Feedback: Shamans

In Development The War Within Beta Test
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In this thread, we’ll be testing and talking about Shamans in The War Within. Look here for posts from the development team as adjustments and bugfixes are made throughout the testing period.

Please note that off-topic or inappropriate posts will be strictly removed.

The War Within Beta

All classes’ Hero Talent trees are available for testing. Please keep in mind that this is a Beta environment:

  • There may be UI elements on the talent panel that are placeholder, including things like talent icons, text, or final UI art.
  • Some talents may not be functioning yet, or may be marked as not yet implemented (NYI).
  • Some new spell visuals and audio may still be a work in progress.
  • There are some talents that are not fully tuned yet. This is expected, and we will implement tuning adjustments throughout testing.

The combat design team has two big areas of focus at this time:

  • Finish work on changes to talents, especially wherever Hero Talents still need adjustments.
  • Fix bugs that are blocking testing of new talents.

Working from Feedback

Alpha feedback thus far has been of great benefit to us.

Now that we are entering Beta, our focus on Hero Talent trees is shifting away from reworks and design changes and towards tuning and refining. We want to thank you so much for all the forum posts, videos, and discussions all over the internet. Your feedback and impressions have been invaluable for bringing their identities to life and making them fit into what you love about the classes you play.

We are looking forward to hearing from more of you as you get a chance to try Hero Talents for yourself. We are specifically interested in feedback or impressions on these topics:

  • Hero Talents that you feel are “required” for your spec in a type of content, such as raiding or Mythic+, or that push you towards picking a specific tree. This could be due to damage profile, utility, defensives, or something else.
  • Hero Talent trees that you feel are either too strong or too weak in power level compared to other options.
  • Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.
  • Hero Talent choice nodes that you feel could offer more meaningful choices.

Again, Thank You

Feedback throughout the Alpha test was highly impactful on our design of the game, and we look forward to refining every class with you in the Beta. Thank you!

– The World of Warcraft Combat Design Team

1 Like
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Hello,

after playing around with both of the Elemental Hero Talents for a while, I’d like to give some initial feedback.

I’m not a native speaker. English is my second language, so keep that in mind while reading this.

Please note, I’m not a high end player. I mainly play on a casual level in PvP and usually try to get my KSM and some of the M+ Portals every season.

Farseer:

This Hero spec feels really good in general, the ancestor spirits have great visuals and add a nice passive bonus, which plays very well into elementals “burst windows” (primordial wave in this case). All the talents give nice bonuses, that compliment elemtals instant cast based playstyle and most of them feel very good and powerful.

Sub Talent "Elemental reverb: this feels really useless to me in terms of PvP and Dungeon content. Usually flameshocking 3+ targets gets you enough Lava burst procs to never worry about charges of Lava Burst. Many people play without “Echo of the Elements” in PvP aswell because you just dont need it. The extra damage is neat though.

Sub Talent “Earthen Communion” : Generally great, this will be absolutely mandatory in PvP. I feel like its way stronger for PvP than the other option. Now to my problem.
The extra charges work on other players, but the tooltop says it only increases healing on myself? I feel like the tooltip should be a bit more clear in this regard, because in PvP you use earth shield on your teammates a lot. The bonus not applying to teammates would really nerf the power of this talent.

Stormbringer:

I really like the idea of lightning focussed Elemental builds, really liked the Storm Ele playstyles in the past etc, but I have a few problems with this Hero talent spec:

Tempest: In general I feel like this is a decent idea, even though I think it’s very boring.
The 2 second cast time feels very long on a spec like ele, thats very instant cast focus. Makes the spec feel a bit clunky. Reducing this could help.
Also this needs to be tuned so it does feel rewarding to press. Currently it feels like a less powerful and slower version of lighning bolt in single target.
In AoE it feels better (seems like it’s not target capped? Thats a big plus for Ele)

In PvP this will feel bad. 2 second cast, that currently does a third the damage of a lavaburst and also locks you out of your utility and healing school, when interruptet just feels terrible. Also it prevents you from using your stormkeeper if not consumed before (including the proc you get from another talent further down). It potetially will also break CC on enemy targets ( not tested yet).

