Shaman Unpruning

[Rend Blackhand]

How are they ruining Elemental? It's going to play in pretty much the exact same way...

Impossible to make it worse.

One of the most annoying things for me switching from Legion to BFA was how Earth Shock required 60 Maelstrom for maximum damage but you could cast it with less and dump your maelstrom but then in BFA it was changed to 60 Maelstrom to cast and that's the end of it. Made it far too clunky to use for general questing.

[themaster24]

I found it to be an amazing mastery effect in Firelands, and in Throne of Thunder and some of the SoO fights. Also for Gorefiend in HfC, but one fight in an entire expansion where it really shines isn't great, and shows how things changed from WoD onwards. Basically, you need fights with phases of very heavy continuing non-spikey raid damage so the Shaman can time their CDs for when the raid is getting low and pour massive healing out for 10-15s using the strong cooldowns and mastery to generate stupid numbers. However, there aren't a lot of fights like that now, other healers can also do stuff like this, and Shaman healing cooldowns have been nerfed a fair bit over the last two expansions. Apparently having a moment of glory or two in a few fights per raid, and being thoroughly mediocre the rest of the time upsets other healers.

Basically, give Resto back the plentiful strong cooldowns, and change the fight design a bit, and Resto will be fine.

Personally, I hope they toss Cloudburst Totem in the crapper. I hate the thing.

The fundamental issue with Resto's mastery (IMO) is that it runs counter to everything that you should be doing as a healer. Generally, you are avoiding players being low hp, and when they are, it's not like every other healer is going to stop so the RSham can heal them. This makes mastery increasingly ineffective, and as not only our CD's get nerfed *cries in HTT*, but other healers get better at sniping, our mastery gets worse and worse. It's pretty much the only mastery that's worse if your other healers are good. I get the concept, be strong at bringing the raid back up, but the only way for that to really work would be for every other healer to have no such ability to do so (i.e. No Tranq, Revival, Salvation, Hymn). I wager that would not only feel bad for other healers, but bad for shamans, as it would further cement us as purely CD healers.

On the flip side of stats, Crit always provides the same healing benefit, in addition to giving us mana back. Simply and easy, no headaches about effective mastery value, and now everyone's go to stat. Glad people are starting to come to the dark side of crit ;p

[Kralljin]

Impossible to make it worse.

One of the most annoying things for me switching from Legion to BFA was how Earth Shock required 60 Maelstrom for maximum damage but you could cast it with less and dump your maelstrom but then in BFA it was changed to 60 Maelstrom to cast and that's the end of it. Made it far too clunky to use for general questing.

Worked out better down the line once MotE / Icefury became the Meta Choice.
In Legion, once you acquired the T21 2pc (which basically did what MotE did), you had to basically ensure that Lvb is your last cast before capping Maelstrom, in BfA, you gained much more leeway.

[themaster24]

Using FS in a cleave scenario isn't exactly funneling, because you are using EQ over ES, which defeats the point of funneling.
And as already said, multi dotting FS wasn't a really core strat Pre Legion, because the shared CD between ES and FS made it more difficult to manage, not to mention that it required multiple targets that lived for a prolonged amount of time to really have a pay off.

It was a niche thing before Legion, that's it.

As I said, it's benefits have been lesser and greater, but it has been a thing. The HfC trinket saw be more viable as it made FS stupidly strong and long. It saw more widespread use in Legion and continues to in BfA, with and without Lava Shock. It has, can, and will continue without the trait.

That change was a zero sum equation, it was done so that using Lvb on targets w/o FS was less punished.
Previously, you lost out on a 200% Crit multiplier, after that you simply lost on a 50% damage bonus.

Your damage on targets with Flame shock wasn't affected, it just made target switch situation slightly less bad for Elemental, which was a huge problem for Elemental until Legion.

I'm talking about simply bringing back the 50% dmg buff, not the base damage nerf they put on it to shift the damage focus around. If they slapped that 50% damage buff on right now and nothing else, that's what I'm talking about.

