Shaman Rework Proposal

[Voodoochile]

Hello, I would just like to preface this with an admittance that I NO LONGER SUCK AT VISUALS.

REWORKED TALENT TREES
*UPDATED* Elemental - https://talent-builder.haaxor1689.dev/tree/uzC5S3M-zX
*UPDATED* Enhancement - https://talent-builder.haaxor1689.dev/tree/7Sy0rf0koN
Restoration - https://talent-builder.haaxor1689.dev/tree/z5JOcigQcI



I am once again trying to influence the fate of Shaman on this server in another fruitless forum post. Perhaps posting a new thread in suggestions instead of responding to other people's threads in the Shaman forum would get these ideas more noticed. God knows the Shaman forum has been fkn dead since CC2. I have already explained my frustration previously in regards to the direction of Shaman into a generic specialist viewtopic.php?t=15586. But now I want to portray a more fleshed out vision of the class I had in mind that fits the unique utility-generalist playstyle that was unfinished in vanilla. Not to say that this is in anyway the BEST way to go about it, but in keeping in mind with some of the changes that have been implemented already to try to offer a compromise of sorts.

This was rather sudden on my part, and I do not have a whole picture painted yet for a never-be class redesign, so these will come in sections as I think on them and iterate idea. The first one I have cooked up is:

CORE CHANGE - All standard buffing totems have their default range increased from 20y to 24y.
// Totem ranges are a major hindrance to all shaman that contributes heavily to the mana issues of the class. Often times in leveling dungeons you cannot even move to the otherside of a room without needing to drop a new set of totems. This change is meant to alleviate this pain a little for those who do not spec for totem range, and to give caster shaman some more wiggle room with their cast range when they do spec into totem range.

RESTORATION

Spells:

Chain Heal - 2.5s Cast, Resto 31-point talent (Replaces Spirit Link) // I believe the crux of Shaman Class identity lies in its ability to do things outside of its assigned role within a party. With this in mind, CH already comes with a relatively hefty cast time for a relatively weak heal if you have little to no heal power in your items.
HOWEVER, given that it is deeply identified with Resto and a majority of Shaman's healing prowess (and the devs already made it clear they think it is too strong for non-resto to have), I believe removing it as a normal leveling talent and making it the keystone fits more with the direction Twow was going with it.

Spirit Link - Link your target (party/raid member or enemy) to their 2 closest allies. 10% of damage taken by any of the linked units is redistributed evenly upon the others. 60s duration, 10s cooldown, Baseline Spell learned at level 40 (Replaces Chain Heal) // With the relocation of Chain Heal from a baseline spell to the Resto Keystone, I believe that it would be appropriate then to make Spirit Link into a baseline spell and to make it a persistent buff with low damage mitigation. In this form I believe it has value for all specs in the same regard of utility that I think that Chain Heal simply doesn't if say you are the individual tanking mobs in group content, either willingly or unwillingly, while also leaning into the generalist and buff aspect of Shaman for their base kit.

I also hope to enable a concept of making Spirit Link function as a buff for allies OR debuff for enemies, which can be further specialized within the talent trees to augment this ability to those unique roles while also allowing it to function well enough unaltered.

Mana Spring Totem - No cost // The regen this totem provides is lackluster at best, and even worse without talents. CC2 removed its power in exchange for personal mana cost reduction, while I do not agree with it, I believe that weakening this totem in its buff capability fits nicely for a vision where healing totem has a bigger emphasis in the Resto rotation.

With this in mind, making the totem have no cost and low impact will allow the shaman to benefit from not interrupting their spirit mana regen on cast making it more useful during leveling for the class as a whole while also having a bigger impact for resto as their spirit mana regen increases, making interrupting that regen less and less worth it for a relatively weak totem. Tbh in my idea of allowing Shaman to cross-spec for buffs, I think that it wouldn't even be all too bad to allow Mana Spring to disappear and to lean in more on Water Shield-based personal regen in exchange for other group utility

Healing Stream Totem - 20s duration, 50% spell coefficient (5% per tick), unchanged health/2s, drops at your target location and heals the 5 closest members of your party/raid, 20 yard range // With the removal of CH from the base kit and the addition of Spirit Link in its stead, a buff to the impact of Healing Stream Totem feels appropriate to still have aoe healing synergy within the base kit w/ Spirit Link, as well as to make the spell a more conscious decision to cast with the possibility for downtime on the totem in crucial moments as well as more impactful, but shorter duration heal over time. The totem currently also has the feeling while leveling to be quite strong when you get it at lvl 20 to really fall off around lvl 30-40. So giving it better scaling per tick makes the totem feel better around the time when one would start getting spell power in leveling gear.

Water Shield - I honestly don't really know what to do with this spell at all. I understand if Twow wants to limit the ability for other classes to affect other classes' mana economy, but I cannot be fucked to care really about the numbers that go into making Water Shield somehow more viable than simply making spells cost less, and making mana refund an rng proc not tied to anything tangible like crits for example feels gross and retail-like. Like its not telegraphed to either the player nor the enemy that the proc happened at all.

Talents
https://talent-builder.haaxor1689.dev/tree/z5JOcigQcI

ROW 1
Improved Healing Wave: Unchanged
Tidal Focus: -2/4/6/8/10% Mana Cost for Heal Spells & Totems (5 Rank)

ROW 2
Improved Reincarnation - Unchanged
Ancestral Healing - Healing Wave has a 100% chance to increase your target's armor by 8% for 15 seconds, stacking up to 8/16/25%. Healing Wave critical hits apply max stacks. (3 Rank)
Tidal Mastery - 1/2/3/4/5% Heal & Lightning spell crit chance. (5 Rank)
Totem Mastery - Radius of totems that affect friendly targets is increased by 5/10 yards. -7/15% Mana Cost for Totems. (2 Rank)

ROW 3
Healing Focus - Unchanged
Nature's Grace - Unchanged
Nature's Guidance - +1/2/3% Spell and Melee Hit Chance. On spell crit, gain an additional 3% spell hit chance.

