Elemental Shaman: What are your main grievances?

[Tikishock]

Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning casting speed. (should be 1.5sec baseline, not 2 sec)

This is one of the biggest for me. We are the only class with lightning-based spells and they are a slow filler spell. That's just bad class fantasy.

[Socialhealer]

As I’m reading through some of these replies it really feels like a lot of them are coming from players that either A.) Don’t play elemental shaman. Or B.) Never took the time to learn the spec and vet out some the surface weak points. One reply said “Not to mention our nonexistent mobility” they must have forgotten ghost wolf which offers a permanent 40% run speed and a slow resist making it so you can never run below 100% run speed. Additionally, it has HUGE utility in raid encounters because it uses a half gcd, allowing you to pop in and out to dodge threatening mechanics. Giving you much more uptime on movement heavy encounter than other casters. Another, complaint focused around the spec being RNG dependent. To that I say, HOW? The most effective build right now doesn’t even require mastery after that the only RNG aspect of you character is critical strike, and if you’re complaining about critical strike RNG then what are we even talking about: every class and spec has this and its very easy to have 35%+critical strike rating while in Uldir. I would argue that the absence of reorigionation array while outside of Uldir is irrelevant since you have access to you pvp talents in the open world while Warmode is active.
This Bring me to my critique. As some people have mentioned, the class is a bit underwhelming. I think that a lot of the talents we had in legion really expressed how an elemental shaman should be played. I don’t necessarily think that stormkeepers should be buffed in 8.1, but instead bring back lightning rod as an Azerite trait for elemental, additional the way flameshock worked in legion allowed for a high quality of life. Especially for the ascendance build die-hards. The talent that allowed flameshock to spread was a very appealing game-play because you could run your single target build and have relevant dmg on AOE packs. As for Icefury, I think that there’s just no space for the build in the game. The build is much much more difficult to play well and there just isn’t any reward for it. I could understand if the dps output had a much higher threshold but there just isn’t, which makes this disappointing. As “Masters of the elements” I do feel that we need ice/frost as part of our rotation and aside from running the Icefury build (which we just talked about), frosthock and elemental blast its almost completely absent from the spec. I don’t have any suggestions for this at the moment.
Overall, I think that elemental offers much more than what most people are giving it credit for. However, it does FEEL poor to play. This comes from a lot of things; primarily the talent changes. I think that elemental shaman is a class that should be played very similarly to the way it played in Legion during Antorus. For as long as I can remember, elemental shaman made up single target dmg with their sheer AOE domitability and have been the AOE king, with changes made coming into BFA, we’ve been dethroned. This makes other classes more desirable going into mythic+ especially since the ramp up time hold us back a bit. There are ways around that but choosing those build really makes it so that AOE is amazing and single target falls way behind. There's no middle of the road for both situations.

this feels like you're trying to argue with yourself.

as for elemental AoE king in antorus? lol no a ton of classes could beat it easily.

my MAIN easily relatable point? it's just not fun, it's designed by devs whose main goal and first prio is weaknesses, what are elementals weaknesses and focusing on those weaknesses.

look back to MoP elemental, what was the first goal? FUN the spec was just made to be fun in everyway the devs didn't go oh you need to be bad at X and X and weak at X it was just crazy full of cooldowns and only expanded as the xpac went on.

when the devs decide they want a spec to be fun first of all and weaknesses a second thought i might play again.

Until then you all enjoy a spec where devs want you to constantly be punished for playing it, i can't wait to hear from Ion how elemental should be weak at X again!

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Survival and mobility is my big one.

If they want us to be a "turret" spec we need to have the survival CDs to deal with staying in one place for a decent amount of time. Astral Shift? That doesn't cut it.

exactly we should be as tanky as a warlock while standing still, like MoP warlock, not soft as a mage.

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I agree with the fact we don't seem to have utility. That used to be our entire shtick and yet nowadays after they decided that "oh I guess classes should have some buffs again" we somehow got left out of that equation.

It'd be nice if we had something that tied back to our old totem buffing ways. Strength of Earth? Flametongue for Elemental and Stormlash for Enhancement? Just something that makes you go "yeah let's try and bring that shaman for X buff"

gotta love that blizzard came up with a buff for every class in alpha? but not shaman since then they removed most but kept like warrior/mage/priest?

i mean you know it's bad when they can't even come up with anything for your class lol, they just don't give a shit.

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The flameshock CD

The flameshock CD

The flameshock CD

The flameshock CD

and this, proof no-one competent at blizzard has a say in elemental design, no-one would ever want this back it was the biggest problem with elemental for years and now it's back? why? it doesn't feel rewarding at all it's pure punishment for a spec they don't like.