- - - Updated - - -

Worked out better down the line once MotE / Icefury became the Meta Choice.
In Legion, once you acquired the T21 2pc (which basically did what MotE did), you had to basically ensure that Lvb is your last cast before capping Maelstrom, in BfA, you gained much more leeway.

Eh, I'd prefer to get away from Blizz justifying how our kit works because of some talents. Although, I'd wager another part of why ES feels so bad, is the MS cap change screwed your ability to build any real extra in between reaching ES and capping.

[Kralljin]

As I said, it's benefits have been lesser and greater, but it has been a thing.

It's just a massive stretch, saying that this was an actual niche of Elemental.
It's a Dot which by nature has a huge DPET, thus it's was always technically beneficial to multi dot, but funneling wasn't a big thing for Ele until Legion / BfA.

Like sorry, that this is some big underlying "thing" of Elemental is just a stretch, it's a footnote that got blown up because of Lava shock and their 150% buff to IP.

I'm talking about simply bringing back the 50% dmg buff,

Just seems tad weird to me to reference a change that basically didn't even buff the damage of Lvb, rather than just saying "buff Lvb".

Although, I'd wager another part of why ES feels so bad, is the MS cap change screwed your ability to build any real extra in between reaching ES and capping.

I don't think the Legion ES felt was superior to the BfA one, you had more flexibility because you could technically use it earlier, but that's about it, which isn't that big of a deal in your average raiding situation.

[Balthour]

Did u guys noticed that they bring back Spiritwalker's Grace for Elemental shamans?!?!

[Kalisandra]

The fundamental issue with Resto's mastery (IMO) is that it runs counter to everything that you should be doing as a healer. Generally, you are avoiding players being low hp, and when they are, it's not like every other healer is going to stop so the RSham can heal them. This makes mastery increasingly ineffective, and as not only our CD's get nerfed *cries in HTT*, but other healers get better at sniping, our mastery gets worse and worse. It's pretty much the only mastery that's worse if your other healers are good. I get the concept, be strong at bringing the raid back up, but the only way for that to really work would be for every other healer to have no such ability to do so (i.e. No Tranq, Revival, Salvation, Hymn). I wager that would not only feel bad for other healers, but bad for shamans, as it would further cement us as purely CD healers.

It's not how healing used to work. In BC healing used to be more deliberate (aside from tank healing in some fights, which could get crazy), and it was about letting people get low if you needed to, but not letting them die, because you really needed to save mana. So you'd let them get low as you cast efficient heals into them and kept them alive and then slow brought them back up - assuming you timed it right. In Wrath it was different again, and you were spamming heals like crazy, and it was about knowing how many inefficient heals you could mix in without going OOM in the fight, and healing assignments were important because if two healers hit the same target someone else was probably dead because they didn't get a heal. I loved it, Blizzard's devs did not. Since then it's seemed that healing is a bit of a mess - the devs were talking about going back to BC's model, but they never got it right, not least because they can't resist the temptation to make every high damage phase fatal if you don't enter it at 100% health and get serious heals throughout. Also, having a bunch of specs with solid self-healing (especially at no cost, like Fury) doesn't work with this model.

The net result is that I think we won't see fights where Shamans' mastery really works. So I think you're right and does need to change, though I like it conceptually. What to replace it with though? Having suffered with the Paladin mastery (must be grouped, so to start with there aren't a lot of grouped fights, want to be in melee, but some effects treat you as ranged, ugh), I don't trust the devs to come up with something that's effective, somewhat interesting, and not gimmicky.

On the flip side of stats, Crit always provides the same healing benefit, in addition to giving us mana back. Simply and easy, no headaches about effective mastery value, and now everyone's go to stat. Glad people are starting to come to the dark side of crit ;p

Shaman's crit system is how Holy Paladins used to work, and boy did that get abused in Wrath (which is why it's a relatively minor effect for Retso). With enough Crit and the right Libram (which everyone used from one end of the expansion to the other) you could get your Holy Light cost down to half (and it was the big heal back then), until they nerfed hell out of the mana return. Stack Crit and Haste, and spam Holy Light all raid, every raid.

