Enhancement PvP - Buffs before Cataclysm

[Aleksej89]

Enhancement is my favorite spec and i like its play style quite a lot;
However in BGs/Arena it tends to be quite weaker compared to other melee classes, both in Survival and reliable Damage:
* There is too much random unreliable damage (Windfury, Maelstrom (dispellable stacks??), Static Shock).
* Without an active Feral Spirit, Enha is quite squishy and relatively easy to kite.
* Enha lacks any form of ''MS effect'' or any kind of ''Mana Burn'', making equally geared healers nearly impossible to kill.
* Enhancement healing spells are very weak, especially if there is a MS effect on Shaman - making them nearly pointless to cast.

I got a couple of ideas for improving Enha in PvP - however these are NOT supposed to affect Enha in PvE in any unwanted way.
All the changes, numbers and percentages would have to be adjusted to make sure Enha deals the same wanted amount of damage.
The ideas are the following:
- Make Ghost Wolf undispellable (this would solve some mobility issues)
- Make Feral Spirit wolves immune to all CC/Root/Snares, and slightly reduce the cooldown of wolves abilities.
- Reduce HEX cooldown to 30 seconds. Make Hexed targets unable to move.
- Change Toughness into 3 points: 3/6/10% Stamina, 10/20/30% Slow Reduction, 15/25/50% Disarm Reduction (remove Anticipation)
- Dual Wield Specialization: change it to affect Spell Hit as well - lower the amount of Hit if needed.
- Shamanistic Rage: Increase the proc chance of mana return to 100%. Lower the amount of mana returned if needed.
- Stormstrike: No longer costs mana. Restores 20% BASE mana per cast. Adjust the mana return if needed.
*- Statis Shock in place of Improved Stormstrike. 2 point talent: Gives a 50/100% chance to hit your target with X% Lightning Shield orb damage
when you Stormstrike. Also increases the amount of charges on Lightning Shield.
*- Maelstrom: Your Stormstrike grants you a ''Maelstrom charge'', which reduces the cast time of your spells by X%. Stacks up to Y charges.
UNDISPELLABLE.
- Lava Lash: Make this ability add a MS effect on the victim, perhaps a weaker 20% version like Frost Mages/Shadow Priests got. Currently Lava Lash is very weak in PvP, especially when Frostbrand is Offhand Enchant.
*- Earthen Power: Gives Earth Shock the ability to DISARM all Weapons, Shields and Ranged for 10 seconds. Cannot occur on the SAME target more often then once every 1 minute.
*- Mental Quickness: Make this talent also grant additional Spell HEALING - perhaps even a 4/7/10% increase of healing effects cast on the
Shaman.

Explanations and Details:
-Static Shock change: This talent would allow LShield orbs to hit Stormstrike targets for a certain percentage of the orbs damage. The idea here is to make Statis Shock a reliable and predictable damage increase without causing an unwanted change in the DPS.
-Maelstrom change: This talent would make Stormstrike grant Shaman Maelstrom charges, which reduce the casting time of your spells by a certain percentage. The idea here is to make Maelstrom much more reliable/predictable without creating an unwanted change in the DPS.
-Earthen Power: The idea here is to give Enha a anti-melee Disarm, similar to Hunter's Chimera Shot/Scorpid Sting. This would give Enha some breathing time against melee. This would also be good utility to get melee off your teammates.
-Mental Quickness: The suggested change here will make Enha healing spells more powerful from his Attack power - and perhaps even add a 10% healing received bonus like Assassination Rogues have.

As i said before, all these changes are meant only for PvP. The numbers and percentages would have to be adjusted to make sure Enhancement DPS does not change in a unwanted way.
Most of these changes are crucial fixes to many ''holes'' Enhancement has in PvP. They either remove the BAD randomness of DPS, some idiocy that blizzard made or simply improve the ''quality of life'' shaman players experience.
Any constructive comments and feedback are welcome!

