6.0 Shaman Info, Speculation, and Discussion!

[shamantime]

General Info

• Hit and Expertise removed.
• Reforging also removed,
• Dodge and parry removed from gear(tanks will still be able to dodge and parry ,how this will be achieved is unknown at this point maybe some abilities will give passive dodge/parry for x amount of seconds or something?), (what will this mean for str dps vs agi and int dps?)
• Meta gems and socket bonuses will be gone.
• About 20% of class skills and abilities have been removed to help address ability bloat.

New Secondary Item Stats:

• Multistrike: Attacks can proc a second, weaker, version of itself
• Amplitude: Increased Critical Strike damage
• Readiness: Shorter Cooldowns

Info on New Stats

• Lhivera on Multistrike Lhivera

New Tertiary Item Stats: These stats will not be on any budget at all and will randomly 'generate' on gear pieces.

• Speed: Movement Speed that will stack with other speed buffs
• Steadiness: Indestructible equip; NO durability losses
• Avoidance: Reduces AoE damage taken
• Leech: Damage you deal to enemies heals you
• Cleave: Increased AoE damage

Shaman Specific Info

• No more Spirit-Hit conversion passive.
• Storm Elemental Totem will be affected by Primal Elementalist.
• No Healing Tide Totem for DPS
• Mana Tide Totem now only increases mana regen of others by 50%. Shaman remains 200%.
• No casting Lightning Bolt on the move.
• No CD for Windfury Weapon

SHAMAN GLYPHS(NEW)

By comparing spells one by one, I was able to find a few changes. I've highlighted changes in green. It also seems that a lot of abilities have had their coefficient changed but I won't list it since it gives us no info on how things will play out.


New Echo of the Elements (source) :
Your spells and abilities have a chance to trigger Echo of the Elements.
Echo of the Elements causes your next short cooldown spell or ability to not incur its cooldown.

Elemental
Lava Burst, Shock, or Earthquake

Enhancement
Lava Lash, Stormstrike, Shock, or Fire Nova

Restoration
Riptide, Healing Rain, Purify Spirit

Note : seems wicked cool for all specs. 2 things to note for elemental : 1) it will allow us to refresh FS and sometimes throw ES right after, so less wasted LS chages and 2) since it is no longer an auto proc but you have to cast LvB again, it will proc any effect (mastery, multistrike, Rolling Thunder and more).


New Unleashed Fury (source)
Your elemental weapon imbues are empowered, granting additional effects when triggered with Unleash Elements:

Flametongue Weapon
Increases the enemy target's damage taken from your Lightning Bolt by 30%, and from your Lava Burst by 10% for 10 sec.

Windfury Weapon
For 8 sec, your multistrike chance is increased by 10%.

Earthliving Weapon
Further increases the effectiveness of your next single-target heal on the targeted ally by 50%.



New Lava Burst (source) :
You hurl molten lava at the target, dealing 1500 to 1657 (+ 72.6% of Spell power) Fire damage. Lava Burst will always deal a critical strike. If your Flame Shock is on the target, Lava Burst will deal 1 (+ 33.4% of Spell power)% additional damage.

Note : the bonus damage was changed from +50% to a scaling bonus on SP. Not sure how to interpret that atm.


New Feral Spirit (source) :
Summons two Spirit Wolves that aid the Shaman in battle, lasting 30 sec. Spirit Wolves are immune to movement-impairing effects, and their attacks heal them and their master for 225% of damage done.

Note : changed from 150% to 225%.


New Windfury Weapon (source) :
Imbue the Shaman's weapon with wind. Each hit has a 20% chance of triggering three extra attacks dealing 70% weapon damage. Lasts 60 minutes.

Note : flat AP bonus changed to % weapon damage.

You can check out all current WoD talents for Shaman: HERE!

SPEC CHANGES

[Omanley]

-There's been a blue comment about Feral Spirits maybe becoming a threatening cooldown again.
-There was another in which they said that they generally do not plan on any bigger class changes i.e. overhauls => outside of talents and some lower changes to existing abilities, there probably wont be all that much improval (still crossing my fingers for the opposite)
-Shamans and hunters are most affected by ability bload, something blizz wants to adress (on all classes)
-It is a concern to blizzard on how much cc is out there. I am not entirely sure if the latter part came from a blue, but I heard that hex was mentioned in regards to that topic. I really hope shaman see an improvement in CC though, since we are essentially on the lower end of it.