[Rawfury]

One grievance is zero communication on the direction of the class/spec from the devs even though we were told were being looked at for some changes. Minor 15% buffs and nerfs and one-two talent changes isnt really telling us anything

[Kralljin]

gotta love that blizzard came up with a buff for every class in alpha? but not shaman since then they removed most but kept like warrior/mage/priest?

i mean you know it's bad when they can't even come up with anything for your class lol, they just don't give a shit.

They kept those because they were the only relevant ones, which is not entirely without merit as having four different buffs that just increase secondary stat X/Y/Z aren't terribly creative, nor unique.
Especially if they just dump them in form of an passive aura on people.

I don't really think they forgot Shaman, there was a dev during Blizzcon that mentioned making BL Shaman was "in discussion", i guess that the devs playing mage were about to mutiny when they heard this suggestion.
Wouldn't even surprise me one bit if this was another case of "miscommunication", like no one really told the encounter team that could put nonavoidable fear effects back into encounters.

Must have gone like:
Class designer: Shamans are fine, they got Tremor back and there will be encounters in Uldir with important fear effects, right?
Encounter designer: Wait, what?

[o17ver]

Currently:

I do solid dps if I stand still and can basically ignore any mechanics and just bash buttons.
If I need to move alot, or switch to burst targets, cleave (vectis for example) I absolutely suck.
If there are multiple targets (3+) and they remain alive long enough for me to stack a few EQ casts (Zek'voz) I do good dps.

The issue's lie within the fact none of the weaknesses are offset by strength. I am 382 ilvl and when running for example Tol'dagor +10 the majority of the dungeon is 2-3 mob pulls, with a few larger 3+ pulls and a few 2 mob packs. I do pathetic damage on anything bar the 2-3 big pulls. I do good dps to bosses if I don't have to move much. But Sand Queen, Howliss, Valyri and Korgus all have mechanics where I lose dps by needing to focus on mechanics. So I don't do particularly great dps on trash, because I have next to no 2-3 target cleave, I do good dmg on a few large pull and I am mid table on boss fights. Where is my class strength here? If I'm going to bring zero cleave I should at least be pushing top tier ST when I can unload all my damage, but I don't. I don't open gates, I have no buffs, my tremor totem is near useless unless my entire group forget to press kick. I feel like if I was a mage I'd be better at nearly everything and bring some extra tools to boot.

[kitsand]

In terms of playstyle, building up enough Maelstrom to use Earthshock. By the time that happens, most of the trash is near death. Hard casting Lighting Bolt isn't fun. When I think of lightning, I associate it with fast: lightning fast. 2 sec cast time is not fast.

Flameshock having a CD makes target switching annoying. I know Add X has to die but FS' CD makes bursting down this add difficult.

[Tradu]

Flame Shock CD, Earth Shock fixed cost and general slow cast times. The latter of which is a problem for every caster every expansion, and only gets fixed through haste later on.. if you're lucky and haste is actually a desirable stat. It's also a problem for non-casters, to some extent, and the problem is that it never really ends up with haste making you feel good, it makes specs feel "fine", like they should feel, but that doesn't kick in until halfway through an expansion.
Just generally, Ele feels worse than it did in Legion, just like essentially every spec in the game.

[Height]

If our movement isn't going to be better, I hope it's offset by a stronger frost shock and faster lightning spells. If our movement damage is high maybe we can make up for having to run a bit more than other classes. Shrug. I know they aren't going to change up mechanically at this point soooo yah.

[Deleted]

2 ideas..make ag baseline and make the group dmg returns as a healing and put a bleeding dot to eq if the target is knocked down

[Teaon]

Flame Shock cooldown.

RNG.

Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning casting speed. (should be 1.5sec baseline, not 2 sec)

i have always felt that shaman have the best visual spells, even though i main warrior and always been a warrior fan, i mained shaman in some patches, and i still play shaman as my main alt.

Elemental Blast should be the hard hitting baseline ability, its visually very VERY satisfying instead of earth shock, that has really underwhelming visual? i'd love to have my shaman build up to shoot a full focused ability that hits like a truck and appealing, Elemental Blast is the best for this.

and chain lighting need to be a channeling spell, like really, its very similar to lightingbolt, why cant it be channeling? that hits for small amount every like 0.5 sec, could be fun.

bring ball the old lighting bolt, which has travel time and it calculates on impact, not when casted, its a lighting bolt, not a zapping light, i always felt that lighting bolt should be similar to Zeus bolts that he throws in Hercules Disney cartoon. aka sperm bolts like the past ones.

thats my 2 cents.