[Omanley]

perhaps make hex instant cast baseline also, or add it as a little extra to a deep enh talent.

it´s quite annoying for every melee to have their instant cc. only we have to sacrifie burst/selfhealing ( maelstrom ) for it.

i quite like your idea for stormstrike to refresh lightning shield orbs. even more simple it would be to simply remove them and make lightning shield proc from melee attacks baseline.

lightning shield, much like stoneclaw totem, only becomes a slightly useful ability through talenting/glyphing.
abilities like that deserve a buff ( the same was the case for improved nova totem ).

the problem that blizzard is blind and deaf to our wishes. feral druids already turned into pvp gods and blizz continues to give them ridiculous buffs ( aoe sprint, interrupt )

as if a passive 20% increased heal, 30% increased movement speed, 30% decreased dmg while stunned, decreased fear duration and polymorph immunity in catform wasn´t enough, they can shift out of root/snare as often as they like, have a much more frequent cc, better burst, 2 gap closers, 3 stuns, unkillable in bear form as well, fear immunity with berserker, sprint, stealth...

and that´s our druid counterpart...

im pretty certain blizzard will make no major fixes to any class before cata. and im just as certain shaman will be left in the dust again. the weak preview we got in comparison with other classes proves that.

healing wave... a heal we ( enh ) wont ever use because either we´ll use greater with maelstrom, or lesser when pressured/no mael strom

primal strike... an here i fought we´d finally have more than 2 melee abilities as a melee spec... but ofc, only a rockbiter version of stormstrike

spiritwalkers... well, it speaks for itself... :

the only thing of slight interest would be unleash weapon.
however, faster swings wont be really that interesting in pvp, where haste sucks
50% weapon damage is a joke.
the instant fire damage from ft ( if used in pvp ) will likelys be less than what flameshock does
the 20% fire damage will only serve as a lvb enhancement... and lvb will be weak with nature dmg mastery...

[Walktheline]

Enhancement is my favorite spec and i like its play style quite a lot;
However in BGs/Arena it tends to be quite weaker compared to other melee classes, both in Survival and reliable Damage:
* There is too much random unreliable damage (Windfury, Maelstrom (dispellable stacks??), Static Shock).
* Without an active Feral Spirit, Enha is quite squishy and relatively easy to kite.
* Enha lacks any form of ''MS effect'' or any kind of ''Mana Burn'', making equally geared healers nearly impossible to kill.
* Enhancement healing spells are very weak, especially if there is a MS effect on Shaman - making them nearly pointless to cast.

I got a couple of ideas for improving Enha in PvP - however these are NOT supposed to affect Enha in PvE in any unwanted way.
All the changes, numbers and percentages would have to be adjusted to make sure Enha deals the same wanted amount of damage.
The ideas are the following:
- Make Ghost Wolf undispellable (this would solve some mobility issues)
- Make Feral Spirit wolves immune to all CC/Root/Snares, and slightly reduce the cooldown of wolves abilities.
- Reduce HEX cooldown to 30 seconds. Make Hexed targets unable to move.
- Change Toughness into 3 points: 3/6/10% Stamina, 10/20/30% Slow Reduction, 15/25/50% Disarm Reduction (remove Anticipation)
- Dual Wield Specialization: change it to affect Spell Hit as well - lower the amount of Hit if needed.
- Shamanistic Rage: Increase the proc chance of mana return to 100%. Lower the amount of mana returned if needed.
- Stormstrike: No longer costs mana. Restores 20% BASE mana per cast. Adjust the mana return if needed.
*- Statis Shock in place of Improved Stormstrike. 2 point talent: Gives a 50/100% chance to hit your target with X% Lightning Shield orb damage
when you Stormstrike. Also increases the amount of charges on Lightning Shield.
*- Maelstrom: Your Stormstrike grants you a ''Maelstrom charge'', which reduces the cast time of your spells by X%. Stacks up to Y charges.
UNDISPELLABLE.
- Lava Lash: Make this ability add a MS effect on the victim, perhaps a weaker 20% version like Frost Mages/Shadow Priests got. Currently Lava Lash is very weak in PvP, especially when Frostbrand is Offhand Enchant.
*- Earthen Power: Gives Earth Shock the ability to DISARM all Weapons, Shields and Ranged for 10 seconds. Cannot occur on the SAME target more often then once every 1 minute.
*- Mental Quickness: Make this talent also grant additional Spell HEALING - perhaps even a 4/7/10% increase of healing effects cast on the
Shaman.

