Shaman Feedback Megathread

[Kashchei]

After Akalix's recent post on feedback I think it's about time we consolidated and structured a lot of the feedback on Shaman class changes into a concise and easy to read format for the teams consideration.

For the following thread what I would ask is for any suggested to be formatted in the following fashion
- list the spell / ability or talent by it's name
- your changes or thoughts underneath it
- your explanation for this opinion

Be aware of both lore friendliness and power creep and these will be the factors on if any suggestions are implemented.

Spells / Abilities

Call of the Elements
- considering adding this spell from later iterations of the game, constantly using up to 4 GCD's just to set up your totems is unintuitive and a waste of time

Stoneclaw Totem
- consider updating this spell to it's WOTLK counterpart as this spells usefulness drastically falls off as the game progresses and it's heavily outclassed by target dummies as it is.

Fire Nova Totem + Magma Totem
- Consider updating this to Fire Nova as per WOTLK, the mana cost of alternating Fire Nova Totem & Magma Totem is painful and the additional GCD feels pointless. Additionally consider adding the threat generated from from both totem and spell to the Shaman

Flametongue Weapon
- This is the ONLY one of the weapon imbues that is largely outclassed by the others in terms of overall DPS. The PPM of Frostbrand makes it consistent enough to out DPS Flametongue despite it also having a slow. Flametongue should probably give passive spell crit not unlike the WOTLK glyph.

Lightning + Earth + Water Shield's + Thunderhead
The fundamental flaw with any of the shield spells is that they require you to be hit in order to gain any value from them, this is all well and good if you are a tank but outside of that the only other use for them is to spec into thunderhead in order to put them on a tank that can benefit from the additional threat generated from lightning shield or the hp / mana return or earth and water.
My suggestion is to (for starters) add an Armor value to earth shield, enhance tanks struggle to get a sufficient amount of armour compared to their counter parts and suddenly your elemental shields are now something you can alternate between based on the needs of the fight (lightning for initial and continued threat, earth when threat isn't an issue and water when you're desperate for mana and can trade off the mitigation of earth) Additionally water shield should almost definitely have massive MP5 because otherwise it's entirely useless to elemental and resto shamans.

Stormstrike
Vanilla stormstrike is in my opinion one of the worst designed spells in the games history. Even with buffs to it's CD and mana cost as per turtle wow, the debuff completely rail roads the rotation of an otherwise intuitive class design. Prior to getting SS you might typically open with a flame shock, but this would leave your earth shock on cooldown for the short window to try and squeeze 2 in during stormstrikes debuff duration. You are also required to hard spam your earthshock to fit the timing and are now no longer intuitively holding the ES for a potential interrupt. If you are a DPS enhance you are suddenly generating a mess load of threat that your tank doesn't want to deal with either.
In short stormstrike could definitely benefit from a re-work, i've reccomended previously that it gain an effect based on your weapon imbue (root for FB, knock back / taunt for RB, cleave for FT and reduced attack speed / cast time for WF)

Bloodlust
While I wholeheartedly agree with having a more lore friendly version of bloodlust in the game, it is a TERRIBLE enhancement capstone. How many other classes have to commit so much player power in the form of talent points to get access to a 5 MINUTE COOLDOWN that lasts 20 seconds? The best use of bloodlust is not unlike many other shaman features like windfury totem + thunderhead is to just give it to a warrior / other melee. My suggestion is to make bloodlust baseline and create a new capstone.

Nature's Guidance
This talent should be moved into enhance or elemental and I feel like that's a no brainer, resto don't need hit or spell hit to heal and it's an ESSENTIAL talent for either enhance or elemental, making people go into resto for something so necessary is rail roading them into totemic focus / totemic focus / enhanced totems ie "the only value your class has is to buff others".

Hex
hex is probably one of the strangest ways i've seen a spell balanced, it has a 5 minute cooldown, a cast time and it only lasts 6 seconds ... but the target can still deal some damage, but can't cast spells? If it's supposed to CC then it should last longer and function similar to poly, if it's supposed to be used in combat like an extra kick or damage mitigation then why such a long cast time, it can't be used on bosses or anything particularly threatening either so I'm really unsure what the team planned for this ability. Maybe make it instant cast, ranged, 3 second incap on a 2 minute cooldown or something idk.

Weapon Imbues + Totems for Elemental / Resto
Given that weapon imbues and totems make up such a big chunk of what spells shamans get access to, it's pretty bad that A LOT of them provide little to no benefit to elemental or resto players. It still very much feels like the best use of your totems is focus on having melee around to benefit from them, eventually when wrath of air / skyfury totem are added this issue is corrected. I don't think we need another 5 totems to resolve that problem though. Either convert windfury and flametongue into their WOTLK counterparts or consider adding spell haste or SP bonuses to totems such as grace of air and searing totem. (this also creates new options for people opting for spellhance)

Last but definitely not least
Give us polearms for crying outloud I mean come on they are basically just spears and it creates a lot of new options for gear hunting.

I know a lot of these changes might seem wrath-centric but please understand I don't really like shaman from BC onwards, dual wielding sucks and mechanics like maelstrom stacks / sham rage are absolutely the wrong direction to go in and will power creep so quickly it's not funny.

Thank you for getting to the end if you did (sorry for the long post) I look forward to hearing any and all feedback.

[Williamson75]

Yeah some of them are rather large and difficult to read through I'll post mine here and some from other people in the mega thread.

Primal Strike or Elemental Slam
First thing is this must have a CD of at least 6second to prevent spam. We don't need CS. Second is we should make sure that it has a cast like slam, I have seen others say next hit but I want something more active. Not a rip on holy strike. Doing this keeps it from buffing PvP due to how shamans function there. You will be kiting or being kited. The Third part can be flexible. I see two main ways for this to scale. Weapon damage + 25% spell power (encouraging spellhance) or AP ratio like blood thirst (45%) + 25% spell power.

