Ok i have 2 people backing me up!
Things i will point out now will not be about class balance or damage and how strong enhancement should be. While reading, try to get the feeling of the play style. Since im not a good writer im counting on your imagination^^
I edited this a lot and it’s kind of hard to read… Sorry for that.
HOW IT WAS AND HOW IT IS:
People remember vanilla enhancement fondly… Or dreadfully. Depending on the side of the axe you’re standing. Enhancement was fun to play and absolutely annoying to play against for it’s unique quirks and mechanics.
I will try to highlight some of the abilities and stuations that made shamans, especially enhancement well rounded.
- Shocks! SHOCKS!
Frost shock! This was, in my opinion the best thing about shamans during vanilla. If windfury is the butter. Shock, defenately are the bread. Earth shock was a 6 seconds cooldown RANGED interrupt. Which dealt substential damage. Frost shock was the ONLY ranged slow apart from mage’s frostbolt which has a cast time. I remember mages using low rank frostbolt casts just to slow me down. Shocks were unique across all classes becouse not many classes had instant good damage source with utility attached to it. And they were what really made shamans annoying to play against.
Damage of it? 400-500 depending on your gear. Crits? 600-750 for enhancement. Now that’s a lot of damage. Regular mages for example had around 3500-4500hp. So shocks took more than %10 of their hp every 6 seconds if you choose to. Now that’s easy to deal, ranged and stable pvp damage with utility on top of it.
How did it “made” the image?
Even without windfury, substantial damage and utility of shocks made enhancement dangerous. That mofo walking towards you with a 2h wf weapon ready to blast out a wf attack chipping away your healtbar with shocks… That is a good image. It’s not to make shamans op, it the feeling keeps your enemies on their toes. Shocks had gooood damage. It was a good opener. And it was a good execution ability. You keep it off cd for utility. But when wf procs and you see juicy big numbers crunch up on your enemy, than you SHOCK! And end it. Animation of it was plain and fitting too. You just simply extend your hand towards enemy. You keep your 1 weapon with 1 hand. And you cast your primal magic with your other hand blasting a magical animation on your target. It’s just simple and good looking.
What do we have instead now?
Rockbiter, flametongue and frostbrand. How i wish they would just scrap this idea. They have existed since vanilla and i dont know why but they are the only things developers seems to keep in place. They have been the main problem of enhancement since TBC. Boring, unfitting and cluttering the whole spec. Destroying idea of burst damage itself. Which was enhancement’s deal.
How it looks?
Bad, really. You swing your weapon to the air. It simply doesnt look good. Becouse both of our hand are full. Does it buff me? Damage opponent? It does both… And does it both very poorly. Stands in way of our burst with it’s little damage. And stands in way of our utility with it’s constant requirement of reimplementation. These 3 abilities with their 1.5s gcd makes me feel like i have to keep my character from fallin off. When i want to use utilities i have to keep my damage on standby. And when u really think about it. Their duration is 16 seconds for flametongue and frostbrand. When u finished casting 3, duration on flametongue is already at 13 second. Even in hands of good players and lucky stuations, it’s mediocre and a bad feeling. Total hell during pvp with all the kiting, stuns, ccs and people bashing on your head with their first big attacks. You cast 3 of em pop feral spirit and ready to kickass. BAM stun. When u get out of it, you will have 5 seconds duration of flametongue. Lets recast them without dealing any damage whatsoever. No? Stormstrike? Well, you just gimped your already subpar damage. Every purge you cast. Every totem you drop. Every heal you throw feels like loosing time on those gcds you spent to buff your damage. It is a BAD FEELING.
- WINDFURY!
Well this is what made enhancement, enhancement. Everyone knows what it is. Everyone tasted its power firsthand and everyone loved or hated it.
It’s gamble what really made the enhancement. If you got it you killed, if you didnt you died. Honestly, there isnt much to say about it. I wont compare old windfury to current windfury. Becouse fundamentally they are opposite things. It was THE burst damage now its one of the things that keeps away from burst damage. Just how flametongue is, completely unneccesery. Developers just want it in place becouse enhancement = windfury.
