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  1. #1

    Enhancement changes 9.0 Discussion

    So, since they are essentially bringing back Enhancement before the maelstrom buff (i can only relate it to MoP and maybe WoD).
    It seems i am going back to my old trusty enhancement since i always hated the maelstrom crap they made enhancement go with.

    Overall pretty excited. I do hope to transfer some power from procs to baseline abilities to not make it too spammy on stormstrike.

  2. #2
    Pretty mixed feelings.

    First of all: It kidna feels nice that they adressed the main problem: this expansion maelstorm was not even a resource, you could put a cd on lava lash, remove the resource, and you would hardly feel any difference in the rotation. So color me impressed when they chose to abandon the concept (instead of trying to fix the rotation) and switching to the old style (frankly its just an rng combo style system, but it adds back instant cast spells as big payoffs).

    If they chose to keep the cd reset of stormbringer, which i hope to, we will keep the best part of both worlds (feeding higher chance to trigger maelstorm weapon). All i would advocate for is a resource bar to display maelstorm stacks (which is ironic, but it would be awkward to just have it as a buff).

    Now for abilities they shared:

    Searing Totem: I hated this ability just for a single fact: it felt awkward to use it. You had to have it up wherever you were, if u moved away u needed to spend a global to do anything and it was almost invisible. The part that intruiges me is that they state that it lasts a "short duration", so if they put a cooldown on it and small duration it is abit more interesting as a small cooldown you have to think forward for.

    Elemental Blast: Fuck yes! more instant cast hard hitting payoff spells. Sign me up.

    Searing Assault: Seems interesting and could have very good payoffs (need to see the duration/cds of other abilities to give verdict).

    Hailstorm, Overcharge, Stormkeeper: Those do not excite me very much, hailstorm has some potential depending on our other spells but overcharge and stormkeeper sounds more like buttons to press and minimize rng (which doesn't rly excite me).

    Questions: There are some things that we do not know yet and could change wildly how our rotation could turn out.

    Abilities we lose: it seems pretty safe to assume we lose frostband, flametongue and rockbitter and they get replaced by their shocks, which is not so much different. Also, windfury flametongue and frostband as 1h long buffs are not really important as a gameplay aspect (mainly cause they will just provide some passive benefit).
    But what of crash lightning? our AOE is currently unknown since we only know that we will have access to chain lightning as a payoff (through maelstorm weapon). No mension yet of fire nova, crash lightning or any new ability for that matter.

    Looking at all that, i am skeptical but overall excited. Hope this time they will listen to feedback and we can have the best playstyle of both world, instead of another meh iteration.

  3. #3
    If they don't also remove Stormbringer the rotation will continue to be stormstrike spam.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Mightytasty View Post
    If they don't also remove Stormbringer the rotation will continue to be stormstrike spam.
    They did say they want to keep the repeat casts of SS.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Razgard View Post
    If they chose to keep the cd reset of stormbringer, which i hope to, we will keep the best part of both worlds (feeding higher chance to trigger maelstorm weapon). All i would advocate for is a resource bar to display maelstorm stacks (which is ironic, but it would be awkward to just have it as a buff).

    Abilities we lose: it seems pretty safe to assume we lose frostband, flametongue and rockbitter and they get replaced by their shocks, which is not so much different. Also, windfury flametongue and frostband as 1h long buffs are not really important as a gameplay aspect (mainly cause they will just provide some passive benefit).
    But what of crash lightning? our AOE is currently unknown since we only know that we will have access to chain lightning as a payoff (through maelstorm weapon). No mension yet of fire nova, crash lightning or any new ability for that matter.
    I do wonder if removing the bar altogether is the better idea. If anything, I would like for it to to still have some indication instead of just a buff. Something akin to GASP paladin holy power. Maybe they already did something cool and fancy and we just don't know it yet tho, we'll see! I do wonder how it's going to be if the focus stays on SS repeat casts (as they said) while still having the LB + CL to use MW on. Feels a bit like a WoD situation where we might end up with lots of buttons to press at the same time. Which, if it happens, could use the last WoD tier bonus that made MW stack to 10. We don't know all that much as you say, can't wait to see what it looks like on alpha!

    I hope they bring back the cooler animation for WF! The new one is so darn bad :'(.

    I do wonder what will happen to crash lighting. I wonder if we'll get both? Crash as rotational AoE while chain is our kinda bigger burst AoE? Or maybe simply a "when you're in melee, crash, if they are far and you can't get close (IE, hitting the boss and adds in the back / flying adds) use chain"?

