Shadowlands - Class Changes for Shamans, Death Knights, Mages and Warlocks

Shadowlands - Shaman Class Changes
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
In an upcoming build of Shadowlands, several changes have been made for both of the DPS Shaman specializations.

One quick note before discussing the specific changes to each spec, Searing Totem is being removed as a baseline button to all Shaman. Searing Totem was brought back in Shadowlands with the intention of Totems being a cool and iconic part of the Shaman class, but without significant redesign to the button to give it mechanical interaction and feeling impactful to press, it wound up feeling like just another cooldown you had to manage that didn’t have any excitement behind it.

Elemental Shaman:
  • Fulmination has been changed to be a guaranteed proc from Lightning Bolt and Lightning Bolt Overload.
  • Chain Lightning has been decoupled from Fulmination entirely, but still grants Seismic Thunder stacks.
  • Earthquake’s base damage has been reduced significantly, but Seismic Thunder now also increases the damage of Earthquake for each stack of Seismic Thunder consumed when cast.
  • Fire Elemental’s previous interaction with bonus Fulmination proc chance has been redesigned. While Fire Elemental is active, the period of Flame Shock is reduced, which increases the DPS of any active Flame Shock debuff and also increases the chance of gaining the Lava Surge effect. Additionally while Fire Elemental is active, any newly cast Flame Shock will have its Duration increased by 100%.
  • Lightning Shield will now grant the Shaman a charge of Fulmination when it deals damage to an enemy.
  • Echo of the Elements no longer grants a second charge of Healing Stream Totem for Elemental Shaman. This is more of a bug fix, but noting here as it is a moderate change to available utility of the Echo of the Elements talent. This talent is unchanged for Restoration.

The changes above should make Elemental Shaman feel quite a bit more control over what will happen as the result of pressing their abilities.

Enhancement Shaman Core Ability Changes:
  • Rockbiter has been removed from the spec.
    ** This is a big change we’re trying out. Rockbiter in Shadowlands basically only serves as a GCD filler. With the removal of Maelstrom, and Flame Shock and Frost Shock becoming class-wide abilities that are also on a short cooldown to fill empty spots, there was a lot of competition in the ~6 sec cooldown space of available buttons. Without Maelstrom, Rockbiter didn’t have any strong interaction with the rest of the Enhancement toolkit, and shock spells are much more iconic to Shaman. This is an experimental change, please try things out in combination with the changes below and let us know how things feel.
  • Lava Lash is now learned at level 11, down from level 22. Base cooldown increased to 18 sec (was 12 sec)
  • Lava Lash now gets upgraded at level 22 to have its cooldown reduced to 12 sec (was 18 sec)
  • Stormstrike’s cooldown has been reduced to 7.5 sec (was 9 sec)
  • Maximum Maelstrom Weapon stacks have been increased from 5 to 10.
  • Each stack of Maelstrom Weapon now grants increased damage and/or healing to the abilities Maelstrom Weapon effects in addition to the cast time reduction.
  • Abilities that are altered by Maelstrom Weapon have had their baseline damage or healing values reduced.
  • Stormbringer no longer causes your next Stormstrike to not incur a cooldown.
  • Feral Spirits now grants one stack of Maelstrom Weapon immediately when pressed, and an additional 5 stacks over the duration of Feral Spirits.
  • Each target that you hit with Chain Lightning now both increases the damage of, and reduces the cooldown of your next Crash Lightning.
  • Windfury Totem radius increased from 12 to 30 yards.
  • Windfury Weapon and Flametongue Weapon no longer require you to click the button, then click a weapon on your character sheet. They automatically apply their effects to an appropriate equipped weapon.
  • Lightning Shield now has a 50% chance to grant you a stack of Maelstrom Weapon when it deals damage to an enemy.
  • Flame Shock and Frost Shock have their cooldowns shortened with your current Haste.

Enhancement Shaman Talent Changes:
  • Boulderfist (talent) has been redesigned and renamed to Lashing Flames (Passive). Lava Lash now increases the damage of your Flame Shock on the target by 100% for 12 sec.
  • Landslide (talent) has been redesigned and renamed to Stormfury (Passive). Each time Windfury Weapon activates, the cooldown of Stormstrike is reduced by 1 sec.
  • Hailstorm (talent) renamed to Cycle of the Elements.
  • Searing Assault (talent) redesigned and renamed to Hailstorm (Passive). Each Stack of Maelstrom Weapon consumed increases the damage of your next Frost Shock by 50%, and causes your next Frost Shock to hit 1 additional target per stack of Maelstrom Weapon consumed. Maximum 5 stacks.
  • Overcharge (talent) redesigned and renamed to Fire Nova. 15 sec cooldown. Cause all of your Flame Shocks to erupt in flames, dealing Fire Damage to up to 6 targets near your Flame Shock Targets.

