Shaman Rework Theorycraft [Fanmade]

[Deleted]

PROLOGUE

I'm playing this game since vanilla and I have a "love/hate" relationship with the shaman class. Picked it back in TBC but got disappointed with how it ended up after Cataclysm.I'm making this tread because I don't think Blizzard will add a new class to the upcoming expansion and I believe they will focus on reworking the old classes.Some,including me,agree that shamans needs their biggest attention cause they lost their identity after WotLK. English is not my first language but I will give my best. Enjoy my rework on our favourite class!

GENERAL INFO

My goal is to give back the shamanistic identity focusing on the elements and totems.
Elemental and Restoration have few changes because I believe that their core mechanics/spells/rotations are just fine.Enhancement has enough changes and I also added a 4th spec.A tanking one named Earthshatter.
Where there is no tooltip assume its the same as live. Text in () are notes,text in [] are spell effects.
Where the number is 0 assume its number depends on balance.Where number is specific see notes for reason behind it.


ABOUT TL;DR:I couldnt think of a way to present this with a tl;dr version but you can read the summary of each spec in the quoted area. Im open for ideas on how to create a tldr version. Please respect my effort and don't troll with "tl;dr" messages

GENERAL SHAMAN SPELL LIST

All 4 specs have access to the spells below,except where noted.
Offensive Spells:

• Lightining Bolt
• Chain Lightning
• Flame Shock: "Sears the target with fire,causing 0 Fire damage and then an additional 0 fire damage over 30 sec.Spreads up to 4 targets."
• Frost Shock: "Instantly shocks an enemy with frost,dealing 0 frost damage and applying frost ward,reducing the target's movement by 50% for 8 sec.After that period if the enemy is within 10yards of you the ward jumps on you,healing you 0." (no access to elemental spec)
• Earth Shock: "Instantly shocks the target with concussive force, causing 0 initial physical damage and another 0 over the next 8sec" (no access to enhancement spec)
• ::NEW::Thunder Shock:"Instantly shocks an enemy dealing no damage but reducing the effectiveness of healing on that target for 8sec and giving you a burst of speed" (no access to resto spec)

(Important note,that all shocks are leaving a debuff on the target for a reason I will explain later)

Defensive Spells:

• Healing Surge
• Healing Rain
• Shamanistic Rage

Utility Spells:

• Purge
• Cleanse Spirit
• Ancestral Spirit
• Ghost Wolf
• Wind Shear
• Totemic Recall
• ::NEW::Totemic Projection: Exactly what the talent does but now as basic spell.
• Reincarnation
• Bloodlust (removed heroism from alliance.all shamans have bloodlust)
• Hex
• Grase of Air (Passive)

Totems:

• Earthbind Totem
• Tremor Totem
• Searing Totem
• ::NEW::Magma Totem
• Capacitor Totem
• Grounding Totem
• Healing Stream Totem
• ::NEW::Healing Empowerment Totem(p/h name): Summons a water totem that places a HOT on the target,every time you heal him for 5% of the amount healed,or when dealing damage,to an injured friendly target for 2% of the damage dealt (basically a mixture between monk fistweaver statue and holy priest's passive).

Elemental Pets: No longer totems. 5min CD.Each spec has its own.

• Storm elemental for enhancement
• Water elemental for resto
• Fire elemental for elemental
• Earth elemental for earthshatter (the tanking spec)

Shield Spells:Every spec has its own shield.Shields are now passive,casted at the same time you change to each spec.Undispelable. [added some flavor to the casting animation.]

• Lightning Shield for enhancement [create a thunderstorm above your head and striking the shaman with lightning]
• Water Shield for resto [summon a pool of healing waters under the shaman]
• Lava Shield for elemental [summon a volcano buffing the shaman with the shield]
• Earth Shield for earthshatter [create an earthquake under the shaman and make the shield come from the ground not the air like on live!!]

Roleplay Spells:

• Astral Recall
• Far Sight
• Water Walking

Removed Spells:

• Primal Strike (who cares?)
• Unleash elements

ELEMENTAL

Moving and casting is something that all casters suffer now so I had to respect that when planing my elemental changes.I also find the rotation funny and didn't want to mess up alot with it. My focus is on the RP and mobility. Dedicated Element is fire.

Removed Spells:

• Frost shock (see talent section for the reason behind it.Also I added some new movement spells to help for the loss)
• Lightning Shield (replaced by Lava Shield)
• Unleash Flame
• Earthquake (replaced by Volcano)

Changed Spells:

• Ascendance: "The Shaman transforms into a Fire Ascendant for 15sec. While in this form,Lava Burst has no cooldown and Chain Lightning is empowered to become Lava Beam. Upon activating Ascendance your Lava shield explodes in a 10 yards radius dealing damage depending on the stacks of Lava shield and stuning them for 2 seconds.While in Ascendance your Lava shield's passive is deactivated.
• Enhanced Chain Lightning: "Your Chain lightning and Lava Beam spells,automatically cast Earth Shock on your current target if you exceed 15 stacks of Lava Shield after the cast" (with the removal of Earthquake I had to change that talent.My logic is that during times where we cast chain lightning the Lightning shield was capping easily)
• Shamanistic Rage:Reduces all damage taken by 30% for 10 seconds. Useable while stunned. (yes its the same tooltip,just added it here to note that enhancement/earthshatter version has a passive effect too:"Passive:If you have suffered damage for 3 continuous seconds you go into a state of enrage taking 0% less damage. 10 seconds internal cd.Not affected by DoTs." With the new Lava shield having a passive effect that punishes melees would be extremely unbalanced to have a second one from Shamanistic Rage)
• Fire Elemental(same tooltip,no longer totem,acts as temporary pet)

New Spells:

