Enhancement PvP : Disambiguation and Discussion(THREAD AT WOWFORUMS RAGES ON)

[Shaamwow]

In PVP our problems are many, but I'll provide a brief overview both as a starting point for discussion and for any non-shaman who thinks "we're fine in pvp" :

An edited version of this post can be found at http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...852521&sid=1#0 , please show your support there if you feel our pvp situation needs to be addressed.


Shocks (All share the same CD):

Wind Shock - Interrupt off GCD, no damage 2 sec lockout from school interrupted

Earth Shock - Interrupt, and ~30% of damage potential for Enh.

Flame Shock - Our only DoT ability (not including magma/searing totem)

Frost Shock - Slow, less damage than Earth Shock (not modified by Stormstrike debuff) - root at +15 yards from target


Totems (Short Version):

Air : Grounding Totem ( absorbs next target magic spell to group members) / Windfury Totem (16% haste, for PVP purposes)

Water: Cleansing Totem (cures poison/disease), Mana Spring Totem

Fire: Fire Nova Totem (stuns, but is usually instapopped in pvp before it can go off), Magma Totem (AoE damage)

Earth: Tremor Totem (clears fear effects), Earthbind Totem ( slows opponents, grants snare immunity if talented)



Okay so with that groundwork I can give a short explanation of our few issues. I'll start with the most obvious:

Health Pool

Enh has about 5-6k less HP on average than all other melee classes, excepting rogues (I don't think I need to justify why it doesn't matter). We are a bit closer to pallys, but they still outshine us and possess far greater ability based survivability (and damage) than enhancement. Toughness is nearly mandatory in PVP, but the bonus from it is garbage. Enhancement needs a deep talent tree pvp targeted stamina buff.

Shamen have the lowest base HP pool of all classes. Even with 10% HP from talents and a 30% damage reduction ability ( which we really need to use to get mana back anyway ) the gap is pretty big. It seems unfair that Paladins, Warriors, and DK's get more hp, more survival CD's/CC, and more burst damage, in addition to wearing plate.

Death Knight 8121
Druid 7417
Hunter 7324
Mage 6963
Paladin 6934
Priest 6960
Rogue 7604
Shaman 6485
Warlock 7164
Warrior 8121


Moving on to what is probably our biggest issue in PVP:

Burst Damage

Enh possesses almost no on demand burst. In pvp more often than not our shock cooldown needs to be sat on and used for interrupts. So there goes that ability ( also note that if trying to keep a rogue from stealthing with flame shock, we now cannot interrupt the heal incoming to him in order to finish him off, nor can we root another player with frost shock to catch up with them and then shock an incoming heal to them). Maelstrom weapon really takes forever to build to 5 in pvp, its a joke. The buff is also EASILY purgeable and dispellable. Assuming a team does allow us to attain a 5 stack, it is MORE than likely that its necessary for us to use it as a free heal on ourselves. Had we another 4-5k hp buffer to allow healers an extra second or two to top us off this might not be necessary. More often than not we can expect not to be able to use a MSW 5 stack for a lightning bolt, so there goes our damage from Lightning bolt ( If you want the truth in arenas if you're playing any team with a dispell you will never reach MSW 5 stack).

So to recap we've lost about 40% of our damage at this point, and nearly ALL of our on demand burst. We're left with 3 abilities: Stormstrike, Lava Lash, Windfury. Stormstrike and Lava Lash when taken together in PVE make up about 20% of our total damage, this number will be significantly lower in comparison with our white damage in pvp ( because we're moving around constantly and cannot use these abilities every cd). Stormstrike loses most of its luster in pvp as you are not doing much nature based damage to your opponent. Stormstrike and lava lash can HARDLY be considered "burst" damage.

So what's that leave us? White damage and Windfury. Windfury does give some pretty sick burst--sometimes, when it feels like it. Stormstrike, Lava Lash, White Damage, and Windfury procs are also all mitigated by armor, reducing our effectiveness that much more. When an enh shaman wants to "burst someone down" in pvp he has to auto-attack that person and wish for an ability to proc. I would complain far less about this if every class in the game did not have some form of "burst damage" that they could feasibly decide to use at a given moment in pvp without gimping their chances of survival or ability to interrupt. Our lack of on-demand burst keeps us from having the ability to finish off an opponent on our terms. We have to just hope it happens, and frankly in 2v2 vs a healer, it almost never will if you aren't running a double dps comp.