Sub Talent “Shocking grasp”: This feels very underwhelming, since I feel like you can’t really control the slow and Shamans have acces to Earthbind totem pretty often, which gives you a on demand AoE Slow.

Sub Talent “Conductive Energy”:
Tooltip could be a bit more precise: Does this apply Lightning rod, even though you didn’t spec in to Lightning rod? It’s currently NYI, so we have to wait and see.

In general this tree feels way less fleshed out, than the other one. I can’t really see any PvP Scenario, where people play this. Maybe in RBGs, when you can stand in the back and freecast lightning abilities.

This post may be edited, if any of these problems will become obsolete in further testing or updates.

Thanks for reading.

Faerox

3 Likes
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I HIGHLY encourage to change how Surging Totem on totemic works. Right now it places Healing rain on a --random-- player inside it’s range. No matter if he stands alone in a corner far away from the group and the mobs, or inside the group. This plays out to be extremly annoying to play around, and makes me not wanting to play with totemic. Tho I like the idea of it and how it works. I like, we get the totem Chain Heals back. I like, we get chain heals from chain lightnings on it. The core idea, and the vision. But this single thing destroys it. There is no reason a group AOE Heal should be placed on a single person which stands in nowhere.
So I suggest to change how it works. Either it should always be placed where most of the players stand, or, which is the idea I more like: You decide it yourself by casting the totem on someone. This way you could cast the totem on the tank and then it will always try to cast healing rain under it, which will mostly default to melee range.

3 Likes
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Hopefully the ui work is still ongoing here, because Tempest definitely needs some sort of visual to indicate when it becomes active. Additional it could be really helpful to have a buff to track indicating how much maelstrom is needing to be spent before your next tempest - like the Fire Mage’s firefall talent.

Additionally, Tempest feels really sluggish not being affected by Stormkeeper. Especially in the heat of a fight if you think you can cast a lightning bolt, but you don’t see that its been replaced by tempest are suddenly start hard casting a 2 sec spell. It doesn’t even seem reduced by haste. Tempest doesn’t feel powerful enough to not be affected by haste/stormkeeper.

  • Its also not affected by nature’s swiftness which definitely doesn’t seem intentional since it is a nature spell
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as new enhancement shaman player there are few things that just feel awful.

Selfheal:
there should be a talent to make selfheal instant cast every 10-15 sec and not use stacks of maelstrom weapon. i generally dont use selfheal, because either i cant instant cast it or because i would loose 10 maelstrom stacs for a heal. it just feels wrong.

Defensive:
really needs another defensive abillity exept astral shift. maybe earth shield should give a shield that blocks damage instead of healing small amounts (dont understand anyways why a stone shield would heal, maybe a water shield but stone?)

Lightning Shield:
just feels useless, at least let us place it on a tank so we can actually do damage and generate maelstrom stacks (maybe give a 5% dmg reduction too?)

frost shock and ice blade feel somehow slow to use and rotation should generally be a bit faster/smoother. dont know how to describe it

and in general too many tanlents in class tree and 2 point talents.

Edit: Windfury totem should be passive like in the hero talent baseline for the weapon enchant. and not be a talent point to waste. or switch windfury totem to class tree so restro and ele can use it too and make it raidwide or remove it completely

3 Likes
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Here is my feedback concerning the hero talents, node by node, for Elemental Shamans.

