Talk about clunky!

[Rotomon]

Also shaman was only unlocked this alpha patch...

[wordup]

I'd go into more detail on this but I'm a bit pressed for time, I'll go into more detail likely at a later date. When it comes to these "mass buff management", I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. Aside from Flametongue specifically, it's not so much buff management. It's pretty simple with these talents factored in, you use them on CD. They sync up naturally, so you just press them when they're ready and that's it, that's optimal, and that's fine. I find it similar in a sense to how we are now, except the cooldowns are a bit longer & we rise and fall in our output more frequently; other than that, it's hit what's ready on a priority list and it's fine. Just because there's a buff doesn't always mean you need to track it & know it's there.

Buff management generally indicates no CD, having to keep it up without pressing it more often than you have to. That's not what we have, we just simply have a lot of short term buffs with individual cooldowns; enhnancements, if you will.

[Manu9]

enhnancements, if you will.

Which is exactly what they said they want us to be doing. So I don't see us changing in that regard.

[Kithelle]

Yeah...I love Enhancement, but I haven't played a Shaman in a while...I remember back was it in MoP? They got rid of all these little procs and stuff to simplify the spec and so it didn't have a ton of different damage sources.

Not only does it look like that is back but now you're also spamming rockbiter on every GCD you aren't using on these buffs or maelstrom spenders...

[Tumble]

If you haven't played it, you don't get to comment on how it feels. I have and it feels wayyyy better than I initially thought it would. Once you get a little bit into your artifact tree, it's not low-damage-rockbiter spammy at all, and maelstrom is easy to generate. Plus when you use your doomhammer dps cooldown, you can actually spam stormstrike 6-7 times in a row, hit like a truck on all of them, and still be at 100 maelstrom.

I'm sorry, but the way finalboss talks about it, it sounds clunky. Does it feel better than it does on live?

You don't play with Weak Auras 2?

Nope, I've only ever used DBM as far as raiding goes. I use addons to make my UI more functional and appealing to me, and grid and clique to heal/cleanse. I tried using rotation helpers years ago when I use to raid full time, and I just couldn't. My dps never suffered, I wasn't world #1, but I wasn't trying to be.

Maintaining buffs is one of the most annoying things in WoW, i really hope Enha will lose all of those.

It really is, it's why I'm sad.

Alpha is alpha. Blizzard will tune it. The only problem is there are a bit too many buffs to get up for rotations (seven for single-target and five for multi-target). Reduce that number and Enhancement looks perfect.

Also, it is not clunky.

Everything in you first paragraph is the very definition of clunky to me. Ramp up dps, especially to that degree, is bad design. I can't even imagine what that's going to play like in pvp.

I know its early alpha still and ppl are saying if you dont like all the bloat dont take the passives. But what happens if all that bloat is the "BEST" dps option in a raid. Does that not mean we are going to be forced into taking/using all of the micro buff talents? From what i have seen from Wordup/finalboss/preachgaming/heelvsbabyface vids the spec is looking purdy interesting and fresh but damn id hate to have to track so many little buffs arggg haha. Ahh well have to wait and see if things change again.


Also i know allot of ppl use weakauras and other mods to track buff uptimes etc. But since vanilla i have always liked using the base ui. Only raiding mods i usually use are skada and dbm. I consider my self a purdy average raider but have never realy liked the need or had the urge to have a ton of mods to have to track stuff going on around me. Just my 2 cents anyways

Exactly, you are always pigeon holed into certain talents unless you want to gimp yourself. If by some miracle they find a way to balance passive talents with management talents, that'd be great, but unlikely.

I'd go into more detail on this but I'm a bit pressed for time, I'll go into more detail likely at a later date. When it comes to these "mass buff management", I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. Aside from Flametongue specifically, it's not so much buff management. It's pretty simple with these talents factored in, you use them on CD. They sync up naturally, so you just press them when they're ready and that's it, that's optimal, and that's fine. I find it similar in a sense to how we are now, except the cooldowns are a bit longer & we rise and fall in our output more frequently; other than that, it's hit what's ready on a priority list and it's fine. Just because there's a buff doesn't always mean you need to track it & know it's there.

