Our World of Warcraft: Forever class deep dive series continues with developer insights into Mages and Shaman. Learn how Mage updates expand Arcane, Fire, and Frost magic with new hybrid possibilities like Frostfire Bolt, and how Shaman changes make totems easier to manage, weapon imbues longer lasting, and Elemental Combat, Enhancement, and Restoration builds more versatile.
You’d never know there was a Forever forum would you…
I know this is only a class deep dive but fire mage really needs some versatility.
For example combustion is not worth taking almost at all. Improved Fire warding (tier 4) does less then Frost Warding (tier 1). We have no oneshot now since Arcane Mind only increases arcane critical dmg so PoM Pyro - where you can have fun every 3 minutes - its not really a thing anymore. Please consider some addition to fire.
Combustion should deal extra 50% crit for those 3 spells (all other specs have 50% in the talents whie fire has only 40% with ignite which again takes 4 sec to do the damage)
Make Improved Fire Warding worth taking for leveling and PvP. Make some dmg in return like a molten armor while active. Or make the first attack to disorient the target for 4 second. If you think its too strong make it so only the 3rd attack from the same target disorients. You can even make it castable (1 sec cast) so it can be interrupted by the enemy. There are many options.
I must say though, Forever is a very good game so far and thank you Blizzard for making it.
Not sure totem management is what most players want from Shaman, improving that is just welcome quality-of-life not core gameplay.
Elemental in particular is one of my favourite specs over the years and this current version feels quite disjointed. It doesn’t cater to either the Classic style of saving up a slow and impactful Chain Lightning, or the later styles of rapid-fire lightning bolts interspersed with big instants in Lava Burst procs or Earth Shocks.
There’s loads of great suggestions to improve this on the class discords and forums so hope we see a bit of movement before release, in the current state it feels like we’ve lost more than we’ve gained.
It would be great to see some changes to the way totem weapon buffs work. With the current design, Enhancement Shamans may be forced to sacrifice their own DPS by using Windfury Totem instead of Grace of Air.
From my understanding, one of the goals was to move away from situations where certain classes are effectively forced to sacrifice their own performance to provide mandatory buffs or debuffs (such as Thunder Clap, Expose Armor, etc.). However, the current implementation of Windfury Totem seems to create a similar situation for Enhancement Shamans.
Windfury Totem is essentially mandatory for melee groups, but it provides very little personal benefit to the Shaman themselves. The only way for the Shaman to gain some benefit from it appears to be using Flametongue Weapon, allowing them to take advantage of the weaker Windfury effect from the totem. Rockbiter’s increased threat generation obviously makes it unsuitable in this situation for a DPS-focused Shaman.
I’m not entirely sure what the ideal solution would be, but I’d really like to see this interaction considered for potential changes. It would be great if Enhancement Shamans could provide the utility that melee groups need without feeling like they’re having to sacrifice a significant amount of their own DPS to do so.
Overall, I’ve been hugely impressed with how WoWF is shaping up. Great job, and thanks for all the work you’re putting into it!
Reported for promoting toxicity by posting on wrong forums.
Sorry but the only thing you learned with pyro and heating up was how to ruin it.
Unusable at low levels (when crit is low), will need stack tracking, and it has a cast time, how fun it is. Why don’t you put a 1.5 sec cast time in Ice Lance btw? Sure it will be enjoyable.
Shamans always had a problem with spell coefficients being worse than other classes. Now they further shortened the cast time (and lowered the spell coefficient even further). So end game scaling will be even worse compared to other classes. I don’t get it. (I’m playing Druid btw, so not biased)