Windfury (maybe along with Stormstrike) is possibly the most iconic spell in the Enhancement Shamans spellbook - back in Vanilla (and in classic now) its a spell that can deliver a ton of damage and strikes fear into the hearts of Cloth and leather wearers alike. However over time, expansion after expansion it has become weaker and weaker, to the point now on the Pre-patch PTR it feels like it barely even tickles the target.
I know WoW has moved away from these big bursty RNG abilities (lol?) and it takes no skill / input but in its current state on the PTR it just hurts, it makes me sad.
I’ve been doing some testing on the PTR (with no azerite traits) and currently without forceful winds it does almost half the dmg that Flametongue does. Doing 100k dmg, using just melee abilities, WF accounted for just 4.5k - 5k dmg. Flametongue done around 9k - so almost double the WF damage and not factoring in that FT double LL dmg.
With forceful winds talented WFs dmg went up to around 10-11k. But the dmg difference between Forceful Winds and Lashing flames is currently huge, Forceful winds isn’t remotely close.
If it goes live like this WF is all but dead. The Forceful winds talent - dead, the Unruly winds Soulbind conduit - useless and the DoomWinds Legendary will never ever be taken (side not increasing the chance of wf proccing BY 100% - not TO 100% is a subtle but substantial difference - 50% chance to proc a weak attack for 8 seconds…)
I’m not asking for WF to go back to the classic days where it was super bursty RNG and our main damage source. I just want it to be noticeable - whats the point of making WF and FT imbues if we never feel or see them?