Rather i will compare it to stormbringer since it’s what inpired stormbringer. If u get proc of stormbringer, you kill. If you dont you die. Its the same thing. Main difference is: You have to spend gcd to make it happen AND you have to get lucky more than once. What really crushing the feeling is, is a little more subtle. It’s connected to stormstrike. Now what it means? Stormstrike is a damage cooldown. When u get stormbringer a couple times in a row u get something similar to wf but a worse version of it ofc. If u want full benefit of it. You have to have frostbrand and flametongue in place. Lets say you used you stormstrike and now its on cooldown. Cooldown means during kites, stuns and runaways. You know you re bidding your time and when its off cd. You will smash your target. But since it’s cooldown can be reset if u re on your target, “not being on your target” punishes you much much more than it usually does.
Old windfury was passive and since your only damage source was stormstrike, shocks and windfury as main. You had lots of time to use your utility spells like wide selection of totems and PURGE (i will stress this later). Now becouse of
constant stormbringer flametongue and frostbrand, even casting a purge feels very punishing. Again, trying to do the lots of “little things” to do, seriously gimps the feeling of the spec. Even when u play perfectly AND get lucky, a stun or a kite will make your tediusly built house of cards crumble. It DOES FEEL BAD.
- Purge
Mages and hunters didnt have spell steal, it wasnt as good for priest to use dispell becouse it removed 1 magic effect. They didnt wanna spam it becouse they had to cast.
But man, for us it was the actual ripper! It removed 2 magic effects and costed nothing. If u were playing against enhancement shaman, you wont have buffs, you wont shields, you wont have hots. End of story. It added on danger of shocks and wf procs. If you shock it wont be wasted on shields or mitigated by hots. It was dangerous and made us feel in control against casters. Backed with frostshock and earthshock, purge made enhancement a destroyer against all casters.
Now even casting purge is a hassle. You sacrefice a lot for it. Most of times, it just doesnt worth it. Its good for only things like BOP. Giving dispel to literally half of all classes had to mean shields should be less impactful. Shields were a good cooldown for priests and mages. Dispelling them meant trouble. Now priests can cast a very weak version of it every 6 seconds. It’s not fun for them, its not fun for us. Warrior wasnt able to get fury while hitting a shield for example. What i mean is shield were trouble. And we were solution. Druid hots? Same thing. Doesnt worth dispelling now. They have 5 of it. Just recast your flametongue and hope for stormbringer if you dont get stunned.
- Maelstrom, resouce and cooldown management.
Maelstrom is a good idea for elemental shamans. You do your thing, and when you do enough you can spike your damage with earthshock. Instant cast, hard earned resource spending. Good feeling.
For enhancement? Is it a resource really? You cant just spend it with stormstrike couse it has a cooldown if you re not lucky. And if u re lucky it makes it free so u dont need it anyway. It’s just there to stop you from casting lava lash which doesnt do any damage without both “hot hand” proc and “primal primer” build up (i know its a little specific build but this is the best case senario).
Even when u have 100 maelstrom. You cant cast more than 2 lava lash in a row. And if u get 2-3 stormbringer in a row, u instantly get 100 maelstorm… Seriously, its not a resource to manage. Just gimps your damage slightly during times you
are unlucky and doesnt add anything when u re lucky. “Everything” depends on how much time you spend on your target.
How is it for other resources? I think energy is best. You spend your energy damaging your opponent. When you use utility spells like blind for rogues or like regrowth for feral druids or ANYTHING accually. During that window you regain enery. That means incoming damage. When you cc, kite or stun them. They will be coming at you ready to spend their 100 energy blasting you to bits.
Even rage in its current gimped state, adds to warriors. When they are stunned and recieving damage, their resource bar is building up. Danger is coming. Even during pve they can have a rotation and expectation. It’s not something enhancement could have with maelstrom.