Buff management generally indicates no CD, having to keep it up without pressing it more often than you have to. That's not what we have, we just simply have a lot of short term buffs with individual cooldowns; enhnancements, if you will.

Well that sounds a lot better than the way it sounds in the Finalboss video. To the bolded part, do you mean our dps is very much like a roller coaster, just all over the map, hit like a wet noodle for 15 seconds, then hit like a god for 15 seconds? That doesn't sound fun either. I guess I just have to hope I get beta access and can test it before it goes live.

[wordup]

Well that sounds a lot better than the way it sounds in the Finalboss video. To the bolded part, do you mean our dps is very much like a roller coaster, just all over the map, hit like a wet noodle for 15 seconds, then hit like a god for 15 seconds? That doesn't sound fun either. I guess I just have to hope I get beta access and can test it before it goes live.

I was a bit vague there yeah, sorry. What I mean is that we have really high highs when CDs stack and line up, and really low lows when we don't get to hit anything. Procs from Stormfury tend to fill in this gap when/if they happen, but you're talking 30%~ of the time you feel amazing, 40%~ you feel like you're strong & then 30% of the time you're a little starved for resources/procs.

[nazrakin]

I was a bit vague there yeah, sorry. What I mean is that we have really high highs when CDs stack and line up, and really low lows when we don't get to hit anything. Procs from Stormfury tend to fill in this gap when/if they happen, but you're talking 30%~ of the time you feel amazing, 40%~ you feel like you're strong & then 30% of the time you're a little starved for resources/procs.

Plus its worth noting that its from the perspective of green gear and without the vast majority of the artifact traits, which all may smooth out the curve a bit.

[Deleted]

its still the alpha, don't look to far into it.

[Deleted]

Why is enha clunky on live?

[Professor Expert]

If you haven't played it, you don't get to comment on how it feels. I have and it feels wayyyy better than I initially thought it would. Once you get a little bit into your artifact tree, it's not low-damage-rockbiter spammy at all, and maelstrom is easy to generate. Plus when you use your doomhammer dps cooldown, you can actually spam stormstrike 6-7 times in a row, hit like a truck on all of them, and still be at 100 maelstrom.

Allow me to posit this question: after the legion expac comes and goes, and artifact weapons are a thing of the past, how is the baseline enhance shaman going to fare without the doomhammer CD and only their basic talent tree to rely upon? From what I've heard, artifact weapons don't carry over into future expacs.

The major difference between Maelstrom and Rage lies in consistency in the generation and use. Maelstrom is much more consistent and can be more easily spent. (At least comparing it to Fury.) Fury now only has 2 rage dumps that are significantly different in terms of rage dumping (Carnage with 90 rage, 40 when talented, and Furious Strike with 5 rage) at least baseline. Maelstrom has 2 major dumps that are much more consistent (30 for LL and 60/30 for SS). The generation is also more consistent. Rockbiter generates 10 no matter what. Windfury generates 15 no matter what. There will probably be a 60~75 Maelstrom sweet spot to stay in with no procs up.

This version of Enhancement is nowhere near clunky as Wrath Enhancement. Hell, the current implementation is clunky as fuck. Blizz has stated for numerous expansions that the biggest issue with Enhancement balancing was that damage was too spread out over too many abilities. Boiling everything down to a basic level is something they should have done sooner. Flametongue is even less clunky than UE is now. There's no harm in using it off CD at the moment, which would guarantee 100% uptime. But there's also a 4 second buffer meaning it's not extremely tight so you can try to space things out more. Using it every 12 seconds means you use 25 GCDs for a 5 minute fight compared to 20 GCDs using it every 15 seconds. Minor change, but both guarantee 100% uptime and still have a bit of wiggle room

I don't consider the current version of enhancement to be "clunky". It does require some macro setup to be useful, but once done, I have no problem making use of all available abilities from my keybinds.

As for maelstrom, it's not so much that we'll be starved for it while being on target and attacking, it's the fact that we have to build it up each time before attacking. Right now you can OPEN with stormstrike/lavalash if it's off CD. If you were being kited (which it seems will be even easier for hunters/mages to do to us in legion) then when you finally do get into range to attack you'll have to whack them with rockbiter doing no real damage before you have the 60 maelstrom for SS or whatever it is for SS. Oh, and if you want to purge them while you're being kited? Forget about it - you'll spend all of your maelstrom in 3-4 purges...and it can easily take that many purges to remove the buff you want to remove.

