Hey,
i wanted to chime in and post my feedback on the Enhancment Tree. This post is written from a viewpoint focused on PvE so not everything written here may also be the case for PvP. With that said let’s get right into it: I think there are six major areas where our tree can be improved.
TLDR – these are very much simplified, for more context please read the respective sections:
- The tree doesn’t offer much choice and there are basically no alternative Playstyles available
- The effectively only single-target build is rather complex. There needs to be a simpler Build
- Utility versus Damage choices will likely not work and the current Utility options are weak
- Enhancement’s main weaknesses (RNG and Uptime reliance) are not adressed in the tree
- The Capstone area is not balanced. This will lead to little choice as certain capstones are just better in some damage-profiles
- Crash Lightning and Chain Lightning feel weak instead of being core parts of our AoE
- Lava Burst is not worth beeing a Button on it’s own for Enhancement
There is relatively little choice in our tree.
A pure Single-target build just takes everthing Stormstrike and Lava Lash related and then only has a couple Points left to spend. And even in case of those left-over points there ist basically only the choice between Doomwinds or the Hailstorm + Ice Strike combo. Similarily a full AoE build can take almost all available talents focused on multi-target damage, leaving the only choice for said build in deciding what single-target talents to finish the build with. That leaves Enhancement not only with few choices to make, but also with effectively only one playstyle in most situations.
In direct comparison the Elemental Tree can for example opt into a „weaving“-playstyle via talents like Icefury and Master of the Elements or can completely avoid those Options and go for a different build.
I wonder if bringing back Enhancement’s version of weaving in the form of Rockbiter + it’s Azerite Power Strength of Earth could offer up an alternative Style to build Enhance.
Playstyle defining Talents that were optional in Shadowlands are now almost unavoidable.
Whether it be Hot Hand, Elemental Blast or Witch-Doctor’s Wolf Bones – all of these were choices in the past and now are quasi mandatory because there are just no alternatives. This worsens when factoring in that these talents all increase the complexity of Enhance. I feel that there should be room for a more straightforward build that makes Enhancement easy to get into and situations where players want to focus on encounter mechanics over spec mechanics.
Putting in Choice-Nodes for said talents would open the possiblity for different and/or simpler builds. I think options for a simpler build could be: Primal Primer as an alternative to Hot Hand and bringing back the T17 4P (Feral Spirits can trigger Windfury) which would allow for the choice between shorter cooldown or stronger Wolves.
Utility Talents
While the Enhance tree only has two utilty talents, they both compete directly with damage options. I think that making a choice between damage and utility is not fun and will lead to said talents beeing rarely if ever taken.
A potential solution to the Utility vs. Damage problem is having a row of utility talents that are mandatory to progress deeper into the tree (as has already been done in different trees).
Additionally the Refreshing Waters/Ancestral Wolf Affinity Choice-Node feels particularily weak and I would like to see it revised. A simple tweak here could be to bring over the Inundate talent (ressource generation on utility-use) from the Elemental Tree or bringing back the old Doom Wolves Artifact Trait (while in Ghost Wolf you generate ressources).
The Tree doesn’t adress multiple of Enhance’s core issues.
Going into Dragonflight the most limiting aspects of the spec are still going to be there:
We are very reliant on RNG while not having any control over it and our damage is extremely reliant on uptime.
I feel the Talent Tree should atleast offer options that lessen these issues. If reducing those weaknesses will make Enhance too strong, said Solutions could compete directly versus damage to keep the spec balanced.
One option I would look into here is to bring back Echo of the Elements. Echo would allow us to waste less procs making bad RNG more tolerable and smooth out the flow of the rotation while under the effects of Hot Hand or Ascendance: Under those effects the SS and LL cooldowns would often not quite allow for a SS/LL-Filler-SS/LL-Filler Rotation. The wiggle room given by Echo of the Elements would make these moments feel much better to play.
Additionally I would propose taking the part of Ascendance that allows the use of melee attacks and abilities from range and shifting it into Spiritwalker’s Grace. This gives Enhance a skillful tool to mitigate the effects of downtime that is more flexible then the current Ascendace implemenation and makes it available to non-Ascendance builds aswell.
The Capstone Area has multiple problems.