The above changes to Enhancement Shaman are a lot to take in, but we feel that the combined list of changes will make your abilities feel like they have a purpose and interact with your toolkit in meaningful ways instead of just dealing damage.

Shadowlands - Death Knight Class Changes
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Hello!

Death Knight will see a couple of abilities tweaked in this Alpha update, based on feedback received. We think these should help their usability going forward. Thank you very much for your continued feedback.

Blood
  • Rune Tap global cooldown removed.
    • Developers’ notes: Rune Tap was made baseline in Shadowlands, but also had a GCD added, which was not present in Battle for Azeroth. We’re reverting this change to bring it back to its current functionality.

Unholy
  • Outbreak duration of Virulent Plague increased to 28 seconds (was 21 seconds).
  • Outbreak AoE range increased to 10 (was 8).
    • Developers’ notes: We changed how Virulent Plague functions in Shadowlands. To compensate for the loss of uptime of Virulent Plague, we’ve increased its duration and increased the initial AoE application, so it doesn’t require such tight grouping to maximize the targets hit.

Shadowlands - Mage Class Changes
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Hello!

Thank you for all of your continued feedback on Mage changes in Shadowlands. Below, you’ll find the latest changes in the Alpha, which includes reverting Shimmer to 2 charges, further talent tuning, and the removal of the short lived Frost and Fire Ward.

There has a been a lot of great discussion in this thread and we hope to see it continue!

Mage
  • Shimmer charge count increased to 2.
  • Shimmer cooldown Increased to 25 seconds (was 20 seconds).
    • Developers’ notes: After listening to feedback and more playtesting, we are returning both charges of Shimmer at a slightly higher cooldown cost. Our goal with the change was to bring more it inline with the other talents on the row, but in doing so, Shimmer lost a lot of its identity. If the other talents on the tier continue to underperform, we’ll look at ways we can enhance them to be more attractive options while up against Shimmer.
  • Focus Magic now also grants the caster 1% Intellect, stacking up to 8 times when their Focus Magic target critically strikes.
    • Developers’ notes: We’d like for Focus Magic to reward the caster a bit more for taking an ally friendly talent.
  • Frost and Fire Ward removed from all specs.
    • Developers’ notes: Compared to some of the other abilities, these two landed a little flat and overlapped a bit too much with each of the Barriers.

Fire Specialization
  • Alexstrasza’s Fury now also makes your next Pyroblast or Flamestrike deal 35% increased damage.
    • Developers’ notes: We’re looking to make this more competitive with the Flame On and the future Phoenix Flames replacement.

FEEDBACK: Warlock Class Changes
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Hello!

In this build of the Shadowlands Alpha, we’ve made some changes to Affliction Warlocks, based on your feedback. We want to address concerns with pet summoning, Curse of Doom, and Affliction’s single target rotation, among other things.

Thank you for all your posts!

Warlock
  • Fel Domination is now a baseline ability, learned at level 34, with a 3 minute cooldown. Fel Domination reduces summoning cast time by 5.5 seconds.
    • Summoning your pet shouldn’t be always easy, but sometimes you need a new pet in a pinch.
  • Curse of Doom removed for Affliction and Destruction.
  • Curse of Exhaustion is learned at level 58 for all three specializations.
  • Curse of Exhaustion slows the target by 50% for 8 seconds.
    • Developers’ notes: We love Curse of Doom, but it wasn’t working out well at a 60-second period. Also, we feel that Curse of Exhaustion will provide interesting choices when deciding which Curse to use.

Affliction
  • Shadow Embrace is now baseline as a part of Shadow Bolt (Rank 2), learned at level 52 for Affliction.
    • Developers’ notes: Shadow Bolt for Affliction was falling by the wayside in the rotation. This should encourage Warlocks to use it more often, and provide more gameplay while fighting a single target.
  • Unstable Affliction no longer has a limit of 1, and no longer amplifies damage on your target.
  • Unstable Affliction’s damage backlash on dispel increased substantially.
  • At level 56, Unstable Affliction is ranked up to gain an additional 5 seconds of duration.
    • Developers’ notes: This is a more of an experimental change than the rest, but we feel that Unstable Affliction is not meeting player expectations at a limit of 1. This change allows Affliction to focus more on spreading dots to many targets at once.
  • Corruption now ranks up at level 54 to gain an initial period, dealing .12 coefficient damage instantly.

