How to make Enh great in PvP again

Classes Shaman
1

Since WoD enh isn’t really good unless it’s overtuned like early Legion and BFA. Whenever they try to nerf his damage to normal state it instantly becomes bad. There are few reasons for this:

  1. Enh biggest weakness is Rogue - removal of Shamanistic Rage (1 min. CD that you could use in stun) and replacing it with Astral Shift - 1,5 min. def CD made us eve weaker. Whenever Rogue is strong Shaman is mediocre. Legion at least had default 40% heal from azerite trait when you used Astral Shift.
  2. Due to CC nerfs there are only two 3 comps Enh can play right now - Turbo, WW/Enh/x and Rogue/Enh/x. In every comp you can replace Enh with someone better. The reason why Enh had more options in the past was better CC. Hex on different DR with Trap made Hunter good option and considering that Hunter is good against Mages helped shaman with RMX. Also Enh’s stun is now 2 secs - it’s rather interrupt than CC option. In Legion you could at least Paralyze - Stun.
  3. Hardcasted Hex. Enh is probably the only meele without any instant CC form at all. Ret - HoJ, DK - Asphixiate, DH - stun and prison, Monk - Paralyze, War - Stormbolt, Rogue - Blind. Maybe a talent changing Hex to magic, reducing it’s duration, making it possible to cast instantly with Maelstrom Weapon and different DR would be great. Imagine Hex into Trap CC chain and Enh/Hunter/x is back.

SL enh design looks promissing but I think that unless they will make some other changes to bring back more comps Enh will be in the same spot it was in Legion and BFA - op when overtuned but barely viable when normal.

4 Likes
2

sham rage PepeHands, windstrike PepeHands, fire nova PepeHands, old shaman PepeHands

3

really? For what I see enh will be terrible in pvp if the numbers are not overtuned.
We just changed a resource and lost 5 instant heals for 1 instant heal (which has the same numbers atm)
The only good thing that happened is actually having instant hex again, but others are just shifts in damaging abilities.
frost shock of course is nice but doesn’t help us against the melee wreck train the slightest.

When we had shaman rage, we still died pretty much to rogues without even dmging them below 99% hp.
But yea I wish we had it back.

4

I mean promissing because playstyle seems to be more fun but it’s absolutely not fine. I think we missunderstood each other. I’m also not talking about the numbers because they should and will be changed but I don’t mean will be tweaked right. I mean that Enh is Enh again instead of Warrior with “blue rage” and no MS.

Enh was my main for years and since Legion I main Ele because I can’t stand it’s Stormstrike spam design. It’s not fun by any means. It looked cool in Legion because there were plenty of random procs and stuff happening in a meanwhile but it wasn’t fun. For me Cata Enh design was the best but I don’t think it fits current game design. The thing I miss the most is rotating weapon enchants. If you were in trouble you could use Rockbitter and get dmg reduction for few secs or switch to Frostbrand and kite. It was small thing but could save you in some matchups.

Regarding SR of course RMX wasn’t Shaman favoured matchup but it was 60-40 for RMX not just free points like now. Just train the Blue and gather points. Maybe another PvP talent similar to old Stoneclaw Totem glyph - an absorb totem would help to survive setups. I can’t understand why that 40% Astral Shift heal didn’t become baseline for Enh.

Are you that Orc Shaman with bunny ears from Arena Junkies? If yes I watched your youtube channel a lot. Good content.

5

No burst what so ever.

I wouldn’t mind being squishy if at least ascendance was burst promising like a warlock (they are also much more tanky) or something but no.

Enhancement is a pve spec atm. There is no way you can play competative pvp with it. I’m sure there are some people rocking 2500 rating with it but those people would make 2500 rating if you gave them a broom stick.

People think enhancement’s main issue is survivability but it’s not. Pvp is about coordinating your cc and burst with your team. Ascendance is way too weak for that. Without it, you can’t even do sustain preassure in pvp.

Even in battlegrounds, there is no way you can pick out people unless you’re horribly outgearing them. No way to have fun with enhancement in wpvp or battlegrounds.

