Shaman Unpruning

[themaster24]

It's just one of the massive niche scenarios considering how long it took until you had FS up on multiple targets to actually reap a serious benefit.
There's a reason why Blizzard removed the CD for CL in 4.3 and essentially made that your sole AoE (let alone that Fire Nova was removed from Elemental in MoP).

I still remember how there was only a single encounter in all of T11 where it was remotely useable: Maloriak, on any other fight, stuff just died after your second FS.
It wasn't really good nor defining, it's just that Elemental AoE pre 4.3 was a massive hodgepodge.

The point is that this niche takes a massive hit without Lava Shock, because Earth gets significantly weaker and that's where Elemental could actually shine for once in the class Meta of BoD and EP because they could funnel that damage into a single mob.
The idea of funneling really came to shine on encounters like U'unat, where you just had multiple FS running on those adds no one cared about and then basically spammed Lvb+Huge ES onto a single target.

In a 2-3 Target scenario you'll be using EQ anyway, so the "funneling" idea gets kinda diluted by that.
You are doing a bit more damage to a single target, but that damage also slightly suffers because you're using EQ over ES (and possibly CL).

If you really want to retain that strength that Elemental had in BoD / EP, Lvb needs to compensate for the loss of Lava shock / nerfed ES.

It seems we're arguing two different things. What I'm trying to say, is that funneling, and to that extent, spreading flame shock, has existed for longer than BfA and Lava Shock. I'm not making a case for funneling with or without Lava Shock, but rather, that funneling has been a gameplay element for quite some time.

On the topic of them moving to this as a focus, seeing as they are talking about turning the dial back, essentially, we will likely be seeing a return of the damage buff to LvB when it strikes a FS target (with automatic crits being baseline again). This would be in line with their focus of utilizing extra targets for increased LvB usage.

[Kalisandra]

So, no more Maelstrom and it also kinda sounds like Enhancement is "stealing" away both Stormkeeper and Elemental Blast - both of which seems odd.

That stood out to me, too. I'll be sad if Elemental loses them as Stormkeeper was the high point of Legion, and and Elemental Blast has been my favourite spell since it was introduced, and I always miss it in times (like now) when it's not worth using. I have a feeling we'll be using Icefury in Stormkeeper's place, and it's nowhere near as fun.

- - - Updated - - -

Restoration "changes"... ugh.

- Mastery to incentivize healing critically injured targets
- Has the single (literally only one) weakest instant-cast heal in the game to do so
- Constantly sniped by Holy Shock/Swiftmend/Holy Word: Serenity
- Zero changes to make this better
- Mythic+ still going to consist of Healing Surge spam during Grievous week
- Literally only brought to raids for cheesing with Spirit Link Totem

Extremely disappointed. Restoration Shaman will continue to be slow, clunky, and under-perform every other healer in the game, as per usual.
Earth Shield coming back is fine, but the new spell to use it is a Talent. Obviously. Can't just give us something new and nice to make our gameplay more interesting.

Happy for you Elemental and Enhancement players, but I might have to stick to my Holy Priest this expansion, or perhaps go Mistweaver Monk.

This depends on fight design and relative tuning, though if Resto doesn't get some work every other healing class needs some serious pruning of the sort they somehow never actually experienced up to now.

- - - Updated - - -

Keep in mind, this is just the initial wave. They say at the start that there are many more changes coming. I too hope for a fundamental redesign of our mastery, as it's garbage, and has been since it was also the resto druid mastery that was quickly changed.

I found it to be an amazing mastery effect in Firelands, and in Throne of Thunder and some of the SoO fights. Also for Gorefiend in HfC, but one fight in an entire expansion where it really shines isn't great, and shows how things changed from WoD onwards. Basically, you need fights with phases of very heavy continuing non-spikey raid damage so the Shaman can time their CDs for when the raid is getting low and pour massive healing out for 10-15s using the strong cooldowns and mastery to generate stupid numbers. However, there aren't a lot of fights like that now, other healers can also do stuff like this, and Shaman healing cooldowns have been nerfed a fair bit over the last two expansions. Apparently having a moment of glory or two in a few fights per raid, and being thoroughly mediocre the rest of the time upsets other healers.

Basically, give Resto back the plentiful strong cooldowns, and change the fight design a bit, and Resto will be fine.

Personally, I hope they toss Cloudburst Totem in the crapper. I hate the thing.

[Kralljin]

that funneling has been a gameplay element for quite some time.