    There is a lot of unknown right now but I'm excited to see what happens! I was not a total fan of the legion redesign and although I stuck to it (mainly because they basically ended up making it not so bad by... making maelstrom something you barely even thought about...). I was really hoping they would go back to this BC -> WoD form!

    I also wonder what will happen of LL. It used to differentiate from SS by the fact that it would reset, spread FS, etc... but now I wonder what mechanic it will have. It won't be a maelstrom dumper, obviously. Maybe it will still spread the shock but that is only useful for AoE, it brings nothing to all single target... We'll see this week I guess!

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Mightytasty View Post
    If they don't also remove Stormbringer the rotation will continue to be stormstrike spam.
    They don't see that as a problem, they even want to design the spec around that being the culminating moment.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Kalarm View Post
    I hope they bring back the cooler animation for WF! The new one is so darn bad :'(.
    Does.. current WF HAVE an animation?

    Personally I would want the old feeling of WF to return, being a random chance for a big hit (+ the animation), currently it procs too often for it to be possible for it to be a strong hit.

  6. #6
    Elemental Lord Makabreska's Avatar
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    Ye, I don't know about these changes. Using so many ele spells as melee? Chain Lightining is back? Does it mean Crash Lightning is gone? I really like current enh play style with it. And searing totem? Honestly, who thought it's a fun gameplay, when you have to drag totems everywhere you go?

    Quote Originally Posted by Segus1992 View Post
    Does.. current WF HAVE an animation?
    Yes it does, and it looks really nice.
    Last edited by Makabreska; 2020-04-08 at 12:12 AM.
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  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Makabreska View Post
    Ye, I don't know about these changes. Using so many ele spells as melee? Chain Lightining is back? Does it mean Crash Lightning is gone? I really like current enh play style with it. And searing totem? Honestly, who thought it's a fun gameplay, when you have to drag totems everywhere you go?



    Yes it does, and it looks really nice.
    Nothing will beat old windfury
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  8. #8
    Mechagnome Crysis's Avatar
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    People in alpha seriously need to let Blizzard know Shamans deserve to choose between 1H and 2H as well... I mean its only fair

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Crysis View Post
    People in alpha seriously need to let Blizzard know Shamans deserve to choose between 1H and 2H as well... I mean its only fair
    No. 2 hand was a meme in classic and quickly phased out, why on earth would they let us have it

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Crysis View Post
    People in alpha seriously need to let Blizzard know Shamans deserve to choose between 1H and 2H as well... I mean its only fair
    Considering Enhancement has an ability that's specifically used with offhand, the chances are basically nil.

  11. #11
    Kalarm, i for one do not find a problem with the stormstrike spam rotation.

    The problem we have now is that we either have that, or wait for that SS proc to happen with nothing else. What they will try to do is turn SS again into a "builder" when a chain of SS happen you actually have a payoff: a fucking load of LB or another spell in their face, and i find that pretty good.

    And yes, a bar like the one retri has seems the most plausible one (and i'm fine with that).

    As for the higher maelstorm than 5, i did not think about that and i like the idea (forgot that this even existed), could help with the old problem about overcapping maelstorm stacks.

    Lastly
    I also wonder what will happen of LL.
    Lava lash always had a place as another button to press when SS was on cd and no buff/debuff wanted renewall, i believe it will also serve the same place.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by lollerlaban View Post
    No. 2 hand was a meme in classic and quickly phased out, why on earth would they let us have it
    This is however not a reason. Have you heard of Survival Hunters?

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Razgard View Post
    Pretty mixed feelings.

    First of all: It kidna feels nice that they adressed the main problem: this expansion maelstorm was not even a resource, you could put a cd on lava lash, remove the resource, and you would hardly feel any difference in the rotation. So color me impressed when they chose to abandon the concept (instead of trying to fix the rotation) and switching to the old style (frankly its just an rng combo style system, but it adds back instant cast spells as big payoffs).

    If they chose to keep the cd reset of stormbringer, which i hope to, we will keep the best part of both worlds (feeding higher chance to trigger maelstorm weapon). All i would advocate for is a resource bar to display maelstorm stacks (which is ironic, but it would be awkward to just have it as a buff).

    Now for abilities they shared:

    Searing Totem: I hated this ability just for a single fact: it felt awkward to use it. You had to have it up wherever you were, if u moved away u needed to spend a global to do anything and it was almost invisible. The part that intruiges me is that they state that it lasts a "short duration", so if they put a cooldown on it and small duration it is abit more interesting as a small cooldown you have to think forward for.

