It’s no surprise that balancing changes are a part of life in Azeroth, but the proposed nerfs to Elemental Shaman for the next reset are more drastic than necessary. While tuning down overperforming specs is expected, the approach here feels like a step too far, especially considering recent changes that encouraged players to invest heavily in a specific gearing strategy.
The Gear Investment Issue
The 11.05 adjustments shifted our stat priorities, making Mastery our go-to over Haste and Crit. This led many of us to pour significant resources—gold, Sparks, and Catalyst charges—into optimizing our gear for Mastery. We doubled down on this stat to stay competitive, in line with the direction the devs seemed to be pushing us. Now, with these upcoming nerfs specifically targeting Mastery’s potential, it feels like a betrayal of that investment.
Reworking stat priorities and making major gear changes isn’t something players can do overnight or without substantial costs. To hit Elemental Shaman this hard right after encouraging a shift to Mastery seems not only unfair but counterproductive. It undermines the effort players put into adapting to recent changes and leaves us scrambling to recover.
Why These Nerfs Are Overboard
here’s no denying that Elemental needed some tuning; we’ve had our moments in the spotlight. However, a measured approach would be more appropriate.
We’ve waited a long time for Elemental to feel competitive, and when we finally get the chance to shine, it’s being taken away almost immediately. Other classes have enjoyed periods of dominance far longer than what Elemental has experienced this tier. Why the sudden rush to pull us back down just as we’re finding our footing?
These sorts of huge nerfs are harmful to the spec and the game.
these nerfs are so far gone so as to be absurd. i’m mainly focusing on the st. Lightning rod was bug fixed, Ascendance spamming way 2 mny lava bursts was fixed, that inflated our st wastly.
we lost defensives, utility, movment. that we all assumed we traded away for more dmg, yes we needed nerfs to our aoe. but i’m at a loss for words. i havent seen nerfs this big since Demonology warlock’s into HFC and they were told we fankly dont want you to play the spec for now since we are reworking it.
My time investment, gold, catalyst charges is now all down in the dumps.
i really like the Flash of lightning shaman with storm ele all the time with so much mobility. can we just go back to before the rework and try again for season 2?
Generally they do this mid season. If something goes from mid of the pack or bot to the top dps, they tend to bring it down. They said that they do that because they do not want to change the rankings between spec during the season, but they want to do that between seasons.
This makes sense in their eyes because it screws with the players that are progressing the end bosses and out of nowhere they have to adapt to a changing meta.
From what is the latest information from the discord, it seems that mastery is still the most valuable stat, so I hope that this issue is dodged.
I think/hope that they go back to some of those nerfs, just like they did with hunters and paladins some weeks ago.
While elemental was overperforming to a disgusting degree in 11.0.5, data shows that those nerfs might put them in an even worse state that they were before 11.0.2. As I said, I do not believe that this is their goal, and I hope that they backtrack some nerfs, so that elemental retains its place from the previous patch.
Haven’t you been paying attention? They did nerfs way bigger than those. Off the top of my head they nerfed enh at the release of DF by 25% (25% nerf on ALL damage). And while that seemed harsh at that time, the spec turned out to be more than fine. Hope that the same things happens to ele.
Just gonna unsub if these changes hit the live servers. Enough of this bullsh.t, tired of spending real life money to change stats on gear and tired of spending time to getting used to new specs. Please respect your customers time and hard earned money and invest in a better QA team.
I was about to buy a 12-month subscription, but I’m relieved I didn’t go through with it. I’ll unsubscribe and come back for Season 2, hoping Blizzard will finally give Elemental Shamans the respect they deserve. It’s really disappointing, Blizzard.
Its funny how people are saying, how they “finally got their chance in the spotlight”, when Elemental Shamans have been blasting through M+ keys since the start of the expansion.
The reason, they were not picked, was because Resto Shamans had the full counter to all mechanics basically, but anytime there was no resto in a group they always picked an elemental if they could.
Who the f spends real life money to change their stats? Srsly, get a grip. Mastery is STILL our top priority with the changes.
I know no other class, that can spike to 11mil dps on a mass pull.
This is your money? Everyone does what they want with them, and no, the elemental shaman wasn’t even close to TOP tier from the beginning of the expansion, only now.
What are you smoking? FDK was busted since the starting of the season and 0 nerf 0 change for the whole 8 weeks. Ele never blasted anything, you can check logs. Stop talking empty and bulls.
You are wrong. before rework Stormbringer was 15% behind literally every spec in game in ST/bossfight. Every time if you play high M+ content you have picked Enhance.
Do you know another spec with 3 min cd burst with broken Spymaster’s web?