Elemental Missfire: A personal rant about Elemental Shamans

[Nelarr]

Hey there fellow farseers and interested bystanders.


With the recent patch adding new raids tiers and class tweaks it is becoming more clear that Elemental Shamans are not in a good state at the moment, with this revelation I just wanted to get some things off my chest.
I know there has already been many threads talking about the state of Elemental but I just wanted to share my own thoughts and frustration.

Ever since I started playing WoW I thought the idea of the Elemental Shaman was one of the coolest, just the idea of being able to throw balls of lightning and lava at your enemies always felt so awesome to me.
It pains me to see my beloved shaman in such a poor state the more I look at it the more I start to think that Elemental has just been a afterthought in the eyes of Blizzard with the mixed ideas, the multitude of buffs that do pretty much the same, the awkward way of doing area damage, the uninteresting arsenal of legendaries and mess that is the Elemental talent tree.


At a glance the spec looks fine it has a pretty straight forward rotation and it has a arsenal of cooldowns but deep down it has a lot of problems that not a simple damage tweak here and there can fix.

Lets start with the fairly recent addition of the new resource system replacing mana, Maelstrom. The removal of mana is not something that bothers me, mana did not really add anything to the spec anyways as you would rarely go out of mana anyways. The idea of you building Maelstrom with your different damage dealing spells was a interesting one, it has a lot of potential as it gives you more options than just casting lightning and lava in your enemies faces
but sadly they never really used it to its full potential, the only spells that used it had been spells we'd had before now just tweaked and revamped a bit to use the new system.

A problem seem to also be that Blizzard decided that it would be a good idea to be able to use this new resource to extend the time on your Flame Shock, this change brings us in to the troubles of Elemental Shamans aoe potential.
Since Earthquake now uses the new Maelstrom we need some way of building Maelstrom, in comes our trusty Chain Lightning, giving us a bit of Maelstrom on every enemy we hit, getting to enough Maelstrom for Earthquake should be easy but in comes the previously mentioned change to Flame Shock, since Flame Shock now has a chance to gives us instant Lava Burst it would seem a fine idea to try to keep it up on every enemy for increased chances for this proc but since Flame Shock also uses Maelstrom every time we use Flame Shock on a enemy we get a tiny bit further from having enough Maelstrom for Earthquake
This can pose a pretty big problem now that we have classes with a lot of area damage potential right out of the box like the shiny new Demon Hunter.
Since Chain Lightning requires a target to be cast you can find yourself have your target die before it can finish casting giving you 0 Maelstrom and you having to start casting Chain Lightning on another target instead.


Next we come to mess that is the Elemental Shaman talent system, the talents does not really seem to have any major point to them with many just being another cooldown that gives some extra stats that you need to keep up or another passive that does the same.
All the talents really does is give us buffs that the old totems used to give us but now with a short duration or give us even more burst potential but nothing when it comes to any sustainable damage.
Sure many of the talents look awesome and all but at the core most are either unneeded or bring fixes to problems we did not really have to begin with.


The final problem I just wanted to rant about is the arsenal of legendaries that Legion brought with it, it might have brought a bit of controversy but its hard to deny that many of them could change the way you would play some classes but this seem to not very much be the case with the Elemental Shaman legendaries, almost all of the Elemental legendaries follow the same formula of the talents with most of them giving increases to stats instead of actually doing anything special.


At the moment Elemental Shamans feel a lot like a class that never really changed much and instead was given some band aid and toys here and there the spec feels badly adapted to the new ways of WoW. The class that was once one of the best support casters is now without a clear purpose and could badly need a revamp instead of minor tweaks to abilities.


Sorry for a long post but I wanted to add some of my own thoughts about one of my most favourite class I am aware that everyone might not agree with my view and that is okay all I really want is for Blizzards to give the Elemental Shamans some much needed love.
I am writing this as I am about to go to sleep so I might take some time before I respond to any comments.


TLDR: Elemental shamans are in a bad state and could need some major revamp, their area damage potential has too much buildup and is ill adapted to the current way of playing, the Maelstrom system has a lot of potential but is mostly unused or weirdly implemented, the talents are a mess and the legendaries are uninspired.


May all your loot be upgraded fellow farseers and see you on the Broken Isles.

[Deleted]

They should give eles the enchancer treatment and completly overhaul the spec. Right now it feels slow, sluggish and clunky as hell.

[Deleted]

the three things you mention are pretty the biggest problems I'm having with elem (weird skill synergy, talents to fill gaps instead of empower you and lame artifact powers). It's still cool to play, but you really have to love it to stick with elemental.
I find myself hardly ever using SK if I'm honest, not worth the gcd unless it's aoe, whereas I use them all the time on enh/resto.

