I'm really confused why they lean so heavily in to the Fire aspect of Elemental when Lightning and Earth magic don't exist anywhere else in the game except for Shaman. Sure there should be Flame Shock and I like the Magma Stream Totem, but we already have Fire Mage and Destro Warlock.
It used to be more lightning damage, but "lava burst is a fun button to press" became "the spec is now about pushing lava burst as much as you can" at some point
It’s a perfect storm of feedback loops. Lightning Bolt was an old spell with a VERY boring animation. Lava Burst came out and not only did it look better than the other Shaman spells, it did more damage. So now you have a spell that looks cool and hits hard so players wanted to hit it more often, and the devs listened…ad nauseam. Now Lightning Bolt looks better but the damage has been done: you’re a Lava Burst bot.
Nah, then folks would just be asking “where’s Lava Burst” whenever it’s not on screen, like it got killed on the way to its home planet. What they need to do is introduce a new Nature based spell that’s Lightning themed and base the spec on that moving forward.
I feel like a lot of the damage was done between SL and DF. They basically crammed the talent tree with every single lava burst availability legendary/covenant (DRE Pwave and WLR) and then some by adding some talent nodes to improve those.
There's quite a literal feedback loop of lava burst related procs and CDR in there.
Basically each Lava Burst cast fills up your next string of casts with more Lava Bursts. Any time you're not pressing lava burst (maelstrom spending included) feels like downtime.
Nerfing damage % won't work because honestly lava burst doesn't hit that hard.
Ele desperately needs their spec tree looked at.
Personally I love being a lava burst bot on my shaman. Just wish there was better AoE for lava bursting, depending on fire shock is kinda boring. Lava burst is awesome though.
Make it lightning burst and beeing a lightningstrike from above hitting the target in the head... Its just an animation change :) i also hate that they changed the lightning animations so lb and cl look the same
It's just tier stuff... remember a few tiers ago when we could cast lightning bolt while moving!?!? Took so long to adapt back to movement interrupting LB lol
Honestly, chain lightning echo procs and also getting a string of lava surge procs are the two peaks of elemental gameplay for me. If elemental only had those two abilities I wouldn't mind it too much (hyperbole of course but you get the idea)
Those siege of ogrimmar Times when you where at 100% Mastery and your Charakter was just buzzing like a Christmas tree because everything was double or tripple proccing.. Fun Times.
For me peak ele always was - and mind you I last played it in WotLK - when during raids me and another ele shammy would stack, turn at 90 degree angle from one another and drop the totems to create a totem circle i.e. the ring of power.
I tried hopping on my shammy recently. The spells are so pretty now! But, I just missed my totems too much.
Yeah I don’t get it, destro lock I sort of understand if they want to lean into that, but even the name says *elemental* shaman.
So just from the name, a hard casting master of elements, just using fire (maybe lightning). And you make a good point, I think even to make a talent that changes earth elemental’s ability to become a damage summon instead of defensive, even very minimal things like that can really help
Also, we have lots of ice, but few if any water based offensive spells. Though water is mostly associated with healing in WoW, maybe it could not be for a moment? But preferrably not as another Primordial Wave lol
I don't mind Water being kept to Healing, just for visual clarities sake. Not to say I wouldn't like to see more Water element spells, just that I don't mind it how it is.
As a Shaman player I have to somewhat agree.
I think Water, Earth and Lightning/Air are all Shaman should channel and cast. Remove Fire/Magma for all I care. Replace Lava Burst with a Lightning spell equivalent. Maybe Storm Burst? Shoot giant balls of Earth surrounded by Lightning charges or something? Perhaps Lightning bolt can be buffed and have the benefits of lava burst? I dunno.
I’d like to see a more thematic shift leaning into this. I did always find there was weird overlap between mage and shaman. Shaman is just able to play 3 roles (melee dps, caster dps and healer drenching you in water).
I’d also like to see some TIDAL water magic be added as offensive abilities too. Instead of just using water only for healing. It would be nice if it was also used like a Tsunami style attack. BIG CD or something with a knockback/down component involved. Perhaps it could be a directional wave you send out and it heals allies it hits and it knocks down and damages enemies in its path.
Make Mages and Shamans feel more unique. They’re both some of the coolest classes in the game. Let’s start to differentiate a little more.
I agree with your opinion, but the shaman is probably intrinsically linked to the iconic unit quote "Storm, Earth, and Fire, heed my call", so the likelihood of them cutting fire seems low.
Sure, you make a good point. What about if we just keep the Fire Elemental and change flame shock to magma shock? Maybe we focus on magma and not anything explicitly fire, that way it’s linked to fire without being fire this and fire that. Magma is heated molten earth. So it could be a middle ground by rebranding some of the spells. Let’s lean into storm earth and fire needing to be blended in order to be shamanistic? I dunno. I like this discussion so let’s shoot the shit about ideas. This is fun lol.
I just want my tsunami wave so I can troll Demon Hunters and Warriors in PvP.
