Ability Bloat- Shaman Edition

[Bernardo79]

I need to admit that i'm altoholic, and one of my alt is Enh Shaman.
And i have to tell you that none of my alts use so many keybindings as my Shammy does.
Ofc it will be easier for me to get rid off some spells, cause it is not my main, so don't be so harsh for me, ok so lets start.

I wouldn't mind if Fire Nova and Searing Totem would gone, they are just extra buttons to press. Also waiting 9s for Lava Lash to spread aoe is kinda annoying and there should be something done about it and some of our cds are way too long (for example Hex or Capacitor Totem). Also things like Maelstrom and Searing Flames shouldn't be shown as a buff, it should be more like a Shadow Orbs or Chi.
And at the end some totems should be redesigned or removed, i know they are core abilities for Shamans, but they are static and outdated mechanic nowadays (Capacitor Totem anyone?), at least for me.

What abilities would you like to remove?

[Xionyus]

The reason I don't play Enh is because I felt like there was too many abilities that needed to be keybound.

Searing Totem/Magma Totem just piss me off. I would rather have a talent/glyph to make Fire Ele 100% uptime but lower damage. So you make it less bursty and more sustained.

I think it would be cool to have Maelstrom to show up as a secondary resource.

I don't like that I have to have Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning bound as Enh. Couldn't you just combine Chain Lightning and Fire Nova to make a stronger AOE?

I'll just stick to Resto and crappy Ele single target /shrug

[Seditian]

Totems are the biggest problem of Shamans. Instead of just planting them down once every five minutes, you now have ten different totems, all with a specific scenario when to place them. I'd hate to see even one of them go though, and I honestly had more trouble binding everything on my Hunter than on my Shaman. Although they're very close (and I think they're both one of the worst classes when it comes to ability bloat).

[Bllets]

I personally enjoy fire nova and would hate to see it go.

While I can see why some find that large amount of keybindings needed as enhancement a turn off, I honestly wouldn't change anything at the moment, except maybe the LB/CL situation.

The reason I don't play Enh is because I felt like there was too many abilities that needed to be keybound.

I found the same thing the first three times I tried enhancement over the last 12 months or so. Then about two weeks ago I had gathered a enhancement set together (again) and tried to set it up again and I finally found a solution that worked.

I wouldn't remove searing totem, but rather make it more interesting. Keeping up a totem each minute isn't much worse as other classes/specs have it, Mages with rune/buff, Some priests with mindbender, etc.

Magma totem just feel very useless however and I rather see that have some more use then finding bad rogues on PvP.

For me there aren't really any useless abilities on my Shaman, but I generally would prefer that they did not add any to many new abilities.

[Starsinn]

this is from an enhancement point of view:

PVE
-Fire nova and magma are basically the same thing. They could just make it official and put them together.
- I personally hate the idea of a permanent ele pet. There are too many pet/guardians in the game already.
PVP
-being affected by disarms and silences is bogus.
- stormblast is lightning nature damage but it cn be parried? how do you parry lightning!?!?.

[Anzen]

Remove:

Magma Totem
Earthquake
Bind Elemental
Rockbiter Weapon
Stormlash Totem

Lack of use and/or boring.

I'd settle for Stormlash being off the GCD though!

[Deleted]

Allow fulmination to proc off Frost Shock aswell as Earth Shock, would be a nice addition for PvP, and would give more freedom if you only want one of those on your bars (i.e. for beginners that don't want a gazillion keybinds).

[Barrun]

Please don't suggest the removal of Capacitor Totem, it has been a god send in PVE and I image PVP as well, anyone who thinks this is worthless needs to reevaluate the ability. On topic, Searing Totem has always been boring and should just be removed, Magma Totem is equally boring but most of the time useless as well so it should get the axe. I'd hate to see any of our utility totems go, they're all extremely potent in the right situation and as far as PVE goes you know when pulling a boss which will be useful and which will be useless, just have a few convenient keybinds for what is needed on a particular fight and switch the utility abilities in those keybind slots on a fight by fight basis. Unleash Elements (for resto) is very lackluster and clunky as it is, I'd certainly be happy to see it go.

[Deleted]

Personally I think theres a tonne of changes they could make in order to reduce button bloat first off the bat the likes of unleash elements is almost similar to the old talent tree's that you get increased x% (Damage/Healing) which I'm very surprised its still in the game when they wanted to removed those talents. Its basically a talent but we have to press a button to get the benefit. Also our shocks could probably do with some changes considering we have 3 buttons to press for different effects and of course this sets a skill cap in terms of PvP but could quite easily become 1 button to apply the dot/slow etc something along the lines of Elemental shock. Thats automatically 2 buttons removed while still keeping the spells. We have to remember that as they mentioned in their blue post that they aren't exactly removing abilities entirely (Perhaps in rare cases) but more so baking things in together or possible making them passive.

