Lightning Shock - Fixing Enhancer Part 1/x

[Kairion]

It is not particularly controversial to say that enhancement shaman is one of the weaker class specs that a group can bring to a raid. At the same time enhancement is one of the best classes in the entire game for burst damage.

In order to make him more attractive to raids, his personal dps should be helped out a bit, while not increasing his burst potential even more.

In PvP players can reach hitcap fairly quickly. Even with just skilling Nature's guidance shaman has a 98% chance to land his shocks in PvP. This is in contrast to PvE where even with Nature’s Guidance shocks still have a 14% chance to miss their targets. It follows that improving spell hit chance for shaman improves his PvE performance while keeping PvP largely unchanged.

There are many different ways to achieve this, but the most elegant in my opinion would be giving shaman a new shock which he was supposed to have during wows development cycle but was rolled into Earthshock in Patch 0.9. Its name was Lightning shock and its referenced here (https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Patch_0.9) . The spell itself remains in the game with the name Shock (https://www.wowhead.com/classic/spell=2608/shock). Many mobs still use it and ist a shock that deals nature damage without extra effect.

Now Lightning Shock would have to be tweaked a little bit. As all different flavors of shocks do provide an extra effect next to their damage. The extra effect for Lightning Shock should be it is guaranteed to hit.
It being guaranteed to hit would be a 100% turtle addition and not the original intent of blizzard

Giving this spell with equal damage & scaling to Earthshock allows enhancers to slot it into their rotation instead of Earthshock. This overall increases his damage done with spells by about 14-17% without generating bonus threat and with no negative impact on PvP.

Now it has to be said, this alone does not make the enhancement shaman viable, but it would be a small step on the road similar to how holy strike is quite a noticeable but not omnipotent improvement to Retri and Protection paladin

Lorewise it also fits well, as Earth, Fire & Water all have their shocks, but the wind element does only have totems but no shock. Lightning Shock neatly closes this gap.

Huge thanks to Daggerfallvanillaenhancedenjoyer on the Turtlewow discord for helping me brainstorm and come up with this idea and providing the sources for the removed Lightning Shock to begin with

[Fishi]

This idea makes a lot of sense, i like it and would love to try it in action!

[Mac]

The scrapped, unused Lightning Shock is still in the game files, as are the tablets that would have taught it. It has a dispel effect attached to it. Changing that to a guaranteed hit effect would be interesting.

[Mrkrissatan]

+1 love the idea

[Gladeshadow]

+1 solid idea for improving PvE without altering PvP.

[Original3]

Big +1

Only thing, I would make differently is the spell hit thingy.
As someone, who is actively raiding as Shaman tank, I can say how unpleasant is that 14% - 17% chance to miss with Earth Shocks. On boss pulls it makes a big polarization of combat. You either get a lot of threat at the begining, that you can sustain with downranking ES and hitting with Rocbiter weapon, or you get resist/miss and it makes you fail your main task as tank.
(by the way, shaman tank has better threat opening potantial than warrior, since we don't have to build up rage)

Shaman Tanks solve this problem with Nat Pagles Broken Reel. But that trinket still has CD and it forces you to lose trinket slot, that could be used for mitigation oriented trinket.

What can solve this? Talents or Gear.

There are two solutions I have:

1. Rework talent Thunderhead (very useless talent)

Row 3 - Reduces the chance, that your opponent resists your Shock spells by 10%

2. Rework Weapon Mastery to Combat Mastery

Row 6 - Increases the damage of your melee weapons by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%. In addition, reduces the chance, that your opponent resists your Shocks spells by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%.

[Knnib4l]

+1

[Darkgestalt]

Not a fan of the original idea of adding another ability for shamans, they have more then enough buttons to press as it is especially on this server. Lets fix what we already have.

But I do agree with the issue and think Original3's plan to be compelling.

Combat Mastery
Increases the damage of your melee weapons by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%. In addition, reduces the chance, that your opponent resists your Shocks spells by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%.

This addresses the problem for all Shocks of all damage types, its deep in Enhancement so wont get picked up on so easily by doubledipping. I like it alot, maybe need to reduce the weapon bonus to 5% instead as to not overbuff.

