Enhancement changes 9.0 Discussion

[Saltysquidoon]

Eh, it's a strong argument that the MW capstone shouldn't be your sister specs filler. It really only is because enhancement has always been a weird mishmash of half executed ideas and band-aid fixes.

[Kralljin]

well we can argue about that but i dont want combo spender that hit for 50% of spamable combo builder, geez

Kinda the point why i've generally never been a huge fan of Maelstrom weapon.
Enhancement should focus on elemental empowered weapon strikes and Shocks, rather than making spells instant, which then need to hit harder than spells from an actual spellcaster for the sake of it.

Or at the very least, have some beneficial effect (you could say enhancing) rather than just straight up damage.

[kosajk]

Kinda the point why i've generally never been a huge fan of Maelstrom weapon.
Enhancement should focus on elemental empowered weapon strikes and Shocks, rather than making spells instant, which then need to hit harder than spells from an actual spellcaster for the sake of it.

Or at the very least, have some beneficial effect (you could say enhancing) rather than just straight up damage.

hmm yea maybe it could enhance next SS by 30-50% it would put it in proper place in priority
they will address it for sure with some bonuses although i dont like designing clases around bonuses from items or necks or other shit,
it should work good baseline, then a bit better with bonuses and having small twist to priority with talents :P

[Advent]

Kinda the point why i've generally never been a huge fan of Maelstrom weapon.
Enhancement should focus on elemental empowered weapon strikes and Shocks, rather than making spells instant, which then need to hit harder than spells from an actual spellcaster for the sake of it.

Or at the very least, have some beneficial effect (you could say enhancing) rather than just straight up damage.

As a compromise, I'd prefer it if they simply turned Stormstrike into Stormblast when at 5 maelstrom stacks, to bring back that ability and animation.

[kosajk]

As a compromise, I'd prefer it if they simply turned Stormstrike into Stormblast when at 5 maelstrom stacks, to bring back that ability and animation.

yea if it would work with mastery that should be enough number wise et least cause we would be spam SS all day long for next 3 years.
It would be good to also get some buff to healing spells in the same time (not sure how its scaling atm on alpha)
also MSW affecting hex is my number two post for pvp, with 1 being some actually working defensive cd

- - - Updated - - -

Maelstrom gets removed, the spec seems to be much better now, and what are we complaining?

The absence of something that was a miniscule niche, based off videos from a few shamans that back in the day went around wsg 1 shotting people with windfury

personally im complaining about
-lacking of good defensive cd,
-msw will not work on hex Oo
-MSW LB will hit for half of SS dmg
-no buff to heals
-wolfs beside generating some MSW stack dont do anything special
-searing totem, like really?
-having potential for 3x proc mechanics is not best design to tbh (MSW, storm bringer and hot hands), especially when most iconic of the 3 is also the one that deal the least dmg
-WF totem range Oo

[wushootaki]

"A totemic warrior who strikes foes with weapons imbued with elemental power."

It's primarily about Enhancing your attacks with Elemental power, the reason why Lightning bolt does more damage as Enhancement is 100% gameplay related because you're not firing off Lightning bolt off every 2 seconds, but built towards it.

That however, doesn't give it a reason why it should deal more damage as Enhancement, your Melee attacks should obviously deal more damage, not your spells.

When the maelstrom weapons mechanic first was introduced, Stormstrike was the big chunker for damage. Lightning bolt competed, and eventually outpaced due to scaling issues with double flametongue spellpower, and elemental blast buff. The idea of building into a lightning bolt, chain lightning, or heal was always the ore of the maelstrom weapon mechanic.

- - - Updated - - -

Eh, it's a strong argument that the MW capstone shouldn't be your sister specs filler. It really only is because enhancement has always been a weird mishmash of half executed ideas and band-aid fixes.

the MW capstone isn't just LB. It also used to be Elemental Blast (huge to have as an instant cast as a spellpower melee), Chain Heal ( could 4 dps certain dungeons due to the instant healing, even moreso once Healing Rain was added to the list), Healing Surge, and Hex.