• Lava Explosion:"You slam an enemy within 5 yards with your shield dealing 0 damage,applying flame shock,disengaging you for 10 yards and knocking the enemy back 10 yards.Requires shield equiped"(so basically its hunter's disengage with pro the fact that deals damage and knocking enemies and con that you need a target in almost melee range) [visually an explosion on the place of "impact" would be cool]
• Lava Shield: "The caster is surrounded by the heat of lava. When an attack hits the caster,the attacker will be burned for 0 fire damage over 3 seconds. Consecutive attacks refresh the debuff and stacks infinetely."
• Volcano: "You summon a Volcano at the targeted location for 0sec. The Volcano erupts after 1sec dealing initial fire damage,applying Flame Shock to all targets and then spit lava to the closest enemies" (I imagine Volcano like the shaman's version of cataclysm (the warlock's spell) plus I took the functionality of Liguid Magma talent (removed) and make it to the basic AoE nuke)
• Earth tunnel:The shaman becomes one with the ground,becoming immune,decreasing damage taken from dots on him,and charging to the position of an ally or an enemy. Once reaching his/her destination create an "earth spike" dealing damage and stuning the target (even if its friendly) for 1.5 seconds.The spike stays on the ground for 6 seconds making enemies having no line of sight on you" (ok im not happy with how I wrote the tooltip but im really excited about this one since until now there was no way to change the shape of the ground and to create LOS situations.The spell already exists in one of Therazane's quests and the pillar is similar to Trundle's from LOL if you need a point of referance)

Intented Rotation:

• The single target rotation remains exactly the same.As I said I like it,its funny and fulfilling.The only small difference is the removal of unleash flame and the unleash fury talent.
• The AoE rotation should be pretty simple with magma totem,volcano and chain lightning spam.

SUMMARY/TL;DR:

Replaced lightning shield with lava shield,they have the same fulmination functionality,but lava shield should be more punishing to melees. Lava explosion is an excellent disengage tool fitting the shaman RP and being the first spell that uses shaman's shield.Ascendance now stuns enemies around the shaman when casted,nice combo with capacitor totem.Frost shock is removed but Thunder Shock and Earth tunnel cover for the loss.

ENHANCEMENT

I believe that the best theme for enhancement is lightning although they still have fire for aoe and water for healing ofc.

Removed Spells:

• Lava Lash (We all remember that when we first got lava lash,we hated it. An offhand attack? Our warrior friends were mocking us (little did they knew). I dont think that LL fits the enhancement kit.Replaced by Windfury (see below))
• Unleash Elements (Another spell noone will miss. Expect for the movement speed boost.There enters the new Thunder Shock (see above) to cover the loss.)
• Fire & Earth elemental (As I said above each spec has its own elemental pet acting as shamans biggest cooldown,dealing the most damage.)
• Spirit Walk (With the added Thunder Shock shamans now trade dps for a burst of speed,exactly how the rogue's talent with the same name works.That change gives more depth and choise to the shaman.Its a 3sec buff on a 6sec cd.
• Enhanced Weapons (Some lines below you will find that I added Windfury as a new spell so the removal of this passive makes sense.)

Changed Spells:

• Ascendance: "The Shaman transforms into an Air Ascendant for 15sec. While in this form,Stormstrike becomes Windstrike,has no cooldown,refresh your shock's debuffs on the target,auto-attacks bypass armor and you are teleported to your target with each attack" (So instead of the wind attacks,now shaman mimics a protoss zealot or Zeratul's heroic ability from HotS,which I find it way more usefull and way more cooler and air-themed)
• Flame Shock: "Sears the target with fire,causing 0 Fire damage and then an additional 0 fire damage over 30 sec.Spreads up to 4 targets." (Having LL to spread the FS was a bad idea. Terrible for killing lower level mobs and another gcd. When other classes uses 1 or 2 spells we used 3 to do AOE.Maybe the cap can be removed to work as live)
• Fire Nova: "Create a ring of fire around the shaman dealing damage to all enemies.If an enemy is affected by your flame shock then a wave of flame emits dealing damage to enemies within 10 yards" 1.5sec cast time.Lowered by maelstrom weapon's stucks.(we still need flame shock spreaded for max dps,but now viable on lower lvl mobs)
• Stormstrike: You strike with both your weapons with such a force creating a thundercloud over you for 10sec.The cloud electrifies you granting an additional 25% chance to critical strike with your lightning spells.If the target is affected by your frost shock debuff small lightning strikes come down from the cloud dealing a small amount of damage to the target every 3sec. (flavor could be changed,basically i want to make stormstrike a buff instead of a debuff to work better when changing targets.)
• Shamanistic Rage: Passive:If you have suffered damage for 3 continuous seconds you go into a state of enrage taking 0% less damage.10 seconds internal cd.Not affected by DoTs.
• Shamanistic Rage: Active:Reduces all damage taken by 30% for 10 seconds. Useable while stunned. Triggers the internal cooldown of the passive once it ends.

New Spells:

• Windfury: "Al'Akir imbues your weapon making your next autoattack hit to have 100% chance of triggering three extra attacks dealing damage" (The bread'n'butter of the spec and who would disagree that this change should had been live for a long time. No more random chances.Now our hardest hiting attack.) [I would love to see the TBC graphic of windfury again instead of this bad live version]
• Storm Elemental(same tooltip,no longer totem,acts as temporary pet)

Intented Rotation: Copied from icy-veins.com and altered for the rework.:

1.Cast Storm elemental on cooldown
2.Cast Ascendance on cooldown
3.Keep searing totem up
4.Cast Lightning Bolt if you have 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon.
5.Cast Stormstrike (Windstrike during Ascendance).
6.Cast Windfury
7.Apply Flame Shock if it is not applied and refresh it when it has less than 9 seconds remaining
8.Cast Frost Shock.

SUMMARY/TL;DR:

Enhancement is my favourite spec but I hate the gcd-lock and the way we do our AoE. I focused my changes on Fire Nova,making it not needing flame shock.Also removed Lava Lash to replace it with Windfury.An air attack instead of a fire one and removing the rng of old windfury. Ascendance now makes you stick to your target,by doing small charges-autoattacks,like Zeratul on HotS.Finally I made a trade of a big movement spell (spirit walk) for a smaller one (thunder shock - check general spells)

EARTHSHATTER

Like guardian/feral druids sharing many spells,so is enhancement/earthshatter. My idea of a tank shaman is that he will equip shield/1-hand,have small block/parry stats and focus on dodge plus absorbs.
All tanking specs have a resource system (rage,holy power,energy-chi/runes-runic power) so I believe shaman should also have.His resource system is Earth Shield Charges (ESC from now on),having 9 maximum,slowly regenerating in combat and fast regenerating out of combat. Read below for more info.
I also have to warn that creating a new spec in paper is really hard and i understand that there is a big chance this wont work in-game.But I had to give it a try.

