Storm and Fire Elemental
Our elementals have a 2.5min cooldown while Ascendance has a 3min or 2min cooldown
To sync with a 3min ascendance we would have to hold our elemental
To sync with a 2min ascendance we must talent both First Ascendant and Surge of Power and consume the buff with Lava Burst, restricting our talent choices. With the current design we want to avoid pressing Lava Burst in AoE, which only makes this worse
Having Primal Elementalist turn our elementals into full pets interferes with our ability to use Earth Elemental defensively. It is a very nice talent for solo content though.
We’re usually stuck playing one elemental for extended periods of time
We only really swap between them when tuning changes occur
Fire elemental has lost some of its niche with Storm Elemental now providing haste
The visuals of the basic fire elemental are beautiful but storm elemental and both primal elementals look dated
Possible solutions
Give elementals a base cooldown of 2mins so that they naturally sync with 2min Ascendance
Add a choice node to Primal Elementalist that reduces the cooldown to 1min, without making them pets under our control. Extra points if the new talent also gives us two charges of summon elemental and alternates between summoning a fire or storm elemental
Change the Lava Burst interaction with Surge of Power to do something else
Lightning Rod
I absolutely love this talent, it’s a very enjoyable way of adding damage to a priority target in AoE situations however I strongly dislike that the optimal way to play is tab targeting to spread the debuff to multiple targets, which is made worse still by the new Charged Conduit talent.
Possible solutions
Change the debuff to be stacking and overlapping (like Ironfur)
Lava Burst and Lava Surge in AoE
We currently want to avoid pressing Lava Burst in AoE situations unless we’ve just cast Primordial Wave. Lava Burst needs more of a reason to be pressed in AoE, at the very least we should want to use our Lava Surge procs.
Ignoring Lava Surge procs feels bad and is unintuitive for newer players
Severely devalues many of our talents in AoE, potentially creating a strong divide between single target and AoE builds (ie the problem affliction warlock had in DF) or those talents are undertuned and never taken, leading to a single build being used in all scenarios.
Possible solutions
Change the Surge of Power interaction to cause Lava Burst to spread Flame Shock to (at least) two other targets
Change Lava Surge to cause our next Lava Burst to cleave onto targets affected by Flame Shock
Change Erupting Lava to spread Flame Shock
Flame Shock
Flame Shock feels very out of place now that the proc rate of Lava Surge no longer scales with the number of targets and trying to maintain it in AoE is unrewarding, at best
Liquid Magma Totem only applies to three targets and can target the same target multiple times, resulting in less than three Flame Shocks. Using Totemic Recall for DPS is also very unenjoyable
Liquid Magma Totem’s cooldown is longer than the duration of Flame Shock
Being unable to maintain Flame Shock on multiple targets devalues Flames of the Cauldron and Magma Chamber in AoE, despite seeming like talents that should be good to use in AoE situations
Possible solutions
Remove Liquid Magma Totem and make Primordial Wave apply Flame Shock to six targets (would also help with button bloat and Totemic Recall)
Rework Erupting Lava so that it doesn’t consume Flame Shock, it could spread Flame Shock instead
Change Surge of Power so that Flame Shock and Lava Burst both have the effect of applying Flame Shock to multiple targets
Icefury
Being able to proc from Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning is nice, but thematically it felt better when it was only enabled by Lava Burst. The animation is dated and now that it’s instant cast the replacing of Frost Shock only to then change the effect of our next Frost Shock is cumbersome and potentially confusing to newer players. Icefury also feels disconnected from the rest of our kit.
Possible solutions
Make Icefury only activate when consuming Lava Surge, but give it a 100% chance to activate
Instead of changing Frost Shock to Icefury, then altering Frost Shock simply make the proc buff our next two Frost Shocks
Stormkeeper and Ascendance pathing
In isolation I like the new position of Storekeeper, however having Improved Flametongue Weapon and Power of the Maelstrom stuck behind it and having to take either Stormkeeper or Storm Frenzy and Lightning Conduit to get to Ascendance strongly encourages us to focus on talents that buff our lightning spells. This really closes the door on an alternative build that focuses on Flame Shock multi-dotting and weaving Lava Burst, Icefury and Lava Burst.
Possible solutions
Rework the pathing
Primordial Wave
The elemental damage theme for Primordial Wave is nice, but also feels odd since it otherwise has entirely fire based effects. Granting Lava Surge is nice though, although I’d prefer to see that cleave effect baked into Lava Surge and Primordial Wave instead apply both Flame Shock and the Frost Shock debuff to multiple targets. If it were changed in this way it could have the cooldown reduced (or removed) and replace Flame Shock to help with button bloat.
Bringing back to 6 sec the activation of Surge of Power with LvB would allow with 5 LvB to shorten the CD of the elementals by 30 sec so as to be able to align them with Ascendance.
The changes make us understand that they do not want us to keep the elementals up all the time, so the other proposals will never be considered by Blizzard because they would go against their current choices.
Spamming Lighting Rod works like Flame Shock. Also the other specs that have DoT must do the same thing.
LvB is a spell for ST and becomes viable for AOE only with P. Wave. It is normal that in AOE situations you want to activate only the instant casts of Lava Surge.
Reintroducing Path of Flame could help with Flame Shock (it would certainly be better than erupting Lava).
Flame Shock is currently very nerfed due to the low procs of Lava Surge.
Adding the (partial) effect of Skybreaker’s Fiery Demise to Searing Flames could help: Flame Shock has a 50% increased critical strike change.
Ice Fury, for me, is fine as is. The real problem is putting something in the game (similar to Lava Surge, maybe blue) that signals Fusion of the Elements
Flux Melting is a flop talent. They should put the effect inside MotE.
