Enhancement changes 9.0 Discussion

[Grimbold21]

I think it should be removed for Magma Totem. It's one of those abilities that feels boring to use and patched in because they kept removing Enh ability to aoe, even though it used to shine at it. I think it would be better off as a talent to alter how SS works.
You could probably replace landslide seeing as Rockbiter is an empty button now.

I actually don't remember what our AoE used to be back in MoP. I know I was Fire Novaing shit in... late Cata. Could always go old school with chain lightning and the AoE totem alone

[jon041065]

Actually those abilities are what builds your maelstrom stacks. It's rockbiter that really feels out of place and searing totem that feels underwhelming.

Lava Lash and Stormstrike had the additional mechanics that I mentioned besides MSW generation in past expacs.

Yeah searing totem just being a mini cd and no interaction unless you take a talent is meh.

I actually don't remember what our AoE used to be back in MoP. I know I was Fire Novaing shit in... late Cata. Could always go old school with chain lightning and the AoE totem alone

I can't remember the name of it but we had an AoE totem. Think it was just called Magma Totem. Then FS spread and Chain Lightning plus Fire Nova like you said. Those 4 made up the core for enhance AoE iirc.

[Grimbold21]

Just noticed that Lightning Shield seems...isolated, as in, it doesn't do anything other than reflect damage.

Like with Flameshock and Lava Lash, I think it should be synergyzing with something. Otherwise it only has a meaningless pvp application, since the dmg reflected doesn't look to be that much

[Oturanboa]

Speaking of 2 handed enhancement, go to the changes datamined on WoWhead and you'll see the entries for Fury of Air and Crash Lightning have modications that includes notation for 2H and DW. Maybe 2 handed enhancement is coming afterall...Cyclone Strikes tooltip for windwalkers have the same type of notation.

I did check it out and it really seems so! This is exciting! What do you guys think we should make out of this? Is this really the herald of 2h enhancement?

[kosajk]

I did check it out and it really seems so! This is exciting! What do you guys think we should make out of this? Is this really the herald of 2h enhancement?

well everything is posible although i hardly daubt it, it would have to get different modiffiers for all skills basically so it will not go randomly rampage with WF or SS and in same time not hinder overall dps.
Not sure if its worth their work to implement it Personally i would like to see less stupid skills like current implementation of searing totem and some decent survivability as pvp atm is rape fest for enh...

tbh after playing this game for ~14 years, 80% of that as shaman, mostly enh + resto ocasionally, i had recently small episode with 2 friends wanting to get some neck upgrades from pvp, getting them in 3vs3 and later on in 2vs2 arenas on different toons to 1k rating made me stop playing wow again :P
freshly made dk with green essences and ~450ilvl was been more durable and could do shitton more control and dmg than ~465 enh shaman with proper settings and years of experience
not mentioning its hard to find another character without some kind of combat reset ability those days (priest disperse, pala bubble, DH fly high, rogue dodge/vanish, monk touch of karma which is fucking ridiculous ability tbh, hunter bubble, mage ice block, and we are left with warlock, warrior, druid and sham), why?
on top of pit-full self heal in pvp that enh can throw out to get ~2 more skills in the face before dying so its basically not worth global cd it trigger most of the times

[Advent]

Random thought/dislike popped up in my head, but I don't think I really fancy Crash Lightning that much.

That's unfortunate, because I really like it. It has far more uses than our previous AoE, for example. Fire Nova was cool and all, but it was so useless outside of heavy, sustained aoe bosses (extremely rare) or trash, that I found almost no use for it. And we sucked at cleave until we got the legendary cloak in MoP.

[melzas]

That's unfortunate, because I really like it. It has far more uses than our previous AoE, for example. Fire Nova was cool and all, but it was so useless outside of heavy, sustained aoe bosses (extremely rare) or trash, that I found almost no use for it. And we sucked at cleave until we got the legendary cloak in MoP.

This so much!
Whatever they do, I hope they won't try to bring back this super clunky fire nova/FS combo. Magma totem was pretty shit too. I'm cool with crash lighting staying, also lighting spells > fire spells.

[Kayaan]

I actually don't remember what our AoE used to be back in MoP. I know I was Fire Novaing shit in... late Cata. Could always go old school with chain lightning and the AoE totem alone

Wasn't it we Flame shocked a target, Lava Lash to Spread the dot, then Spam Fire Nova.

[Kalarm]

Wasn't it we Flame shocked a target, Lava Lash to Spread the dot, then Spam Fire Nova.

It got changed during cata but it really was incredible during WoD. I'm trying to find the history just by curiosity. The thing that happened is that in during cata (4.1) it got changed from being a pulse from the fire totem to pulsing from flame shocks. Then in mist, lava lash gained the ability to spread flame shock to 4 targets. In WoD it could spread to 6 targets. Meanwhile fire nova got a big DMG buff at the end of Mist (5.4). In WoD it was changed to trigger from 7 targets max, and then 6. In WoD we also had echo of the elements talent which was a must and meant we had 2 charges of fire nova.