Passive Spells:

Earth Shield: "An Earthen shield protects the shaman,increasing armor by 0%,stamina by 0% and causing attacks against him to heal for 5% of maximum health for every 25% of health missing. This effect can only occur once every 6 seconds and consumes one charge for every 5% healed.A new charge is gained every 7sec.If the shaman is about to be killed,the earthen shield makes him/her immune to all damage and crowd control effects for 3 seconds and heal him/her for 10% for every charge remaining at that time. This effect can only occur every 3min." (The earth shield has maximum 9 charges and cannot be droped below 1 or dispelled.Some spells like Lava Lash and Windfury consume charges and some like Frost Shock and Healing Surge add charges.If the earth shield procs on 50% of your health will heal for 10% and consume 2 charges.If it procs on 25% will heal for 15% and consume 3 charges)
Therazane's Gift: "Earth shock now deals less damage but has no cooldown or triggers cooldown to other shocks. Also reduces the cooldown of Earth Tunnel by 0sec and no longer stuns friendly targets."
Servants of the four elements: "Small elemental servants spawn every time you cast Earth shock,Lava Lash,Flame shock,Healing Surge,Frost Shock,Windfury and Thunder Shock.Each servant assist the shaman in its own way for 10sec before it returns to the elemental plane.When a new servant is summoned add a new stack (up to 2) refreshing the duration. (works like the hand of guldan debuff)

• - Earth servants buffs shaman with rockbiter weapon that increase the damage of earth spells by 0% and giving you a shield absorbing damage depending on your Earth Shield's Charges.
• - Fire servants buffs shaman with flametongue weapon that makes each hit to cause additional fire damage.
• - Water servants buffs shaman with water ward that increase his healing done by 0% and healing taken by 0%
• - Air servants buffs the shaman with windfury weapon that increase his dodge and movement speed by 3% (I have added a number here cause that needs to be really small).

Maelstrom Weapon: "When you deal damage with a melee weapon,or getting hit by a melee attack or single target spell,you have a chance to gain an application of Maelstrom Weapon.Each application reduces the cast time and mana cost of your next Healing Surge,Healing Rain,Lightning Bolt,Chain Lightning and Fire Nova.Maximum charges at 5.Every 3 charges of Maelstrom Weapon (MWC) you gain above the limit you gain a charge of Earth Shield"
Thunderaan's Swiftness: This is the shaman version of Monk's Shuffle,only that it gives dodge,instead of parry.The buff stucks.Triggered by windfury.The more windfuries the bigger the duration of the buff.

Active Offensive Spells:

Lava Lash: "You strike with your main hand weapon dealing 0 fire damage for every stack of Earth Shield consuming 1 in the process.Summons one fire servant" (replaces Stormstrike)
Windfury: "Al'Akir imbues your weapon making your next autoattack hit to have 100% chance of triggering three extra attacks dealing damage.Also buffs the shaman with "Thunderaan's Swiftness". Consumes 3 charges of Earth Shield but gives your 2 charges of Maelstrom Weapon"
Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning: Gives 1 ESC
All four shocks
Fire Nova: "Create a ring of fire around the shaman dealing damage to all enemies.If an enemy is affected by your flame shock then a wave of flame emits dealing damage to enemies within 10 yards" 1.5sec cast time.Lowered by maelstrom weapon's stucks. (we still need flame shock spreaded for max dps,but now viable on lower lvl mobs)
Earthquake: What it does on live but instant cast,and gives two charges of Maelstrom weapon if it hits 3 targets or more.
Lava Charge: "You charge the target dealing fire damage and increasing the damage of your next fire spell by 40%" (a compination of warrior's charge and unleash flame)

Active Mitigation Spells:

Earth tunnel:The shaman becomes one with the ground,becoming immune,decreasing damage taken from dots on him,and charging to the position of an ally or an enemy. Once reaching his/her destination create an "earth spike" dealing damage and stuning the target (even if its friendly) for 1.5 seconds.The spike stays on the ground for 6 seconds making enemies having no line of sight on you" (ok im not happy with how I wrote the tooltip but im really excited about this one since until now there was no way to change the shape of the ground and to create LOS situations.The spell already exists in one of Therazane's quests and the spike is similar to Trundle's pillar from LOL if you need a point of referance)
Shamanistic Rage: Passive:If you have suffered damage for 3 continuous seconds you go into a state of enrage taking 0% less damage. 10 seconds internal cd.Not affected by DoTs.
Shamanistic Rage: Active:Reduces all damage taken by 30% for 10 seconds. Useable while stunned. Triggers the internal cooldown of the passive once it ends.
Servant Sacrifice: "Sacrifice all your active elemental servants,dealing 0 damage for each one,giving you a shield and refreshing your ESC.The shield is enhanced for each element and last 6 sec. 1min CD.

• - Earth servant sacrificed: Gives you a big absorb
• - Water servant sacrificed: Gives you a big HoT
• - Fire servant sacrificed: Gives you a big fire thorn effect
• - Air servant sacrificed: Gives you 30% chance to dodge

Ascendance: "The Shaman transforms into an Earth Ascendant for 15sec. While in this form,Earth Shield's stacks are always maximum,reduces all damage taken by 50% and you are immune to movement impairing effects"
Earth Elemental: "Summons an Earth Elemental to protect the caster taunting enemies.While the Earth Elemental is active earth servants have no cap.The Earth Elemental can cast Reinforce on the shaman giving you a shield absorbing 0 damage but no longer deals any damage"
Earthen Heal: "You instantly active 3 charges of Earth shield,healing for the same amount,without consuming the charges" (a small heal like expel harm)

SUMMARY:

