Mr. Blizzard, say something pls…
2 Likes
On another note, I’ve been playing some shadow priest on beta and this concerns not only Elemental in beta but also on live.
Priest’s voidweaver hero tree transforms Mind Blast into Void blast during Rift. When Rift has some seconds to expire and you are in the process of casting Void Blast but the buff wears off, Void blast still finishes its cast and then goes back to Mind Blast.
Now for elemental, when your Lightning bolt is transformed to Tempest (Stormbringer hero tree) and you start casting it with some seconds left on its buff but you don’t make it in time and buff wears off, your cast is cancelled (interrupted) and goes back to Lightning bolt. Now if that was the only issue and the only spell in elemental’s toolkit I would suspect it’s a bug since it’s exactly the same situation with shadow priest’s Void blast, and expect it to be addressed. BUT, since we have the same problem with Lava beam while we are under an Ascendance proc on live, and you start casting Lava beam but Ascendance buff wears off, it cancels Lava beam and goes back to being Chain Lighting.
My question is this: how can you have the tools to make this issue not present in any other class like shadow priests, but when it comes to elemental you somehow manage, even on this matter, to not address it?
Like Jesus man.
2 Likes
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 However, over the years they have started to get a bit outdated, especially for elemental shaman.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 Ascendance model is also outdated and I can’t understand why you removed the Glyph which gave us corresponding elemental form.
Ghost wolf form is also outdated and it doesn’t really make sense for any race except orc.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.
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Shaman hero talents for Elemental:
Stormbringer
I had high hopes for this one because the developers said they are working hard into brining the fantasy of the sole lightning caster…
In it’s current iteration, it heavily underdelivers on that intent. I was expecting something like WC III Forked lightning or MoP Stormblast return.
Instead we got Tempest, and oh my, where do I begin…
The visual itself is underwhelming, Lightning rod looks much better. The ramp uptime is too slow, and the fact it needs ramping up at all feels bad. You made it scale with haste, and that is about the only thing Tempest has in synergy with the rest of our toolkit. It doesn’t scale with mastery and has any interaction with our talents. The damage is pitiful and the payoff for such a hugh ramp uptime feels bad.
In my opinion, and many other shaman players, it should have replaced a spender.
The rest of the tree is nothing to be excited about, only the 3 instant CL talent feels powerful on it’s own.
Farseer
The tree feels better then Stormbringer. The theme is ok, I am actually ok with the visuals and I like the fact spirits are from your race. The tree is leaning heavily on our LvB spam playstyle, which some love and some hate. Last time I logged on beta, it seems the ancestors have been fixed and cast while you move.
With so much focusing around Primordial Wave (which I like, but I know many don’t share that sentiment), you are again forced into a rigid fire build. Also, it would be cooler if ancestors casts scaled with our stats.
The Elemental Blast casted upon expiring should be on our focus target, instead of nearest target. This especially feels bad in PvP.
The defensive nodes are actually OK for pvp, but do little for our PvE survivability.
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Please just give shaman a reason to be brought into mythic raiding, give me a raid buff, just something, anything
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Yo be absolutely fair, if Druids can bring Versatility to a group, we could easily add Mastery, Haste, and Critical Strike group buffs/debuffs to other classes. Random ideas:
- Shamans could offer Power of the Elements granting Mastery (static amount, scaling at max level so it’s on par with Druid buff) or 3% Crit, granted while at least one of their totem is active (would probably need some totem like Windfury that lasts long enough, maybe even change Healing Stream to be such, and unlink Cloudburst from it). [Not haste as we already got Bloodlust.]
- Death Knights in W3 have Unholy Aura that increases attack speed, so maybe let them have such effect grant 3% haste (same range as paladin auras).
There are thematic options, and the values could be lowered to 2% even and still be good to have.
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Hello wielders of the elements!
Over the first few weeks of testing, we gathered a lot of feedback from you. Subsequently, we aligned that feedback with our design goals, and got to work.
We’ve been recently working through a package of updates for Shamans, and we can now confirm that we’ll have the majority of the changes implemented and ready for testing in the next Beta build, next week.
Before then, we intend to deploy some Beta tuning hotfixes for the class in the next couple of days. But please know that this tuning is not a part of the package coming next week.
Thank you for your testing and feedback!
3 Likes
Remove 2 point talents,
Combine Acid Rain and Overflowing Shores into one talent,
Combine Primordial Wave talents into 1 point talent,
Group Riptide talents together,
Remove Undercurrent talent,
Stormkeeper baseline ability,
Return the Shadowlands legendary that buff your Chain Lightning then your Chain Heal as a talent node
I believe it’s too late to ask for specifics at this time, as the build has been worked on in past weeks with feedback that was granted at the time and will be finalized next week. Let’s hope these are included, at least most of them are decent and make sense.
It makes no sense for Resto to have baseline Stormkeeper, unless you meant that for Elemental.
Also, I’d personally prefer Primordial Wave to be gone from Restoration completely, and if we need to have a Shadowlands ability here, it should either be Vesper Totem or Chain Harvest - both are much better option than PW.