[Saltysquidoon]

It got changed during cata but it really was incredible during WoD.

Wasn't it we Flame shocked a target, Lava Lash to Spread the dot, then Spam Fire Nova.

Funny how things change, I remember a lot of screeching in cata about how tabbing FS and nova had too much ramp and 'felt clunky'

[Kalarm]

Funny how things change, I remember a lot of screeching in cata about how tabbing FS and nova had too much ramp and 'felt clunky'

Edited my post with some history.

It was. I think part of the problem was also that in cata we had the mechanic that made searing totem leave a debuff on target which increased lava lash DMG by a lot. So switching targets was really un-natural as it could mean losing a stack. That mechanic later came back in legion's legionfall traits to use flametongue's attacks to add the debuff. The good thing was that it could stack really high and it couldn't go on targets which you only wanted to cast a spell on. That mechanic then came back in BFA with a max of 10 stacks.

I wonder if they will get some form of that mechanic for SL. I hope not. It didn't add anything to the spec in legion and was annoying in BFA (at least when I left... Maybe they changed it?). Lava lash does need a little something in SL. Right now it's just a filler. We got too many fillers in SL... They should remove rockbiter and potentially build landslide into lava lash instead or something. WoD enh was in a better place-ish because all abilities did something and frost shock was really the only filler. SL got rockbiter, lava lash, frost shock and even flame shock doesn't do anything by default. Crash lightning is also a filler when in ST.

[Saltysquidoon]

I wonder if they will get some form of that mechanic for SL. I hope not. It didn't add anything to the spec in legion and was annoying in BFA (at least when I left... Maybe they changed it?). Lava lash does need a little something in SL. Right now it's just a filler. We got too many fillers in SL... They should remove rockbiter and potentially build landslide into lava lash instead or something. WoD enh was in a better place-ish because all abilities did something and frost shock was really the only filler. SL got rockbiter, lava lash, frost shock and even flame shock doesn't do anything by default. Crash lightning is also a filler when in ST.

I agree re; rockbiter and LL. It's so stupid having multiple competing talents in multiple rows that you have to take in order to not make both spells pure filler.
In addition, frost shock being purely cc and the hailstorm talent being pointless and decoupled from it hurts too.

I feel like enhance is morphic back into this spec where you have a lot of buttons to press but you only press them because they're there to press not because the gameplay makes you want to press them, and talents just exacerbate this by making them compete.

[LTCrystallite]

What I would like to see is a return to the "Your melee abilities enhance or enable your spells" kind of playstyle.

In Mists of Pandaria, you could:

1 Use Unleash Elements (40% fire dmg for next fire spell + 6 faster swings which enabled more Maelstrom procs)
2 Use Stormstrike (25% increased nature spell crit chance)
3 Cast Ele Blast (which gained both the fire dmg and nature crit bonuses and also benefited from your Mastery elemental damage and reduced cast time from Maelstrom procs)

which all fed into each other very nicely. I feel like minus Searing Totem, it felt good to have your melee strikes and weapon procs benefit your spells and to be uniquely battle magey when compared to the rest of the melees. I hope Shadowlands sets up Enhance to go down a similar route instead of this current one where we rely heavily on Stormbringer procs and try to minimize our fillers and maintenance spell usage in between.

Maybe make SS and LL a 10 yard range and bring Sham Rage back instead of Astral Shift to reduce their obvious squishiness.

Overall, I feel like Enhance needs the Disc Priest treatment when it comes to uniqueness. No other healer in the game is baseline built around dealing damage to heal, and similarly I'd love to see Enhance head in more of a "Caster that melees" direction. Paladins, druids, monks and DK's can all technically "cast spells" despite the fact that they are melee. Push it a step further.

[Advent]

What I would like to see is a return to the "Your melee abilities enhance or enable your spells" kind of playstyle.

In Mists of Pandaria, you could:

1 Use Unleash Elements (40% fire dmg for next fire spell + 6 faster swings which enabled more Maelstrom procs)
2 Use Stormstrike (25% increased nature spell crit chance)
3 Cast Ele Blast (which gained both the fire dmg and nature crit bonuses and also benefited from your Mastery elemental damage and reduced cast time from Maelstrom procs)

which all fed into each other very nicely. I feel like minus Searing Totem, it felt good to have your melee strikes and weapon procs benefit your spells and to be uniquely battle magey when compared to the rest of the melees. I hope Shadowlands sets up Enhance to go down a similar route instead of this current one where we rely heavily on Stormbringer procs and try to minimize our fillers and maintenance spell usage in between.

Maybe make SS and LL a 10 yard range and bring Sham Rage back instead of Astral Shift to reduce their obvious squishiness.

