buffs non the less insignificant)

Also want the original weapon imbues back. That change was really dumb, and I did often swap imbues mid-fight as necessary. Rockbiter plus UE for a 40% damage reduction - good stuff...which we can no longer do.

Also, no frostbrand other than that glyph...which wastes a glyph spot for something that should have been baked into our revised imbue passive.

-Is it core to the spec that non healing classes can compete in selfhealing?

In group battles, with glyph of flame shock, enhance can approach healing levels of dedicated healers even though most of that will be self-heals...still, it's good.

-Is it core to the spec to have what others have, but as whacky totems?

I like the totems and don't mind them, but they do need to be more durable.

-Is it core to see trash die before you can get your aoe going?

Takes 3 GCDs, or 4.5 sec minus whatever your discount is because of haste.

-Is it core to die to others' burst in pvp by the time you have popped all your dmg cooldowns to counter burst?
-Is it core to die to others' burst with lacking mitigation and no reset ability?

We do lack in defensive abilities. I guess our healing is supposed to make up for that, but when stunned, silenced or lacking MW stacks we cannot heal effectively. Was less of an issue when you could macro rockbiter to your off-hand, pop UE to get 40% dmg reduction then swap back to FB or FT.

-Is it core to see SS/LL deal almost the same dmg, and feel like there's hardly any difference between them?

SS works on rogues when they pop CoS, and it works when we are silenced if I am not mistaken. LL does more consistent damage because it bypasses armor, even though armor values are not as wide as they used to be.

-Is it core to see all the stuff you used to excel at taken away?

We excel at being exceptionally average.

-Is it core to have to purge, frost shocks, and use one of several sprints to slowly make your way towards a kiting hunter vs, CHARGE!?

With frozen power I rarely have trouble getting on top of a hunter. I highly recommend you use that; that windwalk totem is a bad choice 9 times out of 10.

If your answers to those is yes, then yeah, I guess I hate what you call core Enh shaman gameplay.
And if you cared to follow the mood on the forums, you'd notice that few give much about that apprent core. Blizz oughta change it.

The forums are generally herd mentality on steroids. There are few, if any, independent thinkers here. Most people just want to validate what they choose to believe and so any "consensus" here doesn't mean much.

I play enhance, I do well, I enjoy it. I agree that it could be better and there are issues that should be addressed, but nothing so bad that makes it unplayable. It's more than competitive with any of the other class/specs overall in both pvp and pve.

[Deleted]

Professor Expert, one question, please! How does your own excrement taste?

Infracted

[Deleted]

If you seriously think "no thought went in to this" or even worse "they're screwing Shamans on purpose" there's something wrong with you.

Look. Most of the stuff that's been plaqueing us was noticable from the moment they put it up for datamining, or announced it. It's not that all the mistakes they made required months of gameplay experience and testing to figure out.
-That totems as they are now (cooldown based) would face problems retaining old drawbacks, I knew that the moment they finally announced that buff totems would become auras.
-That buff totems would need to be auras, I realized that the moment they announced all that homogennisation back in 3.0
-That LM with it's random targeting was crappy design, people critisized that in beta
-That capacitor totem would be bogus, any idiot would see at first glance

Most of the stuff we get, people have been asking for for years. It doesn't mean that they put thought into this. We did. They just finally decided to do what we've asked for for many years. And all that work that needs to be done on us, it's been piling up for the most part because they purposefully design us complicated.
Look at cpt, look at hex, look at our aoe, all unique compared to others, in a negative way. Complicately designed, where they could've made a simpler, fool-proof ability like hammer of justice, poly or blind, or whirlwind, we get extra dev time just to make sure it'll be flawed. Those experiments that they always try on us, usually dont work, and wont be changed until much later, if at all.

That's what I said when I ment hardly thought went into us. If I as a player can look at an ability and immidiately see it's flaws, blizz devs should be able to. It's what we pay them for, right? Common sense most of the time is enough to avoid designing crap as they do. Honestly, I dont see anything infantile about that. I guess it would appear as such, at it sounds emotionally ladden, but it's for the most part a logical conclusion, as you can see from my arguments. I wont lie and say I am not angry or frustrated, rather, I've abandoned the class already after many years of being exactly that.

I am not /rageing as you want to make it seem like. I am reminding, of what happened, what should have happened instead, and what conclusions you can form based on pure logic. I dont think I have the energy left to be genuinely angry anymore about their plunder. I'd stopped playing wow because of it back in wotlk/cata transition, and coming back, decided to roll something else. I still love the idea behind shaman, but it's a pain to see what they've done, or rather haven't.

I am also partial about the pve/p split, because shamans already have that, with Hex. The spell would not function in pve if they hadn't made a split. CCed mobs are supposed to stay where they are. Pvp hexed targets dont. And in pve, most abilities work just fine, because npcs are dumb and cant exploiut our many weaknesses. Pvp is another matter. Personally, I dont see where blizz would change their policy concerning the way they design shaman pvp.
Anyways; not holding my breath, but monitoring beta, as always.

