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.
