Enhancement changes 9.0 Discussion

[Trinkie]

Don't know the reasoning behind it. I just know people were doing it, which kept 2H relevant much longer than the initial post I responded to insinuated.

It was alive for 1 expansion as a meme macro for one ability. It was never useful during windstrike

[Grimbolt]

Looks like enh shaman will be one of the more fun melee classes in shadowlands. Lets hope the tuning is done right too so the shaman class isnt stigmatised for an entire expansion again.

[Kleym]

Does anyone have logs in raid or mm+ of someone who actually knows how to play enh on the beta ? Cause I don't see much people playing that spec

[Schmilblick]

Looks like enh shaman will be one of the more fun melee classes in shadowlands. Lets hope the tuning is done right too so the shaman class isnt stigmatised for an entire expansion again.

And still super squishy in PvP, which is very bad.

[Oturanboa]

A dude posted some target dummy logs on one of the threads but it's meaningless before 1st pass of tuning, which should be around the corner.

[cocomen2]

Frost DK players : "Can we get 2h playstyle, we loved it" -> DEVS:"Okay just wait a minute"

Enhancement players : "Can we get 2h playstyle, we loved it" -> DEVS: "STFU,scrubs ion not wants you in his party"

same shit as in 2018

Get rekt Shamans.
"The community doesn't always do themselves a favor in this regard. There's a fine line between lobbying for change, and trying to get Blizzards' attention and constantly putting down your own class."

And then ... even people with half of brain can see that shaman has LOWEST number of defensive cooldowns among all classes just for LOLs.
Use healing totem boy .....ROFL
Shaman Moblilty ? lets prune "GUST OF WIND" these shamans not deserve it.

1)Mobility = shit (all other classes can teleport or jump miles, except DK but damn DK has shit load defensive cooldowns+plate)
2)Immunity = dont have it
3)Mitigation = no def CDs +mail armor sucks @ss.

[Grimbolt]

I think the biggest issue is still our utility. We actually bring no utility to a raid force compared to all other melee specs.

We get windfury totem. I figured this would be great if you stacked 2h dps specs with an enh shaman, but after the first round of raid testing, this increases the groups dps by less than 1%. So its pretty much a gimmick. Plus, I personally discovered that while I liked totem management back in classic and TBC, its really not a great fit for the games speed in 2020.

So what do we actually bring? Well, we do bring some off healing, but darkness or rally are better.

And off healing has several issues.
1: it doesnt scale at all, First tier true sure, in the 2nd tier the healing is worthless.
2: it comes at the cost of your dmg. So you are not gonna randomly heal

Other than that. We get the speed totem, which is rarely used at all.

And in PvP we are as squishy as ever.

So honestly, we NEED something that other melees dont have, I dont think windfury is the answer, but even buffing it to a 20% would be pretty good, but at the same time, I am not too sure that it will make up for the lack of other utility.

If they don't want us to bring actual useful utility, we need to do top dog DPS or we will remain the meme DPS spec for another expansion.

It does feel to me that the enh shaman is the odd spec that they still dont know what to do with and the feedback forums doesn't seem to address it at all.

[Traveler Voltin]

on paper i dont like the changes.

[Oturanboa]

Blue post says they are happy with what they did with enhancement. It's all done i suppose. No arena for another expension.

There should be a developers only prize money for like 50k usd, for the one who gets to be gladiator with the least played spec in arena. Pvp balance would be in place in 2-3 seasons.

[Kalarm]

Blue post says they are happy with what they did with enhancement. It's all done i suppose. No arena for another expension.

There should be a developers only prize money for like 50k usd, for the one who gets to be gladiator with the least played spec in arena. Pvp balance would be in place in 2-3 seasons.

I think you're reading too deep into it. I think they meant that as far as the main mechanics go, they are happy with how the spec plays with their previous major changes.

Now after going on the PTR for a bit, here is what I think.

Stormfury is frustrating. I get so many SB procs that watching SS at all times is a necessity otherwise you lose procs. Something needs to be done so that it doesn't stay as frustrating.

Ice strike is interesting. I always wanted an ice based melee attack (or cooler looking spell). I hope there is a really cool animation coming with that. The design of it is flawed tho. Shocks are on incredibly low CD. To use it optimally you gotta wait for a shock -> ice strike -> shock. Total of 3GCD. A lot can happen in that time. SB procs, maybe LB ready, etc. Shocks are very low priority as their DMG is really low so making a new ability that puts them on the spotlight like this is not really fun. Maybe if it simply made the next shock not incur a CD? I have no idea how to deal with this TBH. I like having a frost attack but it was more of an headache than anything.

