Which Spec Deserves a Revamp? - Shaman Edition

[Futhark]

Every expansion I come back to Enhancement, hoping I will like it.

I never do, and I either play Ele or my DK instead.

[Tore]

I've been PvE enhancement since late BC. They haven't had a single coherent vision for the spec in that entire time.

-The first obvious thing is the transition from 2H windfury-driven to dualwield and spell proc dependent.
-In Wrath we were over 50% white-hit damage contribution, single target, movement-less, and AoE-less. Fire Elemental was a marginal DPS gain over Magma Totem (because we actually used magma totem on single target back then)
-In Cata it was much the same except the introduction of mastery made our spell damage more relevant than our melee hits, and they tried (and failed) to give us AoE with spreading Searing stacks.
-In Mists we were made into a pet class that depended on pet uptime and CD syncing to squeeze the damage out of our elementals.
-And in WoD they've decided that we're going to have monstrous AoE with the same single target dependence on pets but with damage scaled back.

Every expac they try to find a way to change what we do, and it never results in a real positive change from a gameplay perspective. In less than 5 years we've gone from having no AoE to the best (and soon to be nerfed) AoE, and from being kind of ehhhh on Fire Elemental to being reliant on it. Shit, in early Cata the only real benefit I brought was a ridiculously low CD interrupt.

It's evident by the frequent changes in class design that they don't know what they want Enhancement to be. Giving Enhancement a revamp would be dumb, because it gets revamped every two years and it doesn't really help at all.

[Razhiel]

I don't think the specs necessarily need an overhaul (although i do think the "Great Purge" needs to take another look at Enhance's button bloat), but what really, really bothers me is the talent tree. It's fucking horrible.

[Roamingstorm]

I feel the class should be reworked in general. If I were to think of a few things off the top of my head...

-The talents do not go hand in hand with Blizzards design philosophy of "choose what you want". There are talents that just outweigh the others greatly and I feel they missed the mark with them. A huge problem as well as most feel incredibly boring, or are rehashed old abilities just shoved into talents...There's nothing exciting with them.

-Another talent issue is that we have very few talents that change based on spec. I think Resto is the only one that has a couple changes based on being resto. Blizzard has already shown with multiple other classes that talents can change based on spec, and Shaman is a class that drastically changes between each spec.

-The class has lost its identity ever since the big homogenization changes and needs to find it. We are one of the old school hybrid classes which role was to be support DPS or healer. We have two DPS specs, with no real support abilities anymore, and we do not make up for it in DPS. Restoration has practically stayed the same.

-Talents that support being a "support DPS" feel more punishing than rewarding. For instance Conductivity.

-Totems were great when we had multiple of them to use. I appreciate the change of totems of how they are now, but I really think people do not identify Shaman now a days as "totem wielding" characters, more so the guys that shoot lightning and chain heal. The design direction should be else where, not focused on totems.

I think, and I said earlier, one major thing is that Shaman needs to re-identify itself. Blizzard needs to look at the class and think of what needs to be done. I'll continue to say this, but I feel we're the old dog that didn't learn any new tricks when homogenization rolled around. Our class has been hurt by it ever since, and the irony of it all is that we used to be the go to class to bring buffs when something was missing, and now that job landed on Hunters.

[Deleted]

Enhance for sure, Ele doesn't need a revamp it just needs its promised mobility buff.

[Selah]

Enhancement, either give them more procs to manage or make the abilities flow together better.

[shamantime]

The whole class needs some changing. I main Elemental and Restoration. I haven't played Enhancement because the overall feel seems very, can't say clunky, but clunky. Elemental deserves as much as a revamp as the other two specs because it just feels like Blizzard is very lost with the Shaman class in general.

- - - Updated - - -

I feel the class should be reworked in general. If I were to think of a few things off the top of my head...

-The talents do not go hand in hand with Blizzards design philosophy of "choose what you want". There are talents that just outweigh the others greatly and I feel they missed the mark with them. A huge problem as well as most feel incredibly boring, or are rehashed old abilities just shoved into talents...There's nothing exciting with them.

-Another talent issue is that we have very few talents that change based on spec. I think Resto is the only one that has a couple changes based on being resto. Blizzard has already shown with multiple other classes that talents can change based on spec, and Shaman is a class that drastically changes between each spec.