Stormbringer

  • Tempest(first): This spell works, the flavour is there… but that’s it. Its implementation is weird.
    • Why does it have to replace Lightning Bolt for both specializations? For Enhancement, I can understand as Lightning Bolt is one of their spenders, which means it does not cause any issues in the flow of their rotation (they can just use it as they would have for a Lightning Bolt), but for Elemental Shamans… Lightning bolt is, even though lightning builds use it as their “nuke”, their main builder which means that depending on the situation, you might just not use it to fill your rotation and instead use Chain Lightning. Tempest would have been way better as its own button that is usable when you have the buff.
    • While it might be because of having low stats on beta, 400 maelstrom seems a bit much and is a weird number. Making it 300 maelstrom would be better, as it would be a perfect multiple of 60 (untalented earth shock/earthquake), 50 (talent earthshock/earthquake), and 75 (elemental blast), and would feel better to use.
    • The active almost seems as if it was an external tool compared to other spells. It does not work with haste, seems to not even work with their own other hero talent (such as Tempest(second)), and, to use the first issue, does not scale with anything that Lightning Bolt scales with (such as Stormkeeper).
  • Unlimited Power: Nice haste buff, nothing much to say about it.
  • Supercharge: This talent should increase the value of mastery a bit for lightning builds, which is nice as there was a clear separation between crit and mastery for those builds.
  • Voltaic Surge: Boring but damage increase on AoE spells is always nice.
  • Tempest(second): Even more critical strike used by lightning builds is always nice, still not a lot to say about it.
  • Storm Swell: A nice way to generate maelstrom in single target… which is wasted if there is one next to it (such as a single target boss with adds spawning). I feel as if this node should just not have the condition and make Tempest’(first) give 30 maelstrom always.
  • Arc Discharge: Really nice node, might be the best out of the whole hero tree. Making it work with Stormkeeper is good and makes a big burst in aoe even outside of it.
  • Conductive Energy (NYI): As of now the talent is not yet implemented, need to know if it applies Lightning Rod in aoe and, if yes, is a massive damage increase (as tempest(first) is uncapped). Overall a nice node.
  • Shocking Grasp: While it might be interesting in PVP, it is really bad in PVE, mainly in dungeons where permanent slow is bad.
  • Rolling Thunder: I really don’t like this one, as it has the same functionality as DF S2 tier set, which had the exact same issue : you can’t control when it happens and you need an external tool to track its cooldown (which can be inaccurate).
  • Nature’s Protection: 10% less damage taken is nice, but not tied to Tempest. Sometimes we might need to hold Tempest for 5 seconds just to have the buff up for the next big damage.
  • Surging Currents: A free and instant heal is nice but might just always be weaker than Nature’s Protection.
  • Awakening Storms: An additional way to get Tempest(first) is a good thing, but there might be times when we get the proc from awakening Storms and the one from the 400 maelstrom at the same time and waste one of them.

Stormbringer Conclusion

Nice flavour, but seems to have been thought for Enhancement and then slapped Elemental on top because it was needed. Making Tempest its own button (and make it work with current elemental procs, such as lighting bolt enhancers), allow the user to know when things will proc because there are about three of them to track in the hero tree without any indication, and improving the defensive node would make it a great talent tree.

Farseer

  • Call of the Ancestors: While stormbringer is clearly the lightning tree, Farseer can only be the fire tree, and the first node confirms it, as it works with Primordial Wave. The ancestors only copying the shaman’s action feels bad, as if you have to move or do mechanics, they are just plain ghosts following you and not doing anything.
  • Latent Wisdom: Plain increase in the ancestors’ damage is a good consistent damage increase, but does not remove the issue from ancestors not doing anything unless you do. 20% of 0 is still 0.
  • Ancient Fellowship: High rolling ancestors means that you could have an “infinite” number of them if each procs another one when disappearing. Nothing much to say, it works against latent Wisdom as the rng vs consistent passive, but might always be the choice because of high roll.
  • Offering from Beyond: Reducing your elemental’s cooldown by 10s for every ancestor is a nice thing on paper, if the fire elemental (storm elemental would never be taken with Farseer I guess) was great, but it is a really meh “major cooldown”.
  • Natural Harmony: As Nature’s Guardian can never proc in dungeons or raids (it won’t prevent a one shot), making it have a reduced cooldown and healing more is at best a small increase in healing when it procs, at worst a dead talent.
  • Earthen Communion: Meh. Really boring, does not fix issues with Earth Shield (having to reapply it midfight), and not a lot of increased healing.
  • Heed My Call: At best, one more spell cast by each Ancestor, at worst, nothing. Making ancestors last 8 seconds instead of 6 won’t really help.
  • Routine Communication: Making Lava Burst have a chance to call ancestors continues the degenerate current gameplay of DF S3/S4, which, while fun for a bit, can really get tired to just spam one spell and ignore all the others because of the loop of it (lava burst => primordial wave => more lava burst => etc.).
  • Maelstrom Supremacy: Nothing to say, increases spender damage.
  • Elemental Reverb: Not sure if an additional Lava Burst charge was needed, as it amplifies the value of random ascendance procs (because it will give all 3 charges back instead of just 2). Further amplifies the lava burst degenerate build.
  • Spiritwalker’s Momentum: Great talent, makes the duration from 15 to 19 seconds. I like it.
  • Final Calling: While it is currently cast, on beta, on a random target (not even one in combat with the shaman), I guess it just works. Even if we don’t cast at all during an ancestor they will do at least one spell.
  • Ancestral Swiftness: Another non-random way to generate an ancestor is a good thing, but not like that. A buffed Nature’s Swiftness (that does nothing if you did not take the talent before hand) is nothing to be hyped about. Really boring “end” of hero tree.

