Enhancement Shaman Buffs

[Williamson75]

I want to start with saying this is a simple suggestion but something I am passionate about. Enhance shaman needs a buff. I don't want them to be completely busted but I would like better scaling and more gameplay than right click, totem twist and then stormstrike.



Primal strike: 6s CD scale with both SP and AP on a low level or an extra weapon swing with added sp. Triggers weapon enhancement except windfury which is maintained at 20% or can be a weapon swing.
Slam Like ability potentially (could steal the scaling from blood thirst and break it in half to get sp scaling of the same kind so 23% AP and 22% sp)

Talent 1 (Elemental Infusion): increase sp scaling on frostbrand and flame tongue. 2 talent points (could be 1/2 of current scaling added as a test)

Talent 2 (Nature's Harmony): weapon enhancement deals extra damage on the target that has the shock of the same type. (No windfury) 2 Talents (could be 50% of the enhancements damage)

Talent 3 (Primal Fury): potentially reduce the cast time of primal strikes slam cast (Reduce to a 1.2 second cast)

Possible Talent Swaps:
Improved Weapon Totems > Talent 2
Reason: the Talent doesn't function for other people which makes it a bad talent because of the fact we have weapon enhancements.
Enhancing Totems > Talent 1
Reason: This one isn't a good talent because it overriding paladin might which is drastically better.
Bloodlust > Stormstrike
Reason: If we replace bloodlust with Stormstrike we can put primal in the same talent spot. By making bloodlust baseline at a high level it would add extra utility to the
As a whole. It is often used right now for adding tank aggro vs a dps boost.
StormStrike > Primal Strike
Reason: This would add the new ability at a lower level and would offer extra to people who do not want to make windfury the main dps by working with talent 1 and 2.
It is still good for Windfury.
Talent 3
Reason: I cannot find a spot to put this without lowering the level you can recieve Primal Strike. Still This could be an extra talent sink that would encourage investment into
more enhancement. I think a 3 talent slot would work well.
Quality of Life:
Weapon buff timer
Reason: 5 minutes is brutal to keep rebuffing. This is mostly just making life easier but is something I can deal with
Totem Bar
Reason: we have a lot of totems which is great but they quickly fill the bars up. I understand you might prefer to have addons handle this part


Changes: If you decide to skip the slam part that would actually be a buff to the ability right now. The goal is to bring a buff to the hybrid and the AP Enhancement shaman.
This would over all increase the numbers of shamans without putting them above any other melee. They would still be a good melee class with better scaling and staying
to the feel of vanilla wow.

[Williamson75]

I meant to remove the totem bar part. Threat reduction is another talent that would be amazing

[Original3]

+1, but I would change some things.

Replace Thunderhead with Primal Strike.
Thunderhead is a crap, no one uses it.
Keep Stormstrike's original position
Replace Bloodlust with Shamanistic Frenzy
(spell designed by a shaman on TWOW discord in #shaman)
"Increases damage done by 30% and decreases damage taken by 30% for 15 sec. In addition, your melee attacks have a change of restoring X% of your total mana while buff is active." (at least 15 min CD)
Make Bloodlust baseline and increase its CD.

+ add Lightning Shock to the game. Spell already exists so not much work to do. Enha shamans need it.

[Williamson75]

Having Primal Strike be instant cast would be ideal but I know that for some it would be a worry about being over powered. So talent 3 could disappear and just go around that

[Original3]

The either give it 0.5 sec cast time or "Next Melee" kind of effect.

[Frostyharris]

I would love to see shamans get a 2nd melee ability, I feel like they don't have much going on aside from totem placement, and that is knocked out of the way by numerous pally buffs being superior/more convenient due to totems limited range and only being able to effect their party members.

[Noce]

- *Water Shield* and *Earth Shield* would be nice if possible to get at lower lvls not only at 60. with ranks while lvling.

- *Earth Shield* mbe also to be able to be casted on targets to give resto smtn to more cast. make it with resto talent to do smtn like this:
Improved Earth Shield
Increases the amount of charges for your Earth Shield by 1, and increases the healing done by your Earth Shield by 5%.
Glyph of Earth Shield
Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%.

- *Lightning Shield - Thunderhead* gotta be fixed since its made to be selfcast and its proven not able to cast on others unless u target them. i speak of using clique or mouseover. mbe make a new spell?

