[Official] Legion Shaman Class Preview & Discussion

[Deleted]

I guess healing spells in dps specs will cost maelstrom ?

0-20 Maelstrom, go look at the tweets.

What i'm the most interested in knowing is if we'll get "Frost Shock", probably named Frostbrand, and if we'll get a gap closer like Heroic leap, Harpoon or Deathgrip.

[Huggykaze]

Brings enhancement down to 4 buttons baseline and having to look after a resource, I know a couple of people in my guild who will love that :P

I'm alting an enh shammy and I'm really happy to see these changes. Currently I had to dance on the keyboard and my eyes were all over the screen even with CD Weak Auras. Not to mention that there was huge gap between good enh shammy and average one, I mean extremely huge, that's definition of broken class, skill should be a curve not a cliff. Furthermore, Maelstorm stacks felt underwhelming without T18 bonus. Good to see all that chaos (kinda fits the class though) gone and ordered Hopefully we'll get talent/artifact previews over next 2 weeks. Would make sense seeing how beta is "weeks away".

I'm thinking of switching from Hunter to Shammy right now :P

[Deleted]

elem and enh sound promising. resto seems rather dead in the water though.. Will have to see what will becomes of it for reals, but I might have to retire from healing or jump ship to another class. neither sound appealing tbh...

[Detritivores]

I'm pretty meh on the ele changes. So our shocks are still in competition, just for consuming our new resource instead of on a shared cd? Personally, on a shared cd sounds less annoying to manage. As a warrior main, I mega-loath abilities that consume variable amounts of a resource that you have no control over (shield barrier). I may be alone in this, but I actually really enjoy ele in WoD, although just as a side-project. I'd have been satisfied with very minor changes/tuning to keep us competitive.

[Huggykaze]

Elemental looks boring as ever. Enhance could be interesting but seems a lot similar to the new survival hunter kit. Resto was already in a good place overall, so I'm pretty indifferent to that.

Nowhere near new SV kit... Starting with: SV has no way to generate Focus at whim, all's passive, to SV has more on demand burst and seems to have less sustained damage to SV has a DoT :P

[Detritivores]

To expand on what I said, this is the problem with variable cost abilities. Earth shock at 0-100 will be the maelstrom dump obviously. But flame shock at 0-20 will be the important to maintain thing that you need to spend 20 on to make the button worth pressing. I imagine we will be falling into traps where flame shock is going to fall off, maelstrom is getting close to cap, so we earth shock to dump it and then don't have the resource available to refresh flame shock efficiently. Similar issues happen with prot warriors where barrier is our rage dump and consumes 20-60, but if you use it too aggressively you will find yourself in a trap where you can't shield block when you needed to. This all boils down to similar to live servers in that you need to plan ahead when you will refresh flame shock and when you can dump lightning shield stacks so as to not lose uptime. And I don't think the new way is any more compelling. Just slightly different. Change for the sake of change. If anything I feel like this homogenizes ele with rage based specs where you have generators and spenders. Lightning shield charges on the other hand were a unique mechanic to us.

Finally, fuck elemental overload. Molten earth was awesome. And by awesome I mean aesthetically pleasing. They're both just extra damage. I fail to see what to big difference is.

Totem changes sound excellent and long overdue.

[Deleted]

In general, the totem changes look really nice! I wonder what they'll replace CoE/projection with - or whether they'll redo the entire talent trees.

Looking at resto, there's just two changes standing out except for Wellspring: The nerf to CH going from a 10 % healing reduction / target to 30 %, and the change to the Tidal Waves mechanic - 2 charges of 20% HW haste / 30 % HS crit (now) versus 40 % HW haste / 40 % HS crit, stacks up to two times (Legion).

Having two charges is convenient, but the bonus sometimes feels a bit lackluster, and during temporary spike damage CH spam is preferred to using up the TW buff. During these situations, or whenever you cast more than one CH/RT without using the TW stacks, you lose out on TW potential - with the changes, you at least get an added benefit from not casting HW/HS directly after CH/RT. Will have to see how it works out, though. As for CH, I'm hoping for a glyph or talent that boosts the spell, or that High Tide remains in it current state.

Also, Wellspring sounds like it's going to be powerful, as the description states that it heals friendly targets within the cone for a strong amount, as opposed to our other spells wich just heal for moderate amounts (http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...-Series-Shaman).

[Nyel]

Finally, fuck elemental overload. Molten earth was awesome. And by awesome I mean aesthetically pleasing. They're both just extra damage. I fail to see what to big difference is.

I loved our mastery. Maybe it was not the strongest but its visuals were awesome.

