Elemental's problem in M+

Classes Shaman
1

The state of elemental gameplay in keys is currently at it’s lowest point in a while. We went from one of the best iterations of the spec (TWW S2-3) to one of the least engaging and fun version after the current pruning. I’ve been an elemental one trick from BfA, focusing on high keys so I do have some insight on the spec.

Nearing the halfway of the season I’d like to put out a couple of clear oversights and issues the spec has in keys. This is not related to tuning (which is also on the weaker side), just the flow of the game itself.

Stormkeeper/ascendance CD as stormbringer

I can’t fathom how this went to live as it is. It’s one of the most unfun interactions cooldowns which NEED to be aligned has. 45 sec vs. 2 min cd essentially guarantees you having to scuff your damage to play optimally. The issue isn’t as prevalent in raid as you can afford to hold an ascendance since it’s more likely you won’t get another use, but in keys there’s many times where you just have to play extremely cringe, holding either depending on the pull cadence.

Playing around cooldowns in general is fine and is a part of the player’s skillset, but it is so numbing to sit on your main short CD for 30 seconds because you know you’re going to have to asce on CD to have it for the next pull. It isn’t fun, it doesn’t provide anything to the game.

Suggestion: Make SK cooldown line up with asce, either by making it a 45 sec or 1:15 min cd baseline, or change asce into 1.5 min. Tune accordingly. Other option would be to reintroduce SK CDR from filler casts, which was one of the best flowing and most fun talents.

Priority damage and removal of Echoes of the Great Sundering

Being one of the classes which actually can opt to dish some priority damage, our current version just feels bad to play. While previously we had the option to weave our AoE/ST spenders and opt to use the ST spenders on a single mob (essentially only losing damage on lightning rod spread), now we basically trade all of our mass aoe completely if we want to squeeze one target dead.

Echoes wasn’t hard to play around and most of all it actually made us fulfil the niche of being able to do priority damage without major tradeoffs. Currently it’s the opposite. You either don’t help kill the target that needs to die or you’re sacrificing more than half of your damage depending on the pull (EQ and the rod spread) to do it. It’s incredibly unfun to play around.

Suggestion: Bring Echoes of the Great Sundering back

2-target and small cleave

I’m not going to go too deep into this since it’s been discussed so widely, but please address this. Ele plays single target rotation on 2T and scales bad until the sweet spot. Again, incredibly unfun and griefing given the amount of 2/3T fights this m+ season.

The spec just doesn’t flow well. It doesn’t have the earlier agency of playing around your DRE, skill ceiling is lower yet to play optimally you have to hinder yourself and have the knowledge to do so. It’s not friendly nor intuitive for a fresh player either, and the tuning is on the weaker side as well which would be fine if the gameplay wasn’t so bad. I love the class fantasy and the spec itself, and the fixes are not hard.

Please do something Blizz.

3 Likes
2

Our spenders suck. Earth shock hits like a wet noodle with no additional benefits and EQ needs enemies to stand still at one place long enough to amp up in damage which often doesn’t happen because tank has to move the pack.

3

TBH this is not even needed. There is already a talent that reduces the CD of SK by 15 seconds. It just happens to be a choice talent with one of the strongest talents (fury of the storm).
All that is needed is to either nerf fury of the storm, or change the placement of the talents, so that you can take herald of the storms.

On priority damage and low target cleave:

The solution is there in the talent tree, the only problem is that the spells are badly tuned, let me explain:

  1. Farseer, a hero tree that shines in ST and low target cleave is undertuned.
  2. Lava burst, one of the core spells are also undertuned and mostly ignored/just a buff.
  3. A whole aspect of the tree (fire talents) are underused just because lava burst is undertuned.

Now imagine if lava burst is better tuned and lava surge scales with number of flameshocks:

  • We get higher chance to proc Lava Burst the more targets we have depending on targets.
  • With Lava Burst netter tuned we can play Molten Wrath, and have Lava Burst do most of the damage.
  • With the Voltaic Blaze supporting talents, you get VB cd down to 7.5 seconds.
  • Every VB will make your next LvB cleave all target with flame shock.

As you see there is heavy support for a build that shines in Cleave (similar but not the same to DF season 3), that is using heavily LvB. The only problem is that currently LvB as a spell is heavily undertunned.

I think there is no need for heavy changes, just targeted tuning on LvB, Flame Shock, Lava Surge, and Spender damage, so that the Lava Burst build with farseer hero spec becomes competitive.

4

I’m well aware, hence I was talking about specifically current season stormbringer. Making changes to farseer would be nice, but it’s definitely not on the platter for this season as it’d be closer to a complete rework.

I didn’t bring herald up because there just isn’t any way to match lightning ele’s damage. Nerfing lightning ele’s damage is an option but then you’d have to do some major buffs to offset the loss, or just move the node. Other option would be to make Herald of the Storm back to CDR based on casts instead of flat 15 second reduction.

My main point was elemental hasn’t felt this bad to play in the past 6 years I’ve one-tricked it and just wanted to put it out there since the changes needed aren’t humongous. The really sad part is going from a really engaging and dynamic version of ele into this.

5

The reason why it’s like this is Blizzard wants Shamans to play Stormbringer in every content this season. The set bonus is even aimed for SB. I’d of course prefer to play Farseer but well…

6

Why blizzard keeps farseer useless still. Even after upcoming tuning, its still so far behind stormbringer. Does blizzard even read these top players comments, or anyone?
Shaman team, knock knock, hello, is there someone?

7

I’ve been playing farseer elemental this expansion even though it’s weaker because it’s much more fun and simple to play. I am okay with doing less damage compared to stormbringer because of simplicity and mobility farseer offers, but it’s way behind in damage, not just compared to sb but also other classes. Farseer is focused on casting lvb and that pushes me towards a fire build which is fine for me, but having to cast lbolt and cl as filler SUCKS as farseer.

  • I wasn’t aware that lava surge only happened for one flame shock in aoe situations. this definitely needs to change so our cleave actually keeps up with every other class out there.
  • Also we need the talent which granted a lava surge after spending maelstrom. Feels like they tuned lvb around that ability but we no longer have it.
  • Removing fire elemental was a big hit towards our cooldowns. Instead now we HAVE to take ascendance which is located all the way to bottom. It’s strong but it’s an obligatory late talent for all cases and without its upgrades, it’s a loooong cooldown which lasts painfully short. I imagine for stormbringers the flame shock component of ascendance is worthless too.

Anyone questioning shaman team’s incompetence at this point is probably new to the game. They might be the only class design team that actually hates the class. Everyone else works to make their class fun and effective where shaman team somehow always thinks shamans are way too strong all the time.
My 225 ilvl arcane mage does about the same damage with arcane barrage crits as my 275 ilvl elemental shaman’s earthshock crits, and arcane barrage cleaves.