Elemental Shaman feedback

In Development Season of Discovery Phase 4 PTR
1

PVE wise elemental we’re in a great spot, we we’re mid field and it felt really good to play after the buffs to burn.

PVP wise we are perceived as majorly OP, I won’t lie and say its bad but let any caster wail away at you 2v1 and you are going to die pretty fast, we should keep our weakness of no hard CC and having to hard cast our most damaging spells. I believe power surge is the major reason for all the hate, it seems never to proc in PVE but in PVP it just causes you to be able to turn any fight through complete luck. Its a horrible rune and must feel terrible to play against.

I see hate also for Decoy and agree that if destroyed the effect should end, I don’t understand how this isn’t the case anyway, other than that I think its perfectly fine to have a rune that stops us being free kills to all melee classes.

I will go through our most used runes and review.

Head = Burn - After buff was in a great place, stopped mental dex being better.

Chest = Overload - I like this rune sometimes feels like machine gun lightning bolts, Lava burst also feels great with this.

Waist = Power surge - terrible rune, feels great for you in AOE but terrible for anyone your against.

Legs = ? - No idea now, seems with sham rage gone we don’t have a rune.

Feet = Alpha or Decoy - Alpha is great utility, feels bad we get no boost like enhance get out of it though (they get 5% physical damage bonus).

Wrist = Rolling thunder or Riptide - The buff was needed to rolling thunder, feels much better now, need the timer removed, its just annoying. Riptide is great in PVP and solo.

Hands = Lava burst - I like it, feels great when overload procs.

Cloak = Storm, Earth and Fire - “We need more AOE damage” said no elemental shaman ever, bad rune, boring. Oh and the root just lol.

Suggestions

Decoy - needs to be fixed with when it gets destroyed, effect ends.

Riptide - Initial heal need toning down so that if you already have the effect going the initial burst healing doesn’t effect you or just increase the cooldown so its not so spammable.

Rolling thunder - remove the timer.

Power surge - This is the big one, this needs to be a ramp up buff so it doesn’t wreck PVP and proc more so its not a slot machine in PVE. Flame shocks ticks have a 35% chance to give you a stacking buff that decreases cast time of Lava burst and chain lightning by 0.1 sec, stacking up to 5 times, on the 6th tick consumes the stacks, resets cooldown on Lava burst and chain lightning and lets Lava burst stack twice for the next 30 secs.

The numbers would need to be tweaked but the essence is that no more OP PVP one shots, and you would get to cast more Bursts in PVE and when it resets you would not lose the bonus as Lava burst can now stack twice.

Cloak - I would like to see a new spell, hard hitting ground target with tiny AOE radius, instant cast but 3 secs delay before it lands. Calls a lightning bolt from the skies to strike the earth, should have a visual indication on the ground when cast so its easy to spot. Would be great for PVE would have to time it right for big damage and PVP should never hit unless someone just stands still.

Legs - some totems that help casters please.

Book - increase imbue times to 30m and place 4 totems at once 2-5 min cooldown

Above are what I feel would make this class more fun to play, I would want it tuned to be mid pack DPS, I do PVP and believe these changes would make us more inline without ruining our PVE which is my main focus but fun is my main goal.

2

Sadly this is EU and from what I see our feedback is less important than US feedback since there’s little activity but I’ll still try just to say to myself I tried :sweat_smile:

When a shaman main tells you how bad the design is for the other players that are against him, and that he/she doesn’t want it, well, maybe think about it.

I agree with what he sais.

I don’t know why shamans have been designed in that way. Don’t get me wrong i want my enemies to be strong and challenging and i want shamans to shine; I wouldn’t want my paladin to feel like he’s bullying it’s enemies, but as it stands, shaman in SoD has been an absolute nightmare to play against. It made the PvP grind a pitiful experience.

Other classes have problems against shamans, but now think about paladins: they’re mostly orcs (immune to stuns almost so our main CC ability, gone), they have purge (most of our OP buffs that build our class up, gone), shamans have always been kinda counter to paladins, but now on top of all of that their burst is stronger than ever, AoE, no mana problems, more CC… :face_with_thermometer: :face_with_head_bandage: they were a nightmare Phase 3 and they’ll be worse Phase 4? :melting_face:

Now realise that paladins vs shamans is how horde vs alliance works.

Now realise how horde racials are insane PvP.

Toxic. :anger:

Thanks for the post.