The position of Stormkeeper and other central talents is conceptually wrong.
P.Wave should increase LvB damage by 65% ​​and this would be enough to make it good in AOE.
Lava Eruption while a cool concept is extremely annoying on PTR because Ancestors Lava Bursts also consume Flame Shock. If you summon them no matter what you press they Lava Burst and then they make your Flame Shock expire before your burst is finished. Even if you press Fire Elemental to have a long Flame Shock your Lava Burst will make it expire. Please make Ancestors also cast other spells than Lava Bursts or not to consume my Flame Shock. Overloads also shouldn’t do it.
Elemental already has to deal with constant dispels in PvP. It will make this spec extremely annoying.
Hello shaman development team!
First off, thank you for all your work on shamans. You probably don’t hear this enough, but you guys are greatly appreciated!
I have two suggestions that I’d like to see with the new and exciting overhaul you guys are planning.
Number 1: Liquid Magma Totem
Liquid Magma Totem (LMT) has some problems. With the cooldown reduction from Flash of Lightning going away it will likely compete for our Totemic Recall (TR) button, which leads to that class talent feeling mandatory to take from a damage perspective to use on LMT instead of all the other exciting uses TR could have, and the gameplay that versatile talent offers being locked. LMT is furthermore problematic because it is not smart in applying Flame Shock (FS) which can be a burden in AoE content due to Splintered Elements (SpE). Lastly, LMT is yet another targeted ground ability, and I feel like we have enough of that in our AoE kit already with Earthquake (EQ).
Proposed solution
My suggestion would be to remake the LMT talent into something that achieves the same but functions differently. Let’s imagine a new talent called “Eruption”. Eruption in my mind is similar to Restoration Shaman’s Downpour in design. Downpour makes you able to press the Healing Rain ability again where the Healing Rain ground effect will burst for additional healing, but not consume the ground effect. Now, Eruption would be something one could press to make an EQ erupt, spreading FS to an amount of targets standing in it, probably on some sort of cooldown (currently LMT is 24s, let’s say it’s the same cooldown). This would solve the following problems:
Eruption is not a totem, which alleviates the pressure to talent into TR in the class tree for damage purposes.
Eruption is one less button to have keybound.
Eruption would replace LMT as a talent, so no complete reshift of talent points or builds.
Number 2: Elemental Blast
Elemental Blast (EB) has been a point of content in the past due to it’s competition with other important talents such as Echo of the Elements in the pre Dragonflight talent trees. In Dragonflight, EB was redesigned to be a maelstrom spender that would replace Earth Shock (ES). Now in The War Within, EB is no longer it’s own talent node but is rather combined as a choice node with ES. The design of EB is however still as a spender. This leads to a heap of problems:
The competing talent Earth Shock (ES) is a core button for Elemental Shaman. It plays so well as a movement tool that we can bank resources for, it packs a nice punch and feels good to press, it is instant cast, and it amplifies other casts via Surge of Power and Echoes of the Great Sundering. ES is a button that I dare say Elemental Shamans are not willing to compromise on, and it is integral to the feel and flow of the spec. Having Elemental Blast potentially competing with ES because of tuning is disastrous. It is a problem waiting to happen, and we can’t afford to have such a major part of the feeling of our spec be dependent on the tuning of one ability.
EB having a maelstrom cost is very clunky. Our maelstrom generation in The War Within is in a healthy spot in my opinion, but not when talenting into EB.
EB should be a fun, flashy, and amazing spell to press but it isn’t for Elemental. It looks and feels great on Enhancement, but for Elemental the EB button is so full of problems that it honestly feels relieving when I don’t have to talent into it.
Proposed solution
Either:
Make Elemental Blast it’s own talent independent on Earth Shock and revert Elemental Blast back to it’s old design of a 12s cooldown button press that costs no resources. Place this talent point somewhere in the tree where it is easy to avoid picking up if you don’t want it. It could potentially be a capstone talent. It goes without saying that all other talents currently affected by or altering Elemental Blast (Surge of Power, Aftershock, Storm Frenzy, Swelling Maelstrom, Eye of the Storm, Mountains Will Fall, Magma Chamber, Echoes of the Great Sundering, and Lightning Rod) should lose their functionality with Elemental Blast.
Or:
Merge Earth Shock and Elemental Blast (this is my favourite solution). “Elemental Shock” could be our spender. Instant cast, same maelstrom cost as ES currently has, and increasing Critical Strike or Haste by 6% or Mastery by 11% for 10 seconds. With Mountains Will Fall talented it could trigger Elemental Overload and sometimes give is 2 stat increases. An updated visual effect could make this whole thing really pop off - I would love to see it! Alternatively, instead of merging them into a new spell we could just have Elemental Blast replace Earth Shock entirely. Keep the functionality of Elemental Blast but make it instant cast and cost less maelstrom.
Or:
Last option is to remove Elemental Blast entirely. While I would be sad to see this iconic spell removed, I want to stress that I seriously consider this option to be better than the current situation. If we are ever suggested to play the current version of Elemental Blast due to tuning it would ruin all the other fantastic efforts you developers are trying to implement for us players. The Shaman community is buzzing with the changes, but the current functionality of Elemental Blast will leave the excitement dead in the dust if we were supposed to play the talent. I sincerely hope you will consider changing Elemental Blast in accordance with my other two suggestions, but if you don’t see that working out, and you don’t have a solution yourself that will adress the fundamental issues with the spell as stated above, please remove Elemental Blast.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my feedback. Thank you again, developers, for all your hard work for the shamans. I hope you all have a great day where ever you are
Best wishes, Whale.
