Shadowlands Enhance Skill Bloat

[nexellent]

thats barely any buttons tho? You really just want to play the stormstrike lottery and thats it?

[Makabreska]

I really don't see a reason why they shouldn't turn WF totem into a passive aura (also don't like Searing). It's super annoying to carry passive sticks from trash pack to trash pack and waste GCD's, while your pal DH starts immediately ass blasting mobs with eye beams.

[Biomega]

I really don't see a reason why they shouldn't turn WF totem into a passive aura (also don't like Searing). It's super annoying to carry passive sticks from trash pack to trash pack and waste GCD's, while your pal DH starts immediately ass blasting mobs with eye beams.

But muh #unpruning! I thought you wanted useless cumbersome mechanics, isn't that why Classic is so popular? MUCH CONFUSED.

[Makabreska]

But muh #unpruning! I thought you wanted useless cumbersome mechanics, isn't that why Classic is so popular? MUCH CONFUSED.

Ye, some of the class changes are pretty nonsensical, and made only to appease this crowd. Corruption for Demo and Destro, but with a cast time? Shield Block and Shield Slam for Fury and Arms, but you need a shield equipped? Dumb.

[Nzx]

All they've done with Shaman in SL is essentially retcon the last ~8 years of iterative class design and replace it with the bastard offspring of Shaman design from three or four different expansions. Unfortunately, because whoever is left designing the Shaman class at this point is useless, they didn't retcon all the pathetic spell animations they've given Shaman over the years - perhaps the class would feel less garbage to play if lightning bolt wasn't literally a blue wet noodle, if Windfury actually.. animated, if Stormblast existed and wasn't the lame Windfury "small white circle" animation stuck together 15 times...

Instead they gave us Searing Totem back which is a strictly worse version of just about every other DoT in the game, and maintenance weapon imbues that they removed years ago because, as someone said earlier, they exclusively want you to use WF MH and FT OH, so all they are doing is just making you press Windfury and Flametongue once an hour again. I've completely lost hope that Shaman DPS specs will ever be engaging or interesting again. They seem completely devoid of ideas for the class and every time they take a step forward (accepting that imbuing weapons was cool 15 years ago and isn't anymore, so WF is now a passive effect) they take two steps back (everyone loves Windfury, so lets make it almost completely invisible, do almost no damage, and exist entirely to passively generate resource). The same can be said for Elemental - getting flame shock up on multiple targets sucks, so they remove the cooldown, then revert the change an expansion later so that Ele AoE just becomes CL and EQ spam.

I think I'll just play Warrior or Mage this expansion. At least the wheels are on those classes more often than they fall off.

[Aleksej89]

blizzard is incapable of properly doing ability pruning so its better to have a "bloated" (its not) class than to risk another genocide of abilities.

[Nzx]

blizzard is incapable of properly doing ability pruning so its better to have a "bloated" (its not) class than to risk another genocide of abilities.

I don't miss a single one of the abilities that has been pruned from any of the classes I've played for the last 15 years. I don't think there's a single one of the abilities that's coming back in SL that I care about, either. Maybe Kill Shot for Hunter. People crying that the game is dead because Sentry Totem and Eyes of The Beast got removed aren't worth listening to.

[Schmilblick]

Enhancement will be worst than BFA and still super squishy in PvP.

[Beuargh]

don't know yet if we can say it's bloated, but it seems to me that there is not a lot of thoughts behind those "new" spells apart from " they want more button to press, so let's give them more button to press" ...

[Murkla]

I don't know if this is just me... So I have a question for you guys as well.
The thing is that I have mained enhancement since BC and when the legion changes came out it didn't feel as fun anymore for me. But like EVERYONE liked it better with the changes and a lot more people seems to roll enh shammy now.
I'm not saying it was perfect before legion, just that I enjoyed it more.

This looks a bit more like the old enhancement so I'm pretty excited about it and hope it will feel fun again for me.

What do you guys feel about it? Do some of you agree or am I just being crazy?

[Oturanboa]

Main reason we enjoyed it was because we could kill people. Flametongue / frostbrand upkeep was the business destroyed enhancement imo. I'm very glad to see it gone. However i'm not really excited about the toolkit we recieve. Best case scenerio; we will be very squishy and flashy version of fury warrior. Just steady damage without mortal strike.

If they could reduce the frequency of mealstrom gain dramatically and make lightning bolt / chain lightning hit like a truck, make our heal, heal like a lot.. thus making overcharge and stormkeeper awesome talents... And maybe make lightning shield give us maelstrom stacks so people would think twice to focus on us... Yea i would be excited too. But right now, things look like shit tbh.