Cooldown management… We dont have cooldowns on our offensive abilities apart from sundering(which is an awesome ability). Isnt that funny in a game like wow? We do have cd on stormstrike but whole system is built on removing that cooldown on chance so i dont think it counts. Basicly we can use whatever ability we like since they dont do any damage by themselves. What i said earlier, since spec doesnt have an ideal image. These gimmicky abilities need to make a pseudo synergy. Not using one of them gimps all the other. This is a tiring and unsatisfactory play style. Makes me resent during every stun i recieve.
- Carnaval on scrolling combat text:
In “good old times”. When u deal your burst. You see 4-5 dmg text on screen. And they were BIG, SATISFACTORY, JUICY hits. When u crit, your slightly bigger crit text would not scroll but smash on your screen with a little jigle, and you would know just how much you screwed your opponent. Just like how warlock makes you feel with chaos bolt. Nowadays, thanks to duel wielding, flametongue and frostbrand (wont even comment on windfury right now). i see a constant stream of “415” dmg on my screen, doesnt even worth to look at how much damage i did. Just trying to keep my buffs up -_-
It really takes the feeling away from the player. Even our big hit “the stormstrike” is dealt with both hands and keeps us away from the feeling. Now you guys may say “its not about how big numbers you see, its about how fast your target drops.” But i disagree. This post isnt about class balance but the feeling i get from enhancement. Lava lash on the other hand is very good step. Absolutely amazing in pve. And i love to see 90-100k crits on mobs. But it also has its bad drawbacks during pvp which i will get to. Even with this amazing tool. Sometimes i just dont see it on the screen becouse of the stream of “415” dmg text.
Main reason of this stuation ofc is being a duel wielding spec which doesnt really add to shaman flavor. Having these gimpers on top of it, just makes it even worse.
- Enhancement in eyes of players and developers: Utility or damage spec?
Whenever enhancement’s damage is discussed. People say “well its good for a support class”, “You can’t expect it to be as good as rogue”. And yes and we never expected, never got that. But now do we really have any utility? Nowhere in a competative side of the game.
If u want to heal in a dungeon or raid you have to sacrefice much more than a global cooldown by healing becouse of the reason i mentioned above. Cramped up global cooldowns, constant need of keeping your buffs up and not having a good resource management makes you squirm when u do anything but what you have to do to damage. Even fury warriors heal themselves with their bloodthirst. Demon hunters with passive lifesteal. EVEN the rogues bring much more UTILIY to dungeons as THE main damage class with cloak of shadows. They can soak things up. They can keep their own with evasion when they get agro.
We dont even bring a buff like we used to. Like DH and monks do now.
In this current state of the game. Enhancement is not an utility spec. Even our heal is laughable. What the spec needs is a decision. What enhancement should be? Becouse right now, it’s not a damage spec and certainly its not an utility spec. Absolutely no-one wants an enhancement shaman as their team mate neither in pve nor pvp. Reasons are obvious. Hard to play, very punishing and doesnt bring anything to table any other class cant bring.
- What can be done?
I explained what bugs me. And i can see what enhancement can be. I’m not saying bring back wf and let us kill everyone. I’m not simply saying buff our damage or survivability. What i want is to make enhancement feel like playing a shaman in the world of warcraft.
It could be like thrall, thor or avatar aang. Enhancement could be calling lightning from above on top of our enemies like thrall and thor. Instead we’re dealing 415 damage with flametongue and frostbrand with our melee attacks. Lava lash could be an actual lash. Like balrog’s flaming whip animation or something. Instead, its an off-hand attack… This spec has an incredible rpg image potential and its being wasted. Make it unpredictable and scary again. Make it look cool with “Storm Earth and Fire”.
what it boils down to is: In the old days enhancement really was a support class. We had a bit of everything without focus and we managed to have fun with it. But spec itself failed to make an image through expensions. With philosophies like “class homogenization” we lost somethings and got somethings. All classes lived that but they kept their spec’s core meaning. Enhancement didnt have such thing so it has always recieved gimmicks.
This spec with immense potential didnt recieve it’s well expected overhaul through many expension. I know i’m asking for a lot but spec’s problem is to embedded. Requires a serious look from developers.
It has been a very long post. Thanks for reading. I really want to hear what you guys have to say.