Posted in the Legion class feedback forums (Enhance)

[Cynical Person]

I just want to say I am very unhappy with the spec in its current state, it is not what I believe a shaman should be. I've played this shaman main for 10 years and I've seen this class go through countless changes but this is the worst I've seen it.

I am saddened at the lack of totems which DEFINES our class as a TOTEMIC WARRIOR. This is your description of the class and now I feel like a fury warrior with spells(rip windwalking, searing totem, tremor totem, grounding totem, healing stream totem), This gimps our utility, PvP has always been a problem with shamans and on the beta we are in a much worse position than ever. The new resource is okay but the extra mana bar is annoying and just shouldn't exist, there should be a more efficient way to give us purge and healing surge(which are basically the ONLY reason the mana bar exists) without relying on mana(think charges and CDs). More than anything I am upset by the terrible talents, no lightning shield, Unless I spec for it (lazy design), This worthless lightning bolt talent which in your current build is the most pointless generic spender talent. No one is going to waste 60 MP for a LB. Choosing between a boring passive and ASCENDENCE for our level 100 is pathetic. I know the blue posts say windfury will generate MP again in the next build but I just don't think a lot of effort went into the design of this spec. Enhance has never really been a dedicated builder spender, asides from maelstorm procs obviously..

15:
Windsong - More bloat?
Hot hand - No animation, more rng procs, lava lash is currently very subpar and almost pointless.
Boulderfist - A good choice to choose so we aren't SPAMMING Rockbiter with the same fkn animation all day.

30:
Rainfall- Pathetic attempt at survivability. Wont help in PvP when we are getting kited for years.
Feral Lunge - Doesn't connect to targets correctly - somehow worse than feral druids leap.
Wind Rush - We already have spirit walk why is this here instead of windwalking? With no totemic projection we need to run back to the totem to get the buff again which is stupid. I like how the totems we do have are built in with projection but the talent needs to come back!

45:
Lightning surge totem - Another baseline ability renamed and turned into a talent. Lazy.
Earthgrab totem - no more earthbind at all, gimping our utility. No one will pick this over stun totem in PvP.
Voodoo Totem - cool concept but puts hex exhaustion?? on targets, cannot be hexed more than once per certain duration... meh.... kinda stupid.

60:
Lightning shield - Give me a break with this one. Just poor choice in idea for a talent
Ancestral swiftness - nerfed to be another passive, at least make it so we get a free heal or maybe it clears some CC like gnome racial?
Hailstorm - More terrible passive damage? I don't even know who would take this over swiftness. Poor design.

75:
Tempest - The only good talent. but makes stormstrike WAY too spammy.
Overcharge - "Shamans aren't spellcasters anymore" but here waste 60 precious MP on a subpar spell
Empowered Stormlash - Here have a talent that your raid leaders will nag at you to get because no one cares about shaman dps if an someone else can get stormlash right?

90:
Crashing storm - Really lackluster for a level 90 talent, boring extra damage. Sad.
Fury of Air - a toggle MP burner, exactly like that DK frost move? Boring.
Sundering - Makes a small 2d rip in the ground that does about as much damage as the small animation. Very underwhelming..

100:
Ascendence - Again, why is this a fkn 100 talent. We have had this since MoP.
Landslide - Passive talents for our final tier talent coool...
Earthen Spike - laughable that anyone would choose this talent. It could knock up the enemy so you can actually see the effect instead of it bleeding into the target LOL NOPE.

These talents just make me feel frustrated not empowered.

Also, no fist weapon transmog really really pisses me off. I do not like the concept of the artifact because the doomhammer is a powerful weapon and I understand that you are trying to make everyone feel powerful but I don't think every fking shaman should wield the doomhammer and I thought the reason thrall lost it was stupid. I much rather would have liked something else like Akama's sickles or something that wasn't a main part of the lore. It feels cheap that everyone has it and the terrible flame offhand that comes out of nowhere is pathetic. I don't want to just rag on you blizzard but I've never been this disappointed in this game. I'm excited for legion but I really don't think I will play my favorite class..