Tank shaman has the armor and stamina increase that non plate tanks get and a somewhat passive heal in the form of Earth shield. His basic niche is dodging and absorbing.The earth servants gives a small amount of absorb and the air giving you a dodge-shuffle effect.Alongside with shamanistic rage,which I feel is maybe OP,the small boosts in self healing and healing recieved(water servant),instant heals from Maelstrom,two big mitigation cooldowns (ascendance and earth elemental) and two smaller (shamanistic rage active and servant sacrifice),I think that Earthshatter Shaman is more than a viable tank.
Offensively he has earth shock with no cooldown to use like monk's tiger palm,lava lash as a medium range damage ability,windfury as the big damage ability,lightning bolt to consume the maelstrom weapon charges and his other shocks.Windfury and Lava Lash though come with a drawback (exactly how heroic strike is for warriors):You can spam 3 windfuries to consume all your earth shield charges but then you lower your servants' absorbs.Let me give you an example of a typical earthshatter opener sequence:
1.Lava Charge (to reach the boss and empower your flame shock)
2.Lava Lash (1st fire servant,lava lash deals its maximum damage due to 9 charges of Earth shield)
3.Flame Shock (2nd fire servant spawns giving you extra damage with each auto-attack)
4.Windfury (You should now be at 5 charges)
5.Windfury (2 charges of ES)
6.Windfury (You should have gained by now a new charge of ES,making them 3 so you can active the last windfury.)
-.Thunderaan's Swiftness should have many seconds remaining now (not sure how many each windfury must give)
-.You now want to start creating ESC
7.Lightning Bolt (1 ESC)
8.Frost Shock (1 ESC)
-.From now you should basically
1.Wait to reach ~8 ESC to use Lava Lash (for max dps you cast it every time the flametongue buff drops)
2.Cast Windfury to refresh Thunderaan's Swiftness
3.Refresh Flame Shock
4.Cast Earth Shock (when nothing else to do)

For AOE situations (neglecting defences):
1.Lava Slam
2.Earthquake
3.Magma Totem
4.Fire Nova

Mitigation:
1.If expecting heavy damage use Ascendance (50% mitigation)
2.If expecting heavy damage but Ascendance on cd,use Earth elemental's Reinforce plus Shamanistic Rage or Servant Sacrifice or Earthen Heal (depending on the situation)
3.If expecting medium damage use Shamanistic Rage or Servant Sacrifice
4.If suffered heavy damage use Ascedance (50% mitigation) and Earthen Heal
5.If suffered medium damage use Shamanistic Rage or Servant Sacrifice or Earthen Heal or Healing Surge
6.You can completely avoid damage with a well-timed Earth Tunnel (to friend or foe) or Astral Shift (TALENT - if chosen).

Additional Notes:Ascendance is shaman's shield wall but its also an ability like monk's serenity and that is because while ascendance is active you can cast as many windfuries as you want,giving you a big thunderaan's swiftness buff duration. Also with the servants,depth is added to the earthshatter spec.You can tank a 5man heroic just pressing Earth shock for the small absorb and windfury for the dodge and damage but you can tank on a mythic progress fight by trying to have as many servants active as possible.You should be able to do that by casting inside a 20 second period 8 spells:2 earth shocks,1 frost shock and 1 healing surge,1 or 2 windfuries (if 1 WF,then cast 1 Thunder Shock),1 Flame shock and 1 Lava Lash. Hard,but not impossible!My concern is that earthshatter would be a hard-to-play-to-it's-maximum spec,that's why I gave big power (defensive and offensive)to Windfury and less power to the servants' buffs. Having to manage 9 ESC,5+ MWC and up to 8 elemental servants is way too much,but makes earthshatter shaman an easy to learn,hard to master spec imto (in my theorytical opinion :P ).

Complexity and the interaction of ESC/MWC:Even in paper this spec seems so complexed.My goal was to push enhancement (maybe the hardest spec to play on live) to its extreme.The charges of earth shield and maelstrom weapon and how they interact with the spells,how many the consume,what's the recharge time and details about all that,are really hard to be planed on paper unfortunately.

Restoration

Restoration Shamans are maybe the best spec on live and its hard to alter/give spells cause of the "rules" blizzard gave to homogenize healers.Its fine though,my goal was not to rework everything but give an identity to each spec and restoration is quite "watery" already.We have a big comeback though here

Removed Spells:

• Earth Shield
• Earth Elemental
• Fire Elemental
• Lava Burst
• Unleash Life
• Grace of Air (replaced by Totemic Bufferment,sorry for the name)

Changed Spells:

Enhanced Earthquake: "Your earthquake is now casted on your feet and follow you for the duration" (replaces Enhanced Unleash)
Enhanced Frost Shock: "Your frost shock now deals 200% more damage" (replaces Improved Riptide,added -1sec cd to the spell)

New Spells:

Water Elemental: "Summon a water elemental to assist you for 1min.The elemental mimics your healing spells,healing the most injured target near your own target.If there is no other target it will heal the shaman.The water elemental can channel Frost Prison to an enemy.5min cd." (The Frost Prison lasts 8 second,has 0 life and can be attacked by other enemies to break it early.1min cd)
Earthquake
Totemic Bufferment (p/h name): You gain eight new totems,two for each element.All the new totems are placed in a bar exactly like the one we had on WotLK.You choose which 4 you want to drop and you drop them with totemic projection.All at once.The totems are (names are placeholders)
1.Earth Totems: Stats Totem,Stamina Totem
2.Fire Totems: Critical Totem,Spell power/Attack power Totem
3.Water Totems: Mastery Totem,Versatility Totem
4.Air Totems: Multistrike Totem,Haste Totem

SUMMARY/TL;DR:

Poor stuff here. The biggest thing I wanted to do with restoration shaman was to return the buffer feel we had back in TBC and WotLK.So Resto only shamans will have the ability to offer 4 buffs.It may be inbalanced in some ways but i just believe that at least on spec of shaman deserves to be the buffer spec.Hunters offer 2 buffs at a time of their choise.Buffs feel so unimportant right now that I dont think that would make shaman TBC-overpowered again.Instead of being just passive we could have an epic quest-line,like the warlock one,that will activate that passive for us. I am also conserned about the removal of Lava Burst that's why I added more damage to Frost Shock to compensate.

TALENTS

TIER 1:Defensive Abilities.