[Hellfury]

As I see it is pre legion elemental with Cooldown on flame shock.

[Northy]

Super happy Maelstrom is gone. Just hoping Elemental goes back to playing similarly to how it was in WotlK. I so miss beefy, chunky, healthbar obliterating Lava Bursts. In its current form, Lava Burst is pitiful.

[Tradu]

Totems and shields(that you have to reapply manually even though they're not even situationally worth swapping) can stay gone, thanks. The rest seems pretty reasonable for shaman.

[Lucavian]

The fundamental issue with Resto's mastery (IMO) is that it runs counter to everything that you should be doing as a healer. Generally, you are avoiding players being low hp, and when they are, it's not like every other healer is going to stop so the RSham can heal them. This makes mastery increasingly ineffective, and as not only our CD's get nerfed *cries in HTT*, but other healers get better at sniping, our mastery gets worse and worse. It's pretty much the only mastery that's worse if your other healers are good. I get the concept, be strong at bringing the raid back up, but the only way for that to really work would be for every other healer to have no such ability to do so (i.e. No Tranq, Revival, Salvation, Hymn). I wager that would not only feel bad for other healers, but bad for shamans, as it would further cement us as purely CD healers.

On the flip side of stats, Crit always provides the same healing benefit, in addition to giving us mana back. Simply and easy, no headaches about effective mastery value, and now everyone's go to stat. Glad people are starting to come to the dark side of crit ;p

Shaman mastery is good for what it does, which is to recover when things go sideways. Mistweaver mastery is far worse, revival doesn't even benefit from their mastery at all. Also, resto druid mastery in raids is pretty bad because not only are you buffing heals which "if your other healers are good" means you're just buffing overhealing, but it's forcing you into healing a subset of people rather than what feels more natural as to blanket the raid. So each mastery has it's pros and cons and I don't think resto shaman mastery has the largest list of cons. It does depend on your healer comp and if you're under/over healing the team as to it's value. If we had more precise tuning over our own stats this would lead to very customizable mastery tuning opportunities for resto shamans, rather than relying on RNG gear drops =\

[Segus1992]

Soooo, enhance is going back to WotLK (good)

Ele is going back to WoD (bad). I thought BFA ele was fine, minus a few dead talents. What does Blizzard think the difference is between dumping earth shock at 17 stacks of fulmination vs dumping at 60 maelstrom?

Resto is..... hopefully pending massive changes

The difference is that Lightning Bolt -> Earth Shock is one combo, rather than Lightning Bolt/Lava Burst/Chain Lightning -> Earth Shock. Point being that the entire spec doesn't build towards dumping Maelstrom on either Earth Shocks or Earthquakes, but rather have the different elements (heh) of the spec be self contained; Flame Shock -> Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt -> Earth Shock, Chain Lightning -> Earthquake.

- - - Updated - - -

Super happy Maelstrom is gone. Just hoping Elemental goes back to playing similarly to how it was in WotlK. I so miss beefy, chunky, healthbar obliterating Lava Bursts. In its current form, Lava Burst is pitiful.

Seems like that's the idea with the changes, seeing as Lava Burst isn't going to generate any resource anymore, but rather be its own culmination.

[Kralljin]

The difference is that Lightning Bolt -> Earth Shock is one combo

So it's really just a thematic thing, something that's rather subjective on top of that?
I mean, Lava burst also generated LS charges in WoD, was that the problem?

I for one, enjoyed weaving multiple Elements together.

Seems like that's the idea with the changes, seeing as Lava Burst isn't going to generate any resource anymore, but rather be its own culmination.

And i'm not sure whether this is truly a good idea.
I'm not a fan of chasing this phantom of a "hardhitting" Lava Burst when it reality it only existed during a single expansion.
In a world where said spell has a rather short cast time, short CD, (possible) charges and can randomnly reset its CD and become instant.