Talents
  • Writhe in Agony now also causes Agony to start at 4 stacks, in addition to increasing its maximum stacks to 18.
  • New Talent: Inevitable Demise. Damaging an enemy with Agony increases the damage of your next Drain Life by 5%. This effect stacks up to 50 times.
  • Nightfall now activates slightly more often as Corruption spreads to more targets.
    • Developers’ notes: Previously, Nightfall was not occurring more often as you spread Corruption to multiple targets. This felt counter-intuitive, so we added functionality to increase its rate with multiple Corruptions. Similar to Agony, its increase is not linear, but you will see more Nightfalls multi-target.
  • Deathbolt is now a PvP talent.
    • Developers’ notes: With Unstable Affliction stacking gone, the instant burst single target damage from this felt more appropriate as a PvP talent, to act as a finisher.
  • Tongue Tied Removed. Replaced with–
  • Howl of Terror: Fears 5 targets within 10 yards for 20 seconds. Has a 1.5 second cast time and 40 second cooldown.
  • New talent: Dark Caller (in place of Shadow Embrace). Reduces the cooldown of Summon Darkglare by 1 minute.
    • Developers’ notes: This talent should allow Warlocks to specialize further into keeping lots of dots on many targets at once, and give them more room to use Malefic Rapture in that window.

PvP Talents
  • Soulshatter removes all active Corruptions, dealing 10% of their maximum HP and grants 10% Haste, stacking 5 times. Lasts 15 seconds, and is magic dispellable.
    • Developers’ notes: This talent was very under-utilized due to the heavy cost of removing all dots, so it now removes Corruption instead, and no longer generates soul shards.
  • Deathbolt now deals 60% damage equal to remaining duration of your dots, has a 0.5 second cast time, and a 45 second cooldown. Deathbolt missile is slower and more apparent.
  • Amplify Curse now affects Curse of Exhaustion, causing it to slow the target by 70%.

Demonology

Talents
  • Curse of Doom reverted to Doom, with damage increased.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Shadowlands - Shaman Class Changes started by Lumy View original post
Published on 2020-06-10 09:59 PM
91 Comments
Comments 91 Comments
  1. Alkhan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pury View Post
    Few seconds is what we have now and it works fine.
    In shadowlands pet summon is 6 seconds. It may not sound long, but in real life scenario it is HUGE. Everybody jumps down a cliff and pull next pack, while I stand still, like a retard and summon my pet for SIX FUCKING SECONDS? Nope, not gonna happen. You can shove your braindead fantasies reeealy high into your asses, Blizztards, you incompetent pieces of shit.
    Won't you get some sort of leveling perk that will reduce the cast time? It's kinda the same with druids barkskin i believe. Cooldown is longer in shadowlands but one of the leveling perks will reduce the cooldown back to it's original duration.
  1. Pury's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Daemos daemonium View Post
    I mean your not hurting blizzard in any way your only hurting your self no one in the group is gonna agree with you after you wipe them.
    Big enough shitshow may force some good changes, who knows? Just make pets unable to aggro things if they don't attack it, it had to be done 10 years a go already. Class fantasy should not be a pain in the ass ffs.

    Quote Originally Posted by Alkhan View Post
    Won't you get some sort of leveling perk that will reduce the cast time? It's kinda the same with druids barkskin i believe. Cooldown is longer in shadowlands but one of the leveling perks will reduce the cooldown back to it's original duration.
    Nothing like that so far, unfortunately.
  1. Alayea's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Venziir View Post
    I mean, I wasn't looking overly forward to Seaing Totems return, but at least it was SOMETHING(!)
    Same. (Although I'd have to laugh if, on an infinitesimal chance, they chose to bring back Windwall Totem of all things...)

    Quote Originally Posted by chiddie View Post
    Nothing about resto shamans? Still no combat ress and no big heal emergency button?
    We already have the unique ability to resurrect ourselves, so it wouldn't make much sense to give our class a combat resurrection ability on top of that.
  1. Beefkow's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lilithvia View Post
    >acting like Rogue, or Warlock are any better

    LOL. I main these three. Without a fucking doubt FW slaps the shit out of the combo point systems of any class. Any day, any time, anywhere.
    You tell FW to show up, and it'll slap the drink right out of those combo point system's hands, and into their face, followed up by a career ending gut punch.
    You could say the same thing with void spheres for spriests back in MOP. They’re all similar and share the same exact function, build up charges and spend, gets old fast. Similarly paladins with holy power and locks with soul shards.

    You could say that festering wounds is better in comparison to the other classes, I don’t know.
  1. Lorgar Aurelian's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pury View Post
    Big enough shitshow may force some good changes, who knows? Just make pets unable to aggro things if they don't attack it, it had to be done 10 years a go already. Class fantasy should not be a pain in the ass ffs.