[Deleted]

They should give eles the enchancer treatment and completly overhaul the spec. Right now it feels slow, sluggish and clunky as hell.

Slow?!? Not a description I would give elemental. One of the faster casters I have played.

[Oozlz]

Doesnt lava burst spread flame shock to near by targets negating the reason to have to put it on more than the original ? (In a close aoe situation vrs a multi target twins fight or w.e)

Also in the subject of talents, I remember blizzard moving away from the old talent system to remove boring talents (the put this in the artifact weapon anyway). Shaman have TWO specs where one of your choices is a flat 10% haste. Pretty lazy.

[Deleted]

Doesnt lava burst spread flame shock to near by targets negating the reason to have to put it on more than the original ? (In a close aoe situation vrs a multi target twins fight or w.e)

Also in the subject of talents, I remember blizzard moving away from the old talent system to remove boring talents (the put this in the artifact weapon anyway). Shaman have TWO specs where one of your choices is a flat 10% haste. Pretty lazy.

Only if you take the talent for it, but it competes with the totems so it's not an option. I think the ele talent tree has some really interesting potential options. The problem is they are just that, potential, since we pretty much have a cookie cutter build for almost all sitations. I'd love for some of the more interesting and fun talents to be competitive like Path of Flame and Elemental Blast. The fact that ancestral swiftness, which is a boring passive is the best on it's tier is stupid. You should be rewarded for more complicated rotations. Icefury is another issue, it should have a place in a heavy movement fight, but primal elementalist is actually also good for this situation since it loads more damage into that cooldown which will keep firing away by itself regardless of what's going on.

In a perfect world talent tiers would each consist of something like a flat passive which is the lowest performing but easy. A passive that changes the way a spell works or gives it another effect you have to account for, and a new active ability or major rework of an existing spell which is generally the highest performing. Then you can mix and match, it might be theoretical best to take all the active abilities, but it might become overly complicated and perform worse in some situations. Inevitably there will be some synergy between talents making some passives more valuable if you take a certain active talent for example, but it would be nice if in general you aren't rewarded for taking the simple passives.

[Riistov]

Slow?!? Not a description I would give elemental. One of the faster casters I have played.

I was thinking the same thing. You could argue that we are in need of desperate help when it comes to movement based encounters, but when we are able to stand still and nuke, it feels pretty fast paced. Especially when compared to balance and spriest (the other classes I play).

[Nelarr]

I was thinking the same thing. You could argue that we are in need of desperate help when it comes to movement based encounters, but when we are able to stand still and nuke, it feels pretty fast paced. Especially when compared to balance and spriest (the other classes I play).

When you are allowed to stand still sometimes it can be a amazing feeling, Lava Surge proccing left and right and you are throwing out Lava Bursts faster than a machinegun but as soon as you have to move just a slight inch things start falling apart real quickly. This can be seen pretty obviously from many of the damage logs from the mythic tier of raiding where Elemental shaman slugs behind by a mile compared to all the other caster specs.

[Riistov]

When you are allowed to stand still sometimes it can be a amazing feeling, Lava Surge proccing left and right and you are throwing out Lava Bursts faster than a machinegun but as soon as you have to move just a slight inch things start falling apart real quickly. This can be seen pretty obviously from many of the damage logs from the mythic tier of raiding where Elemental shaman slugs behind by a mile compared to all the other caster specs.

Yeah, I noticed a lot of people running Lightning Rod, movement is super punishing with that ability (though it is awesome for cleave and patchwerk with no movement). I started switching to Earthen Rage/Ascendance on movement fights and I seem to be keeping up with our locks/mages/Spriest. Ele isn't going to set the world on fire by any means, but at least we have options (which is a nice change from previous tiers where we were locked into a bizarre sustained aoe niche).

[Andriokz]

They gave your spec to fire mages.

[DeusX]

In a perfect world talent tiers would each consist of something like a flat passive which is the lowest performing but easy. A passive that changes the way a spell works or gives it another effect you have to account for, and a new active ability or major rework of an existing spell which is generally the highest performing. Then you can mix and match [...]

Going to stop you right there. Nobody is going to mix and match in raids. Cookie cutter will stay cookie cutter (of course, depending on the encounter). Casual player may use some of the less output options, but anyone with at least HC claims will just play the top choice no matter how complicated may seem. In WoD all Unholy DK's played BoS because BoS had the highest output ST, even though it was difficult to play (much more than defile or the passive NP).