Farseer Conclusion

While the flavour is also on point in this hero talent tree, the gameplay it will create is even more degenerate than current elemental shaman. Defensive nodes are lackluster, and it will even more promote the lava burst loop.

Final Conclusion

Nothing has to be said for the class and elemental tree… as there has been no changes concerning any of them, which is really concerning (not even a single note or information about it). Both hero talent trees are confirming that Blizzard wants to keep the separation of lightning and fire builds, which have been separated since the beginning of DF and always have been an issue as some people prefer one and despise the other. I’m not even talking about the fact that, with restoration shaman, elemental shaman is one of the two specializations not bringing any unique utility to the raid, or that the class tree is almost exclusively utility where most of it is useless except one piece of content.

I’m not sure where elemental shaman is going in TWW, but certainly not in the right direction (if I can even call it a direction, as it is stationary).

3 Likes
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Shaman Feedback

  • Elemental

Stormbringer does not flow with Elemental shaman rotation,
tempest needs to be an instant cast and work with mastery to overload for it to be worth the pick

Farseer procs are too low, it would flow better if it had a higher chance to proc, otherwise the hero talents feel good and seeing a proc feels satisfying

  • Enhancement

Totemic hero talent feels lack luster, its a 30second totem that you fire and forget , its static and leaves me feeling less impactful for myself and my party
the buff granted through Surging totem are lacking impact, maybe they could be party wide buffs and have unlimited charges?
the totem also suffers with being stationary making totemic projection a MUST
in comparison this hero talent i feel will be my Last choice out of the other choices with its current interaction

Enhancement rotation feels sluggish and requires an update or “prune” i feel maybe lightning bolt could be passive and automatically cast when you cap at max maelstrom
and healing surge to not consume maelstrom procs to help those that pvp

its suffering in PvP situations currently and needs to be looked at.
maybe an idea could be to grant stormstrike and lava lash a 10 yard range to compensate for the lack of range

  • Resto

Rain dance pvp talent ( reduce mana cost of healing rain) does not reduce the surging totem mana cost
surging totem replaces healing rain so this pvp talent should effect the totem

TLDR:

  • Totemic needs some love, surging totem only really works well with Resto shamans, (due to the nature of it being stuck in a single place but still healing at range), for enhancement it makes the rotation feel slow and boring
  • StormBringer only works correctly with enhancement, it makes elemental WORSE ( due to tempest not being instant cast )
  • Farseer is ok but needs a higher proc chance, a lot of downtime between procs
1 Like
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Here is my feedback on the hero talent tree from the perspective of a Resto Shaman after playing beta.

Totemic (Resto):

Totemic feels really good overall but there are still some pain points for me.

Healing Rain placement
The biggest issue I have with totemic is the inconsistency of the healing rain placement. In dungeons, it often goes far from the mob pack even when I’m trying to position myself close to the mobs to bait it on the pack, which cause a lot of missed damage from Acid Rain.