It "worked" (by that, i mean in only in PvP) only in Wotlk, where things like Lava Surge, Overload and charges did not exist, but i just don't see a spell that has received that much push on its frequency (at the cost of its damage) suddenly keep all of that while also dealing insane amounts of damage.

Some people want their "Elemental Chaos Bolt", but Chaos Bolt has a longass cast time, requires a rather valueable resource, cannot randomnly become instant, nor Overload for 85% of its original damage.
It gets difficult if you want it both ways.

[agittunc]

I just noticed that enhancement is getting back Windfury totem baseline. I believe that wasn't mentioned in the post for all class changes?

"10% chance to swing an additional time."

Thoughts? for me it is a fun totem to bring back. make totems relevant again!

[Schizoide]

WF totem has no cooldown so you will be casting it every time your party moves 30 yards, alongside Searing totem and Healing Stream totem, both of which have 30 second cooldowns. Three GCDs, every single fight this entire expansion.

Interesting fact, shamans haven't needed to spend multiple GCDs to drop boring passive buff totems since mid-WoTLK, when they added the totem bar. That was back in 2009.

Actually it's far worse than that. Back then WF totem had a 30 yard range and a 5 minute duration, in Shadowlands it has a 12 yard range and 2 minute duration. So you'll need to re-cast it if the target moves over 12 yards. How far we've come, gentlemen!

Seriously, though, this is truly awful-- one of the most impactful Shaman quality of life improvements in the entire history of the game is being reverted. And it is going live like this, believe that. This will not be changed. Welcome to the worst case scenario.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Totem_Bar
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Patch_3.2.0

[Kralljin]

...And they heavily lowered the skill ceiling for Icefury.

Icefury now just buffs Frost shock damage, no more resource generation.
So Long, juggling of Icefury stacks and Maelstrom cap, it was enjoyable to have some depth added to Ele.

[Craaazyyy]

That stood out to me, too. I'll be sad if Elemental loses them as Stormkeeper was the high point of Legion, and and Elemental Blast has been my favourite spell since it was introduced, and I always miss it in times (like now) when it's not worth using. I have a feeling we'll be using Icefury in Stormkeeper's place, and it's nowhere near as fun.

.

they still have both on alpha..

[themaster24]

It's not how healing used to work. In BC healing used to be more deliberate (aside from tank healing in some fights, which could get crazy), and it was about letting people get low if you needed to, but not letting them die, because you really needed to save mana. So you'd let them get low as you cast efficient heals into them and kept them alive and then slow brought them back up - assuming you timed it right. In Wrath it was different again, and you were spamming heals like crazy, and it was about knowing how many inefficient heals you could mix in without going OOM in the fight, and healing assignments were important because if two healers hit the same target someone else was probably dead because they didn't get a heal. I loved it, Blizzard's devs did not. Since then it's seemed that healing is a bit of a mess - the devs were talking about going back to BC's model, but they never got it right, not least because they can't resist the temptation to make every high damage phase fatal if you don't enter it at 100% health and get serious heals throughout. Also, having a bunch of specs with solid self-healing (especially at no cost, like Fury) doesn't work with this model.

The net result is that I think we won't see fights where Shamans' mastery really works. So I think you're right and does need to change, though I like it conceptually. What to replace it with though? Having suffered with the Paladin mastery (must be grouped, so to start with there aren't a lot of grouped fights, want to be in melee, but some effects treat you as ranged, ugh), I don't trust the devs to come up with something that's effective, somewhat interesting, and not gimmicky.

Shaman's crit system is how Holy Paladins used to work, and boy did that get abused in Wrath (which is why it's a relatively minor effect for Retso). With enough Crit and the right Libram (which everyone used from one end of the expansion to the other) you could get your Holy Light cost down to half (and it was the big heal back then), until they nerfed hell out of the mana return. Stack Crit and Haste, and spam Holy Light all raid, every raid.

