Enhancement Shaman - Yay or nay

[Deleted]

So, quick question. How're you guys finding the changes to us in both PVE and PVP.? Do you feel stronger or weaker, more clunky or more sleek.

Personally i've found a fairly steep drop in my PVE dmg (Which at the moment i am putting down to the nerf to our tier-set and the loss of our relic) and a really quick drastic change to the feel of our specc, which i am putting down to the haste reductions. Over-all from a PVE perspective i am fairly disappointed with the changes right now and ive even started to gear some alts incase of a Main-switch in MoP

PVP-wise i think we're doing a lot better, we finally have some decent survival Cds as well as a boom in utility (Slows/stuns/purge) that MORE than makes up for the extension of Ws Cd. I might even go as far as to say our self-healing is a little over the top if some other classes werent on the same level and beyond. And at LONG last we have the Burst potential in the form of storm-lash and new wolves to really pressure healers on command (assuming they arnt all as Op as Holy pallas) without grinding them down using windshear and purge.

(Last quick thing, seeing how strong the New PVP trinkets are, has anybody run sims to see if they have taken over for BiS? im thinking the 400(ish) agil + 2k(ish) agil on Cd one. )

[Deleted]

So, quick question. How're you guys finding the changes to us in both PVE and PVP.? Do you feel stronger or weaker, more clunky or more sleek.

Personally i've found a fairly steep drop in my PVE dmg (Which at the moment i am putting down to the nerf to our tier-set and the loss of our relic) and a really quick drastic change to the feel of our specc, which i am putting down to the haste reductions. Over-all from a PVE perspective i am fairly disappointed with the changes right now and ive even started to gear some alts incase of a Main-switch in MoP

Another thing to consider is that your dps is also balanced around the level 87 ability Ascendence and our talents too, which many other classes are not (i.e. we are without 2 of our major abilities right now, while most specs are missing at most, 1).

PVP-wise i think we're doing a lot better, we finally have some decent survival Cds as well as a boom in utility (Slows/stuns/purge) that MORE than makes up for the extension of Ws Cd. I might even go as far as to say our self-healing is a little over the top if some other classes werent on the same level and beyond. And at LONG last we have the Burst potential in the form of storm-lash and new wolves to really pressure healers on command (assuming they arnt all as Op as Holy pallas) without grinding them down using windshear and purge.

I'm not much of a pvper, especially as Enhancement so I can't comment here unfortunately

[shokter]

It is too early to gauge for PvE in my opinion as we are without Ascendance. I don't agree that there is a 'drastic change to the feel of our spec' particularly in regards with PvE--it plays fairly similarly to cata, however we are penalized less on target swaps and are able to use both our Elemental totems without sacrificing a buff, and on top of that our wolves are now more of an offensive CD than they were previously.

In PvP so far I am liking the changes as we have a few more CDs and some interesting talent choices to play with though I must admit I am not a competitive PvPer. Healing in PvP feels a bit stronger than before with EotE and Healing Storm glyph.

Overall I am liking the changes, but I honestly don't think our playstyle has changed very much (nor would I want it to).

[Deleted]

From what I've seen on the Beta,


PVP -
Damage wise we seem alright, especially in Ascendance. Our healing and mana are based on auto attacking to get maelstrom charges and if your getting kited from here to tomorrow, you won't get any - You will feel naked w/o Ghost wolf and Healing Storm glyphs, because all other hybrids do either the same or even more healing/mobility than us without some glyph to boost their healing thus everyone saying they are "mandatory" (which i think they are, atm).

Action bars feel very clustered up. I still see no point in removing totem bars even though we no longer have "5m buff totems"

IMO Wolves and Healing stream are somewhat surviability CDs and not damage since they do a decent amount of healing for 2 globals.


Alot of issues have been solved (target switching with searing flames, FE buffed, etc) but new ones - mobility/mana - appeared and its a pain in the butt.

I'm confident that if mobility gets fixd mana wont be a problem but if we get a similar mana regain to ret palas we should be alright.

PVE -
Damage is strongly balanced around Ascendance and lv90 Talents, don't expect to top charts without proper use of those and other cooldowns.

Off Healing is shining atm, compared to cata IMO.

AOE still very clunky, wish it worked like Pestilence for DKs or made it work with chain lightning placing Flame Shocks on targets instead of Lava Lash.

Action bars just as clustered as PVP.

We basically got alot of the stuff we wanted from Cata: Viable AOE, competitive damage and good amount of utility with new totems and off healing.

Biggest drawback I see in PVE would problably be the AOE and below average cleave damage on 2 targets or so.


TL;DR - Go read what I wrote :d

[CHRONICGODX]

pvp healing is just stupid. at 85 with echo and healing storm its not hard to break 100k healing surges. good change for our survivability imo. enhance got better in pvp in every way. very playable atm. i dont like our mana pool being normalized to 20k though. one more purge/healing surge while rooted would be nice. its very noticable that you oom much easier with purge filler. being kited by a mage is really annoying. by the time you connect again you didnt get his shields down through his trash buffs and you're oom as shit. playing with sham rage glyph though is glorious. deep freeze is mad.

