Enh in Shadowlands - Thoughts/Suggestions

[Shango]

Hey Guys,

i know this might not be the best place to post suggestions, but for some reason i cannot select any charakter on the official forums right now and am therefor unable to create any threads. Still wanting to share my thoughts and exchange ideas i figured i might just post here aswell.

After the initial changes to enhance in shadowlands landed pretty well (mostly) i feel like the spec got somewhat overlooked while still having major issues. Now while i dont want to have every single problem removed i would still like to see some issues adressed, mainly some of the dead talents, our underwhelming level 50 talent row and some other stuff. Some points im going to talk about are probably pretty subjective and not real issues, in that case, just let me know.


Baseline Abilities

Stormstrike

Considering there will be 4 different ways (Stormbringer procs/Frostwitch legendary/Ascendance&Stormfury talents) to reduce or reset SS's cooldown i really believe SS needs charges, either via a return of Echo of the Elements for Enh or preffered baseline. While the recent addition of a dmg component to SB makes the issue less pronounced, it still feels underwhelming getting a reset after reducing the CD to <2sec via a lucky WF streak.

Flametongue

Since Flametongue gets changed from an active buff that has to be refreshed in time to an somewhat passive weapon enchant i really dont see why this spell still has to exist, besides reducing our other abilietys damage by 2-4% (its own dmg share) this ability does not do anything. Just increase Flameshock/Lava Lash dmg accordingly and change any interaction with Flame Tongue to work with Flame Shock ticks instead, adding the benefit of scaling up with multiple targets.

Flametongue/Lightning Shield/Windfury

If FT has to exist, i fail to understand why WF/FT/LS have to be active abilities with a 30 min duration, reduced from BfA in the case of LS. I wont break my fingers refreshing those buffs once per M+ and i know this is simple a QoL issue but the design purpose eludes me.

Feral Spirits

Probably one, if not the weakest dps cooldown in the game, i cant say for sure as i know to little about other classes, however unless skilled Feral Spirits feels really underwhelming to press, one common suggestion is to make Elemental Spirits baseline as rank 2 spell upgrade, and i can agree with that.

Talents

Level 30 and Level 40 Talent Rows

Before i start talking about specific talents i want to adress something that has always bothered me with the options granted in these 2 rows, the talents here are focused on defense/mobility and in the case of Static Shock CC. Shaman has always had a horrible defense because of that you would in most cases just pick double def for pvp purposes and lose out on mobility. On the other hand picking Windrush Totem over Nature's Guardian for Raid Utility (Carapace) and losing one of our only meaningful def tools also feels pretty bad. I would therefor suggest focusing the level 30 row on defense while focusing the level 40 row on mobility.

Spirit Wolf

Swap place with Nature's Guardian

Earth Shield

In Shadowlands it is no longer possible to have both shields up at the same time, taking in consideration that LS will grant MSW stacks on being attacked which can be turned into instant heals for survivability, Earth Shield while allready being underwhelming before completly lost any viability. Therefor id suggest changing the functionality back and in addition to that changing the 10% heal increase to a 10% dr if placed on yourself.

Static Shock

Remove and replace with "Stoneskin" granting a 30% max health shield for xy sec on 90 sec cooldown, numbers can be adjusted. What i am trying to do here is to offer a small but steady defense boost in the form of Earthshield, a medium passive defense tool via Nature's Guardian and a big on demand Def with Stoneskin. In an ideal (albeit uncontrollable) scenaria Natures Guardian is still 50% more effective than Stoneskin.

Fire Nova

The current version of this talent sadly jsut is not worth it. Even with extra Flameshock debuffs via Primordial Wave and Ice Strike the payoff is to little for the hassle of micro managing the perfect setup. For this talent to work we need our WoD Flameshock spread ability back, can be in the form of Lava Lash but does not need to be.

Crashing Storm

Bland and boring and never could compete with the other options during entire BfA. Could be replaced with either Echo of the Elements or a way to enable Flameshock spread, or something entirely different.

Stormkeeper

This talent just does not fit Enh in my opinion, 1st you use your MSW stacks to buff your LB/CL casts making them instant and deal more dmg, which they allready would have if you just used your stacks on the respective cast right away (obviously less and only affecting 1 cast). 2nd in an ideal scenario you want to gather another 5 MSW stacks to use on LB to increase the dmg without actually using your stacks in the process, add on that the interaction with a possible Primordial Blast and at least for me things start getting really confusing. 3rd Compared to Ele it feels like something is missing when using Stormkeeperas Enh, getting a guaranteed Overload proc just feels really satisfying, Enh does not have any such interaction.