ROW 4
Healing Way - Your Healing Wave spells have a 100% chance to increase the effect of subsequent Healing Wave spells on that target by 6% for 15 sec. This effect will stack up to 3 times. Healing Wave critical hits apply max stacks. (3 ranks)
Spirit Walk - Spirit Linked party/raid members will now redistribute an additional 20% of physical damage taken. Lasts 30s, 6m CD. (1 Rank)
Water Shield - idfk, unchanged ig

ROW 5
Loa's Blessing (Replaces Tidal Surge) - If the target of your Chain Heal has Healing Way and/or Ancestral Healing buffs, transfer those buffs at 33%/66%/100% strength to all targets that Chain Heal bounces to, and refresh the duration. (2 Rank)
Nature's Swiftness - Unchanged
Undertow - ???

ROW 6
Healing Ward - Healing Stream Totem now heals an additional .4/.8/1.2/1.6/2% missing health per tick. 2 charges, 60s recharge (5 Rank)

ROW 7
Chain Heal - 2.5s cast (Requires Healing Ward Rank 5)

It is 5 in the morning as I finish this segment, amendments to be made. Just know that the goal was to incentivize HW being woven into CH rotation with HW buffs being spread with chain heal. And the Spirit Link/Spirit Walk changes were to allow for Tank Shamans to be able to spec into Spirit Walk as a Defensive CD that also has good utility as an OT using your own HP as a resource even while not tanking. This comes with the added benefit of being non-necessary as the persistent, but weaker Spirit Link would still provide a decent enough buff for the tank group should the Shman Tank opt into other talents.

Anyway gn TO BE CONTINUED

[Voodoochile]

Elemental

Spells:

Lightning Bolt - 2.5s Cast // This feels like a long time coming and such a necessary QoL buff for Resto Shaman in particular, ESPECIALLY while leveling when a heal minded shaman is both not specced deep in ele or deep in enh tree and TTK is so insanely long. Not to mention it takes so long to get faster LB that you spend most of your time leveling as Ele as an objectively worse Enh shaman spending 80% of your time fighting in melee.

Aside from this I don't really have any objections with the current spell list.

Talents

https://talent-builder.haaxor1689.dev/tree/uzC5S3M-zX

ROW 1
Convection: Unchanged
Concussion: Unchanged
Call of Flame Unchanged (Moved to Row 1)

ROW 2
Earth's Grasp - Unchanged
Elemental Warding - Unchanged
Elemental Devastation - Gain 1/2/3% Spell Crit Chance. Your offensive spell crits grant you 3/6/9% melee crit chance for 10s (3 Rank)

ROW 3
Elemental Focus - Unchanged
Reverberation - Unchanged
Call of Thunder - Unchanged
Forked Tongue - UPDATE While Flametongue Weapon is applied to your active weapon, allows the Shaman to have a 2nd fire totem active. Fire totems have doubled mana cost while atleast 1 fire totem is currently active. (1 Rank. Requires Call of Flame Rank 3) // I've updated this effect to allow for more flexibility but at the cost of greater mana cost, which I feel is an appropriate given the new accessibility to Elemental Weapons in the Enh tree allowing for up to 40% dmg increase from fire totems in talents.

ROW 4
Improved Fire Totems - Unchanged
Eye of the Storm - Unchanged
Twisted Nether - Spirit Linked enemies will now echo 10% of their damage taken onto each of the other linked targets instead of redistributing it. 30s duration, 2m cd. (1 Rank)

ROW 5
Storm Reach - Unchanged
Elemental Mastery (Replaces Electrify) - When your offensive spells miss, resist, or are interrupted, your next Shock spell has a 100% hit chance, has its range match your Lightning Bolt, cost no mana, and incurs no GCD. 45s CD (1 Rank).

ROW 6
Lightning Mastery - Reduce the cast time of your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5s. Spell crit bonus damage is increased by 15/30/45/60/75% (5 Rank)

ROW 7
Farseer's Wrath (Replaces Elemental Mastery) - ACTIVE: Chain Lightning has its CD reset and incurs no CD for 10 seconds. 6m CD.
PASSIVE: Each Chain Lightning hit applies a debuff increasing all spell damage taken by 5% to the target, stacking up to 3 times, crits apply 2 stacks. Does not stack with Nightfall. (1 Rank)

In lieu of Elemental's previous (weak) identity of funny big numbers, I believe that giving it a new identity befitting of the Utility class was the right call. By adding an applicable 3 target debuff in Twisted Nether and Farseer's Wrath it both defines Elemental Shaman's specialty in small groups of enemies as well as giving it unique debuffs at the cost of personal performance in Lightning Bolt being a shorter baseline cast and having its spell scaling reduced to match.

Although ideally Elemental Shaman would probably want to provide an incentive to be included in caster groups, I think that securing a raid slot for this design is good enough to fix the major issues of Elemental as well as provide incentives to mix up ones rotation with this new Elemental Mastery, which enables the Shaman to use a Shock spell without hurting their dps ontop of giving the Shaman an extra hit every so often allowing them to lean into crit itemization.

[Voodoochile]

Enhancement

So, as far as Enhancement is concerned, I like the changes made for the most part from CC2. I have a minor issue with Thunderhead being removed as I think that was a talent that was good for the class if it got the changes it needed, and the moving of the totem talents into the 5th tier greatly hampered cross-speccing and the ability to lean into the utility aspect of the class. But otherwise than that, fantasywise and balancewise the spec was improved.

My changes for enhancement mainly revolve around leveling pains, accessibility to group buffs, as well as a desire on the bigger picture of Twow to nerf or outright remove Blessing of Salv and Tranquil Air Totem and other PASSIVE threat reduction buffs and talents, especially for DPS, in favor of CD's or conditional threat reduction as threat is one of the few mechanics that DPS, Tanks, and Heals NEED to interact with.

Spells:

The only changes I feel that I'd like to make here is to reshuffle when and where certain abilities are learned.

WINDFURY TOTEM - First and foremost, I think that WF Totem being as strong and identified with Shaman as it is - is actually just the quintessential melee buff and feels perhaps inappropriate that a buff this strong should be available to the ranged specs. This in addition to the totem being so strong it actually works against the interest of the other specs by forcing them into melee groups instead of groups that provide them appropriate buffs due to the insane value this 1 totem provides, as well as being against the interests of Hunters who also provide a strong buff but even when put into a group with shamans rarely get an Agility Totem, and practically never now after CC2 that Totem Twisting no longer exists.