[Kairion]

Well better general spellhit chance would also be nice, but if shaman is ever to make use out of stormstrike for dps increase, you need a shock to consume it without bonusthreat. Without spellpower a stormstrike boosted earthshock can generate 2k threat (and 1k damage)

That might not be a big deal with shamans poultry dps but its crypling for dungeoncontent and will become an issue if enhancer will get his personal dps increased in some other form
*Huffs copium*

Lightning shock does fill that niche quite naturally without negative impacts for anyone.

[Darkgestalt]

...if shaman is ever to make use out of stormstrike for dps increase, you need a shock to consume it without bonusthreat.

Ye, that is a excellent point to bring up, and a good example of how unfinished the shaman talent trees were before TBC became the new hotness. In all fairness, they should just get rid of the bonus threat of Earthshock, it hurts enha-dps for no good reason. And forcing enha-tank to only use nature damage for tanking just makes them unreliable.

Then, if Turtle-wow cares about it, they can just find a way for shamtanks to deal bonus threat with all shocks.

[Mekunekud]

Well better general spellhit chance would also be nice, but if shaman is ever to make use out of stormstrike for dps increase, you need a shock to consume it without bonusthreat. Without spellpower a stormstrike boosted earthshock can generate 2k threat (and 1k damage)

That might not be a big deal with shamans poultry dps but its crypling for dungeoncontent and will become an issue if enhancer will get his personal dps increased in some other form
*Huffs copium*

Lightning shock does fill that niche quite naturally without negative impacts for anyone.

I think a better solution is to remove the threat modifier from Earth Shock and move it directly to Rockbiter so it can affect any shock, meaning Shamans can tank resistant/immune mobs by changing their shocks. There's no need for a new shock in the lineup when they can just make a current shock viable by a small change that can help shamans elsewhere as well. Also making shocks a melee hit skill like Judgement would be a welcome change that would be a slight nerf to Ele and a huge buff to Enhance.
A new shield explictly for tanking would also be nice. Lightning Shield is all good but costs too much outside initial pre-pull. Instead just give Shamans a nerfed version of the TBC Molten Armour with the crit reduction (helps give them a bonus as tank) and a small reactive damage so they aren't as bad at tanking, at least in 5 mans.

[Kairion]

Melee hittable on Shocks has massive implications that i don't think are helpful for the game.

You trade a higher misschance for being parryable / Dodgeable
How should it interact with stuff light Nightfall & Winter chill. These effects specifically improve spells agains the target.
Elemental devastation turns from bad to 100% useless
It does not fit with classic theme one bit
Physical "elemental attacks" can pierce spellshields
Can it Proc spellbased procs, what about melee based procs?
Does weaponskill make an impact here? because if it does you made Orc even more decisively be the best race than it already is
etc.

Also all interrupts produce a lot of threat. Earthshock is significant here in the sense that it does noticeable damage. Its much more interesting if the class with a kick every 6 seconds has to consider if they really want to kick the boss and risk drawing aggro or rather let the cast trough. Just dumbing down earthshock and hard tying aggro to earthshock makes dedicated tanks better, but funnily enough makes emergency "taunt" with earthshock worse. So these things are all tradeoffs. While the new shock just solves DPS shamans problems without creating any for people who do different things.

[Ravenstone]

As a quick aside, does Stormstrike's next 2 sources of nature damage work for stuff like Wrath from Druids, or even our own Lightning Shield? I've never actually paid attention to whether it did or not. Was wondering whether it'd just make more sense to change Stormstrike to give your next two shocks within 12 seconds the extra damage, allowing your Flame and Frost shocks also affect it, though I think I still prefer the current implementation.

[Kairion]

Yes any sources of nature damage. Unfortunately that includes thunderfury, shocks, wrath, lightningshield and even rogue poisons.

Funnily enough nature dots that are active on the target (deadly poison, serpentsting) also deal more damage but the stacks are not consumed

[Mac]

As a quick aside, does Stormstrike's next 2 sources of nature damage work for stuff like Wrath from Druids, or even our own Lightning Shield? I've never actually paid attention to whether it did or not. Was wondering whether it'd just make more sense to change Stormstrike to give your next two shocks within 12 seconds the extra damage, allowing your Flame and Frost shocks also affect it, though I think I still prefer the current implementation.