Would there be a chance to get an update whether DHs and Rogues are planned to receive any major changes before TWW release? Now that Shaman changes are upcoming, DHs and Rogues are the last ones with no talent updates.
Please, read. Thank you.
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Also a nice feature would be to have some way as a resto shaman to be able to atleast get some sort of flame shock spreader. Would make resto shaman damage pattern so much more omph. Ofc tune the numbers if needed.
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I personally prefer surging totem on totemic hero talents to place the healing rains for me, rather than it being the healing rain
2 Likes
Remove Primordial Wave from this game please for all three specs. Most boring skill
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second that, feels more warlock then shaman aswell.
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Shaman used to be about rare huge DPS spells, either 2h windfury crits, or crazy lava burst crits.
Now it’s just a bunch of spamming spells no flavor
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I just went through the posts again and remembered someone mentioned in one of the posts that new Ascendance animation is needed, and I couldn’t agree more.
Apart from a talents rework for Shamans, I think the class needs some visual updates, too. Dragonflight, especially in season 1, showed a lot of great elemental visual effects, which only reminds me how certain Shaman spells are visually outdated.
Firstly, the Ascendance form using a model from Cataclysm, dated circa 2010. I dare say that a lot of fellow Shaman lovers would agree that the form is in desparate need of being replaced. I personally think that Dathea, Ascended from Vault of the Incarnates is the right blueprint for a new Ascendance form - having the shaman float inside of an elemental form.
Secondly, Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. Again, Dathea comes to mind, this time from the Primal Council encounter. After seeing her cast her version of lightning spells it made me feel envious:
The best thing is these effects already exists, at least for the lightning effects. I reckng Ascendance would require some work, so unless its already in the works, maybe have it as a Midnight project?
Hello, I play Elemental Shaman only. No resto, no enhancement. so don’t look here for that info.
After playing with Stormbringer Hero talent consistantly for a week, here is my feedback:
Stormbringer is a good starting point to the hero talents, but it just stays at that. Just being a good starting point.
Graphically, it is not good. Tempest should be more flashy as the name indicates. Seeing 2 chain lightning jumping between 3 targets looks much better than this and makes me feel more like the Thor than the “big hero talent” that defines our playstyle.
Gameplay:
1- Tempest skill itself is the issue. It is not buffed (instantly casted) by stormbringer is a big negative. Skill should be a big dps spike with the big strike that happens occasionally, while being followed by possibly 3 instant cast chain lightnings. Make tempest an instant cast or make it interactive with stormbringer. While you are at it, add the lavabeam (ascendance’s chain lightning) to be interractible by stormbringer aswell as a bonus, its just a pain for aoe ascendance procs and it doesnt make any sense without DF tier set bonus.
2- Making us choose between 3 instant cast spells or gaining 30 maelstrom is not a good idea. At Single target scenario, 3 chain lightnings create 12 maelstorm, and a good dmg spike, while gaining 30 would seem to be good on the combat flow to cast more spenders like earthshock or elemental blast but it just doesnt work like that, cancel the second choice, keep the instant cast chain lightnings and move along.
3- Unlimited power + Elemental Blast / Earth Shock doesnt make sense. In a single target scenario, you would want to stack your maelstorm power, unleash at once, gain max stack of haste you can in 15 seconds and go on with your rotation.
You cannot do this with elemental blast. Skill takes 1.8 seconds to cast (even at current retail it takes no less than 1.5 seconds). Assuming we casted 2, First by hard cast and other by using natures swiftness (assuming player picked “swelling maelstorm” & “natures swiftness” talents to have 150 melstorm pool etc.), now we have left with 15 seconds of buff uptime. We have 12% increased haste in this case (assuming elemental blast gave us haste buff aswell). This only happens on the first pull. During combat, you will be left with 13 seconds of buff time. Assuming we dont have any aftershock procs or anything we go on with our rotation.
In earthshock case, you use 3 earthshocks back to back, all instant casts, and probably after shock, it will proc an after shock and you will reach 5 stacks in 5 seconds by spamming Earthshocks (15% haste), and you are left with 10 seconds of dps window. It is much easier to implement in combat and much easier to use.
It is quite obvious the talent is designed to be used by Eathquake + Chain Lightning combos only for this rythm to be disturbed by Tempest casts to get that sweet instant casts. (You see the point here? Tempest is not mandatory to aoe as of now, becuase the dmg it deals is just meh at most)
4- Gaining a tempest after 400 maelstrom spend is not logical from player stand point. You would need a Weakaura addon, that would keep track the amount of maelstroms spend and show us when the next one is coming. As well as an indicater that shows 3 stacks of “awakening storms”
5- Stormkeeper stacks are bad. 2 stacks at most is a horrible decission. Distrubts the gameplay with occasional free stack we recieve. Make it uncapped. Let the player use 2 stormkeepers back to back. Force them to use the Tempest to apply lightning rod. Only then the talent would make sense.
Update: I Tried the Farseer for the last 2 days.