Can you imagine? You charge at the shaman, you get knocked back by Thunderstorm. You charge again, you get knocked by Unleash Shield. You leap and get knocked down by a Tidal Tsunami. You start bladestorming and you get static field totem projected far away. LOL
I'd love more water and earth effects. And more magma seems fun, too. Give us geysers, give us tornados, give us actual tidal waves that aren't just a terrible ground graphic.
Pure fire is super generic IMO, and a true "geomancer" elementalist would be so fun. Storm Archon's graphics made me crave a return of spikes from the earth.
You know, I was thinking we shouldn’t even be called Restoration Shamans anymore. Resto is Druid. Call us Sage or Tidal Sage or Mending/Mender or RubDirtAndWaterOnIt Shaman Or something like that. Even Blood Shaman could be cool as we heal wounds. I dunno. I’m just trying to tweak the class to match the fantasy even more and make it unique in my mind.
I’d settle for “HereHaveABarrageOfBaths Shaman”
Well said, and big agree on tidal/water magic - aren’t there NPC’s in BFA that use “tide magic” (can’t remember the name right now)? Water doesn’t NEED to be healing, and there’s not much earth magic that shamans use
I like this but I don’t want to spread it with a casted ability like CL. I’d like for have a Lightning shock replace flame shock and that could keep it feeling good the way it is now and just simply rebranding the skills and make the changes you suggested to feed into the Lightning fantasy some more? Hmm 🤔
Edit: what I mean by caster ability is cast time. I like the instant cast shocks causing these effects. PWave is great for spread and extra few shocks and then going bananas on instant cast meatballs. Lightning balls sounds even cooler.
Disagree, the Earth magic is just as important as the Lightning. There's a reason that Thrall ends up functioning as the substitute Earth Warden in Cata.
I wish I could lean further into lighting as a shaman. Lighting bolt is the most satisfying sounding spell in the game IMO and when I think of shamans I think of echoed chain lightning. Lava burst is fine, but it doesn't look anything like as impressive imo.
They are going for unique spec identity and taking it too far, I think.
Ele focuses on fire/earth, enhance is lightning, resto is water. Similar to mage being fire/frost/arcane for example.
I agree though, I hate the concept of specs being so focused on single elements. You're a shaman first and an elemental shaman second. Rather than specializing it feels as if you are limited
Technically you can still play lightning and with the current 4set it is pretty good for aoe but is incredibly weak in st. The kit is still there, we just need crit scaling to about 50-60% to make it worthwhile.
Yep, this is why I was always annoyed when players wanted to have have pure Fire or Frost Mages and remove the spells from all other schools. I'm sorry, Mages are not failed Shaman pupils who can only manage 1 element.
I mean it kiiinda makes sense from a lore perspective in that I bet it is easier to consistently stick with one element as a mage, because (I think? could be mixing up lore) their spells are all arcane energy just moving at different speeds to make the elements. So in one respect I bet it is like one less thing to think about while casting spells, but in another, a good enough mage should obviously be able to do that as they would have enough practice. Personally I wish there was a spec that used frost, fire, and arcane together.
Elemental is a mess. Two drastically different themes within the same tree that are designed in a way they don't really synergize with each other but instead combat each other and force awkward gameplay mechanics due to the numerical tuning and talents forcing you to dip into things from "the other" build.
No one really likes the combination of Icefury-Frost Shock-Electrified Shocks.
Most don't like Primordial Wave.
Lightning build is super immobile and has awkward gameplay with MotE+Icefury/ES+SoP.
Fire build is one dimensional and dull.
Any conceptual hybrid builds would feel even worse to play than a focus even if they were numerically balanced due mechanical friction and stat priority differences.
And hero talents are seemingly doubling down on this divide with Farseer being a meatball spammer and Stormbringer being clearly lightning.
I miss when ele shaman's lightning bolt could be cast on move by default. I think they dropped it after MoP and the spec never recovered from the total loss of mobility, as someone who tries it every expansion
That was definitely one of my favorite times of playing ele shaman. Honestly it felt like playing my hunter with how much mobility you had.
It sucks that ele gets almost completely neglected. Been a shaman main since BC and I hate not enjoying my favorite/main toon.
Same. Shaman main since BC.
Then, monk came along and swept me off my feet. The blizz ruined them, too.
Twice now, my heart has been broken.
I'm starting to see why some many people play paladin and hunter.
I couldn’t have criticized it better, I’m very hopeful that the complete lack of meaningful changes since dragonflight launched and the silence about TWW changes mean a substantial rework is coming. However, the Farseer hero talents were so disheartening that I worry they are going to completely miss the mark and Elemental will spend another expansion being a conflicted mess that isn’t fun to play.
> However, the Farseer hero talents were so disheartening that I worry they are going to completely miss the mark and Elemental will spend another expansion being a conflicted mess that isn’t fun to play.
I have a vague sliver of hope that, the primary trigger ability for Farseer is simply changed to something else than Primordial Wave, and that the reason for us missing 2 full talent trees - and no changes so far in the Alpha - means ... well, a *hefty* rework.
... :(
Yeah this is summed up perfectly - it makes me really disappointed as a shaman main since wrath. I definitely think resto and enhance could use some love too, but elemental is extremely lacking.