[Deleted]

I honestly believe the developers are more than aware of the state shamans are for years, talking about enhancement purely now. As Omanley stated when we as players can point out the flaws surely the developers, especially with the tons of feedback we give.

This is what I think, and I'm not one of those people who lean easily to conspiracy theories. But I'll:

Two valid points I believe in:
- They want to spend most of their time and resources on the more popular classes, like warriors mages dk's etc. Or like for legion in a new class and expansion. (They remain a business and like any buniseness they want to maximize their profits.)Resulting them pushing them selves in to giving "hotfixes" and some "tweaks" to enhance.
- Second, I can't think of anything else but them genuinely being afraid of reincarnating the one shotting two hand wielding wf enhancer from Vanilla. Now the haters will tell me to stfu and that my theory is based on nothing but sentiment. But think about it and look at enh in MoP, burst was insane, especially cause of ascendance. Look at how Ascendance got handled for WoD, and especially the unnecessary nerves enhance got in Beta WoD.(Just to get buffed again in HM). Just pointing out, in my view, they are scared shitless enhance getting out of hand. A rework would bring many "unknown" variables and thus to big of a risk for them to do it.

This is my point of view and my way of coping, of how Blizzard threats our mechanics and scaling for many expansions.

[shammypie]

See you made a good post that I would, for the most part, agree with. And then you have to throw in this childish nonsense at the end.

Good constructive criticism followed by infantile armchair ranting over devs.
If you seriously think "no thought went in to this" or even worse "they're screwing Shamans on purpose" there's something wrong with you.

All that being said, I agree with most of what you say here - MoP felt pretty spot on, we did require a nerf to our Burst however. In the end the thing that really killed Enh from MoP to WoD was the horrible PvP/PvE balancing, they killed our burst and "oomph" abilities largely due to PvP complaints.

With Legion going the split route (FINALLY) it may be a fresh start for spec design.

so he's not allowed to be bitter after all his efforts go to waste?

- - - Updated - - -

I honestly believe the developers are more than aware of the state shamans are for years, talking about enhancement purely now. As Omanley stated when we as players can point out the flaws surely the developers, especially with the tons of feedback we give.

This is what I think, and I'm not one of those people who lean easily to conspiracy theories. But I'll:

Two valid points I believe in:
- They want to spend most of their time and resources on the more popular classes, like warriors mages dk's etc. Or like for legion in a new class and expansion. (They remain a business and like any buniseness they want to maximize their profits.)Resulting them pushing them selves in to giving "hotfixes" and some "tweaks" to enhance.
- Second, I can't think of anything else but them genuinely being afraid of reincarnating the one shotting two hand wielding wf enhancer from Vanilla. Now the haters will tell me to stfu and that my theory is based on nothing but sentiment. But think about it and look at enh in MoP, burst was insane, especially cause of ascendance. Look at how Ascendance got handled for WoD, and especially the unnecessary nerves enhance got in Beta WoD.(Just to get buffed again in HM). Just pointing out, in my view, they are scared shitless enhance getting out of hand. A rework would bring many "unknown" variables and thus to big of a risk for them to do it.

This is my point of view and my way of coping, of how Blizzard threats our mechanics and scaling for many expansions.

you are actually pretty close but you missed a few details. You are correct in that they know all the details about why the class is broken and how they could/should fix it. They don't have the time to rebuild them from the ground up and they can't tweak them with the current setup without making them op at something. Furthermore they don't want shamans ending up 1 shotting people in PvP like they did in the past. Hell with enhance it's happened 3 times that I can remember while playing. Vanilla 2-h, End of DS with heroic maces from deathwing, Somewhere in the middle of mop with crazy ascendance combo. So they purposely leave them on the bottom because at low levels/gear/skill it doesn't matter and at higher levels they aren't enough people to complain that would actually leave the game because of it. (FYI model for everything they are super lazy at but actually somewhat important). Legion though they do actually have the potential for once to change it without a complete rework.

Honestly I think they were just playing the razzle dazzle game in wod to keep us distracted for legion because nothing they did makes sense and they have already changed half of it just to keep up the bluff.

[Professor Expert]

I honestly believe the developers are more than aware of the state shamans are for years, talking about enhancement purely now. As Omanley stated when we as players can point out the flaws surely the developers, especially with the tons of feedback we give.

When they do make chances to enhance, it more often than not feels like they're taking away rather than improving or even fixing. Maybe it's better just not to say anything and hope they leave enhance alone...because things could be worse, a lot worse.

Two valid points I believe in:
- They want to spend most of their time and resources on the more popular classes, like warriors mages dk's etc. Or like for legion in a new class and expansion. (They remain a business and like any buniseness they want to maximize their profits.)Resulting them pushing them selves in to giving "hotfixes" and some "tweaks" to enhance.

This is true, and likely the main deciding factor behind whether or not changes get made for any class.

- Second, I can't think of anything else but them genuinely being afraid of reincarnating the one shotting two hand wielding wf enhancer from Vanilla. Now the haters will tell me to stfu and that my theory is based on nothing but sentiment. But think about it and look at enh in MoP, burst was insane, especially cause of ascendance. Look at how Ascendance got handled for WoD, and especially the unnecessary nerves enhance got in Beta WoD.(Just to get buffed again in HM). Just pointing out, in my view, they are scared shitless enhance getting out of hand. A rework would bring many "unknown" variables and thus to big of a risk for them to do it.

