[Enhancement] Future Legion Resources

[Throdin]

If they've taken Shamanistic Rage away and replaced it with AS, I'm going to be relentlessly optimistic and say they've finally decided to make rage an offensive cool down as it sort of was with the ICC 4pc set bonus. If Shamans start dropping dead whilst everyone else shrugs it off, that's an obvious issue that won't be around for long. Been playing Enh since WotLK, I never remember that being the case historically. Frankly, I'm much happier being on the mobile end of the spectrum.

[Deleted]

So far just a comparison Enhancer <-> Feral PVE wise, baseline without talents (Rogues are tons ahead of both) :

Utility:
Battle Rez (free, instant, usable in cat form)
Stampeding Roar (2min CD, 8sec duration, no positioning required)

vs.

????? (Basically nothing)


Mobility:
45% baseline speed in catform
70% sprint for 15 sec
vs.
0% baseline
60% sprint for 15 sec
ghost wolf (can't deal dps in that form, losing a GCD to shift into it)

(Cats can easily always break roots, enhancer need the sprint for it)


Defense:

Survival Instinct (3min recharge, 2 charges, 50%, 9 sec duration with artifact trait))
vs.
Astral Shift (40%, 90 sec CD, only 1 charge, 6 sec duration, 30% heal assuming the artifact trait works similar))

Healing:
Healing Touch at no DPS cost (Proc based, you can weave them in during free GCDs, so far stronger than healing surge)
vs.
Healing Surge (costs our Ressource and a GCD we could use e.g. Rockbiter, having noh GCD means we always lose some damage per HS)


So far, ferals are much better at utility and mobility and def CDs and Offhealing in Raids.


Now take a look at talents:

Enhancer can pick 1 mobility or utility talent, Ferals can pick 2 talents (or even 3 including that talent row with a Stun or Typhoon knockback).

So just for example, a feral can go for an instant free 30% hp heal every 2 min and permanent10% less damage taken and go some nice offtanking. Really nice for fights where mobility isn't important so he has a lot stronger life savers.

Or he can go for a talent teleporting him 20meter and gaining 50% movement speed for 4 sec. It's a teleport, unlike wind gust which is much slower. Also we don't get 50% movement speed on top for 4 sec. Or fly to a certain position on a 15 sec cd. Overall those talents are closer to our talents, at least as strong as ours. They're on the same row with the 30% heal.

The second talent row has those 10% damage taken or +5 yards on all atacks, making them more like a mid range dd and less like a pure melee like we are, they can have higher uptime on the boss. Or pick Restoration Affinity, healing the feral for 3% of max health every 5 sec permanently or someone else.


So now please tell me, if you compare the whole tool kit of enhancers and ferals, which one has the overall much stronger tool kit?

I'd say ferals will have more utility (even baseline), they have more mobility, much more self healing or off healing and overall better defense CDs.

On top they can pick two defense talents or one mobility talent and somekind of offhealing, where as we can pick 1 mobility talent or utility. So they can actually pick to be more tanky or more mobile, whenever they need it. When we pick Wind rush totem for utility, we end up being less mobile than all those "mobile melees" you are referring to.

So e.g. Enhancer picks Wind rush totem to offer the utility to the raid.

A feral can still pick a mobility talent at least equal to feral lunge and wind rush because Roar is freaking baseline. And can additionally pick permanent 10% less damage taken or off healing which equals to 180% of max hp over 5min. Sure, not that much, but at least they have something. And they can use some Healing Touches at zero DPS costs.

None of those talents cost any DPS.

Just to clarify, Wordup:

Am i the only one seeing our toolkit being much weaker than those of ferals on pretty much EVERY end?

If an enhancer wants the same mobility like a feral, he loses wind rush totem where as a feral still has roar.

Def CD wise, we simply always lack.

Healing wise, ferals have Healing touch and possibly two talents, a strong instant selfheal and a passive offhealing hot, pretty weak, but at least it's something. All of those cost exactly zero DPS, where as enhancers have nothing at all. We need to sacrifice a lot of damage to use Healing Surge. Why?

[wordup]

snip

As I said in the post, you have dug your heels in and are refusing to see reason, you're too focused on spinning everything to be negative.

Ferals, you use Tyrant (a live encounter, so irrelevant data for testing in Legion), yes they can use two charges of defensives during P1, what happens when they need a defensive in P2 for an edict? Oh, it hasn't recharged, it's not ready, while the Enhancement Shaman has Rage back, how convenient. Ferals mobility is not higher, you can't keep saying "they also have higher mobility so there!" when they simply don't. Their mobiltiy is on the same level as Enhancement. I'd also rather you not explain to me why DR is not about uptime, it actually can be. Frequency of availability is also very important, of which, Enhancement shines far more than Feral does on any encounter that lasts longer than that 2 minute window of having two SI charges. Two charges but triple the cooldown means that the frequency of use on say, an 8 minute encounter, makes a significant change to how often and how aggressively you can use it on encounters (8 uses vs. 4) and during progress, encounters tend to be extended to that duration.

