Lava Lash, Weapon Imbues and searing flames

[Goradan]

Hey s'up folk. one thing that have been bothering me as of late is the fact that only two of our weapon imbues are currently( If barely) viable Flametongue and Windfury, While Frostbrad and Rockbitter are currently next to useless right now and as one of our core feature as a class those two imbues should be brought back into use because just having two weapon imbues at the moment is damn boring and the fact they last an hour before expiring is still annoying. Why the hell can't we have weapon imbues the last until cancelled with no ICD huh? I really feel we should and while I am talking about issues that still exist atm I'll be getting the main point of my post right now.

All of our imbue are in need of an overhaul if they are to be and remain interesting and effective and as of now they are boring as hell. One thing i was thinking about was how Lava Lash was using Flametongue to buff it and with a 4 pieces of the PvP set Frostbrand buffs the damage of Lava Lash and then I Thought to myself what if Lava Lash was removed(or rather upgraded) and replaced with an ability that deals damage based on the current weapon imbue Which I would call Elemental strike and it hits with both weapons. That way all weapon imbues would finally be effective, but first thing first here how I think that each weapon imbues should be.

Rockbitter should become a combination of the old and the new model with the removable of the threat buff. increasing physical damage by 20% while reducing damage taken by 10%

Windfury should grant a small amount of hastle and deal damage to all targets within 8 yards.

Flametongue should no longer buff spell damage but instead proc a DoT

Frostbrand should now deal damage on hit(about the same as FT) and the slow proc should no longer deal damage, slows the target by 25%

As for Searing Fire totem and Searing flame, well SFT and magma totem should become a merged totem that deals fire AoE damage at a range with a 30 sec-1 min CD and Searing flames should become a stackable buff that buffs Flametongue and Frostbrand's on hit damage by 8-40% per stack and when used with Elemental weapons then they active a stronger version of their proc(increases DoT damage by 6% for FT and adds + 5% slow for FB to the target per stack) that is guaranteed to proc base on the stacks consumed by Elemental weapons. each time FT or FB Procs the stronger Debuff will be refreshed while the weaker debuff will be replaced with the stronger( and talking about Elemental weapons then I got a list of the effects I thought should proc based on the Imbues.

Rockbitter: Deals Physical damage reduce armor by around 5-10%

Flametongue: Deal Fire damage and causes Instant proc activation and refreshes debuff

Frostbrand: Deals Frost damage causes and Instant proc activation and refreshes debuff

Windfury: Deals Nature damage and causes WF to proc and also deal nature damage to all targets.

Anyway that's it. Appreciate any feedback.

[Omanley]

Imbues from the day they were created were supposed to be long lasting buffs, not supposed to be changed regularly.
There is three specs, and with enh dual wielding the maximum of imbues that could be made use of would be 4/5.

-Flametongue is a boring +x% dmg to ele and should be something more interesting.
-If FT were to be made ele only and specifically designed for it, FB could be remade into the enh oh imbue of choice. Blizzard's ping-pong between FT and FB for our intended offhand pvp imbue is annoying

I dont think something like weapon swapping or imbue switching for different imbues will be popular. Blizz has just recently stated that imbues are not meant to be optional either, and they also want to cut down on ability bloat.
IMO, getting rid of RB and (possibly, if they dont want to go the above road suggested by me) FB is a very likely scenario.

I think blizz might originally have considered imbue switching with the UE/UF designs, but probably dumped it. They got rid of stance dancing for warriors by removing stance requirements, and streamlined poisons for rogues to get rid of weapon swapping (or does that still work?). Cant see it happening for shamans in the future, and tbh, I am glad about that. What shamans need is more streamlined and homogenisized design.

As for your imbue ideas:
WF being an aoe imbue does not sit well with me, as it is our trademark and should not be limited to aoe situations
FT proccing a dot would be fine with me for an ele only imbue. As enh though, I dont want any more dots than our Flame Shock though. We need more bursty stuff. Plus if the dot refreshes all the time through melee hits, we'll be cutting our dot constantly. It'll be impossibly hard to balance right. It'll also be problematic in conjunction with CC. That would exclude it from pvp, like Windfury.