Shadowlands however seems to remove number of damage sources a little bit. Which could mean active abilities will deal more damage.
Lightning shield is gone
frostbrand is gone
flametongue is partially gone (would hope to be removed but wont ofc)

I hope they reduce damage of a lot of things so when u get a stormbringer proc, you can accually hurt someone.

But ofc, i don’t see a way for them to make enhancement a good or fun choise for competative pvp. Watch some tbc/wrath videos if you wanna see enhancement in action.

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How can Ascendance be a factor in making Enhancement good if it was good only in MoP and Enh was about burst only in MoP and in Legion due to Doom Winds.

In TBC, Wrath, Cata, WoD and even in early BFA it was sustained damage spec. The reason it was good was it’s utility that currently is provided also by other specs that’s 1 thing and other is that it’s extremely weak against RMX. In the past where Hunters were actually good Mages had way harder time because RMX had few comps that countered them. Now there are only few of them and they are mostly Survival playing Jungle.

What Enha needs is better survivability and maybe better offhealing. I hoped that it’s finally a buff to Enh offhealing but SL change seems to be nerf. The thing about Enh survivability was that for example in Cata with Maelstrom weapon, Stoneclaw, snare removal from Earthbind and SR Enh could deal a lot of damage in small windows and kite in necessary. I never liked that Ascendance burst playstyle every 3 min. because every def CD has shorter CD than Ascendance.

7

I guess i’m misunderstood a bit. What i mean is, Ascendance seems like our best option for burst in SL and it sucks.

Right now elemental; stormkeeper+skyfury totem. Makes you very responsive against targets with low hp. Lets you secure a kill, with a really good cd. Even when you dont have lasso or any maelstrom in advence you can still go bananas.

Compared to this(and many other classes), enhancement has nothing. No one expects any surprise from an enhancement shaman in the arena or battlegrounds or wpvp. I think this is worse than getting killed in 20 seconds.

I think we’ll just stick to elemental for pvp again. I hope at least enhancement stays fine for pve.

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I would say that Earth Shock with Master of the Elements is bigger burst option but I see your point. I’d say I don’t like a lot of things in BFA and probably I won’t like in SL.

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Enhance in SL, in its current state, will be worthless for pvp. And the thing is, in their description of enhance for SL, they state that if you combine certain skills you will unleash a super powerful cooldown-based skill. This is nowhere to be found. Either its just flavor text (which makes zeeeeero sense) or there are more things to come which arnt in the game yet.

Im inclined to belive its flavor text which serves no purpose at all and enhance is doomed to yet another expansion of non-viability in pvp.

Btw we marksmanship-hunters feel you guys.

10

Yea i was hyped a lot. Than i heard youtubers mention “enhance recieved a lot of changes”. And i was hyped even more but know i read talents and such, there is nothing. I understand they want to do something and they don’t have the time/interest in doing it. While being baffled when u consider they literally have thousands of employees which original game required tenth of resources they have now. Corporate shtshow i guess.

As much as i would like to say “this is only first class iteration of alpha it will be changed” but honestly i really don’t hope it to be. At least elemental is relatively good atm and seems even slightly better for bfa. Echoing shock sounds like a lot of fun.

Since there won’t be azerite pieces, it will be much easier for us to swap back and forth. What i hope for is now, secondary stat weight distrubition to be similar between specs.

