Ele-Shaman Shadowland Feedback

Hello, I wanted to give some Feedback towards Elemental Shaman for Shadowlands.

But first who am I? I am just an ordenary Shaman Player. I played it for many years as either Main or twink. I am a above average player but not high-end or pro (Doesnt have the time anymore to play 8 hours a day)

When it comes to games I allways look on combat-design/class-design because that the stuff I care about the most. My focus is mostly not only on my class but all specs of the game therefor I am not really biased.

Sadly I didnt got an beta invite (This is the reason why I put it general and shaman forum.) but I watch streams, interact with streamers to get things tested and ofc I am uptodate most of the time(You can allways correct me when they changed something what I didnt pointed out.) so I think I am able to judge Ele quite nicely.

Some of my feedback and Ideas are from other Players/Streamers/Theorycrafters that I read and thought are really good. So credit to everyone who helped me to give this feedback.

And excuse my Grammar or if I make any mistakes its quite late and there was a lot of stuff to type.

Unlike Enhancer the rework of Elemental Shaman is not really good because It has a lots of problems that accured because the Spec still feels like its about Maelstrom . So some Talents seems worthless or no longer fit to the gameplay of the spec. I am a firm believer that such fundamental ERRORS cant be fixed by normal numbertuning. So here I go:

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PROBLEMS with Basekit:

Flametongue weapon: Weapon imbues were allways a part of shamans so I am glad to see it return. But atm it has no real use like it had in the past. I would love if it would give Spellpower again.

Flame Shock: Compared to Battle for Azeroth Flame Shock ticks only every 3 seconds now instead of 2 seconds. It also has its duration reduced from 24 to 18 sec. Thats 1 Flame Shock less you can have active.

Since the Azerite-Trait of Igneous Potential will be removed Lava Surge procs accure even less. If I did the math correctly it is about 40% less procs.

This is a really bad change because it devalues certain talents and make ele more stale… but the reason why its even worse I need to explain our Main CD. Fire Elemental.

So plz just revert it.

Fire Elemental: It is now changed to make Flame Shock last 100% longer and ticks 25% faster.

Do you see the reason I hate the FS change? It feels like it was nerfed to make the new Fire Elemental looks better. But even with the faster ticks its still slower than the old one.

Tbh. Fire Elemental as a cooldown sucks outside of the Talent Primal Elemental. It never really felt good or impactfull to me with one expection: Legion with the full T20 Setbonus. In SL we get a Legendary that is similar but worse.

I would love when Fire Elemental buffs our Fire Spells but not on the cost of making them weaker baseline like the transition to SL.

Lavaburst: Lavaburst should give one Charge of Fulmination. Its that simple to fix the problem.

Since it doesnt really interact with anything but FS it feels incredible weak and bad to use. This would also help with our Fulmination generation since it feels slow and not rewarding

It would also make our weak mastery a bit better (Overloads give Fulmination stacks)

Fulmination and Seismic Thunder: I personally love that we go back to Fulmination-Stacks but Maelstrom was not a bad thing because it allowed to interesting Gameplay where you could make a lot of different decisions like Focusdamage in AoE-Situations.

Splitting Fulmination and Seismic Thunder just doesnt work. There are multiple reasons. It makes the Spec feel clunky and really bad as soon as adds spawn. 5 Chain Lightning till your first Earthquake is way to long. Not to mention that on live depending on the number of Targets you can cast Earthquake after 1-3 CL. There is also the issue that having no choices to make (Since casting LB goes into ES and casting CL goes into EQ) makes the spec incredibally stale and boring to play. And having Fulmination doing its own Damage makes Earthshock feel weak.

Fulmination also doesnt feel rewarding and doesnt interact with certain talents that allways worked. Since Fulmination is its own damage (and not a part of the Earth Shock) it isnt interacting with DMG-Increases like Master of the Elements.

Thats why I think we should change Fulmination and Seismic Thunder a bit by fusion them:

Fulmination

Increases the Damage of the Earth Shock by X%

Increases the Damage of Earthquake by Y%
Reduces the Casttime of Earthquake by 33%

Using Earthshock consums up to 8 charges. Earthquake consums up to 3 charges.

I am aware that this could create problems between EQ and ES depending on tuning. But this would be the best solution if CL creates only one Charge of Fulmination.

Alternative: CL generates additional Stacks of Fulmination depending on Targets hit. This way we could Increase the Stacks needed for EQ


There is also another Problems… we need some stuff baseline:

New BASELINE Abilities/Spells:

Stormkeeper: Same as the Talent.