Even if maelstrom worked "perfectly", which we know it won't, it's still pushing enhancement into being slight variations of warriors or DKs. I've been playing as enhancement since late WotLK / early cata and in my opinion they were at their best towards the end of cata.

Oh...did I mention they took away grounding totem? Wow...really. Clearly THAT needed to go because being able to eat one random spell every 45 seconds was just so OP.

While it has little concerns, I don't want for Enha to become the new Frost DK. There are 2 reasons for why I play Enha, the concept/lore of it, and the complexity.

This!

[Tumble]

That sounds like haste and mastery will make huge changes further down the line. While you say it's fun, do you enjoy it as much as live, was the change for the better in your opinion at this point in time? Can you see what they have planned for the spec and agree with the direction?

Edit:That's for wordup

[nazrakin]

Allow me to posit this question: after the legion expac comes and goes, and artifact weapons are a thing of the past, how is the baseline enhance shaman going to fare without the doomhammer CD and only their basic talent tree to rely upon? From what I've heard, artifact weapons don't carry over into future expacs.

Just because the weapons are abandoned does not mean the the traits will as well. Anything from these artifcts can easily be integrated into the baseline design of the class.

[wordup]

That sounds like haste and mastery will make huge changes further down the line. While you say it's fun, do you enjoy it as much as live, was the change for the better in your opinion at this point in time? Can you see what they have planned for the spec and agree with the direction?

Edit:That's for wordup

As of right this second, I'd wager no I don't enjoy it as much on live, but that's for one very clear reason: I've only really done quests/low-intensity dungeons with it. It suffers greatly from the lack of stats too (live enhancement at say 680 ilvl compared to 740 are worlds apart because of how our scaling operates) right now. The Artifact has some things in I'm excited to use (I unlocked Hurricane ASAP and it's extremely fun to play with) but that's speculation at this moment in time.

I'd say what the changes do is loosen up how rigid our gameplay is atm. We're quite locked into a very static level of damage outside of our fixed DPS cooldowns, now we have low-CD high-impact rotational skills like Doom Winds/Windsong or Wolves + Affinity, which allows for flexibility or gaming of mechanics which in the raiding world is really useful (see current sub rogues).

[Tumble]

Allow me to posit this question: after the legion expac comes and goes, and artifact weapons are a thing of the past, how is the baseline enhance shaman going to fare without the doomhammer CD and only their basic talent tree to rely upon? From what I've heard, artifact weapons don't carry over into future expacs.

I think they will just do what they have done in the past with tier bonuses. They will just become a part of the spec in the future, either by being baked into other spells or staying their own.

its still the alpha, don't look to far into it.

This is old, and untrue. It's been many times before where this has been said, and almost every time, it gets brought to live with issues that should have been fixed in alpha, and then beta, but weren't.

- - - Updated - - -

As of right this second, I'd wager no I don't enjoy it as much on live, but that's for one very clear reason: I've only really done quests/low-intensity dungeons with it. It suffers greatly from the lack of stats too (live enhancement at say 680 ilvl compared to 740 are worlds apart because of how our scaling operates) right now. The Artifact has some things in I'm excited to use (I unlocked Hurricane ASAP and it's extremely fun to play with) but that's speculation at this moment in time.

I'd say what the changes do is loosen up how rigid our gameplay is atm. We're quite locked into a very static level of damage outside of our fixed DPS cooldowns, now we have low-CD high-impact rotational skills like Doom Winds/Windsong or Wolves + Affinity, which allows for flexibility or gaming of mechanics which in the raiding world is really useful (see current sub rogues).

That's one thing I was hoping they would change. I never liked that gear changed the way you play. It would be nice so that gear and talents would increase in a streamline fashion, that way at green gear its x<y<z<w and at bis it's still x<y<z<w. Faster is fine but reaching levels where it becomes x over everything else so we pool resources because it's a net gain doesn't sound fun. Bring on beta and let me in is all I can say.

