9.0 Class redesign suggestions

In the recent Ion 8.2 video he talked about the future of class design. In this thread I would like us to give our own, personal opinions, on where the class and specs should move in 9.0.

Shaman as a Class:
Core fantasy:
Totems. A whole lot of totems.

Today we only use totems as a cooldown, but I would much prefer having totems that give buffs to players like Strength/Agi/Mana regen/WF totems.
I think Grounding Totem, Tremor Totem and Poison Cleansing Totem should be baseline for the class, at least. Don’t put them as “PvP talents”…
I would also like to see the return of very situational totems that rarely are useful.

Signature spells:
Heroism/Bloodlust.
Purge.
Too many classes has similar spells now. It used to be “our” things. I would like to go back to that.

Pruning:
No more Stun/CC. To me, Shaman should never have gotten their Hex nor their stun totem. What made Shamans unique in Vanilla/TBC was no CC at all. This meant we had other, more fun, strengths.

Enhancement:
Core fantasy:
Strong burst windows.

Signature spells:
Back to a focus on Windfury.
Back to being a 2H spec.
Strong hitting Stormstrike.

Pruning:
Possibly removing Maelstorm.
No more procs reseting the cooldown of Stormstrike. It is supposed to be this strong hitting spell that takes a while to get.

Elemental:
Core fantasy:
Strong burst windows.

Signature spells:
Lava Burst
Chain Lightning

Pruning:
Removing Maelstorm. Back to using Mana. The Maelstorm gathering abilities into these unsatisfying Earthquake/Earthshock is not fun.
No more procs reseting the cooldown of Lava Burst. It is supposed to be this strong hitting spell that takes a while to get.

Restoration:
Core fantasy:
Strong hard casted raid AoE healing.

Signature spells:
Chain Heal
Earth Shield

Pruning:
Instant heals
Healing rain

7 Likes

Agree with most of what you say. But to get to a point where we wont need hex is kind of a long shot.

Will purge be really removed from all? Will slow effects be removed from most specs? Will huge mobility of “all” classes be reduced? Is instant cast going to be a “rare” thing? Will whole crowd control business be like it used to be so we wont be gimped?

I dont think they will go that far into vanilla mindset.

To me shocks are realy signature spell for all shamans with their “unique” position as instant range damage source with utility on top. Is other specs gonna be powered down so much that shaman’s uniqueness will shine?

And also, i would hate to have so much totems. I think they are fine as cooldowns. Current pace of combat doesnt allow you to waste precious gcd into buffing yourself or your team. This flametongue / frostbrand business is biggest part of what makes enhancement clanky.

2 Likes

bring gust wind back or moving light bolt or spirt walker grace pls

4 Likes

Lol noway ele get another rework. Move along

If it will really be as far as “redesign” for some specs i would like to talk about enhancement (again). I think its one of the most “undecided” specs in the game. Makes me feel devs following some guidelines and doesnt really wanna do much with it.

When ion said specs turned into classes and they wanna revert that. It made me think of a unique place enhancement could be placed on. (probably he means something minor but here i go)

First, name should be changed. “Enhancement” is a bad name for a spec and cant represent a well class fantasy.

Spec should be something between a caster and melee dps. Now you might say it already is but heavy emphasis on weapon buff takes the spec far into melee dps side and doesnt really use lightning bolt for example, which is a very iconic shaman ability.

  • 2h weapons, please. Duel wielding sucks for a raw, primal magic user as shaman.
  • Keep weapon buffs (lets be honest i only want real wind fury) as static and passive like rogue poisons. Its not fun to keep using gcds to keep yourself “up”
  • Let us have a rotation, procs that remove cooldowns isnt good.
  • Maelstrom could be made something good but this iteration is really bad. We either have too much or none. There is no resource management.
  • Let us use lightning bolt. If elemental’s lb hits for 5k, enhancement should hit for 4k. Are we not shamans? Why should it hit 1-2k? It cant really be abused since it wont be optimal but it will be fun to use in limited stuations and it wont feel like a wasted key bind. Maybe it could even be in our rotation to some extend.
  • Shocks, please let us use shocks. Shocks are most iconic shamans spells let us just use them instead of stupid weapon buffs. Make them fit their name and shock people when they see such damage they recieve.
  • Purge is another iconic shaman ability if its gonna stay with all the other classes, make ours somewhat better. Like it used to remove not 1 but 2 jormu- buffs! Or adds some substential damage to it so it wont feel like a wasted gcd.

All in all right now enhancement feels like a “skin” of fury warrior. A worse fury warrior. A generic duel wielding melee class to fit into agility damage dealing stream to fall in line… Let us be shamans again and use shaman spells.

There are some other things i would say but we dont know what they really wanna do. Wish he talked more about what they feel about how classes should play out.

TL:DR
2h weapons - shocking shocks! - big hits - no flametongue/frostbrand - actual shaman spells - Wind freaking fury - name change (“primal” imo)

3 Likes

Thats the problem with the game today. Its too fast paced

5 Likes

I have played the class for 15 years straight so my opinions is heavily based on what I miss.

Totems. I really dislike the removing of the many totems what made me feel needed and had some fun interaction.

I would love to get Mana Totem back. Searing Totem also as this fun little static pet doing damage.

Strength of Earth for damage buff to melee, and Grace of Air for hunters, monks and demon hunters would be cool.

2- handed windfury would be fun. I don’t see a problem with being able to do insane spike damage with slow 2 handed maces for insane WF procs.

Lightning Shield should be baseline. Its such an iconic shaman spell. Make it give a spell power increase. Water Shield as well as a mana or maelstrom increase. And you could change them based on the situation.