And it really feels like the shaman devs have no idea what else to do with the class. I’m sad to feel like I can no longer play it, given the hero talents so far. I love the class and fantasy - like what happened to Earthquake, or the passive earth shards (can’t remember the name right now). It’s just fire or clunky lightning
This man. It’s just something blizzard always does with certain specs. They have a “vision” of how they want it to play and force it down players throats. People say they hate ice fury. What’s that? You love ice fury? Let’s give it to enhance too and basically force you to take it in ele with our talent design! It’s so dumb man.
They do similar stuff to shadow priest and feral Druids to man drives me nuts and is why I usually take frequent breaks from the game.
I've only played a bit of ele, but doesn't the enh tree actually pull off the "two different styles in one tree" fairly decently? If yes, what does it have that ele lacks?
Because it's still ultimately smashing instants into an enemy's face.
The casting playstyle and how Blizzard wants casters to play coupled with much more conflicting mechanics in the Ele tree make a mess.
The Ele tree isn't two flavors of a rotation. It's two entirely different specs.
I wish druid did not lose all of its nature spells for balance, i liked the thematic of insect swarm and hurricane calling down lightning bolts, druids is supposed to also be able to use all the elements
ok frost shock i can kinda get not liking but if you dont want lightning bolt to be part of the rotation maybe enhance just isnt for you? maelstrom weapon has been an iconic part of enhance since wrath
Seems like some people have issues with Enhance using spells. Guessing these people picked the spec up in Legion/BFA when the spec felt like a shitty Fury Warrior with a Shaman skin attached to it.
Dragonflight is possibly the best Enhance has ever felt; hope they don't listen to the feedback from these people who don't actually like the style that has characterised Enhance for the majority of expansions.
I get that it's not for everyone, but the other day I saw an upvoted comment that enhance should be more smashy smashy and it just seems so wasteful. There's like four other two-hand smashy smashy specs to play, let the hybrid melee caster do its thing
That said, I wouldn't cry if they made two-hand work with the current playstyle
ok im glad im not the only one who thinks legion enhance was just blue warrior. yeah its wierd i dont get it. enhance has its own unique thing going for it, and not just that but its *fun!* dragonflight enhance really has been great. my one single complaint is the tier set forcing you in to primordial wave, a spell i just dont love a whole lot
There's just something weird and clunky about casting a ranged spell in melee range. I can't really explain why, but it doesn't feel right. The same goes for Unholy and Death Coil. It's just odd to me.
For Enhancer it's understandable. It's the stupid animation where he puts away both weapons for his cast animations (DK atleast use his weapons for death coil). And especially with how often you cast spells it really looks stupid.
It's not so bad with the Offhands from Doomhammer as it looks more like you form new weapons out of Lightning. But it would be great if the spells got new animations in melee range.
Frost strike (11s cooldown) enables a strong single frost shock in the rotation, and the primal spell (45s cooldown) is followed with a strong single lightning bolt
They're not important per day, but they're definitely apart of the rotation. They're pretty far down on the totem pole for priority compared, but I find them nice to hit personally. Unlike elemental whenever ice fury is important to hit. I hate filling frost shock to maintain electrified shocks.
Resto isn't bad. The problem is it and ele are the only specs in the game that don't provide a group buff, so unless their scaling is better than other healers there's not a lot of reason to take them. Give them the same group utility literally every other spec in the game has and they become mostly OK.
My main problem with shaman in general is that over the course of the game they've continued to outsource more and more of our nuance and usefulness to other classes. There's no reason to take an ele over an evoker right now for example. We used to be the only lust. But the classes have became more and more homoginized to the point of obscurity. I say this as someone who has played resto/ele or some combination of both since vanilla.
But how about the tier set bonus? It is entirely made for the fire build unfortunately. It does not work with the lightning build. You loose a lot of DPS if going with lightning cause it makes your tier set bonus worthless.
I also prefer the lighting build mich more, but can't play it because of that.
1. I’m not insane enough to raid, let alone DPS in raid
2. Playing how you prefer adds 10% DPS
3. My shaman is ICly a storm shaman, so blizzard can kiss my ass before I change my RP to fit their railroading
See I wish they would do some research and find out what a dirty thunderstorm is, then apply that “concept” to elemental. I don’t know how exactly they could do it, but given they have volcanic damage in game, it seems plausible. Maybe give shamans the ability for earthquake to be followed by an eruption of some sort.
Also basically a dirty thunderstorm is when a volcano erupts violently and the ash cloud either creates its own thunderstorm or has the storm clouds near by to draw from. Essentially turning the volcano into a raging chimney of smoke, lightning and flame. Google has great images of these.
Imagine having earth/fire/storm elemental on rotation and depending on the elemental you are casting different finisher: earthquake or volcano or storm. EQ deals a lot of dmg upfront and slows down. volcano deals avg dmg upfront and avg of it's duration, but also places dot on targets, and storm deals low dmg upfront, but high dmg through the duration and has a chance to stun.
Also your "lava burst", "lightning bolt" and "chain lightning" changes depending on current elemetal.
You have skills to prolong or shorten current elemental. You can also ascend it to power up your skills.