[chooi]

(Note: I've never played an Enhancement Shaman. So I'd say I have a quite neutral view on the new Enh Sham spec.)

I've watched Finalboss' Twitch stream on Enhancement Shaman and I disagree with his review in general.
I logged off his stream when he wanted to tell the viewers how good Earthen Spikes over the huge 5min CD talents will be. Because he assumed that the 10% damage taken buff on target from ES will apply to the whole raid, not only the Shaman. That's so delusional. I guarantee you it won't. Blizzard will never do stuff like this again. It would enforce stupid class stacking of melees and nature spell casters in raids. Definitely not gonna happen. That alone killed Finalboss' opinion on Enh Shaman for me. Though, I enjoy his shows when the actual high-end players show us their views (not saying he's a bad player).

But back to the core spec:
Actually, I really like how spammy and fast-paced the Melee Shaman looks right now. It has zero downtimes. Any GCD can be filled if 'only' for Rockbiter that can be further enhanced via talent (more attack power!).

I don't understand why Finalboss is making such a big deal out of Enhancements and 'micro buffs' to maintain. What's so hard about that?
Basically, it's:
- Flametongue every 12/16sec,
- Stormstrike / Lava Lash for MS dump and/or with SS proc
- Rockbiter as filler to generate MS and maintain AP-buff if talented
(- Crash Lightning every 5/10sec for multitarget)
(- Windsong/Fists of Stone every 30sec if talented)
(- Fury of Air every 30sec if talented and high on Maelstrom)

Yes, there may be too much spells to maintain currently. But even if so, it perfectly fits Enhancement Shaman to have a huge arsenal of well...Enhancements Nothing that can't be easily tracked via WeakAuras. All Enhancements are CD-based, so you simply press what's up. Except talented Rockbiter that is in your rotation anyway. Really, serious business...

Also, as a Warrior-in-exile I really dig the Rage-like resource generation of Maelstrom that still is different from actual Warrior Rage.

Remember, it's a really early state of the spec that will see several changes/prunings until release. So far, the spec has a lot of potential IMO and I will keep a close look on its development during Alpha/Beta as I'm still undecided what Melee I will play for Legion. Enhancement Shaman suddenly made it on my list. Not perfect but promising.

PS:

I'd go into more detail on this but I'm a bit pressed for time, I'll go into more detail likely at a later date. When it comes to these "mass buff management", I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. Aside from Flametongue specifically, it's not so much buff management. It's pretty simple with these talents factored in, you use them on CD. They sync up naturally, so you just press them when they're ready and that's it, that's optimal, and that's fine. I find it similar in a sense to how we are now, except the cooldowns are a bit longer & we rise and fall in our output more frequently; other than that, it's hit what's ready on a priority list and it's fine. Just because there's a buff doesn't always mean you need to track it & know it's there.

I should have read this post before. My thought exactly. Alpha Enhance is not about 'buff management' but rather 'hit what's up'.

[Tumble]

If people only discussed things on the official forums, mmo-champion and every other website like if would close shop. I hope your other 22 thousand post have been more thought out and on topic.

[Mantioch]

I'd like to start by saying I've been playing the alpha moderately hard since Enhance got introduced, I'm a PvE exclusive player, and I've been playing the spec since Classic (Paying 100+ gold a week for respecs...). Also, I've been testing, so I'm late to the thread, incoming wall of text Omanley style. /highfive Omanley

If you dont want to track a bunch of actives then.. dont take those talents?

I'm not trying to be totally dismissive but thats kinda the point of removing a lot of the baseline actives. Right now @ baseline you have a 7 ability ST rotation, a 6 ability AE rotation, and 3 CDs. In Legion that becomes 5, 3, and 1 respectively.

This isn't quite right. TLDR, we use all our ST in AoE. We have, on alpha, four rotational abilities to use in single target (RB/FT/SS/LL). For multi-target (I wouldn't call it AoE anymore, it's more cleave, but that may be only semantics) we use five abilities (All the ST + CR). Talented, at most, we have eight (Base four, WS, LS, FoA, and ES. <If FL starts doing the damage it states in the tooltip, we may use it rotationally, not sure.>). AoE is nine (adding CL). For CDs, we have a minimum of two, those being Doom Winds and Feral Spirits.