The Air Mote
I also have a small issue with the air mote from the capstone. A 40% increased cast speed ends up lowering the spell you use it on below the gcd most of the time, which cause you to lose most of the value. If you use it on Healing Surge, it goes below GCD. If you use it on Chain Heal with Tidebringer, it goes below GCD. If you use it on Healing Wave with Tidal Waves, it goes below GCD (this is made worse by our 4p). It’s also often consumed by Lively Totem Chain Heals right now, but I assume this is not intended. I also think it would be nice if we were able to use this buff on damaging spells too, placing Surging totem at the start of a pull into a quicker Lava Burst/Chain Lightning seems like it would be a decent way to use this air mote.

Farseer (Resto):

Ancestors
My biggest issue with Farseer is the duration of the ancestors. After spawning an ancestor with unleash life and getting our GDC back, less than 5sec remains to make him cast spells. In practice, I end up feeling pressured to hyperoptimise my next 2/3 GCD to get good value, it feels terrible to use a GCD for a utility spell during that window. I tried playing with Heed My Call (the 2sec extension on ancestors), the 2 additional seconds helps a lot, but playing without Routine Communication also feels bad.

I also don’t like that the ancestor’s healing doesn’t feed Cloudburst Totem.

Trying to add DPS with the ancestors does not feel good to me because it forces you to weave Unleash Life/Riptide into your DPS rotation when there is no healing to be done. Adding a chance to proc ancestors from some of our DPS spells might help with this issue.

Overall feel
Apart from the ancestor, the tree is extremely passive HPS or small QoL, apart from the riptide CD reduction which does feel pretty good.
I think a more passive tree like Farseer could work, but the gameplay around ancestors don’t feel good to me right now.

Overall, I think Farseer is decent, but I have a hard time being excited to play it when I could play Totemic instead.

1 Like
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Hi all.

In my opinion the Enhancement Stormbringer needs:

  • a better interface so we can track how many charges we are to get Tempest.

  • different glowing effects for the three Chain Lightning we get for free after a Tempest and for those who are glowing because of the stacks of the Maelstrom Weapon. Otherwise it is not impossible to cast a CL using the MW we were saving for the next Tempest.

  • Combo Primordial Wave + Lightning Bolt bug?. Sometimes, not always, I have seen simultaneous Tempests trigger on all the adds with the Flame Shock dot after using the Primordial Wave + LB combo.

  • The way Tempest works is strange. It replaces LB but not the effects on LB. For example, PM+Tempest does not get the same combo effect as when we use PM+LB on adds with the Flame Shock dot on them. Maybe would be easier to play with Tempest if it really replaced LB. Then, if necessary, tuned it accordingly.

  • Potential bug: Arc Discharge goes off even when not selected in the hero talents tree.

Cheers!

2 Likes
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Any word on more races that can be shaman on alliance in TWW? I want to be a Gnome. :frowning:

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First Impressions of a Shaman Dungeon Healer

Since the names of the hero talent trees were revealed, I was more excited for Totemic. I like totems in general and Farseer still sounds too nondescript for me. (Every shaman receives that title after finishing the order hall campaign).
Reading the talents did not change my opinion much. Farseer appears to be one fancy Multistrike passive, while Totemic seems to have more interesting impacts on my gameplay.
Playing Farseer on beta however felt surprisingly good. Especially having 3 charges on Riptide and Lava Burst felt better than I expected.

I like to contribute damage as a healer in dungeons. As a group, we run against a timer, and the faster the mobs die, the less danger they pose to us. It also gives me something meaningful to do during downtimes.
Again, while reading, Farseer seems to offer more damage through the ancestors then Totemic does from the increased Acid Rain uptime. (I recognize that there are more damage-related passives in both trees and it may balance out.)
Numbers aside, the randomness that Surging Totem introduces feels bad. Acid Rain may not be placed under any mobs, and less Rains will probably be buffed by Master of the Elements. Healing Rain has not been an effective healing tool in dungeons thus far. I do not expect this to change and am therefore focusing only on its damage component. (Side note: I don’t like Deeply Rooted Elements either.)
On the other hand, Totemic reads like it increases my group healing capabilities more than Farseer due to the additional Chain Heal talents. (I’m looking more at the text than the numbers ingame, as I don’t expect the values to be meaningful at this point in development.)
Since group healing is an area where I struggle more than some other specs, Totemic seems very appealing. Having to change hero talents to trade healing for damage sounds very bad though.
However, both trees appear to have the necessary knobs to be tuned to similar healing and damage outputs. I hope the devs choose to do so, instead of emphasizing different strengths and weaknesses.

