Looking at the new Dragonflight Enhancement and Shaman talents, they generally look positive but there are a few talents that could be altered to make more sense. In this thread I’d like to focus on the “Elemental Spirits” talent.
Elemental Spirits as it’s currently looking.
“Your Feral Spirits are now imbued with Fire, Frost or Lightning, increasing your damage dealt with that element by 20%”.
A couple of problems I have with this and are similar to what I’ve gleamed from other threads and videos.
- The Fire/Frost/Lightning damage modifier replaces the Physical Damage modifier that Feral Spirits has.
Spending a talent point to add additional benefits or replace with reasonably stronger effects feels fine. Spending a talent point to modify an existing talent where it converts its damage bonus from one type to another doesn’t feel good. Where this talent is currently positioned it should feel like an upgrade rather than a sidegrade. Even though the change is from 15% Physical to 20% Fire/Frost/Lightning suggesting some improvement, the rng aspect of this can lead to disappointment. (see point 2).
- Each Elemental Wolf increases your damage by 20% based on their elemental type.
Depending on your build the damage increase can either be significant or insignificant. E.g. If I invested heavily towards fire talents, getting 2 flame wolves would feel amazing but 2 Ice or Lightning Wolves would be pretty disappointing in comparison. I don’t mind rng but I don’t believe the power variance should be so large for a major cooldown.
My suggestions below:
Talent Row 8 - Where Feral Spirits is, make this a choice node.
Choice 1 → Feral Spirits.
Summons two Spirit Wolves that aid you in battle for 15 sec. They are immune to movement-impairing effects, and each Feral Spirit summoned grants you 15% increased Physical damage dealt by your abilities. Feral Spirit generates one stack of Maelstrom Weapon immediately, and one stack every 3 sec for 15 sec.
The same as it currently is.
Choice 2 → Elemental Spirits.
Summons two Elemental Spirit Wolves that aid you in battle for 15 sec. They are immune to movement-impairing effects, and each Elemental Feral Spirit summoned grants you 15% increased Fire, Frost and Nature damage dealt by your abilities. Feral Spirit generates one stack of Maelstrom Weapon Immediately and one stack every 3 sec for 15 sec.
Same as Feral Spirits but instead modifying Fire, Frost AND Nature damage.
Talent Row 9 → Witch Doctor’s Ancestry, remains as is.
Talent Row 10 → Alpha Wolf, now a single choice node with a modified effect.
Alpha Wolf
While Spirits Wolves are active, consuming at least 2 stack of Hailstorm, using Chain Lightning, Crash Lightning or Fire Nova enhances your wolves for 8 sec.
Feral Spirit Wolf: Attacks all nearby enemies for X Physical damage every 2 sec.
Fire Spirit Wolf: Every X sec, launches a fiery tornado at their target’s location, dealing X Fire damage over 3 seconds to enemies within 3 yards.
Frost Spirit Wolf: Melee attacks cleave dealing X frost damage to 2-3 nearby enemies and reducing their movement speed by 20%.
Lightning Spirit Wolf: Melee attack speed increased by X%, and attacks have a chance to launch lightning spikes at their target.
Comments:
Given that DF Elemental Spirits is nearly the same as Feral Spirits but modifying elemental damage instead, it feels more sensible to have this as a choice node with Feral Spirits. Having Elemental Spirits bolster Fire, Frost and Nature damage rather than a specific type makes it a reliable cooldown to use regardless of which element my talent distribution is weighted towards. It would also give a little extra flexibility in my talent allocation as it would require less points to attain.
Then if we changed up Alpha Wolf so that it also applies to Elemental Spirits, so that the wolves can apply additional damage but in different ways depending on their type, we can retain an rng aspect to Elemental Spirits that doesn’t have such a spike in power and still make sense thematically. The effects I suggested for the fire, frost and lightning wolves don’t have to be as I’ve written, but having rng affect the wolves damage rather than your own fits better I think. I wouldn’t be disappointed to get 2 ice wolves even if I focused more on fire talents etc.
Anyway those were my thoughts. This post ended up larger than I was planning it to be, so if you read through it all thanks for checking it out.