I'm not strictly against running rb/fb in pvp, if the dps loss is minimal and the utility gain plenty. I'm just not convinced we need that. We can just stick to two good imbues, and add utility elsewhere, without creating/forcing more sacrifice/decision making.

There will always be two imbues straight up stronger than the others in terms of dmg. That's why having four dps imbue options is a waste. RB was a dps imbue all throughout vanilla, tbc, and wotlk, and not taken after wf came avaiable. It was simply not strong enough, simple as that. Trying to make four imbues very close in dmg will just confuse players as the whole FT/FB thing did, but worse even.

I think your suggestion adds a lot of new stuff (which takes time to grow accustomed to; people dont like to many changes (and that's just imbues and fire totems to boot)), while hardly explaining why we need it. Imbues are not supposed to be any more exciting than blasting the enemy with their effects every now and then. I think they are in a fine place.

I once suggested Elemental Shields as survival/utility cooldowns, but with the many new cds shamans got in MoP, that time has passed. Shields do offer to few imo/are too boring. Imbues are fine though, imo (aside from rb still being there, and fb being useless atm).

hope that helps, even though it was not positive feedback .

[Goradan]

Omanley I know your're of the top dogs here in the MMO Champ Forum so I know Positive or not, your criticism is always insightful and of value. Personally I'm against all the Homogenized view of shamans and all other classes because while the risk of the game being unbalanced is very real if all classes are all too different, I believe it is possible to do that if blizz was more committed to WoW.

Anyway getting to the main subject I believe that the imbues now have no "soul" if you catch my drift. the fact that WF and FT are your main and FB and RB are situational and even then they are sub-standard for when they are real need, Im trying to have FB and RB being equal in damage compared to FT and WF. I merely trying to say that the two "lesser" weapon imbues are too iconic to just remove and still have the potential to be of good again. WF should be about strong, unpredictable burst, FT should about dealing good consistent damage RB should be for defensive play and FB should be about keeping opponents within reach by slowing them down.

As a side note, I thought that it would be good for WF to deal AoE damage even if the damage was spit between all secondary targets especially with my ideal of Lava Lash called "Elemental Strike" because that way we would be able to have more manageable AoE. I also understand where your coming form in regard to WF as giving it AoE would damage the "soul" of the spell as it was meant for single target Dps, not AoE.
I also feel that classes as of now are forced into the role of the spec they play as. take for example in tbc, true that the xpac was still rather unbalance but at that time you could still do a little of everything but now healing form dps is now either sustained but low or nearly op burst but with a lack control.

anyway as long as people don't troll, talk crap or patronise me I don't mind non-positive constructive criticism. In fact I appreciate it be I see as it something to help me in the right direction. so you still have my thank Omanley.

[Omanley]

I share your sentiment about homogenisation. In an ideal world (of warcraft ), everyone would be a special snowflake. In classic, shamans made up for not having (good) CCs, instant gap closers or what else with stuff like...
- Earth Shock => interrupts became homogenisized
- Frost Shock => snares became homogenisized
- Purge => several others got it now, and ours got severely nerfed
- Grounding Totem => changed to be destroyed after ANY offensive spell in vanilla still ( I think). Up to that point, its advantage over spell reflect was that it could eat several non damaging spells without being destroyed, whereas SR hit the spell back, but only one, no matter which. Now GT is just an inferior SR
- Tremor => changed from a hard counter against fearing classes (and yes, I know that was kinda OP) to a short duration fear break CD, an inferior warrior's Berserker Rage. The effect on the team is nigh useless now. How often will you manage to break multiple fears with it?
- Ghost Wolf => now Travel Form is faster. There's no real advatage to it now.
- Windfury Weapon => unreal burst made meh. Other classes can outburst enh in pvp no problem (were actually pretty good through ascendence, but nothing others cant manage (warriors, hunters, rogues, mages...)
- Huge Buff variety => buffs homogenisized (others had then superior buffs), later we got our buffs to be auras too => yay for homogenisation
- Cleansing Totem => removed

To sum the above up: The years since classic have been a constant stream of homogenisation. In most cases, we were the ones negatively hit by it. It's wishful thinking (both sadly and thank god, both had their ups and downs) to get the old thing back. Ferals wont give their interrupt, or pounce, or cyclone back (for instance).
I wouldn't want to give up all the stuff we gained through it either, only that our gained tools are mostly inferior, along with the ones we kept, mostly.