In regards to Demon Hunters, great you can pull an arbitrary example to make Netherwalk sound good. Now we're on Archimonde, a more significant encounter than Zakuun, I use my SR correctly, I block all 3 Wrought Chaos beams, and I do it on all 3 Wrought Chaos cycles by using it aggressively, and reduce 30% of the entire incoming damage from the ability. The Demon Hunter immunes the first Wrought wave, then takes the full hit from the next two. Netherwalk isn't ready for the second Wrought, it's back for the first wave of the third. See how easy it is to make a specific mechanic give a stronger showing for a specific defensive?

Why are you referencing Feral Lunge? Gust of Wind is superior in every single way. Saying that Ghost Wolf is only useable for corpse running kind of proves my initial point, you want to speak negatively about the spec in every way and provide arbitrary reasons to stick to those guns. An attitude like that is not the kind you should be holding if you're commenting on Alpha stuff, or if you're testing at all.

Were are these Alpha testers stating they have to use Healing Surge frequently to survive? I have not encountered that at all, and currently mobs die faster for Enh than a majority of other classes.

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Healing wise, ferals have Healing touch and possibly two talents, a strong instant selfheal and a passive offhealing hot, pretty weak, but at least it's something. All of those cost exactly zero DPS, where as enhancers have nothing at all. We need to sacrifice a lot of damage to use Healing Surge. Why?

Let's actually objectively look at these things instead of trying to spin it, shall we:

Utility:
Feral - Stampeding Roar, Battle Res
Enhancement - Bloodlust, Purge, Decurse, Ranged & lower CD Interrupt

Baseline mobility:
Feral mobility - 30% movement speed in Cat Form (not 45%), 70% 15 second sprint on a 3 minute cooldown. (Whether Feline Swiftness stacks with Cat Form bonus or not I don't know currently, it does on live but give it is baseline it may no longer be the case, and simply be an out of form boost, so leaving that seperate).
Enhancement mobility - Base movement speed, 60% 15 second sprint on a 1 minute cooldown, Ghost Wolf.

As you sad in regards to defense earlier, frequency and availability is most important. Spirit Walk completely crushes Dash in every sense when it comes to that with 1/3rd of the cooldown. This is even disregarding the talents that add to this further.

Defense I am going to compare the two before the changes yesterday since that is the case I was arguing for, not the new change which I have already vehemently stated is not a good change whatsoever.

Feral - 50% CD for 6 sec on a 3 minute recharge, two charges.
Enhancement - 30% CD for 15 seconds on a 1 minute cooldown.

& Finally, your healing.

Feral - Predatory Swiftness procs granting free, instant Healing Touches for 360% of spell power. The frequency of these on an average duration fight is dependant on your output and how regularly you use finishers, meaning they will always take at least two GCDs to take advantage of, though you can bank the proc for up to 10sec. Whether these can be "weaved into regular rotation" (on live they are used in conjunction with a specific talent that makes their use locked in to a specific usage, not free to be dumped whenever) is completely unknown because no-one has seen Feral on the Alpha.
Enhancement - Healing Surge, 25 Maelstrom no cooldown, 360% - 720% (double!) spell power heal, costs resource and a GCD.

[zurm]

Just to throw in my two cents (as someone who also has alpha and has spent most of his time playing enh sham), I concur with wordup 100%. Enh shaman are in a fantastic place right now on alpha, and seem to have a far more coherent and complete skillset than any other DPS I've played (especially so for melee DPS). Sure, feral isn't yet available on alpha (it's one of the five specs remaining to be unlocked, along with brewmasters, assassination rogue, frost mage, and destro locks), so we can't do an apples to apples compare yet since we don't know what could still change. Still, enh is in a great place. While the defensive CDs don't offer hard immunities like some other classes, the duration is pretty long and the CD is pretty short, giving you the one thing that is prized more than anything else (aside from abusing bad balancing) in mythic progression: CONSISTENCY. Sure, you won't be cheesing mechanics most likely like a rogue or monk will, but you also bring other forms of utility to the raid that they can't.

Enhancement's self-healing is also extremely potent compared to any other melee dps right (it completely blows ret pallies and monks especially out of the water, and it's speed, cheap cost, and lack of CD make it superior to options that rogues and warriors have).

Finally, specific to your feral comparison, I have to reiterate: FERAL IS NOT EVEN PLAYABLE IN ALPHA. To assume that the datamined talents/abilities are even remotely close to what will make it to live is silly. Even enhancement has had some pretty major iterations already, and it's one of the specs that has been available for longer than most. A numbers pass isn't even in the cards in the near future (and during these passes, ANYTHING can change, from the potency of the CD, to the duration, to the CD time, to the number of charges). So please, you aren't doing anyone a favor by comparing them.