Nature's Harmony
This would tie your shock and elemental weapon enhances together to have other options than windfury. IE: Frost shock/Frostbrand. This would need a base damage and a SP mod. For this I look to SoR. It shouldn't scale as well though. I would recommend about an 8% sp mod per 1s of weapon speed.

Frostfire
This talent would buff Frostbrand and flametongue damage by 25%/50% either base damage or increase the sp scaling mod by 7%/15%. Right now its windfury or nothing for enhance shamans. I would like to add more reasons to swap that.

Embracing the Warrior
This one is completely options but it is a simple way to reduce the cast speed on elemental slam. This might be a tad too much like improved slam because it basically is

Elemental Reaction
This one has a few different ideas. All of which are not my own. Basically throw your shield at the enemy. For lightning shield it deals damage still can't crit, water shield is mana to the shaman, and the last is a self heal from earth shield. How to proc it has more options. A recent one is a chance on melee crit or spell crit. The other is a 10% chance on hit. I like the first one more since it scales better with gearing. This is another reason to play hybrid but still buffs the melee side.

Critical Synergy
This decreases the chance for the target to resist your shocks by 3%/6%/9% and increases spell crit by 33%/66%/100%. Also not my suggestion but still really good. Might be better to work as a proc from a melee crit but overall its good.

Improved Shields
This one increases your shield effects by 5%/10%/15%. The key to this that makes it different is it affects earth and water shield too. Seems pretty simple

Storm Shield
This one is not a talent but a new ability. Its 1/4 of lightning shield damage but it is an AoE proc. This would help with aoe and shaman tank aoe aggro. The other option for this came from another poster: As long Lightning Shield is active, it will deal X/X/X% damage & jumps over to two additional nearby enemys, after you land a hit with a damage spell. Each jump reduces the damage by 30%. This calls to chain lightning and still does roughly the same damage. That version was another talent. I feel it should be a stand alone spell instead.

Lightning Shock
Earth shock but without the threat added to it. That's it.

Cleanse Spirit
removes curses, poisons, and diseases. Seems to be a rather simple thing but don't know if that would be too good. credit goes to another person.

Nature's Guidance
This is a recommendation to swap the talent. 3% hit is fine should be at least 8% for spell though or 9% for it to fit better

Curse of Elements
This is for a change for locks that would benefit shaman greatly mostly elemental. Add a buff to nature the same way for the other already on it. Just doesn't make sense to not have nature.

Rafale
This is some of their ideas. I think a good way to improve Enh Shamans would be to improve Stormstrike with an effect linked to your active shield :
- Lightning Shield : Deals damage equal to 100% of the charge to nearby enemies
- Earth Shield : Restores health equal to 50% of the charge to you and nearby party members
- Water Shield : Restores mana equal to 50% of the charge to you and nearby party members
Only comment is I dont want shamans to be only support stuck.

Haroone
This is their idea. If we're looking at potential enhancement buffs, I can't recall if it was this thread or a similar one, but someone suggested a melee attack that changed based off weapon enhancement and I think that would be really unique and cool if handled properly. Here are my ideas based off that:

Rockbiter: Next attack cleaves all targets in front of the target for X (lets say 75%) of a normal attack's physical damage, but with twice the threat generation affecting all affected enemies.
Flametongue: Next attack deals bonus damage Y (normal attack damage + spell power ratio) as full fire damage.
Windfury: Next attack is a guaranteed windfury proc that also interrupts (gives a non-threat boosted interrupt on a separate cd as shocks)
Frostbrand: Next attack deals bonus damage Z (normal attack damage + lower spell power ratio) as full frost damage and slowing the target.
I am conflicted personally on changing storm strike this way but i felt this needed to be here.

Bloodlust
This as a max talent is very mid. We are often only using this on the tanks to increase their threat letting other dps go wild or we are putting on the highest dps. I have seen two main ideas for this. I advocate making it baseline. But Refale had a good idea make it 5% haste to your group but only proc on melee crit making it enhance only not having resto grabbing it instead.

Shaman Tanking
Shaman tanks need more mitigation and a way taunt if possible could tie the stoneclaw totem to the shaman as a taunt or could double threat gen while down. I do not know much on this subject but I am listing the most common complaint.

Resto Shaman
For this I don't know too very much about but the talents are not very good. mana tide is bad enough that going into bloodlust is more common for higher raids. I am not the one to ask about this but refale has some good ideas in the discord but I can't find them.

Closing thoughts
I would be remise to not talk about Fishi, Noce and others I might have missed who helped refine and contribute these ideas. Gearing is another issue to be talked about. Totems, idols, and librams are all loaded at end game. They should make more of them for leveling. Ranged weapons are common and that makes sense but not having a slot filled until 55+ is less than ideal. They don't have to be extreme. 10 damage on earth shock from WC or 5 mana on hit for paladins from commander in SFK. Could also add an idol with armor to CG. Them missing from the game removes alot of play. I would recommend adding alot more to the game we often fight paladins, shamans, and druids in the game stealing their gear should happen more often.

[Bombaybadboy]

Spirit shield - Increases your armour gained form shields by 30% and increases healing receieved by 60-90% of your block value.

• (Increases your healing received which, gives your earth shield additional healing scaling and increases the value of block and the shield specialisation talent.)

Ancestral Knowledge - Increases all stats by 5%.

• (Provides value for all specs.)

Shield Specialisation - Increases chance to block by 5% and the amount blocked by your shield by 25>30%.

• (Brings it in line with other shield spec talents.)

Shamanistic Focus (new talent) - Increases your Spell damage and healing by an amount equal to 30% of your attack power after a base amount (e.g. level*2.5) and decreases the cost of your instant cast spells by 15%. / gives your hits/crits a chance to restore 3% base mana/mana equal to 3% of your ap. (3 points)

• (Gives you sp scaling with ap, while reducing the gain without str/ap gear, so it's less powerful before endgame and for resto shammies. Also can give mana regen that scales for endgame or cost reduction. row 6 enh tree.)
  (If you add sp scaling with ap, you also need to change rockbiter to be increase weapon dps like it does in tbc.)