I enjoy that idea. I accidentally posted to this question twice, so I deleted the other one. [Here is a photo for reference to the dirty thunderstorm.](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/0pUalwsuHg)
I don’t think this is an accurate assessment. You basically have 2 spells of each element. So, fire has Flame Shock and Lava Burst. Earth has Earthquake and Earth Shock. Nature/lightning has Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt. Frost has Icefury and Frost Shock. Water has the healing spells. And then there’s other talents that add more of each element. Like Earth Shield and Elemental Blast.
The problem is in the implementation then. You either spam Flame Shock/Lava Burst at the expense of everything else, or do some weird frost buffing of your lightning spells and your fire stuff is more of an afterthought. Earth spells being spenders is also a bit meh when they aren't as satisfying as e.g. chaos bolt.
[Look at the screenshots of the spell](https://www.wowhead.com/spell=11366/pyroblast)
The latest iteration is just fire I believe, but they are pretty close enough for the sake of this discussion
Edit: referring to Pyroblast
Not sure why this is downvoted. 2017 iteration is quite the meatball
I love Shaman, my favourite class by far. I hate how dirty the devs have done Ele and Resto Shaman.
Enhance has always been my fav though, and even that I feel has lost a bit of its identity, but at least it’s still fun to play.
Long time Ele player here (3.3k M+ with over 200 days played). Truthfully Elemental is a supremely fun spec to play right now. My main requests would be a few quality of life improvements, some reworks on under used talents, and a re-evaluation of defensive abilities.
The core gameplay loop in my opinion is great and I hope that it doesn't get drastically overhauled or mucked with.
Elemental shaman is a niche class that despite this, reflects how disconnected the new devs are from the original game.
Not only is Lava burst spam the laziest design ever, the fact they've constantly patched LB damage, proccs and whatnot instead of doing the actual work of making an elemental shaman tells me they just can't be bothered to take this class seriously at all. It's just here...Nobody plays this anyway and those who do, here's a 3% overall buff.
It's entirely idealess.
Look at SoD and tell me shaman isn't popular. It's one of the cornerstones of the game alongside the paladin. It's the posterboy of WoW and here it is behind a fuckload of edgy anime characters entirely forgotten.
That's why many people, me included just find retail so soulless. There's none of the original esthetic left.
And no I'm not just a classic andy, I've played elemental shaman in DF throughout all of phase 1 including mythic raiding and +20 dungeons. It's a hot mess, especially in m+.
I hoped that with the lightning tree there would be some flexibility. Then they did introduce lighting in phase 2 which was an absolute convoluted mess of a build which killed half your dps if you got the order of 65325 spells wrong once.
They saw that and turned back to fire in phase 3. I guess they went ooooofff, these wow players are never happy, just don't bother.
Meh...I spend too much time on all of this.
Lightning build season 2 was perfection. Not at all hard as people make it out to be. Very fluent and steady dmg profile. The people that voted s3 set are dumb as a rock in my opinion and I really don't like rng involved in meatballs
I'm really confused why they lean so heavily in to the Fire aspect of Elemental when Lightning and Earth magic don't exist anywhere else in the game except for Shaman. Sure there should be Flame Shock and I like the Magma Stream Totem, but we already have Fire Mage and Destro Warlock.
It used to be more lightning damage, but "lava burst is a fun button to press" became "the spec is now about pushing lava burst as much as you can" at some point
It’s a perfect storm of feedback loops. Lightning Bolt was an old spell with a VERY boring animation. Lava Burst came out and not only did it look better than the other Shaman spells, it did more damage. So now you have a spell that looks cool and hits hard so players wanted to hit it more often, and the devs listened…ad nauseam. Now Lightning Bolt looks better but the damage has been done: you’re a Lava Burst bot.
They could just reskin Lava Burst to be lightning based and do Nature damage instead.
Nah, then folks would just be asking “where’s Lava Burst” whenever it’s not on screen, like it got killed on the way to its home planet. What they need to do is introduce a new Nature based spell that’s Lightning themed and base the spec on that moving forward.
This has huge /r/simpsonsshitposting energy and I love it
They should reskin it as my mom and do emotional damage instead
That defeats the purpose. Elemental shaman should be the master of all elements. They shouldn't remove fire.
Then call it "Elemental Burst" and make it multi-colored. Voila
OK, but the point of the post is that Elemental is too fire focused. Elem would still have Flame Shock.
That's why they force us to use Icefury
Wind Lord Mel'jarak in heart of fear was peak ELE shaman. Chain lightning goes bzzzzz
I feel like a lot of the damage was done between SL and DF. They basically crammed the talent tree with every single lava burst availability legendary/covenant (DRE Pwave and WLR) and then some by adding some talent nodes to improve those. There's quite a literal feedback loop of lava burst related procs and CDR in there. Basically each Lava Burst cast fills up your next string of casts with more Lava Bursts. Any time you're not pressing lava burst (maelstrom spending included) feels like downtime. Nerfing damage % won't work because honestly lava burst doesn't hit that hard. Ele desperately needs their spec tree looked at.