Even with Hex gone, Enhancement is a glass cannon melee, and smacking things to instantly heal yourself helped make it feel different from other melee (except maybe Holy Power Pallies).

- - - Updated - - -

well we can argue about that but i dont want combo spender that hit for 50% of spamable combo builder, geez

Then spec elemental blast, and get an instant hard hitting nuke that also buffs the rest of your attacks. LB isn't the only option.

[apelsinjuice]

some big enchament updates today, sadly dont have alpha so will have to wait for other people to test it out in next patch.

[Oturanboa]

Indeed these are some awesome changes we all discussed here. I don't know if they read feedback or we just wanted correct things but i'm glad we are on same page.

I want to comment on some of the changes.

1)Stormstrike’s cooldown has been reduced to 7.5 sec (was 9 sec)
Not sure about this but i imagine it will be fine. Still hope they revert this change. I would like SS to hit as hard as possible.

2)Maximum Maelstrom Weapon stacks have been increased from 5 to 10.
This is a great change since we'd be loosing a lot "6th stack of msw" without this change

3)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.
This is a flat nerf to our base spells, something i feared would happen. I wish they kept the flat value of healing surge as good as elementals. If we wanted to spam healing surge between fights, we shouldn't be punished for having a mechanic tied to it. This is very bad change. Unless they intend to keep base spells just as good as elemental's and just let msw buff them as much as they want it to.

4)Stormbringer no longer causes your next Stormstrike to not incur a cooldown.
I can't stress enough how good this change is. I'm really happy to read this. What i really wanted stormbringer to be is; "not to be procced by anything but stormstrike" so we could have a meaningful stormstrike cooldown. We could use it twice or 3 times once the cooldown is waited so that we could have a little more control and burst over it. They did opposite of that but i'm still happy to see SS spam reduced.

5)Feral Spirits now grants one stack of Maelstrom Weapon immediately when pressed, and an additional 5 stacks over the duration of Feral Spirits.
This is a very good change. I wish they also removed elemental wolves talent. I mean they are already spirit wolves. They don't have to be elemental on top of it. They are cool enough. Added rng also ruins it. This change gives meaning to them to be good enough. If they add back strong healing they had. It would be nice.

6)Each target that you hit with Chain Lightning now both increases the damage of, and reduces the cooldown of your next Crash Lightning.
Kind of a ramp up mechanic. Not really a fan of it for sure. I guess they just add this so that people would stop saying "we dont have synergy between spells". This is what happens when you ask for things you don't really want. For all i care -now that we have chain lightning- they could just remove crash lightning. Or just make it a flat damage, instead of buffing your weapons. But i guess it is what it is and maybe i'll like this version when i play it but i'm not hopeful.

7)Windfury Totem radius increased from 12 to 30 yards.
Expected, don't see why not 40yards or more. Still want some of our abilities to drop it on chance so we don't have to waste a gcd b4 ever fight. First ability you use while you are running up to your target sets a "tone". Using frostshock and spamming SS while running to your target gives an aggressive vibe with high damage openers. Dropping buff totem or applying weapons buff and whatnot... Doesn't. This will feel like a chore in dungeons rather than making you feel like an elemental juggernout.

8)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.
QoL i guess. Nice to see they care.

9)Lightning Shield now has a 50% chance to grant you a stack of Maelstrom Weapon when it deals damage to an enemy.
This is an awesome sentence to read. I've been advocating for this for some expensions now. This is really really good. I don't cooldown of lightning shield in alpha so it could be not-so-important change unlike i imagine it to be but none the less. It's something that just makes so much sense. I have nothing to say but thank you. Even if it turns out to be shitty. Taking this step towards this mechanic rather than a gimmick they could give us is really really wonderful.

10)Flame Shock and Frost Shock have their cooldowns shortened with your current Haste.
This is rather a fix i suppose. Nice to see.

And there are also talents.