For these reasons, I would see it removed from the base leveling abilities and moved to the Enhancement Keystone 31pt Talent befitting of an ability of this magnitude, and replace the ability with Agility Totem at the levels where a Shaman would've learned WF Totem normally.

Stormstrike/Lightning Strike - As stated in the Elemental section, Shaman ends up in melee a majority of the time during leveling, and while those changes above sought to ease the pain of attempting ele leveling, I believe that making one of these abilities baseline would allow Shaman leveling to be not so... braindead, and more reflective of class as a whole. I have a preference for making Stormstrike baseline as it frees up the space in those deeper talent rows for another of my changes, but either would work.



Talents
https://talent-builder.haaxor1689.dev/tree/7Sy0rf0koN

Ok, so if it isn't listed, assume its unchanged.

ROW 3
Calming Winds - *REMOVED* If it were up to me, I would see this talent removed along with the threat reduction for dmg spells from 'Nature's Grace' in Resto, but I believe this would need to be alongside a mass removal of passive threat reduction talents and spells.

UPDATE - I have decided to commit to the idea of removing this passive threat reduction for dps shaman and have replaced it with the old Enhancing Totem Talent which I have split in this update.

Enhancing Totems - Increases the effect of your Strength of Earth and Grace of Air Totems by 8/15%. // Cut and dry. Reverted back to vanilla state and replace Calming Winds, which I had already provided a cooldown based substitute for prior in the Enhancement Keystone Talent

ROW 4
Elemental Weapons - Imbuing your weapon gives you a special benefit based on the imbue.

Flametongue: Increases the damage done by your Fire Totems and spells by 25%.

Rockbiter: Reduces your damage taken by 10%.

Frostbrand: Increases the chance to proc the effect by 25% and becomes guaranteed to critically hit if the target is afflicted with Frost Shock.

Windfury: If one of the bonus attacks doesn't land, your attack speed is increased by 20% for your next strike.
// Swapped with Flurry. Slightly nerfed to accomodate its lower talent cost and accessibility to Ele.

*Added* Thunderhead - You can now cast Lightning Shield onto friendly targets. Threat caused by the Lightning Shield is attributed to the target with the Lightning Shield buff. Applying Lightning Shield onto an ally reduces remaining cooldown of Stormstrike and Chain Lightning by 1/1.5/2s(3 Ranks)

Ancestral Guidance - Increase the armor value of your items by 5/10/15% and your chance to dodge by 1/2/3% // I have reduced the mitigation value from this talent and reallocated it deeper in the tree so it is not as easily accessible to Ele Shaman. Shaman tanking while leveling is already quite decent while leveling, so taking power away here should not be an issue for dungeon tanking.

Flurry - changed from 5 Rank to 3 Rank


ROW 5
Flurry - Increase your attack speed by 8/14/24% for your next 3 melee swings after landing a melee crit.
// Swapped with Elemental Weapons. Slightly buffed to accommodate the higher talent cost

Guardian Totems - Increase your Stoneskin Totem's damage reduction by 15/30% and increases your block amount by 15/30%, and reduces the cooldown of your Grounding Totem by 1/2sec.

Additionally, while under the effect of any Earth Totem, increase your armor by 15/25% of your armor value from items. And while under the effect of any Air Totem, increase your dodge chance by 2/3%. // The thought process of returning this talent back is to reintegrate Shaman's power back into their totems so there is both more pressure in pvp for opponents to deal with them as well as for them to create a greater reward for using a gcd to destroy it. And in addition to this, I have made the armor value originally on spirit shield cost more than 20 talent points making it more costly to get that survivability.

With these points in mind, I would also see that shaman totems are put back on the gcd for counterplay reasons.

Stormstrike - Replaced by Bloodlust (1 Rank) // Again, Stormstrike preferably added to basekit.

Bloodlust - Fly into a frenzy, increasing your attack speed and spell casting speed by 20% for 30 sec. While under this effect, your melee & spell crits increase the attack and spell casting speed of all party members within 30 yards by 8% for 6 sec. // Updated the group buff aspect to allow it to be procced by spell crits so it has value for Ele who opt into BL instead of Farseer's Wrath or possibly even for Resto Shamans.

ROW 7
Windwalker - PASSIVE: Grace of Air Totem and Nature Resistance Totem now provide the Windfury Totem effect in addition to their normal effects. Gain: *New* Tranquil Air Totem now stops threat generation for party members within 20 yards for a brief period and cleanses roots and slows from the shaman on cast, 90s CD. (1 Rank)

I believe this concludes my proposal. I wish I had more to add on for Tank Shaman and/or PvP elements, but these are the aspects of Shaman I am least familiar with on this server, and even more so after CC2. Again, I do not posit that this is the best or only way to go about redesigning Shaman, but I wanted to put out a concept of a utility-class capable of cross speccing to lean in on the utility aspects, as well as make leveling as resto or ele more tolerable and maybe even fun.

Please let your opinion be known on the matter.

[Cecilc]

I wish we got something like lava burst or caster party / raid buff (like boomy) 3 or 5% SP totem maybe?

This is every elemental shamans’ identity right now

All we do is LB LB CL ES on repeat, then we get stuck into a melee group for WF Str FT totems

So dry….

[Surtugal]

Ever got feedback from official side?

[Noce]

oh yeah.. What Dreams May Come..
as u sed there are sooo many posts about shaman gameplay design changes, but sadly nthing got implemented nor it will. currently im not a big fanof few things added. They're not bad ideas, but they need to be worked out. we still lack a few options in our arsenal.

i myself have been advocating for Chain Heal to be the capstone talent.
also this new design of Spirit Link is good. nut even if it stays only as party buff its fine.
id mbe also implement some kind of HoT to have it during lvling for dungeons, or Earth Shield to be castable on friendly targets. and also, id change the mecanics of healing. not to be booring. in a way so that all healing spell are usable ( LHW/HW ) and desired. like haste gaining on crit, some healing power stacking etc..

those hit chance, crit chance, range increase, threat reducing talents could be combined and not put accross all trees for simplicity.

i also liked that Thunderhead talent. it does need rework, but it was exellent addition.
Bloodlust also i think should not be a capstone, but rather single target spell. and weaker one ofc.

all specs should bring smtn extra and unique. ok, for resto CH, mbe even a specific totem. id say a Clensing Curse Totem, since we do not have a MTT. for enha as a capstone mbe a WfT. for ele it could also be somekind of totem.