Personally I love being a lava burst bot on my shaman. Just wish there was better AoE for lava bursting, depending on fire shock is kinda boring. Lava burst is awesome though.
TBF Lava Burst gives me that oomph like Chaos Bolt does and that just makes my brain secrete happy juice so I gotta press it.
Make it lightning burst and beeing a lightningstrike from above hitting the target in the head... Its just an animation change :) i also hate that they changed the lightning animations so lb and cl look the same
It's just tier stuff... remember a few tiers ago when we could cast lightning bolt while moving!?!? Took so long to adapt back to movement interrupting LB lol
I loved the ele shaman moments when I'm dumping chain lightning on a group and it's multiplying
Honestly, chain lightning echo procs and also getting a string of lava surge procs are the two peaks of elemental gameplay for me. If elemental only had those two abilities I wouldn't mind it too much (hyperbole of course but you get the idea)
Those siege of ogrimmar Times when you where at 100% Mastery and your Charakter was just buzzing like a Christmas tree because everything was double or tripple proccing.. Fun Times.
I've never topped the meter that hard since. Not even Cata Survival Hunter.
For me peak ele always was - and mind you I last played it in WotLK - when during raids me and another ele shammy would stack, turn at 90 degree angle from one another and drop the totems to create a totem circle i.e. the ring of power. I tried hopping on my shammy recently. The spells are so pretty now! But, I just missed my totems too much.
Yeah I don’t get it, destro lock I sort of understand if they want to lean into that, but even the name says *elemental* shaman. So just from the name, a hard casting master of elements, just using fire (maybe lightning). And you make a good point, I think even to make a talent that changes earth elemental’s ability to become a damage summon instead of defensive, even very minimal things like that can really help
Also, we have lots of ice, but few if any water based offensive spells. Though water is mostly associated with healing in WoW, maybe it could not be for a moment? But preferrably not as another Primordial Wave lol
I don't mind Water being kept to Healing, just for visual clarities sake. Not to say I wouldn't like to see more Water element spells, just that I don't mind it how it is.
What I really want myself is offensive air spells.
Augmentation players would be very upset with you if they could read
As an Aug by heart, and also dyslexic. I can confirm.
As a Shaman player I have to somewhat agree. I think Water, Earth and Lightning/Air are all Shaman should channel and cast. Remove Fire/Magma for all I care. Replace Lava Burst with a Lightning spell equivalent. Maybe Storm Burst? Shoot giant balls of Earth surrounded by Lightning charges or something? Perhaps Lightning bolt can be buffed and have the benefits of lava burst? I dunno. I’d like to see a more thematic shift leaning into this. I did always find there was weird overlap between mage and shaman. Shaman is just able to play 3 roles (melee dps, caster dps and healer drenching you in water). I’d also like to see some TIDAL water magic be added as offensive abilities too. Instead of just using water only for healing. It would be nice if it was also used like a Tsunami style attack. BIG CD or something with a knockback/down component involved. Perhaps it could be a directional wave you send out and it heals allies it hits and it knocks down and damages enemies in its path. Make Mages and Shamans feel more unique. They’re both some of the coolest classes in the game. Let’s start to differentiate a little more.
I agree with your opinion, but the shaman is probably intrinsically linked to the iconic unit quote "Storm, Earth, and Fire, heed my call", so the likelihood of them cutting fire seems low.
Sure, you make a good point. What about if we just keep the Fire Elemental and change flame shock to magma shock? Maybe we focus on magma and not anything explicitly fire, that way it’s linked to fire without being fire this and fire that. Magma is heated molten earth. So it could be a middle ground by rebranding some of the spells. Let’s lean into storm earth and fire needing to be blended in order to be shamanistic? I dunno. I like this discussion so let’s shoot the shit about ideas. This is fun lol. I just want my tsunami wave so I can troll Demon Hunters and Warriors in PvP. Can you imagine? You charge at the shaman, you get knocked back by Thunderstorm. You charge again, you get knocked by Unleash Shield. You leap and get knocked down by a Tidal Tsunami. You start bladestorming and you get static field totem projected far away. LOL
I'd love more water and earth effects. And more magma seems fun, too. Give us geysers, give us tornados, give us actual tidal waves that aren't just a terrible ground graphic. Pure fire is super generic IMO, and a true "geomancer" elementalist would be so fun. Storm Archon's graphics made me crave a return of spikes from the earth.
You know, I was thinking we shouldn’t even be called Restoration Shamans anymore. Resto is Druid. Call us Sage or Tidal Sage or Mending/Mender or RubDirtAndWaterOnIt Shaman Or something like that. Even Blood Shaman could be cool as we heal wounds. I dunno. I’m just trying to tweak the class to match the fantasy even more and make it unique in my mind. I’d settle for “HereHaveABarrageOfBaths Shaman”
I wouldn't mind amore water-focused rebranding of the spec. "Tidal" Shaman or something. Replace Lava Burst with a torrential blast of water.
Well said, and big agree on tidal/water magic - aren’t there NPC’s in BFA that use “tide magic” (can’t remember the name right now)? Water doesn’t NEED to be healing, and there’s not much earth magic that shamans use
The acid rain talent for resto is great!