- enha and resto SHOULD get talent or smtn to be able to use up shield charges when crit at least. smt like this:
Improved Water Shield
"You have a % chance to instantly gain mana as if you consumed a Water Shield Orb when you gain a critical effect from your Healing.."
Shamanistic Rage
"Reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana.."
Improved Stormstrike
"When you Stormstrike, you have a 50% chance to immediately grant you % of your base mana."
Maelstrom Weapon
"When you use your abilities while having Lightning Shield active, you have a % chance to deal damage equal to a Lightning Shield orb."

- resto COULD get talent for chain heal:
Improved Chain Heal
"Increases the amount healed by your Chain Heal spell by %."
Glyph of Chain Heal
"Your Chain Heal heals 1 additional target."

- shamans COULD get Cleanse Spirit in nature of their shadowshamanism:
"Cleanse the spirit of a friendly target, removing 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 curse effect."

- totems COULD/SHOULD get reworked and to be made simple. in current vanilla some are not used at all. i get that totems are party related so raid can use more shamans.. but mbe get us totems from later expansions like:
Totem of Wrath, Wrath of Air Totem, Flametongue Totem(caster buff), Cleansing Totem

- shamans SHOULD get some caster *Weapon Imbue* in any way or form

- Calm Elements, not sure how usefull it is, mbe rework it?

- some talents to be swaped and reworked, combined, make it more usefull? like *restorative totems* not worth all those points, *improved ghost wolf* to be instant cast. and pls make that talent swap of totemic focus and tidal focus as it was i think intended in some post. and Totemic Mastery COULD be in lower tier.

- Stormstrike COULD possibly be a elemental dmg increase, not just nature. so we can use frost and fire shocks also

- Earth Shock - it rly should be devided. and if we do get inceased buff stacks on mobs it could get that reduced melee attack speed. if not, then make only a dmg spell with or without high threat depending if we get TAUNT.
- Wind Shear - if ES get devided then we need a WS as result of that. id say only in form of intterupt w/o lowering threat

- give us some custom quest to combine all of ours totems. 4 bag slots used are rly too much.

- giving enha and extra mele ability may be too much but COULD be a posibility. but giving shamans ability to use fists SHOULD be a must. no need for dual wield imo, but even that would work nicely.

++

mbe give shamans (even if not bcoz of just tanking) smtn similar as paladins (as they are counterpart) some new aoe (with hight threat mbe) like consecration. rather than just using totems and novas. it could be in a form of targetable AoE, point-blank aoe..:
Fissure - attacks an area by opening a hole in the earth and damaging anything near it.
Twister - summons small twister that deal damage [and stun/slow enemies].
Earthquake - Makes the ground tremble and break, causing damage per second [and stun/slow units by %]

also mbe add some defensive ability like:
Cyclone Armor - Covers the druid in protective forces that absorbs

[Original3]

I think best way how to balance Primal Strike in the right context of the game, is to make it a "next melee" ability.
Raptor Strike, Holy Strike, Heroic Strike are all "next melee" abilities.

How could it work? Same way as holy strike. So in terms of coding the spell, the body is already made.
Convert the extra damage as Nature damage, so it synergizes with Stormstrike.
Make it capable of windfury proc, since the two additional attacks won't benefit from it anyway.

[Fishi]

Every spec of shaman needs love. Even resto. Devs, i know we are sucky, and it sucks to touch an already fragile imbalanced mess, but i believe in you, please make shaman satisfying and rewarding, not just fun.
+1 on the idea of changing the status quo, and making us not neccesserily stronger, but at least way more stable and steady

[Karrados]

Every spec of shaman needs love. Even resto. Devs, i know we are sucky, and it sucks to touch an already fragile imbalanced mess, but i believe in you, please make shaman satisfying and rewarding, not just fun.
+1 on the idea of changing the status quo, and making us not neccesserily stronger, but at least way more stable and steady

They don't really care that much which is apparent when they decided to buff Holy Priests which were already the best healers along with bumping up Holy Paladins and Restoration Druids while leaving Shamans as they are.

[Williamson75]

If they covert your damage to nature on next hit the issue would be more that it would nerf your damage in most raids. The only one it wouldn't would be nax. It just doesn't seem like it would solve the shaman issue. An elemental slam ability would fit better. Cast time the same as slam but can proc weapon imbues seems pretty solid. If we can add the two talents I think using your elemental imbue would be something we see. Frost sounds rather good when running with a frost mage. I would obviously prefer an instant hit but gotta temper reality a bit. The on hit stuff doesn't seem to be a fit for shaman either. Paladin has a way to increase holy damage by a ton so the build up works great. Warrior use heroic strike as a rage dump when they get to much. For us I like the flavor it just wouldn't be good because of how the dungeons and raids are set. In pvp it would be pretty good.

