r/classicwow • u/slothsarcasm • 14h ago
Forever Elemental Shamans on the last week of beta
Mana is still awful, damage is still awful, flame shock is still 20 yards and mandatory to upkeep, and the playstyle is just a worse boomie/lock.
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u/disastrous_hyena759 11h ago
I saw the Mage rework and then the Elemental Shaman changes and laughed so hard. They somehow managed to make all three Mage specs better, yet they couldn't do even half as good a job with Elemental Shaman.
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u/whoxcaresxixdont 14h ago
Lightning is my favorite part of ele sham. I dont like all the fire stuff. Gime CL totem
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u/slothsarcasm 14h ago
Agreed. New elemental mastery that lets you spam chain lightning is cool but like... we're immediately oom after that. I don't understand how the dev team keeps misunderstanding what elemental shamans like about playing elemental shaman??
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u/whoxcaresxixdont 14h ago
My favorite spec i ever played with ele sham was the lightning conduit build in the dragon xpac forgot name of it. Was so cool shooting lightning everywhere.
I don't expect anything like that in classic+ but lightning is more their identity than lava burst and fire. Mages can be the firemen why does shaman need to pretend to work with fire as a core part of their spec they are the lightning kings!
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u/B1TW0LF 9h ago
EM removing the CL cooldown is also going to lead to balance issues where CL will never be buffed because of how good it is when its hitting a ton of different targets and EM is active, regulating it to an AOE only ability.
I think they should have CL be instant cast with EM on but not remove the cooldown. Then (since there is no way they are going to fully remove Lava Burst at this point), just rework it to actually do something cool. Maybe it leaves a pool of lava on the ground that deals damage and reduces armor and elemental resistances. Maybe it activates your fire totem a couple times in rapid succession. Maybe it resets your Flame Shock duration. Idk, something.
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u/HarpyPiee 6h ago
I literally just want lava burst to be a long CD nuclear explosion again. I want my 5k shaman BS back
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u/slothsarcasm 8h ago
resetting flame shock would be a neat idea. Or when flame shock is active it has a higher crit chance? I don't mind lava burst and like the look of it, but its beyond underwhelming and they have to force Ele to take it just to get EM now, or they know people would pass on it. If they know people want to pass on it, why not buff it instead of just making it mandatory? It's Slam for warriors all over again.
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u/Randvek 12h ago
“I spam lightning and then run oom” is the classic Elemental Shaman experience, though.
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u/slothsarcasm 12h ago
That was tolerable because of massive burst. Now they don’t even have that
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u/Randvek 12h ago
That’s just a tuning issue.
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u/panlakes 11h ago
No it’s deeply rooted in the philosophy of their new design for the class. Sounds like someone hasn’t been keeping up with Blizzards own words.
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u/MwHighlander 13h ago
the dev team keeps misunderstanding what elemental shamans like
That's because they never even bothered to try. And honestly, have made the message very clear they don't care.
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u/forgotaccount989 12h ago
You are supposed to take water shield and then get mana back from the crits. There i solved the problem for you.
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u/slothsarcasm 12h ago
So 11 mandatory talent points in Resto is good design when almost every other mana using class including enhance has mana regen baked into their talents?
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u/forgotaccount989 12h ago
Yes. We Do hybrid shit here.
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u/Kind_Reaction_8463 6h ago
it is crazy that people think that dipping into other trees is a bad thing...... like they want to dump all 51 pts into one tree and call it a day? what? the flexibility of spending talents into multiple specs is what makes the system interesting, especially on a hybrid class.
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u/panlakes 11h ago
Tell me about it. I have to hybrid my way out of the atrocious lava burst build and completely ignore all its fire talents just to go into enh to gain damage in pvp. Great class design Blizz!
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u/RegularFeeling8389 11h ago
Spriest going into disc for meditation boomie going into resto for reflection? What is your point here?
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u/RoadSpecialist 14h ago
Make fire the enhance thing and give us our lightning
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u/no_terran 13h ago
Enhance is already the wind thing. Actually wind might be the only cool thing about shaman. Water resto is also neat I guess.
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u/Considany 11h ago
All "feedback" from this sub is formulated like this comment and then people get mad that one half constantly is in uproar about their feedback getting ignored.
"I like X. I don't like Y. I want more X. I don't want more Y."
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u/Sleepywhoo 13h ago
If enhance and elemental don't get something unique to bring to raid -- we are all getting replaced with 2 resto shamans.
HELLO? BLIZZARD?
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u/Thunderkleize 12h ago
imagine leveling as resto shaman, sounds awful
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u/MourningsOwn 12h ago
It's actually better than leveling as Elemental right now. The mana regen is Goated lol.
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u/Thunderkleize 12h ago
that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence
I leveled mine as enhance and that was... fine
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u/GreenTheColor 12h ago
That’s exactly what I’ve been doing sitting at lvl 23 right now. Dungeons are fun but running around questing trying to do my best ele impression can get rough. I’m limping through it though!
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u/Thunderkleize 12h ago
I think I'm gonna go priest just cause it's gonna be way stronger than any other healer to level
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u/NoSugarGatorade 9h ago
Have you not tried druid? My druid is sensational at questing and wpvp
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u/Thunderkleize 9h ago
if i level a druid, it'll be for tanking probably
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u/NoSugarGatorade 8h ago
Yeah but with hotw in row 1 you just need good healing offset and you're fine to heal dungeons as deep feral. It's been great.