On to my personal pet peeve when it comes to Blizz:

Totems

Outdated, archaic, boring, not streamlined. This is how one wowforums poster describe the totem system. You might be surprised to find that ghostcrawler not only agreed with the poster but added in additional flak for the totem system, by saying that it has never really worked out as planned. I'll let you check the link for yourselves.
Source: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/1289...-you-said.html

It's worth mentioning that GC and Blizzard have as of yet done nothing to address these design flaws ( and frankly our vanilla wowness ).

Enh's issue here is simply stated: Earth totems.

Too much of our goodies are locked up in one element of totem. The biggest problem here is with SoE. With earthbind (snare immunity, slowing enemies) and tremor(clearing fear) having so much necessary pvp utility it is almost impossible to ever drop SoE, one of our most classic buffs. Meanwhile DK's get this buff in castable (unkillable i should add) form. To add to the fun casting the buff actually GIVES them runic power. Cool right? Not so much. This isn't DK qq, but rather an argument having to do with wherein this situation we can find the "balance", because I'm not seeing it.

The biggest problem for sure: Enhancement is doing great in PVE and there aren't very many ways that Blizz can address our pvp issues without fucking it all up. Most of these solutions include things that they've said will not be handed out anymore ( funny that we got left off the list of classes that get these fun tools though eh? )-- Mortal Strike, Stuns, More CC.

My personal feelings (up for debate)

The pvp situation for enh would be WORKABLE if we were to receive an MS effect, or some extra CC/Stuns. However, I'm afraid it won't be "balanced" until we're able to interrupt without reducing our damage by 20% (as other melee, and some casters, are allowed to do), until we have a bit more health, and until we're actually allowed to push our buttons to decide when our damage goes out.


I am currently temp-banned from wow forums for necro'ing the above linked totem post, when the ban is up I will be making an attempt at compiling and posting a constructive list of enhancement shamen pvp issues (you're looking at this post's predecessor now and I am interested in your opinions!). I will pass along the link to that thread when I post it; I hope that with your enthusiastic support we may be able to catch Blizzard's eye with this issue. I'm of the mind that a 50page bitchfest containing demonstrably warranted whining is just about the only way to get Blizz's attention these days.

[gobtol]

It seems to me that the problems facing enhancement shamans currently are a lot like the problems of paladins in TBC. All of their buffs and utility spells were in the form of a blessing. The blessings of course were limited to 1 per target per paladin, so if you wanted to use Blessing of Freedom to remove a snare, then it would take away your Blessing of Might ap buff. The same thing happens when a Shaman drops a Earthbind Totem to remove a snare effect, replacing their Strength of Earth totem.

Burst damage for paladins was a lot like it is for shamans now. They had Crusader Strike and Judgement, but their real burst damage came from random Seal of Command procs. Now all the ret pallys are running around with Seal of Blood, which procs on every swing. In addition, they have another instant cast ability (Divine Storm), plus changes were made to Hammer of Wrath making it an excellent spell. Currently there's not really anything a Enhancement Shaman can do in PvP that a Ret Pally can't do better, except of course Purge, but that seems to never work anyway.

[Shaamwow]

I think you're exactly right to compare our situations with that of Ret in BC. While at the same time I am perfectly willing to admit that we're not in as bad of a position as they were in pvp, that is to say one can be more successful in pvp as Enh now than Ret ( or lolret ) was able to then. However we are for all better purposes the "lol[class]" of WotLK pvp.

There are a few ways I can see addressing this:

Tone down the damage of WF and give us more of our damage from Stormstrike and lava lash. If you're looking at our current damage chart of 35-40% WF and 20% SS/LL just swap the two. WF 20%, SS 20%, LL 20%. Or however u want to figure it. Make it so that when I slam both of my weapons on that guy's face at the same time it HURTS and he remembers it.

Give us an off GCD interrupt ability not tied to our shock CD, remove the interrupt from Earth Shock thus allowing us to use it more freely as a damage ability (possibly remove wind shock altogether and/or give it a different effect). No, and I repeat no, other class in the game has an interrupt tied to one of thier main damage abilities.