Using FS in a cleave scenario isn't exactly funneling, because you are using EQ over ES, which defeats the point of funneling.
And as already said, multi dotting FS wasn't a really core strat Pre Legion, because the shared CD between ES and FS made it more difficult to manage, not to mention that it required multiple targets that lived for a prolonged amount of time to really have a pay off.

It was a niche thing before Legion, that's it.

we will likely be seeing a return of the damage buff to LvB when it strikes a FS target (with automatic crits being baseline again). This would be in line with their focus of utilizing extra targets for increased LvB usage.

That change was a zero sum equation, it was done so that using Lvb on targets w/o FS was less punished.
Previously, you lost out on a 200% Crit multiplier, after that you simply lost on a 50% damage bonus.

Your damage on targets with Flame shock wasn't affected, it just made target switch situation slightly less bad for Elemental, which was a huge problem for Elemental until Legion.

[Rucati]

This part doesn't make sense to me, so maybe someone can help.

Elemental
But we want the focus of the rotation to be about managing your Flame Shock debuff on multiple targets to maximize the potential of Lava Burst through Lava Surge procs. Lightning Bolt, and consequently Earth Shock, are meant to be a flavorful but secondary part of the single-target rotation.

They say they want managing Flame Shock debuff on multiple targets to be the focus, but then in the next sentence say that Lightning Bolt and Earth Shock are secondary to single-target... So what's the focus for single target? Keeping up Flame Shock? Because that doesn't really require focus to keep a 20 second debuff up on one enemy.

Either way, I'm apparently in the minority because I like Maelstrom, at least for Ele (I've never played Enhance so no idea). So I'm not super thrilled with this, but I was unlikely to main Shaman next expansion either way so if it makes everyone else happy that's fine with me. The fact that your primary damage is going to come from Lava Burst procs has me pretty nervous for single target though unless I missed something somewhere.

[Venziir]

This part doesn't make sense to me, so maybe someone can help.



They say they want managing Flame Shock debuff on multiple targets to be the focus, but then in the next sentence say that Lightning Bolt and Earth Shock are secondary to single-target... So what's the focus for single target? Keeping up Flame Shock? Because that doesn't really require focus to keep a 20 second debuff up on one enemy.

Either way, I'm apparently in the minority because I like Maelstrom, at least for Ele (I've never played Enhance so no idea). So I'm not super thrilled with this, but I was unlikely to main Shaman next expansion either way so if it makes everyone else happy that's fine with me. The fact that your primary damage is going to come from Lava Burst procs has me pretty nervous for single target though unless I missed something somewhere.

Maybe they'll remove the CD on FS again

[Jotaux]

I wonder what class I should switch to from shaman.

[MiiiMiii]

While I am super stoked with all the changes they did talk about. Because everyting they did was just perfect, in my eyes, I am having some doubts.

What happened to the "unpruning" of totems? You know, the thing they bragged about on Blizzcon 2019?

I love real totems, but in current WoW's "GOGOGO" rush rush rush, spending 4 GCDs on totems, probably just does not work.

I don't see much information about totems. They mentioned Searing Totem, Healing Stream Totem. Is that it?

Are we getting mana spring totem? Are we getting Resistance totems? Are we getting Windfury Totem? Are we getting Tremor Totem outside PvP?

[ricecookie]

While I am super stoked with all the changes they did talk about. Because everyting they did was just perfect, in my eyes, I am having some doubts.

What happened to the "unpruning" of totems? You know, the thing they bragged about on Blizzcon 2019?

I love real totems, but in current WoW's "GOGOGO" rush rush rush, spending 4 GCDs on totems, probably just does not work.

I don't see much information about totems. They mentioned Searing Totem, Healing Stream Totem. Is that it?

Are we getting mana spring totem? Are we getting Resistance totems? Are we getting Windfury Totem? Are we getting Tremor Totem outside PvP?

I think it was in Wrath (might be wrong) that shamans got a "totem fort". You could pre-select which 4 totems to drop at once and then had a specific button for that. That's one of the things I miss the most about shamans. To me the Legion/BFA version of enhance is more of a fury warrior with some elemental flair. I love seeing Searing Totem and Healing Stream Totem coming back but I would love to have buff totems aswell. BRING BACK WINDFURY TOTEM!!

[Razaron]

I've never seen any shaman wish for Searing Totem to return so that scares me that Blizzard have highlighted it as a key ability and then in their statement showcased a talent that basically makes it a machine gun version of Searing Totem. Ehhh...

[Foxhoundn]

Bye Maelstrom, you won't be missed...at all. Don't ever come back.