In conclusion, If the shaman is not seriously tuned and given serious thought I will have to reroll which is unfortunate because its like a big fk you to my face because like I said earlier I've been playing this class for 10+ years, poured more than a decade of my life into this just to be a gimped semi ranged fury warrior.

1/10.

[Pundit]

I think it's interesting when it comes to perspective on stuff like this. Coming from a hunter main of 10-plus years, Enh Shaman on the PTR is one of the most refreshing, fast-faced and fun specs I've played around with so far, so much so that I've been thinking about rerolling Enh. If you want to be disappointed, try MM hunters. We have always been a bit of a lackluster class in terms of visual flair or animations with regards to our abilities, but the enhanced Melee animations and utterly dreary MM animations are making me realize it even more.

To address another one of your points, I understand that a lack of totems kind of violates the class fantasy, but I would rather have a tight rotation and spec that doesn't involve them if they can't find a weave to weave them in, rather than be forced to use one awkwardly just to fulfull class fantasy.

[Jotaux]

I think it's interesting when it comes to perspective on stuff like this. Coming from a hunter main of 10-plus years, Enh Shaman on the PTR is one of the most refreshing, fast-faced and fun specs I've played around with so far, so much so that I've been thinking about rerolling Enh. If you want to be disappointed, try MM hunters. We have always been a bit of a lackluster class in terms of visual flair or animations with regards to our abilities, but the enhanced Melee animations and utterly dreary MM animations are making me realize it even more.

To address another one of your points, I understand that a lack of totems kind of violates the class fantasy, but I would rather have a tight rotation and spec that doesn't involve them if they can't find a weave to weave them in, rather than be forced to use one awkwardly just to fulfull class fantasy.

It used to be one of the funnest till maelstrom generation was gutted last patch. We'll have to see how it shakes down when they have windfury give maelstrom.

[Rollcage8]

I definitely feel the lack of totems on the traditionally "totemic warrior" is bizarre.

The maelstrom bar reminds me of Hunter focus and Paladin holy power changes, most players don't want a new resource bar. They were fine with the old one for 10 years.

[Dagonfel]

What exactly are you looking for in a talent. There's alternating passives and active abilities to give you choice. Yet you bitch about every single one except the talent that literally just gives you an extra stormstrike. I have some issues with our talent tree, but this feels really over blown. Have you played the beta? Getting a full feel of the spec with Doomhammer is a definite improvement over live.

[wordup]

I read through what you had to say on talents and honestly, I don't think it's deserving of a response. Your breakdown is so negative for virtually no reason at all times, I don't think you understand how feedback actually works.

Also there is no reason for raid leaders to demand you taking Empowered Stormlash, it has NO BEARING on the raid damage, it scales with YOUR stats, meaning that no matter what, it is a matter of whether Tempest or Emp. SL increases your damage more or not, it will have no effect on the raids damage if Tempest generates more damage for you as a player than the Emp. SL will.

[Hekili]

I am saddened at the lack of totems which DEFINES our class as a TOTEMIC WARRIOR.

They can change the phrase "totemic warrior" then. Speaking candidly, totems suck.

They've never realized their potential in terms of being a physical object within the game world. No added interactivity except being vulnerable to damaging abilities -- basically, giving anyone the power to dispel their effects.

If you attach a buff to a totem, you enable enemy players to remove the buff. If you increase the potency of the buff to increase the value of the totem, you just make it that much more urgent for enemy players to kill it. Past a certain point, you'd need to consider having NPC enemies go after your totems, too.

15:
Windsong - More bloat?
Hot hand - No animation, more rng procs, lava lash is currently very subpar and almost pointless.
Boulderfist - A good choice to choose so we aren't SPAMMING Rockbiter with the same fkn animation all day.