[Kerenis]

IMO shaman only needs 3 changes:

-Ability to dual wield, weapon enchants working on both weapons
-Threat reduction in elemental tree
-Mana tide base spell

That would fix most of the problems

[Williamson75]

Not into dual wielding and it doesn't fix any problems. Threat reduction is always good. Dual wielding is tbc onward. I mean using iron foe and flurry ax would be super fun.

[Ugoboom]

IMO shaman only needs 3 changes:

-Ability to dual wield, weapon enchants working on both weapons
-Threat reduction in elemental tree
-Mana tide base spell

That would fix most of the problems

We tested Dualweild shaman on the turtle ptr more than a year ago. It actually resulted in worse dps. Enh doesnt have rouge's +50% offhand damage talent nor warrior's +25% plus Heroic Strike, to make it work.

Also, every other expansion did DW enhance. Blizzard originally intended 2h or 1h+shield for shaman, and the change to dual weild was to differ ret and enh once they were both in the same faction. Doing that change to vanilla would fly in the face of 2004 blizzard's approach.

You can make enh good without DW.


Anyway yeah I agree -20% base threat for paladin and shaman is really needed, with an optional +threat% for those wanting to shaman tank.

Mana tide totem wont solve a single thing even if it didnt overwrite BoW.

[Williamson75]

Pretty much agree with ugoboom. They really need a way to deal with using the sp scaling weapon imbues and another filler melee ability being able to work all three together would be great. Still not sure what the scaling on the matching shock/imbue should be but they could add that it would work with rockbiter and earthshock to then do extra threat. Would be a good way to increase shaman tank aggro in higher level raids. Threat hasn't been an issue that i have seen, so maybe a 5% damage reduction that lasts 6second? They could use extra mitigation. Seems that they will take more damage that war or paladin due to less armor this would be 1 way to buff that and help with the niche of dealing with spell damage better

[Kerenis]

Ok so no DW.

Mana tide baseline would be a bandaid, because I felt Enhance dps is hurt by mana costs. Spamming shocks would leave you dry on 1st phases.

For example, Stormstrike should make next shock within 5 sec 0 mana

[Williamson75]

Well the clear casting in the elemental tree triggers on melee crit so the mana cost isn't that major. When you get back to back crits when I was still playing shaman would make max rank cost almost the same as rank 1

[Williamson75]

At 25% crit I rarely go oom casting shocks if elemental destruction pops I don't go oom at all.

[Williamson75]

Bumping again

[Fishi]

I would really, really love to see some form of scaling on totems, a clever, class specific way to manage mana, and less bursty (but MORE, just to make that clear) damage overall, threat also needs to be addressed, and a good redesigning to the tier sets to make them useful for all specs.
Lots work needs to be done on shaman.
Have a hefty bump

[Williamson75]

I agree with you on the scaling on totems being an interesting way to go. Healing stream totem having a bit high scaling and searing totem as well ould be good things to add. Thanks for the bump btw. I wish they would go back to the way clear casting was working a few months ago. Having 4 up at a time would cause the spells to cost 80% less rather than 40% it was pretty major imo.

[Torr071]

i would offer dual weilding fist weapons, as they can basically only be enchanter made. any exploits devs would have considerable control over as there arent many fist weaps avail for vanilla, other than player enchanted.
but also take into consideration turtle's own survival profession: torches / spirit seem something a shaman's existance should be very much in line with.

[Williamson75]

Dual wielding is a rather interesting option but is rather they increase the base of the spec so that if they do give us dual wield it would ideally work better

[Williamson75]

bump

[Snoodydood]

I think dual wield would be a big improvement to enh as a whole and giving them TBC-like buffs without overtuning could make enhance viable for PVE. My idea was for a new spell called "water weaver weapon" which lowers threat generated. This, along with DW could have WF on 1 weapon with Water weaver on the other to keep them from puling threat in raids. Just an Idea
Other than that, I think shamans as tanks would be very cool but that would more rely on tuning gear in their favor because they get basically no extra defense skill from mail or leather

[Kairion]

Shamans with dual wield aren't good, as mentioned in a previous post, their dps gets worse.