Earthen Spike

This ability simple adds to the rotation without any meaningful payoff, in addition to that you completly lose access to any relevant dmg cooldown. Another underwhelming design that just could not compete almost (strength of Earth builds) the entire addon.

Elemental Spirits

While i dont think this ability has any real issues that need adressing, to me it feels like it should be baseline. An idea i came up with would be to split it into 3 talents (fire/ice/lightning), making a buffed version of feral spirits unavoidable in an enhancers basekit, ascendance can take the place of Crash Lightning/Stormkeeper and Earthen Spike most likely wont be missed. This would also allow to focus the differnt buffs granted by Elemental Spirits on different playstyles PvE/PvP dmg patterns ST/AoE or put more focus on certain ability centric playstyles like Stormstrike/Lavalash/Frost Shock. The options are vast.


Alright i feel like i adressed all the issues that i would like to see adressed, do you share my views or would you rather see other abilities changed?

[Oturanboa]

I've talked about most of the things you suggested both here and official forums.

Stormstrike needs charges.

Flametongue = meaningless crowd on combat log (wf too to behonest...). I too suggested it to buff some other ability instead or just remove and be done with it.

Feral spirits just sucks. At least make them stun the target they are unleashed on. New msw gain with them is cool but msw itself (lightning bolt itself) needs to be buffed tremendeously for the spec to have any control imo.

Lightning shield's damage should be buffed absurdly. Training an enhancement shaman just doesn't have any downside... It's a sure kill w/o any repercussions.
Earthshield talent can just integrate into lightning shield. Just let it's buff to be added into a single spell when talented.

Fire nova... I liked the new hailstorm. I hope fire nova doesn't outsource hailstorm. So... Suck it!
However, manually spreading flameshock to every target in mythic+ sounds horrible as a melee spec.

elemental spirits, earthen spike, ascendance... All 3 of it is rubbish. I hate picking elemental spirits for higher dps.


As suggested on other threads...
Stormstrike's cooldown should be doubled! Go for 12-15 seconds.
Rotation will be empty when you do that, so halve the cooldown of lava lash (or even more) since it doesn't do much damage, it doesn't matter. It can be some kind of a filler.
Now dps of enhancement is lowered. Buff damage of lightning bolt with all the remaining room. Being able to keep 2 charges of high hitter lightning bolt will be amazing for enhancement burst damage. Combined with 2 charges of stormstrike and stormbringer, we can finally have good burst damage for arena.
This way, value of feral spirit msw gain, lightning shield msw gain, stormkeeper will increase by a lot. Spec will finally make sense.
I'm tired of this emphasis on stormstrike. After %100 ss damage legendary, spec will again be just waiting for stormbringer... This just sucks.

I don't know what to say about defensives... I anxiously kept refreshing mmo-champion and official forums for the news of enhancement. Ion just thinks we're "lobbying for buffs". I can't understand how something so obvious can be a point of controversy or can fail to be seen. Every player would tell enhancement sucks donkey balls in arena. Imagine a dk + rogue pair on you in arena...

This whole beta period just made depressed.

[Shango]

I feel like it is still to early to talk about numbers, i dont think those are final at all, i however i agree that lightning bolt in its final version should deal more damage than SS.

Regarding our defense, with recent beta changes Astral Shift got a rank 2 spell upgrade increasing its duration to 12 sec, probably not enough however im fine with our def being one our defining weaknesses, as long as others points get adressed.

I however disagree with Lightning Shield needing its damage increased, unless its via some kind of pvp talent, i could see that working pretty well though.

I also thought some more about my idea of splitting up Elemental Spirits into 3 Talents and here is what i came up with:

Fire Spirits: Lava Lash now has 2 charges and causes Flame Shock to spread to 2 nearby targets. While Feral Spirits are active you Fire Damage is increased by 50% and Flame Shock spread is increased to 4 targets.

Lightning Spirits: Stormstrike now has 2 charges and causes your next Windfury attack to hit 1 additional time, stacking up to 3. While Feral Spirits are active your Stormstrike and Windfury Damage is increased by 75% and Stormstrike causes your next Windfury attack to hit 2 additional times, stacking up to 6.

Frost Spirits: Your Shocks now have 2 charges and Frost Shock causes LB/CL to shatter any active FS debuffs dealing 25% increased damage. While Feral Spirits are active your Frost Damage is increased by 25% and your meele attacks deal additional Frost Damage to enemies, slowing them by 30%, in addition Frost Shock causes your next LB/CL to shatter any active FS debuffs dealing 50% increased damage.

Numbers and effects can ofc be changed, thoughts?