Right now enhancement is a CD based spec where maelstrom provides bonus damage or healing options...but is not required to have MW5 to use any of your key abilities and that is one of the unique things that makes enhancement fun - the fast pace with options on what you can do at any given time. Enhancement has a fairly high skill cap and it's rewarding to get good at it...it's a lot of fun.

The legion proposal shifts enhancement to a warrior "rage" based spec, where all abilities require maelstrom (aka rage) to be used, aside from a few weak fillers to generate maelstrom. This shifts it from a fun, fast, tactical spec to a derpy "build up your resource then spam your hard-hitting ability just like every other melee spec in the game" spec, but if you don't have maelstrom all you can do is rockbiter.

Yes, we're going from short rotational cooldowns with a very small amount of healing utility towards a builder/spender dichotomy with no healing utility and some raid DPS increase utility. I'd argue that we have a fairly steep initial skill curve, a significant plateau once you've got the spec generally learned, and a fairly high (but not the highest) skill cap. Once you've got the spec mostly down the net benefit from approaching skill cap is limited. It's one of the main issues many of us old grizzled Enhancers have, once the basics are learned, it's a steep climb skill wise, with an anemic output increase. Compare this with, say, Fire Mages, where it's low learning curve, steep skill cap with absurd output increases comparatively.

Initially we did resemble warriors a fair bit, now, not so much. We're builder/spender, yes, but the playstyle is more frenetic and less predictable in my experience. We're unable to spam Stormstrike, and it has a much higher coefficient than Lava Lash, so there's some resource management around SS cooldown and possible procs. It plays, right now, like a short buff CD management spec with edge of your seat resource management. I'm inclined to think that this will lead to both a higher skill cap, and a higher benefit from playing near that cap. As for resource generation, we get a LOT of MP passively, it's not all Rockbiter generated.

We have heard its alpha/beta/ptr for so many years with shitty issues being ignored it's not even funny anymore. They are going to tweak numbers, I have no doubt, what I do doubt, is that they are going to change their minds and revert the changes made to the spec. They had time and OH SO MANY forums about just how shitty the changes looked and sounded. Enhancement shamans had the lowest rated changes of every other class/spec, by not only shamans but by other people looking and going "wow that looks like shit, poor shamans". I get they want to freshen up the spec a bit, okay fine, but a complete rework isn't the answer.

Agreed. We need to get them the feedback asap. Waiting for Beta and then release is a losing battle we've fought for years. Did we need an overhaul? I'm on the no side of this question, but I think the community is fairly split on this.

I already see a bunch of macros you can make and pretty much half your amount of keybinds :P
Shocks pretty much just had their names and icons change.
You can just switch your flameshock weakaura to flametongue and maelstrom weakaura to maelstrom power?
We no longer have a searing totem to track. Or almost any totems at all.. the sonic one is nice for raids I guess.
Rockbiter instead of frost shock filler.. nova/chainlightning>crashlightning+fury of air etc.

It doesn't really look any harder. Just a metric ton of rng that takes away your control.

Atleast lavalash and stormstrike will have a clear spot in your rotation instead of fighting over it like they do now.

Macro-ing abilities together takes away control and flexibility, I'd suggest against doing this in general. As for the weakauras, yeah, there's only a few more to mess with if you talent for the actives. We've got a lot fewer keybinds, but this is mostly due to pruning, and not do to lower complexity. Where the spec could be 'harder' is that there's a possibility that we're going to want to hold some of these abilities so that we can line them up together instead of generally hitting things on cooldown. That'll lead to a higher skillcap and more gradual ramp up to average skill. We're losing some control, but that leaves room for higher skilled players to get more out of the spec, and also room for players to improve. Lava Lash and Stormstrike don't fight for spots in the rotation currently, not sure what you mean there, except that in Legion Lava Lash is a filler spender as opposed to Stormstrike which is what we always want to hit. (Not 100% true, we may end up having to bank SS for AoE phases similar to how we bank LL now.)