[Barky]

I played a fair bit on the beta but not much on live and I would imagine things are a little but bad without Ascendence and the level 90 talents. However I did make the mistake of dropping into the official US Shaman forums earlier and I have never seen such a ****storm of abuse aimed towards Blizz form the Shaman community. Last time I saw something that bad is when they wanted to put your realID name on your forum posts.

I wish they would just shut the hell up complaining in that matter on such a stupid subject. 'Wah our dps is lower now' because it's INTENDED to be since Ascendance is so good. Most other classes don't get a dps cooldown at 87, and none of them are at the same magnitude as ascendance. 85 won't be balanced any more, unfortunately you have to just accept it and wait a month and a bit.

Sometimes I wish they didnt make ascendance so good because (like I feared when I first saw it on the beta) it's so good that it's too good, and shamans overall have to suffer as a result, same with Stormlash totem.

I personally think the stormlash effect should have also been given to something like demonology warlocks, they have a CD when in demon form (5 mins CD) to have all abilities / attacks deal an extra bit of fire damage, just so it turns into a new 'raid buff' and not a 'bring a shaman' thing. Same thing with the warrior's Banner too.

[Deleted]

For me, I have seen like a 10k dps drop on a dummy, however this is when completely selfbuffed.
Before the patch we would have a str/agi totem and a 20% attackpower buff. Also atm, when I am alone, the I am not giving myself the mastery or the spellpower buff(I know that the spellpower buff does nothing for us anyway, but still)
I have run through a few dungeons yesterday and my dps on the short fights (around 1 minute) has increased.
Most likely because our fire elemental now also gives the searing flames buff, wolves do a bit more dmg and we have a stormlash totem.

PvP wise, I have done a few duels, and only lost one against a blood DK, we have had some great buffs for survivability.

[Deleted]

Is it me or are the wolves still pretty weak? I thought they wanted to make it a 'real' CD

[Deleted]

From a soloing perspective we're a bit weaker as I expected (huge loss of hit rating, nerfed 2pc, broken 4pc, having to wait for 5 stacks), and dps is also lower on fights over 1 min (under 1 min seems fine though, eg. Naj is still soloable). Raid-wise it doesn't seem that different (at least while we're snoring through DS), except for fire ele and stormlash.

Also atm, when I am alone, the I am not giving myself the mastery or the spellpower buff

You do get the buff (check your paper doll, you'll have ~3k mastery instead of ~2k), it just doesn't show on the group buff icon/display.

[melzas]

For me, I have seen like a 10k dps drop on a dummy, however this is when completely selfbuffed.
Before the patch we would have a str/agi totem and a 20% attackpower buff. Also atm, when I am alone, the I am not giving myself the mastery or the spellpower buff(I know that the spellpower buff does nothing for us anyway, but still)
I have run through a few dungeons yesterday and my dps on the short fights (around 1 minute) has increased.
Most likely because our fire elemental now also gives the searing flames buff, wolves do a bit more dmg and we have a stormlash totem.

Dummies are for some reason considered 93 lvl already so testing dps on them isn't very precise (you will miss a lot)

[Grimbold21]

Im having a blast in pvp. Our healing plus our survivability cds keeps up alive for a considerable amount of time.

Mobility is a bit tricky for me. Initially i thought that Spirit walk would remove any snares/slows and grant immunity to them right after, but, alas, if you get hit with a slow/snare after it's being used, those effects still apply to you. It sort of should be like cloak of shadows, but only for slows/snares, that is to say: you're currently snared/slow > pop spirit walk and free yourself from them and you're granted immunity to those effects during the duration of SW. Yet that would probably require a nerf to it's duration since SW still lasts a while.

[Emophia]

PVP - Yay.

[Grubjuice]

it's nice to have both Shamanistic Rage and Astral Shift, and I like that Healing Stream Totem is a little more active, but i wish i there were some way to force it to heal a particular target sometimes.

In general the game play of Enh has not really changed that much.
Having a Sprint is nice, and several movement impairement purge options is nice. But the actual attack spells are unchanged.

[Greyback]

[...]Also atm, when I am alone, the I am not giving myself the mastery or the spellpower buff(I know that the spellpower buff does nothing for us anyway, but still)

You actually are giving yourself the mastery buff, it just won't show in the buff bar. I tested it myself solo and in a group and both compositions showed the same mastery. Additionally I summed up my own mastery rating I gain from my gear and the difference was 893 between the mastery rating displayed in my character info and the mastery on my gear. But the DMG loss as Enhance is still pretty significant ... it would have been better to balance 5.0.4 at 85 for the last month of raiding (still hoping madness will finally drop my heroic axes) and patching it again when MoP goes live at the end of September ... but I guess that's to much to ask of them -.-"