They need support talents as tbcs +10% hitchance when dualwielding a reworked stormstrike that can hit with two weapons and a much better selection of gear to be viable.

Just putting them on the much more contested 1h weapon lootpool is not doing anything.

Since resto currently also skills 31 enhancement frequently for bloodlust, there is a 100% chance they would pick claw of chromaggus for the offhand for a decent healing buff. Thats probably the biggest beneficiary if dw gets added without furter support.

[Fishi]

As long as dual wielding is an option and not a fix, I stand by the idea. But if it's introduced as a fix and not an option, it kills the vanilla shaman
please maybe consider adding spellcrit to thundering strikes?
Apologies if it has been said in this thread, before, but tidal mastery/imphealingwav should be switched around with totemic focus, totemic mastery should become baseline.
Talents in all trees definitely could use a good looking at.
Some don't even work ever since vanilla, and are just dead weight.
I appreciate where the devs wanted to go with thunderhead, but it's gimmicky and makes little sense apart from the mana reduction, at least the way it funcrions now
So many of shaman skills and spells are set in stone. What enhances the enhancement? The weapon imbues should become a bit stronger, for much of our damage is white hits, and there is nearly no way to make them better.
They should be improvable. Paladin pulls flametongue off better than shaman does.
Much of our abilities would become better, and our presence more desirable, should we be able to affect them with growing our character's personal power.

[Rukopashka]

currently a shaman may have difficulty managing mana, especially when healing. by increasing the effectiveness of his spells, the shaman will be able to provide longer lasting support without depleting mana too quickly. this would be a nice improvement to the shaman class

[Williamson75]

Part of the reason I suggested the talents I did was to increase the importance of the imbues of enhancement while also adding a better sp side to the melee build. The other way to boost the imbue power is to give a melee ability that does weapon damage plus sp. Thats just my opinion. Would function fine for either dual wield or windfury imo. Would be interesting to put frost oil or shadow oil on your off hand because windfury and weapon imbues dont work on off hands

[Fishi]

Well, why not both? And that's actually a fun idea. Still, I respectfully stand by my arguement; fix 2H first, then consider switching the dead talents out to ones that can support (if it's even possible to manage on this client) dual wield.
And btw when I say totem scaling, I would love to see enhancement shaman dropping scaling str or agi totems, or stronger resistance/defensive totems. But making that work is probably a developer's nightmare.
Gear is going to be the next interesting question. I hope they are going to add more spellpower + str pieces to LW, that would be crazy neat, but I'm just daydreaming to reasonably fill out a
B U M P
Big love to all my fellow shamans.

[Balake]

What enhance shaman needs: Remove the charges system from Stormstrike. It automatically makes everyone who tries to use them feel bad cause they're taking them from someone else (Poisons consume it, stings probably consume it too).

Baseline 40yd totem range for all specs. 20 yards is an atrocity, if the shaman wants to buff everyone including the ranged they have to keep going to the middle and place down totems instead of staying in the fray. (Rework totem range talent in resto tree to 1 sec gcd when placing a totem)

[Ravenstone]

(Rework totem range talent in resto tree to 1 sec gcd when placing a totem)

I really like this idea.

[Williamson75]

The idea of removing the charges from stormstrike is rather interesting would make it pretty good for boosting nature damage. Would be great for ele shaman and maybe rogue and hunter.

[Yaoiboy]

Absolutely overtuned and not needed. Shamas already get blood lust, you changes just make them even more oveprowered than palas in pvp. If u want play pure dps - play warrior, enh already super usefull and mandatory in any raid\pvp party, now u want him on top being best dps? Like u just want kill button. You need proper use of consumables and dont press everything that not on cd if u have mana problems, shamas are comlitely fine support class what already super strong in pvp, u cant buff it more.

[Williamson75]

They are no more useful than what else or resto can do. Short of totem twisting enhance is not needed in any raid even then having a resto in group to drop totems is more utility. My point is even with consumes you are not competing with other classes that bother to do half. The second part in regards to mana is that is what is being done. In order to get or DPS up enough to be brought into raids our itemization is mostly ap items. Those same items lack a lot of int. This does not really improve. The point of the idea with slam is that is not that great of an pvp boost because of the fact that with most shaman match ups you are kiting, wearing a 1h and shield, or being kited. None of which are useful with casting slam.