Thread: your preferred cataclysm shaman changes?

because there have been quite a bunch of changes recently, blizzard intending a major class rework, and many players bubbling over with ideas, i figured, it would be a good idea to collect suggestion´s allready.

i have mainly played enhancement, so im not that farmiliar with the other two specs. basic abilitiy-changes will of course affect the other trees as well though.

totems:

our trademark ability since release. that´s what defines a shaman. the totem system is really really old and out-dated though. the basic concept is that totems should be powerful, but as to limit their power they received following weaknesses:

-one-shottable by the weakest attacks, even through caster melee hits
-immobile, which cripples the shaman´s mobility ( mobility is very important in both pvp and pve though)
-only 1 totem of each bracket usable at a time, with the most useful totems residing in the same bracket

intended changes: reducing the number of totem´s through merging and assembling, making them more assessable and useful

Buffing totems: strenght of earth & stoneskin ( merging ),mana spring & healing stream ( merging ),
wrath of air & flametongue ( merging ) turn into spells. NO TOTEMS ANYMORE
the new rule is:
you may not have more than 2 of those 3 spells active at a time.
the spells work like most spells, with death the effect will end, the buff is not dispellable ( like horn of winter/battleshout )

windfury totem gets changed into a proc, either part of unleashed rage or a new talent, imp windfury


Resistance totems: new passive baseline ability => elemental prisma: whenever you have a totem out ( earth => shadow, fire => fire, water => frost, air => nature ) your party will receive resistance to the corresponding element

Mana tide totem will turn into a spell you can use like the current ability but requires a manaspring buff active during the duration.

totem of wrath changes into a passive talent that increases the spellpower the flametongue spell provides so that it becomes equal to other spellpower buffs, and additionally giving flametongue spell the +3%crit.

Elemental totems: elementals are no totems anymore. they receive a pet bar shared with wolves, get their cooldown reduced to 5 minutes, live up to 2 minutes, but you cant use more than one elemental at a time.
elemental´s share the same cooldown. When having a Fire Elemental out, your Fire Nova spell will be triggered at your Elementals location when used. When having Earth Elemental out, your Earthbind Totem effect will follow the Elemental until Earthbind expires or the Elemental dies ( this effect cant occur more than once every 2 minutes.

Fire nova: fire nova does not trigger the global cooldown and isn´t affected by it. talented, the cooldown should be 5 seconds ( 2/5 second reudction ), the glyph refunds 5% of the manacost for any target it hits by 5% ( up to 50% )

elemental will have the talent => magma hurl: whenever your lava burst ability hits a target which is affected by flame shock, a magma totem will be planted at the targets feet, costing no mana ( nova will still cost mana )

pvp utility totems: ( you can use 3 of them at a time )

Magma totem: no changes

stone claw totem: the absorbed damage gets increased to 6000 ( up from 4000 ) and is now baseline, the stoneclaw totem gets destroyed when it has absorbed all it can. glyphed: should your stoneclaw totem get destroyed withing 10 seconds of puttign it down, you will absorb an additional 2000 damage

searing totem: the damage gets increased tremendously. range gets increased to that of lightning bolt, and additional damage & range increase through elemental talents

tremor totem: makes you immune to fear for 1 second should it be destroyed ( only works when out of fear ) additionally to the current effect

grounding totem: does not get destroyed through non-damaging and instant spell´s anymore ( does not swallow them anymore either ) only spell´s like fireball/lightning bolt get swallowed ( cooldown increased )

new ability => sentry port: ports your target to your sentry totem ( works on hostile and friendly targets, as well as yourself ) sentry port has a ( ? ) 1-2 minute cooldown

cleansing totem: no change

earthbind totem: earthern power will NOT remove slowing effects whenever it pulses, but it will prevent slowing and rooting effects allready on you to be refreshed or newly cast on you while within 8 yards of the totem

those were my suggestions for totems.

purge: whenever you purge a target, you generate 1% of your total health over 10 seconds ( stacks up 5 times )

hex: as this spell is a mix of melee and spell-silence, it isn´t removable through trinket anymore but breaks immediately on damage

ghostwolf: the shaman will be immune to polymorph while in gw-form ( to make up for being vulnerable against beast-cc ( sleep/fear beast ). gw will be instant cast base line, but it wont be unaffected by movement impairing effects anymore. when talented, the shaman will be able to plant totems and use melee-abilities without leaving the ghostwolf-form.

waterwalk/water breathing: these abilities wont require reagents anymore and are now 1 spell: water mastery. glyph: water-mastery: your water-mastery ability is now usable while mounted and buffs your whole group

farseeing,bloodlust: no changes

shields: no changes

lavaburst: base damage increased, deals additional damage with flame shock on the target, but does not have a guaranteed crit with flame shock anymore.

well, that´s about it for now. i will see if i can add an more exiting enhancement tree as well.
edit: here it is: http://www.war-tools.com/t65873.html

any suggestions and critique are well appreciated, but try to keep it non-insulting.

please keep in mind that those suggestion´s are for cataclysm, which is still far away from now, and that spells/talents which we or other classes currently have would have been seriously overpowered during tbc, so try to not only look at the current situation, as other classes will get overhauls as well.