- totems in general needs a rework, and talents affecting totems also need rework.
- hex should be base spell
- totems should be talented in a way so that a any fresh shaman cant be usefull just as full geared/fully speced just bcoz all totems are available
- for uniqueness, ele tree should get a specific totem like Totem of Wrath
- mbe introduce some new totems like endurance totem, or totem that will give us casting/mele speed or make them as shaman racial ability so that all shamans get hex
- talented spirit wolf should be instant cast. but even better id completely remove shapeshifting shamans. id make something else like cyclone armor or smtn
- earth shock should be devided into earth shock + wind shear
- enhancement should get smtn else to do instead just melee autoattack. a talent that will give us a instant cast or at least a chance to get instant cast. id do it in a way when we make a mele crit we have a chance to get instant cast. Shamanistic Rage + Maelstrom of some sort.
- and some kind of caster weapon imbue could be added.
- ancestral knowledge could incease intelect

serpent ward or poison/shadow dart could be a troll shaman racial and hex to be base spell.
same could be for feral spirits, not to be a orc racial.

as i sed tons and tons of ideas and sugestions..

[amanagor]

its quite obvious that the devs don't give two shits about shaman. Idk why you still waste your time trying to get them to spend any time thinking about the class.

[Voodoochile]

its quite obvious that the devs don't give two shits about shaman. Idk why you still waste your time trying to get them to spend any time thinking about the class.

Because I love Shaman, and I used to love this server until CC2. And I'd like to believe that the dev team was simply being ill advised on Shaman design than pigheaded or malicious.

those hit chance, crit chance, range increase, threat reducing talents could be combined and not put accross all trees for simplicity.

Bloodlust also i think should not be a capstone, but rather single target spell. and weaker one ofc.

- hex should be base spell
- totems should be talented in a way so that a any fresh shaman cant be usefull just as full geared/fully speced just bcoz all totems are available
- for uniqueness, ele tree should get a specific totem like Totem of Wrath

- enhancement should get smtn else to do instead just melee autoattack. a talent that will give us a instant cast or at least a chance to get instant cast. id do it in a way when we make a mele crit we have a chance to get instant cast. Shamanistic Rage + Maelstrom of some sort.

Personally, I believe that keeping the hit and crit chances separate throughout the trees is necessary to incentivize cross-speccing and providing an extra angle on theory crafting around talents and ones own gear.

- Bloodlust suffered alot pre-CC2 from the fact that it was essentially Power Infusion on a DPS class who would much rather cast it on themselves, and when they didn't their DPS suffered greatly for it. It just felt bad. Maybe if they reintroduce it in that way, then they could make it so the shaman always gets a BL on themself when they cast it. But I think BL as it is is fine.

- Shaman not having hard CC in their kit is a major balance point, tho. The trade off is high dmg, good mid-range kiting, utility, and survivability. Making Hex base kit would ruin this bakance as it would give Ele free rain as its hardest counter is really just being able to hit them (and Curse of Tongues)

- I think that focusing around unique totems is the obvious choice, and fits with the class identity quite well, but it felt like there could be room for Spec Fantasy as opposed to Class Fantasy. Again, I don't think my way is necessarily the best way to go about this issue, but I began to feel that maybe an Elemental Shaman should feel more like a conduit of Thunderous Power, a mighty Farseer as opposed to a totem jockey. Maybe we could squeeze in a spell hast totem, but a Totem of Wrath would perhaps be too much in addition to these changes. It would have to be inplace of, which would swap from Spec Fantasy to Class Fantasy.

- I thought about making each charge of Lightning Shield reducing the cast time on CL (maxing out at instant) as a part of Thunderhead or instead of Stable Shield, but I couldn't figure out how to make it so it was only usable for Tank Shaman specifically. Because I believe having this as a part of Enh DPS rotation would make them too strong, and allowing it to be below 21 cost would make it a balancing issue for Ele Shamans. They would need to give something up and, again, I couldn't decide on what exactly that would be.

[Voodoochile]

Ever got feedback from official side?

Like from the devs? Never, no. I would've believed the devs hadn't even looked in the Shaman forum until I read the most recent patch notes addressing Shaman feedback

[Surtugal]

Hello, I would just like to preface this with an admittance that I fucking suck in terms of providing visuals for things

FYI https://talent-builder.haaxor1689.dev/c/class-changes-2

[Voodoochile]

Hello, I would just like to preface this with an admittance that I fucking suck in terms of providing visuals for things

FYI https://talent-builder.haaxor1689.dev/c/class-changes-2

And here are my talent trees, good sir. https://talent-builder.haaxor1689.dev/c ... l4eruYTh_7

[boxcar221]

These suggestions are great, was like WTH when started reading, but upon finishing, I really started to appreciate the effort put into thinking this out. Really like what you suggest to do w/ WF totems.

Using LS on friendly targets? Removing it from shaman himself or not? Clarify, hence it makes huge difference, as I'm speaking from PVP point of view.
Also making SS baseline would effectively make Ele/Resto shamans into an even better version of Vanilla Enh shamans to some extent, and I think this is something to be argued about.

[Voodoochile]

These suggestions are great, was like WTH when started reading, but upon finishing, I really started to appreciate the effort put into thinking this out. Really like what you suggest to do w/ WF totems.

Using LS on friendly targets? Removing it from shaman himself or not? Clarify, hence it makes huge difference, as I'm speaking from PVP point of view.
Also making SS baseline would effectively make Ele/Resto shamans into an even better version of Vanilla Enh shamans to some extent, and I think this is something to be argued about.

Im not sure what would work balance wise, if LS should be 1 per shaman or 1 for themself+ 1 for their ally. I think I'd lean toward 1 per shaman, personally.

As far as the power skew of making SS baseline, the way that this rework is formatted is to enable Enhancement to have access to more utility from the other trees than Ele or Resto. The Spirit Link modifiers Twisted Nether and Spirit Walk are both below the 21 point mark so that Enhance has access to either while also having access to their new WF talent, which is also an improvement from current WF in the ability to also have the 4.4% crit/dodge bonus of Agi Totem.