Earthen Protection (new talent) - Increases your stamina by 9% and increases the number of charges of your earth shield by 3. (3 points)

• (Gives you much needed stamina scaling. You need about 15% for raids and this plus 5% form new ancestral knowledge is 14.45%. Also impoves the efficiency of earth shield. Maybe row 4 enh tree.)

Changing Winds (new talent) - After you cast Flame Shock or Wind Shock you have a 100% chance to gain either the Biting Frost effect, which increases the critical strike chance of your next Frost Shock by 10% and and causes it to refund 100% of the base mana cost or the Earthstorm effect, which increases the damage of your next Earth Shock by 10%, causes it to heal you for 20% of the damage done and to create no threat.
If you are using a weapon imbued with Rockbiter, Wind Shock will taunt the enemy instead. (2/3 points)

• (Gives you a rotation involving all for your shocks, reduces the average mana cost and reduces the threat of earth shock. The effect also procs off wind shock to allow it to proc off fire immune enemies. Earth shock healing is just for flavour.)

Wind Shock (new spell) - Distracts the enemy with a blast of wind, reducing the likelyhood they will attack you. 18 second cd, reduced to 15 with Reverberation. (Maybe reduces wf threat as well?)

• - Brings your threat down to the 2nd highest on the threat table and reduces it by an additional 10%.

• (Works in the opposite way to a taunt. Useful for dropping threat if you get a big wf crit and can be used rotationally for lowering your threat and proccing changing winds. Also doubles as a taunt if rockbiter/rockfury is active, which is baked into the spell or active with a talent. Row 5 enh tree)

Windwall Totem - Summons a Windwall Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 8 sec that reduces physical damage taken by 20% for nearby party members within 10 yards. 20-30 min cd.

• (Reworks windwall intos an active ability, needs a long cd as multiple shaman can bring it. Small radius is to make it easier to destroy in pvp and to make it more useful for enhance shamans to bring in raid as they're already in melee range.) (Still need a personal dmg reduction that reduces all dmg sources)

Stormstrike (rank 2) - Instantly attack with your weapon. In addition, the damage of the next 2 shock spells used against the target are increased by 15% and have an additional 8% chance to hit. Lasts 12 sec. (cd 12>10 sec.)

• (The stormstrike debuff is meant to be a personal debuff for the enh shaman. As you can't do that in the vanilla client making it effect shocks is the next best thing as it becomes a debuff just for enh shammies (need to let it stack to at least 4 tho). Having it effect shocks also gives you flexibility in which shock you use and allows it to give you increased shock hit chance. Which, is much needed.
  Stormstrike cd shouldn't be more than 10 sec, as 12 is already quite long, but also, stormstrike won't provide enough debuffs if you talent for reduced shock cd.)

Rockfury Weapon (new spell) - Imbue the Shaman's weapon, increasing threat generated by 30% and giving melee attacks a chance to cause additional damage and threat when using that weapon. Lasts for 5 minutes.

• (Rockbiter doesn't scale as it was only intended to be used for tanking while levelling. This would replace it at lvl 60 and is based off rockfury twisting that existed in classic, where you could have both wf and rockbiter active if you swapped from rb to wf right before your swing, kinda like seal twisting.)

Elemental Strike (new spell) - Instantly attack with your imbued weapon, causing a different effect depending on your current weapon imbue. (Doesn't proc weapon imbues)

• Windfury - Causes X% weapon damage and increases your attack speed by 6% for 5 seconds. This attack cannot cause the windfury effect.
  
  Flametongue - Causes X% weapon damage as fire damage and sears the target causing flametongue weapon damage over 4 seconds.
  
  Frostbrand - Causes X% weapon damage as frost damage and freezes the target in place of they're already affected by a frost slow effect.
  
  Rockfury/Rockbiter - Causes X (plus ap) damage to your target and reduces the damage they deal by 3% for 10 seconds. Causes high threat.

• (Gives enh a 2nd melee ability based on they're imbue, can be used to balance non wf imbues, making them more effective and gives shammy tank a melee ability that can have added utility. )

Lava Shield (new spell) - The caster is surrounded by 3 balls of lava, increasing your damage dealt by 9%. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, the caster will take additional Fire damage equal to 5% of their current health. This expends one lava ball. Only one ball will fire every few seconds. Lasts 600 sec. Only one elemental shield can be active on the Shaman at any one time.

• (Gives ele and enh a elemental shield to use in raid content that buffs they're damage and doesn't really affect other content as it increases your damage taken, so isn't useful outside of engame pve.)
  (Alternatively could make lava shield a dmg reduction cd that gave a buffed effect of all your other shields for the duration.)

Unleash Shields (new spell) - Unleash your active elemental shield, causing an effect depending on which shield your currently have active.

• Lightning Shield - Hits up to X nearby enemies with a lightning shield orb and stuns them for 2 seconds. Causes high threat.
  
  Water Shield - Restores X mana. / Increases your mana regeneration by 100% for 15 seconds.
  
  Earth Shield - Increases your block chance by 50% and your block value by 20% for 10 seconds. / Prevents spell pushback and increases your resistance to silence and interupt by an additional 30%. / Reduces damage taken by X% for Y sec.
  
  Lava Shield - Increases your fire damage and fire totem damage by 20% for 15 seconds.

• (I wouldn't add this and elemental strike as they're both judgement type effects, just thought this was kinda neat.)

Shield Enhancements (new spells) - Allows the shaman to use Shield Imbues

• Rockbiter Shield Enhancement - (permanently) Imbue the shamans shield, Increasing armor by 300/reducing physical damage taken by 10% (or a lower amount of all damage) and increasing your block value by 20/X%.
  