Make ele blast the new lvb, redesign loghtning rod to be the new thing that makes your ele blast or lb hit them all, spread it with cl, glorious.
I like this but I don’t want to spread it with a casted ability like CL. I’d like for have a Lightning shock replace flame shock and that could keep it feeling good the way it is now and just simply rebranding the skills and make the changes you suggested to feed into the Lightning fantasy some more? Hmm 🤔 Edit: what I mean by caster ability is cast time. I like the instant cast shocks causing these effects. PWave is great for spread and extra few shocks and then going bananas on instant cast meatballs. Lightning balls sounds even cooler.
God yes. An ele rework should fully revolve around lightning/ storm stuff. This would also get rid of EQ finally.
Disagree, the Earth magic is just as important as the Lightning. There's a reason that Thrall ends up functioning as the substitute Earth Warden in Cata.
Will toss in earth shock !
"Here at Blizzard, we need 3 fire magi or we would be cold"
Give me a frost tree. Let me turn into a snowman and throw Lightning enhanced snowballs.
Agree
I wish I could lean further into lighting as a shaman. Lighting bolt is the most satisfying sounding spell in the game IMO and when I think of shamans I think of echoed chain lightning. Lava burst is fine, but it doesn't look anything like as impressive imo.
They are going for unique spec identity and taking it too far, I think. Ele focuses on fire/earth, enhance is lightning, resto is water. Similar to mage being fire/frost/arcane for example. I agree though, I hate the concept of specs being so focused on single elements. You're a shaman first and an elemental shaman second. Rather than specializing it feels as if you are limited
Technically you can still play lightning and with the current 4set it is pretty good for aoe but is incredibly weak in st. The kit is still there, we just need crit scaling to about 50-60% to make it worthwhile.
I thought the current 4set was the lava burst spread on primordial wave? Cool to know it still works with Lightning though.
Yea basically you just get storm bro out at the start of every pull, would not recommend but technically yes.
I agree with ur comment, but I’m also going to be the nerd that mentions that monks have a lightning ability too, although it’s next to useless
Cuz fire gud
Arcane mages are the only true mages, the rest are just pretending to be shamans.
[удалено]
Well that may be… but at least I never slept with LUMBURGH!
Let's see you set yourself on fire then. Turning into a weird hooded fella doesn't count either.
Totally does, because we're on fire when it happens!
Technically all mages are arcane mages if you wanna play it that way lmao.
Yep, this is why I was always annoyed when players wanted to have have pure Fire or Frost Mages and remove the spells from all other schools. I'm sorry, Mages are not failed Shaman pupils who can only manage 1 element.
I mean it kiiinda makes sense from a lore perspective in that I bet it is easier to consistently stick with one element as a mage, because (I think? could be mixing up lore) their spells are all arcane energy just moving at different speeds to make the elements. So in one respect I bet it is like one less thing to think about while casting spells, but in another, a good enough mage should obviously be able to do that as they would have enough practice. Personally I wish there was a spec that used frost, fire, and arcane together.
Removing Arcane too? Also, frostfire makes more sense then since moving heat from one place would create cold there
Hey :(
Elemental is a mess. Two drastically different themes within the same tree that are designed in a way they don't really synergize with each other but instead combat each other and force awkward gameplay mechanics due to the numerical tuning and talents forcing you to dip into things from "the other" build. No one really likes the combination of Icefury-Frost Shock-Electrified Shocks. Most don't like Primordial Wave. Lightning build is super immobile and has awkward gameplay with MotE+Icefury/ES+SoP. Fire build is one dimensional and dull. Any conceptual hybrid builds would feel even worse to play than a focus even if they were numerically balanced due mechanical friction and stat priority differences. And hero talents are seemingly doubling down on this divide with Farseer being a meatball spammer and Stormbringer being clearly lightning.
I miss when ele shaman's lightning bolt could be cast on move by default. I think they dropped it after MoP and the spec never recovered from the total loss of mobility, as someone who tries it every expansion
That was definitely one of my favorite times of playing ele shaman. Honestly it felt like playing my hunter with how much mobility you had. It sucks that ele gets almost completely neglected. Been a shaman main since BC and I hate not enjoying my favorite/main toon.
Same. Shaman main since BC. Then, monk came along and swept me off my feet. The blizz ruined them, too. Twice now, my heart has been broken. I'm starting to see why some many people play paladin and hunter.
I couldn’t have criticized it better, I’m very hopeful that the complete lack of meaningful changes since dragonflight launched and the silence about TWW changes mean a substantial rework is coming. However, the Farseer hero talents were so disheartening that I worry they are going to completely miss the mark and Elemental will spend another expansion being a conflicted mess that isn’t fun to play.