I understand tho that this is purely theoretical st the moment, so perhaps I'm wrong in my thought process.

[Farseer Wolves]

Twisted Nether - Spirit Linked enemies will now echo 10% of their damage taken onto the other linked targets instead of redistributing it. 30s duration, 2m cd. (1 Rank)

Wait, echo how? Like, will it split a bonus 10% of the damage dealt between the 2 linked units, or will each linked unit take a bonus 10% of the damage dealt?

[Voodoochile]

Twisted Nether - Spirit Linked enemies will now echo 10% of their damage taken onto the other linked targets instead of redistributing it. 30s duration, 2m cd. (1 Rank)

Wait, echo how? Like, will it split a bonus 10% of the damage dealt between the 2 linked units, or will each linked unit take a bonus 10% of the damage dealt?

I think it would need to be each for it to be impactful. I've edited the description to be a little more clear.

[boxcar221]

Im not sure what would work balance wise, if LS should be 1 per shaman or 1 for themself+ 1 for their ally. I think I'd lean toward 1 per shaman, personally.

BTW, if your LS on friendly target design thing is about actively speeding up the melee abilities CDs, I suggest it could be done another way, like reducing the CDs by 1 sec each time the shaman places a totem that has a cooldown, for example fire nova totem, or earthbind totem; or/either a mana expensive totem that is worth more than X mana, adding magma and grace of air totems to the list, from the top of my head. To my view, it would be more convenient (especially in PVP) and effective rather than targetting partymates/writing macros to target them each time.

[Voodoochile]

Im not sure what would work balance wise, if LS should be 1 per shaman or 1 for themself+ 1 for their ally. I think I'd lean toward 1 per shaman, personally.

BTW, if your LS on friendly target design thing is about actively speeding up the melee abilities CDs, I suggest it could be done another way, like reducing the CDs by 1 sec each time the shaman places a totem that has a cooldown, for example fire nova totem, or earthbind totem; or/either a mana expensive totem that is worth more than X mana, adding magma and grace of air totems to the list, from the top of my head. To my view, it would be more convenient (especially in PVP) and effective rather than targetting partymates/writing macros to target them each time.

The purpose of adding that stat to the Thunderhead talent is to incentivize using it despite its inconvenience of targeting an ally and spending mana and a gcd (as casting it on someone else provides the caster no benefit otherwise, and players tend to not like things that dont tangibly benefit themselves), as well as giving it a place within your rotation (when Chain Lightning or SS are on cd).

The goal is to make the supportive playstyle appealing to the audience that is willing to accept Shaman being turned into another Warrior, or another one button caster.

[ForumGentleman]

Appreciate that you try to make shaman gameplay more interesting.

It definitly needs it, especially heal and Ele.

But I will admit I am not a big fan of some of your suggestions which are overall too pve oriented

[Johnkw]

you are rework the role,not fix it. it's complex to balance game mechanic. you may focus on at most 2 or 3 point, not everything. that's easy to implement.

[Voodoochile]

Appreciate that you try to make shaman gameplay more interesting.

It definitly needs it, especially heal and Ele.

But I will admit I am not a big fan of some of your suggestions which are overall too pve oriented

Can you gives some examples for I can work on these points? Because I am not experienced at all with CC2 pvp. All I know is that ele is still a hardcasting class with weak burst after CC2 and that enhance murders people.

[Farseer Wolves]

I was thinking on this for a bit, but have you considered swapping elemental weapons with flurry to incentivize its use on ele? Like having a frostbrand buff being exclusive to enhance doesnt really make sense when there isn't duel wielding because no enh sham uses that spell when wf exists, and less commonly flametongue

[Voodoochile]

I was thinking on this for a bit, but have you considered swapping elemental weapons with flurry to incentivize its use on ele? Like having a frostbrand buff being exclusive to enhance doesnt really make sense when there isn't duel wielding because no enh sham uses that spell when wf exists, and less commonly flametongue

Yeah, that talent does feel like it has alot of useless text in it, because I genuinely forgot that it had effects other than WF and Rockbiter. Maybe splitting the effects into the other trees or maybe into the lower section of enh so other classes can get the flametongue and frost brand effects would work.

[Maclar]

as a fellow ele enjoyer i would take those changes but that last talent is elemental tree should only be a group wide buff stacking to 3 times that would be a nice buff for caster grp and elemental shaman having a place in caster grp

[Voodoochile]

as a fellow ele enjoyer i would take those changes but that last talent is elemental tree should only be a group wide buff stacking to 3 times that would be a nice buff for caster grp and elemental shaman having a place in caster grp

I don't really know how to feel about this. On the one hand ele probably should have some incentive to be placed in a caster group, but on the other the buff might feel too weak when you consider that the Nightfall axe can proc the effect for all spell dmg against that target not limited by groups.

If we could have incentive I'd still prefer to see it in the form of a totem. I originally felt like the TBC route of Totem of Wrath felt right, but since I've thought it over it, personally, feels a bit lackluster to simply have a caster totem added as the keystone, especially one not strong enough to be on a CD.

Perhaps we could fit in a form of Wrath of Air totem so ele can still have use out of their fire totems as a part of their rotation. If we went this route i'd prefer to see it in the form of spell haste, and this way we could probably reason it into the +21 point range of the ele tree.

And with this change then maybe we could change Bloodlust so melee OR spell crits provides the BL buff to allies so it is viable to a raid could have multiple ele shaman with either the Farseer's Wrath or Bloodlust each.

[Noce]

we could mbe make, if we dont make a WfT as a capstone for enha, we could make as ele capstone to WfT affect spells instead of melee. thaht could be interesting. or just make a new totem and problem solved.