Make us do something with our shield. We carry shields for no apparent reason other than looks.

4 Likes

Yes I agree with the point on shocks:

Additional iconic Shaman spells:

Earth Shock, Frost Shock and Flame Shock should be baseline for all specs.

7 Likes

Do you really want to spend 3 global cooldowns before every pull in dungeons and raids? Especially with this pace of the game. In mythic+ dungeons where we race seconds.

Totems look cool and miss that “marking my territory” feeling too. But implementing that into game right now would generate lots of frustration. Warriors, rogues, dhs rushing with big openers and gettin you to %70 hp before u can drop your totems doesnt make me feel good about them.

It could be something like:
“whenever you heal, you have %x chance of droppin a mana stream totem”

I would be fine with that but spending gcd on them is very bad feeling. I think having them as big cooldowns is much better. Yes there are fewer of them but at least they are impactful. Searing totem had next to no damage at all. It was just bugging your enemies and not that much.

Agree with shields. Holy paladins dont use them too. Maybe same thing could be done for them. “OR!” see how they use 2h weapons now? Maybe resto and elemental shaman could have 2h wf too if it comes back? How about that?

Like enhancement could have slightly weaker version of lightning bolt, they should have slightly weaker version of windfury attacks. Not so much as it should replace lightning bolt but not a wet noodle. After all, its not set in stone that “elemental and resto shamans should be as weak as mages and priests with melee attacks”

If you sacrefice your shield to hold a 2h weapon, a rogue or warrior should be anxious while you are kiting them. IMO ofc…

2h enhance was stupid
What we need is MoP enhance back

7 Likes

Oh god no, we had way too many totems. Way too many buttons to fit on bars and keep track off. Totemic mastery is fine for totems, it should be a choice, not forced. I never use TM as I do not find it engaging to plop them every 2 minutes. Its just searing totem all over again, which im happy to be rid off.

Elemental
Lightning bolt while moving needs to come back. As well gust of wind. As well more speed for ghost wolf, like we had with that glyph once upon a time. Maelstrom is fine as it is, but we could more spenders to play with. Elemental blast would be a great spender.

3 Likes

2h weapons for shamans. Just give us the ability to use stormstrike with any type of weapons like it used to be. I want to use it with 2h, I want to use it with 1h+shield (in pvp when fighting melee or in pve when I need more sustain e.g. questing or so on). Give enh SHOCKS and TOTEMS. Thats the changes that almost all shamans wants. Since legion we basically turned into 1h fury warriors with shiny lighning animations. Let us be SHAMANS agian!

5 Likes

I would like to have frost shock on restoshammy then i would run natural harmony x3 since all resto traits are weak.

I dont think there will be traits like these in 9.0 but i agree all shocks should be important for all specs

Here is my list of cool stuff I want for my shammy:

  • Elemental shields (earth for armour, lighting for dmg, water for heals)

  • Gust of wind. It was such a versatile spell. I loved it.

  • Ascendance and maelstrom can be deleted imo. Who ever enjoyed these?

  • In the talents, make us choose between Totemic mastery (buff it hard + includes searing totem) and Primal elementalist. Totemic mastery gameplay would be more territorial for a turret caster style while pet mastery would be more the on-the-go caster like it is on live. The third gameplay on that tier could be a big switcheroo on elements, making them rotate to buff dmg like the Azerite trait we have and use elemental blast as a big spender.

Finally, on a pure fantasy note, I wish we had more voodooesque spells such as Hex as well as more spectral spells too. This is what makes us shamans :slight_smile:

1 Like

dont care about ench

Purely PVE since I don’t PVP.

Elemental:
I am quite happy with current elemental, but the things I’d like changed are:

  • Change Totem mastery. Make the totems do something else than simply give you buffs.
  • Make Elemental Blast baseline. Looks very cool and I want to use it.
  • Remove the flame shock cd. It sucks.

Resto:
I quite enjoy resto currently, only things I’d like are:

  • Buff Healing Tide
  • Add some damage mitigation to Earth Shield (or something else to give us a tank cd).
  • Like someone else said it would be nice with more dps spells. Same goes for most other healers where the dps rotation is very dull.

Enhance:
Don’t know since I don’t play it, but since many seem upset I guess enhance should be priority :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like

More tweaking for Resto Shaman and i’d be fine with the current way Shaman is atm. Not saying the spec is weak in all forms of PvE by any means, but it certainly needs picking up again.

Ele i’m mostly happy with/do not know specifics.

Enhance I don’t play much either.

woah Woops holy necro!

Enh rework? Just return it into wotlk -> MoP version. It was way more fun then
Give the mana back.
Make my Stormstrike hit cool again, let my lava lash no longer useless and boring spender, let me gather up maelstrom stacks to blast someone with strong instant lightning bolt or chain lightning, or heal myself, or hex someone
Let my wolves heal me again, give me back my shield granting totem, the cute little fireball totem that made lava lash hit like truck every 6 stacks, gimme my cool windfury proc animation where black wind spins around me! :frowning: Give me thw feeling of awesome when unleash elements procced windfury and my character did that stupid awesome spin animation
I want my frost shock back, not that stupid weapon imbue, I want flame shock to apply burning dot that I can spread using lava lash, I want my fire nova back to proc those fps murdering aoe blasts

I want to feel like a truck hitting a huge cake and making it explode into a billion pieces like I used to, not a small scalpel that chips away at the cake seemingly without any effect yet somehow the cake dissapears.

Edit20: Wow it turned into a rant

6 Likes

Blockquote

+1!
-searing totem
+2h weapon

great cake metaphore! 2 handed weapons would oblitirate it with more squish :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes