Thanks for taking your time to read/answer!
- Why does chain lightning and earthquake do so little damage?
because CL can proc 5 overloads per cast, AND each bounce can crit. if it hit as hard as lava burst, what would happen when 5 overloads and 25 crits proced? shaman oneshoting an entire pack by himself in +17 dungeons because lol rng? yes when you get no overloads and no crits its a very sad spell, but look at the average, not the worst case scenario.
Earthquake is one of the few remaining aoe spells capped at TWENTY targets, so kinda same reason as cl. If it hit as hard as earthshock on 2 targets, what would happen if the tank pulled 20 mobs? 400k dps shaman off 1 ability press?
- Why is earthquake still physical damage? Armor reduces its effectiveness, yes? I think it should be nature damage.
Because its balanced around being physical, if it became nature it would come along with a 40% dmg nerf. What do inner spell mechanics matter to you? Press it instead of earthshock on 3+ targets, what does it change for you if its physical or nature or shadowfrost damage?
- What happened to weapon imbues? Flametongue seems to be here just for flavor. Useless.
There has never been a time where pressing your flametongue button once every half hour was an exciting part of shaman gameplay. It provided crit once upon a time, and the class was balanced around having a passive 2% crit bonus to everything. Now it doesn’t, and the class is balanced accordingly, but if you absolutely miss pressing that button every 30 mins, you’re still free to do so. Isnt that the best of both worlds?
- Do you like using Stormkeeper or do you feel like you have to?
I like it, the guaranteed 5 overloads CL is very pleasing visually, lightning has been the oldest shaman theme and CL is our most iconic ability since the days of Warcraft III. Much more fitting and elegant imo than transforming into some weird tall humanoid-ish thing that shoots fireballs.
- Do you know how to make a macro that casts Primordial Wave only on an enemy, so that I don’t waste it on myself by mistake?
I do not
#showtooltip
/cast [harm]Primordial Wave
Elemental have always been good at aoe damage. Too good perhaps, as our single target damage is low.
Thank you for the input! I just miss the small buffs of Flametongue and the HoT that Earthliving also gave. Flametongue Weapon is still WAY more useless than Fire Blast, for example, which all mage specs get. Just saying.
I said earthquake should be nature, so that it’s more consistent. Right now it’s less effective against high armor targets. That doesn’t make any sense. Elemental should be equally good against a plate user and a cloth user. Surely you can appreciate consistency? Too bad damage types don’t matter at all, except for physical, which is the worst bar none.
I like Stormkeeper too. Ascendancy never made sense, as ascendants are CORRUPTED by the Twilight stuff. Why would we, the pure and goodly shamans, resort to using corrupted elementalism? So I wholly agree that it’s good that Stormkeeper is effective.
It’s funny because it’s pretty much the opposite right now.
We’re having extremely good dps in raid (single targets) and so many classes smash us in m+ aoes.
Single target and big groups (5+ mobs) are good scenarios for Ele. The problem are groups between 2 and 4 mobs. It’s kinda hard to build enough maelstrom fast there to deal good cleave dmg…
The average chain lightning feels terrible to press.
Yeah but the tank isn’t pulling 20 mobs, usually 1 or 2 packs at max because they are squishy, and then has to start kiting.
Imo the cast time should be removed from Storm Keeper. Sure you can pre-cast it most of the time, but it buffs only 2 CL and by itself does nothing. It just greatly adds to the build-up time for AoE.
I main resto and I greatly dislike setting up AoEs because it feels like you barely do any damage. At ilvl 210 I was being outdpsed by a 185 feral in cleave and AoE (neither of us with legendaries).
Anything maelstrom related feels bad to press. I don’t know what it was like before SL, but right now it feels bad. So not only you have the problem of not being able to generate maelstrom at a decent income, it also feels bad spending it.
I’m not surprised, we’re quite garbage in aoe right now. Popping stormcaller provides good dps which then quickly fades away because we have no sustained aoe compared to other classes. Then good luck with the next pack, without stormcaller.
I honestly wish there was more (chain) lightning focus, because we don’t have a lightning mage for example. CL with SK feels really fun and good to press, and it’s a good visual.
This is how I felt too. That’s why I asked why CL does so little damage. I played in WotLK and Legion and it did not feel nearly this weak. I used to have fun and feel impactful pressing CL 
It’s just terrible balance, it might be fixed someday.
The easiest fix would be to increase CL dmg by 50%, and cap the mastery procs on it to 1 per cast.
It would make CL significantly less useless (but not OP) on regular key press, and stormkeeper CL would still be slighlty nerfed, which would make ascendance more attractive too.
No big up, simple fixes.
Another solution would probably be to just rework EQ a bit and make shaman be able to generate MS out of combat like moonkins can with astral power.
I think EQ could simply be fixed by making it follow the target. At least the damage porition of it.
EQ could create an AoE effect on the ground which sometimes stuns the target and not do any damage by itself. Instead it just applies a dot do any target hit by EQ.
This way the CC portion of EQ would still stay on the same spot you placed it but every mob initially hit by it would have the dot applied to it and it wouldn’t hurt us damage wise if the tank kites them out of the AoE, which he certainly has to do in higher keys. That’s how the game works right now.
Simple damage fix without making it too op because of the CC.
Also the ramp up of ele shamans for aoe is really high compared to other classes.
Just make us able to generate MS out of combat so we can start every fight with EQ ready, like druids can with Starfall.
Would also like stormkeeper to be instant cast and why does it even have a duration? Should just sit on us like an aura till we use it. So frustrating it popping it and the tanks delaying a pull for whatever reason “guess I will do no aoe then” EOGS feels really clunky in the rotation as well after getting windspeakers but guess that’s a grumble for another post
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