[Terrydavis]

shamans are already very overtuned. there should not be any shaman buff at all under no circumstances.

shamans are the easiest class to gear in the game, every damn melee group is crying for a shaman so people will bring green geared shamans into naxx so these groups finally shut up. the penis meter is real. if you play in a guild you know that everything is irrelevant except your spot on the dmg meter. you get NO respect unless you are high up in the dmg = people in raiding guilds cry for shamans 10+ times per week.

in pvp shamans just melt people. if a shaman OPENS on me that is already 80 % of my hp gone INSTANTLY, in both specs. so many disgusting abilities.
sometimes i imagine a world where i can press tab and not get some stupid totem as my target but alas that world stays a dream

also shaman healer completely obliterates most priests (u know, the original healer class that is 5 times more difficult to gear because everyone rolls on cloth). you can outheal a shaman but it is extremely difficult and you need to play your best for the entire raid with all consumes loaded.

its a complete joke class, press 2 buttons to win = shamans should have many of their support abilities removed since they are full damage / full healer class now.

[Guillaume]

Elemental Devastation - Gain 1/2/3% Spell Crit Chance. Your offensive spell crits grant you 3/6/9% melee crit chance for 10s (3 Rank)
Call of Thunder - Increases the critical strike chance of your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells by an additional 1/2/3/4/6%.
Tidal Mastery - Increase your spell crit chance by 1/2/3/4/5% for your healing & lightning spells.
Lightning Mastery - Reduce the cast time of your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning by 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 seconds. Spell crit bonus damage is increased by 15/30/45/60/75%
Farseer's Wrath - ACTIVE: Chain Lightning has its CD reset and has no CD for 10 seconds. 6 minute CD.
PASSIVE: Each Chain Lightning hit applies a debuff increasing all spell damage taken by 5% to the victim, stacking up to 3 times. Crits apply 2 stacks.

You sure that's enough crit? Might as well implement the "pwn" button while we are at it.

Forked Tongue - Having a Searing Totem active allows second Fire Totem to be active at the same time, this includes a 2nd Searing Totem. (1 Rank. Requires Call of Flame Rank 3)

I see you won't let that pesky engeneering requirement to use a Goblin Sapper Charge stand in the way of "the most oppressed class" so you just went ahead and removed it. More mining nodes for us alliance plebs I guess.

Elemental Mastery - When an offensive spells misses, resists, or is interrupted, your next Shock spell has a 100% hit chance, its range match your Lightning Bolt's, no mana cost, and incurs no GCD. 45 second CD.

I got a better idea.

Shaman Crit Rising: Revengeance - When an offensive spell fails to oneshot your target, your next autoattack has a 69420% hit and crit chance, its range matches your Far Sight ability. No mana cost, instead drains mana from all gnomes currently online on the server. Also pierces Paladins' Divine Shield and sends a tactical nuke to Blizzard's HQ for daring disrespect the shaman class by not making this ability baseline on lvl 1. CD optional.

[Akarui]

The latest changes in 1.17 - level out the identity of the shaman class and simply pull up their effectiveness in each individual role of the tree (like mdd, rdd, heal). You suggest to further develop this trend, with which I completely disagree.
Firstly, reducing aggro is necessary for everyone except tanks, who often use spells with high aggro. Playing as a tank, I simply kick shamans who repeatedly ignore requests NOT to use earth shock in the first seconds of the fight.
Secondly, Enh Sham more than ever embodies the meme as a class of one buff - windfury. It was fun as a child, now it's boring

For 10 years of playing as a shaman, I always wanted Blizzard to buff totems. So that totems correctly chosen for the situation would give an effective increase. For example, pets for a hunter, warlock give about 20-40% efficiency. Also, totems should change greatly as each talent branch is pumped. For example. In the 4-5 row, the restoring shaman is an improved version of the HS and MS totem. The healing totem (in addition to healing) gives a buff that increases the effectiveness of healing by 5/10/15%. The mana totem additionally reduces the cost of using healing spells.
In the elemental branch, for example, GoA would give intellect instead of agility, and +1/2/3% spell crit.
And the same for the ench shaman. Over the years, I've gotten too tired of the class. More precisely, in Draenor, it was made too primitive for 4-year-olds. Therefore, for the most part, 60% dps is to buff windfury once every 30 minutes and just pray to the god of randomness.

You don't need to consider shamans as an alternative version of casters, healers and mdds. This is a unique class that combines all these roles together with an indispensable support

Personally, I would really like to see the shaman's effectiveness without totems nerfed. But at the same time, to increase the importance of totems VERY MUCH. For wowturtle, this is of course a very difficult task, to fit 4 roles into 3 branches)) mdd, rdd, heal and undertank

[Voodoochile]

Elemental Devastation - Gain 1/2/3% Spell Crit Chance. Your offensive spell crits grant you 3/6/9% melee crit chance for 10s (3 Rank)
Call of Thunder - Increases the critical strike chance of your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells by an additional 1/2/3/4/6%.
Tidal Mastery - Increase your spell crit chance by 1/2/3/4/5% for your healing & lightning spells.
Lightning Mastery - Reduce the cast time of your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning by 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 seconds. Spell crit bonus damage is increased by 15/30/45/60/75%
Farseer's Wrath - ACTIVE: Chain Lightning has its CD reset and has no CD for 10 seconds. 6 minute CD.
PASSIVE: Each Chain Lightning hit applies a debuff increasing all spell damage taken by 5% to the victim, stacking up to 3 times. Crits apply 2 stacks.

You sure that's enough crit? Might as well implement the "pwn" button while we are at it.

1) The only crit I added on that list that didnt exist before was 3% spell crit on Elemental Devastation. As a matter of fact, the crit bonus is REDUCING shaman crit damage from how much is does right now AND Shaman would also lose their guaranteed spell crit on Elemental Mastery.

Forked Tongue - Having a Searing Totem active allows second Fire Totem to be active at the same time, this includes a 2nd Searing Totem. (1 Rank. Requires Call of Flame Rank 3)

I see you won't let that pesky engeneering requirement to use a Goblin Sapper Charge stand in the way of "the most oppressed class" so you just went ahead and removed it. More mining nodes for us alliance plebs I guess.

2) You know that searing totem on a ES+Naxx geared Ele Shaman only does an avg of 80dps and does not have any crit scaling at all, right? This plus the rework would scrap the Flame Guidance talent that increased its range and made it target flame shocked opponents.

Elemental Mastery - When an offensive spells misses, resists, or is interrupted, your next Shock spell has a 100% hit chance, its range match your Lightning Bolt's, no mana cost, and incurs no GCD. 45 second CD.

I got a better idea.