    Elemental Blast: Fuck yes! more instant cast hard hitting payoff spells. Sign me up.

    Searing Assault: Seems interesting and could have very good payoffs (need to see the duration/cds of other abilities to give verdict).

    Hailstorm, Overcharge, Stormkeeper: Those do not excite me very much, hailstorm has some potential depending on our other spells but overcharge and stormkeeper sounds more like buttons to press and minimize rng (which doesn't rly excite me).

    Questions: There are some things that we do not know yet and could change wildly how our rotation could turn out.

    Abilities we lose: it seems pretty safe to assume we lose frostband, flametongue and rockbitter and they get replaced by their shocks, which is not so much different. Also, windfury flametongue and frostband as 1h long buffs are not really important as a gameplay aspect (mainly cause they will just provide some passive benefit).
    But what of crash lightning? our AOE is currently unknown since we only know that we will have access to chain lightning as a payoff (through maelstorm weapon). No mension yet of fire nova, crash lightning or any new ability for that matter.

    Looking at all that, i am skeptical but overall excited. Hope this time they will listen to feedback and we can have the best playstyle of both world, instead of another meh iteration.
    Pretty sure back in WoD we had echo of the elements so we can get an additional charge. Maybe bring down the stormkeeper procs to make it more in line. i personally don't mind rockbiter, flametongue and frostbrand go in place of flame shock. I always felt that enhance would have many buttons but you never get to press them.

    Also, the Aoe will come from Flameshock spread with lava lash followed by insta chain lightning + searing brand. This is more powerful then a crash lightning i would guess.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Segus1992 View Post
    This is however not a reason. Have you heard of Survival Hunters?
    Ahh yes, i always favor 2hand survival over dual wield. Wait a second...
    2 Handed enhancement is never gonna happen. It was a fucking meme build for a reason

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by lollerlaban View Post
    No. 2 hand was a meme in classic and quickly phased out, why on earth would they let us have it
    It would be fun, though. Thrall did carry around a 2h model before he had the smaller 1h Doomhammer, and it's pretty telling that people even now still desire it when the reality of it working was only alive for such a brief period - it certainly left a lasting impression that people have really latched onto and seem to identify with it.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Razion View Post
    It would be fun, though. Thrall did carry around a 2h model before he had the smaller 1h Doomhammer, and it's pretty telling that people even now still desire it when the reality of it working was only alive for such a brief period - it certainly left a lasting impression that people have really latched onto and seem to identify with it.
    The only reason people desire it is because they saw some stupid "Let the bodies hit the floor" pvp ragnaros from 14 years ago. The spec will never and can never be balanced around having dual wield and 2handers, let it die

  17. #17
    Guys, the problem with 2h is that it might have worked on classes/specs that were designed with that in mind (monk/dk). But we were not.
    If we try to make 2h work, we run into ALOT of problems. The spec is built upon procs and cds, feeds on the dual wield, and if they try to make it work as 2h, they will have the same work as building another spec from scratch.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by lollerlaban View Post
    No. 2 hand was a meme in classic and quickly phased out, why on earth would they let us have it
    It was OP because of WF and didn't have much (if anything) to but otherwise, it could be be studied. (not saying it would be easy, mind you)

    They changed how weapons work now if I remember. So now weapons are basically stat sticks more then anything. Which mean that most abilities could be used with a 2hander.

    The big thing that differentiate us with frost DK or monks is MW. THAT is the bigger problem. The weapon being much slower and only being... well, 1 of them instead 2 would mean that MW charges would go up much slower. It also means that you only use 1 weapon imbue instead of 2 which depending on the mechanics they are giving us, could be a problem. So while specs built with the idea of both can get away with tuning some numbers if you DW or 2H, enh has a lot of things to think about. MW could be like frost DK's KM and be a proc per minute thing, but there is a whole lot of things that would possibly be a problem. That's the roadblock to the idea and right now we got no idea what toolbox the spec has.