Reduce charges required for MSW (obviously reduce proc rate accordingly).



I haven't really thought out any numbers because that isn't my forte. Obviously it's important to figure out how this system could work for pvp and pve without making too much of a hiccup in already stable enh pve viability. One of our biggest problems, as I've already stated, is our lack of ability to put nature damage on target in pvp. This greatly reduces the effect of our (class defining) nature damage debuff from Stormstrike. If we aren't pumping nature damage we are dead in the water. We can't really do this without giving up all of our pvp "survivability" and utility.

[Àzazel-TheArgentChampion]

A very in-depth and informed post that has actually enlightened me (a paladin) to the state of enhancement shaman PvP at the moment.

Maybe I've been lucky andhave never met a good shaman player, but NEVER, since wrath, have I been killed in a fair fight by an enhancement specced shaman. This is as a ret paladin until several months ago, and currently protection paladin.

Infact (true story, though I don't think I have any screenshots to prove it) I saw an 80 enhancement shaman killing scourge in Icecrown and decided for a joke I'd put on my level 60 pvp gear and Lord Blackwood's Blade with a level 30 green quest reward shield and try to kill him.

He didn't get me below 70%.

From an external perspective, shamans have EVERYTTHING you could possibly need in a pvp situation.... but to balance that, blizzard has let you use only 25% of these abilities at any one time (through the use of shock cd and totem elements). The most interesting thing I found had been added to the tree with wrath was the Maelstrom talent. But now that I know it is dispellable.... well what the hell.

Spirit wolves are cool, sure. But their duration seems lackluster compared to death knight ghouls, who also (from an external, and not incredibly informed perspective) seem to posess just as much utility and more survivability.

Maybe it would be too good, but what if Shamanistic Rage gave a Bestial Wrath/Bladestorm-esque effect (immune to all CC)? Perhaps that would only assist in making shamans into "IWIN" classes for 15 seconds every two minutes.

No, and I repeat no, other class in the game has an interrupt tied to one of thier main damage abilities.

This is true, and the reason, I believe, they took the damage component out of Kick (though it wasn't really a part of a rogue's rotation, but you get my drift).

At any rate, I want to see shamans happy. Happy shamans means more shamans, and shamans are cool.

[alkaholik]

purge in arena doesn't seem to work anyway,since the one classes that we needed to do the imbah "Purge+auto attack" combo now have huge resists to it...good luck trying to purge imp barkskin,or innervate,or bubbles
Totems...might wanna add the "totem stomping macros"....no need to say anything more
you can really compare enh shaman to any other class/spec in the game,and proove,with valid arguments that it is the most broken class in arena at the moment
and don't give me that omg wulfs are soo imba Q_Q,and they are feared,snared most of the time...srsly
they don't even do 2.7k dmg per hit(as the stupid dk's garg)
anyway !support sticky

[Shaamwow]

Yes purge sucks, mostly. It is still better than not purging in some situations ( innervate, etc etc ). Purging a druid hurts more than helps though, you're causing his blooms to go off and healing him the whole time. It is pretty suck. Again lack of burst comes into play here. Say I purge all of a druids hots off and have my partner stun him. Now my only chance at helping to kill him is to either have a 5 stack of MsW (lol), or to have Windfury hopefully proc and crit. Even IF you get a 5 stack of MsW and ur foes have no dispell, your damage/heal on yourself is predictable ( your opponent can see how many stacks you have ).

Purge still works quite well on disc priests and is absolutely key for removing HoP/AW, at least in my experience. Oh and resto shamans, purge does seriously own resto shamans--I won't lie. Funnily enough the one purge that never misses for me (ever) is an opposing enh shaman's maelstrom weapon stack.

Oh and hell while we're at it another thing: Our heals are garbage. I'm talking bad, instant or not.

The wolves....oh wolves. I'm from the camp that says they are a crutch, balancing us around them hurts us more than helps us in pvp. In pve, they look cool and I dig them. In pvp the CD is too long, they can be easily killed (and should be in arena tbh) once summoned (and cannot be resummoned for 3 minutes). They only last for 45 seconds, provide 2 free snare breaks if you use the first immediately upon summoning, and 1 short stun (which you have to jump through macro hoops to control).

