Feedback: Elemental Shaman 11.0.5

In Development The War Within Patch 11.0.5 PTR
1

I didn’t see any threads for feedback, so I created one.

  1. change the position of Improved Flametongue Weapon with Earthen Rage.

  2. Charged Conduit forces me to spend 2 points to have a good Lightning Rod. It seems like we’re back to when the tree had 0/2 points. It directly improves Lighting Rod.
    Replace Charge Conduit with a new talent:
    STORMS OVERLORD
    2,0 min cooldown / Channeled 3 sec cast
    Dealing, up to 5 enemies near the target, [3(250% of Spell power)] Nature damage evenly split to each enemy target over 3 sec. At the end of the channeling Generate 4 Maelstrom for tick. (Total 3x4=12 Maelstrom)*
    I was inspired by Fae Transfusion. The animation may feature lightning bolts falling into the spell’s area and hitting targets.

  3. Stormkeeper’s stance isn’t the best. Makes it mandatory for all builds.

  4. Rolling Thunder is terrible. Replace it with Fury of the Storm.

  5. rework Tempest like this: Every 300 Maelstrom spent , the next time you cast Lighting Bolt or Chain Lightning, you additionally cast Tempest at your target.

  6. Considering that we lost Skybreaker’s Fiery Demise and the nerf to Flash of Lightning, reducing the uptime of our elementals makes no sense.
    There is no longer the possibility of them overlapping with Echo of the Elementals and nor that we are constantly active.
    Ask you to bring the uptime back to 30 seconds and leave the uptime of the lesser elementals at 10 seconds.
    PTR
    (20 sec +20%) + 10 sec = 34 sec
    DC 150 sec - 34 sec = 116 sec (1 min and 56 sec)
    PROPOSAL
    (30 sec +20%) + 10 sec = 46 sec
    DC 150 sec - 46 = 104 sec (1 min and 44 sec)

  7. We have a serious problem with maelstrom generation. Add to Swelling Maelstrom this effect: Generates 1 Maelstrom every 1 sec. When you are not in combat the maximum Maelstrom generated is 10.

  8. Replace Erupting Lava with Path of Flame: Lava Burst deals 10% more damage and causes Flame Shock to spread from the target to a 4 yards nearby enemy.

  9. Deeply Rooted Elements is activated a little less often using spenders. Increases the activation rate (7 → 15%) or increases the duration of Ascendace (6 → 10 sec).

PS: finding a shield is proving to be a difficult task. I hope you see Thunderstrike Ward again in the future because it is frustrating to have to use this talent but not find a suitable shield.

1 Like
2

Major points of feedback: spec tree, Ascendance, elementals and Icufury

PvE

I am a big fan of Stormkeeper and a big proponent that Elemental should play as a waver, utilizing all elements.

So I don"t have a problem with SK being mandatory and the rest of the tree seems to go in a weaver direction. I want to weave Lava bursts with Lightning bolts and shocks, utilizing PoM and MoTE talents. It gives elemtnal somw finesse and complexity, which was lacking in DF season 3 and 4, and now in TWW which has flipped the switch on the lightning side. Current elemental in PvE is atrocious, it feels wrong to ignore LvB almost entirely.

New Ascendance needs some getting used to. It is more bursty (but it didnt work on dummies last I tested it, it fired LvB only at the dummy with already active Flame Shock). Combining Primordial into SK into Ascendance with Farseer does feel really fun and the burst skyrockets.

DRE feels bad now that it procs off off spenders, and it feels like it procs significantly less. Also, it feels bad if it procs and you have no LvB charges. The whole point of ele Ascendance being a fire version is kind of moot now because you no longer get to spam LvB.

If it were up to me, I would probably remove DRE alltogether and just reduce Ascendance CD to 1 min. If it needs to stay, it has to have a bigger proc chance.

Elementals and Icefury feel worse compared to live. Especially fire elemental with the removal of Skybreaker talent.

Maelstrom generation also feels too low and it feels like it was nerfed with us stacking mastery in future. Could use a buff.