Cookie cutter will always be cookie cutters. I expect to have different choices based on output for a particular situation. And this was somehow taken away from some classes.
Coming back to the DK (which I mained in WoD), we were using BoS for ST, but on Gorefiend for example, spirit duty was requiring NP play with NP gear. It was fun and great to have this choice and it was also fun to not have to pay 400g to change specs in the raid (or 4000g for a raid wide change window).

It purely sucks how inconsistent Blizzard is: on one hand they claim they want to make situational talents, on the other hand they put super high prices on changing talents in the middle of the raid. I was switching talents like crazy as DK in WoD (and not only on the last row) and it super fun to be able to have this choice. The shaman does not have that feeling now and also the big price is a chore. Ask me how many times I have switched talents during last 2 weeks of raiding. Yeh, none.

[Deleted]

Going to stop you right there. Nobody is going to mix and match in raids. Cookie cutter will stay cookie cutter (of course, depending on the encounter). Casual player may use some of the less output options, but anyone with at least HC claims will just play the top choice no matter how complicated may seem. In WoD all Unholy DK's played BoS because BoS had the highest output ST, even though it was difficult to play (much more than defile or the passive NP).

Cookie cutter will always be cookie cutters. I expect to have different choices based on output for a particular situation. And this was somehow taken away from some classes.
Coming back to the DK (which I mained in WoD), we were using BoS for ST, but on Gorefiend for example, spirit duty was requiring NP play with NP gear. It was fun and great to have this choice and it was also fun to not have to pay 400g to change specs in the raid (or 4000g for a raid wide change window).

It purely sucks how inconsistent Blizzard is: on one hand they claim they want to make situational talents, on the other hand they put super high prices on changing talents in the middle of the raid. I was switching talents like crazy as DK in WoD (and not only on the last row) and it super fun to be able to have this choice. The shaman does not have that feeling now and also the big price is a chore. Ask me how many times I have switched talents during last 2 weeks of raiding. Yeh, none.

I totally agree, and what you are describing is what I meant. There are many different encounter types, single target, 2-3 target, multi target, sustain dps priority, specific burst phases, heavy movement, light movement etc. It would be nice if most talents actually saw use in different fights. This is what I meant by mix and match. But right now the tomes are so ridiculously expensive I'm grateful we don't have to switch talents after every boss. I did my first EN raid as a lock and I did a talent swap after almost every boss.

Mythic+ is an area where mixing becomes more interesting though, since theoretically you could want to organise with your group so you are covering all the bases depending on the dungeon and what affixes you have.

[ns263759]

Let me start out by saying that I haven't posted on a forum in almost eight years. I am not one of these guys the think Blizzard can do no right. I have been playing their game for twelve years, obviously I think they are doing something right. that being said I feel compelled to post something about the current state of my main class, shaman,and specifically the dismal place that elemental has been in for the last 6-7 years.
To start, I do keep logs but I do not theory craft or sim craft or any other type of craft, I just want to do the best I can, and most importantly pull my own weight dos wise, and maybe a little more utility wise while raiding. That being said I have been benched form my guilds mythic team yet again. Not due to my handling of mechanics or understanding of the game itself, but solely due to my inability to pull my own weight on the dps meters. On pull I am able to burst fine and usually find myself in the top five easy, once those cd’s go away though I begin the decline and before there up again I find myself competing with the tanks on the meters (and sometimes losing). We are not even two months into the expansion and we already find ourselves in a super niche role of mythic +6 earthquake spam, and to add insult to injury, this time its not even the damage people want but an rng stun we have no control over.
Which leads me to our survivability. I always thought it was weird that although we are the only dps caster class that wears mail and has a shield that we are by far the weakest class/spec. No mobility, fine, can usually be solved with a firm understanding of mechanics and a little planning. but why are we carrying a shield around if obviously does no good for us. Never made sense to me why warriors should have a spell reflect and not shaman, class fantasy wide would it make more sense for a mystical shaman to be able to reflect spells back. That led me to think about the aegis of aggrammar ability in HoV. If ele is always going to be at the bottom of the meters why not give us some raid wide defensive cds, why not give us an astral aegis that reduces damage taken of everyone standing behind by 40% for six seconds, I wouldn't even mind not being able to cast while channeling, its not like the raid will miss our dps. I am not saying turn into a tank, but Ive been told by blizz that we are the masters of utility, a true hybrid class. In my experience not only are we not Jack of all trades masters of none, we’re basically just jack shit, not able to do anything that well, and certainly not better than any other class/spec combo.
The other thing in this expansion that has been bothering me is our artifacts. I don't want this to turn into a debate about why it makes all the sense in the world that ele should have got the doomhammer, obviously Blizz didn't want to remake the fist weapon animation which is why all the classes that got fist don't really use them i.e. wind walker monks, feral druids, and ele shaman, so enhance got the doomhammer and ele got the fist. I get it blizz, your a business, financial decision, I’m fine with it. What really chaps my ass about the artifacts is the all three of our hidden skins are random drops form mobs. Really? Now I get to sit back watch all these other classes do a bunch weird stuff, throw back content, new scenarios, hidden bosses, and we get al three of ours from doing shit we’re going to be doing anyway. All three put in as an after thought, which pretty much sums up the elemental shaman, an after thought.
To sum up, the absents of any blue posts about all the thousands of posts concerning ele shaman make me think one of two things. First, that blizz does have plans for an ele revamp and they are either still working on it, or want it to be something of a surprise (I find this very unlikely as the last big change we have received was the addition on lava burst back in wrath). Secondly (which I find myself believing despite my best and most optimistic efforts), is that Blizz knows that the shaman community is a very loyal one and that even if our spec sucks and they never pay any attention to us we still wont uninstall or reroll. Thats all I have to say, basically just things I’ve thinking about while sitting in Dal listening to the rest of my guild down mythic bosses without me.
I will add though that if your one of these guys saying that ele is fine and your doing great on the meters and what not, you need to find your self some better players to surround yourself with.