I think this tier is decent.Nature's Guardian is a good passive ability,Stone bulwark adds an absorb to our toolkit which is nice.My only problem is the current dominant choise of Astral Shift cause it's not doing anything different from stone bulwark and it's boring.Good but boring.
NEW TALENT: Astral Shift: "Leave your psysical body and enter the astral planes for 3 seconds. During that time you are immune to all damage."

TIER 2:Movement Abilities.

I think this tier is really good.I wouldnt change anything.

TIER 3:Totemic Abilities.

Call of the elements is good. Totemic Projection is something I added as a baseline spell. Totemic Persistence I dont like at all. So we need 2 new choises here.
NEW TALENT:Totemic Might: "Your baseline totems gain 0% of your max health and are lasting longer."
NEW TALENT:Totemic Empowerment: "Four of your baseline totems gain new abilities additional to their original." (tremor is castable while feared,magma's radius is bigger,grounding reflects the spell,healing stream adds a HoT)
(In my mind all 3 choices are really good for both pve and pvp)

TIER 4:Improved Performance Abilities.
Removed Ancestral Swiftness,replaced with Elemental Blast.

TIER 5:Healing Abilities.
With my revamped tier 3 talents I believe rushing stream would be the default choise,with ancestral guidance being better for fights with a burst phace.
CHANGED TALENT:Conductivity(elemental/enhancement/earthshatter): "Your Lightning Bolt,Chain Lightning,Shocks and Windfury increase the duration and the area of your Healing Rain,up to 30 sec and 60yards"
CHANGED TALENT:Conductivity(Restoration): "Healing Rain now heals for 0% more,its duration is increased to 30 sec.Cooldown 15sec"

TIER 6:Quoting icy-veins "Tier 6 talents have been designed to improve your performance." but we already have that niche on tier 4. I would describe this tier as "gameplay change abilities"
Unleashed Fury is replaced by "Elemental Shock Convergence" (p/h name)
NEW TALENT: Elemental Shock Convergence: "Your shocks gain interaction with each other.Casting a shock on a target already affected with one of your own shocks,adds a new effect to casted shock.See individual shock for details"
(Note: Here is the explanation why I wanted every shock to have a debuff on the target. Depending on what shock your target is debuffed with,a new shock of different type would create additional effects.Since I dumped down the other two choices of this tier making the gameplay more easy I wanted a choice for the high skill capped pvper.Maybe something like empowered judgment of paladins.Note also that since flame shock has big duration all of its interactions are consuming it.)
Here are the examples:first shock applied <-- second shock applied. If this could chain,depends on balance.
Flame shock <-- frost shock:Consumes the remaining damage,converting it to self heal
Flame shock <-- thunder shock:Consumes the remaining damage dealing it instant
Flame shock <-- earth shock:Consumes the remaining damage giving you a shield of the same amount
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frost shock <-- flame shock:Consume the slow effect,healing the shaman for 0 over 0sec
Frost shock <-- thunder shock:Consume the slow effect,stuning the target for the remaining duration of the slow (with lots of haste that would be around 3 seconds,not THAT OP,and affected by DR,would make it worth only once)
Frost shock <-- earth shock:Consume the slow effect,giving you a shield that would fully absorb one spell or one special attack for 4sec
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Earth shock <-- frost shock:Stun the target for 3sec (enhance doesn't have access to earth shock,elemental to frost shock and resto to thunder shock so only earthshatter (has all 4) has double stun combo (earth-frost,frost-thunder)
Earth shock <-- thunder shock:Refreshes the duration of earth shock's dot and create a small crate under the target slowing it by 20% for 3 sec
Earth shock <-- flame shock:Creates a firey armor around your enemy,dealing fire damage around him,to all his allies for the duration of flame shock
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thunder shock <-- frost shock:gives you a 10 second buff,making heals 10% more effective on you
Thunder shock <-- earth shock:doubles the effect of the earth shock's dot
Thunder shock <-- flame shock:flame shock now spreads to all targets within 15 yards of your target
For Restoration,it might remove Riptide's cooldown additionally to the shocks effects

CHANGED TALENT:Primal Elementalist: Permanent nerfed versions of our elementals.1 for each spec as mentioned above.
NEW TALENT:Greater Ascendance (p/h name): Permanent Ascendance form. Nerfed to compensate for the damage.Should be the dominant choise for single target pve fights.

TIER 7: Removed all Three Choises.Replaced by four new.Spec in parenthesis DOES NOT HAVE ACCESS to the specific talent.Here we embrace the hybrid nature of shamans.
(Earthshatter)Therazane's Might:Shamanistic Rage now has an additional passive effect:If you have suffered damage for 3 continuous seconds you go into a state of enrage doing 5% more damage for 3 seconds. 10seconds internal cd.Not affected by DoTs.Removes friendly damage from Earth Tunnel.Also you have 5% more Stamina.
(Restoration)Neptulon's Wisdom:Your Healing Surge is replaced by Chain Surge. Chain Surge is a more effective chain heal with the cast time and mana cost of Healing Surge.Also you have 10% more versatility.
(elemental)Ragnaros' Fury:Lightning bolt and Chain lightning is replaced by Lava burst and Lava Beam for restoration.For enhancement/earthshatter Windfury is replaced by Hand of Ragnaros. HoR deals the same damage but cleaves a second target for 50% of the amount.Also your fire totems last 5mins.
(enhancement)Al'Akir's Swiftness:You move 10% faster at all times.Lowers the cooldown of air totems by 5 seconds.Also you have 3% more haste and 2% more multistrike.
Hard tier to balance but pretty cool theorycrafting-wise

GLYPHS

I would love to see a minor glyph making ghost wolves become a single one,bigger one,doing the same damage and...be mountable only by shaman (like thrall in w3)
A glyph that would make the passive shields to deal no damage to enemies.A glyph to solo old content without the shield killing the mobs.

EPILOGUE

Thank you for reading all this wall of text. I hope you understand that this is all theory,some things are surely OP,some might not. My goal is to make Blizzard aware that shamans need a rework so bad.

[Ogudei]

I read all of that. No.

[wordup]

I read the parts relevant to myself (Enhancement) and I found you added unnecessary, convoluted design ideas that had unusually awkward interactions/balance issues concerning how they operate. They also change some really core things without really adding anything other than more buttons to press that won't feel better to use.