Do not want, please fix.

[Elementium]

Our base health should go up. That's pretty much a fact for both PvP and PvE.

As far as fixing PvP.. well let's go back to the end of BC.. *woooooosh*

Omg! they finally fixed our problem in pvp! ghostwolf breaks snares!
Blue: Sorry guys, too much like druids (WHICH WE LOVE) we don't want you stealing abilities from a class made up of other classes. (makes sense amirite?)
What?! *dotshock* *Dotshock* "." "."

*woosh* back to now.. Didn't they also have Shamanistic rage remove stuns? or uh.. cause temporary immunity to stuns? once again say it's Op and give it to Dk's? (that im not sure of)

[PalliesThrowStuff]

I sympathize with Shamans, they're in an off-balance canoe as far as PvP goes, it needs weight to one side or the other, but too much or too little, and the whole thing capsized. Ret is in many ways, in the same boat.

Shamans have an AoE snare and a much more reliable, albeit cooldown-oriented direct snare, they have an interrupt that shares the cooldown with the more reliable snare. They have some good cooldowns and from what I've seen, ferocious damage, they tend to hit harder than anything but a Killing Spree rogue.

The problem is that while they have every trick in the book, minus an MS effect, most of then can't be used at the same time, you can't snare AND interrupt, or burst AND interrupt, or Burst AND Snare. Top that with very little defensive utility, and Shamans wind up feeling under-powered. I dont think giving Shamans an MS effect will help anything, they already have the potential to eat certain healers. Enh eats right through Disc, I've seen it personally, the Purge > SS > ES trio is usually all she wrote. If Enh could keep out of harm's way long enough to put their versatility to use, I think they'd be fine. I suggest the following:

Earthen Power: And whenever you are the victim of a melee attack, your earth totem reappears at your feet.

It's simple in design, but it makes managing your earthbind freedom/snare effect a lot easier, enough to really give Enh some mobility, without changing their output or ability to hurt healers.

More might be needed, but as with Ret, PvP buffs have to take baby steps, or else we wind up being called OP, and the devs nerf us back into the single digit representation realm.

[Àzazel-TheArgentChampion]

is usually all she wrote.

Love it

Earthen Power: And whenever you are the victim of a melee attack, your earth totem reappears at your feet.

So when you get in melee, your earth totem is removed from where it was, and placed instead at your location? Sounds fair enough, but isn't it kind of redundant? If you're being kited, it's usually (with the exception of hunters) going to be a caster. I don't know, maybe I misinterpreted your meaning there.

[Ivpiv]

I agree with the op totally.. Not because i find it right , but because those are the fact.

I dont think they should fix enhancement shamans. They just need to nerf other hybrids.. Shamans are a caster oriented hybrid why op melee ?

The just need to nerf druids to being a class primarily focused on as healing as the description says. And then make elemental better utility wise in pvp..

There Blizzard fixed your entire hybrid system.. I just did what you originally wanted to do, before you got derailed by arena whine.

[Baabinator]

I approve of this forum!
Bump.

Main issues:
-we will only stick to our target if we give up our main-damage, and interrupt
note: Our new frostbrand weapon buff which is PPM, not on demand, has no further utility, can be resisted/absorbed/avoided
-we have only ONE survival button (shammy rage), which we need for mana regeneration
-we have ONE dps cooldown (wolves), which we usually need to get to our target ASAP or we will be perma-kited
-our totems consist too much of our utility pack, grounding, earthbind, magma, mana tide, searing are the ones most used in arenas/pvp


And as more personal note:
GTFO WITH THOSE WOLVES, I HATE THEM... would rather have evasion+sprint in the spot on Spirit Wolves.

[Abremm]

Good post, i agree enhance could use some pvp love.

the problem i have is that any pvp buffs need to be done smartly. in PvE, we are at the tipping point of being OP. You can bet that anything that boosts our damage in pvp will have us on the pve dps chopping block..