Shaman Crit Rising: Revengeance - When an offensive spell fails to oneshot your target, your next autoattack has a 69420% hit and crit chance, its range matches your Far Sight ability. No mana cost, instead drains mana from all gnomes currently online on the server. Also pierces Paladins' Divine Shield and sends a tactical nuke to Blizzard's HQ for daring disrespect the shaman class by not making this ability baseline on lvl 1. CD optional.

3) My brother in christ, you are getting mad about an "Overpower" ability that doesn't even reset the shock CD or give any extra damage.


Like, genuinely it just looks like you want to be mad at something. Look upon the changes I've put forth, and compare them to what is. Think on it critically, cause and effect, gains AND losses.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

shamans are already very overtuned. there should not be any shaman buff at all under no circumstances.

shamans are the easiest class to gear in the game, every damn melee group is crying for a shaman so people will bring green geared shamans into naxx so these groups finally shut up. the penis meter is real.

Shamans are not overtuned, and even if this were true, these changes are not a buff. This is a rework. Shaman would lose aspects that exist atm like long range searing totems, guaranteed crit cd, spell crit dmg and LB spell scaling in just the Ele tree, and in the resto tree they would lose a portion of their mana sustain and remove the CH cast speed to replace it with aoe buffing.

And the allowance of green geared classes is attributable to the power creep of CC2 which trivialized raid content, which is one of many points of failure from that patch. The situation you propose here is no different than bringing in a feral druid for Leader of the Pack. And either way, the changes above sees that WF would no longer be available on all shamans.

This is not intended to be a buff. It is a rework.

in pvp shamans just melt people. if a shaman OPENS on me that is already 80 % of my hp gone INSTANTLY, in both specs. so many disgusting abilities.
sometimes i imagine a world where i can press tab and not get some stupid totem as my target but alas that world stays a dream

That is not a Shaman issue, that is a CC2 issue and it is already in the works to be addressed. Smite priests and Arcane Mages are doing the exact same thing except they are actually functioning classes on top of that, while Shaman burst got NERFED in CC2 making the worst caster in every way.

And if you read through the changes I put forth, and like I said above, I would see Shaman burst nerfed even further to facilitate these changes making Ele a more unique caster than 'funny big number' and to make the Shaman class more rounded as a whole.

also shaman healer completely obliterates most priests (u know, the original healer class that is 5 times more difficult to gear because everyone rolls on cloth). you can outheal a shaman but it is extremely difficult and you need to play your best for the entire raid with all consumes loaded.

its a complete joke class, press 2 buttons to win = shamans should have many of their support abilities removed since they are full damage / full healer class now.

Shaman healers are not the best tank healers nor will they ever be. And if you are looking at healing throughput exclusively, then you are simply evaluating healer value wrong because healing isnt DPSing. The objective is to ensure your allies' health dont hit zero. But shamans have had purification removed in CC2 and replaced with more mana sustain and faster CH. Both of which I would see replaced due to their trivialization of healing and awkwardly, and counter-intuitively, re-enforcing CH spam despite the devs saying they wanted to mix up their rotation.

[Upsetlobster]

First of all, I love the effort you put into thinking about this! It's great seeing constructive propositions for balance changes .

On the matter of WF totem, I completely agree it should be the capstone. Otherwise it's too hard to buff the shaman without making it OP.

I also really appreciate the idea of leaning into the threat mechanics, removing passive threat all around ( a problem would still be vanish and feign death) and try to make the threat system something more engaging to play with, rather than the dmg meter.

All blast all the time gets super boring super fast, and encourages a toxic mindset I would love to see discouraged.

[Guillaume]

1) The only crit I added on that list that didnt exist before was 3% spell crit on Elemental Devastation. As a matter of fact, the crit bonus is REDUCING shaman crit damage from how much is does right now AND Shaman would also lose their guaranteed spell crit on Elemental Mastery.

Removing one crit in 3 mins in exchange for a gratuitous flat 10% crit on melee abilities? How often would it proc with a truckload of crit on spells your class already has? If a paladin would be gaining so much crit for melee and spells at the same time, your lot would be whining about alliance bias (that's what you were doing during CC1 for WAY less, Shockadins were nowhere as bursty as your ele rework is poised to be)

You know that searing totem on a ES+Naxx geared Ele Shaman only does an avg of 80dps and does not have any crit scaling at all, right? This plus the rework would scrap the Flame Guidance talent that increased its range and made it target flame shocked opponents.

You know Searing Totem lasts for a whole minute, right? You also know is not only about damage but preventing going out of combat, interrupting bandages, consuming reflects, providing pushback for casters, wasting a GCD/swing time to remove it?

3) My brother in christ, you are getting mad about an "Overpower" ability that doesn't even reset the shock CD or give any extra damage.

Like, genuinely it just looks like you want to be mad at something. Look upon the changes I've put forth, and compare them to what is. Think on it critically, cause and effect, gains AND losses.

You are bemoaning CC2 burst meta, while your talent ideas basically boil down to giving even more burst. Overpower needs dodge to proc, not a miss or parry, and it's a melee, whereas your talent basically goes "if me fails to hit stuff, me hits stuff regardless", a better comparison would be with Arcane Surge, which still does not proc on interrupts and does not have an outrageous 36y range.

Also, I'm curious to see what are kind of losses you propose, maybe adding cooldown on Purge? Scaling down Lightning Shield damage that routinely hits for 300-400 by at least 50%, instead of giving 6 more charges on what is basically ranged Retaliation with no CD?

[Bjorn88]

All this talk of 'rotations' make it seem this is only pve considered?

From an Ele pvp perspective, no. You need to replace Electrify with the old Elemental Fury. End of story.

[Voodoochile]

All this talk of 'rotations' make it seem this is only pve considered?

From an Ele pvp perspective, no. You need to replace Electrify with the old Elemental Fury. End of story.

Why?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1) The only crit I added on that list that didnt exist before was 3% spell crit on Elemental Devastation. As a matter of fact, the crit bonus is REDUCING shaman crit damage from how much is does right now AND Shaman would also lose their guaranteed spell crit on Elemental Mastery.