Lightning Shield's damage is increased by Stormstrike, but won't consume charges of it.

[Frostyharris]

+1

[Tllap]

+1

[Noce]

imo, we do need alot of changesfor shamans. i did wrote on other posts some ideas.
we need earth shock devided. and we do need ES to give some kind of effect like slow att/cast speed but w/o high threat. give us taunt for that. that Light shock sounds nice also. wind shear should be added to be interrupt. mbe light shock can be that..
in case any1 is interested:
viewtopic.php?p=34002#p34002
viewtopic.php?p=33088#p33088
viewtopic.php?p=22301#p22301

[Noce]

what also shamans need is for every tree to have somekind of nopushback while casting and instant cast ability. enha need it the most. it was solved by Maelstrom Weapon. smtn like this is needed. make all those talents deep into tree so u cant have similar effects or make em nostack or share cd.

and one more time. give us wind shear [not to share cd with shocks ofc+synergy with purge]; smtn to mimic palas Hammer of Justice [light shock, water splash, molten fist..] and Seal of Justice. Seal of Justice could be done by giving us the light weapon imbue that gives same thing - in this case a chance to zapp for some mini stun and dmg. we do lack in cc & survivabilty department alot. also give us clense!

[Kairion]

No shaman needs none of that, why do both shaman and paladin compare themselves to one another not realizing both have considerable upsides over one another. Shaman has a crapton of slows (3separate sources of it) in his toolkit and the best interrupt in the game. You dont need more CC.

Cleanse is also not needed since he gets pruge wich is a similar but more offensive version of it.

Shamans main problem is a lack of sustained dps in both pve and pvp. More bells and whistles on his support toolkit does not solve that problem.

Mealstorm weapon is an option but it does synergize poorly with shamans wanting slow two handed weapons in classic and already struggling to pay manacosts as is. And mealstorm lightning bolts suffer from the same 17% misschance this new shock tries to address within his current kit

[Fishi]

Well, I'd like to scream into the void in here as well;
I feel like shaman is incredibly stunted. We have crazy good tools on paper, but the numbers just fall short, as if we're feared for being too strong on our own, or offering too much power to our allies.
The result is us hitting like wet noodle and offering raw sticks of spaghetti for support.
Please give totems some form of scaling. Totems pale in comparison to anything a paladin can offer at endgame content.
Please give shamans ap from agility AND strength. We already hit lighter than my grandpa's farts, (apart from that one time in combat when wf kicks in, which in itself is also an issue) we have sooo little of both on endgame gear, i don't think this can break the game in any way; the meat of our damage is white hits, so please let's make those white hits count.
Speaking of which, please add threat reduction to AT LEAST windfury, but to the two dps specs as a whole would be hella sweet.
Please consider a proactive way for us to maintain mana.
Please fix weapon imbues, give them some form of scaling as well; ap AND spell power as well, for you can only really stack one, or at least make str/agi + spell power gear available for shamans
Please do something to the tier sets. Them being only good for healing (and mildly okay for ele) hurts a little in the heart.
Please fix Ancestral Knowledge. That talent is crazy useless. (I usually suggest a mp/5=[your level]/2, but please feel free to get creative)
Please fix resto. Even just switching the totem reduction talent to go down to the first row so that we can reach the hit talent with meaningful choices would help a lot to spend the rest of our points more meaningfully.
Please consider adding another melee filler ability available to enh shamans in stead of stormstrike and please make stormstrike baseline, enha needs another melee hitter (a slam-like ability has been brought up in a few spots lately and i am enamored with the idea), ele could use it very well, and as there is no functioning nature damage debuff available to worthy of taking a debuff slot;
Please fix stormsrike debuff. 12 secs of 20% increased nature damage RAIDWIDE would make nature oriented classes feel a lot more validated, and shaman would feel a lot more valid choice to bring to raids.
This is all, from the top of my head, and the bottom of my heart.
Thank you for reading.