Another concern is your suggestion to make Ascendance TP us to the target, that is in every way, fundamentally worse than what Ascendance currently grants us. Porting repeatedly leads it to having the issues rogues have suffered with Killing Spree for years, but without cloak to save us. The utility of us remaining ranged for the duration is extremely strong.

Lastly, and more seriously, I think (don't take this part personally) the class is nowhere near at a point where an overhaul of this scope containing so many unnecessarily heavy ideas is required. It's fun to think about & everything having a wishlist, but pure number tweaks would do far more than reworking the entire spec and having to re-tune the numbers from the ground up, when the skeleton for both specs already exist, the tuning is just not correct; and feedback like this (as you highlight at the bottom, you want to garner attention for issues) isn't going to change much. Blizzard are good at ideas, what they are lacking is consistent feedback of what exactly the issue is with -current- class design, number tuning, and in-action mechanics.

[Deleted]

Hey wordup. Thx for the feedback.
About ascendance TP,your point is valid. I just thought it would be a cool fresh idea to have small charges and be sticky to the target.I also believe that would make players give a second thought on when to press it.

About your first part i disagree because i removed Flame Shock-Lava Lash interaction,made Fire nova a more usefull spell,removed passive random windfury procs and replaced Lava Lash with a windfury active spell. Also changed Stormstrike to be a buff. All-in-all i think those are kind of necessary (in the scope of a possible rework) providing quality of life changes,without changing much of the core of the spec.

[Collinsham]

Na,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[Firebug1975]

I was gonna read your wall of text, but then I got high.

[Rhinox]

Wow your only job was to make lava burst not require flame shock to be on the target and have earth shock and flame shock not to share a cooldown, and incorporate unleash flame into something else and BAM ele fixed. And make ascendance not suck ass.

[Redecle]

Also commenting purely from enhancement point of view. I do play rogue as main, but if it wasn't for character specific reputations and soulbound items i would have changed my enha shaman to be my main long time ago, but it's too late for that.

Played some resto, but nearly not enough to comment on it and never played elemental.
But enhancement is like the second child to me and regarding that, i'm quite on the opposite boat as the OP. The fact that each shaman spec has that main theme but also make use of other elements is what makes them feel shaman to me. It would be boring as fuck if enha was tied to storm only, resto to water only and ele for fire. Currently i'm actually a little disappointed that they removed earth shock from enha, it's only a name of a spell but still all 4 elements and spirit world are what makes shaman shaman. It's great that the specs have this major focus on one element, but as shamans they still ought to know the other elements too.

And the fact that they are gdc locked constantly makes the play great imo. It's something to do and it's something that varies to do constantly.
From pure gameplay (pressing buttons) perspective playing a rogue is boring as fuck, playing most caster specs is boring as fuck, dps warrior same boat, multidotting aside, but multidotting only adds target tab spam and buff tracking instead of combat it's just a chore. The Fire Nova aoe spam is still better than multidotting as it's aoe but made simple, it's the single target that's engaging. The aoe is irritating in packs that die with in 5 seconds cause the ramp up is still so long, but after that it's easy enough to maintain and very powerful, at least you don't have to tab or click find clear targets to rend or something more annoying.

One major thing, i find having Lava Lash as offhand attack brilliant, it doesn't make that much difference in a rotation or priority list based controls, but for a dual wield class it actually makes some sense to have 2 different attacks for both hands. Smashing main hand Sinister Strike doesn't really feel like dual wielding, you're just using your main hand to do damage and the off hand sort of just flings in the air doing nothing. Based on cooldowns, based on dual wielding and 2 major attacks such as Stormstrike (even though SS is currently with both hands) and Lava Lash makes much more sense. And this is on a pure combat level if you're thinking first person and actually using your hands to attack.

I wouldn't be all opposing to Windfury making it's way to a spell to be more predictable, since we still have fire based spells other than Lava Lash, right now Lava Lash is just so big part of spell synergy in the spec that it makes sense to have.

Ascendance on the other hand is something i'd mess around bit. Many probably wouldn't since it's a very powerful cooldown at the moment, but i'd actually lower it's burst and would make it just last longer. Right now it's like pop this massive cool looking cooldown and infuse the shaman with the element and 15 seconds later poof the form is gone. I'd rather see it more sustained form, not permanent but longer, since especially for enhancement it makes you really hybrid melee ranged class. Which is something this game doesn't really have anymore, monks could have had that at least in the basic class concept form, but they currently don't.

Unleash Elements never really felt anything about it. It's there, but it would be same if it wasn't. Movement speed increase, not too fussed.. Convenience, but still not too fussed, Ghost wolf is accessible everywhere now and Sprint/Spirit Walk is now baseline if you need it when you need it. With Ghost wolf the 45 sec cd is hardly a problem, my go to movement speed is still Ghost Wolf and mainly cause it's more aesthetic than Sprint or Unleash.

Totems are sort of controversial, if you look at Thrall as the ultimate shaman totems should still be there. Personally i would just get rid of them completely, they are more of hindrance than asset. At least i wouldn't feel any less shaman without my totems, for me shamanism is more about the synergy with elements and spirits and spirit animals. The elemental pets should definitely not be bound to the totems anymore. The changes made in to totems was pretty decent, they are now area bound buff effects that are niche at best. Some powerful cooldowns sure, but are more awarding to players who actually understand mechanics of fights etc, like predicting fear dispels or slows, instead of constantly having people raid wide dispels. rewarding for people who understand the purpose of the totems and not every day shaman tools you are bound to have keybinded. Used when needed but not so much that the shaman is just there to buff the rest of the players.

[Deleted]

Wow your only job was to make lava burst not require flame shock to be on the target and have earth shock and flame shock not to share a cooldown, and incorporate unleash flame into something else and BAM ele fixed. And make ascendance not suck ass.

Isnt that dumpening down an already easy spec? shocks have such a low cd,and its easy to plan ahead 1-5 sec to swap targets. About ascendance I personally enjoy the lava burst spam during it,just added some pvp flavor on it.

The fact that each shaman spec has that main theme but also make use of other elements is what makes them feel shaman to me. It would be boring as fuck if enha was tied to storm only, resto to water only and ele for fire.