Removing one crit in 3 mins in exchange for a gratuitous flat 10% crit on melee abilities? How often would it proc with a truckload of crit on spells your class already has? If a paladin would be gaining so much crit for melee and spells at the same time, your lot would be whining about alliance bias (that's what you were doing during CC1 for WAY less, Shockadins were nowhere as bursty as your ele rework is poised to be)

First off, it is not a "gratuitous flat 10% crit on melee abilities" it was 9% melee crit on a spell crit that existed in Vanilla. They changed it on Twow because it didn't have much synergy with Enh shaman because, as it turns out, the spec that does the bulk of its damage with melee swings doesnt benefit that much from stacking spell crit. The purpose of this talent is to give ele some bite when its in melee range because ele is very likely to crit. Enh shaman are maybe pushing 12% spell crit with T3.5 gear and balance wise the reason why this talent was even below avg in vanilla was because Shaman didnt have free hit all over their talents and had to actually gear for hit chance, AND shaman has no form of Hard CC aside from Troll Hex, which is ass.

It wouldn't be balanced for Paladins because they have several forms of hard CC within their kit and already one shot people when they get in range. Paladins are still fundamentally broken and uninteractive. They are not fun to play as or against in pvp in both CC1 and CC2. And again, read the rework. Burst is being explicitly nerfed in my rework. Like..... read my man.

You know that searing totem on a ES+Naxx geared Ele Shaman only does an avg of 80dps and does not have any crit scaling at all, right? This plus the rework would scrap the Flame Guidance talent that increased its range and made it target flame shocked opponents.

You know Searing Totem lasts for a whole minute, right? You also know is not only about damage but preventing going out of combat, interrupting bandages, consuming reflects, providing pushback for casters, wasting a GCD/swing time to remove it?

Why shouldn't they have this interaction? They have no hard CC in their kit (except for Troll Hex, which again, sucks ass) and AGAIN burst is being nerfed here in favor of dps and utility.

3) My brother in christ, you are getting mad about an "Overpower" ability that doesn't even reset the shock CD or give any extra damage.

Like, genuinely it just looks like you want to be mad at something. Look upon the changes I've put forth, and compare them to what is. Think on it critically, cause and effect, gains AND losses.

You are bemoaning CC2 burst meta, while your talent ideas basically boil down to giving even more burst. Overpower needs dodge to proc, not a miss or parry, and it's a melee, whereas your talent basically goes "if me fails to hit stuff, me hits stuff regardless", a better comparison would be with Arcane Surge, which still does not proc on interrupts and does not have an outrageous 36y range.

Again.... Burst. Is. Nerfed. In. This. Re. Work. 75% crit dmg is less than even Electrify is right now, you understand that right? Lightning Bolt being made a 2.5 sec cast baseline means it will have a lower spell coefficient, AND Chain Lightning would be a 2 second cast instead of a 1.5 second cast because the Lightning Mastery talent got nerfed. And there is no guaranteed crit cd anymore.

Please. For the love of God, just read.

Also 100% hit chance does not mean it cannot be resisted. Because, you know, spell resist exists. As a matter of fact, Arcane Surge cannot be partially or fully resisted. And THAT IS A BASE. LINE. ABILITY. You don't even need to spec for that as a mage, and their burst is still better than Ele Shaman in CC2, so wtf is the point of Ele shaman? I am trading burst for consistency, and if you had a consistent stance, you'd agree with these changes.

[Akarui]

ok. let's continue the madness carousel and add a pwn button to all classes
Rogue. If Sinister Strike misses/blocks/parries/dodges - the next backstab can be used without spending energy
Mage. If Firebolt resists/misses, then the next Fireblast has an instant cast and 0 mana.
Hunter. If Aimed Shot misses/dodges, then you can immediately shoot another one instantly and without spending mana.
Warlock. I don't even know. If Shadow Bolt gain resist, then you can instantly cast Soul Fire without spending Soul Shards.
It's so cool to win even if you were unlucky once.

Shaman is a combined class. Unlike Druids, Shadow Priests, he has no restrictions on healing if he chose the role of DD. Unlike hunters, it does not drop much in efficiency without totems. Unlike all classes, it has a rich arsenal of buffs for the entire party (totems). I think shamans cannot and should not be considered as a full DD. This is DD + support and CC2 is the biggest mistake at the moment and a disaster for balance. In best case, shamans should be strongly nerfed, and the bonuses from totems for shamans should be strengthened. Then the class will retain its peculiarity. And to make another caster or MDD from shaman - no, this is nonsense.

[Voodoochile]

ok. let's continue the madness carousel and add a pwn button to all classes
Rogue. If Sinister Strike misses/blocks/parries/dodges - the next backstab can be used without spending energy
Mage. If Firebolt resists/misses, then the next Fireblast has an instant cast and 0 mana.
Hunter. If Aimed Shot misses/dodges, then you can immediately shoot another one instantly and without spending mana.
Warlock. I don't even know. If Shadow Bolt gain resist, then you can instantly cast Soul Fire without spending Soul Shards.
It's so cool to win even if you were unlucky once.

Rogue have a fuck ton of free hit chance within their talent trees as well as a fuck ton of cc in their Base kit. they don't need an "Overpower"
Mages have Arcane Surge
Hunters have Mongoose Strike
Warlocks also have a fuckton of free hit for their dots as well as have hard cc with no cd in the form of fear, and they also have Death Coil which is instacast and puts an enhanced fear on the target that cannot be cleansed. Also they have Nightfall procs which makes Shadowbolt instant cast.

Shaman is a combined class. Unlike Druids, Shadow Priests, he has no restrictions on healing if he chose the role of DD. Unlike hunters, it does not drop much in efficiency without totems. Unlike all classes, it has a rich arsenal of buffs for the entire party (totems). I think shamans cannot and should not be considered as a full DD. This is DD + support and CC2 is the biggest mistake at the moment and a disaster for balance. In best case, shamans should be strongly nerfed, and the bonuses from totems for shamans should be strengthened. Then the class will retain its peculiarity. And to make another caster or MDD from shaman - no, this is nonsense.

Druids and Spriests also have multiple forms of hard CC, and they have the same limitation on healing as Shaman does except that a Shaman has no peel in his base kit. Ele Shaman already is not a full on dps, but even if it were, my proposal, the OP, is replacing damage with utility. You are legitimately not addressing any points within the rework