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-Instant Hex for 20 maelstrom,like Healing Surge. With Capacitor Totem being a 3 sec stun with small AoE which activates after 2 seconds,if enemy stays in that area or doesn’t kill the totem,it is our only reliable CC and it’s a hardcast which is %100 getting interrupted. And when it’s interrupted,you can’t heal yourself for 3 seconds. Hex is some kind of curse and should belong to shadow school aswell.
-Immunity to movement impairing effects during Spirit Walk. Spirit Walk is good for getting out of slows and roots,but you are getting slowed and rooted again doesn’t accomplish anything. It is our only mobility tool (not counting Feral Lunge since it’s a talent) and it doesn’t really grant mobility in pvp.
-Ghost Wolf should work like druid shapeshift. It would be still weaker than druids since you don’t have anything special to Ghost Wolf while druids still have different abilities for their forms. Shaman squishiness would be acceptable if we were able to run away from fights sometimes.
-Make Bloodlust and Reincarnation usable again in Arenas. I don’t know why they are banned when DHs can meta. Bloodlust isn’t unique to shamans anyway,and can still be spellstolen and dispelled. Reincarnation would add another strategic layer to shaman pvp for both sides.
-Give lifesteal back to Spirit Wolves. Without ES they are completely trash,and I don’t think people pick ES for pvp anyway. That lifesteal was actuall very vital to Enha survivability.
-Make Tremor Totem usable during fear again. In it’s current state, you have to preemptively use it against the priest healer you are pressuring,and that means a GCD you are not using on for damage. It actually takes away from our damage, and makes it a lot harder to use. Having old Tremor Totem was something that gave uniqueness to shamans.

  • Revert the %33 reduction to Healing Surge in pvp. I have 473 ilvl and my Healing Surge only heals around 30k atm. I am paying this skill a GCD,huge amount of maelstrom and is very limited by mana. Hard casting it is out of question for being very interruptible. I am getting sooo little in return.
1 Like
12

Dude Tremor in fear is a bit too much but rest I agree.

1 Like
13

well there was hope ele blast does lots of dmg, it doesn’t
there was hope storm strike does lots of dmg, it doesn’t because we still have landslide
there was hope windfury does dmg again, it doesn’t
there was hope heal is healing you again, it doesn’t, in fact it does less healing than now

the devs for shamans we never really great but it seems to get worse by every expac.
If you are so bad at your job, why not just revert it to a time it worked well (like woltk)

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I lost all hope for the expansion. It will be garbage again sadly.

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true, not much will change unfortunately

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well there was hope ele blast does lots of dmg, it doesn’t
there was hope storm strike does lots of dmg, it doesn’t because we still have landslide
there was hope windfury does dmg again, it doesn’t
there was hope heal is healing you again, it doesn’t, in fact it does less healing than now

the devs for shamans we never really great but it seems to get worse by every expac.
If you are so bad at your job, why not just revert it to a time it worked well (like woltk)

Notice how these are all tied to procs?

Actual system of enhancement is (imo) solid, during shadowlands alpha. Problem is their ppm value. Number of procs we get, should be reduced DRAMATICALLY.

So, damage of those skill could be meaningfully increased. As of now enhancement is “just spamming all you got to make room for new”. No reason to hold back what you got because what you got is not much to worth keepin.

If ppm of maelstrom is reduced by a lot to let you cast 1 or 2 lightning bolt (or heal) PER minute. They would deal a lot of damage (or heal) which would make them fun to use. Talents like overcharge would be real fun pvp powerhousezavaganza. But no we’ll just be spamming whatever to have semi consistent damage.

Same with stormbringer. At the start of expension, enhancement will suck. When you get enough haste, you will just be spamming stormstrike again. With current amount of stormbringer ppm. No matter what system they bring, it will turn into stormstrike spam.

If we had lower number of procs, it would be an exciting to have and base damage of stormstrike wouldn’t be so low.

Fix of enhancement isn’t about a bad design. It’s about a decision to make enhancement competative. They don’t want this spec to be in arena. They literally don’t have to do anything but; Reduce ppm / increase damage. That’s it. But they won’t do it.

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is I know thats why I advocate to remove garbage like landslide and hot hand.
All those talents do is reduce the value of the actual skill. If you get a proc it does actually normal dmg if you dont talent it, the dmg is very underwhelming.

You cannot have a talent that increases a main skill by 100% and let it have a high base dmg.

LB and Eleblast is a complete joke. As it stands I rather would use maelstrom for heal than for those 2…
Well of course we are super squishy so you cannot use you dmg spells anyways at any time :joy:

2 Likes
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didnt played shaman that much ( hey i was always a scumrogue ) but MoP shaman was one of the most fun classes in a looooooooooong time …

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Maybe Shaman is fine. Maybe it’s you?

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