The hero talents amplify some issues I have with the talent trees.
Totemic seems like it wants me to take all Chain Heal talents and Earthliving Weapon in the specialization tree, as well as all talents in the class tree that affect the uptime of Surging Totem, which are quite a few.
(The Air Mote of Whirling Elements is mostly useless and I would much prefer it to be replaced by some damage effect.)
As Farseer, Chain Heal on beta felt so weak that I briefly considered freeing up all associated points, but I couldn’t find any good alternative ways to spend them. I do dislike being forced out of Undulation, and I sincerely hope that Unleash Life’s behavior will be changed somewhat. Hitting more targets with Chain Heal, Healing Rain or Downpour is of no use to me in dungeons.
(The defensive talent option Natural Harmony is just very irritating.)

A few more general comments on the talents:

  • Consider removing all melee talents from the class tree and reducing the number of totem-related passives.
  • The capstone talents (mostly on the class side) are far less interesting than those of other classes.
  • Downpour, Wellspring and Earthen Wall Totem aren’t very useful group healing spells for me due to their positional restrictions, and as I said, I would welcome better tools for these situations.
  • Stormkeeper could use the Empyreal Blaze treatment. How about if it worked similar to the Elemental DF Season 2 Tier Set bonus and perhaps also increased the Chain Lightning target count?
  • It would be great if Totemic Projection became a baseline ability, or at least easier to access. The function could also be integrated into totems so that recasting them would move them.

Will mana play the same role in TWW as in DF?
Shaman is the only class with a set bonus that affects mana cost. We also have several mana regenerating talents. (I personally can never feel the effect of Mana Spring or Mana Tide while playing). Farseer also gets an increased mana pool. With several enchantments and a gem, we can increase it even further.
Currently, different healer specializations feel mana constraints extremely differently and I fear that this imbalance will become more pronounced.
In general, I would prefer less emphasis on mana efficiency, as I have limited control over how much my group forces me to spend in dungeons.

Please update the Ascendance models. Thank you!

2 Likes
12

would really love to be a Male human Shaman
the Word SHAMAN literally has the word man in it… lol

hopefully we can get new class combos soon to test

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Now this is a spec thats somewhat well designed. Feral Spirits going off cooldown as the durations runs out with the tier piece. No need for a major 3minute cooldown, it just works well.

Can we get this designer to look at Feral?

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For enhancement:

  • Windfury totem really needs to be baseline. Talent points are extremely limited as it is, and the entire Totemic hero tree depends on it.

  • The Hero talents also need to pay more attention to both storm and elementalist builds. Stormbringer accomplishes this pretty well, as it revolves around Maelstrom Weapon, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Stormstrike. Asides from Stormstrike, you will be using these as Elementalist. But when you take a look at Totemic, you have Totemic Rebound that’s pretty much dead for Elementalist, and Lively Totems/Reactivity that are useless for Storm build. You just don’t want to press those spells. If Totemic Rebound was tied to MSW, and Lively Totems maybe to Flame Shock damage, that would make them feel significantly better for Elementalist.

  • Also, Windfury Weapon giving the WFT buff to party members is amazing.