Windsong is obviously designed to pair with Doom Winds, once you have your Doomhammer. Used together, Windsong adds free damage, free damage from auto-attacks, plus more MP from those auto-attacks, plus more MP if you get an additional guaranteed Windfury. WS+DW = fill your bar. That's bloat?

Hot Hand gets RNG procs, Lava Lash is not at all pointless, has artifact traits and legendaries to prop it up, and the only reason you're not already mashing it more often is that we have less MP than we're supposed to at the moment. In terms of animation, I agree that it should have a spell alert so that you actually see when it shows up (but many would turn it off and just use WeakAuras, so that's sort of a wash).

Boulderfist is GCD lock vs. unlock. That's what it does. Saying Rockbiter should have more animations is fine, I guess. Complaining that we spam the free instant MP generator leaves me scratching my head a bit. You have choice here! It's great! (Boulderfist also makes it so all your other abilities are going to do more damage from the +dmg/+crit aura, so it also has other advantages for higher burst if you play right, I guess.)

30:
Rainfall- Pathetic attempt at survivability. Wont help in PvP when we are getting kited for years.
Feral Lunge - Doesn't connect to targets correctly - somehow worse than feral druids leap.
Wind Rush - We already have spirit walk why is this here instead of windwalking? With no totemic projection we need to run back to the totem to get the buff again which is stupid. I like how the totems we do have are built in with projection but the talent needs to come back!

Rainfall is garbage, I'd agree. I wouldn't even call it an attempt at survivability, I think it's more like "didn't people like standing in puddles back in 5.2? idk but let's give them that again."

Feral Lunge is alright. Not entirely sure if it's buggy, or if it just suffers from laggy beta servers. Min range and max range don't seem entirely responsive. Needs bugfixing? Probably. Defective and bad? Not really.

Wind Rush is actually cool. It provides an escape like Stampeding Roar, it's refreshable if you're moving through a chokepoint/etc. It doesn't need to be re-projected, it's already good.

45:
Lightning surge totem - Another baseline ability renamed and turned into a talent. Lazy.
Earthgrab totem - no more earthbind at all, gimping our utility. No one will pick this over stun totem in PvP.
Voodoo Totem - cool concept but puts hex exhaustion?? on targets, cannot be hexed more than once per certain duration... meh.... kinda stupid.

Control tier. They've reduced control throughout, so it's not imbalanced. Earthgrab does have an Earthbind effect if it already grabbed something once, but I think you mean that we don't have that control without picking the talent. That's true. Not a big deal.

Voodoo Totem is great! It CCs every new thing that streams into its effect. Want to delay a bunch of adds all at once? Of course it's not going to re-CC. Why would you expect that? The real thing to be disappointed about is that everything is a fricking demon so it won't work on a lot of enemies.

60:
Lightning shield - Give me a break with this one. Just poor choice in idea for a talent
Ancestral swiftness - nerfed to be another passive, at least make it so we get a free heal or maybe it clears some CC like gnome racial?
Hailstorm - More terrible passive damage? I don't even know who would take this over swiftness. Poor design.

This is the output tier. You have a self-buff option, a passive option, and an option that impacts rotation. Choice!

Lightning Shield losing its ICD was up for discussion the other night (per Celestalon). That would mean an increase in its damage potential in both ST and AOE. Could become competitive.

Ancestral Swiftness is passive. I'd like a free heal, sure, but I wouldn't put it here.

Hailstorm encourages the "master of the elements" playstyle such that you're keeping all three elemental buffs up and mashing Stormstrike. It has synergy with a legendary, IIRC, too. It provides an opportunity to get your damage gain and play different.

75:
Tempest - The only good talent.
Overcharge - "Shamans aren't spellcasters anymore" but here waste 60 precious MP on a subpar spell that will hit less than lava lash.
Empowered Stormlash - Here have a talent that your raid leaders will nag at you to get because no one cares about shaman dps if an someone else can get stormlash right?