[Deleted]

I am not in Alpha,but what does "doing fine" mean if there was no cutting edge raiding, no numbers tuning and so on.

It absolutely makes no sense anyways when certain specs deal over 100% more dps than others, certain talents are way op (Hailstorm being 35% of our dps is well not balanced at all).

Raiding will be about e.g. having 6 melees in your raid, 2 or 3 are benched. And raid leaders actually pay attention to this.

So you can argue against my post if you want to. And we still have a weak tool kit compared to many other melees. I would bet o v erall we are still the weakest melee before numbers tuning.

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@wordup:

Healing surge for sure costs dps. It is about 1 lava lash at best. Could be a lot more if that lava lash procs crash lightning or we are ms starved with e.g. fury of air and without wolves.

And it hasnt been tuned yet.

[Lavindar]

I am not in Alpha,but what does "doing fine" mean if there was no cutting edge raiding, no numbers tuning and so on.

It absolutely makes no sense anyways when certain specs deal over 100% more dps than others, certain talents are way op (Hailstorm being 35% of our dps is well not balanced at all).

Raiding will be about e.g. having 6 melees in your raid, 2 or 3 are benched. And raid leaders actually pay attention to this.

So you can argue against my post if you want to. And we still have a weak tool kit compared to many other melees. I would bet o v erall we are still the weakest melee before numbers tuning.

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@wordup:

Healing surge for sure costs dps. It is about 1 lava lash at best. Could be a lot more if that lava lash procs crash lightning or we are ms starved with e.g. fury of air and without wolves.

And it hasnt been tuned yet.

You can't say that is wrong to say we are fine because tuning didn't happen yet and then go on to say we are one of the weakest, it makes no sense.

[Throdin]

What matters at the moment is mechanics. Mechanically I'm very happy with the way Enhancement is turning out.

We have a lot of playstyle options: enhancement maintenance, a more passive build with fewer buttons, or a build more reminiscent of live using stormbringer/lightning bolt as a maelstrom spender.

Does something like hailstorm doing 35% of our damage bother me? No, because a) numbers tuning isn't in yet and b) its damage that scales with our main spenders (but not stormbringer which does raise a small concern regarding it's viability over tempest). Anything that makes our main spenders feel more impactful and hit like a truck is absolutely fine by me.

[wordup]

@wordup:

Healing surge for sure costs dps. It is about 1 lava lash at best. Could be a lot more if that lava lash procs crash lightning or we are ms starved with e.g. fury of air and without wolves.

And it hasnt been tuned yet.

I made it quite clear it costs resource and a GCD in the post.

[Raiju]

You can't say that is wrong to say we are fine because tuning didn't happen yet and then go on to say we are one of the weakest, it makes no sense.

Cooldowns are a lot 'bigger' changes than %'s, and usually when we say tuning we mostly refer to damage/healing/survival %'s.

[wordup]

Cooldowns are a lot 'bigger' changes than %'s, and usually when we say tuning we mostly refer to damage/healing/survival %'s.

You aren't wrong in concept but the post he's quoting is theorising (without actual empirical data from testing themselves) that it will be the worst and just "look good" because they're overtuned, but that it's the only spec suffering from these tuning issues, which it absolutely is not.

[Lavindar]

Hey anyone on the alpha have you tested the pvp talents? (are them even up?)

I wonder if we would be able to use them in pve word content.

[wordup]

Hey anyone on the alpha have you tested the pvp talents? (are them even up?)

I wonder if we would be able to use them in pve word content.

I could be wrong but PvP stuff seems completely disabled atm, no BG queuing and can't seem to access the tree.

[Deleted]

Hey anyone on the alpha have you tested the pvp talents? (are them even up?)

I wonder if we would be able to use them in pve word content.

Not available as far as I know.

Also if it helps tune down the topic of survival on the pvp side of things, I highly recommend reading Counterstrike totem carefully.

On the PVE side, Hailstorm seems to be eclipsing everything? And I extremely dislike the SR -> AS switcherino.

[Emophia]

How does the new lightning shield work?

Is it just the old one + static shock? Or the old one + static shock + old unleash fury air effect? Does it do decent damage? I don't want to play a shaman without a float ball orbiting them, be it water or lightning, I really can't.

And how does stormbringer work? Does it actually make lightning bolt worth using and instant? Better than Stormstrike? Or is it for when you don't have any storm fury procs?

I hope Earthen spike is competitive single target, because crashing storm is obvious for aoe and I REALLY REALLY REALLY never want to touch ascendance ever again.

Cheers.

[Deleted]

How does the new lightning shield work?

Is it just the old one + static shock? Or the old one + static shock + old unleash fury air effect? Does it do decent damage? I don't want to play a shaman without a float ball orbiting them, be it water or lightning, I really can't.