  Flametongue Shield Enhancement - (permanently) Imbue the shamans shield, Increasing Fire Resistance by 30/reducing fire damage taken by an additional 10-15% and causing your blocks to deal X/Y(+sp) fire damage.
  
  Frostbrand Shield Enhancement - (permanently) Imbue the shamans shield, Increasing Frost Resistance by 30/reducing frost damage taken by an additional 10-15% and causing your blocks to have a chance to deal X/Y(+sp) frost damage and slow attack and movement speed.
  
  Windfury Shield Enhancement - (permanently) Imbue the shamans shield, Increasing Nature Resistance by 30/reducing nature damage taken by an additional 10-15% and causing your blocks to increase the attack speed of your next attack by 3%/5%.

• (Lets you imbue your shield as well as your weapons. Nice class appropriate buff for shammy tanks. Can either be unlocked as a talent (maybe with spirit shield as a prerequisite), or have a weaker version baseline.
  Can be implemented as a buff that requires a shield active or could be an enchant (maybe using elemental air/water/fire/earth as reagents).

Hybrid stats
Should also make a unified hit and crit stat for hybrids or add spell crit and hit to the melee and ranged one. This is more difficult for spell hit as it uses less item budget compared to melee hit, but if you make a unified hybrid stat like you've done with attack and cast speed you can just cost it at the more expensive amount and make up the difference through talents (e.g. stormstrike giving spell hit).
If you did this you'd be hit capped through melee hit cap plus 8% shock hit, although if you had weapon skill you'd still be short 2% spell hit, which isn't a big deal, but could be made up by either having weapon skill not affect boss hit chance or giving a spec a spell hit buff/debuff (e.g. boomie in wotlk).

Shammy Tanks
Shammy's in vanilla are designed to kind of be an off tank/able to tank in leveling dungeons, It's be cool if this was expanded on for end game. So, in addition to making them more tanky (more dmg reduction, hp, scaling threat and cd's) their niche was off tanking utility as well as spell dmg mitigation.
A few things to consider for making them better off tanks:

• Ranged threat/taunt

• Self healing/increased raid healing (would be cool of they had an effect like the shammy T1 8 set where direct heals chained off you to heal nearby allies at reduced affect)

• Mitigation for allies/utility

• short cd mitigation cd's (to allow you to tank harder hitting bosses with tank swaps for a short period)

• Reduced damage in exchange for threat (for when your off tanking an add and threat isn't an issue)

In terms of itemisation shammy tanks also need high stam, defence and additional armour on all their gear pieces in endgame.

[Williamson75]

This isn't my ideas but a discord user who has had issues posting on forums. English isn't their first language. The user is called Grindplayer so credit where due.




New Racial Spell respectful with War 2 / War 3 lore :

- Bloodlust.
Make it the second racial orc spell at lvl 60 because it's bound to fel curse from their blood. Of course need a new 31 pts talent for enhance tree (see below Elemental Wrath Slam).

- Seconde troll racial spell at lvl 60.
Big Bad Voodoo (inspired by war 3)
8 sec channeling spell for x mana. Cooldown of 5 minutes.
When the shaman is channeling this spell, all ally in his party at 20 range is immune to all incoming dmg from all source. But the shaman is not protect by Big Bad Voodoo.

- Seconde Tauren racial spell at lvl 60.
Ethereal Form (inspired by war 3)
work like a stance without mana cost and with cooldown of 45 sec between stance change.
The shaman reduce all physical dmg by 85% and cannot use offensive attack and spell (can still heal or place totem) but take 50% more magical dmg.
__

Overall baseline changes
- Suppress Mana Spring totem and make Mana Tide Totem baseline instead when you learning Mana Spring Totem. Need new rank to scale from rank 1 to lvl 60 final rank. Of course need a new ultimate talent for resto tree (Rafale did a good one with Water Surge).
- Suppress threat bonus on Earth Shock.
- Give Rockbiter bonus threat similar to how paladin's Righteous Fury work.
- Windwall is merge with stoneskin totem. Keep the mana cost of stoneskin and the reducing dmg of windwall.
- Suppress Sentry totem because totaly useless one.
- Hex now have his casting time reduce to 0.5sec, with 3min cooldown and duration is 5sec with total incapicity effect (no spell, no attack). Still only affect Beasts, Humanoids and Critters.
- Feral Spirit now scale with 50% of the shaman AP and have 3min cooldown.
- Flametongue scale with SP at 20% instead of 10%.
- Frostbrand scale with SP at 20% instead of 10%.
- Magma Totem scale with SP at 45% instead of 32%.
- Fire nova Totem at scale with SP 25% instead of 15%.
- Searing Totem at scale with SP 13% instead of 8%.
- Totemic Mastery is now baseline spell, learn at lvl 25.
__

Enhancement tree suggestions

New talents :
- 0/1 Elemental Wrath Slam
4 ranks available with x sec CD and cost x mana. Link with Elemental Weapons. Need 30 pts.
Elemental wrath focuses in your shield or in your left hand item and hit the target, causing 225 to 235 damage at last rank and is modified by your imbued weapon.
- Windfury : give you an extra attack with your main hand weapon (need some scaling?)
- Flametongue : damages inflicted are fire. (need some scaling?)
- Frostbrand : damages inflicted are frost. (need some scaling?)
- Rockbiter : damages inflicted are nature and give high amount of threat. (need some scaling?)

0/3 Resistant Skin (from war 3)
Talent at row 4 and link with Spirit shield
The duration of all negative and control spells affecting the shaman is reduced by 5/10/15%.