11)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.
Do we have to snapshot flameshock now? Cus it would be just bad. If it works retroactively, well it's just a flat damage increase. Take lava lash up in the priority list. Don't know how to feel about it but feels like "synergy just for the sake of it" Not really fun imo. Hope it will be outshined by something else. Only good thing on that row is elemental blast. I hope they buff the damage of it hard enough to make us use it.

12)Landslide (talent) has been redesigned and renamed to Stormfury (Passive). Each time Windfury Weapon activates, the cooldown of Stormstrike is reduced by 1 sec.
This is REAL bad no no please. Please just please don't fuck with SS cooldown anymore. Making things like this hurts us a lot when we loose uptime on targets. We already don't have any dots or cooldowns in 15-45-sec-mark. Loosing uptime on targets already hurts us more than other classes. This just adds to it. Also, stormstrike already has a lot going on for 1 spell. It's just enough. Please no more mechanix on top of it. Hot hands (similar mechanic for lavalash instead of SS) and totem mastery is on that row. This row is hell for me. I hope they add something else to this row to reduce uptime loss punishment.

13)Hailstorm (talent) renamed to Cycle of the Elements.
Another thing tied to stormstrike. Another thing to punish us for loosing uptime on boss. Please remove this. That 4th row looks like a aoe row and this talent have no place there.

14)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.

This is interesting for sure. I feel like this is a chance for frost shock to be a good burst ability like earthshock was for elemental maybe? With some pvp talents? Well i don't expect that much love but still a good thing i guess? I'm not on the alpha to test but it feels like numbers are decisive for this to be good or bad. So i'll wait what people say.

15)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.

This is something A LOT OF PEOPLE wanted. Me included. However some fellow shaman on these very forums talked me out of it tbh. Now we will need to watch for flame shock on targets and it will go up very high in priority list. Maybe clunky to use. But still, awesome to see blizzard listening to players. This really is great to see.

What's better? Hailstorm(Searing assault) Fire nova(overcharge) are on the same row for aoe. This is like... i don't know. AWESOME? This really is what talents should be all about. Maybe they could add that chain lightning change in that row instead of "cycle of the elements" rather than a base mechanic. So we could choose how we do our aoe damage. This would be awesome.

Right now, for aoe we have; Chain lightning, Crash lightning, hailstorm, fire nova. Fells like a little too much. If they could remove crash lightning from base and add it as a talent on 4th row (aoe row!) They would be really fun choises to alter our gameplay. And tbh it would be much more fluid. Crash lightning talent on 6th row also looks awkward on there. It chould just switch places with cycle of the elements (and be buried by sundering or stormkeeper hopefully)

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Some of the changes are really awesome and some of them feels like a burden. But overall it feels like they are listening to players and adressing real issues. Lightning shield change is enough to make my day. Thank you blizzard. Specially 4th row talent changes is like "we can make everyone happy" Superb addition of fire nova. I hope they will be balanced enough to accually be a choise.

But the thing is whole spec is revolving around stormstrike. It's not wrong that it does but way too much mechanics are tied to it. Getting it's cooldown reduced or removed during fight wrecks everything a little too much. If we could have "patches" of SS spam instead of every now and than, it would tenfold the satisfaction. So i again endorse making stormbringer only proc by stormstrike. This would make the class whole lot more exciting and fluid.

And of course reduce the ppm of MSW and increase damage/healing proportion of it by a lot to make it feel like a finisher. I guess i have wait for what alpha testers have to say. If numbers aren't big enough, all these won't mean anything in the end.

[Puupi]

So they finally ditched that idiotic Searing Totem idea. Good.

[Kralljin]

When the maelstrom weapons mechanic first was introduced, Stormstrike was the big chunker for damage. Lightning bolt competed, and eventually outpaced due to scaling issues with double flametongue spellpower, and elemental blast buff. The idea of building into a lightning bolt, chain lightning, or heal was always the ore of the maelstrom weapon mechanic.

I don't understand your reply.

I'm explaining why i didn't really like Maelstrom weapon, you explain that's been a core mechanic.
...Yes, i know that, doesn't mean that said mechanic causes rather weird situations because i don't think the spells from a Melee spec should flat out deal more damage than one from a caster spec.

