Big flaws in Spiritwalkers Grace

[axion6]

I see some big problems with this ability, it is incredibly underpowered. Granted we don't know much about it yet, but anyway you look at it, its not that great.

Assuming it just gives you the ability to cast while running...
-long cd, short duration, very situational.
-can still be snared (crip poision we cant dispel anymore)
-can still be interupted

One of the easiest counters to this ability is another shaman lol!! Wind Shear would make this feel very useless, also charge, death grip ect. The fact that your casting leaves you open to lockouts from too many sources.


Now....lets say they give you 10 sec of freedom and you can't be interupted as well.

Then why do we even have to cast in the first place? Why not just trigger 3 instant casts, like 3 nature swiftness, but for any element, but give it like a 2 sec gcd between each cast. By saying we can cast, they want a very easy counter thru interupts or stuns ect.


Sounds cool on paper but not all that great when you think about it in practice. I know Blizz has the right intentions and is trying to give us some tools for mobility, but this probably isn't the way to do it.

/agree

sounds kool but very dull, consider your normal rotation and the fact that just about every class can dispel/disrupt, an "EXTREMELY" very short duration making it extremely situational if your a "enhancement" shaman.

instead id suggest something like a speed buff or survivalbility proc such as a absorbtion effect and id rely like to see the enhancement tree with a permanent wolf pet such the the unholy DK permanent ghoul pet that'll branch off the spirit wolf talent, which would benefit the tree much more than what blizzard intends to do.

[eeva]

Even though it feels pointless for enhancement, I am excited to pop Heroism, Haste Pot, Glove enchant, and Rocket Boots. I will be moving so fast throwing so many LBs. Its going to be awesome, pointless and awesome.

[suleria]

The ability does have counters just like everything else in PVP. slows are not up 100% of the time and interrupt options are much more limited outside of melee

[ghrunt]

I feel like the main problem is the fact that so far Spiritwalkers Grace appears to be the "strongest" new shaman ability introduced. Each class has at least one ability that when you read it, you go wow, that will make _____ way more nasty in PvP. Spiritwalkers is supposed to be that for shaman, but in further though, it really falls short, especially for enhancement shaman.

[wordup]

I feel like the main problem is the fact that so far Spiritwalkers Grace appears to be the "strongest" new shaman ability introduced. Each class has at least one ability that when you read it, you go wow, that will make _____ way more nasty in PvP. Spiritwalkers is supposed to be that for shaman, but in further though, it really falls short, especially for enhancement shaman.

Unleash Weapon is incredibly powerful for any spec.

And as for the guy complaining about this for enhancement, I can't see why. Yeah, you'll be burning maelstrom charges, but you'll essentially be dealing auto attacks while lava bursting in someone's face. I can see this having massive potential for burst in pvp as enhancement, and grant resto the burst mobility it needs in tight situations.

As for elemental, seriously, you have SO many tools to lock someone in the open and blow someone up, not like you need long for that anyway, so as you're all basing it off current mechanics you finding holes in the ability is irrelevant.

[Deleted]

This is going to be extremely powerful. The fact that we can till be slowed, interrrupted and stunned saves this ability from the instant nerf category.

Smart use of spiritwalker will make or break fights. Bloodlust, elemental mastery and spirit walker then charge an enemy and watch him eat lightingbolts every second of the cooldown while you follow him around corners and pillars uninterrupted.

God it must be satisfying to run after that healer while he makes a break for the pillars to turtle and we spiritwalk and continue the pressure.

The most fun is going to be all the neat tricks that will become available to use with enignering and other spells that may synergize with spiritwalk.

It would be TERRIBLY broken if it gave some kind of mini "the beast within" while at the same time providing spirit walk.

I mean really. If it gave immunity also every game would come down to: Give elemental shaman tricks of the trade etc, pop bl and cooldowns and watch him steamroll down half the enemy team unchallanged.

[Omanley]

Unleash Weapon is incredibly powerful for any spec.

no it´s not.
1.) we do not even know what frostband will do ( and it´s THE pvp imbue )
2.) windfury/ft as enh will give us 50% weap dmg, a little fire dmg ( we dont know yet how much ), 20% more dmg next fire spell and more haste for 5 hits. => stormstrike 2x 100% weapon dmg => more burst.

unleash weapon for ele comes down to a little lvb dmg increase. pretty dull, as it increases the already to unsteady ( and often op ) burst of ele, without giving them any survivability. ( same with spiritwalkers )

i really h8 it when people are claiming that a class spec which relies on 2-3 shotting people with cooldowns are fine and balanced, and require skill to play.

