Just put skyfury totem into the talents tree… It would work kinda like Windfury, just for ele and resto. and maybe give it some nerfs, for example, make it only work for caster DPS, so you never had to bring 2 eles/restos. S4 is gonna be a meme anyway since there is no new raid hence no progression and no race, so why not experiment with it? it’s not like ele would be good anyway since we still have a bad damage profile, bad defense, bad mobility, and bad utility.
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I digress here. In M+ at least, with so many caster mobs our interrupt, plus cap totem and thunder strike are pretty OP IMO.
The only one that can come marginally close are Evokers.
When it comes to RShaman, if they figure out a way to do damage during healing, we would be instantly OP. One day to the next.
No need to buff HPS or DPS numbers.
I maybe should have stated I only raid… so you’re probably right about m+, idk. But in a raid setting, we are pretty down bad in absolutely everything.
And maybe this would be too powerful on a healer, but if ele were to get this, resto would be the only spec in the game without a raid buff of any kind. and it would force every team to have 1 ele, which there aren’t many of.
So the right thing would maybe be to remove WindFury and give all shamans something? since if we didn’t remove Wind Fury you would just bring an enhance for Windfury + the buff and no ele/resto.
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Yeah, but it begs the question: There is a limited amount of spots available in a raid.
You do realize that right? So by trying to give every spec something unique, what you cause is more trouble than what you are trying to avoid.
Like class stacking in progression bosses. Eles ARE brought to the table, but ONLY for the council fight. And some bosses require more sustained rot healing, or burst AoE healing… so in the end, you have specs that are only useful in 1 or 2 bosses and thats it.
So you are literally benched for the whole season EXCEPT for those bosses where you are useful.
And you cant make a raid boss where ALL the specs are useful. There will always be some that are more useful than others.
So maybe, just maybe… instead of a unique raid buff for every class, Blizz should instead make 5 raid buffs TOTAL. Spread out through the specs. Such that the goal would be to have all 5 buffs, and that would allow for more class variety.
I 100% agree I despise the current version of Raidbuffs. So the best thing would for sure be to either remove almost all of them or give all classes one. The current problem with Shaman is that only enhance has one, and therefore if they tried to give us one as they did with Hunter you would just bring an enhance anyway since they now bring 2. Having a spec-only raid buff is very toxic to the game, but the problem is blizzard devs did NOT think of this when they made windfuty for enhance and left resto and ele in the dust. In the current state of raid composition Elemental is completely unviable, and that’s what I’m trying to fix with this suggestion.
I have discussed similar issues with other aspects of the game. There are mechanics that are so OP that you cant give some classes “a bit” and some others “none”.
Since I am a healer, I always give the example of combat mana regen. Its so OP that we either ALL have it, or NONE have it.
Raid buffs are the same. Except that each buff is not just different ways to achieve the same thing (mana), its different ways to achieve different things (buffs).
And the “different things” is what should be homogenized. One alternative is to treat raid buffs like BL and CR. Give “worse” versions of them via scrolls you can buy. That way there is less pressure to actually have X or Y spec that has them.
And thus it comes full circle.
Make windfury totem give 3% haste, make it available to all shamans, affect the whole raid, and voila.
It removes abit of spec identity, but the world that melee and ranged shamans have different buffs that you want BOTH of them, is not a healthy world for raids.
Oh yeah, and make a talent in the early class tree to make it an aura.
Enh would still get WF for themselves though. Its a class identity thing.
Yeah Wind fury is totally separate from WF totem, if that is what you mean.
If you mean enh having WF totem and then this 3% haste raid buff, then no, since that would mean that you still bring a single enh shaman in the raid, and never an ele.
Thats what I meant. Just in case Blizz ever reads this (which they dont). Because they are capable of entirely removing the WF “effect” from Enh just to justify a 3% haste raid buff.
i wouldn’t say they don’t need a damage buff, at least in raid there is one fight that buffs Ele’s overall standing and that is council ofc apart from that ele is kinda dogshiet maybe useful on lara but the rest other class’s just outclass them
tbh its about time Ele received something that makes them a viable pick up in raid saying that if people realize there are limited amount of raid spots, people still class stack and there is room for them to introduce somethings for ele - so you would pref ele to never be taken into raid for end tier content because they bring 0 value atmo, shiet damage profiles and 0 raid buff with other class’s having the same but better utility (apart for kick) but a short kick isn’t going to get them brought to end tier raiding
you can make it so ele are viable by giving back a buff totem we previously had
“And the “different things” is what should be homogenized. One alternative is to treat raid buffs like BL and CR. Give “worse” versions of them via scrolls you can buy. That way there is less pressure to actually have X or Y spec that has them.”