I'm not strictly against adding more imbue versatility either. I think it is very unrealistic though (same with reversing homogenisation state), that blizz, with their goal to reduce ability bloat and their statement that imbues are not meant to be optional, would ever consider making rb/fb into two slightly less dps, but much more extra utility imbues.
I must say though, I dont agree on RB/FB being iconic. Tbh, FT isn't either. All the way throughout both vanilla and tbc, FT, FB and RB were of no use after you reached lvl 34 or so (w/e level it was you got windfury). Blizz forced us to use FT in wotlk, by adding so much damage bonuses to it we had no other choice, and tried (but failed) with FB. After that, they struggled between the two for pvp offhand. No real attempt was ever made to make RB into anything remotely useful.

IMO, the only iconic imbues are WF, and EL maybe (resto only, though I dont know how iconic they see it).

Blizz had a chance to make imbues iconic via UE/UF and imbue switching, but failed in implementing it. And considering how boring UE as an ability is overall, I dont think many people would want to go through such trouble.

There's two qualms I have with WF doing aoe damage:
1) It's our one iconic imbue, and it's not what it's iconic for
2) It's not a manageable aoe either, as you call it, because it is 100% rng. Rng is only useful in certain situations, and in those situations you need to be able to depend on it. Blowing passive aoe into thin air 90% of the fights does not feel awesome either, when looking back at MT being our perma fire totem of choice

I'm not sure I can agree with the "forced into their roles" point. You were forced into certain specs in vanilla:
shaman, priest, paladin, druid => healer
warrior => tank
rest => dps
You would not see rets or enhancers running around offhealing. You wouldn't see enhancers in raids at all (not in high performance ones at least). In that sense, enhance made leaps and bounds forward.

Glad my POV is appreciated. You're welcome .

[Goradan]

Thanks man appreciate your words. In being realistic about this with all the cutting down on ability bloat, I'm thinking that our weapon Imbues should become passives as much as I hate saying this because it is right now just a waste of time and space having to apply it every time. and as what I said about being forced into roles, I do believe that each class at least had some freedom in Tbc and to a lesser extend in Woltk as I have seen some tanks wearing the gear but were dps spec'ed before things when and became officially fix.

And while I do agree that Enhancement were not viable in the earlier xpac's and that we have gotten better and better at the cost of the "soul" of the spec among other things I still do enjoy playing as the spec I'm getting rather tired of how blizz (I Not ranting here) kind of ruined their own masterpiece here. Things are getting more and more homogenized and it really ruins my experience of playing the game. having the game boring but stable is just as bad as having an awesome but unstable(I.e Unbalance) games. But since Blizz mentioned that there will be two more Xpac after WoD.Then this could just be the beginning of the process of making the game better again.

But as far as I see things right now I've more or less reached a moot point in this discussion as there is nothing more to say and saying anything more would be a waste.

[AutomaticBadger]

I actually liked reading about this and thought I could put some of my own spin on changing the way thses buffs work. As it stands enhance has found what I love as a niche and that is our dps skyrockets the moment we can use all our cooldowns effectively and get stupid levels of burst who why not cater more to that chosen niche.

Things like making Haste reduce the ICD of Windfury making our haste value increase also helping us keep trend with other classes as they get more secondaries. While I always understood why the ICD was put into the game it doesn't mean that it should stay completely static.

Maybe a secondary change to Flamtongue would be making it so the damage we get for having it on the of hand is augmented by our crit levels akin to how the Chaos Bolt Warlocks use funcions. The higher the crit the more larger the damage increase will be.

Rockbiter could be swapped into a cleaving embue giving it its own niche where it can shine. As it stands it really is an ugly duckling without that much to draw it back to us. Maybe with this they can find the elusive sweet spot that they seem to have missed where swapping out for the embue actuall is a noticiable bonus to our cleaving damage. Hell maybe allowing it to simply copy a persentage of all our damage over to all argets within x would help. Just really has no real useage outside of soloing and maybe pvp but at such a high cost.