Ya, that's the unfortunate situation about our mastery. There are a lot of simple things blizz could do to make our mastery better (while remaining the same idea) without even radically altering how healing is done. Make the mastery hit full effectiveness at 35-50%, make certain conditions allow a spell to get our full mastery regardless of hp, stuff like that can make it work better. Alternatively, they could do something like one of the Legion RSham traits, and give our spells a chance to drop a Mini Healing Totem, making mastery increase the effectiveness of the totem.

Shaman mastery is good for what it does, which is to recover when things go sideways. Mistweaver mastery is far worse, revival doesn't even benefit from their mastery at all. Also, resto druid mastery in raids is pretty bad because not only are you buffing heals which "if your other healers are good" means you're just buffing overhealing, but it's forcing you into healing a subset of people rather than what feels more natural as to blanket the raid. So each mastery has it's pros and cons and I don't think resto shaman mastery has the largest list of cons. It does depend on your healer comp and if you're under/over healing the team as to it's value. If we had more precise tuning over our own stats this would lead to very customizable mastery tuning opportunities for resto shamans, rather than relying on RNG gear drops =\

I'd argue that it does have the largest list of cons. RSham Mastery is the only healer mastery that is the worst stat through all PvE content. Meanwhile, Mastery is increasingly useful for every other healer for either M+ or Raid. The biggest thing about everyone else's mastery is that it under your control, while RSham, you have absolutely no control over it. No amount of reforging or personal tuning would make RSham's value mastery, as it is simple too unreliable, especially when crit heals will always give a better result and give back mana.

"RShaman mastery is good for recovering when things go sideways" The problem with this train of thought is that people only remain low for a matter of seconds in the current healing/raid climate. You will rarely get more than a few spells off before everyone is back up, making mastery kind of pointless in it's current incarnation.

- - - Updated - - -

WF totem has no cooldown so you will be casting it every time your party moves 30 yards, alongside Searing totem and Healing Stream totem, both of which have 30 second cooldowns. Three GCDs, every single fight this entire expansion.

Interesting fact, shamans haven't needed to spend multiple GCDs to drop boring passive buff totems since mid-WoTLK, when they added the totem bar. That was back in 2009.

Actually it's far worse than that. Back then WF totem had a 30 yard range and a 5 minute duration, in Shadowlands it has a 12 yard range and 2 minute duration. So you'll need to re-cast it if the target moves over 12 yards. How far we've come, gentlemen!

Seriously, though, this is truly awful-- one of the most impactful Shaman quality of life improvements in the entire history of the game is being reverted. And it is going live like this, believe that. This will not be changed. Welcome to the worst case scenario.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Totem_Bar
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Patch_3.2.0

I'm wondering if the Totem Bar will return since we're going to have all sorts of totems again.

[Schizoide]

Totem bar would certainly help, but what would be better is not unpruning those totems. All totems should have some sort of cool active effect with a real cooldown.

(The talent is fine, its purpose is to assuage people who enjoy spending a GCD every time they move 30 yards.)

If I mained a shaman I would be absolutely gutted by this change. And I'm pretty oldschool shaman-wise, I mained one in vanilla and maintained the stickied FAQ on the Blizzard shaman class forums until like 2015. So it still hurts that they're reverting that absolutely monstrous quality of life gain from 11 years ago.

[themaster24]

Totem bar would certainly help, but what would be better is not unpruning those totems. All totems should have some sort of cool active effect with a real cooldown.

(The talent is fine, its purpose is to assuage people who enjoy spending a GCD every time they move 30 yards.)

If I mained a shaman I would be absolutely gutted by this change. And I'm pretty oldschool shaman-wise, I mained one in vanilla and maintained the stickied FAQ on the Blizzard shaman class forums until like 2015. So it still hurts that they're reverting that absolutely monstrous quality of life gain from 11 years ago.

Eh, as someone who mains shaman, I wouldn't say I'm gutted until we know if we absolutely have to spend 2-4 gcd's every time we move. Then I'll be really annoyed. I'll see what information comes out today as people start playing alpha. Very curious to see how it plays out.