As mentioned above, totems are a quite a problem at the moment. In my opinion we have too many niche totems and again as with the shocks they have a sort of niche role. Think tremor totem, grounding totem and even Earthgrab. I understand obviously that these totems are very needed in PvP and perhaps this is going to be quite a tricky issue to solve. Also magma totem/searing totem could probably be removed all together, don't get me wrong I don't know what sort of % make up of damage searing totem is to enhance shaman (Not the buff just the totem) or elemental. Of course I'm sure there would be much rejoice in the dps shaman community if they said searing flames is no longer tied to searing totem. But yeah so many of them could go away completely or be merged with something to make it more interesting.

Not sure anyone has picked up on it yet but in the recent blue post stating that they are looking to remove instant cast spells and some classes ability to cast on the go and that sort of thing. Ancestral swiftness' instant cast portion of the spell could quit easily go but perhaps become some sort of passive? X% proc chance to make your next spell instant or something along those lines. Again its one less button to push and also iterating on Blizzards current design intent.

Over all I'm not too fussed about them removing 4-5 spells (20% rough guess?) at the moment as restoration I've got a tonne of stuff keybound that I very rarely use, in terms of totem. Got them bound anyway just incase an encounter has X ability that Y totem is going to be useful but yeah they're on keys that don't get used much because there isn't much use for them most of the time in PvE. Infact the only time I've used tremor totem this tier was in the Garrosh heroic second transition a few times but the fear is avoidable.
I understand its hard for them to remove any ability because guranteed there will be one player that thinks the ability is the best, fun, flavour and a range of other things. Just aslong as they make rotations/healing interesting and varied Ill be quite happy!

Also, my first post

[Blithe]

Please don't suggest the removal of Capacitor Totem, it has been a god send in PVE and I image PVP as well, anyone who thinks this is worthless needs to reevaluate the ability. On topic, Searing Totem has always been boring and should just be removed, Magma Totem is equally boring but most of the time useless as well so it should get the axe. I'd hate to see any of our utility totems go, they're all extremely potent in the right situation and as far as PVE goes you know when pulling a boss which will be useful and which will be useless, just have a few convenient keybinds for what is needed on a particular fight and switch the utility abilities in those keybind slots on a fight by fight basis. Unleash Elements (for resto) is very lackluster and clunky as it is, I'd certainly be happy to see it go.

Capacitor definitely serves a purpose because it's obviously a stun, but using it is clunky, and having to provide a Talent -and- Glyph for it to make it at least half decent is completely ridiculous.

I suggest the removal of Magma Totem, Capacitor Totem and Stormlash Totem. Feral Spirit should have its damage and healing increased, as well as Stormstrike and Lava Lash dealing Nature and Fire damage respectively, instead of Physical damage. Searing Totem should receive a Healing Stream mechanic (short cooldown, short duration, burst damage), and Searing Flames should not be tied to Searing Totem and instead tied to Flame Shock (Lava Lash should -not- consume it); its damage should also be baked into Lava Lash (For every application, 20% increased damage on Lava Lash, just increase Lava Lash to 400% off-hand damage), and Flame Shock should have a small chance (5%? 10%?) of resetting its cooldown like our set bonus.

[Morphic224]

Capacitor definitely serves a purpose because it's obviously a stun, but using it is clunky, and having to provide a Talent -and- Glyph for it to make it at least half decent is completely ridiculous.

I suggest the removal of Magma Totem, Capacitor Totem and Stormlash Totem. Feral Spirit should have its damage and healing increased, as well as Stormstrike and Lava Lash dealing Nature and Fire damage respectively, instead of Physical damage. Searing Totem should receive a Healing Stream mechanic (short cooldown, short duration, burst damage), and Searing Flames should not be tied to Searing Totem and instead tied to Flame Shock (Lava Lash should -not- consume it); its damage should also be baked into Lava Lash (For every application, 20% increased damage on Lava Lash, just increase Lava Lash to 400% off-hand damage), and Flame Shock should have a small chance (5%? 10%?) of resetting its cooldown like our set bonus.

Personally I'm inclined to agree with everything you've said, I would also like to add that they should make ascendence a toggle that also effects lava lash, so we can actually keep up with movement fights or other FLARK YOU mechanics such as cinderfall in timeless without getting your cookies smashed.

[shokter]

Remove:

Magma Totem
Earthquake
Bind Elemental
Rockbiter Weapon
Stormlash Totem

Lack of use and/or boring.