    Nothing like that so far, unfortunately.
    It seems incredibly unlike your gonna make a movement out of getting people you run dungeons with to hate you.
  1. Danvash's Avatar
    For a multidotter, BFA affliction is terrible to play outside of single target fights, of which there are very few. You can dot up everything and still do no damage because your cooldowns aren't up. And Blizzard responded by nerfing our single target damage in every patch while leaving agony and corruption as bad as ever. It makes you wonder why most warlocks switched to demo or destro, right?

    If they insist on keeping the BFA design of affliction being the single target cooldown-reliant nuke spec, then they really shouldn't be removing UA stacking or deathbolt unless they're going to be buffing Drain Life, Agony, and Corruption substantially. Bring back malefic grasp as well. While it was boring to sit and drain in WoD and Legion, at least it allowed you to buff your own dots while you could stand and cast. Spamming Shadow Bolt for 10k hits and no interaction with any other abilities is not fun.


    PVP changes:
    Soulshatter: I'm not going to lie. Blizzard sounds absolutely clueless in the description of this change. People don't take this talent because they only have three talent slots, and it just so happens that three talents are absolutely required to stay alive because Blizzard made affliction so squishy in this expansion. If we had more talent slots, soulshatter would get some use because it is a good talent for DPS output. Putting corruption on everyone before using Soulshatter is already the optimal way to use it in your opener. Making it possible to purge (and therefore spell steal) and removing the shard generation component is what will push the talent into the garbage tier that nobody would ever pick, not the other way around.

    Deathbolt: Without UA stacking, this talent will also not be any good if we're going by the BFA design and tuning of our dots. Deathbolt is not used as a finisher because it does no damage when the target doesn't already have a lot of dots on them. It's better for affliction to just ignore someone who is at low health and let a teammate execute them or use something like an Azerite essence rather than a core ability. This is another reason why destro is way better in every way with current class design.

    5 second pet cast time:
    What a half-assed and thoughtless change. You can't do an epic battleground as Affliction or Destro and not have your pet die constantly to aoe. And Demo's pet dies constantly in PVE. If this change goes live, demo will be unplayable and Grimoire of Sacrifice will be the only option for PVP. Summoning a new pet already has a cast time that can be interrupted, and people rush to do so. Considering warlocks with out low mobility cannot escape from melee for 5 seconds at any point in the game, Blizzard's definition of impactful must mean that we are completely screwed for the rest of the game if our pet dies.
  1. chiddie's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Alayea View Post
    Same. (Although I'd have to laugh if, on an infinitesimal chance, they chose to bring back Windwall Totem of all things...)


    We already have the unique ability to resurrect ourselves, so it wouldn't make much sense to give our class a combat resurrection ability on top of that.
    Self res is useful, but imho ressing other party members would be more useful.

    Also, maybe I don’t remember well but self res cd is way higher than combat res cd.
  1. kosajk's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by chiddie View Post
    Self res is useful, but imho ressing other party members would be more useful.

    Also, maybe I don’t remember well but self res cd is way higher than combat res cd.
    we dont need to have everything just make everyone excel at something a bit
  1. chiddie's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kosajk View Post
    we dont need to have everything just make everyone excel at something a bit
    It’s not an “excel” ability, it should be baseline for EVERY healer (or none). Or at least we should have something to compensate, which we don’t (self res every 30 mins or so is not nearly as useful as ressing others every 10 mins, at least M+ side).
  1. Caperfin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mimolandia View Post
    take out the Enhancement specialization and place the tank for the shaman
    It looked like they were about to do it though.
  1. kosajk's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by chiddie View Post
    It’s not an “excel” ability, it should be baseline for EVERY healer (or none). Or at least we should have something to compensate, which we don’t (self res every 30 mins or so is not nearly as useful as ressing others every 10 mins, at least M+ side).
    but atm i can use self rez (that is not affected by all rulles other CR have) and then use engi item to rez another 2-3 ppls, tbh got couple medicore m+ to end in time this way, from my point of view its better
    Imo not everyone should have everything for instance shaman have one of the best interupts at disposal as healer, you think they should take it to keep us in line so no one actualy can interupt to much as healer? What with purge(only 2 healers can offensive dispel basicaly)? also every healer can dispell defensively only 2 things of 4 kind of debuffs in game (magic + one of curse, poison, desise depending on class) thats problem to for you? TBH i would prefer to dispell poisons instead of curses but its not that big deal in the end.
    Everything should have some strong and weak points to excel at something specific a bit more, with high emphasis on "a bit more" part
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