[markiez]

Enhancement does need a little help but we can kite like theres no other if you know how to im the best enhancement shammy in 3s on my bg right now you just need to know how to play kinda and the better your gear you get its way easy to survive burst. I do agree we need some burst, im happy with what we have right now could use some help. The only thing that is holding my team back is gear im still in some pve gear and need some new weapons lol

[Shaamwow]

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...erspine&n=Tesi L2P

L2Know-What-You're-Talking-About.

One, probably exceptionally skilled, enh shaman makes it above 2.2k an alluva sudden the class is no longer gimped in pvp. I am well aware that there's been 25-50 enh shaman (out of 11million players) who have done pretty well in arenas.

Funny how there aren't any 12-year old enh at 2.5k+ who've made it there by slamming their face on their keyboard. (As there are many DKs, Ret Pallys, Warriors, and to a lesser extent Rogues).

Now let me be clear: I'm not asking that Enh be buffed to an OP level, or even brought up to equal footing with this season's heavy hitters. I am simply asking that we be brought more in line with the surivability/dps expectation of other classes (this includes ranged and melee).

If you've honestly read my entire first post and at the same time have a clue as to how pvp in this game works you'd understand that ENH is at a pretty large disadvantage right now in arenas.


Regardless of all this, your comments are un-needed here. This thread is for discussing a problem which we all know exists, and hopefully coming up with some solutions to that problem. If I were a moderator you'd have just garnered a temp ban for being useless and disruptive. Since I'm not, I'd like to ask Levva or Barrar to delete your post, mainly because its miles away from being productive.

[Omanley]

changes i would want to see as enhancer in pvp:
1.

New talent in enhancetree ( not reachable by elemental because it would be op )

cremation: when the damage over time portion of flameshock damages your target when it´s under 25% ( or 30 maybe ), you have a 50/100% chance for an instant lavaburst for 10 seconds on that target ( this effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds )

2.

Maelstromweapon is not dispellable anymore

3.

decreased spirit & strenght gain at lvl ups and increased agility & stamina gains and ( if this isn´t enough to fix our health to an acceptable point, additional increase the direct health gain from lvl ups too )

4.

wolves switching their place in the tree to a lower tier, because they simply aren´t powerful enough to be 51p.

5.

enh will get a new 51 talent

fusion with the spirits: the shaman fuses his mind and body with the great spiritwolf, assuming the form of a spirit-worgen. While in spirit-worgenform, the shaman is able to use new skills. duration: ?? seconds, cooldown: ?? minutes
( maybe permanent form ? dont know )

1.) spectral-leap: the shaman leaps through the nether towards his target.Preventing any movement imparing effect on the shaman ( root/snare/stun/disorient/incapacitate )for 3 seconds. can only be used on targets 8-25 yards away (like charge/intercept ), 20 second cooldown

2.) deafening howl: the shaman lets out a loud roar, silencing all targets within 5 yards for 3 ( or 4, not sure ) seconds. 35 seconds cooldown

3.) worgen claws: causes ?-? arcane damage over 8 seconds on the target, cannot be resisted and pierces through all absorption effetcs. cooldown 25 seconds

4.) astral sphere: the shaman removes every negative effect on him, healing himself for 3% of his total health for each and reducing damage recieved by 5% for each, lasting 5 seconds. 30 second cooldown

none of this changes except the worgenclaws,( which would be fine doing only few damage )would affect enhancement dps in pve. we merely recieve some cool talent, being worth called a 51 point talent, giving us enhancers the survivability we lack since forever and need ( since tbc )

summed up we would gain: a way to finish off opponents at low hp, acceptable health, a weak silence, a way to effectively overcome the distance between us and our foe, a way to annoy those bubbling paladins, ice-blocking mages and shadowcloak/vanishing rogues, as well as a ( if well used ) ability to heal ourselfes without having to rely on the very unrelieable maelstromprocs and reducing incoming dmg

this all sounds like a little to much and testing would have to be made.i think however that these changes are necessary

edit: there could also be an cremation-glyph, allowing your cremation to proc on a little % hit-basis like sudden death of warrior-arms-tree, would give us an additional way of burst in pvp

ps.: i posted this on another thread ( made some changes ) and figured it would fit in here 8). STICKY!