Making Lava lash an air attack,i dont feel enhancement loses his master-of-elements niche. I dont feel like lava lash was the spell that offered that diversity,but it was fire nova and magma totem maybe.

And the fact that they are gdc locked constantly makes the play great imo. It's something to do and it's something that varies to do constantly.

The only change i suggested against the gcd lock was the removal of lava lash-flame shock combo for AoE exactly because "The aoe is irritating in packs that die with in 5 seconds cause the ramp up is still so long"

[stomination]

Isnt that dumpening down an already easy spec? shocks have such a low cd,and its easy to plan ahead 1-5 sec to swap targets. About ascendance I personally enjoy the lava burst spam during it,just added some pvp flavor on it.


Making Lava lash an air attack,i dont feel enhancement loses his master-of-elements niche. I dont feel like lava lash was the spell that offered that diversity,but it was fire nova and magma totem maybe.


The only change i suggested against the gcd lock was the removal of lava lash-flame shock combo for AoE exactly because "The aoe is irritating in packs that die with in 5 seconds cause the ramp up is still so long"

The problem is when an add comes you end up having to apply flame shock to get full value out of your lava burst. By the time you cast your lava burst a lot of adds are dead. The other problem is wasting lightning shield charges. Ascendance sucks in dmg as a 3 minute cd for ele. Even a wow dev agreed on that.

[Deleted]

Some stuff I could agree with, though it was mostly what has been said dozens of times on these forums already. Most felt unneeded, or detrimental to the sollution of our many problems.

From my own enh POV (main points in blue, sub points in red):
-slim down our huge amount of abilities required to do a task others do with much less:

Less aoe abilities (cut MT(boring and weak), CL(weak and a ele spell), FN (change how it works or incorporate it into another spell) and FET (on that I agree with you, give every spec a single elemental (allows for tailor-made spec specific design) unlink from totems).

Less single target dmg abilities. Make Frost Shock utility only and unlink from shock cooldown. Add frost damage through a new ability (if at all). Remove Flametongue and Searing Totem, as they're pathetic. Get rid of UE, as it's boring. If having a snare in your rotation is not a problem with blizz, they may even add it to Flame Shock, and remove Frost Shock (more space on the bars). Instead of an additional ability, make Elemental Blast replace Lightning Bolt when taken, remove the cooldown, make it hit for more than lb, make the proc something you can choose yourself (like lone wolf), weaker buff, but maybe stackable, so you wanna make sure to keep the buff up.

-Rework the entire totem toolkit. Two options:

Look at the individual totem, it's purpose and what abilities it competes against. It's unreasonable to make Earthbind Totem destroyable, as other aoe snares aren't, for example. In other words, homogenisation by massively cutting down on all the drawbacks of totems.

Make totems super strong, borderline OP, because that's the only justification for them to be immobile, unusable while silenced, locking each other out shitsticks with 5hp.
Someone commiting the falacy of being hit by Capacitor should take 10% damage of his total hp each second during the stun, or should take extra damage while stunned, or whatever. Someone actually having their aoe fear broken by tremor should be feared instead, for double the duration.
This sounds unreasonable, but some totems are just THAT garbage.

In either case, implement more tools to support and improve totem handling. Baseline tossing for totems that benefit from it is as much a given as removing the elemental restriction. Stuff like old Totemic Restoration, A cooldown shield ability for your next totem and stuff like that would be nice.

-Give us freakin' mobility already.
One single, dependable gap closer on a reasonably short cd easily replaces Ghostwolf, UE sprint, Spiritwalk and SET aura, as they are all plaqued by disadvantages. Enh is easier to kite than other melees. Given that we need uptime for potent and cheap/free selfheals, that's just plain bad design.

-This is something that many will argue about, but I want a resource of some kind. It doesn't have to be a primary like rage/energy/runepower/focus, but something like runes/ki/holy power/combo points. An energy system allows, usually, to pool damage for when it's needed. It allows for burst.
Enh with cds as cooldowns could only ever burst because of one or two super strong abilities.
Windfury procs in vanilla => rng => bad
Feral Spirits in wotlk => dependance on cd => bad when it's gone
Ascendence Stormblast + EB in mop => similar to Feral Spirits, except that EB was more often avaiable.
If you want to be able to burst often/frequently, you'll need a proper recource system to allow you to unleash pooled damage in a short time. They could polish msw some more for this, with baseline 10 charges(max 5 spend).
Also they could(imo should) make Stormstrike more about it's procs again. It felt more right to have SS as an ability to get things going (msw procs, old Static Shock, additional chance to proc wf (which procs msw) and so on) and LL as the heavy hitter. This way, you can push more damage on LL and LB/EB for example, and bam! => more bursty in less gcds.

[Deleted]

You seem like not enjoying the gcd-lock niche of enhancement and thats a big disagreement to begin with. Removing everything may result in ppl rerolling because thats not why they started playing shaman in the first place.

About the totems im happy that we all agree that atm they suck.
Being as massive as it is,my thread,you missed the talent section that i tried to give some options -REAL OPTIONS- on the tier3.The totem tier.Being an altoholic Ive read all the talents in the game many times,played some of them too,I believe this tier is the worst tier in the whole game.

About the mobility i stole the rogue's talent "burst of speed" and made this "Thunder Shock:"Instantly shocks an enemy dealing no damage but reducing the effectiveness of healing on that target for 8sec and giving you a burst of speed"" trading dmg for mobility like the rogue loses energy for a small burst of speed.

[Deleted]

I am not hating on the "gcd-lock" thing. I have never enjoyed enh as much as during icc wotlk, where we were about haste stacking to the max and totally gcd with priority on more and more msw procs. That said, we had Feral Spirits during that time to get that burst off. The only option for us to remain interesting in pvp without lowering the excessive amount of abilities would be through one or two super strong cooldowns.

And look how well it turned out for us in the past. WF is crappy weak, Feral Spirits is crappy weak, Ascendence is crappy weak, EB is a dead talent.
As for "big hitters", both LB/LL/SS are "meh" hitters instead, because our damage is to splintered, where frost has obliterate as a big hitter and MM chimeara shot, we have three and more.