Overall, I feel like Enhance needs the Disc Priest treatment when it comes to uniqueness. No other healer in the game is baseline built around dealing damage to heal, and similarly I'd love to see Enhance head in more of a "Caster that melees" direction. Paladins, druids, monks and DK's can all technically "cast spells" despite the fact that they are melee. Push it a step further.

The original version or the glyph-buffed one that gave us like 60% damage reduction?

OT: I'd love to go back to MoP enhancement, it was my favorite iteration of the spec by far.

[LTCrystallite]

The original version or the glyph-buffed one that gave us like 60% damage reduction?

OT: I'd love to go back to MoP enhancement, it was my favorite iteration of the spec by far.

Not the glyphed version. Basically the idea would be that you get 30% damage reduction which is usable while stunned for 15 seconds once every minute and that would both solve Enhancement's squish issue as well as give them something as a DPS that DPS "aren't supposed to have" (uniqueness) but some of them do (vanish/CloS, pally bubbles, fel rush and DH mobility in general is redonk etc). Things Shamans do have are typically shared or similar to other spells. Feral lunge is just Shaman charge, Ghost Wolf is just not as good Cat/Travel form, etc.

I guess totems could fill this role again but we'd have to wait and see.

As far as MOP Enhancement goes, I REALLY REALLY miss Stormblast being benefited by mastery and the SS debuff. Jesus. So rewarding.

[Advent]

Not the glyphed version. Basically the idea would be that you get 30% damage reduction which is usable while stunned for 15 seconds once every minute and that would both solve Enhancement's squish issue as well as give them something as a DPS that DPS "aren't supposed to have" (uniqueness) but some of them do (vanish/CloS, pally bubbles, fel rush and DH mobility in general is redonk etc). Things Shamans do have are typically shared or similar to other spells. Feral lunge is just Shaman charge, Ghost Wolf is just not as good Cat/Travel form, etc.

I guess totems could fill this role again but we'd have to wait and see.

As far as MOP Enhancement goes, I REALLY REALLY miss Stormblast being benefited by mastery and the SS debuff. Jesus. So rewarding.

This part. This part right here. Yes. I want that animation back. It's too cool to give to elemental, and it was OURS FIRST! >_<

[wushootaki]

The wow dev team just needs to bring elemental and enhancement back into the similar abilities, different method tree.

Baseline: Earthquake becomes baseline aoe for enhancement as well as elemental

Enh: Crash lightning remains as a cleave/cone melee strike
Earthquake now has its casting time reduced by maelstrom weapons

AoE rotation for Enh now becomes crash lightning, EQ at 5 stack maelstrom, and and tab flame shocking while doing single target rotat


Enhance and Elemental were always more interesting when they used similar abilities, just in a different way.

[kosajk]

The wow dev team just needs to bring elemental and enhancement back into the similar abilities, different method tree.

Baseline: Earthquake becomes baseline aoe for enhancement as well as elemental

Enh: Crash lightning remains as a cleave/cone melee strike
Earthquake now has its casting time reduced by maelstrom weapons

AoE rotation for Enh now becomes crash lightning, EQ at 5 stack maelstrom, and and tab flame shocking while doing single target rotat


Enhance and Elemental were always more interesting when they used similar abilities, just in a different way.

although having cast time or not from time to time on ability is not same to using it different way :P
tbh for SL i would like to see
- wolfs healing for % of dmg done, maybe having elemental wolfs baseline to have some more synergy
- some decent defensive CD
- ancestral guidance
- scrap searing totem again or give ability to strike enemy and re position all active totems to your location with ~10 sec cd (maybe talent option)
- baseline ascendance
- instant hex for enh ffs
- scraping SS spam mechanic and making it more impact-full, 15-20% chance to proc but actually hit like a truck to have that "fuck yeah!!!" moments when it proc 3-4 times in a row

[Kralljin]

Enhance and Elemental were always more interesting when they used similar abilities, just in a different way.

Never been a huge fan of that as Elemental to be honest.

Enhancement gets all the fun stuff from Elemental and what does Elemental get?
Primal Strike.

Yep.

[msdos]

Never been a huge fan of that as Elemental to be honest.

Enhancement gets all the fun stuff from Elemental and what does Elemental get?
Primal Strike.

Yep.

The spell blade idea would've been cool back in the day when you could have a pure auto-attack class. Put a talent deep in Ele that increases the damage of flametongue/frostbrand weapon so much that you can just dps with it lol. Then have searing totem be an actual thing. A lot of people thought they would go down that path because of the Shadowhunter from WC3. But instead they went down this path of summoning elementals and extra attacks on separate CDs and being obsessed with radial AOEs.

I think they found that no one alive actually likes totems, using them, having to destroy them, etc because they nerfed or removed PVP and high frequency totems faster than you could blink your eyeballs.