Hot hands is kinda fun but feels weird to me. It's kinda adding too much to the gameplay?

Overall, I like the base spec gameplay. I think the bigger problems with enh in SL is the flow of it. It was pretty "feast or famine" while I was playing. I'd have all those buttons light up and then I'd get a moment where everything was on CD and nothing to do. It felt more whack-a-moley than playing piano as we had been in pre-legion.

SB and LB kinda competing feels like a problem. There is quite a few talents that tries to add focus to certain abilities which ultimately end up feeling you got too much to watch out for. Maybe their idea is to make LB not a priority and really just something you press after SS and lava lash but before the shocks. Having a proper simulation set up to know what our actual rotation would look like would help a lot I think.

In any case, if you got no buttons to press for 2-3 seconds, a different rotation isn't gonna change much to it.

In the end, I think there is a lot of ideas put into the spec and it might be suffering from it.

Also, sidenote. On my frost DK, I was able to transmog my 2H into the artifact (DW). So I was effectively dual wielding really slowly... So I guess a 2H transmog might not be too hard to add... I'm not usually a big supporter of the 2H enh but as a mog like this, if it's low effort for them, why not?

[Grimbold21]

I want to do a spec leaning towards Fire, but it feels kinda odd, mainly because the talent bonuses to flame shock are kind of irrelevant if you can't spread the dot.

[cocomen2]

I want to do a spec leaning towards Fire, but it feels kinda odd, mainly because the talent bonuses to flame shock are kind of irrelevant if you can't spread the dot.

I feel like Shaman must become more like Avatar of elements wonnabe.

1) Fire spec = range dd (fire + earth = lava) hurts like Lava

2) Wind spec = melee dd (wind + fire = lightening) fast like Lightening

3) Water spec = healer ( water + earth = mud) heal like curing Mud

4) Earth spec = Tank (earth + wind = sand) intangible like Sand


Everything Changed When The Fire "Shamans" Attacked

[Makabreska]

Eh, was super pissed about SL enh changes, since I really like BfA iteration, but everybody and their mums say it's super fun and best spec in the universe, so I guess I will give it a go.

[Jotaux]

Eh, was super pissed about SL enh changes, since I really like BfA iteration, but everybody and their mums say it's super fun and best spec in the universe, so I guess I will give it a go.

It’s pretty similar to live imo. Flame shock instead of flame tongue, frost shock instead of frost brand. You have lightning bolt now and use frost bra.. shock with the hailstorm talent after consuming maelstrom. No rockbiter, so there can be some downtime.

[tronkles]

It’s pretty similar to live imo. Flame shock instead of flame tongue, frost shock instead of frost brand. You have lightning bolt now and use frost bra.. shock with the hailstorm talent after consuming maelstrom. No rockbiter, so there can be some downtime.

You also use Crash lighting on ST now because of no maelstrom

[Schmilblick]

It's still super squishy in PvP, but can be good in PvE.

[Mellomania]

You also use Crash lighting on ST now because of no maelstrom

You already did that on live.
Really looking forward to the changes, going back to a style much more similar to MOP/WOD.

[tronkles]

You already did that on live.
Really looking forward to the changes, going back to a style much more similar to MOP/WOD.

In the later part, sure, but early on you couldn't waste maelstrom for the chance of a windfury/SB proc.

[Traveler Voltin]

It’s pretty similar to live imo. Flame shock instead of flame tongue, frost shock instead of frost brand. You have lightning bolt now and use frost bra.. shock with the hailstorm talent after consuming maelstrom. No rockbiter, so there can be some downtime.

why does a melee spec need to be using range spells.

[Kalarm]

why does a melee spec need to be using range spells.

Because until legion, the fantasy was being a shaman that can conjure lightning and all but who got into melee instead of staying far away. The point was to enhance your weapons to become a capable melee attacker while retaining the spellcaster side of being a shaman (elemental). Personally, that's what always attracted me to the spec. I always ten to go towards melee with spells. I also love frost DK for very similar reasons, although their rotation is much, much simplier. Simply put, I enjoy throwing lightning bolts straight in my enemies face instead of far away.

Problem right now is LB hits like a wet noodle compared to what it used to do pre-legion.