Why?: Stormkeeper was our artefactability and is one of the most satisfying CDs in the game. Since its a Talent its allways picked and it will continue to be. It just feels necessary and way too good to use to not take it. I also cant really get over the fact that enhance-shamans can also spec into it (I would be okay with it if we get it baseline) since its our iconic CD.

Echo of the Elements: Same as the Talent.

Why?: We asked for this talent to be baseline since its introduction. Having 2 Charges of Lavaburst is a huge QoL-Change since Lava Surge can proc multiple times and get wasted. It makes the spec play just way smoother.

Totem of Wrath:
Increase the Spellcrit-Chance of your Partymembers within 30y by 5%

Lasts 2 mins.

Why?: Totems were a big part of the Shamanfantasy. And all Shaman specs got a specific Totem to support the group beside Ele. Enhancer helps melee with more autoattacks. Resto helps healers with mana. I think it would be great if Ele supports Casters. It also would help Ele to get invited more often.


Now I want to Talk about Talents:

Talents:

LvL15:

Earthen Rage: Its a pretty boring talent. The best solution would be rework it a bit:

Elemental Rage: Your damaging spells incite the elements around you to come to your aid for 6 sec, repeatedly dealing X Damage. Each Elemental school can be active 1 time .

This way it would be way more interesting and interact with the rotation and Talents/Spells like Frostshock and Icefury without losing the core of the talent. For visuals you can still use shards but the ones from the Legion Enhancer Artefact (with elemental imbues)

Echo of the Element: Since it came out we ask for it baseline. It is a huge QoL talent and never really picked for its dmg-increase. It helps to not waste Lava Surge procs and make the spec feel more fluid . SO PLZ MAKE IT BASELINE!

Elemental Blast: Its a cool spell. The new interaction with Fulmination is interesting. But the spell doesnt interact with Talents that interacts Fulmination e.g. Surge of Power.

New Talent idea (in place of Echo of Elements):

Power of the Maelstrom:

Increase the Chance for Lava Surge by 5%.

Increases your Maximum Fulmination Charges to 12. (Numbers can be changed)

The Talent would allow bigger Earth Shocks and is Perfect for Focus-Damage in M+ and PvP and more Lava Surge Procs for Fire/ST builds. And I am sure I am not the only one who loves big ES Crits.


LvL 25:

Aftershock: Cool Talent.

Echoing Shock: This is one of the best Talents I have seen in the last years. It interacts with everything (Last Time I checked it bugs with Lavaburst) and fits the Elemental fantasy perfectly!
LOVE IT!

Totem Mastery: While I love totems the changes to the Talent are horrible. Not only the Totems feel totally random. It also doesnt feel like it fits the row. Which is Ressources.

My suggestion: Revert to the old version but the Resonance Totem generates 1 Fulmination-charge every X secs.

If the new Resonance Totem would make the Talent to strong it could also be replaced with Totem of Wrath so we dont need to spend a additional global. (In this version we can make Totem Mastery Talent replacing Totem of Wrath if skilled)


LvL 30:

I am fine with the row.


LvL 35:

Master of the Elements: This is one of my favourite Talents and the best example how a passiv can increase the skillcap of a spec. I would love to have this baseline but this could be the wrong move. I understand that classes should be relatively easy baseline and this Talent should continue to add complexity for the ones who want it.

It also has the problem atm that it doesnt interact with the Fulmination Damage but with my suggestion to Fulmination this would be fixed aswell.

But ofc you can allways make it baseline (It basically was in the past: Elemental Focus)

Storm Elemental: Good Talent can stay the same.

Liquid Magma Totem: Again… I love totems but this one is just so bad. It can never compete with the other Talents in the row. Thats why I would re-design it. I am not quite sure what would be the best move here but I think that making it apply flameshock on every target would be awesome. This way it would interact with the covenant spell Primordial Wave.


LvL 40:

I am fine with the row.


LvL 45:

Surge of Power: I like that Talent. It gives you interesting choices and adds a certain complexity to the spec. But it has some Problems. 1. The Fulmination generation atm feels really slow therefore you dont use it that much. 2. The Increases of the Talent can not compete with the other ones at the row. 3. Theoretically there is a high chance that you will use the same Enhancement most of the time. (Which is still fine)

I would get rid of the RNG factor for Lightning Bolt and give a fixed amount of additional Overloads.

Primal Elemental: Good Talent can stay the same.

Icefury: I love the Idea of using another Element and having more Mobility.

Tbh. I never liked the change of Icefury from Legion to BFA. It felt better for me when it didnt generated Maelstrom with its Frostshocks but consumed it. The Problem was that it was not worth it in BFA due to numbers so they decided to change it into a generator.