Currently both 2-pointer talents Elemental Assault and Legacy of the Frost Witch have all of their functionality in the first point while the second point only increases the secondary damage bonus tied to their effect. This leads to the second point spent beeing much worse than the first. Having the worth of talent points be so different is confusing and will „trap“ less informed players by spending more points then they would need.
Therefore I think said talents should be either changed to 1-pointers or changed to have their functionality scale with invested points.
There ist also the issue that Primordial Wave and it’s follow up talents do not do enough in single-target. This is especially problematic as we only have 3 capstones. Meaning if one Capstone does not work in single-target, the other two are the default and only options for all single-target builds. Thus eliminating all choice from the capstones.
Elemental had almost the same issue with Primordial Wave and got an update for the follow-up talents that allow P-Wave to work better in single-target. I feel similar tweaks are needed for Enhance. To me it seems like Elemental’s current implementation of granting procs should be usable for Enhancement aswell.
Finally the newly announced changes to Thorim’s Invocation open up a new problem: Ascendance together with it’s follow-ups is now flexibly usable in AoE and single-target while for Feral Spirits you have to decide between single-target or AoE by choosing either Alpha Wolf or Elemental Spirits. Thus given similar tuning of both Abilities and their follow-up talents Ascendance is now almost always going to be better when a mixed damage profile is asked for.
I think that the design surrounding AoE versus single-target should be unified between the capstone talents – otherwise it will limit our choice. So either Feral Spirit needs to get both Alpha Wolf and Elemental Spirits as it’s final option or Thorim’s Invocation needs to be split into a Choice-Node where you have to decide between Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning.
The Role of Crash Lightning and Chain Lightning in our AoE-Toolkit
There are situations with the current Shadowlands AoE build focused around Fire Nova and Lava Lash in which Chain Lightning falls down the priority list quite far. Therefore making us sit at 10 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon and not using them. I think that we should care about Maelstrom at all times and never want to blindly overcap it.
Crash Lightning lost a lot of it’s damage to make room for Hailstorm/Fire Nova and has become a button we only want to press to keep up the Buff portion of it. I feel like a button designed around AoE should be worth pressing in those situations and be prioritized above single-target abilities.
The newly announced Crashing Storms Talent (Crash Lightning damage increased by 40%, and Chain Lightning strikes 2 additional targets) is a good step to make sure we care about both spells in AoE. However i would like to see more changes to push those two spells further.
In the recent update Hailstorm was made to be able to scale it’s damage with up to 10 Maelstrom Weapon stacks. I think the idea of making our abilities interact more with Maelstrom Weapon is super cool and would propose a change furthering that approach: Making a talent that allows Chain Lightning’s target count to scale with Maelstrom stacks spend. Thus allowing Chain Lightning to hit up to 10 Targets in combination with Overflowing Maelstrom.
For Crash Lightning I see two possible directions the ability could go: First the popular T20 4P (Crash Lightning damage gets stacked up by our outher abilities) could see a return. This would give damage back to Crash while also giving Enhance the ability to pool for a big AoE hit. Secondly Crash Lightning’s role as a facilitator could be further strengthened.
Secondly I always thougt the Hailstorm rotation had an issue with the Frost Shock cooldown. There were situations you sat on Maelstrom stacks and had a Hailstorm buff ready but had to make the awkward choice of either waiting for Frost Shock or spending Maelstrom and thus wasting the Hailstorm buff. By adding a talent that allows for Crash Lightning to reduce the cooldown of Frost Shock (and potentially Fire Nova) our AoE Rotation would feel smoother to play and we would care more about using Crash.
And lastly a point related to the class tree instead: Lava Burst doesn’t fit into Enhance
Lava Burst currently feels like button bloat - it is not integrated into Enhancement at all. Instead it fills the same role as Lightning Bolt as a simple damage-only Spender while also tapping into the same Ressoure. Lava Bursts only reason for use therefore is that it does slightly more damage but on a cooldown.
I think in it’s current implementation Lava Burst is not worth beeing a button. I would prefer if it got taken out of Maelstrom Weapon and not be a thing for Enhancement entirely. Alternatively it could either replace Lightning Bolt or Elemental Blast to cut down on Button Bloat. A far shot could also be to take some of Elemental’s talents like Lava Surge or Master of the Elements to integrate it into Enhancement’s Toolkit.
Thanks for reading my wall of text. If you liked my post and have access to the Alpha forums consider cross-posting it there.