[Kalisandra]

As I’m reading through some of these replies it really feels like a lot of them are coming from players that either A.) Don’t play elemental shaman. Or B.) Never took the time to learn the spec and vet out some the surface weak points. One reply said “Not to mention our nonexistent mobility” they must have forgotten ghost wolf which offers a permanent 40% run speed and a slow resist making it so you can never run below 100% run speed.

In my experience that supposed 100% floor on runspeed is a lie. Plenty of snares, especially in PvP pull you under 100% speed.

Additionally, it has HUGE utility in raid encounters because it uses a half gcd, allowing you to pop in and out to dodge threatening mechanics.

A half GCD? Really? You're playing a different game from me (and that's not what Wowhead says, either). In fact, it's a full GCD and it's on the GCD, so you must stop whatever you're doing a GCD before the mechanic you're avoid occurs so that you won't be locked out of GW when you need it. GW is nice, but it's not all that, especially as it silences us.

As for what I really don't like, having to choose between Echo of Elements and Elemental Blast just feels wrong. That combination made the slow casting of ChL, etc. bearable because at least I had another strong ST spell, and it was one that looked cool. Now it's weak and Echo is effectively mandatory (I like Echo too, mind) so I don't get my EB, and if it was strong I wouldn't have my two LvB charges. It's part of what makes the spec boring to play.

[Skylarking]

A lot of things but the one worth mentioning is lightning bolt on the move. Not having it in the first place is one thing, but then to get it and have it taken away is another. I still loathe the change and probably always will. Its pretty much like gust of wind.

[Irian]

It doesn't feel fun or cohesive at all. It's clunky as hell, awkward and has too many weak areas to justify its huge damage fluctuation, complete lack of mobility and mediocre single target.

No amount of number tuning will fix this. An OP class that isn't fun to play isn't the answer, just ask Affliction.

[Tikishock]

That people think my class is trash and it's hard to get into PuGs.

[wushootaki]

A lot of people are stating they don't find it Fun and herald back to MoP times.


Can someone please give me an example of the current rotation vsd. MoP rotation?

Thanks!

[oleander89]

As I’m reading through some of these replies it really feels like a lot of them are coming from players that either A.) Don’t play elemental shaman. Or B.) Never took the time to learn the spec and vet out some the surface weak points. One reply said “Not to mention our nonexistent mobility” they must have forgotten ghost wolf which offers a permanent 40% run speed and a slow resist making it so you can never run below 100% run speed. Additionally, it has HUGE utility in raid encounters because it uses a half gcd, allowing you to pop in and out to dodge threatening mechanics. Giving you much more uptime on movement heavy encounter than other casters. Another, complaint focused around the spec being RNG dependent. To that I say, HOW? The most effective build right now doesn’t even require mastery after that the only RNG aspect of you character is critical strike, and if you’re complaining about critical strike RNG then what are we even talking about: every class and spec has this and its very easy to have 35%+critical strike rating while in Uldir. I would argue that the absence of reorigionation array while outside of Uldir is irrelevant since you have access to you pvp talents in the open world while Warmode is active.
This Bring me to my critique. As some people have mentioned, the class is a bit underwhelming. I think that a lot of the talents we had in legion really expressed how an elemental shaman should be played. I don’t necessarily think that stormkeepers should be buffed in 8.1, but instead bring back lightning rod as an Azerite trait for elemental, additional the way flameshock worked in legion allowed for a high quality of life. Especially for the ascendance build die-hards. The talent that allowed flameshock to spread was a very appealing game-play because you could run your single target build and have relevant dmg on AOE packs. As for Icefury, I think that there’s just no space for the build in the game. The build is much much more difficult to play well and there just isn’t any reward for it. I could understand if the dps output had a much higher threshold but there just isn’t, which makes this disappointing. As “Masters of the elements” I do feel that we need ice/frost as part of our rotation and aside from running the Icefury build (which we just talked about), frosthock and elemental blast its almost completely absent from the spec. I don’t have any suggestions for this at the moment.
Overall, I think that elemental offers much more than what most people are giving it credit for. However, it does FEEL poor to play. This comes from a lot of things; primarily the talent changes. I think that elemental shaman is a class that should be played very similarly to the way it played in Legion during Antorus. For as long as I can remember, elemental shaman made up single target dmg with their sheer AOE domitability and have been the AOE king, with changes made coming into BFA, we’ve been dethroned. This makes other classes more desirable going into mythic+ especially since the ramp up time hold us back a bit. There are ways around that but choosing those build really makes it so that AOE is amazing and single target falls way behind. There's no middle of the road for both situations.