-The class has lost its identity ever since the big homogenization changes and needs to find it. We are one of the old school hybrid classes which role was to be support DPS or healer. We have two DPS specs, with no real support abilities anymore, and we do not make up for it in DPS. Restoration has practically stayed the same.

-Talents that support being a "support DPS" feel more punishing than rewarding. For instance Conductivity.

-Totems were great when we had multiple of them to use. I appreciate the change of totems of how they are now, but I really think people do not identify Shaman now a days as "totem wielding" characters, more so the guys that shoot lightning and chain heal. The design direction should be else where, not focused on totems.

I think, and I said earlier, one major thing is that Shaman needs to re-identify itself. Blizzard needs to look at the class and think of what needs to be done. I'll continue to say this, but I feel we're the old dog that didn't learn any new tricks when homogenization rolled around. Our class has been hurt by it ever since, and the irony of it all is that we used to be the go to class to bring buffs when something was missing, and now that job landed on Hunters.

Can't agree more.

[Sticknsquirt]

Enh is a one trick pony.. Ele will have our play in BRF along with all the other hybrid casters, but enh will just be that one trick pony meant for maybe darmac.

[seasawl0l]

Enhancement. I like to think of enhance as blizzards version of the platypus. They took aspects of a melee, a mage, and a healer and called it a day. Ten years later its still the same. Not saying its a bad thing, it just needs to be more streamlined.

[Mormolyce]

Ele could use a few tweaks. Enh is like, throw it out and start again IMO.

[Irisel]

Why only one? Our entire talent tree is terrible, and we're generally pretty behind.

[Darksoldierr]

I don't mind enhance, the class lacks utility, which would bring us up to par with other top melee classes in PvP, but other than that the spec play fine both in PvE and PvP, however ele needs a serious overhaul, that is no question

[Nyoken]

Among shaman, enhance for sure, although I don't know that it needs to be totally rebuilt. Shaman talents need a complete overhaul. Elemental needs a few tweaks beyond what a talent overhaul would bring--the #1 priority in my book is to scrap and redo elem's mastery--but I think the concepts behind the core elem spells work well.

They just remade Ele's Mastery this expansion?

[Kuniku]

Enhancement for sure, though I have some gripes with Elemental as well.

It largely comes back to nostalgia for me, with Elemental, back in the day they just had LB, just spam LB for days. So naturally I'm all for new spells, and I do kinda like the fairly simple reactionary rotation. It just bugs me that Lava Burst is such a prominant hard hitting spell, I don't feel I'm casting enough lightning! (Lava Burst is an awesome spell and I dig the mechanics and pretty much everything about it, I just think that with all the procs you spend too much time casting not lightning spells..)

Enhancement all boils down to one thing, while I can bring up seperate points such as wanting 2 hander back, and nothing feeling like it hits hard and none of the buttons excite me. It all boils down to one point, Enhancement doesn't feel like a melee spec! There are too many spells going on. You play it and feel like a spell caster who is in melee range auto attacking while casting. My suggestion has always been to take a leaf out of Frost DKs books, and have both DW and 2H as options, DW remaining as it is - as I'm sure some people enjoy it, but 2H being much more melee based, slower, harder hitting attacks, big (but not unbalanced) windfury crits and all that - keep some spells etc, but increase the melee abilities prominance, make it feel like hitting storm strike actually does something, make windfury noticable again...

[Mefistophelis]

they managed to turn enhancement into WotLK retribution... hit whatever comes out of cd and win.

[Blithe]

Both Elemental and Enhancement though I'd prefer Elemental be redesigned first if there were a choice. Restoration is somewhat fine, most of the things it needs reworked stem from inherent class design that would be fixed via a revamp of another specialization anyway.

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

I really like ele, haven't tried enhancement. I've played all healers at high level and resto shaman is def. the most boring. With some more fun healing spells with nice visuals I would like it more. The only heal I actually enjoy using is chain heal :P

[Putin-Chan]

Hopefully,

So that times change for us shamans.

[Thandrend]

I dropped enhancement after 5.4 because I hate the play style ( I know it's similar to how it used to be, but it changed enough for me to not like it.)

Not sure what's up. I'd like to see it revamped.

[Cute Chen]

I like the way Elemental plays (mostly), resto is fine too, but I haven't played Enhance since Wrath, so I can't say. I really hate how slow and simplified they made it in Cataclysm. I think the class (TOTEMS) as a whole needs a bit of a re-design and the specs can work from there.