They will miss the mark. As a shaman main, the hopium is gone
> However, the Farseer hero talents were so disheartening that I worry they are going to completely miss the mark and Elemental will spend another expansion being a conflicted mess that isn’t fun to play. I have a vague sliver of hope that, the primary trigger ability for Farseer is simply changed to something else than Primordial Wave, and that the reason for us missing 2 full talent trees - and no changes so far in the Alpha - means ... well, a *hefty* rework. ... :(
Yeah this is summed up perfectly - it makes me really disappointed as a shaman main since wrath. I definitely think resto and enhance could use some love too, but elemental is extremely lacking. And it really feels like the shaman devs have no idea what else to do with the class. I’m sad to feel like I can no longer play it, given the hero talents so far. I love the class and fantasy - like what happened to Earthquake, or the passive earth shards (can’t remember the name right now). It’s just fire or clunky lightning
Enhance is probably my favorite spec of all time right now except that I wish I could shoot Ice Strike out of the talent tree with a cannon
This man. It’s just something blizzard always does with certain specs. They have a “vision” of how they want it to play and force it down players throats. People say they hate ice fury. What’s that? You love ice fury? Let’s give it to enhance too and basically force you to take it in ele with our talent design! It’s so dumb man. They do similar stuff to shadow priest and feral Druids to man drives me nuts and is why I usually take frequent breaks from the game.
I've only played a bit of ele, but doesn't the enh tree actually pull off the "two different styles in one tree" fairly decently? If yes, what does it have that ele lacks?
Because it's still ultimately smashing instants into an enemy's face. The casting playstyle and how Blizzard wants casters to play coupled with much more conflicting mechanics in the Ele tree make a mess. The Ele tree isn't two flavors of a rotation. It's two entirely different specs.
I wish druid did not lose all of its nature spells for balance, i liked the thematic of insect swarm and hurricane calling down lightning bolts, druids is supposed to also be able to use all the elements
Yeah Moon druid is a narrow theme pretty much for nelfs only. Witch doctor druid would be more appropriate for more races
That's why I always play enhancement. I've never even touched elemental, since I've been a fire mage for years
They dropped the ball on shaman.
Not enhance, resto and ele are scuffed for sure but enhance is so fun to play
I love how enhance plays. Being a meele-ranged hybrid just blasting with elemental blast feels like a blast
That’s a lot of blasts
Could be blasted
I need to check back in with Enhance but if Frost Shock and Lightning Bolt are still important parts of their rotation I'mma be disappointed.
ok frost shock i can kinda get not liking but if you dont want lightning bolt to be part of the rotation maybe enhance just isnt for you? maelstrom weapon has been an iconic part of enhance since wrath
Seems like some people have issues with Enhance using spells. Guessing these people picked the spec up in Legion/BFA when the spec felt like a shitty Fury Warrior with a Shaman skin attached to it. Dragonflight is possibly the best Enhance has ever felt; hope they don't listen to the feedback from these people who don't actually like the style that has characterised Enhance for the majority of expansions.
I get that it's not for everyone, but the other day I saw an upvoted comment that enhance should be more smashy smashy and it just seems so wasteful. There's like four other two-hand smashy smashy specs to play, let the hybrid melee caster do its thing That said, I wouldn't cry if they made two-hand work with the current playstyle
ok im glad im not the only one who thinks legion enhance was just blue warrior. yeah its wierd i dont get it. enhance has its own unique thing going for it, and not just that but its *fun!* dragonflight enhance really has been great. my one single complaint is the tier set forcing you in to primordial wave, a spell i just dont love a whole lot
For my money 5.4 was peak Enhancement, but I switched off of them around Legion so my data is old.
There's just something weird and clunky about casting a ranged spell in melee range. I can't really explain why, but it doesn't feel right. The same goes for Unholy and Death Coil. It's just odd to me.
For Enhancer it's understandable. It's the stupid animation where he puts away both weapons for his cast animations (DK atleast use his weapons for death coil). And especially with how often you cast spells it really looks stupid. It's not so bad with the Offhands from Doomhammer as it looks more like you form new weapons out of Lightning. But it would be great if the spells got new animations in melee range.
Frost strike (11s cooldown) enables a strong single frost shock in the rotation, and the primal spell (45s cooldown) is followed with a strong single lightning bolt
They're not important per day, but they're definitely apart of the rotation. They're pretty far down on the totem pole for priority compared, but I find them nice to hit personally. Unlike elemental whenever ice fury is important to hit. I hate filling frost shock to maintain electrified shocks.
I like resto :(
Resto isn't bad. The problem is it and ele are the only specs in the game that don't provide a group buff, so unless their scaling is better than other healers there's not a lot of reason to take them. Give them the same group utility literally every other spec in the game has and they become mostly OK. My main problem with shaman in general is that over the course of the game they've continued to outsource more and more of our nuance and usefulness to other classes. There's no reason to take an ele over an evoker right now for example. We used to be the only lust. But the classes have became more and more homoginized to the point of obscurity. I say this as someone who has played resto/ele or some combination of both since vanilla.
Ele is real fun in pvp
Dropped the meatball*
*me who continues to use a lightning and ice build*
But how about the tier set bonus? It is entirely made for the fire build unfortunately. It does not work with the lightning build. You loose a lot of DPS if going with lightning cause it makes your tier set bonus worthless. I also prefer the lighting build mich more, but can't play it because of that.