-I'd be really surprised if we saw a lot of the blizzcon talents in the actual game. My thought is they just needed something to show for blizzcon, and to appease people they threw in some crappy stuff, because that way everyones hyped for new, better ones, instead of bitching that there were no new talents for viewing.
Honestly, from an Enh POV, there are two crappy random target spells, and a "lasts till canceled" Elemental totem which obviously wont work. The LS thing is essentially a copy of D2's Thunder Storm skill, The lava globs of the totem talent remind me of D2's Volcano druid spell, and the Storm Elemental is obviously a continuation of the already existing ones. That it works until cancelled makes it obvious it's not gonna remain like that, and the aoe version of how Feral Spirits currently work could be a confirmation on Feral Spirits turning into a dps cd again (self heal would be to op otherwhise, I guess (what with msw heals, healing stream, healing tide, feral spirits, ancestral guidance, that new wind elemental, the new leeching secondary stat...).
The random target thingy is just bogus. The only defending part ride now is that they are rather "colourful" placeholders, in comparison to, for example the mage ones, which seem rather bland in comparison.

[Grimbold21]

Storm elemental totem needs to be cleared up

[Siebog]

i hope those change, none of them seems brand new, i was hoping for something awesome and new, like the 90 talents, not a passive, a spell that changes our fire totem into basically a volcano, and another elemental to use on cool down....

[Xayl1]

Only talent I actually like is the Storm Elemental and even that one seems like it needs some tweaks. I am however to see what the ability upgrades they have planned for leveling bring to the table.

[Teriz]

The news of no major class overhaul kind of disappoints me. We've been using this current system since WotLK. I really feel that it needs to be updated.

[Grimbold21]

In enhancement's case, why mess around with smth that doesn't need it? The spec is in a good place right now. Only AoE sucks

[Recom]

In enhancement's case, why mess around with smth that doesn't need it? The spec is in a good place right now. Only AoE sucks

Because elemental and enhancement share too many abilities which means that tweaking something for 1 spec will affect the other unless you really heavily on passives which in turn can be problematic.

[Blithe]

My biggest requests for WoD are:

Feral Spirits becoming a stronger cooldown, like they used to be.
Searing Flames no longer tied to Searing Totem (a stupidly clunky mechanic).
Frost Shock no longer sharing the cooldown that Earth Shock and Flame Shock do.
Searing Totem buffed, using the Healing Stream Totem mechanic. Now lasts 15 seconds with a 30 second cooldown.
Magma Totem removed. A useless totem that has passed its expiry date.
Capacitor Totem removed. Having to spec into a talent and use a glyph to make it viable is absurd.
Stormlash Totem removed. Just 'another' cooldown, there's nothing special about it.
Stormstrike and Lava Lash as Nature and Fire damage respectively.
Old Ghostwolf to make a return. Unable to be reduced below 100% movement speed while in Ghost Wolf (Druid's can do much more innately, while we have to Glyph it just to be sub-par?).
NO MORE DAMAGE COOLDOWNS RELATED TO FIRE TOTEMS! (Spew Lava I'm looking at you)
Old Astral Shift as a passive for all Shaman, but only one component of it (-30% damage taken while Stunned). Astral Shift removed from the Talent tree. (We don't have an immunity, or GTFO button like every other hybrid)
Shamanistic Rage baseline for all specializations.
Deluge - Replaces Astral Shift on the Talent tree: Protects a friendly target, causing any damage taken to heal the Shaman for 6174 (+ 52% of Spell power) every 2 sec for 6 sec. Allies are healed for double the amount. Gaining the healing effect consumes the Deluge. Lasts 30 sec. 30 sec cooldown. (Will give you a choice of a strong personal defensive Nature's Guardian/Stone Bulwark, or a support defensive that effects others more than yourself).
Ascendance damage reduced, and instead spread across other abilities. Outside of it, you hit like wet fish, while inside it you take off half of someone's health).

[Omanley]

In enhancement's case, why mess around with smth that doesn't need it? The spec is in a good place right now. Only AoE sucks

As recom put out, sharing so many spells with ele is of concern because of number balancing, but it also is kinda...lame...to borrow so many abilities from another spec. Where is enhance's identity as a specialisation within the shaman class? Enh lacks a lot in terms of spec specific abilities. It started out with wf and ss in vanilla, and since then gained ll, that's it.
For WoD, I'd like to see at least one new melee ability (rework of primal strike? a frost ability maybe?). Enhancement at the end of the day is a melee spec, and as such is too based on ranged spells. How ascendence works (increasing our melee range) is a perfect example of blizzard's warped version of us, a ranged melee spec (sounds dumb to you? welcome to the club) so to speak.
As for what our new melee strike could replace? Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning would be my first choice. It's weak and boring as enh. And requiring melee uptime to fire a ranged spell is just bullshit. Make hex instant baseline for enh, restrict msw to healing spells (and lower it to one charge, either it's instant or not), and introduce a new mechanic for melee strikes. Searing Flames is dumb right now, and never changing cooldowns are boring also. Refresh mechanics or lowered cds would be need. Enh is hardly about procs anymore, totally static. Aside from nowadays almost boring wf and static shock...no procs to watch really, aside from weak msw5xlb.