Those cast can complement the Melee spec, but not become a cornerstone of the rotation, which needs to hit for a significant amount to feel statisying.

[Saltysquidoon]

When the maelstrom weapons mechanic first was introduced, Stormstrike was the big chunker for damage. Lightning bolt competed, and eventually outpaced due to scaling issues with double flametongue spellpower, and elemental blast buff. The idea of building into a lightning bolt, chain lightning, or heal was always the ore of the maelstrom weapon mechanic.

MW was added in wrath, EB was added in MoP and it wasn't even viable after the first raid tier. I think it's prefectly reasonable people were only talking about LB.

[Oturanboa]

I don't understand your reply.

I'm explaining why i didn't really like Maelstrom weapon, you explain that's been a core mechanic.
...Yes, i know that, doesn't mean that said mechanic causes rather weird situations because i don't think the spells from a Melee spec should flat out deal more damage than one from a caster spec.

Those cast can complement the Melee spec, but not become a cornerstone of the rotation, which needs to hit for a significant amount to feel statisying.

Not commenting on the argument but some other people share your opinion on melee/caster situation. I think it's perfectly fine for enhancement to have spells as high damage moments. For real melee classes like warriors and rogues, those moments can be (used to be) define by finisher moves and execute. I don't think stormstrike will ever fall into that category. Devs specifically said they want repeated uses of SS. So it will be a moderate damage spell in one way or another. Lava lash could be canditate with some mechanic. For me, it's not flashy enough.

I love that we have lightning bolt. It's flashy as fuck. It's the best candidate for burst for me. I love identity of shaman being in front of enhancement. I love the idea of battlemage. Building up to a strong magical attack as a melee class is fantastic and accually kind of unique atm. If anything, MSW should be buffed by a lot and lightning bolt should be devastating.

So in the end, i would like melee attacks to be a generator for our spells as the melee caster. I don't see anything wrong with it. We're shamans after all.

[Damik]

13)Hailstorm (talent) renamed to Cycle of the Elements.
Another thing tied to stormstrike. Another thing to punish us for loosing uptime on boss. Please remove this. That 4th row looks like a aoe row and this talent have no place there.

Is there a synergy in aoe situations, but only shine with Necrolord Covnenant ability.
"Blast your target with a Primordial Wave, healing an ally or dealing Shadow damage and applying Flame Shock to an enemy.
Enhancement: Your next Lightning Bolt will also hit all targets affected by your Flame Shock."

I belive this combo have a place in dungeon.
Also remember LB can be buffed by stormkeeper.
If we fit all in one moment we can create some crazy situations and this seems really rewarding.


departing from the subject, blizz really want to create somethink great, and i support them to succeed.

[Kralljin]

Not commenting on the argument but some other people share your opinion on melee/caster situation. I think it's perfectly fine for enhancement to have spells as high damage moments. For real melee classes like warriors and rogues, those moments can be (used to be) define by finisher moves and execute. I don't think stormstrike will ever fall into that category. Devs specifically said they want repeated uses of SS. So it will be a moderate damage spell in one way or another. Lava lash could be canditate with some mechanic. For me, it's not flashy enough.

I love that we have lightning bolt. It's flashy as fuck. It's the best candidate for burst for me. I love identity of shaman being in front of enhancement. I love the idea of battlemage. Building up to a strong magical attack as a melee class is fantastic and accually kind of unique atm. If anything, MSW should be buffed by a lot and lightning bolt should be devastating.

So in the end, i would like melee attacks to be a generator for our spells as the melee caster. I don't see anything wrong with it. We're shamans after all.

Viewing on Enhancement as a standalone spec, i think it that's fine, but again, looking at Shaman as a whole, it's silly.

Imagine if Balance Rotation would involve going into Cat form and doing Ferocious Bite for a Bazillion damage...wouldn't that be sort of weird compared to your standard Feral?
Or a Fire mage had some proc that allowed their Frostbolt to do a ton of damage "because they're mages after all!" is also not really fitting.