[Shaamwow]

I sympathize with Shamans, they're in an off-balance canoe as far as PvP goes, it needs weight to one side or the other, but too much or too little, and the whole thing capsized. Ret is in many ways, in the same boat.

Shamans have an AoE snare and a much more reliable, albeit cooldown-oriented direct snare, they have an interrupt that shares the cooldown with the more reliable snare. They have some good cooldowns and from what I've seen, ferocious damage, they tend to hit harder than anything but a Killing Spree rogue.

The problem is that while they have every trick in the book, minus an MS effect, most of then can't be used at the same time, you can't snare AND interrupt, or burst AND interrupt, or Burst AND Snare. Top that with very little defensive utility, and Shamans wind up feeling under-powered. I dont think giving Shamans an MS effect will help anything, they already have the potential to eat certain healers. Enh eats right through Disc, I've seen it personally, the Purge > SS > ES trio is usually all she wrote. If Enh could keep out of harm's way long enough to put their versatility to use, I think they'd be fine. I suggest the following:

Earthen Power: And whenever you are the victim of a melee attack, your earth totem reappears at your feet.

It's simple in design, but it makes managing your earthbind freedom/snare effect a lot easier, enough to really give Enh some mobility, without changing their output or ability to hurt healers.

More might be needed, but as with Ret, PvP buffs have to take baby steps, or else we wind up being called OP, and the devs nerf us back into the single digit representation realm.

I don't think adding in another gimmick ability, like moving earthbind, is really going to answer our problems in pvp. Remember, earthbind has a cooldown and can be easily 1 shotted by an opponent. I won't complain that they can be totem stomped in this thread, because blizzard has stated they don't support this mechanic and that they are working on it. This thread is not meant to be about things which Blizzard has already acknowledged and promised to fix, but rather about those things which seem not to have been fully acknowledged and are actually at the very root of our issues.

Fixing totems needs to happen, because they are old and they suck--but fixing totems won't (and shouldn't) fix enh pvp. I believe firmly that our biggest problems lie with our damage abilities, our low health pools, and lackluster survivability cooldowns. I'm not asking for an MS effect (though as I've said it would make our situation more doable in arena). I'd much rather see them even out the damage of all our abilities, so that we have more consistent on demand damage. As long as WF is such a huge chunk of our damage we will be gimped, because we cannot control it--Just can't. If they should add any new abilities one should be an interrupt not tied to the shock cooldown.

The cool thing to me is that Blizzard could choose to go about this alot of different ways. Reducing the charges of MsW would sort of address all three issues at once in a way. Whereas they could simply buff our health pool and spread our damage around a bit and get a similar effect. This is what I'm looking for in this thread, I don't want to go post some thread that's going to get ignored to the last page of wowforums. This call needs to be answered, there are FAR more skilled enhancement shamen out there than we see represented in Arena--and it's only getting worse.

I freely say that I am NOT amazing in pvp, nor do I think myself to be the next hot thing. I do reasonably well considering my skill/gear level and the amount of play time I have available. I can also say that I have an understanding of this class/spec and a basic enough understanding of pvp/arena to know that there is a visible disparity between what we can do to you (being most everyone else, save spriests I guess), and what you can do to us.

[demonocus]

We need something with a 6 second cooldown that makes windfury proc, and a talent that removes a buff or two off the target when windfury procs. Enhance needs plate =). edit: I want plate.

[Shaamwow]

All that taken together would be a bit OP to say the least, lol. I think you're on to something there with controlling windfury procs. I feel like windfury should proc alot more, and do less damage than it does now.

[demonocus]

The purge build into windfury would be nice it would save gcd's for other things. Or add a ms effect to wf....or add a ap effect or make it magic damage. It would be nice to actually be able to fight other melee classes equally geared.

[Shaamwow]

I think purge is fine as is. Windfury can still proc while you are purging. I think this would be even better if windfury procced more often and did less damage (more consistent). Dispell resistances do lessen the OPness of purge, but I think its probably about where it is right now. MsW does need some similar dispell resistance though, because right now it comes off at the flick of a switch, and it's almost always on top of all other buffs.

Make it more of the equivalent of a medium strength dot ticking on someone when we are in melee range, rather than a huge spike of damage every 8 seconds (maybe).