3

Decoy totem absolutely cannot get a nerf.
it would hit enhancement harder than ele, and enhancement is already getting trucked with nerfs so please think before you post.

decoy is less important for ele because you’re a caster, but enhancement need decoy in order to function at all because we’re in melee getting blasted constantly.
the only thing keeping us from the eternal stunlock is decoy totem.
and now with our healing getting gutted we probably won’t last long in melee even if we had double decoy totem.
and here you are suggesting riptide get nerfed as well… DUDE STOP!! its like the only remaining viable heal enhancement shamans have left now!!!

also, your suggestion to remove the effect when the totem is destroyed is absolute 5head.
its designed with being destroyed in mind you dingus, it absorbs a physical hit for the shaman and gets destroyed in the process so if the buff ended when the totem is destroyed it might as well not provide the movement impairing immunity at all.

as a matter of fact, elemental shouldn’t even have access to this totem. it should be strictly for enhancement.

i am getting sick and tired of elemental being the culprit of enhancement nerfs.
you having access to our toys (and abusing the f out of them like you did with mental dexterity back in the day) is the reason we keep geting nerfs.

watch spirit wolves catching a nerf because of elemental shamans as well.

you wanna sit there and act like nerfs to ele is justifiable, then address the real culprit which is flame shock and lava burst with power surge/overload combo.
nerf that instead of suggesting nerfs that would do little to hit elemental while trucking enhancement.

4

Chain lightning 1,5 sec cast - Thats nothing
Lightning bolt - 2 sec cast - thats barely more than the GCD
Shocks instant + built in interrupt
Totems instant
Utility instant
Overload

You’re miles ahead of other casters in terms of cast speeds and kit. Your burst is way ahead of the pack

but we hardcast

With those cast times it doesnt matter at all. try 3 second casts or 2,5 second and getting them off in pvp. GG

5

Enhance has been top DPS for the last 2 phases. Fact. Ele has been no where near you.

PVP wise enhance has been amazing and pretty much un killable since phase 2 with instant massive heals with healing wave. Ele have been great too, thinking this is balanced though is delusional.

We used mental dex because burn sucked, they changed burn we don’t use mental dex, why would we cause nerfs to it when we don’t use it.

Decoy is most defiantly not less important for ele rogues and warriors would wreck us without it which I wrote. All totems work by the effect ending if the totem is destroyed, that’s how they should work.

Also on your last point I did suggest changes to power surge because its horrible.

To the mage you used the quote about most damaging spells then listed, totems, utility instants, shocks and lightning bolt. Our most damaging spells are chain lightning and lava burst :confused:

getting a 2 sec cast off is impossible in PVP if your opponent isn’t AFK so unsure how me saying power surge instant casts should get nerfed wouldn’t help balance us. You seem to be arguing that our casts should be long and that’s exactly why power surge should get changed.

Also mages get blink, roots and hard cc with sheep, there has to be some give and take. I am in no way saying mage is in a good spot right now but this is an elemental feedback post not mage. Same as its not an enhancement shaman feedback post :stuck_out_tongue:

6

Just got tidal waves and riptide for PvP and have 25% increased crit chance with LHW. You’ll still pump and you can still self heal

7

that’s a helm rune… not viable for enhancement.

8

I mean… If you need to self heal then yes it is. Don’t be daft man. That response is exactly why people are mugging off shaman players.

“But if I take that healing rune I can’t absolutely blast anymore and instant healmyself from 1%-100% in 1 instant cast”

If you’re complaining about PvP and self sustain… You know… Sacrifice some damage for some healing…

9

what a troll take… so in order to self sustain i literally have to give up my ability to do damage whatsoever?

its not 1-100% btw. its about 60-70% with mental dexterity affecting +healing.
sub 60% after that gets removed (but that matters little as they are taking healing wave off maelstrom entirely, effectively flat out removing the spell from our arsenal)…

and it takes 5 stacks to get that instant cast which requires you to stick in melee at all times to do it, which puts you at risk of getting killed… and on top of that, if you use the maelstrom stack for healing you are already giving up damage, because that could have been an instant lightning bolt, chain lightning or lava burst, but instead its now a heal…

i’m already giving up damage as it is if i heal, so to ask me to gimp my damage further by giving up the rune (and the damage scaling that comes with it) entirely is unreasonable.

its like asking a rogue to give up all his dps CD’s if he wants the luxury of being able to vanish.

not being able to heal will now be a death sentence in pvp.

might as well go elemental and not having to give up on either.
but that would only add to the problem everyone is complaining about, which is the prevalence of elemental shamans.