0/1 Kor'Kron warshaman (my idea of critical synergy from Rafale suggestion)
6 row, link to weapon mastery at his side.
Reduce your target's chance to resist your shock spell by 16% and and your melees crit increase your chance to have a spell crit by 50% of your melee crit score during 10 sec.
__
Overall enhancement changes :
- Ancestral Knowledge increased now your maximum mana by 2/4/6/8/10%.
- Improved Ghost wolf reduces the cast time of your Ghost wolf spell by 1.25/2.50 sec. You Can now morph out from this state, and dash close to an ally or ennemis from 10/20 yards (inspiration from Reghar HOTS)
- Merge Enhancing Totems (keep this name), Guardians totem and Improved Weapons Totems together.Take place where is actually Enhancing Totem (third row).
- Stormstrike give buff to the shaman instead debuff on target and affect nature, frost and fire dmg spells instead only nature ones.
- Link Shield Specialization -> Ancestral Guardian -> Spirit shield (merge this last one with Elemental Warding from elemental tree) -> Resistant Skin.
- Take Rafale talents suggestions about our shield spells suggestion (his Improved Shield + Elemental Reaction talents) to remplace Thunderhead and Improved Lightning Shield.
- Weapon Mastery give +1/2/3/4/5 to your weapons skill and increase dmg you deal with all weapon by 2/4/6/8/10%.
__

Elemental tree suggestions

New talent :
- 0/1 Earthquake
1 rank available with x sec cooldown and x mana cost. Link with Elemental Mastery at row 7. Need 30 pts.
Channeling spell with a duration of 10sec. 30 yards range and area of effect same like Blizzard spell. 40% scaling from SP and 10 ticks (so 4% per tick).
all targets are slows by x% and take x nature dmg per second.

Overall elemental Changes :
- Elemental Focus give 50% mana reduction instead of 40% for his 2 charges.
- Elemental Devastation can proc from Flametongue, Frostbrand and fire totem crits too.
- Merge Call of Flame and Improved Fire Totem. still row 2 and 0/3.
- Swap Call of Thunder and Lightning Mastery and link talents like this Lightning Mastery (row 3) -> Storm Reach (Row 4) -> Call of Thunder (Row 5).
- Convection now reduce mana cost lightning spell / chain lightning spell by 2/4/6/8/10 + increase dmg by 1/2/3/4/5%
- Consussion now reduce mana cost of all shock spells by 2/4/6/8/10 + increase dmg by 1/2/3/4/5%.
- Reverberation link with Concussion at row 3 and now need only 3 pts (0.33 / 0.66 / 1sec CD reduction).
- Elemental Warding is delete from this tree (see enhancement suggestion).
- Elemental Mastery is know at row 6, still link to Elemental Fury.
GrindPlayer — Aujourd’hui à 20:35
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Restoration tree suggestions

New talent :
- 0/1 Healing Salve
X ranks spell Talent link to Healing Way at row 6. cost x mana and x sec CD (short one).
Heals the target for xx damages over time during 18 sec (6 ticks at 3sec each, xx heal per ticks, SP scaling 100% - 16,6% per tick).
When the target is hit by Lesser healing weave or Healing Weave, consume the duration of Healing Salve and heal instantly the target with his remaining power.

- 0/1 Water Surge (Rafale idea talent)
Remplace the base line Mana Tide Totem talent. So row 7 and need 30pts.
Cause your active Healing Stream or Mana Tide Totem to restore instantly 100% of their total effect to all affected targets.

Overall restoration Changes :
- Restorative Totems now increases the effect of your Mana Tide Totem by an amount equal to 1/2/3/4/5% of your Spirit and your Healing Stream Totem by 1/2/3/4/5% of your intellect. (Rafale idea talent)
- Totemic Focus Reduce the mana cost of your totem by 5/10/15/20/25% and the reduce the GCD when placing totem by 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5
- Improved Reincarnation reduce now the cooldown of your reincarnation spell by 15/30min and increased the amount of healt and mana you revive by an additional of 25/50%. When you did so, you are protected from all damages and spells for 5 sec.

[Kashchei]

For the benefit of increasing everyone understanding of subjects like changes to stats and co-efficient for spells. I would highly recommend watching this series that covers shaman tanking as well as advanced shaman dps and gear breakdowns. You will find that in a lot of cases there are not fundamental issues with the way shaman's spells and imbues interact, but instead a lack of gear that supports their ability to either perform as a tank or a "spellhance" DPS.

[Williamson75]

I have watched those videos, but it still lags behind because of the two gearing is something that is mostly locked in due to items being set at different power levels.

[Grindplayertwo]

So, I create a new account to posting here my ideas for a better shaman. All this work was possible with the great help from our Shaman comunity.

Here, the link to my Google Slide, for review :
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing

Say me if you prefer having pics directly on the forum

[Grindplayertwo]

Hello, I've made some new change with suggestion for two-handed weapon tanking (new page at the end).
Now having a changelog if you want to see directly what is different in the new version.

Here, the link to my Google Slide, for review, Version 4.3 :
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing


For two handed tanking, there already some usable weapons. Maybe need mores.

2-handed axes
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=19354
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=21856
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=11931
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=13003

2-handed maces
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=22798 because big stamina bonus
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=18867 because big stamina bonus
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=19357
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=18531
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=11921
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=12776
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=83063
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=80751
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=81305

Staff
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=943
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=50631
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=80709

There is few two handed sword and polearm, but we can't use them.

[Darbo]

I made a post on shaman experiences but here are some more:

Thunderhead talent is useless. When I buff for example a tank with it the agro goes to me. So it really has no use other than wanting that 20% mana cost reduction. If it was change to affect all shields that would be much better. If you removed it I wouldn't notice. For example remove it and add another ghost wolf talent slot for instacast.

Extra shields. Are very good but I would love to have had them at around 20-40 range. At least the mana shield one. If you added them earlier shaman would have a much nicer leveling experience.

All in all it's better in PVP but same-ish in PVE. I like the new zones and quests they really fill out the void in leveling past certain level. There is also much more mp5 gear I noticed and that sure does help with the healing dungeons.