Keeping Frostbrand as a pvp embue works and maybe keeping it closely in line wih the scaling of Flametongue would help and simply reducing the amount of damage gained to compensate for a slow woul make he choice more interesting.

Then again it seems this topic is done and dusted. just my 2c

[Goradan]

I actually liked reading about this and thought I could put some of my own spin on changing the way thses buffs work. As it stands enhance has found what I love as a niche and that is our dps skyrockets the moment we can use all our cooldowns effectively and get stupid levels of burst who why not cater more to that chosen niche.

Things like making Haste reduce the ICD of Windfury making our haste value increase also helping us keep trend with other classes as they get more secondaries. While I always understood why the ICD was put into the game it doesn't mean that it should stay completely static.

Maybe a secondary change to Flamtongue would be making it so the damage we get for having it on the of hand is augmented by our crit levels akin to how the Chaos Bolt Warlocks use funcions. The higher the crit the more larger the damage increase will be.

Rockbiter could be swapped into a cleaving embue giving it its own niche where it can shine. As it stands it really is an ugly duckling without that much to draw it back to us. Maybe with this they can find the elusive sweet spot that they seem to have missed where swapping out for the embue actuall is a noticiable bonus to our cleaving damage. Hell maybe allowing it to simply copy a persentage of all our damage over to all argets within x would help. Just really has no real useage outside of soloing and maybe pvp but at such a high cost.

Keeping Frostbrand as a pvp embue works and maybe keeping it closely in line wih the scaling of Flametongue would help and simply reducing the amount of damage gained to compensate for a slow woul make he choice more interesting.

Then again it seems this topic is done and dusted. just my 2c

Thanks man I appreciate your ideas. never thought of the RB cleave but it's a cool idea although it isn't really in line with the whole concept of RB also like the thought of WF having lower ICD through haste and it was make it more valuable as a stat.

[Baracuda]

Weapon imbues should be like stances for ench and removed (passive) for ele/resto. Windfury/Flametongue/Frostbrand (or Rockbiter) chosen depending on situation instead of windfury being mandatory, like windfury mechanic made passive and instead each stance is like single-target/multi-target/... defensive? Shields should be passive auras for ele/ench and more of a choice for resto, like lightning for dps mana reg.

[Omanley]

Weapon imbues should be like stances for ench and removed (passive) for ele/resto. Windfury/Flametongue/Frostbrand (or Rockbiter) chosen depending on situation instead of windfury being mandatory, like windfury mechanic made passive and instead each stance is like single-target/multi-target/... defensive? Shields should be passive auras for ele/ench and more of a choice for resto, like lightning for dps mana reg.

Warrior stances are pretty much no brainers though:
Prot: Defensive Stance, ALWAYS
Fury: Battle Stance, ALWAYS
Arms: (the pvp spec), Berserker Stance, most of the time. Maybe Defensive Stance when heavily focused, or Battle Stance when left alone.

Imbues aren't meant to be optional, apparently, and tbh, after all these years of RB and FB being obsolete, I'd rather they'd get over with it and make WF/FB a default passive, with FB being redesigned to give us what FT currently does, with FT becoming ele only and redesigned to do something actually interesting for them.

WF icd scaling down through haste was brought up before. I'd rather see some actual influence on our playstyle though. WF is passive RNG still, and if it is just pure scaling with haste, they could always add more dmg procs here and there, or buff LB dmg (msw scaling with haste).
They should improve on LL/SF mechanic and MSW and their importance (cd refresh procs that benefit from haste for example).

Example:
Searing Flames, Melee Range
passive
Gives your melee strikes a 50%, your imbue hits a 30% and your auto hits a 15% chance to provide you with a charge of Searing Flames, stacking up to five. For each stack of Searing Flame, the damage of your next Lava Lash is increased by 20%, consumed in the process.

Lava Lash
4.0% of base mana, Melee Range
Instant, 10 sec cooldown
Requires Shaman (Enhancement)
Requires level 10
Requires Melee Weapon
You charge your off-hand weapon with lava, instantly dealing 300% of that weapon's damage to an enemy target. Damage increased by 20% with each stack of Searing Flames on you. Using Lava Lash with five charges of Searing Flames grants you the effect Scorching Whip, resetting your Lava Lashes cooldown and reducing its damage by 20%.

