Current Farseer Elemental Shaman is by far my most favorite spec in the game, and the most fun I’ve ever had in WoW. The rotation plays extremely well as everything weaves in nicely and the animations & sound effects are top tier.
On the PTR we have received numerous changes that, just like the tank & healing changes going into the expansion, achieve the complete opposite of what you set out to accomplish.
The changes to Primordial Wave were done in an effort to make the rotation less complex, but all it really does is force us to now monitor and re-apply Flame Shock every ~16-18 seconds. This completely breaks the flow of the rotation and also ends up as a DPS loss. Settings up AddOns to track and manage debuffs adds more complexity to an already bloated spec.
The changes to Ascendance are mind-boggling. 100% to 50% effectiveness Lava Burst and Elemental Overload damage changed from +150% to +25% is one of the largest nerfs I have ever seen.
The update to Lightning Bolt turning it from instant damage to a projectile causes ancestors to cast less spells over their duration. This is yet another nerf that has gone by unnoticed.
With all of these changes, I am dealing less damage in fully upgraded Mythic Undermine gear than I am on live with 635 ilvl. This isn’t the worst part - numbers can be tuned quickly. The problem is that you have turned a spec that was near perfect rotationally to a spec that feels extremely clunky and disorganized, while also adding extra complexity to it.
If you were truly attempting to make Elemental Shaman less complex, you should have made Primordial Wave apply Flame Shock for 30 seconds and some minor numbers tuning to bring the spec to a decent level. Everything else should be reverted to the way it was in patch 11.0.7.
14 Likes
Shaman rotation is a MESS.
Almost every patch, they change the playstyle, the stats, or something else. I am seriously fed up with trying to keep up with these changes. You start getting used to one playstyle, and then Blizz says, ‘Hey, here’s a new one.’
On top of that, the PW change was completely unnecessary. I have no idea what they’re trying to do.
And this is just with Ele/Enh—I won’t even touch Resto. You are not a Resto you are Mozart.
4 Likes
I can try to understand that the new PW has been modified in this way to be able to better manage the damage of PW and LvB but I don’t understand why PW no longer applies Flame Shock to the target.
The management of Flame Shocks at the moment is the most annoying thing about Elemental because to do it correctly you need WA and it’s a bit uncomfortable.
The simplest solution at the moment would be to modify EotE in this way: Lava Burst and Flame Shock has an additional charge.
It would also be nice to reintroduce Path of Flame: Lava Burst deals 10% more damage and causes Flame Shock to spread from the target to a 6 yards nearby enemy.
Path of Flame could replace Erupting Lava which is a clunky and unused talent.
1 Like
I dont understand why a melee aoe (enha) locked behind a ranged spell.
Just remove PW from the game please, of all the SL skills, you had to choose this one? 
Chain Harvest in 11.1.5 pls
7 Likes
REVERT Primordial Wave for Elemental pls !! This is the worst change ever !
You ruined the rotation & took out all the fun of playing Elemental and building up the pressure with all the lava bursts… how on earth can’t you see that !!!
On top of that it hits for such low dmg that it’s not worth pressing and it doesn’t even apply a flame shock, so you gotta put up an extra flame shock before using it… Why !!!
OMG, this is such a bad change !! This destroyed all the fun in playing Elemental.
6 Likes
Agree with everything that was said. Horrible change both number wise and gameplay wise
3 Likes
Everything you mentionned is true, but there’s even more.
the fact that PW use to apply flame shock was very important in PvP.
In higher lvl games, a good healer would dispell flame shock on your target while you’re on burst. So the idea was to have already flame shock on your target, and then land your burst, including PW, securing high damage outcome. now you land your flameshock, land your burst, and if Ascendence dosen’t flame shock your target, you become useless for the entire ascendance CD time.
It’s horrible… Just played a 2k4 lobby and couldn’t play at all.
Not even talking ancestral guidance…
(cancelled my membership for now, tired of all these ele changes that destroy the spec everytime).
4 Likes
This change is so anoying. Unable to have multiple FS when questing is so bad. Taking the totem to spread FS is bad too cause you want to pull enemies at range. The damage is f*ing crap… really, less dmg than LB & LvB… Dunno, stop making such db changes…
I totally agree, changes to prim wave are absolutely awful.