Edit!: I have redone this post of mine to make it easier to read ( Correcting Spelling/Grammar, removing/adding changes, also adding some of your idead, so keep up the feedback )

Kill the aspect that Shaman function through their totems.

It's an outdated mechanic and it hurts us.


My ideal change? Make Enhance not a shitty DPS spec comparatively.

Originally Posted by Rabidthunder

GW might be OP if it allows use of melee abilities and totems. That makes Enhancement almost as effective as if we were in humanoid form. Also, polymorph immunity not gonna happen (druid flavor, though I dislike it too).

Water Mastery not gonna happen (breath in water and unimplemented movement on/in water? Druid flavor)

Glyph of Water Mastery not gonna happen (DK flavor)

I really like the ideas, but then again it is hardly gonna make its way to live - you know, blizz don't want us to tank and stuff.

Blizzard wants to hold onto old outdated ideas of Shaman and make us damn gimp because of it.

Either shit is gonna change or I'm rerolling for the first time in 4 years

Originally Posted by Gryzorz

That's an epic thread, I laughed hard !

You want to do tremendous damage, be immune to many things, reflect half of offensive abilities, increase armor from an insane amount, have undispellable (and ofc unkillable) totems providing tremendous buffing in 1 ou 2 GCD, moving with you, and so on...

I'm just quoting :
"it isn´t removable through trinket anymore" about hex.

It illustrates better than I could do the complete load of crap you just dropped on these forums.

(scuse my wierd french-english btw !)

I just want Shaman to be on par healing and damage wise with other classes that provide just as much if not more utility.
But tying a lot of our useful abilities to totems really limits what a Shaman can do compared to a Priest, Paladin DK etc.

there is a picture forming in my head:

an enhancement shaman moving with 30% increased speed, immun to poly, reflecting 50% of all other ccs, with 130 resistance to all spell schools absorbing ne first 2 cast completly, with 40% increased armor, 5% health regen over 5 sec ....

sounds just a little op, just a little

don't get me wrong, shamans do need some tweaking. but you have to keep in mind that shamans with their totems are a support class. i know almost all your buffs can be provided by other clases but no class brings so many buffs like one shaman. you will never be on top of the dmg meter (yes, i know that sucks).

nice ideas anyway. but they need some balancing.

btw: a drenai shamen talking about reroling for the first time in 4 years... if i remember correc bc was released in january of 2007.

This is about the best thing you suggested, but no way on earth should it be accessable to enhance, this should be a deep deep deep elemental talent, you guys with your enhance deal with the melee, leave the casting and the elementals to the elemental shaman please.

currently elementals are baseline. i´d also like to add that they attack in melee range. nowhere near logical

Tremor change. I don't like a chance. I'd rather it just break fear then have a chance to reflect CC. Also soooooo op.

tremor is currently bypassed easily by any priest/warlock who fears just before he destoys the totem. you would need godlike reflexes to replant totem the other players destroys it to prevent being feared. against bad players it does it´s job, against decent players it´s almost useless. especially with chainfearing locks you wont be able to do anything

Shaman tanking with purge? Shaman tanks fail, its pointless, no.

with a complete overhaul shaman tanking "might" become an option. im no big fan of tanking, but if my longtime main class and spec might become viable if specced correctly, i wouldn´t say no ^^

Elemental totems being down to 5minutes cannot be done as they would be usable in arena and we would then be more like a pet class.

what´s so bad about that? death knights are a melee plate class with pets. as a unholy dk you get, additionally to your ghoul and your army of darkness a gargoyle. it´s not a overhaul for nothing. And what´s with mages? water elemental + mirror image anyone?

No offence but everything on there was OP.

as i explained in my post above these are suggestions for cataclysm, which is more than a year from now. how would we stand there if the other classes whgere to receive buffs even stronger? it´s blizzard we´re talking about

an enhancement shaman moving with 30% increased speed, immun to poly, reflecting 50% of all other ccs, with 130 resistance to all spell schools absorbing ne first 2 cast completly, with 40% increased armor, 5% health regen over 5 sec ....

the polymorph immunity is necessary, because shaman in ghostwolf is the most cc vulnerable target in arena alltogether
sap/stun/blind ( rogue ), fear beast/frosttrap ( hunter ), fear/seduce ( warlock ) sleep ( druid ) we are affected by everything. through changing into a beast, we get more vulnerable against hunter/druid cc so i think it´s not so overpowered to give us at least polymorph protection

reflecting 50% of all other cc´s? uuum what? it only absorbs cc should you not destroy grounding, which has a cooldown, as far as i know, as well as a measly 5hp. a scorch/searing pain will end it.tremor will only reflect cc upon not being destroyed also it is a gamble ( 50% chance to reflect ) and i also suggested a cooldown, whitout me committing myself 30 sec maybe?

the 130 resistance i thought of to give the spells we allready have but rarely ever use some meaning. it would give spellpenetr against shaman meaning, and afaik any decent pvp-caster nowadays has it.

the 40% increased armor was at the most point a tank suggestion ( who would spam purge every 5 sec in pvp to keep this buff up, not factoring in targets having some hots/buffs on them most of the time )

the life regen should animate resto-druid´s or classes with similar often selfcast spells from simply spamming their abilities. ( along the lines: hey, if i simply keep spamming hots he will get harder to kill because of purge spam. we have to cc him )

as some have allready pointed out allready, im not a charakter designer. im merely giving some feedback/suggestions.