Why can't we as Elemental Shamans don't conjure rocks like Thrall? Why are we forced to use those visually ugly lightnings and lava bursts?

Oh and this is the best answer to the Shaman changes:

"When I die I want the shaman class developers to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time."

[Eliot123]

Other than totem changes, everything else is pretty meh. Restoration is basically staying exactly the same mechanics-wise, which I find rather disappointing. With all the other previews it was like the Oprah meme "YOU GET THIS! YOU GET THIS! EVERYTHING GETS A BUNCH OF STUFF!", while resto shamans seem to be the looked-over stepchild. Personally what I feel about shamans is this - the sum of parts is not larger than the whole, which it is with all other classes. As for elemental, I'll just quote someone from reddit "When I die I want the shaman class developers to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time." The sky isn't falling but if the preview is any indication of the direction they're going with shamans in Legion, may the odds be ever in the favour of people who decide to stick with shamans.

[Kaesebrezen]

I imagine we will be falling into traps where flame shock is going to fall off, maelstrom is getting close to cap, so we earth shock to dump it and then don't have the resource available to refresh flame shock efficiently. Similar issues happen with prot warriors where barrier is our rage dump and consumes 20-60, but if you use it too aggressively you will find yourself in a trap where you can't shield block when you needed to

As long as the pandemic mechanic stays in game, you have 9 seconds wiggle room to reapply Flame Shock. Combine that with Shocks having no Ccooldown, there is hardly any problem with "capping Maelstrom vs. dropping Flame shock".

[Deleted]

I loved our mastery. Maybe it was not the strongest but its visuals were awesome.

Why can't we as Elemental Shamans don't conjure rocks like Thrall? Why are we forced to use those visually ugly lightnings and lava bursts?

Oh and this is the best answer to the Shaman changes:

"When I die I want the shaman class developers to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time."

the visuals where awesome, I agree. However I felt like I was wasting them a lot while soloing, which bugged me more then it should. Probably also the case with overload, but it felt worse with ME.

[Seditian]

Nothing that improves PvP wise? Totems scaling with your health + elementals finally not bound to a totem anymore is a huge boon for PvP. Shocks not having a cooldown anymore also helps, although I'd love to get the 30% haste if Flame Shock is dispelled buff back.

E: I realize they haven't addressed the survivability and mobility of the turret spec called Elemental yet, but it's just a preview and the totem changes alone is already a great buff.

[Detritivores]

I loved our mastery. Maybe it was not the strongest but its visuals were awesome.

Why can't we as Elemental Shamans don't conjure rocks like Thrall? Why are we forced to use those visually ugly lightnings and lava bursts?

Oh and this is the best answer to the Shaman changes:

"When I die I want the shaman class developers to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time."

I so agree. Current mastery is one of the most satisfying visual effect in the game.

As long as the pandemic mechanic stays in game, you have 9 seconds wiggle room to reapply Flame Shock. Combine that with Shocks having no Ccooldown, there is hardly any problem with "capping Maelstrom vs. dropping Flame shock".

I agree but I could say the same about the current state of affairs. The shock cd is less than our 9 sec pandemic window. I just don't see how this is any sort of improvement. Just shuffling the shit around while taking away our unique resource...

[Deleted]

Nothing really sucky.

Except for our DPS in Legion as well =)

[Nyel]

Shocks not having a cooldown anymore also helps

Shocks don't have a usual cooldown anymore but the need of Maelstorm is just replacing the old Cooldown issue.

[Deleted]

I absolutely love the new changes.
Enhancement is gonna be so awesome.
the 4 basic spells are gonna work much better then the old rotation
combining them with new talents (Thralls HotS abilitey hype), totems (finally searing totem + fire elemental totem) and your Artifact abilities makes enhancement a really fun class te play.
Only downside to this is that i'm hyped now and the broken shore patch (which will include these changes i gues) won't come about for atleast 7-8 months

[Tore]

I don't want to spam Rockbiter the way a Combat rogue spams Sinister Strike

[Deleted]

The spec which deserved all love of this Legion got the least amount of it. Sorry, we've to just accept that Blizzard stopped caring about class balance (not only numbers) years ago.

[Deleted]

The spec which deserved all love of this Legion got the least amount of it. Sorry, we've to just accept that Blizzard stopped caring about class balance (not only numbers) years ago.

This makes no assumptions or implies nothing at all about class balance.

[Aleksej89]

Is it me or is Enhancement missing Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Fire Nova?

They mentioned "devastating spells" but then they did not mention ANY spells in the Enha section?