I'd settle for Stormlash being off the GCD though!

good list from an Enhance pov at least. I'd like to keep Stormlash but would be fine with it leaving. They said ~20% of abilities will be cut so I'd expect a few more. I'm a little nervous tbh

- - - Updated - - -

Searing Totem should receive a Healing Stream mechanic (short cooldown, short duration, burst damage), and Searing Flames should not be tied to Searing Totem and instead tied to Flame Shock (Lava Lash should -not- consume it); its damage should also be baked into Lava Lash (For every application, 20% increased damage on Lava Lash, just increase Lava Lash to 400% off-hand damage), and Flame Shock should have a small chance (5%? 10%?) of resetting its cooldown like our set bonus.

These are approved by me, especially the ST change.

[Deleted]

Remove:

Magma Totem
Earthquake
Bind Elemental
Rockbiter Weapon
Stormlash Totem

Lack of use and/or boring.

I'd settle for Stormlash being off the GCD though!

Good list, completely forgot about those... because I never use them.

[Raiju]

Bind Elemental
Rockbiter Weapon

I don't want these removed. Rockbiter has uses in soloing and bind elemental in older content once again largely in soloing (really sucks its not a banish type effect though)

Agree with all of starsinn's points.

Overall I don't want 'enhancement' to lose anything. The reason I enjoy it is having so many different buttons for different situations. Magma totem is really quite pathetic although sometimes it's our only way to aoe mobs we can't spread out aoe onto (This should change with the level 100 talents though so I didn't keep it in the above list). I don't feel it's bloated, it just separates an ok player from a good player from a great player in what extra utility they manage to use.

[Deleted]

My guess is once again Blizz are just taking a hammer to it (in their quest to make it into a console game) without thinking about specifics. "Oh, every DPS macros all their nuke CD's to one button so let's replace all nuke CD's with one button!!!111"...ever thought that not every nuke has the same CD? Or sometimes we'd activate some nukes but not others depending on the situation? Then there's all the defensive stuff, which often gets spread out to handle damage intakes that are spread out etc.

I don't want these removed. Rockbiter has uses in soloing and bind elemental in older content once again largely in soloing (really sucks its not a banish type effect though)

They could probably merge hex with bind ele (although that would nerf situations where we'd use both at once) and probably remove magma (as it never gets used due to it being so crap), but otherwise I'd want to see everything stay...after all we're supposed to have a totem for every situation.

And for me it doesn't clutter up the action bar...as many of these totems only get used on specific fights so I simply swap them in/out of slots I reserve for fight-specific buttons.

[Swiftninja]

Only use Ive seen Magma is interrupting flag cappers in bgs. They should just remove magma totem and add its aoe effect into searing totem. Bind elemental is too specific only affecting water eles and shaman eles, which is prob too tedious to spam every 8 sec while being prone to interrupts and losing gdcs. I think Stormlash totem should be merged with ascendance like skull banner has been merged with recklessness, or just rmoved altogether as it has no interaction with our rotation and just a mindless cd stack ability. Also healing rain has got to go for enh/ele.

[Raiju]

Only use Ive seen Magma is interrupting flag cappers in bgs. They should just remove magma totem and add its aoe effect into searing totem. Bind elemental is too specific only affecting water eles and shaman eles, which is prob too tedious to spam every 8 sec while being prone to interrupts and losing gdcs. I think Stormlash totem should be merged with ascendance like skull banner has been merged with recklessness, or just rmoved altogether as it has no interaction with our rotation and just a mindless cd stack ability. Also healing rain has got to go for enh/ele.

This game has PvE, too

[Deleted]

Blizzard doesn't want to remove spell, just to make smaller number. They want to remove binded spells, so things like Rockbiter Weapon won't go, bacause it's very situational. Whatever I use as Elemental Shaman I like it, and I don't want anything to go. If I had to decide then Flame and Earth Shock could be removed / combined with something else.

[Swiftninja]

This game has PvE, too

I realize that and the spells I have mentioned are very lackluster in raids too. Bind ele only ccs eles, magma totem is nearly pointless to drop, stormlash is just extra damage which we could do without as a raid group.

[Zorperior]

Remove:

Magma Totem
Earthquake
Bind Elemental
Rockbiter Weapon
Stormlash Totem

Lack of use and/or boring.

I'd settle for Stormlash being off the GCD though!

100% agreement on the removable of those, or maybe removal and the reworking of Stormlash.

I'm just afraid of Enhance being reduced to white hits, Stormstrike, Lava Lash, and Fire/Earth Shock. Unless they really reduce the CD on Stormstrike and Lava Lash, and add a third melee CD, add something Icy, cuz no one uses Frost Shock in PvE anyway.