2 Likes
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Elemental

  • Tempest does nothing in PvP, the whole tree is doing negative damage, it needs some major changes for it to work
    hard casting an otherwise faster lightning bolt for the same dmg but on a 2 second cast is POINTLESS
  • there is no pressure or no " lightning " theme , you occasionally get lightning rod … nothing is new here
    out of all the classes i have tried. elemental Shaman is by far the WORST

…
solutions to fix Tempest for elemental

  • tempest guarantees overload and your next lightning bolt is 200% stronger,
  • shocking grasp ROOTS the target and then applies a 50% snare
  • Storm swell, reduce cast time on lightning bolt and chain lightning by 25%
  • surging currents , next time you take damage you automatically cast healing surge on yourself at the cost of no mana …internal cd 20 seconds
  • Super Charge, 50% increased chance to overload and lava blasts now also fire a free lightning bolt

i dont exepct any of these suggestions to go through, but just spark… get it SPARK… some imagination of what TEMPEST could be for elemental

3 Likes
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This is a feedback for elemental shamans regarding class tree, spec tree and hero trees. I hope developers read feedback and come back to us, since TWW launching on the 26th of August leaves us in a desperate state.

  1. Class tree: I don’t want to repeat every single point the US forums have already said but please think about dps shamans and especially the capstones on the tree. As an ele shaman, if I pick to play Farseer, I’m obliged to pick Nature’s Swiftness in order for it to be replaced by Ancestral Swiftness just to give my next spell the mediocre 10% increased damage/heal and to have a secure way to summon an ancestor. Rest of capstones, particularly Stoneskin Totem/Tranquil air totem, do not provide a significant impact to be called capstone talents. Call of the elements is only required IF you pick Liquid magma totem on the spec tree and IF you play Farseer. What happens if Stormbringer is the play for mythic + or raids? That means that all 3 capstones, maybe not Nature’s Swiftness, are completely useless for us. Rest of the tree is so heavy on 2-point nodes that other classes have seen a reduction of. Suggestion: reduce some 2-point nodes to free up some space to get useful utility and replace/rework some talents that were never used.

  2. Spec tree: Since DF alpha/beta and 2 years of live, elemental spec tree has seen almost 0 changes, especially to its heavy 2-point nodes that restrict choice and playstyle. The spec, heavily influenced by tier set bonuses, has gone from trying to combine both Lightning and Fire sides, to exclusively Lightning in S2 and exclusively Fire in S3/4. First off, we are elemental shamans, we are masters of the elements, not masters of one or the other. Legion ele was so smooth and was incorporating all elements, but in SL in an extend and especially in DF, we saw the separation of the two. With the introduction of Farseer and Stormbringer, this further divides us into the two separate sub-specs, and in my humble opinion this doesn’t feel rewarding, doesn’t really provide choice as your post says, and I’m really concerned about this as we move forward. Suggestion: please revisit and rework/reduce some 2-point talents in our spec tree, to free up choice and let us opt-in into both playstyles. In addition, if you please, incorporate the 4 piece set bonus of S3/4 of DF into our tree and maybe replace Searing Flames or another under-used talent. Also, Ascendance/Deeply Rooted Elements and their capstones should be reworked. Further Beyond, even before the nerf, was never used. Ascendance as it stands can never ever compete with the rng Deeply rooted elements so my suggestion is to rework ascendance to interact with all of our toolkit, for example our spenders as well, maybe increasing their damage or making them cleave or something. Elemental as a spec doesn’t have a baseline dps cooldown, we need to spec into Fire/Storm elementals and Ascendance. Both of them are very mediocre and it’s been too long that they need an overhaul.

  3. Farseer hero tree: Promotes the Fire side of the spec tree and plays exactly like S3/4 on live. personally I don’t mind the fantasy of Lava burst and cleaving with Primordial wave but we loose a ton of AOE potential since Flame shock is capped at 6 targets (why?), it has a cooldown and its spread mechanics are severely outdated compared to how enhancement can spread with Lava lash. I do understand why people hate this playstyle promoted by S3/4 and Farseer since spamming Lava burst (1-2 button rotation) is very hectic and uninteresting. Farseer tied to Primordial wave again doesn’t promote choice as you clearly stated in your post that you don’t want to force talents or limit choices but this hero tree does exactly the opposite. We have to go way down to Primordial wave and its nodes to make this hero tree function and again it locks us in a specific playstyle thus limiting choice of players. Also, the capstone Ancestral Swiftness makes Nature’s Swiftness a mandatory pick on the spec tree in order to summon an ancestor. On top of that, as shamans struggling with damage reduction talents and survivability especially in high m+ keys, our defensive note giving us 3 more charges of Earth shield doesn’t save us from big hit mechanics and it also again locks us into speccing into Chain heal (a spell we NEVER use as eles) and the row below it to reach Earth shield. Its counterpart , Natural Harmony, is, and sorry for saying it, a slap in the face. 5% more healing when we drop below 35% and 10 sec reduction is horrendous. More tanky specs like mages and warlocks have gotten even better defensives in their hero and reworked trees, but when it comes to shamans, it seems you are lacking imagination or desire to help. I don’t know what suggestions can be made here but I hope you can solve it out before launch.