[grevari]

evasion. not really counterable except you´re able to get behind them.
blind. not counterable except trinket ( no interrutability, not dispellable )
sap. not counterable except you´re able to get into combat fast enough, which is almost impossible in arena ( or use trinket )
bubble. not counterable, except you´re a priest

as you can see, there are a bunch of abilities alsmost impossible to counter.

spiritwalkers grace would still be counterable through stuns, cc´s and silence
far from an "I WIN!" button, especially with a short duration and high cooldown.

there are counters to all abilities in PvP... your class just may not have all of them. That's how it works. Blizz doesn't balance the PvP situation for 1v1. It is all based on 3v3 and 5v5. 2v2 is not really what they look at either since they don't even allow them to obtain the PvP weapons for this bracket. so every team has a chance to counter the abilities of the other team. you just have to deal with the fact that you have to depend on others to do their job as well.

[Nekhetyo]

The biggest flaws?

IT'S NOT HERE YET!!!

[Omanley]

there are counters to all abilities in PvP... your class just may not have all of them. That's how it works. Blizz doesn't balance the PvP situation for 1v1. It is all based on 3v3 and 5v5. 2v2 is not really what they look at either since they don't even allow them to obtain the PvP weapons for this bracket. so every team has a chance to counter the abilities of the other team. you just have to deal with the fact that you have to depend on others to do their job as well.

your mostly right with the only thing left for me to say:

-we have less pvp abilities than others ( bad cc, no silence/stun/ms, no dependable burst as non ele, bad survivability )
-even less of them are halfway decent
-those halfway decent ones are easier to counter than those of other classes
-we have less abilities than the other classes to counter the other classes pvp abilities ( and it keeps getting worse, with poison/disease dispell removed, our new baseline decurse dispell not working against as many spells ( because some wl curses turn into bane spells and the most notable cc being removed by us being hex... ), as well as increased mana costs for purge.

if there is one class being dependant of others pvp abilities, it´s the shaman, because he hardly as any himself.
( shadowpriests and arms warriors are the only "viable" pvp spec (im not counting fury/holy-pr here) aside from us to face such disadvantages )

[Sunscorn]

This is obviously PvE ability.

All pvp players QQ about overpowered and underpowered, nothing is just right.

[Flash89]

Unleash Weapon is incredibly powerful for any spec.

And as for the guy complaining about this for enhancement, I can't see why. Yeah, you'll be burning maelstrom charges, but you'll essentially be dealing auto attacks while lava bursting in someone's face. I can see this having massive potential for burst in pvp as enhancement, and grant resto the burst mobility it needs in tight situations.

As for elemental, seriously, you have SO many tools to lock someone in the open and blow someone up, not like you need long for that anyway, so as you're all basing it off current mechanics you finding holes in the ability is irrelevant.

Burst is being removed..

Sorry to 'Burst' your bubble

>.>
<.<

[errosync]

bubble. not counterable, except you´re a priest

Stop being wrong.

[Cjeska]

Burst is being removed..

Sorry to 'Burst' your bubble

No it's not, sorry Bubbles

burst damage will go back to being a tool and not the only way to win matches

[Omanley]

This is obviously PvE ability.

All pvp players QQ about overpowered and underpowered, nothing is just right.

you dont fix pve mobility issues with a 2 minute cooldown. stop talking nonsense

in movement fights, you´ll be walking more than once every 2 minutes.
you´re right at one point though. this is no pvp ability. at least none for enhancement.

and for big addon-patches which are supposed to add "something new" i´d like blizzard to refrain from the "surprise!!, the things x and y you could do for the whole time now, you can now do them at the same time"-policy they seem enjoy using on the shaman.

dual-wield: surprise! remember all those tight imbues you used or did not use ( all except windfury )? well, you can have now two of them! surprise!
not so good surprise: the proceeding wf days from classic get nerfed after a few dreamlike months with dw.

static shock: surprise! that lightning shield that you have since vanilla, it´s now actually of some worth!
bad surprise: it´s still a 10 minute passive buff but also still needs to be refreeshed every few seconds ( only in pve usable though )

maelstrom: surprise! you can now cast the heals and lightnings you used for the entire classic/tbc while meleeing
not so good surprise: you cant do it with the new wotlk-spells hex and lvb, we´ll let you string along for a (long) while until adding them one at a time.