Tempest is good, but has its drawbacks if you aren't managing Maelstrom well. You have a fair amount of potential to waste some of its benefit if you can't use up the buffed Stormstrikes before Stormbringer procs again.

Overcharge is intended to effectively replace Lava Lash. You didn't like Lava Lash, so why would you like this? Does it not have potential in PvP if you are Ghost Wolf-pillar humping for Maelstrom and then get to Overcharge LB from range? I'm not a PvP'er, but it seems like there's value here.

Empowered Stormlash is a passive DPS boost for you and the raid. If it's balanced with the rest of the tier, then it is simply providing you an option where you don't have to play differently based on your T75 choice.

90:
Crashing storm - Really lackluster for a level 90 talent, boring extra damage. Sad.
Fury of Air - a toggle MP burner, exactly like that DK frost move? Boring.
Sundering - Makes a small 2d rip in the ground that does about as much damage as the small animation. Very underwhelming..

What does "lackluster for a level 90 talent" even mean? If it swapped places with Lightning Shield, would it be better or worse? Why or why not? I don't understand.

That said, I love Crashing Storm. It adds power, it has pros and cons (movement, obviously), and it matches the AOE theme of the tier.

Fury of Air does AOE damage, provides an opportunity to manage carefully so you don't MP starve yourself, but overall is kinda boring. Still, not inherently bad. That I don't like it isn't an indictment of its value, it's just not something I want to add to my priority list in combat.

Sundering has not yet realized its potential, but it does hit fairly hard. I don't think it's powerful enough for its long CD and cost, but I like the animation. I have the trinket that does a similar animation and I don't want to dump it. I'd chalk this up to "tuning" for the moment. But neither of us even mentioned the knocksplit. Interesting.

100:
Ascendence - Again, why is this a fkn 100 talent. We have had this since MoP.
Landslide - Passive talents for our final tier talent coool...
Earthen Spike - laughable that anyone would choose this talent. It could knock up the enemy so you can actually see the effect instead of it bleeding into the target LOL NOPE.

Ascendance is a talent because they made our wolves cooler. If we'd kept Ascendance baseline, then our wolves would be a CD here and all our artifact traits would add buffs to Ascendance and wouldn't seem nearly as cool. Ascendance's problems have nothing to do with the fact that it's not baseline, but rather that it doesn't reset Stormstrike and that Windstrike costs more than Stormstrike. It's a double-edged sword of a cooldown for some reason.

If you hate passives, don't take passives. Just hope for balance. It should just be a passive altogether, though -- no point in making it trigger from RB/BF that I can see.

Earthen Spike would be fun if it gets tuned up so that it competes. I leveled with it part of the time. It has the potential to be like Colossus Smash, where it might influence our MP pooling a little bit and then we try to dump during the window (and we time our CDs so that they overlap). It has potential, it's just not well-tuned.

These talents just make me feel frustrated not empowered.

Frustration comes from unmet expectations. What were your expectations? We finally get a meaningful spec revamp, and there's the risk that you don't like how it turns out. I think it's great. I enjoy it a lot.

Also, no fist weapon transmog really really pisses me off. I do not like the concept of the artifact because the doomhammer is a powerful weapon and I understand that you are trying to make everyone feel powerful but I don't think every fking shaman should wield the doomhammer and I thought the reason thrall lost it was stupid. I much rather would have liked something else like Akama's sickles or something that wasn't a main part of the lore. It feels cheap that everyone has it and the terrible flame offhand that comes out of nowhere is pathetic. I don't want to just rag on you blizzard but I've never been this disappointed in this game. I'm excited for legion but I really don't think I will play my favorite class..

Doomhammer is great. It's one of the most well-justified lore artifacts offered to players, period. There are hundreds of pages of forum posts where people debate whether Thrall cheated at the mak'gora and guess what? We have a lore answer. The elements said, "sorry bro'el, you abused our trust and sullied our honor in the process."