Ok I wasnt expecting this, but I had more fun while playing Farseer than playing Stormbringer. Is the damage lackluster? probably, but I enjoyed playstyle more.
It is obvious it was crafted to play with fire route + ascendance + elemental blast for an instantenous triple elemental blast combo with your 2-3 spirits, while using ascendance and lavaburst casts to recharge primordial wave for a new burst window, and yes Icefury with LvB buffing is mandatory for rotation if you dont want to cast Lightning Bolt, which I liked doing. Feels like combustion mage build, and I didnt even need to cast lightning bolt even once during a 5 min dps trial on a training dummy (I did not spam frost shock while waiting for lavaburst cd to come off, because it had 3 stacks of LvB skill which made roation smooth like butter).
Changes I want to see are below.
Gameplay:
1- make the spirits last a little longer. 6 seconds + 2 feels like too short, round it up 10 at least. Dps is probably too low already, give the class some leverage.
2- summoning additional spirits on despawn seems lackluster, doesnt work properly. Since we can summon only 2 for 6 seconds initially and can only have 2 summons max per 45 seconds burst window is just meh. 15% chances from one talent 8% chance from another… like what are these percentages man? you are affraid that the spirits are being spam summoned? have you seen shadow priest apparions on burst? let them be an army… they dont even hit 50% of my crits anyways (spirits copy like 25-30 % of my dmg, 200k lavaburst crit from me, 86k per spirit crit with 20% increased damage talent (ilvl 531 after leveling the character and not farming any gear)).
ps: Only once, I have seen an elemental blast crit with 1.1m damage, and I didnt have had any spirits, that would have been a nice screnshot
3- its strictly fire type playstyle, dont play this spec with lightning build. just dont. its horrible. you might want to re consider your choices.
4- mandatory primordial wave… are you really sure about this? like you can change it to lavaburst procs to summon a spirit instead of primordial wave, and just add it to a sub passive that primordial wave also summons a spirit with 50% efficiency or something.
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Please remove ICEFURY.
3 Likes
Give me back Vesper totem on my Rsham plzzzzzzz
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Feedback elementalist (enhance):
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Ice strike is button bloat and should be removed. It is just annoying to press, doesn’t add any value to the rotation, isn’t exciting and just is a mess in a gcd bloat elementalist hast. The dmg modifier could just easily be baked into Hailstorm itself
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Lashing flames tab target is not fun and should just be removed. If you still want to keep it as talent, then make lava lash apply lashing flame to all flame shock targets as well. tabing around with very low melee range is very clunky and adds zero fun to the spec
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Primodial Wave is super annoying to use because it needs too much setup. Additionally the talent that gives 10 msw when using pmw is always making you overcap msw, which is just bad design.
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Target cap is terrible and makes enhance to less dmg than a tank DH, which is just stupid.
Speaking of msw design in general:
In shadowlands you went back to the 5 msw spender design and added a talent to be able to store 10 msw to avoid overcapping and wasting resources which always feels bad. In DF then you went and added a talent that let you spend 10 msw and you are back to the same design as before, just doubling the resouce that you need now. Could have just stayed at 5 msw and cap at 5 msw and it would be no different?
Now 5 msw spender + 10 msw cap was much more smooth and also didn’t require you to waste a talent point.
Feedback storm (enhance):
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DRE is the elefant in the room for storm. The super rng proc is really bad.
Either change it to the way pulsar or even now tempest works or remove it. Now you could even easily combine it with tempest itself. If tempest procs, DRE procs. easy. -
Stormbringers interaction with MSW is currently terrible. I don’t know if intended or bugged but here are a few:
a) instant CL after using tempest are using all your MSW up. The instant CL should have a 10 msw value and not using any msw that you currently have
b) Ascendance is using the instant CL procs as well even though thorims is firing its own CLs
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there seem to be generally a priority issue with tempest and DRE. tempest is similar rng as DRE and often you sit on a tempest proc with no msw available and you may have another wasted tempest proc.
Additionally it would be better if ascendance also would fire tempest if you used chain lightning before ascendance procced. At the moment it only fires tempest if you used lightning bolt before ascendancem which makes using tempest arkward during ascendance window. -
the node in stormbringer hero talent that lets you choose btw msw after tempest vs 3 CL if hit 2 targets is quite bad.
In M+ you always want to use the CL talent, which means that we lost out on ST dmg. It doesn’t seem a lot but still in 95% of the cases the ST talent would be dead on arrival. -
Doomwinds is just terrible in its current version. Please revert it to legion.
Massive dmg, of gcd on 1min cd. It felt great as a burst cd. Current doomwinds feels like nothing happens at all. 10% dmg buff to WF feel like a joke considering WF doesn’t even do dmg in the first place. If i recall correctly, legions doomwind had a whooping 100% dmg buff to WF.
Generally it is weak and the worst is that it is on the GCD which makes it incredible unfun to use. To top it off, if you have bad rng stormstrike procs during this window it might as well do 0 dmg at all.
1 Like