    Stormstrike is pure AP based and reset by random proc -> Can be 2H the resets need to be tuned
    Lava lash is pure AP based -> Can be 2H.
    Frost shock, flame shock, lightning bolt, chain lightning, etc etc -> Can be set to pure AP
    WF -> Pure AP but since it's 20% chance per hit, you need more of them to get to the same DMG. If dmg becomes linked to weapon DMG, might create problem of it being OP in PVP. If % to proc increase, it means SS and LL will proc it more often and thus make it do more overall dmg. Might be able to make it proc more on AA only but that could also be problematic in PVP. WF set to procs per minute? Might remove to the overall randomness and chaos enh always had.
    FT -> Pure AP, can be tuned but same issue of melee attakcs proccing it more (although to a lesser extent since it's dmg was never super high and it never did a whole lot gameplay wise.

    That's pretty much all of it. Maybe we'll see the mechanics and it will turn out to be totally possible. Until then tho... I think the mechanics would need to be seriously tuned for it to work which is a big problem for balancing.

  19. #19
    The main difference between us and DKs/monks are their resources to gameplay conversions:

    DKs have runes that charge over time and feed into runic power, Monks have energy that feeds combo points. Both of the above systems are not tied into weapon attacks, so that means they have as much freedom as they want to tune and give them their weapons.

    In contrast shamans have maelstorm (and will have maelstorm weapon stacks), which is a resource that is built upon weapon attacks (so attacks matter). Trying to decouple that resource synergy, and then rethink all the buffs/attacks/interactions is like building a new spec.
    Bear with me, not impossible, just ALOT more work than monks/dks, and it will be WAY more different than any gameplay pattern we had until now.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Razgard View Post
    Kalarm, i for one do not find a problem with the stormstrike spam rotation.

    The problem we have now is that we either have that, or wait for that SS proc to happen with nothing else. What they will try to do is turn SS again into a "builder" when a chain of SS happen you actually have a payoff: a fucking load of LB or another spell in their face, and i find that pretty good.

    And yes, a bar like the one retri has seems the most plausible one (and i'm fine with that).

    As for the higher maelstorm than 5, i did not think about that and i like the idea (forgot that this even existed), could help with the old problem about overcapping maelstorm stacks.

    Lastly

    Lava lash always had a place as another button to press when SS was on cd and no buff/debuff wanted renewall, i believe it will also serve the same place.
    Oh I don't either! I liked the early days of legion where you had those satisfying moments of spamming SS! It was fun... Although at the end of the day, it kinda felt like you were jumping around like a jedi master and doing all those fancy shit while one punch man sat next to you, poked something and did more dmg.

    Did they confirm SS will be a "builder" of LB/CL? We didn't quite run out of buttons before. It's only since legion that the only really interesting button is SS and crash lightning. I hope we get a more varied toolset of things we care about.

    When they announced the maelstrom bar I honestly thought it was a way to fine tune the generation a bit more and that it would keep the instant LB/CL mechanic. Only that now they could micro tune things more and do it so that "Ok, so LB and CL will cost 50, healing spells will cost 40, hex will cost 20" etc etc. And instead of having just very random intervals of 20, you'd have a slow ramp-up with auto-attacks and bigger procs with WF. Just so they can fine tune those things as they want instead of being stuck in complete RNG of getting 5 charges while not removing the iconic RNG of the spec.

    Yeah the overcapping was crazy at the end of WoD. We had echo of the elements so SS + LL has 2 charges. Then you had unleash elements that was pretty important to cast. Even flame shock + fire nova was important if you were in AoE. Everything was important and you had to not waste MW charges in that. The gameplay in challenge modes was pretty fun, specially with that tier bonus (gear scaled down remember), but in raids, boy was it chaotic.

    I'm not sure for LL. I don't think they like buttons that are just fillers and beside, frost/flame shocks are probably going to be those fillers now. LL often had some utility / mechanic linked to it to make it interesting. We'll see what they do with it. In WoD it actually had priority over SS because it did decent DMG and could randomly reset.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Jeed View Post
    Bing back the TBC feeling with 2 x 1h windfury! Or at least the old windfury annimation <3 i miss it :'(

    And i want flurry back, with my red glowing hands - i miss this part too. 33 % crit and then stack AP as mutch you can get.

    Nobody need this 2h meme stuff. 2 times wf, the old wf annimation and flurry.
    2X WF was bad in TBC. WF had an internal 3s CD, which means that your OH proccing it prevented your MH from proccing it. That's why WF + FT became a thing. Plus, I think blizz like the variety of it. Having to choose between FT or FB for your OH gave you... well options. Considering hailstorm is staying, I think that they are gonna prevent WF + WF from happening still.

    I do agree they need to give us back a better animation for WF. Guy earlier in the thread didn't even know WF has an animation xD.

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