Explanations and Details:
-Static Shock change: This talent would allow LShield orbs to hit Stormstrike targets for a certain percentage of the orbs damage. The idea here is to make Statis Shock a reliable and predictable damage increase without causing an unwanted change in the DPS.
-Maelstrom change: This talent would make Stormstrike grant Shaman Maelstrom charges, which reduce the casting time of your spells by a certain percentage. The idea here is to make Maelstrom much more reliable/predictable without creating an unwanted change in the DPS.
-Earthen Power: The idea here is to give Enha a anti-melee Disarm, similar to Hunter's Chimera Shot/Scorpid Sting. This would give Enha some breathing time against melee. This would also be good utility to get melee off your teammates.
-Mental Quickness: The suggested change here will make Enha healing spells more powerful from his Attack power - and perhaps even add a 10% healing received bonus like Assassination Rogues have.

As i said before, all these changes are meant only for PvP. The numbers and percentages would have to be adjusted to make sure Enhancement DPS does not change in a unwanted way.
Most of these changes are crucial fixes to many ''holes'' Enhancement has in PvP. They either remove the BAD randomness of DPS, some idiocy that blizzard made or simply improve the ''quality of life'' shaman players experience.
Any constructive comments and feedback are welcome!

Well I read through this "changes". First of all all the changes sound really nice, and I would appreciate to see those. BUT if you give enh all those changes, it would be really op, i mean really...

ghostwolf undispellable ---> okay
feral spirit immune to roots ---> maybe, they are already quite strong
reduce hex cooldown ---> 30 or 20 secs would be really nice, but to make them unable to move, that would be too strong
Change toughness ---> yea, this talent would be nice, if changed so
DW spec ---> maybe for pvp nice, would be to strong in pve
shamanistic rage change ---> not needed
no manacost on SS ---> could live with that
Static shock change ---> would be nice for pvp yea, but in fact also too strong in pve then
Maelstrom Change ---> again nice idea for pvp, but you would get to many charges in pve - undisellable would be fine
lava lash ---> 20% ms, hmm im not sure about this one, but it would be really strong, maybe they should just increase the dmg of it by 20 or even 30%, its hits really quite low
earthen power ---> that earthen power ability sounds nice, maybe should be testet, could result in a quite op way (shock 1st target disarm, change target 5 secs later shock second target, change target, 5 secs later shock third target and so on)
Mental quickness change --> okay

best regards walk

[Aleksej89]

Great replies, thank you for posting!

About the ''changes may result in OP dps'';
I already said that the numbers & percentages need to be adjusted so that NO unwanted DPS change occurs.
Most of the suggestions i posted are about increasing the RELIABILITY of Enhancement DPS & Survival capabilities.

Quite honestly, I am confused as to WHY do Enhancement's most important abilities suffer from such huge ''randomness'':
- Windfury is very random and uncontrollable.
- Maelstrom is also very random and dispellable.
- Static Shock is ridiculously random and unreliable.
- Huge part of overall Enhancement DPS (and Windfury/SShock/Maelstrom procs) come from White attacks, which tend to Miss since they are NOT hit capped.

Enhancement mechanics should get remade, so that they are reliable as much as other Melee classes.
If a complete overhaul of Enhancement mechanics is not possible before Cataclysm, the most important problems (Windfury, Maelstrom, Hex/Survival) should be ''band-aided'' with simple and swift hotfixes.
It is utterly unfair to make Enhancement fans wait several YEARS before becoming finally fully viable in serious PvP.