Aside from more melee strike(s), I'd see more in terms of mobility. An instant gap closer would be sooooo neet.
Arms warriors are the most common spec within the top 1000 players in 3vs, both in us and eu rankings (not just most common melee, most common SPEC! (by far)).
I believe on of the key features is pressure. Arms puts out tons of pressure through excellent gap closing (charge, heroic leap, intervene). As a shaman we're down to crappy ghostwolf, two 1min cds (windwalk totem (talent) and windwalk) and a 3min cd (ascendence (which is mostly used for the damage, not for gap closing)).
You dont have to be gladiator to realise that you're in trouble after you've popped your cooldowns.
I would be thrilled if they changed spiritwalk into a leap (the ability our feral spirits use) with like 15-20 sek cd (or, alternatively, lowered the cd/duration to 15/4 or something.

[Kazgrel]

Spew lava with a 45 sec cd seems bizzare for ele and resto. Should just make searing totem do aoe damage as a passive. Also the storm ele note stating it lasts until cancelled...don't see that happening.

More paranoid about them removing castable LB while moving, but I think it won't get touched.

Cap totem glyph needs to be a baseline. Would also say the same for ghost wolf since we had it baseline only to have it removed.

[shamantime]

They say there won't be any class re-hauls, but hopefully that doesn't exclude any re-configuring of a spec. I personally hope we see a little less sharing of damaging abilities between Enhancement and Elemental (Looking at you LB), removal of a shared CD between shocks(or just take Frost Shock off the shared cooldown), new graphics for spells (Shocks and Lava Burst) and some changes to Elemental.

[Recom]

Great recap Omanley. I quit playing enha when they introduced MSW because firing shitty LB isn't what I want to do when I'm in melee range, I'd rather multi cast them as ele.

Remove LB/CL/ES from enha kit, make FN the real aoe, maybe keep fire shock for the dot part, it works ok on DKs so why not and replace all those abilities with new ones, make the gameplay more dynamic (procs) and bring back double WF and you have a great spec again !

[shamantime]

As recom put out, sharing so many spells with ele is of concern because of number balancing, but it also is kinda...lame...to borrow so many abilities from another spec. Where is enhance's identity as a specialisation within the shaman class? Enh lacks a lot in terms of spec specific abilities. It started out with wf and ss in vanilla, and since then gained ll, that's it.
For WoD, I'd like to see at least one new melee ability (rework of primal strike? a frost ability maybe?). Enhancement at the end of the day is a melee spec, and as such is too based on ranged spells. How ascendence works (increasing our melee range) is a perfect example of blizzard's warped version of us, a ranged melee spec (sounds dumb to you? welcome to the club) so to speak.
As for what our new melee strike could replace? Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning would be my first choice. It's weak and boring as enh. And requiring melee uptime to fire a ranged spell is just bullshit. Make hex instant baseline for enh, restrict msw to healing spells (and lower it to one charge, either it's instant or not), and introduce a new mechanic for melee strikes. Searing Flames is dumb right now, and never changing cooldowns are boring also. Refresh mechanics or lowered cds would be need. Enh is hardly about procs anymore, totally static. Aside from nowadays almost boring wf and static shock...no procs to watch really, aside from weak msw5xlb.

Aside from more melee strike(s), I'd see more in terms of mobility. An instant gap closer would be sooooo neet.
Arms warriors are the most common spec within the top 1000 players in 3vs, both in us and eu rankings (not just most common melee, most common SPEC! (by far)).
I believe on of the key features is pressure. Arms puts out tons of pressure through excellent gap closing (charge, heroic leap, intervene). As a shaman we're down to crappy ghostwolf, two 1min cds (windwalk totem (talent) and windwalk) and a 3min cd (ascendence (which is mostly used for the damage, not for gap closing)).
You dont have to be gladiator to realise that you're in trouble after you've popped your cooldowns.
I would be thrilled if they changed spiritwalk into a leap (the ability our feral spirits use) with like 15-20 sek cd (or, alternatively, lowered the cd/duration to 15/4 or something.

We are heavily-magic based class, just look at DKs, they have a handful of ranged abilities as well. As for Ascendance, I never really thought the ranged part was because we are in a "ranged melee spec" niche, but just an added benefit of the cooldown. As for gap closers, they definitely need to rework our level 30 talent tier to help with movement/gap closing, because if there is one thing Ele/Enhance have a problem with it's keeping enemies off ourselves, and staying on our target, respectively.

[Hekili]

I think Shamans need more work than we're willing to ask for. Enhancement, in particular, seems afraid to seek dramatic changes just because we're at or near the top of the melee pile at the moment.