spiritwalkers: surprise!, those spells you had for the entire time now,and the walking you´d be doing occasionally? :P you can now use them together! :
not so good surprise: you´re still easily kept from dishing out those casts through interrupts, stuns, silence, cc and most noteworthy they only last for 10sek each 2 minutes... 1/12 of the time... ( that´s a worse uptime than fireelemental or bloodlust ) i also woudln´t be surprised for our new casted spells ( healing rain etc ) not being able to be used with this ability.


oh and whenever blizzard intends to give us something basic, pretty much any other class ( or in some cases a few ) in some form already has, we get some weird version of it.

in fight rezz: druid battle rezz ( any target ) wl soulstone ( any target ) shaman reincarnation ( self rezz only )

cc: hex ( trinketable, interruptable silence, which doesn´t work against druids and breaks on dmg, a polymorph with a high cooldown which lets the target walk around as it pleases and it can be removed by druids (the ones immune to it) or a fear with a high cooldown, which druids are immune against and that allows your target to walk around as it pleases. TAKE YOUR PICK )

melee single target abilities: shocks, maelstrom lightnings, aoe abilities with high mana costs ( spell casts used in melee, making us a vulnerable to silence melee spec, which is unable to use more than half of those abilities in pvp.

aoe: YO DAWG!!! we heard you like aoe, so we put an aoe in an aoe so that you can aoe when you aoe your mobs with your aoe ( feel free to walk forward ( in the true sense of the word ) as an ele, if you want to be able to say something in the matter).

to be continued...

[Atone]

I don't know if anyone has said this yet but if there is someone who can't run whilst attacking (Low IQ). Wouldn't this help out a lot? As in the person Damaging you. ( Re-read it and it wasn't clear) :P

[Northy]

I see some big problems with this ability, it is incredibly underpowered. Granted we don't know much about it yet, but anyway you look at it, its not that great.

Assuming it just gives you the ability to cast while running...
-long cd, short duration, very situational.
-can still be snared (crip poision we cant dispel anymore)
-can still be interupted

One of the easiest counters to this ability is another shaman lol!! Wind Shear would make this feel very useless, also charge, death grip ect. The fact that your casting leaves you open to lockouts from too many sources.


Now....lets say they give you 10 sec of freedom and you can't be interupted as well.

Then why do we even have to cast in the first place? Why not just trigger 3 instant casts, like 3 nature swiftness, but for any element, but give it like a 2 sec gcd between each cast. By saying we can cast, they want a very easy counter thru interupts or stuns ect.


Sounds cool on paper but not all that great when you think about it in practice. I know Blizz has the right intentions and is trying to give us some tools for mobility, but this probably isn't the way to do it.

As an Ele Sham I have never thought to myself "geez I wish i could run and cast." It has never been an issue for me. I'm very disappointed in this spell. Extremely situautional and I don't foresee using it on a regular basis at all. The issue is LoS not people just running like mad and you hauling ass tryin to Lightning Bolt em. Stuns/slows/snares/interrupts AND only 10sec on a 2min CD is laughable. The only time I would possibly use this is if a melee is on me, but even that wouldn't work since I'd be trying to get distance on him and the only way I could cast and hit him is if im backpeddling, which is extremely slow. Then i'd just be praying I'm not interrupted during those 10 secs. Such a dumb ability.

I'd be amazed if this talent makes it to Cata. It lacks so much imagination If this makes it to Cata I'll be switching my main to hunter

My idea: make it so for 10sec the shaman is immune to silence and interrupts (not stuns/cc you QQ-ers) on a 1 min CD. 2 min is a long time.

[Cjeska]

I'd be amazed if this talent makes it to Cata. It lacks so much imagination If this makes it to Cata I'll be switching my main to hunter

So you gonna ditch your shaman because he gets a new spell you don't want to use? Makes sense :

[Nikoll]

air ganking.

You can gank in mid air. Shamans are the new druids.

[Northy]

So you gonna ditch your shaman because he gets a new spell you don't want to use? Makes sense :

When it's the new core spell of an expansion, and lacks any wow factor (like Camouflage and Smoke Bomb do for me) then yes, it seems justifiable to make my shaman an alt.