^ this is irrelevant even if its 1-2% less value people are still going to opt to use the class over a smaller scuffed version - at least for end tier Mythic raid content
i tried sticking to ele shaman all this expansion at least from my point of view since ele most likely going to stay with S3 (even thought they said they would balance the tuning on class) which i highly doubt they will as ele shaman doesn’t receive any love from blizzard the current scaling on that build is dogshiet unless they make it available for all 3 tiers to be purchased, blizzard promised us that it will be made available for any build to be played and with the s2 + s3 we are stuck with one build and one build only and the current S3 is the worst of them all
from what i can tell Ele shaman is in desperate need of rework or given a raid buff
r shaman not so much they have great utility with SLT and MT that
maybe buff there Windrush totem by 20% to put it in line with druid roar could also be a play
I play mainly M+.
And I can tell you that Blizz has put themselves in a tough spot with RShaman.
We have a mazing utility. Especialy in 12s kick, cap totem and thunderstrike.
And to be fair, should we ever get some sort of raid buff we would become instant OP in M+.
And I believe that the problem Blizz has been having since S1 is balancing out raid/M+ and ST, cleave, and MT damage with the shaman.
In elemental’s case I can clearly see that with Earquake. Because its uncapped damage. So should you ever buff it, it would be OP to the extreme in big pulls. Should you target cap Earquake then it turns into another version of Chain Lightning and its button bloat.
In cleave situations, because we can funnel ST damage to all targets with Flameshock, if our ST damage is too high, then we destroy in cleave situations. OP even. Look at council fight in Amirdrassil during PTR.
So I kind of get why were in this situation (Ele + RShaman). Any buff in either direction would make us instant OP. So we need a rework, and especially, a re-think of what shaman is. And Blizz needs to be radical about it too, to the extreme that we might need to have some utility spells be entirely removed from Shaman tree, or, rethink the iconic “spread Flame Shock” ideology of Elemental.
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I mean we have destro lock right around the corner.
How could you say it would make ele OP while WL is essentially doing the exact same thing including the mass stunning part.
while WL would sit in MDI pull at 3mio DPS ele would probably be at 1mio if it wasn’t dead already because it just flops from every fart.
I still advocate to remove this stupid spell. Earthquake is terrible, not matter if it does dmg or not. It only works if you pull around it which makes it terrible in pugs, which probably 99% of the people play.
resto shaman (or shaman in general) just lacks a defensive cd and external. The dmg obviously isn’t great either especially because you cannot even talent all dmg talents. The flame shock cd and duration is also not helpful in that regard.
In the case of healer, having 1 external is required. Not for DD specs.
As for defensiveness, let me turn it arround a bit:
I would argue that its the other classes that need less defensives. They are getting out of hand IMO.
Cant speak for destro because I never played them.
Thats what I see on my runs in M+. Should you buff Earthquake, elemental would have it all. Prio damage, AND AoE damage. And that is what would make it OP.
So sure, we need a rework (resto too). But dont forget that the goal of a rework is not to make us OP. Should they do that, we will get the nerf-bat and be exactly where we are now.
Also MDI is not representative. Have you seen what they do there? Like: AD: Pull EVERYTHING up to the golden lady (including boss) and just AoE. ANY class can do 3M dps there.
all healers have externals, except shaman. I mean we argued in the past how good GS or Cocoon is as an external for tanks but since tanks are immortal in DF, we don’t need externals as pure % dmg reduction anymore to make the valueble.
I don’t count spirit link as external as it is more of a group heal than anything else.
it doesn’t matter. Rain of Fire and Earthquake is very similar. After setup, you can basically spam both abilities and both will stun the pack very often. The difference is that RoF actually does insane dmg once stacked, while earthquake… not so much.
not true though. While WL was at 3m dps, the other 2 classes were not and most other classes also have a target cap.
The only classes that maybe could match WL would be BM and DH i would imagine.
I don’t advocate to make ele OP but to be fair, destro lock is not considered OP either.
When you do keys, you stop looking at overall damage.
It does not matter if you do 3M damage in a pull. Sometimes you need priority damage as well. And there are some classes that are exceptionally good at it.
Like Enhancement Shaman.
So that destro might be doing 3M damage, but its worth nothing compared to the 1M DPS SP in that group doing double the Warlocks damage to the Colossi. Thats more important.
The only reason Enhancement is not meta, is because the lack of utility it brings. But thats about it.
You cant have it all. I wont advocate for a FMage S2 type of gameplay, where classes have absolutely everything.
There needs to be limitations to give comps a reason to exist. So you bring 1 person with a ton of AoE, and 1 person with a ton of prio damage. To even out the run.
We technically do have externals. We have Ancestral Reach, which is really undervalued. The disadvantage is that it requires ramp up. Lengthen the duration of the buff by 3 or 4 s and were good.
We have things like Stone Skin totem. Just expand the protection from Physical damage, to magical damage as well. From 10 to 5%.