You want to do tremendous damage, be immune to many things, reflect half of offensive abilities, increase armor from an insane amount, have undispellable (and ofc unkillable) totems providing tremendous buffing in 1 ou 2 GCD, moving with you, and so on...

that, sir, is called a feral druid ( except the totem part ). they do tremendous damage in catform, are immune to polymorph, can switch out of root and movement impairing, have reduced fear duration talent, ridicious high armor and life in bearform, passive +5% crit aura... And please refrain from hostile speak. i expect the shaman community to be more civilized than that.

trinket not working on hex follow´s the logical thought that it´s neither an ability which causes the control over your body, nor a snare/root. it also has a quite high cooldown, and can be dispelled. To add to that i suggested the removal of hex not breacking on damage instantly.

the waterwalk/waterbreath change is not really that gamebraking and considering warlocks not having any reagents for waterbreathing and dk getting their powerful icy paths, although we are the jesus class, i dont see a reason not putting that change in. ( waterwalk is no dk flavour, but icy paths is shaman flavour )

Kill the aspect that Shaman function through their totems.

It's an outdated mechanic and it hurts us.

my thoughts allmost exactly. i greatly reduced the number of totems for a reason. at some point a totem or two wont hurt though .

im not thaaat into tanking and i wouldn´t spill tears over not getting it. just some suggestion´s made how you could implement it ( note that increasing survival abilities make you almost automatically more tanky )

im well aware that some suggestion´s might be overpowered at this point of time,but please think before posting: keep in mind these are suggestions for cataclasm, where the other classes will see major overhauls as well, no point in comlaining about balancing when we dont know anything yet this post is for a way "you would like to see pursued"

One of my main objectives is to make the uninteresting shaman abilities ( of which we have as much as useful ) more attractive. purge is one of our best abilities, so a buff isn´t that needed here, rather than a spammable ability which doesn´t affect disc/resto druid i´d rather have a 12 or so second cd ability which would bypass dispell resistances ( not imunites ) and make the dispelled abilities not castable for 2 seconds ( with the numbers being object to change )

and please overlook slight errors in grammar and spelling, im german :

Spirit wolves - Too much is attached to these. Make the stun into a spell that can be centered on an earth totem. Do the same for the sprint ability except attach it to an air totem.

Properly itemized mail and sufficient weapon choice - Bad mail itemization makes us feel like second-class citizens. Enhancement shamans are left with hunter mail (with less useful abilities like armor pen, but without abilities we seriously need like expertise). Elemental shamans have the same problem with caster mail being itemized for restos. I believe cataclysm is changing/eliminating some of these stats, but something must be done.

Enhancement weaponry has a similar issue. We complained that there were too few useful weapons for us and they almost always dropped off of hard-mode bosses or bosses at the end of the instance. We asked to be able to use swords (which are very plentiful). What we got was rogues using axes and a promise of more axe drops. That never made any sense on paper and it still doesn't in practice. ToC came out and surprise, surprise, all of the weapons we can use are still ONLY on the END boss, except now we have to compete with rogues for the axes off of Anub too. Swords and two-handers drop all over, but for some reason dps axes and maces are almost never found off of earlier non-hard-mode bosses (Angry Dread and the off-hand hook weapon in Naxx are the only exceptions I can think of).

those matters i will look into with my enhancement tree suggestion comming soon ( i will try to make every talent interessting at some point )

Originally Posted by Gryzorz

That's an epic thread, I laughed hard !

You want to do tremendous damage, be immune to many things, reflect half of offensive abilities, increase armor from an insane amount, have undispellable (and ofc unkillable) totems providing tremendous buffing in 1 ou 2 GCD, moving with you, and so on...

Hmm kinda reminds me of retridins.

I lol'd

I hope they will remove some of our support.
i don't like the fact that my dps does not get the same boost as the dps of others. Reason is simple, since we are balanced around having most support all the time.

Its not a real problem, but i'd like to see this changed.
Therefore i'd like to have more "active totems", not those standing around for 5 mins and giving a passive buff. I'd like to have more like magma, manatide, searing, and so on - totems standing some seconds and actually doing something.

here´s the link of a by me redone Enhancement tree and part of the Elemental tree. I as you can see you wont be able to take every good dps talent unless you have another enhancer in your Raid. In terms of pvp you will lose quite a bit of pvp burst but will make up for that with some nice pvp utility boni . I will see if i can make the model even better, keep posting suggestions, i may add them ^^.

http://www.war-tools.com/t65873.html

new ability => sentry port: ports your target to your sentry totem ( works on hostile and friendly targets, as well as yourself ) sentry port has a ( ? ) 1-2 minute cooldown

Haha awesome idea, like a Warlocks portal except better, getting rogues off you would be priceless.