This is a straw man because back then, shaman were not the only ones able to insta-gib players. As the gear levels increased when level 60 was max, player damage outpaced their HP and defensive abilities and so players were dying pretty quickly. The gear gap was also very wide. Remember that, back then, only a handful of players had epic pieces, let alone a full set. If you did have a full epic set, like the grand marshal set, you'd be largely unstoppable - with about 3x the HP and damage of the guy in a mix of greens and blues.

2H enhance wouldn't work because WF is so weak now and LL requires an off-hand weapon. We would not be one-shotting anything...although MoP ascendance was close. They seem to not have a problem letting other classes get out of hand, but they're always quick to reel in enhance.

[kosajk]

i stoped plaing some time ago but im reading what blizz is doing with our clas, what i want to say its wod as shaman is like going two steps backs after mop sadly, what omanley1 says in his posts is so true that it would hurt even more badly if i would still play,

its hard to say what they will do with shaman next but experience sugest that it will be not nice sadly and i really hope im wrong this time,
i get through all the phases through all these years from defending blizz after first expansion to flame on them before mop but what they did in the last expansion with our class and this game as a whole is freaking strange for me and drop in player base is sugesting one of two things:
-ppls get bored with wow after all this time
or
-they fu!@#$ something really badly

i supose its personal experience what answer you will chose or it may be mix of both :P

[Incarnia]

Been playing elemental shaman as my main since TBC. In April this year I decided to switch to mage instead. I just can't stand their cold shoulder towards the shaman class anymore.

I know we've had some rather good times every now and then, but they are few and very far in between. This time around I just got very depressed about it all.
It's always the same kind of dance - Devs not listening to all the feedback. They end up doing what they want (while hinting towards the shaman community that they can't play shaman), and shit fucks up. Like everyone knew it would. Once that happens they throw band aid fixes at us (or just ignores the issues for as long as they can). Which in return for the most part doesn't really work satisfactory, and they end up nerfing or buffing stuff all over the place throughout the entire expansion.
It's always the same things too that turn up as problems, and these will continue to cause issues. Again and again and again, unless they actually do a real overhaul of the entire class and all its specs. The class identity as a whole is also in desperate need of an complete rework at this point.

[freddy090909]

I'm extremely sad that this patch came out with the buffs to other hybrid specs and Shaman hasn't gotten any attention yet again. Shadow and Windwalker were in very similar balance states to ele in that they were great in some situations and below average in others. Not to mention, Shadow is seeing pretty good utilization in upper-end raiding.

We really need some kind of bandaid to help our target swapping instead of simply being ignored until next expansion. Some kind of improvement to the way lava burst is treated or a sizable increase in our fulmination damage would be great to tide us over. If we continue to be a ranged dps that doesn't have the ability to kill priority targets (unless they're stacked near the boss - in which case melee can help just as easy), we'll just continue to be a hindrance during progression.

[jliska]

So, dumb question:
Wouldn't making lightning bolt and chain lightning instant cast with a recharge solve many of ele's problems in both pve/pvp? At least as far as mobility and slow ramp up for AOE. More like a shock. Hell, whats more shocking than electricity? We're already the cooldown kings, why not add 2 more. It seems like Echo of the Elements change was a move in this direction.

Or, adding MSW to Ele based on spells landed or LB landed and granting the same effects. Instant group/self heal/dps spell.

I very much miss the talent choice of early expansions and wish they would go back to more character customization other than transmorg. Seems like more talent choices would be better, even if the dps numbers didn't change much....so you could talent yourself into being an AOE specialist, shock/purge specialist, ST heals, group heals, burst specialist, etc...This would enable more variety in comps and raids.

The variability in the game is gone, and that is why I think people have lost interest. They should have gone with too many choices rather than not enough.

[freddy090909]

I very much miss the talent choice of early expansions and wish they would go back to more character customization other than transmorg. Seems like more talent choices would be better, even if the dps numbers didn't change much....so you could talent yourself into being an AOE specialist, shock/purge specialist, ST heals, group heals, burst specialist, etc...This would enable more variety in comps and raids.

The current system is better for customizing your character, and this kind of thing has been discussed to death. Being able to change your character on the fly (boss to boss) is great, and we don't have the stupid "filler" talents from the old tree. The problem with the current system is the choices are not valuable enough. Speaking from an Elemental perspective: ele blast has gone this entire expansion without any worthwhile changes (it could be made into a hard hitting short cd ability with the buff removed for snap target swapping). Our non-dps tiers are entirely uninteresting (some completely worthless) outside of windwalk's niche uses on fights. Our last tier of talents was the most interesting before the trinket, but now you can basically set and forget EF. Similarly, echo vs EM has become much less of a choice because of the ring. Looking to next expansion, I'd love to see more value shoved into individual talents, so that they really would feel like a choice (I'm giving up Y, but gaining X), something to make you really build against the boss.