Searing Totem no longer produces Searing Flame, Fire Elemental has now a 50% chance on melee hits to proc them.


More haste => more imbue/auto hits => more Lava Lashes => profit
The 20% dmg reduction on LL would be as a meassure of keeping our burst in check, if at all needed. Numbers optional (including SF proc chances).

[Deleted]

just go for 2x frostbrand and freeze the shit out your target

[Deleted]

Up until 5.4 FB had a use now all i use it for is the ooze boss in AQ 40. If enhance gets a 2h spec i think that would be the perfect spot to revamp RB, another possible idea would be for LL to change dynamically depending on what imbudes you use on you OH weapon. For example if you use FT you receive normal LL if you use FB you recieve a version that does less damage but roots the target and if you use RB you apply a sunder effect or knock the target back.

[Thralk]

Imbues aren't meant to be optional, apparently, and tbh, after all these years of RB and FB being obsolete, I'd rather they'd get over with it and make WF/FB a default passive, with FB being redesigned to give us what FT currently does, with FT becoming ele only and redesigned to do something actually interesting for them.

As an Elemental spec here, I can't agree more. For better or for worse, I've never had much interest in trying out Enhancement because it seems, at first glance, very complicated with CD management. From the bounty of forum posts I've seen you make as an experienced Enhancement shaman, I get the feeling you know what the heck you're talking about, even if the points don't make sense to me due to lack of familiarity with class mechanics.

I'm really hoping that imbues become more interesting across the board, as WoD is presenting little for me to get really stoked about mechanic-wise. From a lore standpoint, I'll probably go with the Storm Elemental because...well...I like having my elementals hitting things for me. I think the one thing that could change my talent choice would be if the imbues become more interesting, either by providing some neat totem-ish buff to those nearby when they're Unleashed, or I don't know what else. With LB likely becoming static (no pun intended), I would very much like a different mechanic to breathe some life into an otherwise uninvolved spec.

Who knows, maybe I'll start working on an Enh set just to try it out.

[Skulljin]

What I don't like about Enhancement in general is that so much of their damage is nigh passive. Was hoping that this would change a bit, but I guess I was wrong.


Still, changes do not look so bad overall.

[Raiju]

What I don't like about Enhancement in general is that so much of their damage is nigh passive. Was hoping that this would change a bit, but I guess I was wrong.


Still, changes do not look so bad overall.

They're removing a lot of passive damage sources and folding them into active spells (Although it will be no difference gameplay wise because the passive argument was sorta BS, a lot of it was only relevant damage because of your interaction), so not sure what you're not seeing.

[Omanley]

With the 6.0 news we have up till now, this thread's topic gets a bump by the blues:

New stuff:
-Searing Flames: gone (much better than the crap it is atm, though personally had hopes it would turn into a actually relevant recource, blizzard's plans look pretty neat as well)
-Lava Lash: From the blue posts, it's hard to say as the numbers dont line up (its a little confusing with ll's weapon damage %, SF's bonus, FT bonus etc.), but it appears it will always deal the same damage as it does now with 5 charges of Searing Flames
-Searing Flames provided FT with extra damage. To compensate for SF being gone, FT received a buff
-The tier 16 4pc is now baseline, with an increased chance to proc (WoD leveling perk: 15% chance for your Flame Shock dots to reset LL's cd, (was 5% with tier16 4pc)
-The talent Echo of the Elements will, instead of copying a spell (lb/shocks/fire nova/elemental blast), allow the next specific spell not to incur its cooldown (Lava Lash, Stormstrike(Windstrike maybe as well(Stormblast's new name)), Fire Nova, and Shocks)
-With Static Shock gone, Lava Lash wont be able to proc it anymore. Stormstrike gets a 30% buff while LS is up though.

Personally, these changes look awesome. The liability of having LL tied to a totem annoyed me from the time it got implemented in 4.0. I guess I'm a little disappointed ST is still there though, unchanged. It's such a boring skill(but at least we are not as dependant on it in pvp anymore). Enh will be much more unpredictable in playstyle and dps bursts in pvp, nice to see.