10

I mean, I also think it’s dogs*it the changes man. I wanted to play a melee healer. Which is virtually impossible. But the amount of extra damage you gain from mental Dex and it’s healing isn’t as much as you’re making it out to be. And riptide is an instant heal with a hot effect. And you get sham rage as a given so you could even take earth shield as well now.

Just use ES and riptide and sacrifice that ap/sp from mental Dex.

I honestly feel like you’re being OTT with this complaint for PvP. You will still be self sustaining. Just with less explosive output.

11

well now it certainly is.
a lot of enhancement shamans enjoyed being able to offheal with maelstrom as they did dps, but that is removed from the game now, and that’s just fun policing. who cares if shamans can pop a clutch heal during a raid boss fight.
they did not need to take that away.

its about 121 attack power based on BIS gear on a 100% conversion rate from intelligence > Attack power, and said increase in attack power would scale to increase the spell power (and healing) conversion of attack power > spell power as we get 30% of our total attack power converted to spell power (and healing)… BOTH are taking a hit - 35% INT > AP and 10% AP > SP respectively, which means the nerf double dips as the rune itself double dips.
its definitely as much as i am making it out to be, however the damage scaling nerf is not the unreasonable part of the nerfs - that’s actually the only reasonable part of them…

its the gutting of +healing on mental dex in tandem with removing healing wave from maelstrom that is the atrocious part because this means both riptide, and lesser healing wave (which will now be our only viable heals) will be around 200 healing power weaker on top of already being weaker heals inherently.

asking enhancement shamans to spend a 5x maelstrom on a lesser healing wave is downright outrageous honestly.
our entire ability to perform hinges on maelstrom, and it was already tough tapping into it for damage as it is (outside of pve that is) because keeping yourself alive is more important than doing damage.

and its a nice ability, i will admit. HOWEVER, we have to sacrifice overcharged or static shock to use it (which again, is also a sacrifice in dps as it is).

shammy rage should have been baseline from the beginning.

i suppose its nice to have earth shield on top of riptide though, but again, it will yield pretty bad healing now that mental dexterity is getting its healing benefit removed, and it also means you can’t run overcharged/static shock because that requires lightning shield.
its primarily a resto spell, and again, elemental gets to benefit fully from it because ele is only getting buffs… so once again, ele wins.

this will just result in not being able to do damage.
whats the point in playing enhancement then?

might as well do that while running elemental because then you get the healing benefit to riptide and earth shield through your spell power/healing from your gear and burn rune + the ability to dps, and do higher dps at that.

doesn’t really matter what you feel tbh.
the numbers indicate a scenario that doesn’t correlate with your theorycrafting at all.
it doesn’t even come close to being a remotely realistic expectation, performance wise.

if i end up being mega wrong, i’ll make my apologies.
but as it stands right now, i am basically certain that this spells doom for enhancement.

12

Meh I hope it all works out for ya. I still think it’s more game breaking having it the way it’s been and changing it feels super bad hence these comments.

But if I’m honest I think loads of stuff in SoD is S*it. Warrior is being hated in. Paladins have like 20 different threads saying they hate it. Shamans hate it. I hate rogue builds. Druids are complaining. Affliction warlock is so bad that it’s quite literally been deleted off anyones tier list and parsing when it really isn’t that hard to make it viable.

Whoever it is managing the dev team at blizzard needs to grow a back bone and actually get the dev team working properly on this.

Like why even bother creating sod if it’s left as this festering mess. I doubt blizzard has ever had such a catastrophic fall in players as they have had from P1 - P3 in sod lol

13

they should have thought about that (believe me, everyone else saw this coming) when they decided enhancement shaman should be a dual wield class with maelstrom being its defining class mechanic… any idiot could have seen this problem coming a mile away, but i guess blizzard devs are a special kind of idiots since they’re the only ones who couldn’t predict the obvious.

time and time again blizzard makes these mistakes, they get called out, and they go “we know better” and their design ends up flopping craptastically and angering everyone who followed what they said…

when i saw dual wield for enhancement i said “yeah this will break 2h and make shaman OP” and everyone agreed… then when they introduced maelstrom i said; if DW put 2h in the grave, maelstrom is what put the nail in the coffin, and i was right (as were everyone else who saw it coming miles away).

yep, lots of L’s on part of blizzards poor design choices. they are ignoring community feedback entirely (especially in the case of shamans) and now we’re the ones dealing with the results.

yep, colossal failure overall. unacceptable tbh, and i am not buying the “its the suits causing the problem” excuse… yea, the suits might have forced the SOD team to work on classic, but that hardly explains the numerous balancing fails we’ve seen since the game’s (SOD’s) inception.