Weapon buffs should add other stuff other than pure damage. Frost weapon should add healing while Fire weapon should add spell damage. That way I actually get to use them over windfurry. Would also be nice if we could get dual weapons instead of bloodlust in enhancement.

[Grindplayertwo]

- No dual wield weapon or other weapon imbued effect to stay true to vanilla and warcraft RTS game shaman.
- We don't want to replicate WOTLK shaman.

- For Shield, see my Google Slide : suggest 2 rank at lvl 30 for Water and Earth (with diminishing effect, of course).
- Same for other talent about shield spells, suggestions are already in the Google Slide about this.

[Darbo]

- No dual wield weapon or other weapon imbued effect to stay true to vanilla and warcraft RTS game shaman.
- We don't want to replicate WOTLK shaman.

Other weapon buffs are 100% unused. Windfurry trumps them all. It's not about staying true or replicating anything its just that there are 2 weapon skills that are being unused. And shaman has 3 specs. 4 if you count a tanking spec. We have rockbitter for tank, wf for dps and the other two should fit the resto/elemental. Dual wield is debatable. And if we are to be "true to warcraft rts shaman" then remove shields and make fist weapons the focus. But one would be silly. They didn't even have heal. It doesn't change anything. Frost could be mp5 oriented and flametongue could just add crit (to differ from wotlk)

[Grindplayertwo]

FB and FT only need better SP scaling, proccing Elemental Devastation (even Elemental Focus) and working like paladin's SoR about on-hit effect.
It's like many things are unfinished for shaman, especially for enh shaman when you compare how paladin's sort of "imbued" (their seal) works with him.

The problem of FT and FB is mainly they don't work like they need to work... they don't have any synergy with items and with our talents kit.
Paladin have it, and so, they can be spellret hybrid.

About removed shield and having off-hand utilitary fist weapon : i'm all good with this idea (see last pages from my google slide) but needed refinement.
And need utilitary fist weapon to remplace shield (bonus stats, armor, etc... not only proc effect + fast attack.

[Darbo]

About removed shield and having off-hand utilitary fist weapon : i'm all good with this idea (see last pages from my google slide) but needed refinement.
And need utilitary fist weapon to remplace shield (bonus stats, armor, etc... not only proc effect + fast attack.

Or just give it dual wield.

[Williamson75]

They have tested dual wield and said that they saw a drop in dps.

[Grindplayertwo]

Before posting new idea, I suggest you to read this Google Slide before, where I give my ideas and others from the shaman's community Forum and Discord : Maybe what you could propose is already in it :

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing

[Keds]

Some really good ideas in this thread, i just wish the devs would at least tell us they will look into it....

[Kashchei]

New additions to the thread with updated thoughts on certain topics

Flametongue Weapons + Frostbrand Weapon
It's not my opinion that the damage consistencies of these weapons should be changed, Frostbrand should be every hit on hit and Flametongue should periodically deal a large sum of damage.

Why? Well because Frostbrand's debuff is considerably worse than both Earthbind Totem AND Frostshock, so having the effect be more or less permanent is not a big deal given that superior effects are already available on demand.

Secondly it's clear that because flametongue doesn't have a debuff or additional effect such as threat genthat it was imtended to be the elemental counterpart to windfury, being that it is the higher damage dealer but with spell damage in mind.

Additionally I think Dual Wielding is worth considering as an a addition to shamans kit WITH THE FOLLOWING KEPT IN MIND. 2H weapons should not be optimised out of use as was done in TBC onwards. While I understand dual wielding will require the addition of new passives skills learnt through class trainers to make it viable, it is very true to the warrcraft 3 lore.

With that in mind it's very worth considering adding a high end talent for Enhancement that allows you to apply 2 weapon imbues to a single 2H weapon.

Additonally I would also like to remind everyone contributing to this thread that this IS NOT the place to make single line additions in the form of back and fourth arguing or disagreements with somebody else's contribution. The idea is to simply format and publish the changes you believe should be considered and why.

[Grindplayertwo]

Hello eveybody!
Another version of the google slide shaman changes and suggestionS is here :
- With more work
- With more fixes
- And new blacksmith crafting sets for enhancement DPS and tank !

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing

[Studbucket]

Thanks for your thoughts and organization put into this. I hope it can serve as inspiration for changes to making Shaman more fun to play across all specs and levels.

[Grindplayertwo]

Hello,

I'm working with the shaman community on relics and stuff rework + refining wording and previous ideas

See the google doc for new ideas :
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing

[Crazyhelix]

Hello,

I'm working with the shaman community on relics and stuff rework + refining wording and previous ideas

See the google doc for new ideas :
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing

Huge wotk done. Heartly hope that Turtle devs see this topic and will use your disign solutions (not all obviously but some cases looks pretty good and finished)

[Grindplayertwo]

Hello,

I'm working with the shaman community on relics and stuff rework + refining wording and previous ideas

See the google doc for new ideas :
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing

Huge wotk done. Heartly hope that Turtle devs see this topic and will use your design solutions (not all obviously but some cases looks pretty good and finished)

Thanks dude!
But it's not only mine, it's a community work from many shaman players ;-)

What is, for you, idead looks pretty good and finished?
And what is not enough refinened or too much clunky (bad or too much op)?

[Turtlefield]

I have now reached level 44 as a Tauren Shaman and I have some thoughts and feedback:

TL;DR: Thanks for making two-handed weapons and Parry baseline, but please reconsider Elemental Focus and Bloodlust.

My journey:
I initially leveled as an Enhancement Shaman with the intention of tanking, but I respecced after being disappointed with Bloodlust. It is only half a Flurry-proc with a high mana cost and a long cooldown. Currently, I am 11/24/0 and I am also let down by the reworked Elemental Focus. The proc from melee crits is incredibly good, but the interruption of spirit regeneration due to the 40% reduction is problematic. Even with 2 charges it is less mana saved, but more importantly will complete block your spirit-regen for 12sec if you shock on CD to use both.