If you're choosing Enhancement, you trade your spellcasting potency for Melee capabilities, you shouldn't suddenly have hardhitting spells again via some backdoor mechanic.
Having some spells, that's fine, but those spells suddenly becoming a corepiece of your rotation?
Sorry, i disagree on that and it's one of the reasons why i've not been a fan of Enhancement for a long time.

[Nitwit]

6)Each target that you hit with Chain Lightning now both increases the damage of, and reduces the cooldown of your next Crash Lightning.
Kind of a ramp up mechanic. Not really a fan of it for sure. I guess they just add this so that people would stop saying "we dont have synergy between spells". This is what happens when you ask for things you don't really want. For all i care -now that we have chain lightning- they could just remove crash lightning. Or just make it a flat damage, instead of buffing your weapons. But i guess it is what it is and maybe i'll like this version when i play it but i'm not hopeful.

I don't think you appreciate just how slow the AOE priority was on alpha with 9s base Crash Lightning, 9s Stormstrike (with fewer Stormbringer procs due to autoattacks no longer triggering it), and 10.5s Lava Lash. If you got unlucky on Stormbringer, you'd hit Crash Lightning, hit Stormstrike, hit Lava Lash, and then be essentially done for 7+ seconds with nothing left to do but hit unsatisfying low-priority single target fillers or mouseover some Flame Shocks around.

Additionally, the Crash Lightning on-use was pathetic since it was given square-root scaling (Crash on 3 targets hit for less than Rockbiter on 1). This change can potentially allow Crash Lightning's on-use damage to be meaningful in AOE situations without simply buffing its baseline coefficient and making you want to prioritize it in single target situations over lower priority fillers. It's also not much of a "ramp up mechanic" - it's just intended to get you into the loop of Crash -> SS/LL -> Chain -> repeat without having as much dead time. Easily one of the best changes in the entire list, probably 2nd to the maelstrom cap increase.

[kosajk]

Then spec elemental blast, and get an instant hard hitting nuke that also buffs the rest of your attacks. LB isn't the only option.

yea with cd that make rotation more clunky and from what i saw its not that much of a nuke just having extra buffs, anyway they changed alot, you can see on main mmo page so im pretty happy overall with changes with one exception and still missing some deff cd

12)Landslide (talent) has been redesigned and renamed to Stormfury (Passive). Each time Windfury Weapon activates, the cooldown of Stormstrike is reduced by 1 sec.
This is REAL bad no no please. Please just please don't fuck with SS cooldown anymore. Making things like this hurts us a lot when we loose uptime on targets. We already don't have any dots or cooldowns in 15-45-sec-mark. Loosing uptime on targets already hurts us more than other classes. This just adds to it. Also, stormstrike already has a lot going on for 1 spell. It's just enough. Please no more mechanix on top of it. Hot hands (similar mechanic for lavalash instead of SS) and totem mastery is on that row. This row is hell for me. I hope they add something else to this row to reduce uptime loss punishment.

tbh i would change it to situtaional talent with usage overall that "if you are in combat and not hit target with mele attacks for 5-7 sec you get a charge of SS stacking to 2 extra attacks"
resonable power and way to get some extra dmg when you have to run out or get kitted also being talent so totally optional

[Oturanboa]

Is there a synergy in aoe situations, but only shine with Necrolord Covnenant ability.
"Blast your target with a Primordial Wave, healing an ally or dealing Shadow damage and applying Flame Shock to an enemy.
Enhancement: Your next Lightning Bolt will also hit all targets affected by your Flame Shock."

I belive this combo have a place in dungeon.
Also remember LB can be buffed by stormkeeper.
If we fit all in one moment we can create some crazy situations and this seems really rewarding.


departing from the subject, blizz really want to create somethink great, and i support them to succeed.

I didn't really understand relation between new hailstorm and your comment but i agree blizzard really seems to want enhancement to work this time. We've rarely got a 2nd pass on expensions. Feels like even a 3rd could come as a polish which makes me excited.