As far as every player having it goes, every player would have Akama's sickles and every player has Ashbringer and every player has Ra-den's fist and, well, that's how artifacts go.

In conclusion, If the shaman is not seriously tuned and given serious thought I will have to reroll which is unfortunate because its like a big fk you to my face because like I said earlier I've been playing this class for 10+ years, poured more than a decade of my life into this just to be a gimped semi ranged fury warrior.

I promise you that Blizzard meant no personal offense when they gave us a spec redesign that people were begging for since... let's say 2005.

We do need further tuning. Some of those numbers are going to get tuned downward, though. Do you want that as much as you want other numbers to be tuned upward? We needed those recent nerfs, and there are still more nerfs that we'll need to see for tuning purposes. You already dislike Crashing Storms, but it's still too powerful and needs some nerfing. Will that be one more thing that makes you frustrated, or something you appreciate since you desire tuning?

[Rawfury]

Ive never really thought about it this way op but i cant honestly say based on your descriptions and analysis that you are correct. Alot of the talents are boring, not very well thoughout, and are repeats of what was baseline in previous expansions.

[Butosai]

seems people will be so ignorant to complain even when they main the best class overhaul in all of legion

[wordup]

seems people will be so ignorant to complain even when they main the best class overhaul in all of legion

This is equally irrelevant. Why post about something you very clearly do not understand anything about, just to incite people? I understand ultimately that this game has empowered everyone to have a voice, but why in the world do you think you have some right to come into another class forum, post based solely on "trade chat told me it's OP" (I KNOW this is the case because anyone who had played it even within the last month would know otherwise) and act high and mighty?

Though, there's some definite irony in you being part of the anti-Momentum brigade because "you don't like it", but are here telling everyone how good they have it. Fingers crossed your high horse kicks you off because it's clear you're too comfortable on it.

[Hivey]

To add my 2 cents, I really agree with the complaint about Hot Hands. It needs an animation when it procs. Like Elemental has when you can fire off an instant cast nuke (name escapes me).

[tanksin the enhance shamy]

talented lightning bolt hitting less than lava lash?...yeah

[valkhy]

To add my 2 cents, I really agree with the complaint about Hot Hands. It needs an animation when it procs. Like Elemental has when you can fire off an instant cast nuke (name escapes me).

True but like Hekili said Weakauras will do the trick if it doesn't happen.

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To add my 2 cents, I really agree with the complaint about Hot Hands. It needs an animation when it procs. Like Elemental has when you can fire off an instant cast nuke (name escapes me).

True but like Hekili said Weakauras will do the trick if it doesn't happen.


For OP, Enh never has been this fun to play, even with the current Maelstrom generation, i really like the gameplay (all of them boulderfist based or not).
Rockbiter animation can be a little spammy but it's not a crappy one. Sound feel good to, even more implemented with Doomhammer giving a crashing foe like sound.


The spec never had so much diversity and choice. Multiple gameplay. Really cool spell like Fury of Air, Sundering (animation).

They took a lot of all feedback from WoD into account. Feel really nice.

Stormlash, and Lightning shield (old version behavior) is back for more nostalgic ones.


Maybe you re too much shackled to old enh to like all these changes with the "better -- before" idea.
Feel free to change, all classes have evolved to next level.

But stop complaining like this OP please it brings nothing.

[Jademist]

I am actually enjoying Enhancement on the PTR a lot. Sure we don't have totems as part of our rotations anymore but what comes to mind when I think of "Enhancement" Shamans is enhancing ourselves with the power of the elements, not dropping totems and do damage. I like the new class fantasy. I've had an Enhancement Shaman since Vanilla and I feel like this is the most fun and refreshing version it has been since then...it's also rather flashy too.

And about Doomhammer -- it's not more powerful than most weapons just because Thrall had it. Thrall was powerful. Sure it enhances elemental capacities since it was forged in elemental lava but it takes a Shaman of great talent to awaken its powers. I feel like we, as Shamans facing against a demonic onslaught, would probably be worthy of wielding the Doomhammer.