Atm on alpha (afaik with videos i watched) every skill apart from stormstrike feels like filler. Since stormbringer resets cooldown of, stormstrike doesn't really do much damage neither... Only sundering... and ofc it won't be useful by itself.

They have to dramatically reduce proc rate of everything we have, to make them deal actual damage. Give us 1 filler like rockbiter or lava lash or whatever... Not 6 fillers. Let us use instant cast of maelstrom maybe once a minute or less and make lightning bolt empowered by maelstrom hit like a chaos bolt. So we can hang on to those maelstrom stacks and our cds for our opening. But ofc they won't do it.

Ok this is my 4th edit and this has turned into a rant
What's up with stormbringer ppm? It resets the cooldown of a 8sec cd ability and it has ppm that's so high, we never see it off of cooldown atm. It's not a fun "proc". It's something it has to proc constantly for you to be able to do anything at all. It's not a rewarding proc but a punishing "non-proc" since times it doesn't proc is less than it does. Takes the burst capability of your toon away from your hand completely... You have to stay on target to fish for stormbringer, not for burst, but for regular steady damage.

At least they got rid of "%25 more damage component" of stormbringer on alpha which is nice... This is what we get happy for now. Over the years, they just fuked enhancement with steady increase of freaking procs!! Make stormbringer 3ppm! Make it hit like a truck! FFS!

[Kalarm]

I kinda get a feeling that a lot of people commenting these days did not play Enh form BC to WoD and started during legion :-/.

The list is greatly exagerated.

GW, WF totem, lust and earth elemental are no rotational.

Searing totem is also not cast all the time. Although more then in the past since it now casted every 30s instead of 1m.

Let's compare with WoD enh

Stormstrike
Lava Lash
Lightning bolt
Chain Lightning
Frost shock
Flame shock
Unleash elements
Magma totem
Searing totem
-> Total of 9 rotational abilities

VS SL


Stormstrike
Lava Lash
Rockbiter
Lightning bolt
Chain Lightning
Flame shock
Crash Lightning
Searing totem
-> Total of 8 rotational abilities


I did put both searing and magma totems to reflect the original post. And also because you often needed to switch them when adds came in.

So now in SL, there is a few things going on. First, frost shock is doing the same base DMG as flame shock while being on the same CD (as usual). So right now, we got no reasons to cast frost shock. That might change through patches tho, it depends on their intentions towards frost shock really. If it's dmg is buffed, it would equalize with the abilities we used to have. Otherwise it will be a purely PVP/kiting tool.

Now we have crash lightning which is semi rotational and AoE. We'll see what they do with it. If it will be a ST filler or more then that.

Rockbiter... I admit, I do think they should remove it and give a better identity to lava lash. Maybe by making it spread flame shock again (Although why? I don't know since we do not have fire nova). Maybe make landslide part of LL. Just something to make it stand out.

We used to have unleash elements but I can understand not getting it back.

All around, I think we're very close to what we used to have. If they remove Rockbiter, make crash lightning semi-important in ST, it has great potential.

The bigger problem with SL enh tho is we got too many fillers right now.

Lava Lash, flame shock, frost shock (if coming back) and rockbiter are all very fillter-ish. They do not interact with much.

In WoD, lava lash would be reset by flame shock (yep, it was the inspiration behind stormbringer. Then it became a talent through hot hands since 2 reset mechanics by default would be redundant). LL would also spread flame shock to other targets (so more resets). Those flame shocks was the center point from which fire nova was triggered. There was this whole ecosystem between those abilities. Then you would have frost shock which nothing really. Searing totem was boring but it was needed for the very used liquid magma talent. Unleash elements didn't do much, it was also a bit of a filler but it actually buffed a few things. I don't remember if it was WoD but it would debuff the target and make it take more nature DMG. So it gave you a window where you wanted to cast as many LB as you could. I think ret has had a similar mechanic in legion with judgement.

SL enh doesn't seem to have too many buttons IMO. It has a problem of too many fillers.

[Teence]

All around, I think we're very close to what we used to have.

This is a huge part of my concern. One of the reasons Enhancement was converted to a builder-spender spec in Legion was to create some sort of spec identity in the form of Stormbringer procs, rather than have a spec whose main focus was plate-juggling with few satisfying payoffs. I've played the spec since WotLK, and at that time, plate-juggling was its own payoff because of where class design was situated. The issue is that class design has evolved since then. A number of specs have developed enjoyable synergies and interactions between abilities that make for satisfying gameplay - Unholy DK, Fury Warrior, Disc and Holy Priest, to name a few.