My concerns with it are all the bugs enhance has in the current build, how strong will our aoe be in a raid (single target looks strong), and the build up time for our opener and aoe. There's also the problem of capping maelstrom during cooldowns. It might be that blizzard intends for us to use our wolves, doom winds, and ascendance (if specced into it) separately to have a more even maelstrom generation but really hoping that's not the case.

Bottom line, I like how the spec is looking in legion and just hope blizzard doesn't screw up the balancing so we can be in a stronger place than WoD.

We're going to have to let the theory guys like Wordup and Purge and Bay figure out best practices, it's looking like the spec is going to be a lot more complicated mathematically in Legion. Buggy, absolutely. Nothing like Rockbiter pulling things 100 yards away after you've killed the baddie you're working on... If I had to guess based on our current state on alpha, I'd say that FoA is in for big big nerfs, and that our ST will be good, but our AoE will be baaaaaad. Crash Lightning feels awful, damage-wise. I think we'll be stronger than WoD, probably, but not as strong as SoO in WoD.

And I have seen wordup's stream and he said that while its very different (which was obvious), he also says that it flows well, isnt just a blue warrior, and is fun to play. Which is a far cry from the terrible doom and gloom/blizzard hates us/this spec is a clunky mess that you are portraying it as.

Absolutely. It does seem to flow well, which is a plus. I'm one of those doom and gloom guys. I like the way the spec is now, and I think many of these changes aren't needed. That doesn't mean that what launches with Legion will be awful, though. I just liked the short rotational cooldown playstyle.

The thing is that our two major procs (Windfury and Stormlash) are currently tied to Mastery, so being in level 100 greens and a bit beyond isn't going to give a full view of what the spec can do. Right now in alpha the Maelstrom generation leans more towards Rockbiter than it will on live (since I guarantee most Enh shamans will have significantly more mastery).

The major difference between Maelstrom and Rage lies in consistency in the generation and use. Maelstrom is much more consistent and can be more easily spent. (At least comparing it to Fury.) Fury now only has 2 rage dumps that are significantly different in terms of rage dumping (Carnage with 90 rage, 40 when talented, and Furious Strike with 5 rage) at least baseline. Maelstrom has 2 major dumps that are much more consistent (30 for LL and 60/30 for SS). The generation is also more consistent. Rockbiter generates 10 no matter what. Windfury generates 15 no matter what. There will probably be a 60~75 Maelstrom sweet spot to stay in with no procs up.

This version of Enhancement is nowhere near clunky as Wrath Enhancement. Hell, the current implementation is clunky as fuck. Blizz has stated for numerous expansions that the biggest issue with Enhancement balancing was that damage was too spread out over too many abilities. Boiling everything down to a basic level is something they should have done sooner. Flametongue is even less clunky than UE is now. There's no harm in using it off CD at the moment, which would guarantee 100% uptime. But there's also a 4 second buffer meaning it's not extremely tight so you can try to space things out more. Using it every 12 seconds means you use 25 GCDs for a 5 minute fight compared to 20 GCDs using it every 15 seconds. Minor change, but both guarantee 100% uptime and still have a bit of wiggle room

This is true, more mastery will definitely lead to a less RB dependent generation. Based on Wordup's spreadsheet, I'd actually be generating more than I could spend easily, and that's my main issue right now. Our cap of 100 MP feels too low for me given generation rates and our desire to be able to respond to Stormfury procs. MP and rage are indeed very different as currently implemented, but I'd agrue that with increased Mastery that our generation will be very very unpredictable, and that we'll overcap a LOT. Personally, I don't see our loadout on live as clunky (Except AoE, and legion is worse), and I do see some of the interactions on alpha to be potentially clunky.

If you haven't played it, you don't get to comment on how it feels. I have and it feels wayyyy better than I initially thought it would. Once you get a little bit into your artifact tree, it's not low-damage-rockbiter spammy at all, and maelstrom is easy to generate. Plus when you use your doomhammer dps cooldown, you can actually spam stormstrike 6-7 times in a row, hit like a truck on all of them, and still be at 100 maelstrom.

I think some people are able to conceptualize quite well without playing it, but it's definately a limited group. It plays better for leveling than I expected, but I'm very worried about needing to hold abilities to line them all up (FoA, WS, ES, etc). This would feel much less flow-y, bordering on clunky and unintuitive. We'll see what the theory guys say. Consistently overcapping feels bad to me as a person who plays multiple classes. I hope it's not something that's expected of the Legion playstyle.