Overall I prefer PTR ele for PvE.

PvP

It gets more complicated here and since I had limited time testing, I could only test it on PvP dummy, which has sqewered numbers.

Overall it feels largely the same, with more powerfull burst and lower sustained because Skybreaker removal nerfed Flame Shock quite a bit. And while I prefer more bursty, impactful damage, since we need to cast more we are more suspectible to melee training us and because we are supposed to stack mastery, lower haste feels bad. Not sure how to approach this in future, it still needs more testing.

3

I also like SK but I don’t think it’s right to make it mandatory to be able to take other talents, which are not strictly tied to the lightning build (Swelling Maelstom, Primordial Fury and Improved Flametongue Weapon).

4

I also want to add my opinion.
Overall the changes are good and I like that we are able to utilize all the elemental toolkit rather then choosing between lightning or fire.
But there are a few things that still few lacking:

  • Elementals are supposed to be a strong CD given that it is on a 2.5min cooldown and that we no longer have a mean to reduce it other than Surge of Power. Revert the duration and buff the Fire Elemental now since we no longer have the 50% crit increase on the Flame Shock.

  • Earthshatter and Swelling Maelstrom feel similar yet mandatory as you cannot get anything batter in the middle of the tree. It is better to combine them or replace them with something else. We got too many multipliers already - talents , hero talents, set bonus. These kind of talents are not fun. I would rather have some effect than a % increase. They feel like one of the auras that we get adjusted every patch or weekly fix.

  • Mountains Will Fall and Searing Flames feels very weak numerically. Mountains Will Fall shouldn’t have 50% penalty and Searing Flames shouldn’t be a chance to proc.

  • Flux Melting, considering that icefury has some sort of RNG and only one charge, is also very weak and it should provide at least double the damage bonus to be a choice.

  • Deeply Rooted Elements seems to trigger a lot less. Either make it to proc on maelstrom spend or increase the proc chance.
    Kind Regards!

5

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.

Adding the (partial) effect of Skybreaker’s Fiery Demise to Searing Flames could help: Flame Shock has a 50% increased critical strike change.

Add to Swelling Maelstrom this effect: Generates 1 Maelstrom every 1 sec. When you are not in combat the maximum Maelstrom generated is 10.

Mountains Will Fall: if bringing elemental overloads damage to 100% meant nerfing our spenders base damage, I wouldn’t be okay with that. Otherwise, fine.

Flux Melting is a flop talent. They should put the effect inside MotE.

Deeply Rooted Elements: increases the activation rate (7 → 15%) or increases the duration of Ascendace (6 → 10 sec).

6

I wanted to take a moment to thank the dev team for the incredible work on the Lightning build in PTR 0.5. The build feels coherent, solid, and thematically engaging. After several tests, I find the current state of the Lightning build to be satisfying and enjoyable to play.

I’m currently using a build that excludes Flame Shock and Lava Burst entirely. Instead, I focus on Lightning Bolt, Earth Shock, Ice Fury (with Frost Shock procs in the queue of Lightning Bolt), Tempest, Ascendance, and Deeply Rooted Elements (DRE). I’m happy that it’s viable, though I’d recommend increasing the proc rate for DRE, as it feels quite low.

I also have a suggestion: it would be great to offer two versions of Ascendance—one that grants Keeper of Tempest for a more Lightning-focused playstyle, and another that allows Lava Burst spamming on activation.

Lastly, I believe it’s time for Lava Surge to become a talent that can be chosen, and perhaps something that can further enhance it—this way, it wouldn’t feel mandatory anymore for those who prefer not to use it.

Once again, great job on this build, and I look forward to seeing how it evolves in future patches and expansions!

7

Given the current problems with Lava Surge, perhaps this could be a welcome change:

Flame Shock periodic damage has a change to reset the remaining cooldown on Lava Burst and cause your next Lava Burst to be instant. This effect can only occur: every 10 sec if you have 1-2 Flame Shocks active; every 8 sec if you have 3-4 Flame Shocks active; every 6 sec if you have 5-6 Flame Shocks active.