I leveled elemental towards the end of season one, farseer tree was very good for open world content, I was looking forward to try it in m+ is season 2.
But changes completely ruin farseer, and negatively affect stormbringer as well.
I honestly can’t understand what was going through their heads, I wanna quote Angry Video Game Nerd: “WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!”.
Ele has to deal with a lot of bs at the moment, blizz, let me give you some obvious solutions:
- Remove cooldown on Flame Shock for all specs
- Give elemental easy and reliable way to spread FS to multiple targets with low cooldown, like something mentioned earlier in this thread:
" It would also be nice to reintroduce Path of Flame: Lava Burst deals 10% more damage and causes Flame Shock to spread from the target to a 6 yards nearby enemy."
- currently Prim Wave GENERATES 3 MAELSTROM. Are you f****** serious? For enhancement it generates 5 stacks of MSW, which is 50% of max, and for ele you get 3% of max? This is absurd, maelstrom gain should be increased SIGNIFICANTLY.
It’s damage is also pitiful, it does less damage than chain lightning, since it cannot overload.
And about new lightning bold animation, it is just terrible.
Why can’t we just choose animation we want with a glyph?
So far Ele feels like it’s the biggest loser of all specs going into this patch. But hey, nothing new here for the class I guess. It’s not like shaman has ever been “meta” for longer periods of time…
1 Like
Is it just me, or do I feel like Ele is nerfed to the ground? My damage output is nowhere near how it was before the patch.
1 Like
had to come to check if it was just me who felt the new pwave sucked donkey peepee. but seems like it’s globaly agreed upon.
it feels good as enhancement. but for ele 
feels like we were an after thought.
I do hate PW in general too, been playing shaman my whole life, and I hate that this is the spell they stuck with
I kind of totally phased the patch notes out, had no idea this was changed. So - I thought it was a bug at first - PW could not be used for some reason - then I read the description…
It really feels like a handicap, suddenly you’re forced to play with one hand tied behind your back.
Elemental used to be quite “bombastic” because of how this single spell worked.
I probably wouldn’t mind as much if they had just reduced the damage, but they’ve taken away the most fun mechanic of Elemental.
What a load of wank.
1 Like
Please change this talent asap blizzard
Ele feels so clunky to play now! The rotation has lost all rhythm and flow. It felt great prior to the update… What a mess.
1 Like
So what are the next steps ? Blizzard gonna reverse the changes ? or ?
I went from 2k1 CR in shuffle (season 1) while being a casual player in pvp , to barely being able to survive and doing 300k DPS .
At the same time affli lock are doing the double damages and everybody find this ok.
There is no fun, no dmg, I play elemental shaman since 2008 . I played 95% of the time this single character with almost 300 days /played. In season 1 TWW , it was the first time ever that ele sham was feared and was respected.
Apparently someone in blizz hate this class…
3 Likes
The new class tuning update coming in a few days completely misses the mark. We are still missing several ways of applying and refreshing Flame Shock when compared to Enhancement. The solution is not to buff the overall damage of the spec, it is so much easier: revert Primordial Wave and make it apply Flame Shock for 30s. This not only solves a major pain-point of the spec, but also makes it more fun again with the Lava Burst animation and sound effect of hitting multiple targets. This also achieves Blizzard’s stated and nonsensical goal of “making the spec less complex”.
There are more issues with Elemental that also needs attention:
- LOU 4p is a damage loss over NP 2p and needs a significant buff.
- Icefury doesn’t hit multiple targets as it should.
- The Primal Elementalist talent shouldn’t cause your Storm Elemental to despawn if you activate Earth Elemental defensively and vice versa. This is especially bad with LOU 2p as you can randomly spawn in a Storm Elemental while Earth Elemental is active.
Visual changes:
- Change the new Lightning Bolt (now Lightning Ball?) animation. Keep the charge-up animation with glowing hands and sparks from the ground but revert the actual travel animation to the old zap with the lovely sound effect that matches Chain Lightning.
- Add the new charge-up part of the animation to Chain Lightning as well but leave the iconic lightning chain alone.
2 Likes
We got some class tuning and Blizz didn’t adress our PW concerns. Why can’t they listen to the players like they did with previous changes? Pwave feeling sucks!