In contrast, Alpha Enhancement seems to be back to the plate-spinning days of old despite class design having moved on. It's a hybrid of pre- and post-Legion eras of Enhancement that not only don't seem to interact well with one another, but which now rely on the RNG elements of both eras (MSW pre-Legion, Stormbringer post-Legion). Rather than iterating on what was enjoyable about both eras, it seems that the devs have simply mashed the playstyles together with no regard for how the spec should feel.

I realize it's Alpha and I'm optimistic that it will get sorted out, especially because we've waited the entirety of BFA for a rework that never came. That said, if this is what they've been building to since BFA beta, then it's concerning.

[Saltysquidoon]

It's pretty safe to say at an absolute minimum LL should not be purely filler outside of talents AND talents that make RB and LL not be pure filler shouldn't compete.

[Kalarm]

This is a huge part of my concern. One of the reasons Enhancement was converted to a builder-spender spec in Legion was to create some sort of spec identity in the form of Stormbringer procs, rather than have a spec whose main focus was plate-juggling with few satisfying payoffs. I've played the spec since WotLK, and at that time, plate-juggling was its own payoff because of where class design was situated. The issue is that class design has evolved since then. A number of specs have developed enjoyable synergies and interactions between abilities that make for satisfying gameplay - Unholy DK, Fury Warrior, Disc and Holy Priest, to name a few.

In contrast, Alpha Enhancement seems to be back to the plate-spinning days of old despite class design having moved on. It's a hybrid of pre- and post-Legion eras of Enhancement that not only don't seem to interact well with one another, but which now rely on the RNG elements of both eras (MSW pre-Legion, Stormbringer post-Legion). Rather than iterating on what was enjoyable about both eras, it seems that the devs have simply mashed the playstyles together with no regard for how the spec should feel.

I realize it's Alpha and I'm optimistic that it will get sorted out, especially because we've waited the entirety of BFA for a rework that never came. That said, if this is what they've been building to since BFA beta, then it's concerning.

It's kinda hard to tell how it will ultimately feel like. I had the impression from testers that they loved the new gameplay. Also had some cringe to some videos who seem to have really no clue that MSW is not new lol.

I do agree we lack synergies, as my post said, RB, LL, shocks, etc all lack something to tie them together right now. Personally, I did prefer the gameplay of pre-legion. So even if the idea is older, I don't see it as negative. A lot of specs were more fun in the past. WoD was crazy on the plate-juggling and that needed to go / toned down. WoD was not impossible to enjoy tho. When I did the challenge modes (ilvl was scaled down remember), the flow was actually really fun. The problem was that as soon as you got good gear, you were "playing piano". Enh was about casting big powered up LB's. In legion, they made it so SS was our big identity. Now in SL, they are keeping that WITH the LB, which creates a bit of a problem. IMO, it's not that bad of a problem because at the end of the day, it just means the CD reset was moved from LL to SS but still something to look into. I do think enh needs to keep a part of RNG but it should be re-evaluated as to where it should be. The elements are known to be chaotic and RNG being part of the spec fits on that side. Paladins are orderly and their MSW equivalent is very controlled.

But yes, there is a lack of synergies and interactions right now. We can't go live and have 2 buttons you care about while everything else is basically filler. They can't really get the flame shock, lava lash and fire nova synergies back so they need to figure something out with our normal rotation. We got crash lightning now which makes our AoEing simplier.

[HCLM]

Like why u people who hate totems even play shaman. Without totems shaman would be just another mage spec...

Also totems look awesome.

[Selaira]

It's pretty safe to say at an absolute minimum LL should not be purely filler outside of talents AND talents that make RB and LL not be pure filler shouldn't compete.

My main thoughts with Enhancement. It doesn't seem that bad in theory, just would be nice if Stormstrike wouldn't be a spam fest and actually got some teeth and open some room for RB and LL to not feel like filler trash. Enhancement felt great when there was a clear rhythm to the spec. Now it's just a Stormstrike lottery and detracts, and pulls power away, from other aspects of the kit that don't feel good.

[Advent]

Like why u people who hate totems even play shaman. Without totems shaman would be just another mage spec...

Also totems look awesome.

Because the design of totems never evolved to match the game's newer design. They're not impactful or easy to maintain, nor are they powerful enough to warrant being as clumsily designed as they are. It's like everyone else moved towards using self-flying cars and we're still riding around on horses, shouting about how great the "good old days" of shoveling horse crap was.

[MakeMeLaugh]

What's up with all this people that don't like shamans being shamans discussing? No totems? Get rid of lighting bolt and chain lightning? Maybe that's the reason shaman got such a poor treatment through all these years, listening to these people.

[Super Kami Dende]

I was wondering how long until I'd see threads like this. Years of People crying about Pruning, suddenly crying about too many buttons.

Can never win.