And how does stormbringer work? Does it actually make lightning bolt worth using and instant? Better than Stormstrike? Or is it for when you don't have any storm fury procs?

I hope Earthen spike is competitive single target, because crashing storm is obvious for aoe and I REALLY REALLY REALLY never want to touch ascendance ever again.

Cheers.

As I could test (just few hours on Alpha because mostly played hunter) Lightning shields is not the best talent on his row at all, does not that much damage and feels like a bit shitty talent, and if you dont want ascendance, you have a big problem, because ascendant still the best 3 min dps cd enh shaman has (at least as I could try).
I have no clue how Stormbringer works, so I cant help you on that point.

[Raiju]

You aren't wrong in concept but the post he's quoting is theorising (without actual empirical data from testing themselves) that it will be the worst and just "look good" because they're overtuned, but that it's the only spec suffering from these tuning issues, which it absolutely is not.

I get that, and staying out of it :P

[Deleted]

What matters at the moment is mechanics. Mechanically I'm very happy with the way Enhancement is turning out.

We have a lot of playstyle options: enhancement maintenance, a more passive build with fewer buttons, or a build more reminiscent of live using stormbringer/lightning bolt as a maelstrom spender.

Does something like hailstorm doing 35% of our damage bother me? No, because a) numbers tuning isn't in yet and b) its damage that scales with our main spenders (but not stormbringer which does raise a small concern regarding it's viability over tempest). Anything that makes our main spenders feel more impactful and hit like a truck is absolutely fine by me.

That was just an example why "Enhance is fine in alpha" isn't valid vecause there was no numbers tuning yet.

But if i look at a normal raid encounter, i just wanted to show that even mobile melees like feral will have e.g. 2 mios off heal + more damage reduction at zero dps costs. Enhance in its current state needs to sacrifice damage for offheal and mobility for utility.

And when was wind shear ever needed? If you need a ranged interrupt sometimes you have mages or elementals for that one interrupt. Seriously 99% of interrupts are supposed to be melee. Wind shear doesnt offer anything special in practice.

I am not talking about PVP. As i told 100 times, sacrificing damage for heals in pvp was always completely valid gamestyle, mostly enhancer was more like a supporter and less like a dd. But in PVE it is highly unlikely you are going to sacrifice a lot of damage for some offhaling.

So in the end my point still stands: having practically 0 offhealing and the weakest defense cds of all melees will definitely hurt us and is IMO completely unfair.

On a side note: if healing surge is as strong as it is now, it will be nerfed anyways. People will always complain about stuff like this. It isnt the first time they did this. MSW in WOD was 100% all the time - until shortly before release when it was nerfed to 50%. Just from a pvpPOV.

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I get that, and staying out of it :P

What Wordup is ignoring: he doesnt have empirical data too since i am talking about mythic raid progress, not questing. And from what i read, people had to use a lot of healing surges while leveling. Others can go full out dps, we cant.

And actually enhance is somewhat overtunedbecause of some op talents. Hailstorm was just an example. Hail storm can be a 50% increase over no talent. If they balance that taent to be a 5% increase we suddenly deal a lot less damage and mobs will die a lot slower. So referring to epirical experince is pointless bevause numbers are far off. Rogues may have the strongest mechanics and still be weak because there as no numbers tuning yet.

[Raiju]

I'm not taking anyone side - I have disagreements of both but am already covering enough arguments in other forum.

[Emophia]

As I could test (just few hours on Alpha because mostly played hunter) Lightning shields is not the best talent on his row at all, does not that much damage and feels like a bit shitty talent, and if you dont want ascendance, you have a big problem, because ascendant still the best 3 min dps cd enh shaman has (at least as I could try).
I have no clue how Stormbringer works, so I cant help you on that point.

That would be awesome thanks. I'm wondering more about the mechanics than the numbers of Lightning shield, since I'm sure tuning is far far off. I've always had a soft spot for static shock, it's passive sure, but so are the other two talents on that row.

But I never want to touch ascendance again, for me it signifies enhance going downhill for me. I never liked it, even with it's insane pve opener's and 1 shotting people. And now that's just a shadow of it's former self, it'll be too soon if I never use it again.

[Darleth]

But I never want to touch ascendance again, for me it signifies enhance going downhill for me. I never liked it, even with it's insane pve opener's and 1 shotting people. And now that's just a shadow of it's former self, it'll be too soon if I never use it again.

Since they've changed Earthen Spike to only affect the shaman himself, it'll probably be the strongest damage CD we get through talents. I guess it'll be worth it for high priority-burst-damage and Earthen Spike will be better in a longer fight, though its just speculation on my part. Crashing Storm is just AoE. Since nothing is final right now and numbers aren't tuned at all, we have to wait and see how it turns out.