Hello.
Here is my feedback, from an elemental shaman main since 2011.
General class feedback:
Shaman visuals have always been good and in my opinion, one of the selling points of the class. However, over the years they have started to get a bit outdated, especially for elemental shaman. All of DF we have faced primalist forces who were using a lot of new elemental effects, so it is sad to see that nothing new has actually been added to the shaman class itself. Lightning bolt in particular could use an update to give it some oomph effect. Ascendance model is also outdated and I can’t understand why you removed the Glyph which gave us corresponding elemental form.
Ghost wolf form is also outdated and it doesn’t really make sense for any race except orc. It would be so cool if my draenei could transform into a talbuk. After so many druid form changes and all of Shadowlands Night Fae forms, I can’t see why this wouldn’t be implemented.
As for the gameplay, the whole class is subpar defensive wise, which is why it is avoided in higher m+ keys and as for raiding, not only do we have weak defensives, we also lack a raid buff, which was added even to hunters after years of same feedback.
Not only that, if we compare Astral Shift to Survival insticts, SI is getting considerable buffs and charges. The difference is hunters have a baseline immunity while shamans only have a pvp talent.
Class tree:
At the beginning of DF, shaman class tree was regarded one of the better ones because of lack of troughoutput talents and focus on utility.
However, after so many classes got their trees reworked, with excessive underused talents removed and multiple point talent bloat reduced, it now feels bad. Too many two point nodes and capstones are underwhelming. Good example is Nature’s Swiftness, which is inferior to druid version, but occuppies a capstone while on druid tree it is near the top. Wind rush and tranquil air both seem unworthy of a capstone.
Elemental tree:
Heavily bloated with 2 point nodes, too many capstones and we are usually forced to pick up rigid fire or lightning builds, which feels bad. It is an elemental shaman, not fire of lightning shaman. This problem is further excerbated with our hero talents doubling down on this, and if I recall, it was explicitly said this is not the intent behind hero talents. Not only that, but Farseer forces us to pick Nature’s Swiftness on class tree for full effectiveness.
Deeply Rooted Elements could be a topic on it’s own, but I will be brief. I hate this talent with a fiery passion. It especially feels bad in PvP when sometimes it can be heavy rng and do too much damage, other time it procs on 1 FS who gets dispelled a second later, rendering the proc wasted.
It is not a fun talent, and is rng on top of other rng elements in our rotation. I get that elements are volatile and unpredictable, so some rng fits the fantasy, but this is too much. Ascendance is bad and weak for a 3 minute cooldown and it hasn’t been picked basically ever…
DRE should be 1 min activated CD with 5 sec duration or outright removed together with Ascendance, and our damage shuffled elsewhere.
These are general problems with the spec. I will write about hero talents later.