  4. Stormbringer: same problem with Farseer, locking us into the Lightning side of the spec tree thus making the fire side useless. Tempest on its own sounds good but it being not affected by ANYTHING is super bad. It’s not affected by haste, by any Lightning bolt modifiers, Surge of Power, Power of the Maelstrom, Stormkeeper, our mastery, Electrified shocks, nothing. I don’t know if this is intended or not and some clarifications and feedback from you guys is very much needed. Tempest replacing Lightning Bolt feels very weird since it can make us loose a precasted Stormkeeper charge by proccing during the fight, it takes too long to let us cast Lightning bolt on single target after we finish its cast, and its damage for elemental compared to enhancement is very very mediocre for a spell that requires 400 (!) maelstrom spend. It also feels very bad to hold our damage spell proc for an incoming huge pull just to get 6 seconds of 10% DR through Nature’s protection talent. I don’t understand the design of this, especially for a hero talent that isn’t up on demand and it cannot be tracked with everything that elementals have to track. Rolling thunder is an awful talent that we begged you to change from S2 set bonus, It’s uninteresting, it requires a weak aura to be tracked and it doesn’t deserve to be given as a talent point (same for second stormkeeper talent on our spec tree!).

Closing, I hope that you guys have something in store for us and I wish you would announce soon. Having our trees available so late in alpha, especially Stormbringer and Totemic, and then you just enter beta and saying that it’s too late for Hero tree reworks, is very unprofessional and a slap in the face for all these shaman players that do pay the same amount to play this game and their favorite class as everyone else. It’s been way too long since this same story keeps happening to us and I seriously don’t understand the reason why.

Side note: elemental still the only spec in game (maybe resto if you exclude Spirit link totem) without a raid buff. How does a spec go from being the absolute buff bot of wow to have its entire toolkit ELIMINATED and given to all the other classes just to keep Bloodlust and non-impactful totems. Like WHY?

Thank you and sorry for the long read, an unsatisfied elemental shaman.

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17

THIS. 100%

the whole Stormbringer tree not working correctly with elemental backs up this fact

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18

Agreed 100% with this post! Very well pointed out pretty much all existing issues. Shamans really need a rework in the same line as Death Knights, with new class tree and capstones, and reworked spec trees. I mean, how is Maelstrom Weapon even a class talent, and not an Enhancement passive?

The only thing I’d add from myself is that for me, Stormbringer’s Tempest feels bad for Elemental due to the fact it replaces an ability that not only is a builder, but also a filler. For Enhancement, you use your spender to expend Maelstrom stacks and build Tempest stacks, which then replaces said the spender. Elemental would be better off if Tempest replaced Earth Shock (the spender), or at least Lava Burst - anything but the spammable filler.

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19

i know this is only beta… but if shaman goes live in a condition it current is in,
ill bench my shammy and go Paladin

elemental would be better off with totemic… that’s factual . at least then ill have some off GCD dps

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20

There’s a meme (which isn’t a meme anymore tbh) that goes around since 8.0 where everyone was saying it’s only alpha, it’s only beta, it’s only 8.0, it’s only 8.1, it’s only 8.1.5 and so on. This actually is not an exaggeration, it’s a state shamans and elemental particularly has been in since forever. And in one word, it’s just sad. I don’t know what they’re doing honestly.

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