[Wootmonkey]

I definitely feel the lack of totems on the traditionally "totemic warrior" is bizarre.

The maelstrom bar reminds me of Hunter focus and Paladin holy power changes, most players don't want a new resource bar. They were fine with the old one for 10 years.

Actually I was really happy when they got rid of mana on my hunter.

[Jademist]

I definitely feel the lack of totems on the traditionally "totemic warrior" is bizarre.

The maelstrom bar reminds me of Hunter focus and Paladin holy power changes, most players don't want a new resource bar. They were fine with the old one for 10 years.

"Most players" as by whose statistic? I'm happy with a new resource bar to be honest. You actually have to play a bit smarter now instead of having a near-infinite source of mana that never really budges when you play Enhancement.

- - - Updated - - -

seems people will be so ignorant to complain even when they main the best class overhaul in all of legion

People will always complain about something without first trying it out. OP says it's the worst iteration of the enhancement shaman. I would argue that it is the best, and so have a lot of people.

[Pantsless]

The spec never had so much diversity and choice. Multiple gameplay. Really cool spell like Fury of Air, Sundering (animation).
They took a lot of all feedback from WoD into account. Feel really nice.
Stormlash, and Lightning shield (old version behavior) is back for more nostalgic ones.

I get that the OP is venting, but what is your excuse ? The spec never had so much diversity and so many choices? Enhance is the one of the most simplistic specs in the game, right down there with BM and Outlaw. And the talent tree is not helping either.

[Cynical Person]

Hey guys I just wanted to give my two cents, personally I am disappointed with the changes but I will agree that the new enhance is semi fun and really strong but I just think the direction is misguided and wanted to weigh in on my experiences with the new talents.. I understand my op comes off as quite cynical but this is my opinion. Please don't judge me as a player for pointing out things I don't like. I do partake in beta and I have tested every talent and I am very skilled at this game I just went on a bit of a rant.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't like the builder spender concept outside the lines of the current maelstorm charges on live. It feels too much like a fury warrior to me. I hate how I have to float around 60 maelstorm at all times so I can maximize output from random stormstrike procs. It really takes emphasis away from a set rotation because of the RNG. Just last night with Tempest on PTR I literally had 12 stormstrike procs in a row. My rotation was to keep up flame/frost enchants, spam stonefist on cd while trying to scramble enough maelstrom to get rid of stormstrike procs, during this process, stormstrike constantly lit up with new procs.

Now this sounds really good because stormstrike hits like a truck but it felt too spammy for my tastes and at the same time there was literally no room for lava lash because stormstrike is so much more valuable. The artifact perc for the fire tornado that procs off lava lash was pretty much wasted. I think they should tone it down just a bit.

When the next patch hits and WF gives maelstorm I feel like the spec will play nicer but in its current iteration it is way too MP starved and there are way too many Stormbringer procs happening in conjunction with everything else that is going on.

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I could go more into what I would like to change in the talents but Id rather point out what is wrong/not going to work instead of saying give me this give me that because this is not my game and ultimately as a beta tester I want to point out what is not working/ what will not work in conjunction with the rest of the gameplay rather than say give me this instead.

[Viradiance]

I'm really excited for it now that they've nerfed the infinite maelstrom retard stormstrike build and general Maelstrom generation across the board. Now, Maelstrom actually means something.

I'd like to see what happens with build versatility when legendaries come up, particularly the Lava Lash bracers.

Edit: My one major criticism is, yeah, no totems feels somehow sacrilegious. I'd appreciate a talent like Totem Mastery for Elemental Shamans. Perhaps drops a Fire totem akin to Searing Totem, a Wind totem that increases Windfury proc rate, an Earth Totem that increases maelstrom gen from Boulderfist/Rockbiter and a Water Totem that does... I dunno, flavorful watery stuff.