While it has little concerns, I don't want for Enha to become the new Frost DK. There are 2 reasons for why I play Enha, the concept/lore of it, and the complexity.

Based on my personal testing, this is NOT something we have to worry about.

I'd go into more detail on this but I'm a bit pressed for time, I'll go into more detail likely at a later date. When it comes to these "mass buff management", I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. Aside from Flametongue specifically, it's not so much buff management. It's pretty simple with these talents factored in, you use them on CD. They sync up naturally, so you just press them when they're ready and that's it, that's optimal, and that's fine. I find it similar in a sense to how we are now, except the cooldowns are a bit longer & we rise and fall in our output more frequently; other than that, it's hit what's ready on a priority list and it's fine. Just because there's a buff doesn't always mean you need to track it & know it's there.

Buff management generally indicates no CD, having to keep it up without pressing it more often than you have to. That's not what we have, we just simply have a lot of short term buffs with individual cooldowns; enhnancements, if you will.

I'm glad to hear you say so, Wordup. It's feeling to me, presently, that there will be a need to line up, say, ES, FoA and Windsong. Given the lower CD on ES, it was looking like it should be held to line up, and if that's not the case, it's a nice thing to hear. I look forward to what you and Purge put together for our theorycrafting needs.

Allow me to posit this question: after the legion expac comes and goes, and artifact weapons are a thing of the past, how is the baseline enhance shaman going to fare without the doomhammer CD and only their basic talent tree to rely upon? From what I've heard, artifact weapons don't carry over into future expacs.

They'll likely change us some more, honestly. Also, I don't think many of those are going to HUGELY affect our play. Kind of like set bonuses, they'll help, and they'll be great, but other than Doom Winds, nothing is active at present.

That sounds like haste and mastery will make huge changes further down the line. While you say it's fun, do you enjoy it as much as live, was the change for the better in your opinion at this point in time? Can you see what they have planned for the spec and agree with the direction?

Edit:That's for wordup

Well, I'm not Wordup, but I'll answer too. I don't enjoy it as much as live, but I've been playing it forever, and it's been basically the same since Wrath, rotationally. This is a stupidly MASSIVE change, and it's especially different without addons. If I'm reading it right, what they have planned for the spec will be a fun spec, though very different.

As of right this second, I'd wager no I don't enjoy it as much on live, but that's for one very clear reason: I've only really done quests/low-intensity dungeons with it. It suffers greatly from the lack of stats too (live enhancement at say 680 ilvl compared to 740 are worlds apart because of how our scaling operates) right now. The Artifact has some things in I'm excited to use (I unlocked Hurricane ASAP and it's extremely fun to play with) but that's speculation at this moment in time.

I'd say what the changes do is loosen up how rigid our gameplay is atm. We're quite locked into a very static level of damage outside of our fixed DPS cooldowns, now we have low-CD high-impact rotational skills like Doom Winds/Windsong or Wolves + Affinity, which allows for flexibility or gaming of mechanics which in the raiding world is really useful (see current sub rogues).

Yeah, definitely. Unfortunately for max DPS, we tend to need to either rigidly hit things on cooldown, or rigidly line certain things up with other things cooldowns. We'll see how it plays out.

I never liked that gear changed the way you play. It would be nice so that gear and talents would increase in a streamline fashion, that way at green gear its x<y<z<w and at bis it's still x<y<z<w. Faster is fine but reaching levels where it becomes x over everything else so we pool resources because it's a net gain doesn't sound fun. Bring on beta and let me in is all I can say.

I, personally, disagree with this sentiment. Without things like gearing changing play, set bonuses, and things like Soul Capacitor, gameplay would be static and boring after many years of play.

I've watched Finalboss' Twitch stream on Enhancement Shaman and I disagree with his review in general.
I logged off his stream when he wanted to tell the viewers how good Earthen Spikes over the huge 5min CD talents will be. Because he assumed that the 10% damage taken buff on target from ES will apply to the whole raid, not only the Shaman. That's so delusional. I guarantee you it won't. Blizzard will never do stuff like this again. It would enforce stupid class stacking of melees and nature spell casters in raids. Definitely not gonna happen. That alone killed Finalboss' opinion on Enh Shaman for me. Though, I enjoy his shows when the actual high-end players show us their views (not saying he's a bad player).