Totems are, in generally, a boring and underwhelming mechanic. They should be core to the Shaman identity, but they're really an afterthought. Pets shouldn't be tied to totems, and totems shouldn't be so passive and lame. Exceptions include Capacitor Totem and Earthgrasp Totem. I'd like to see our rotation cleaned up a little, more of our damage baked into our own output (rather than having a Fire Elemental do 20% of our damage), and totems to get pared down into active and passive components.

Instead of Searing Totem and Magma Totem, I'd like a basic totem that increases fire damage by X% for up to 50 seconds. I mean, it's a fire totem, so increasing fire totem makes sense, right? But passive is kinda boring. So maybe add a cooldown that overloads a totem for an active effect; a 10 second buff that increases fire damage by 5 * X%. Now, you get your regular damage output, and you get a benefit to AOE or burst phases by overloading your totem.

For an earth totem, maybe one option is a passive X% snare for up to 30 seconds, which could overload into the Earthgrab effect for 6 seconds or so. Although, I'd like the Earthgrab to be more like Void Tendrils, tbh. An alternative would be a defensive totem like Stone Bulwark Totem which would overload into bigger shields for a short time.

Water totems shouldn't be about healing for Enhancement. Healing Stream is too pointless, and Healing Tide is rather powerful. I'd rather see abilities inspired by Neptulon's PURE WATER shenanigans back in Throne of the Tides or whatever. Perhaps a haste or cooldown reduction buff.

Obviously, there's rebalancing to be done if totems get changed, but I just really wish totems were cooler.

[Doomchicken]

For Elemental:
Damage for single target is way too low in most fights, especially fights that require movement. Flame shock is probably the worst DOT of all time and the 5 second cooldown between uses which makes multi-dotting more difficult than for other classes.

Another thing that should be addressed is AOE that's effective that can hit more than 5 targets. Our AOE is pretty great if its up to 5 targets but start going to 10 plus and there's no way you can keep up with a lot of the other classes. Having a niche is all well and good, but not when the niche is very rarely used as a boss mechanic.

[Blithe]

For Elemental:
Damage for single target is way too low in most fights, especially fights that require movement. Flame shock is probably the worst DOT of all time and the 5 second cooldown between uses which makes multi-dotting more difficult than for other classes.

Another thing that should be addressed is AOE that's effective that can hit more than 5 targets. Our AOE is pretty great if its up to 5 targets but start going to 10 plus and there's no way you can keep up with a lot of the other classes. Having a niche is all well and good, but not when the niche is very rarely used as a boss mechanic.

I find Elemental to be in a better place than Enhancement, personally. It's really just fights that require a lot of target switching that ruin us. There's multiple times where I've beaten higher item level Warlocks and Mages on single-target fights, and also on AoE fights.

I was pulling close to ~60 million damage away from the second highest DPS during the Galakras encounters; and the only one to have ever beaten me was a Windwalker monk with RJW. They scale quite well with the Legendary Cape.

[Deleted]

I'd like to get rid of totems, or most of them at least. Why not make a lot of the totem effects into the elemental familiars that we already have the models for? What if the healing stream/tide totems was the water familiar instead, tossing a few heals, being all cute and such? Searing totem could be the fire familiar, and follow you around - and when you cast Fire Elemental, it spawns from the fire familiar, if it's up.

I mean, we might as well use the models. The current familiars are cute, but rather pointless - such is the way with minor glyphs. But if our totems were familiars (and they walked a little faster), then that would change the game completely.

EDIT: Heck, leave the slow walk speed anyways. We are used to recasting stuff like searing totem, so we could either just summon it again, or wait for it to come along on its own. In a raid setting, we generally don't cover long distances, so a little movement from the familiar might be enough.

[Sigmatic]

I have a strong feeling that Blizzard with go through with the Lightning Bolt nerf and not being able to move while casting. Will probably also result in buffing Lightning Bolt damage to buff our single target damage.

Otherwise for Elemental, I really hope they do something about Earthquake. All they need to do it make it somewhat usable in AoE situation and I'll be happy.

[SamoTray]

I find Elemental to be in a better place than Enhancement, personally. It's really just fights that require a lot of target switching that ruin us. There's multiple times where I've beaten higher item level Warlocks and Mages on single-target fights, and also on AoE fights.

I was pulling close to ~60 million damage away from the second highest DPS during the Galakras encounters; and the only one to have ever beaten me was a Windwalker monk with RJW. They scale quite well with the Legendary Cape.

Honestly if what you say is true then you're just completely out playing the lock and mage in your group, and there is no other explanation for your claims. As for your claims about elemental and enh those are misplaced as well since elemental is literally one of the worst dps single target wise while enh is quite literally one of the best single target wise,