And then we have the extremly undervalued Ancestral Protection Totem.
We have Erthen Harmony, a permanent 6% DR + 100% healing taken external. This is something people seldom use in lower keys. The tree boss in WM for example: If you place this on the guy that gets the spine he is functionally inmortal. Because every heal you drop on him will heal for 700k.
The problem with shaman is that we have a ton of “meaningless externals, or ramp up externals, or rapid reaction externals that cost a GCD”. If blizz ever considers doing a rework, then a few tweeks here and there would put us in line.
Like the Earth Shield. It should not use up a GCD to cast, or even better, usable while casting. Blizzard should give tools to incentivize us to swap earth shield around as people receive damage. And I think that is a fair tradeoff for 1 cacoon or pain sup every minute.
you were saying other classes can pull 3 mio too
we didn’t debate if those 3mio is as valuable as 1mio prio dmg.
Either way, you need those 3 mio AoE the same way as you need the 1 mio prio dmg. If you had 3 dds only doing prio dmg, then you cannot do big pull either.
Ele certainly has funnel dmg, but so does warlock. Warlock can choose to do massive funnel or massive aoe. Ele can choose to do mediocre of both.
sure enhance has great funnel. But it is not used in current meta because it flops by random environment dmg from pulls.
If prio dmg would be so valued, enhance would be quite up there but there are tons of reason why enhance is just not good enough.
enhance has tons of utility though?
Knockup/knockback, BL, aoe stun, short kick, off heal with AG, root
Enhance is known to be one of the most squishy specs in the game, it certainly is one of the reasons it isn’t picked.
the thing obviously is that we cannot remember when we last time died from a direct physical aoe hit. It has a niche but it isn’t necessary and also very annoying to use. Furthermore you need to give up something else that you may need. be it 2% crit, some % dmg red, curse dispel or poison dispel.
yes earth shield is great but 6% hardly will save you from something big. The gcd of course does the rest has you mentioned already.
earthen wall totem is also supposed to be an external but it is just bad and also again has a stupid totem range.
Think about it for a minute:
Earth shield is 6% DR permanently on 2 targets. One of which is you.
As a defensive: 6% permanent DR is much better than a one-off DR (like DPriest has) for heavy rot damage situations. Its the equivalent to having 12% versatility on your char.
So sure… it wont save you from a 1-shot… OK… but in very high keys, its not the healers job to defend against 1-shots. DDs play a massive roll in that.
However, it will be better for things like: WM boss spikes, last boss of BRH, on the tank for tree boss of DHT… list goes on.
The only reason its not used more often is because it costs 1 GCD to cast. So when for example the 3rd boss of ToT you waste 1 GCD on the shield, the person is dead so you need to cast a heal on him first.
But in bosses like Yazma, where you can predict who will get the dot… its just massive advantage to have. Not just the DR, but the 100% extra healing if the individual has less than 75% life. And that is where the great value of earth shield is in: The power to heal someone from 0 to 100 with 1 Healing Surge, on demand (not just sometimes like the meta healers).
Its on a choice node with Ancestral Protection Totem which gives you 10% HP. And it makes sense: You choose EWT for rot damage, you choose APT for 1-shot protection.
EWT what it needs is: You place the totem, and the ammount absorbed depends on the ammount of people in it. Because right now blizz has issues balancing it correctly. If you were to buff it, then it would be broken in raid scenarios. If you make it OK for raid, its useless in M+ and Arenas.
APT what it needs is: Reduce the CD from 5 min to something reasonable. And the Brez just remove it. Either give us a Brez like everyone else, or dont. But not this half-baked thing to justify the totem having 5 min CD.
ONE: In fortified weeks the value of that totem on just DR on the tank is undervalued. Especially on high keys where the tank just gets mauled.
And it does have a niche value: Tree boss on DHT on Tyr weeks (pure physical damage on tank), TOT 3rd boss (he does a good chuck of physical damage on tank when totem is up) and 3rd boss of BRH (the big AoE that dude does is an issue in high keys and its physical damage), tree boss of WM (physical damage spike AND tank buster).
And 10% DR for 15s with a 30s CD… is just really good. But not good enough to justify it so I would add some more magic DR there.
Sorry. When I talk about “utility” I include def CDs as well.
That is why Ele’s tier was nerfed so hard in the beginning of the season. ST damage was fine, but by doing so, Ele’s became unstoppable cleave machines.
Like I said, you cant have both. Either you are good at 1, or the other. But you cant have both. Or you should not.
And granted, Ele’s problem is by the way the “guaranteed crit” of Lava Burst works. They have to re-think the spec from the ground up because currently you cant buff anything from their kit with out making them massive OP somewhere.
Or give shaman a totem for every raid buffs making them the swiss knife if you’re missing something
Wont change a thing. Not until the structural weaknesses of Ele and Resto are fixed.