About your totem tier: Totemic Empowerment would be the go to. Totems having more life is a baseline thing that has to change, depending on the totem. Band-aid fixing is the shit that you're trying to replace, dont copy it.
Tremor was okayish before, and recently ruined by blizz. Talenting it back to ok leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. It is basically the same band-aid bullshitting kind of talent as blizz have put them in. And Magma's range being increased, as useless as it probably would be (considering how weak it is and how few extra adds would've been hit (not including actually pulling adds with higher range) would make it a throughput talent, and probably mandatory, so yeah, not much pve/pvp diversity here, same going for HST'S extra dot. Shaman totems atm barely provide any relevant utility in raids, so CotE doesn't really present an attractive talent either. If you're not feared during an encounter, resetting that tremor will be useless, after all.

And your Thunder Shock would definately help with mobility issues yes, though I wouldn't want it tied to other abilities. BoS also removes snares, and for a gap closer, that's more important than a MS debuff, which can also be brought by a mate.
I do not enjoy the concept of spells pulling double duty, like shamanistic rage or feral spirits once did, so I am not much of a fan of an ability like your thunder or frost shock, that combine a snare with a heal and speed with a healing debuff. The debuff means a lot of indirect extra damage, hence you'd want to keep it up all the time, even when not kited. On the other hand, while kited, you'd not benefit from the debuff for a couple of seconds, since you're in the process of gap closing. Same goes for Frost Shock: Getting that heal from it, assuming you're not focused at the moment, will be lost, if all you want to do is hinder someone from running away. Meanwhile, as a low cd ability, the heal wouldn't be anything special either, or it would be overpowered.
It would make more sense for one shock to have both the snare and sprint (focus on chasing/escaping) and the other to deal damage/apply the debuff, and get heal from somewhere else.

That said, I am overall not a fan of the shared shock cooldown, or of the boring elemental shields. Blizzard seemed to have enjoyed to make a set of shocks, shields and imbues for every element when it came to shaman, but these ability clusters ultimately are part of what brings shamans down, as you cant freely utilize them because of them excluding themselves, same as with totems. I admit I didn't read all of your post (it's just that long), but what I read about shields seemed like you thought that they're fine, some new graphic effects, that's it.
Imo they should turned into proper survivability cooldowns or removed or turned into useless flavor like frog rain or such.

That said, I am a long time critisizer of shaman design (as much as I love/hate the class, same as you), so I hold high standards to improvement ideas. I've come up with and adopted ideas over a course of, like, 7 years or so, so yeah, high standards.


P.S. Your Elemental Shock Convergence sounds interesting concept-wise. If shocks were unlinked from the shared cd, this could make for a nice little mini-game within the dps rotation. That said, you'd have to manage this on top of gcd-locked enh and ele, which already has a use for Earth and Flame Shock, so yeah.

Also, you want to get rid of FrS for ele. What about pvp, where it would want to snare?

[Deleted]

Asking me about elemental and FrS made me realise i have to fix tier 2 talents cause of that. Thx

Elemental Shock Convergence was an idea i had,not knowing where to put it. Because i decided to add two talents in the same tier that makes the game easier i thought having an option for the highskillcap player would be great. If its time for shocks to get unlinked...i dunno...maybe. We have to play it.

About my versions of FrS and Thunder Shock
i thought it was cool for FrS to have a movement debuff on the enemy and a buff on you
and for Thunder Shock to have a movement buff on you and a debuff on the enemy.
Adding a spell that both slows enemies and gives speed on you,seems to overpowered and lets not forget about the tier2 choises.

About elemental snaring,i prefer giving him a nice disengage/push-enemy-back tool and a better version of charge to compensate (plus thunder shock).

[Deleted]

The shared cooldown was necessary in vanilla, as being able to spam shocks would've been op back then. It would'nt have been op for many years now though.

Again; Two completely different effects on one ability means pulling double-duty and is bad design.
You say a sprint-snare is op, but many melees passivle apply snares in addition to super strong mobility, so no, it wouldn't be op. A sprint-snare is still no instant gap closer, like we have it with warriors, druids, death knights, monks and (optionally) rogues. They are all superior to ret in uptime, afaik. And ret has a snare-judgement that, talented, applies a sprint, hence, a snare-sprint. What would be op? The very point I am trying to make is that our stuff is splintered into many weak things, so merging complimenting things would achieve giving us what others have: potent and rewarding abilities to use in one gcd.

About ele-kiting: Snares are nowadays existing almost everywhere, same as interrupts and stuns. Mages have both blink and snares/roots, and incidentally are good in pvp. Food for thought, imo. Why shouldn't ele have both?

[Deleted]

back from vacations. will soon update with your ideas.
i wonder if you guys are willing to push this thread or another (i dont mind) to reach blizzard
maybe some1 can repost it on US forums?

[Manu9]

The shared cooldown was necessary in vanilla, as being able to spam shocks would've been op back then. It would'nt have been op for many years now though.

Again; Two completely different effects on one ability means pulling double-duty and is bad design.
You say a sprint-snare is op, but many melees passivle apply snares in addition to super strong mobility, so no, it wouldn't be op. A sprint-snare is still no instant gap closer, like we have it with warriors, druids, death knights, monks and (optionally) rogues. They are all superior to ret in uptime, afaik. And ret has a snare-judgement that, talented, applies a sprint, hence, a snare-sprint. What would be op? The very point I am trying to make is that our stuff is splintered into many weak things, so merging complimenting things would achieve giving us what others have: potent and rewarding abilities to use in one gcd.

About ele-kiting: Snares are nowadays existing almost everywhere, same as interrupts and stuns. Mages have both blink and snares/roots, and incidentally are good in pvp. Food for thought, imo. Why shouldn't ele have both?

Are you THE Omanley from the olden days? <3

The writing style surely fits.

[Deleted]

That's me, yes

[Mueller Greyhound]

Just no. Too much un-necessary abilities added.

[Deleted]

Just no. Too much un-necessary abilities added.

the point is that blizzard will understand that we,shamans,need some love. and we,the community of the shamans,that we thousands can give our insight (small or big) to the few that decide the future of the shaman class. And now,right before the expansion is the time to do so.