Viewing on Enhancement as a standalone spec, i think it that's fine, but again, looking at Shaman as a whole, it's silly.

Imagine if Balance Rotation would involve going into Cat form and doing Ferocious Bite for a Bazillion damage...wouldn't that be sort of weird compared to your standard Feral?
Or a Fire mage had some proc that allowed their Frostbolt to do a ton of damage "because they're mages after all!" is also not really fitting.


If you're choosing Enhancement, you trade your spellcasting potency for Melee capabilities, you shouldn't suddenly have hardhitting spells again via some backdoor mechanic.
Having some spells, that's fine, but those spells suddenly becoming a corepiece of your rotation?
Sorry, i disagree on that and it's one of the reasons why i've not been a fan of Enhancement for a long time.

Contrast of elemental/enhancement isn't like feral/balance now come on i think you're exaggerating a bit. We will already be using LB and shocks now. So the point is how heavy they should hit. And we -need- some hard hitter abilities, be it melee or spell damage. But i see your point and why you want it to have a stronger emphasis on melee part of the class. Just a matter of opinion i guess.

I don't think you appreciate just how slow the AOE priority was on alpha with 9s base Crash Lightning, 9s Stormstrike (with fewer Stormbringer procs due to autoattacks no longer triggering it), and 10.5s Lava Lash. If you got unlucky on Stormbringer, you'd hit Crash Lightning, hit Stormstrike, hit Lava Lash, and then be essentially done for 7+ seconds with nothing left to do but hit unsatisfying low-priority single target fillers or mouseover some Flame Shocks around.

Additionally, the Crash Lightning on-use was pathetic since it was given square-root scaling (Crash on 3 targets hit for less than Rockbiter on 1). This change can potentially allow Crash Lightning's on-use damage to be meaningful in AOE situations without simply buffing its baseline coefficient and making you want to prioritize it in single target situations over lower priority fillers. It's also not much of a "ramp up mechanic" - it's just intended to get you into the loop of Crash -> SS/LL -> Chain -> repeat without having as much dead time. Easily one of the best changes in the entire list, probably 2nd to the maelstrom cap increase.

You maybe right. I'm not on alpha and i don't accually know how it feels. It just feels like with these new 2 additions of talents, aoe is pretty much "covered" maybe they could add this as a talent on the same row but still... If you say it feels better like this, i'll believe you for now

yea with cd that make rotation more clunky and from what i saw its not that much of a nuke just having extra buffs, anyway they changed alot, you can see on main mmo page so im pretty happy overall with changes with one exception and still missing some deff cd




tbh i would change it to situtaional talent with usage overall that "if you are in combat and not hit target with mele attacks for 5-7 sec you get a charge of SS stacking to 2 extra attacks"
resonable power and way to get some extra dmg when you have to run out or get kitted also being talent so totally optional

You bet! Would be awesome amazing! %100 agree.

[Kalarm]

Viewing on Enhancement as a standalone spec, i think it that's fine, but again, looking at Shaman as a whole, it's silly.

Imagine if Balance Rotation would involve going into Cat form and doing Ferocious Bite for a Bazillion damage...wouldn't that be sort of weird compared to your standard Feral?
Or a Fire mage had some proc that allowed their Frostbolt to do a ton of damage "because they're mages after all!" is also not really fitting.


If you're choosing Enhancement, you trade your spellcasting potency for Melee capabilities, you shouldn't suddenly have hardhitting spells again via some backdoor mechanic.
Having some spells, that's fine, but those spells suddenly becoming a corepiece of your rotation?
Sorry, i disagree on that and it's one of the reasons why i've not been a fan of Enhancement for a long time.

Well I guess it's just not your cup of tea. Many of us liked old enh exactly because it's a caster that throws lightning in your face instead of far. Also, druids always had very strong spec identity so of course it would be weird to go into cat form to do big DMG. You're example is also very clunky. Enh doesn't switch into some other form, run into melee to ferocious bite and to finally go back at range in boomkin form. It just uses a spell differently. A balance druid can still dash in cat form.