[ricecookie]

I've never seen any shaman wish for Searing Totem to return so that scares me that Blizzard have highlighted it as a key ability and then in their statement showcased a talent that basically makes it a machine gun version of Searing Totem. Ehhh...

I want it back. Been missing that little guy. I know I might be in the minority but that totem is talismanic to me as an enhancer since TBC

[StillMcfuu]

While I am super stoked with all the changes they did talk about. Because everyting they did was just perfect, in my eyes, I am having some doubts.

What happened to the "unpruning" of totems? You know, the thing they bragged about on Blizzcon 2019?

I love real totems, but in current WoW's "GOGOGO" rush rush rush, spending 4 GCDs on totems, probably just does not work.

I don't see much information about totems. They mentioned Searing Totem, Healing Stream Totem. Is that it?

Are we getting mana spring totem? Are we getting Resistance totems? Are we getting Windfury Totem? Are we getting Tremor Totem outside PvP?

I think it was in Wrath (might be wrong) that shamans got a "totem fort". You could pre-select which 4 totems to drop at once and then had a specific button for that. That's one of the things I miss the most about shamans. To me the Legion/BFA version of enhance is more of a fury warrior with some elemental flair. I love seeing Searing Totem and Healing Stream Totem coming back but I would love to have buff totems aswell. BRING BACK WINDFURY TOTEM!!

Wrath had a "Totem Bar" that allowed you to set what totems you wanted to drop, all at once, obviously you could create hotkeys for different load outs. There was also the totem recall ability that allowed you to pick up all your totems and get refunded 50%+ of the mana used on them. And you could just make a drop again. It actually worked really well and was a lot of fun to use.

It's possible they are still bringing this back and just didn't mention it yet because they aren't sure how they will do it. I think they should just pull out the Wrath system because that was pretty much the pinnacle of Shaman totems.

[Acidbaron]

I don't mind a return to wotlk enhancement but i am wary of us having to use stationary totems for our damage again. Shamans having raid/team buffs would be good. So while i can understand the sentiment of @ricecookie, i also very much remember the annoyance it at times was.

We will see how things work out, not a big fan of debuffs/dots on targets that need to be build up to do decent damage.

[Gurahk]

Personally I don't mind the searing totem, probably because I'm used to always having to place down the 4 totems in bfa.

[ricecookie]

Wrath had a "Totem Bar" that allowed you to set what totems you wanted to drop, all at once, obviously you could create hotkeys for different load outs. There was also the totem recall ability that allowed you to pick up all your totems and get refunded 50%+ of the mana used on them. And you could just make a drop again. It actually worked really well and was a lot of fun to use.

It's possible they are still bringing this back and just didn't mention it yet because they aren't sure how they will do it. I think they should just pull out the Wrath system because that was pretty much the pinnacle of Shaman totems.

That's the exact part I was talking about! Loved it! Having totems baseline instead of a talent is must have for as enhance.

I don't mind a return to wotlk enhancement but i am wary of us having to use stationary totems for our damage again. Shamans having raid/team buffs would be good. So while i can understand the sentiment of @ricecookie, i also very much remember the annoyance it at times was.

We will see how things work out, not a big fan of debuffs/dots on targets that need to be build up to do decent damage.

Oh, I am well aware of the clunkiness with having stationary totems but at the same time I think that makes the class what it is. I am okey with that annoyance if we can a way to re-position totems easily. I just don't like being a fury warrior with lightning attacks, that doesn't feel like a shaman to me.

[Kralljin]

Either way, I'm apparently in the minority because I like Maelstrom, at least for Ele (I've never played Enhance so no idea).

I never really saw Maelstrom as a huge issue to be honest, it was Lighning Shield Charges in a better capacity.
People always asked for having to spent LS charges to interact with LS charges, Maelstrom essentially did just that.

Like, the core rotation of the rotation was still the same.
Keep FS up, hit Lvb on CD, press ES once you're capped on Charges / Maelstrom, cast LB if nothing else available.

It wasn't a massive rework like Insanity or something.

Are we getting mana spring totem? Are we getting Resistance totems? Are we getting Windfury Totem? Are we getting Tremor Totem outside PvP?

Considering they even changed Vesper Totem (it was previewed as more like a "support" totem at Blizzcon), i doubt this support niche returns.
And Tremor totem is already baseline...it's just highly situational in PvE, but that's always been the case.

[Skildar]

As a class, Shaman have long had some of the most distinctive categories of spells in the game—Totems, Shocks, Shields, Weapon Imbues, and Chain spells—but over time, some have become the domain of specific specializations.

