I’ve been enjoying playing enhancement shaman as 2h specialization. Shaman has got buffs to make it soar high in terms of pve and pvp performance. This has been mostly result of rockbiter weapon attack power buff and tank rune being strong combination of damage and defence.
In the same time 2h specialization has gotten better but not nearly as good as 1h and they frankly don’t even need to be the same. 2h shaman has his totems, stormstrike and shocks. When totems are down, stormstrike and shocks on cooldown, you are waiting for a proc of windfury that most of the time doesn’t happen. It feels like you are missing an ability to use.
Lowering the stormstrike cooldown sure was a right move but using a slow 2h weapon there isn’t much happening still. 1h specialization has lava lash to fill the gaps better.
I feel there is an obvious solution via an existing ability and that is lightning shield. We don’t really use lightning shield outside soloing and most of the time not even then. It has lost its meaning outside prepull tank ability. If there is a need to shift rockbiter weapon imbue damage towards windfury maybe moving % of rockbiter’s ap bonus to Lightning shield when it has stacks on you and rockbiter giving weapon specialization bonus for one handed weapons. Second part of Lightning shield change would be how it works when applied: enemy doesn’t need to hit you but instead you need to be close enough so it automatically zaps and lowers targets nature resistance by %.
The problem that remains is the low chance of windfury to proc as 2h and how missing a hit when wielding 2h weapon penalizes the specialization when the strikes are few and far in between. That could be fixed with Stormstrike giving 20% more proc chance for windfury when wielding 2h weapon until the next windfury proc.
These changes would give Lightning shield a new life, move damage from rockbiter to windfury and make the rotation more engaging and fun. As an added bonus to these changes would be lowering the target’s nature resistance which would be a buff for shaman elemental damage side but also for rogues that are not performing as well as they maybe should (maybe giving rogues sunder type ability for their main ability bonus effect would make them more desired in groups when they have it already in form of Expose armor).
I also see a problems with what I’m suggesting. Lightning shield has 3 stacks that would be gone fast after using it so it should have an internal cooldown for example 2 seconds how often it can zap an enemy and there should be more stacks. This would be a great book for P3.
Second book I suggest is a quality of life changes for ghost wolf. You can’t buff yourself or others, target NPC or walk over a plank in a ground without losing ghost wolf. A book that gives your ghost wolf ability to be used inside since you already use it in Undercity and Orgrimmar, and little plank on the ground would not remove your ability when running over it or reapplying weapon imbue wouldn’t take you out of it would be a great addition thinking of similar changes to abilities as in P2. After all it’s casted ability even if talented.
Third quality of life change would be increasing the time weapon imbues time.
Lastly I have to voice a concern for the future since there is this thing called “totem twisting” with air totems where you have to switch windfury and agility totems every 10 seconds to give both buffs for the group. I really hope this isn’t going to be a thing. It sounds like the most not fun thing I know of doing in intense boss fight.
Thoughts, suggestions, ideas?