But the real problem now is that it doesnt interact with anything and feels bad to use due to not generating anything. Since it is used with Master of the Elements most of the time (Which feels awesome in combination) there is another problem because our Lava Surge Procs are reduced.

So there is two ways to fix the problem:

The enhanced Frostshocks generate Fulmination Stacks or the enhanced Frostshocks can consum up to 2 stacks of Fulmination to increase the Dmg even further.


LvL 50:

Stormkeeper: Should be baseline.

Ascendance: I dont really like that Talent but some people do (it was just not worth taking most of the time) With the new Legendary that increases Lavaburst Damage even more it maybe worth it again. This is a number issue.

I could think of changing the talent but I do not see a reason to do so. (I actually have an Idea but it would need some Talents to move in a different row.)

Unlimited Power: This talent is just weak and needs us to stack Mastery which is a weak stat.

It could be fun with Stormelemental to get insane amounts of haste with the right tunening. But I dont see that happening.

Thats why I would Change the Talent: Since Stormkeeper is now baseline why not use this talent to buff SK to his Legion-Glory?

Unlimited Power: Stormkeeper enhances the next 3 Chain Lightning/Lightning Bolt instead of 2.
Additional the Stormkeeper increase the Dmg-Bonus of LB by 200% instead of

150%.

Not only the name would be more fitting… but more later.

With Stormkeeper baseline there is Room for another talent.
I suggest to bring Lightning Rod (Legion Talent) back:

Lightning Rod: Your Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt have a 30% Chance to make the primary Target a Lightning Rod for 10 sec. Lightning Rods take 40% (This number can be changed) of all Damage you deal with Chainlightning and Lightning Bold.

I loved this talent. While its kinda boring in pure Single-Target Fights but it becomes a lot of fun as soon as you have more Targets. The Talent was great for focus damage and sustained AoE and had a relatively high Skillcap to use on full potential. It was one of my favourite AoE Talents.

With the new Talent row we would have a Short CD Burst option (Unlimited Power). A Passive Sustain option with Burst Potential (Lightning Rod). A long CD Burst with focus on Fire (Ascendance). And I would only see a bit of a Problem with Ascedance having to compete with the other talents (Which will be hopefully fixed with the new Legendary)


At last I want to speak about the Covenant Spells.

Primordial Wave: Its an interesting Spell with a lot of potential for Ele especially paired with Fire Elemental. The only Problem I see here is that it has a huge Setup Window for Aoe which maybe is not worth the effort numberwise. I also like that it focus Ele more on fire for the ones that like it.

Chain Harvest: While I like the ability on paper, especially paired with Echoing Shock. It also has a nice hybrid style for us Shamans. But it just feels weak. It is just like a red Chain Lightning+ Chain Heal without the benefits of a real CL like Fulmination and Overloads (or Tidal Waves for Resto). It also has a really long CD (Especially at the start of the SL because Low crit).

My suggestion let it generate Fulmination (TW for Resto) and increase its dmg. I am not quite sure if the Spell will ever feel good if you just increase its damage.

Fae Transfusion: I think most shaman players dont like it. It feels weird to stand right in the front and channel for 3 sec. Also the last time I checked the numbers werent that good either. Its just a worse version of Ancestral Guidance. (´But atleast I like AG). I get that FT is there to fit the hybrid style but it is just clunky and not worth taking

But sadly I have no Idea how to redesign it now. So atleast make it to be able to channel while Moving. This would remove a lot of the clunkyness.

Vesper Totem: Not much to say. More Totems. I love Totems and its a real interactive one. I like it.


Not gonna judge the Legendaries because I didnt have seen enough of them to judge and I also think that you should fix the main problems of the spec before improving it by outside things.

All in all I think going back to Fulmination is a good thing. Not every Class need a second resource bar. But moving away from Maelstrom is the wrong move if we keep the way of Seismic Thunder and Fulmination. The Spec atm is worse because of this change and I would really love to see either Change it to something I described or just go back to Maelstrom for ele. Because the actual SL version just doesnt work. Its not Fun to feel extremely gutted.

I seriously doubt that you can just tune the number to make it feel better. The amount of Damage Earthquake and Earthshock would need to do to make it feel rewarding is just unreal and should not be the goal.

The Goal for the spec should be to be fun baseline and not being fixed by legendaries and conduits!

I hoped you can use this feedback and that you enjoyed reading and maybe liked my ideas. IF YOU WANT TO HELP US LIKE THE POST AND MAYBE BUMP IT!

BUT PLEASE PLEASE FIX FULMINATION AND SEISMIC THUNDER!

PS: IF you have access to the US-Forums I would thank you If you could post this there, because I think that Blizzard is more likely to see it there… thy :slight_smile:

Have a nice day:)

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