This is what bugs me the most. If you ask me how to describe a shaman, I will say the following :
themes -> elements & elemental, totems, spirits for
iconic spells -> shock, bolt, blast, chain spells, strikes, totems, elemental summon, feral spirits, wolf form for

In no way does shield and weapon imbue come to mind. Why? Because they are currently not a part of the shaman toolkit that is interesting. So don't force lightening shield and weapon imbue if they are not part of a dynamic rotation. If it is just a 1h button to press, then remove it, makes no sense. I've always hated to push that button everytime I died in bg.

I can see it coming from a mile away that those shields will act just like in MoP instead of current enhancement talent...
Whereas it could make so much more sense to give each spec a specific shield that plays with the role of the class :
- elemental: earth shield that gets more dense when you don't move and reduce damages up to 10%
- enhancement: lightening shield, bfa talent
- restoration: whenever you summon a totem, heals an injured ally for X health

General Changes
In Shadowlands, Chain Heal, Chain Lightning, Healing Stream Totem, Flametongue Weapon, Flame Shock, Frost Shock, and Lightning Shield will be available for all Shaman to use regardless of their specialization.

Why so many healing spells? no!
We don't want to be a hybrid class, we have a single target healing spell and it is perfectly fine like this. We can have one more heal as a talent if needed (legion healing rain) but either make it a 2min healing totem or a chain heal that we don't feel obligated to spam everytime we have the mana for it.

Searing Totem also returns as an ability for all Shaman to use, which bombards nearby enemies with fireballs for a short duration.

why?... at the end of mop you agreed that this totem was useless and introduced in WoD the liquid magma totem. Why are you forcing searing totem back?? oO'
At least try to make it interesting like having special use for each spec :
- elemental: acts as current liquid magma totem
- enhancement: for X sec, lava lash doesn't have a cooldown
- restoration: for X sec, each second the totem imbues 6 people in the group making their next ability to also deal X amount of fire damage

Elemental
...

We removed a UI bar to replace it by 2 buffs that will require a weakaura to track your stacks.
And you are now forced to build up when switching from single target to multi-target.

Enhancement
...

We basically restored MoP-WoD enhancement version and gave you most of elemental toolkit.

Restoration
Once Restoration Shaman step into the realm of the ancestral spirits, they will find new ways to tap into the elements’ powers. Earth Shield can now be used by all Restoration Shaman without needing to select it as a Talent. Surge of the Earth is a new Talent that expends a few charges of Earth Shield to significantly heal the current Earth Shield target and several nearby allies.

And now have fun managing earth shield when it looses its stack so fast that the new ability can't be used in any interesting way and that none of your spells have any synergy with this.

[Elodeon]

We removed a UI bar to replace it by 2 buffs that will require a weakaura to track your stacks.
And you are now forced to build up when switching from single target to multi-target.

Agreed. I'm maining Elemental during BfA and I'm really not excited for these changes. I expected some minor unpruning, instead we're getting some major steps back.

I don't like it. Each of the previous expansions, I mained a spec which Blizzard then proceeded to destroy in the next expansion, making it alien to me. I loved Affliction in Pandaria, they destroyed that. I enjoyed Shadow in WoD, they completely changed it. I enjoyed Marksmanship in Legion, they went and "fixed" it so that no one plays it in BfA. Now they're ruining Elemental. *sigh*

The way this looks, I'm running out of specs to which to switch.

[lostsoup]

Agreed. I'm maining Elemental during BfA and I'm really not excited for these changes. I expected some minor unpruning, instead we're getting some major steps back.

I don't like it. Each of the previous expansions, I mained a spec which Blizzard then proceeded to destroy in the next expansion, making it alien to me. I loved Affliction in Pandaria, they destroyed that. I enjoyed Shadow in WoD, they completely changed it. I enjoyed Marksmanship in Legion, they went and "fixed" it so that no one plays it in BfA. Now they're ruining Elemental. *sigh*

The way this looks, I'm running out of specs to which to switch.

How are they ruining Elemental? It's going to play in pretty much the exact same way...

[Schizoide]

What happened to the "unpruning" of totems? You know, the thing they bragged about on Blizzcon 2019?

Searing and Healing Stream totems mean every shaman in the game will have to spend 2 GCDs every time they move 30 feet. So, like, enjoy that.

Of course they could be balanced so it isn't worth bothering but then-- why add them at all?

Or they could have 5min+ cooldowns and be balanced accordingly, and that would be perfectly fine, actually. Anything but 2 low-power yet highly efficient mandatory GCDs every 30 feet.