They're removing a lot of passive damage sources and folding them into active spells (Although it will be no difference gameplay wise because the passive argument was sorta BS, a lot of it was only relevant damage because of your interaction), so not sure what you're not seeing.

We'll have to see about that. Static got folded into Stormstrike/Windstrike, but Searing Totem gets two(!) buffs, 65% and 50% (the latter through the perk). Ft also got a buff, and while WF's damage per proc got nerfed, I assume the removed icd will more than make up for it not only raw imbue-wise, but also through msw, which will cause lb/cl/eb to deal double damage with 5 charges now (another perk).

With that, we'll get quite a lot buffs in the passive department. I guess we wont know how it'll end up prior to beta, or after the first guys have their raiding gear after release.

[seasawl0l]

I agree on the frostbrand, but the rockbiter has its uses. I think the damage on frostbrand should be increased, as it will never be a choice vs flametouge at its current state in pvp and pve for ele or enh. Rockbiter saves my life more often than it should. In a pvp standpoint, rockbiter is good if you run unleashed elements; I use it all the time and it makes it hard to kill.

[Raiju]

We'll have to see about that. Static got folded into Stormstrike/Windstrike, but Searing Totem gets two(!) buffs, 65% and 50% (the latter through the perk). Ft also got a buff, and while WF's damage per proc got nerfed, I assume the removed icd will more than make up for it not only raw imbue-wise, but also through msw, which will cause lb/cl/eb to deal double damage with 5 charges now (another perk).

With that, we'll get quite a lot buffs in the passive department. I guess we wont know how it'll end up prior to beta, or after the first guys have their raiding gear after release.

The pruning is fairly even, but most of the perks buff active whereas searing totem is the only real passive increase:

Improved Flame Shock: Your Flame Shock ticks have a 15% chance to reset the cooldown of Lava Lash.
Improved Maelstrom Weapon: Maelstrom Weapon now also causes your spells to deal 20% additional damage per stack of Maelstrom Weapon.
Improved Stormstrike: Increases the damage of Stormstrike and Stormblast by 20%.
Improved Lava Lash: Increases the damage of Lava Lash by 20%.
Improved Feral Spirits: Increases the damage of your Feral Spirits by 100%.
Improved Frost Shock: Your Frost Shock spell no longer shares a cooldown with your other shock spells.

vs

Improved Searing Totem: Increases the damage dealt by Searing Totem by 50%.

[Omanley]

Perks are not the only buffs though. Baseline buffs further include:
Searing Totem: Searing Bolt damage increased by 65%. (passive damage gain)
Unleash FlameFrost/Wind no longer deals direct damage, but now increases the damage of the Shaman's next Fire spell by 40% (up from 30%). (active dmg loss)
Windfury Weapon no longer has a 3-second internal cooldown. (passive damage gain (most likely))
Feral Spirits could actually be considered to be passive. You push a button and for the next 30 seconds, there will be damage on the target. What's the big difference towards Searing Totem/Fire Elemental Totem?
Flametongue Weapon: 40% buff (overcompensates the loss of Searing Flames, as the uptime of 5 charges was like 2 seconds or so, rest of the time was build-up)

There's also a 30% buff to SS/WS while Static Shock is up, so you also missed an active dmg buff. Point is, up till the point where they fine tune in beta, we wont be able tosay much about the passive/active ratio.

[Schizoide]

Imbues from the day they were created were supposed to be long lasting buffs, not supposed to be changed regularly.

Hah! Not so much. Imbues lasted 5 minutes in vanilla.

[Raiju]

Unleash flamefrost/wind is not an active damage loss, it's moving it onto the next active spell you use. The uptime of searing flames was a lot higher as well, due to use of fire elemental 1 min / 3.5 mins uptime where it stacked to 5 a lot sooner - on top of this LL's relatively low priority meant it often was being held. TL;DR Flametongue is not an overcompensation

So still, all in all our active damage is being increased to compensate the removal of passive damage sources. It's hard to say "wait till beta" when the only thing that will cause higher % passive change is the numbers changing from current. Ofcourse they will but, right now active is the way its going outside of our pet damage.