[Saltysquidoon]

I like enhance's feeling of the 'spellblade' magical warrior class (it's why I main a dk). I don't necessarily agree with everything Kralljin is saying, but I do agree that the pay off for MW weapon shouldn't be elemental's filler.
At an absolute minimum blizzard should give it a new name and icon so it 'feels' more powerful and different, anything; galvanizing blast, shock, lightning flash, lightning shock, thundering bolt anything.

Here's my example, how bad would it feel If subtlety's combo point finisher was called sinister strike, Instead of eviscerate?

[Kalarm]

I'm pretty hyped for the new changes!

There is a few things that I do wonder about.

Lava lash -> Needs to be interesting by itself. We got 2 talents now for that. 1 is interesting and the other new one that feels like it will be very forgetable. It feels likes it will just be annoying and synergy just for the sake of it as someone also said earlier. I wonder if their endgame goal is to have the full row be LL focused. So you basically end up choosing how do you make your LL interesting.

SS -> I really wonder what the SB change means... Did I miss something or does that mean that we'll pretty much always have SB up for the next SS? I agree that the SS spam needs to be toned down to make SS stand out more but the way I'm understanding it, buffing SS DMG by 20-25% would do the same. Unless SS gets 2 charges now? Or if it stacks? So in the course of the CD you could end up having between 25% to 100% + DMG buff? That would make SS hit more and give us a bit more of the old chaotic burst we had? PLZ correct me if I'm wrong, to me it just feels like there will be a lot of wasted SB procs. In any case, I do think SS needs to be used less but deal more DMG per hit. Specially in order to make LB deal a bigger portion of our DMG.

MW -> Last tier of HFC set bonus, that is great! It really helped the spec a lot!

CL -> I like the interaction between the 2! It's interesting on paper. Let's see how it feels in the end.

WF -> The new stormfury thing is... interesting... I'm not sure what others mean by it hurt us, plz enlighten me. I think it may fall into a pitfall the same way tempest did at the start of legion. It builds too much on our main ability.

WF/FT -> I'm baffled it wasn't this way... It was already that way before. Guess it's a bugfix more then anything. I'd rather they just make it passive TBH. I was happy when they finally made it passive in WoD. We don't even have frostbrand now so...

Hailstorm -> Looking interesting. We'll see what DMG it does! I'm also concerned if they will buff it's base DMG a bit or if we'll really have no reason to use it other than CC situations if we don't have that talent.

Fire nova -> Nice to see it back! I'm just a tiny bit concerned that our AoE rotation could become too populated.


Overall I'm pretty happy with those changes! I really can't wait to see the notes so we know exactly what is happening. I'm repeating myself but the SB change is headscratcher for me. The change to LB's DMG too, I'm hoping that by "reduced" they mean like 25-50% and not 100%. LB DMG was too low already to be satisfying. The spec needs more synergy and not "buttons just for the sake of it". They aknowledged that and that it cool! They just need to actually deliver and not have synergies just for the sake of it.

- - - Updated - - -

I like enhance's feeling of the 'spellblade' magical warrior class (it's why I main a dk). I don't necessarily agree with everything Kralljin is saying, but I do agree that the pay off for MW weapon shouldn't be elemental's filler.
At an absolute minimum blizzard should give it a new name and icon so it 'feels' more powerful and different, anything; galvanizing blast, shock, lightning flash, lightning shock, thundering bolt anything.

Here's my example, how bad would it feel If subtlety's combo point finisher was called sinister strike, Instead of eviscerate?

I can get behind that. What I don't like about his post is how he doesn't want a spell to be a big finisher for a melee spec when for me, it's the whole point of enh.

I would of liked if let's say LB cast in melee had the crash lightning animation or something (which can't happen because we actually have crash lightning). It was always a weaker point of the spec, having a big nuke that didn't have the show for it. One of the cool thing with it tho is that you can spam it in situations where you can't melee the target.