But back to the core spec:
Actually, I really like how spammy and fast-paced the Melee Shaman looks right now. It has zero downtimes. Any GCD can be filled if 'only' for Rockbiter that can be further enhanced via talent (more attack power!).

I don't understand why Finalboss is making such a big deal out of Enhancements and 'micro buffs' to maintain. What's so hard about that?
Basically, it's:
- Flametongue every 12/16sec,
- Stormstrike / Lava Lash for MS dump and/or with SS proc
- Rockbiter as filler to generate MS and maintain AP-buff if talented
(- Crash Lightning every 5/10sec for multitarget)
(- Windsong/Fists of Stone every 30sec if talented)
(- Fury of Air every 30sec if talented and high on Maelstrom)

Yes, there may be too much spells to maintain currently. But even if so, it perfectly fits Enhancement Shaman to have a huge arsenal of well...Enhancements Nothing that can't be easily tracked via WeakAuras. All Enhancements are CD-based, so you simply press what's up. Except talented Rockbiter that is in your rotation anyway..

I believe that Bay tested Earthen Spike, and it DID increase other people's damage. I could be mistaken, though. I agree that it shouldn't, and that Blizzard isn't likely to push it to live that way. Also, Bay is a fairly high end player. Absolutely in the top 1%. I agree that if all the 'enhancements' remain in the 'use on cooldown' camp, that things will be fine.

This might be Captain Obvious, but I guess you cannot be obvious enough on MMO Champion

How about you provide your feedback (based on a video, haha) on the official forums.

It just MIGHT be that ALPHA and BETA is just for that purpose. You know? Provide feedback to the devs instead of bitching on a forum?

They read this stuff. On this forum. Just sayin'.

[nazrakin]

This isn't quite right. TLDR, we use all our ST in AoE. We have, on alpha, four rotational abilities to use in single target (RB/FT/SS/LL). For multi-target (I wouldn't call it AoE anymore, it's more cleave, but that may be only semantics) we use five abilities (All the ST + CR). Talented, at most, we have eight (Base four, WS, LS, FoA, and ES. <If FL starts doing the damage it states in the tooltip, we may use it rotationally, not sure.>). AoE is nine (adding CL). For CDs, we have a minimum of two, those being Doom Winds and Feral Spirits.

When I talk bout rotational abilities I'm talking about skills that are 60secs or less, which is why I lumped doomwinds in as a 5th rotational skill -- its semantics, but to me that has always made sense. I didnt include FT in as an AE skill since I was unsure whether or not its damage is spread. Sundering is the 5th active you could theoretically pick up in the tree, its currently total trash but tuning isnt really relevant at this stage.

[jimmyolsen]

I find it similar in a sense to how we are now, except the cooldowns are a bit longer & we rise and fall in our output more frequently; other than that, it's hit what's ready on a priority list and it's fine. Just because there's a buff doesn't always mean you need to track it & know it's there.

I had a similar reaction playing it this afternoon. As long as you maintain the maelstrom to support Fury of Air (which is way, way, way too strong right now compared to every other skill), there's not a lot of management.

[Murderdoll]

It's alpha.

Contrary to popular belief (and my god do so many people on this forum say the opposite and I don't know why) balance and rotation fluidity-wise, with the exception of WoD, classes often underwent a huge amount of iterations. Granted, conceptually enhancement seems really borked currently, but I wouldn't be too alarmed until beta.
Let's just hope they actually read feedback this time instead of a WoD all over again...

I dont know how many times it needs to be said.

This "its alpha/beta/ptr" comeback is absolute HORSESHIT.

If noone speaks up. Nothing gets changed. Its that simple. Now is the BEST time to voice your opinions and dislike for certain things because they can be changed. Numbers are dial the knob. But mechanically, if people find it clunky you need to speak up and you NEED to say WHY.

If you have no interest in looking at complaints about a alpha/beta build than stop reading beta posts. Its that simple.