Experience:
I absolutely love that two-handed weapons and Parry are no longer talents! It felt wasteful for Shamans to have to spend talent points on abilities that other classes received naturally. Also, thanks for adding Totemic Recall, it's a really nice quality of life improvement.

Shamans still struggle with mana management. Even with maxed Convection (mana reduction for shocks) and the 40% reduction from Elemental Focus, Lightning Shield still does more damage per mana spent. Unfortunately, Lightning Shield doesn't benefit from the Elemental Focus proc. As a result, I often find myself not using either of my focus procs because there is a better damage per mana ability available, or it would interrupt my spirit-based regeneration.

I understand the need for balancing, considering the talent was already quite powerful, but to me, it feels almost like a nerf.
On a positive note, I really appreciate the idea of Shaman racials aligning with their religion and culture, similar to what has been done for priests. Great job on that! However, it's a little disheartening to realize that Spirit Link does nothing when solo, and you can't even cast it on yourself in a group (perhaps a bug?). Nonetheless, I do like the synergy between Water Stream and Chain Heal.

I'm looking forward to reaching rank 2 of Stormstrike and acquiring the new shields. It's a bit disappointing to have to wait until level 60 for Water Shield. Stormstrike is not a major issue for me since the debuff works for Lightning orbs without consuming the debuff, but it's clear to me that it is much more beneficial for a two-handed weapon user than for someone wielding a one-handed weapon.

Totems feel a bit odd in terms of scaling with party size. They are mostly balanced for a full group, which makes them less effective when playing solo. It also makes coordinating totems between Shaman feel somewhat arbitrary.
The easiest example is Mana Spring (Rank 2), that cost 60 and totally provides 180 mana, only netting 120 mana equal to one single cast of Convenctioned and Focused Earth Shock... but for the group 120+180*4 = 840 mana enough for two very big spells.

Suggestions:
I think many of the suggestions made by @Grindplayertwo are interesting, but they may be a bit excessive and require too much effort for just one class at the moment. However, I would like to highlight a few of my favorite suggestions: Improved Shields, Elemental Reaction, Ethereal Form, Spirit Weapons, and a version of Shock Synergy.

It would be great if the mana reduction could be baked into all the Shaman shields. Alternatively, increasing the charges or allowing Elemental Focus to benefit Lightning Shield would be beneficial.

The Elemental Reaction talent seems more manageable and enjoyable than constantly buffing another group member (Thunderhead) with a very short-lived buff.

Ethereal Form, while very fitting for the Tauren Shaman, could be considered as a baseline ability or a talent to support the idea of Shaman tanking.

Having a talent that provides some weapon skill would be nice, perhaps with a focus on spirit. For example, gaining weapon skill and attack power based on spirit could work (although it may conflict with an agility-focused build, it does align with the lore).

Shock Synergy aligns well with the spell-enhancing concept that I love. Otherwise it could be an inversion of Elemental Devastation?
If re-working bloodlust I would just reduce CD and manacost a bit, or have the ability baseline and then a talented improvement benefit both the caster and target.

I strongly believe that Spirit Link should be castable on yourself as a tank. It would also be useful to redirect some damage to Stoneclaw when alone (currently you can cast Spirit Link on Stoneclaw, but that seems counterintuitive).

Stormstrike could potentially synergize with a shield, such as dealing bonus damage based on block value or functioning as an actual taunt (or mocking blow) when used with a shield.

I would love a talent that passively increased the benefits the Shaman alone receives from their totems. This would further incentivize their use and encourage more intricate coordination based on Shaman preferences.

On a different note, Plainsrunning (although not specific to Shamans) is a cool and unique ability. It would be helpful to have a tooltip indicating the speed increase it provides.

Overall, I hope you find these suggestions and feedback helpful. I appreciate the effort you put into improving the Shaman class and I'm excited to see how it evolves.
Also, YES Troll Warlocks :D

[Grindplayertwo]

Thank for your feedback.

Indeed, this google slide is a very big overhaul for shaman class en specialization. But many thing can be taken by devs one by one if needed, and tweaked by them.

I did some last change today if you want to take a look on it.
Basically I think it's almost complete. Just need to tweak existing items / set in game (mostly T0.5 T2.5 ZG and AQ20 sets) and creating some lacking items for gear progression (like Ashnaggar from Discord suggest).

Zaas (from Discord too) suggest for stats budget rebalanced for hybrid stats on stuff and i'm aggre with him. Maybe need to do a new guideline to have that in mind.

[Grindplayertwo]

I changed my mind on some suggestions :
Mainly reduce spell scaling buff or just back to normal but doing buff to flat base damage for various spells.

I try my best to have synergy between imbued weapon and active totem + having imbued weapon usefull for caster shaman too.

Ashnaggar find flaw on gear progression with the classe and try to create some new items to fix this problem.
I reworked all PVE set tiers. So, now, they are more focus with playstyle (T1/T2/T3 can share some between elem and resto because Intel / spell power stat).