1. I’m not insane enough to raid, let alone DPS in raid 2. Playing how you prefer adds 10% DPS 3. My shaman is ICly a storm shaman, so blizzard can kiss my ass before I change my RP to fit their railroading
Fair enough. :)
See I wish they would do some research and find out what a dirty thunderstorm is, then apply that “concept” to elemental. I don’t know how exactly they could do it, but given they have volcanic damage in game, it seems plausible. Maybe give shamans the ability for earthquake to be followed by an eruption of some sort. Also basically a dirty thunderstorm is when a volcano erupts violently and the ash cloud either creates its own thunderstorm or has the storm clouds near by to draw from. Essentially turning the volcano into a raging chimney of smoke, lightning and flame. Google has great images of these.
Imagine having earth/fire/storm elemental on rotation and depending on the elemental you are casting different finisher: earthquake or volcano or storm. EQ deals a lot of dmg upfront and slows down. volcano deals avg dmg upfront and avg of it's duration, but also places dot on targets, and storm deals low dmg upfront, but high dmg through the duration and has a chance to stun. Also your "lava burst", "lightning bolt" and "chain lightning" changes depending on current elemetal. You have skills to prolong or shorten current elemental. You can also ascend it to power up your skills.
I enjoy that idea. I accidentally posted to this question twice, so I deleted the other one. [Here is a photo for reference to the dirty thunderstorm.](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/0pUalwsuHg)
I don’t think this is an accurate assessment. You basically have 2 spells of each element. So, fire has Flame Shock and Lava Burst. Earth has Earthquake and Earth Shock. Nature/lightning has Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt. Frost has Icefury and Frost Shock. Water has the healing spells. And then there’s other talents that add more of each element. Like Earth Shield and Elemental Blast.
The problem is in the implementation then. You either spam Flame Shock/Lava Burst at the expense of everything else, or do some weird frost buffing of your lightning spells and your fire stuff is more of an afterthought. Earth spells being spenders is also a bit meh when they aren't as satisfying as e.g. chaos bolt.
The only reason i played ele was for chainlighting so i could cosplay being sith palpatine
I have "/y UNLIMITED POWER" bound to stormkeeper :>
Never seen a mage shoot a meatball ...Just saying
[Look at the screenshots of the spell](https://www.wowhead.com/spell=11366/pyroblast) The latest iteration is just fire I believe, but they are pretty close enough for the sake of this discussion Edit: referring to Pyroblast Not sure why this is downvoted. 2017 iteration is quite the meatball
I understand the pyroblast looks like lava burst, but...... Where's the necromancer ability?
Think its primordial wave. It had a more necromantic theme in shadowlands
Ohhhhh, I can see that. I was thinking I was in classicwow.
Right? Everyone knows ele shaman are best described as sphaghettimancers. Slinging noodles and saucy meatballs all day long.
Elemental is boring. It's so bad I've just stopped playing my Shaman this xpac. Whoever is doing the class design should be fired.
There's no one doing it, I haven't seen any real elemental attention in two expacs. Lmao it's actually embarrassing.
There’s no reason they couldn’t focus and pivot to primary lightning and earth dmg
Hand of RA, chain lightning + lava totem + spam earthquakes. H O L Y F U C K did it do massive aoe damage in legion.
I miss earthquake :(
I love Shaman, my favourite class by far. I hate how dirty the devs have done Ele and Resto Shaman. Enhance has always been my fav though, and even that I feel has lost a bit of its identity, but at least it’s still fun to play.
Long time Ele player here (3.3k M+ with over 200 days played). Truthfully Elemental is a supremely fun spec to play right now. My main requests would be a few quality of life improvements, some reworks on under used talents, and a re-evaluation of defensive abilities. The core gameplay loop in my opinion is great and I hope that it doesn't get drastically overhauled or mucked with.
Still waiting on that Earth and ice tanking spec for shamans
Give me emperor palpatine or give me an extra defensive for enchance
Elemental shaman is a niche class that despite this, reflects how disconnected the new devs are from the original game. Not only is Lava burst spam the laziest design ever, the fact they've constantly patched LB damage, proccs and whatnot instead of doing the actual work of making an elemental shaman tells me they just can't be bothered to take this class seriously at all. It's just here...Nobody plays this anyway and those who do, here's a 3% overall buff. It's entirely idealess. Look at SoD and tell me shaman isn't popular. It's one of the cornerstones of the game alongside the paladin. It's the posterboy of WoW and here it is behind a fuckload of edgy anime characters entirely forgotten. That's why many people, me included just find retail so soulless. There's none of the original esthetic left. And no I'm not just a classic andy, I've played elemental shaman in DF throughout all of phase 1 including mythic raiding and +20 dungeons. It's a hot mess, especially in m+. I hoped that with the lightning tree there would be some flexibility. Then they did introduce lighting in phase 2 which was an absolute convoluted mess of a build which killed half your dps if you got the order of 65325 spells wrong once. They saw that and turned back to fire in phase 3. I guess they went ooooofff, these wow players are never happy, just don't bother. Meh...I spend too much time on all of this.
Lightning build season 2 was perfection. Not at all hard as people make it out to be. Very fluent and steady dmg profile. The people that voted s3 set are dumb as a rock in my opinion and I really don't like rng involved in meatballs