[frumper]

Let me start out by saying that I haven't posted on a forum in almost eight years. I am not one of these guys the think Blizzard can do no right. I have been playing their game for twelve years, obviously I think they are doing something right. that being said I feel compelled to post something about the current state of my main class, shaman,and specifically the dismal place that elemental has been in for the last 6-7 years.
To start, I do keep logs but I do not theory craft or sim craft or any other type of craft, I just want to do the best I can, and most importantly pull my own weight dos wise, and maybe a little more utility wise while raiding. That being said I have been benched form my guilds mythic team yet again. Not due to my handling of mechanics or understanding of the game itself, but solely due to my inability to pull my own weight on the dps meters. On pull I am able to burst fine and usually find myself in the top five easy, once those cd’s go away though I begin the decline and before there up again I find myself competing with the tanks on the meters (and sometimes losing). We are not even two months into the expansion and we already find ourselves in a super niche role of mythic +6 earthquake spam, and to add insult to injury, this time its not even the damage people want but an rng stun we have no control over.
Which leads me to our survivability. I always thought it was weird that although we are the only dps caster class that wears mail and has a shield that we are by far the weakest class/spec. No mobility, fine, can usually be solved with a firm understanding of mechanics and a little planning. but why are we carrying a shield around if obviously does no good for us. Never made sense to me why warriors should have a spell reflect and not shaman, class fantasy wide would it make more sense for a mystical shaman to be able to reflect spells back. That led me to think about the aegis of aggrammar ability in HoV. If ele is always going to be at the bottom of the meters why not give us some raid wide defensive cds, why not give us an astral aegis that reduces damage taken of everyone standing behind by 40% for six seconds, I wouldn't even mind not being able to cast while channeling, its not like the raid will miss our dps. I am not saying turn into a tank, but Ive been told by blizz that we are the masters of utility, a true hybrid class. In my experience not only are we not Jack of all trades masters of none, we’re basically just jack shit, not able to do anything that well, and certainly not better than any other class/spec combo.
The other thing in this expansion that has been bothering me is our artifacts. I don't want this to turn into a debate about why it makes all the sense in the world that ele should have got the doomhammer, obviously Blizz didn't want to remake the fist weapon animation which is why all the classes that got fist don't really use them i.e. wind walker monks, feral druids, and ele shaman, so enhance got the doomhammer and ele got the fist. I get it blizz, your a business, financial decision, I’m fine with it. What really chaps my ass about the artifacts is the all three of our hidden skins are random drops form mobs. Really? Now I get to sit back watch all these other classes do a bunch weird stuff, throw back content, new scenarios, hidden bosses, and we get al three of ours from doing shit we’re going to be doing anyway. All three put in as an after thought, which pretty much sums up the elemental shaman, an after thought.
To sum up, the absents of any blue posts about all the thousands of posts concerning ele shaman make me think one of two things. First, that blizz does have plans for an ele revamp and they are either still working on it, or want it to be something of a surprise (I find this very unlikely as the last big change we have received was the addition on lava burst back in wrath). Secondly (which I find myself believing despite my best and most optimistic efforts), is that Blizz knows that the shaman community is a very loyal one and that even if our spec sucks and they never pay any attention to us we still wont uninstall or reroll. Thats all I have to say, basically just things I’ve thinking about while sitting in Dal listening to the rest of my guild down mythic bosses without me.
I will add though that if your one of these guys saying that ele is fine and your doing great on the meters and what not, you need to find your self some better players to surround yourself with.

except there was a blue post in the shaman forum