There is so much wrong with what you wrote. Mastery is the best stat single target with the highest simming build. Yes, ghost wolf is nice for dodging something quick but if you need to cover a long distance, like recovering from a knock back, ghost wolf takes an eternity compared to a lock or mage who can instantly get back into position. Ele is not as bad as the wow community thinks but if you are actually pushing content, elemental really isn't viable.

[Deleted]

Mechanically, like ALL classes, it's a tremendous step down from pre-WoD expansions.
That's just how it is, every class has been reduced to a dull mess where even classes that are putting out high numbers are still incredibly dull to play.

The only exception is probably DH, since they have a much better talent support than most it seems.

True classes were better before WOD .. definetly more FUN

[Triggered Fridgekin]

So genuine question but how much easier would this spec be to balance around damage if Lava Burst was either removed, lost its chance to auto crit or Elemental Fury wasn't a thing?

[Kralljin]

A lot of people are stating they don't find it Fun and herald back to MoP times.
Can someone please give me an example of the current rotation vsd. MoP rotation?

It wasn't the rotation, MoP Elemental also suffered from low / mediocre ST dps, target switch was a massive issue as a shitload of damage was locked behind lava Burst and Fulmination+ES did hardly do a lot of damage.

However, you had clear cut strong Cleave / AoE dps due CL, as EQ was a rather niche thing, required like 4-5 mobs, needed stay in there for the duration, pure CL spam was a lot more effective.
You pressed CL and AoE Damage happened, not like pressing 3-4Cl's, put EQ down and slowly start your AoE damage happening like now.

Next, LB on the move, you could do like 80%-90% of your total dps while, only hardcasted Lava bursts stopped you.

Lastly, with AG and later HTT Tide you had a great support tools for the raid, you just dregged the entire raid up, especially on fights where you could combine it with AoE.

The spec had strengths and weakpoints...like how it should be.

So genuine question but how much easier would this spec be to balance around damage if Lava Burst was either removed, lost its chance to auto crit or Elemental Fury wasn't a thing?

I really don't know why people keep digging into this auto crit thing, Lava Burst is not the centerpiece of your rotation anymore, especially if the numbers as on the PTR go live.
Crit scaling is not a problem, in fact it's a sound stat for Elemental, especially for AoE as you don't have any auto crits there and fully benefit from the 250% crit multiplier.

[Bats]

As a shaman main since vanilla, all specs feel very underwhelming now.

I mainly PvP, but I used to PvE until the start of WoD where the whole class became slow and unappealing. Legion and BfA I still main the class but I barely play anymore.

Enhancement PvP feels horrible. I know it's not a terrible class numbers wise, but it just is so god damn annoying to play this expac. I find myself constantly just running oom, I either have to heal or spam purge a couple of times and then can't do anything for a couple of seconds 'cause oom. It just feels incredibly annoying.

Elemental PvP is probably worse, everyone focuses you as they know you're pretty much a free kill unless you run for it. Can barely kite any melee at all since MoP. Flameshock CD is basically a big joke. Damage while just stood casting uninterrupted is pretty shit. Shamans used to be a glass cannon, you leave them alone and they'll blow you out of existence. That's no longer the case, pretty much any other caster is scarier than a puny elemental shaman now.

Resto I barely play so can't really comment on that.

WotLK and MoP were the peak for elemental and enhancement in my opinion, not necessarily number wise, just in terms of how fun the class was.

WotLK PvP was pretty solid, BL still being a thing in arena, managed to get 2.1k with a weird arcane mage / ele / holy paladin comp. I could kite most melee if they screwed up their gap closer abilities. Enhancement PvE was pretty sweet but tbh, the raids were amazing so no matter what class you played then, it felt good to PvE.

PvP in MoP was so fast and dynamic, you could pretty much run anything in 2s or 3s and make it work past past 2.2k. Elemental shamans were scary, every once in a while you get some silly LBs and force some big CDs, good times.
Enhancement was super fun in PvE, constantly doing stuff and prioritizing abilities over others, flame shock + lava lash + fire nova AoE felt soooo good.

Then the class pruning began and maelstrom came in. Shamans slowly became extremely dull to play over the course of WoD and Legion and now BfA feels like a complete joke. Stuff taken away from both enh and ele, nothing "new". The class just feels weaker, slower and has become the meme of the expansion.

I'm hopefully waiting for Blizzcon. Please give us something to look forward to Blizzard.