Take a look on it :
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing

[Regaldandin]

Issues:

• Elemental and enhancement shamans Oom too fast

• Enhancement shaman - even with infinite mana deals basically no dmg

• too many stats needed to play enhance properly

• Shaman tanks lack armor, a taunt, tanking abilities

• many of the shamans spells are useless most of the time

Core shaman abilities:

• Shocks

• Totems

• Imbues

• Healing

• Lightning bolts

• Ghost wolf

Solutions:

• Ghost wolf can now be used indoors. While shapeshifted all melee attacks are absorbed and instead drain your mana equal to 75% of the damage dealt. When you have 0 mana you shift back to humanoid form. Improved ghost wolf 2/2 grants 50 to all resistances

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Ghost wolf becomes a tanking ability allowing you to shift to avoid damage at the cost of mana and being unable to cast spells. It doesn't effect pvp much except in fringe cases and doesn't impact its use in leveling as a movement tool. Has a downside now to balance out it being used to run away from enemies who might hit you with melee abilities - and on top of that is very on flavor with wc3 spirit walkers

• Frostbrand weapon - Mana cost - 0. proc grants you a buff that restores 3% of your mana and another 10% of your mana over 18 seconds

• Rockbitter weapon - Mana cost - 0. 10% increase to armor

• Flametongue weapon - Mana cost - 0. Increases spell power by 5% and healing power by 5%

• Windfury weapon - Mana cost - 0. Your shocks become melee hits rather than spells and increases your melee hit by 3%

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Now your imbues have a use - no matter what spec you are playing. regaining mana should be something each spec will want to do. shamans now go to melee to heal mana back. Mana regen is possible for all specs. and enhancement shaman doesn't need to worry about spell hit anymore allowing them to gear more efficiently

• When a totem is placed on the ground, the shaman gains an additional buff depending on the type of totem. This should making placing a totem to support others feel good regardless of the spec you are playing

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Earth totem - grants 3% bonus to stamina and armor

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Fire totem - grants 3% bonus to intellect and spirit

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Water totem - grants 3% increased mana and 5mp5

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Wind totem - grants 3% bonus to strength and agility

• Improved stoneclaw totem - Casting stoneclaw totem will cause enemys to attack you for 3 seconds. Stoneclaw totem cooldown changed to 10 seconds and its duration set to 3 seconds. No longer taunts enemies when cast

Code: Select all

Now you have a taunt if you talent into it at the sacrifice of your aoe threat totem

• Spirit shield talent - increases the armor of your shield by 50%

[Grindplayertwo]

Hello,

It's time to up this topic again.
For reminder, I did a big google slide to summarize, streamlined and use many ideas from many players on the Discord and shaman forum section.

here the last version :
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing
I mainly delete some too odd effects with too much combo between spells (not really vanilla wow), refine some number, better wording

Goals are :
- Streamlined shaman toolkit with strong flavor of each spe and having a meaning to take the ultimate talent (not like now with, for exemple, the 31/20 resto meta) or rewarding hybrid playstyle.
- Fix what don't work but are good idea at the base (imbued weapons for exemple).
- Delete or merge many thing when needed (talents being disptach or too much totems doing the same thing for a little effect, like res or cleansing one).
- Adding more active playstyle and keeping the heavely crit proc flavor of the class.
- Fixing some leveling flow (no water/earth shield during leveling, better Ghost wolf, for exemple)
- helping with the "too many stats needing" without copying stats conversion effect
- Giving exemple of revamp stuff with more budget for hybrid class because they benefit less than pure class from stat.

[Hyrag]

just play retail then...

shaman only needs tweeks not this whole kit rework on the class

1. stormstrike debuff turns in to a buff on shaman.
2. bloodlust cast on both shaman and target(same as wc3)
3. a taunt and +block mechanic
4. a + weapon skill on hammers talent(for race viabilization)

maybe dual wield as a fun deep enhancement spec.
balanced like "the shaman can only use only Main hand and off hand weapons when DW"(not one hand) because of spell scalling on elemental builds with DW.

[Grindplayertwo]

just play retail then...

shaman only needs tweeks not this whole kit rework on the class

1. stormstrike debuff turns in to a buff on shaman.
2. bloodlust cast on both shaman and target(same as wc3)
3. a taunt and +block mechanic
4. a + weapon skill on hammers talent(for race viabilization)

maybe dual wield as a fun deep enhancement spec.
balanced like "the shaman can only use only Main hand and off hand weapons when DW"(not one hand) because of spell scalling on elemental builds with DW.

1/ Done on the slide.
2/ Bloodlust was never casted on both target and the caster during war3/war2.
3/ Block mechanic are in the slide for shaman tanking (and adapt for shaman 2-handed tanking page). don't sure about the taunt usefulness.
4/ I did better than just hammer with Spiritual Weapon talent (all weapon skill + haste)

After that...
Said me to "just play retail then" and at the same time asking for dual wield enhancement... a bit strange...

[Hyrag]

just play retail then...

shaman only needs tweeks not this whole kit rework on the class

1. stormstrike debuff turns in to a buff on shaman.
2. bloodlust cast on both shaman and target(same as wc3)
3. a taunt and +block mechanic
4. a + weapon skill on hammers talent(for race viabilization)

maybe dual wield as a fun deep enhancement spec.
balanced like "the shaman can only use only Main hand and off hand weapons when DW"(not one hand) because of spell scalling on elemental builds with DW.

1/ Done on the slide.
2/ Bloodlust was never casted on both target and the caster during war3/war2.
3/ Block mechanic are in the slide for shaman tanking (and adapt for shaman 2-handed tanking page). don't sure about the taunt usefulness.
4/ I did better than just hammer with Spiritual Weapon talent (all weapon skill + haste)

After that...
Said me to "just play retail then" and at the same time asking for dual wield enhancement... a bit strange...

"I did better than just hammer with Spiritual Weapon talent (all weapon skill + haste)"
that phrase says it all. "i did better because it has more stats"

its just too much of everything.

the bloodlust part was just mandela effect

DW spec is just personal flavor thing i want from retail.

shaman only needs tweeks not this whole kit rework

[Kayax]

Enslave elemental - warlocks can enslave demons, give shamans the ability to enslave/control hostile elementals.

Also +1 to the adding nature damage to curse of the elements that I saw posted. Always thought that would be a good idea.

[Bigsmerf]

Enslave elemental - warlocks can enslave demons, give shamans the ability to enslave/control hostile elementals.

Also +1 to the adding nature damage to curse of the elements that I saw posted. Always thought that would be a good idea.

I uh... Don't think that feels very in line with how shams work lore/morality wise. Shamans have a sort of mutual bond with the elements and work in tandem serving each other, iirc.