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u/Jordykins850 8h ago
I’m going probably to try and main shaman.. but I know I’m going to end up playing warlock/druid/warrior 😞
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u/Infernalz 9h ago
Haha yeah true since it's impossible to respec your talents now so if you level as elemental you can't heal in raid! /s
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u/Lazy-Singer4391 4h ago
Your wodh is fullfilled. The changes for raid wide buffs are reverted. You can now bring 4-5 resto shamans to a raid
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u/Dr-Enforcicle 8h ago
So enh/ele gets buffed and now nobody takes resto shamans to raid.
....except no, that's not how any of this works. I don't know where people keep getting this fantasy idea that everyone in the entire game is mega sweaty stacking 200% optimized raid comps. Most players don't give a shit and just take whoever they can get.
So much crying over "wahhh my class is not top 3 dps so nobody will ever take it to raid THE WHOLE CLASS IS DEAD AHHHHH" jesus fuck
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u/ImpossibleMorning12 8h ago
I think part of it is that we've all been in TBCC this past year, which is far more demanding in terms of raid optimization. So people are in that mindset.
Forever raids aren't going to be like that. It will probably be closer to SOD which was very forgiving.
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u/Dr-Enforcicle 8h ago
TBCC this past year, which is far more demanding in terms of raid optimization
It doesn't though. You don't need to "optimize" a raid comp unless you're pushing for speedruns / parses.
WoW has never required "optimization" other than mythic raids or pushing for 99 parses.
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u/iHaveComplaints 8h ago
TBC has multiple instances of bosses that will take dozens of pulls to get down even with a modestly optimized composition.
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u/Dr-Enforcicle 6h ago
Anyone who is taking "dozens of pulls" on post-nerf content, the raid comp is not the issue lmao
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u/ImpossibleMorning12 8h ago
You don't need a perfect comp, but you do need the basics in place if you want to comfortably clear in 2 nights, which is typical for a casual guild like the one I'm in.
Also remember that unoptimized raid teams tend to have lower-performing players, which doesn't help. In a roundabout way, casual guilds benefit more from optimization.
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u/Acrobatic_Garage_891 9h ago
No shaman streamers so no one is looking into us
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u/NoSugarGatorade 9h ago
Well summit did spend a good portion of his stream time on his shaman actively shitting on the class he was playing so, yeah
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u/Loud_Permission9265 8h ago
Where is cdew
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u/ExtremePrivilege 6h ago
Playing slots.
Not joking. He’s a gambling streamer now. He plays with fake money given to him by the company (which he denies) and compels children into gambling addiction.
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u/Mr_Pastee 3h ago
Bean too. I went to see if he was playing WoW and the thumbnail looked like a walrus on a beanbag. He was just laying there shirtless playing slots.
Saddest shit I've ever seen.
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u/Uncreativity10 5h ago
Man, it so fucking sad, but I get it he has like what 4 kids to feed and 8 animals or some shit?
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u/AlfredJQuack45 5h ago
Not defending the guy in any way because gambling is for absolute degenerates, but I doubt there are any "kids" below the age of 32 watching Cdew in 2026 lol
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u/astral_icecream 4h ago
All these streamers who aren't big names like an xqc and have lower viewers are also viewbotting. They always have 600-1k views as they play slots and the chat is virtually dead. The entire thing is one big scam. A bunch of people with salary contracts that get a daily stipend of house money they can't withdraw, they just gamble it on stream in an attractive manner for whatever their contract says until they lose it all. The winnings are real, they just go to the house. Thing is, these people are so hooked and such fiends, when they run out of the stipend house money, they continue their stream and tap into their own money and lose thousands.
Should this gambling bubble burst or get banned/regulated and these contracts end, these fiends are going to lose their families and homes. They're completely addicted.
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u/Skore_Smogon 13h ago
I absolutely hate, hate, HATE Lava Burst.
Mages and Warlocks already had Fire covered.
We had Lava Burst in WOTLK, in SoD and now again in Forever?
Are the devs creatively bankrupt?
Elemental Shaman are cool because they are the class that throws LIGHTNING around like Zeus or Thor.
If we're going to get a 2ndary spell school, why can't it be something thematic that works with our Lightning Spells?
Imagine a Water Bolt or a channeled Water Beam that did damage left a "Wet" debuff on the target (stacks up to x3).
Every time you hit a Wet target with a Lightning Spell it consumes a stack of the debuff for extra damage and you can put a talent in the Ele tree to also have it stun the target kinda like Mage's Impact or Hunter's Imp Concussive Shot.
Fuck Lava Burst.
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u/Lucky-Peak-8256 13h ago
Could introduce a talent that, since chain heal could be wet-ish, chain heal no longer heals and slaps the water effect around the field and then a chain lightning could come afterwards or something, that'd be fun to see. Idk just throwing spaghetti at a wall here.
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u/Jordykins850 5h ago
That’s actually pretty good. Instead of the lava burst talent it changes chain heal into a poison beam.
Poison dot and increases nature dmg 🤔 maybe the poison slows attack like thunder clap.
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u/Virtual_Fudge8639 12h ago
Maybe puts a buff on allys, then if there are friendlies with the buff between you and your target, it chains through your friendlies to consume the buff and empower the lightning onto the target.
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u/HomelessFlea1337 12h ago
I agree, I fell in love with the class for shooting lightning and because chain lightning is the coolest spell ever made. I don’t want to be a meatball thrower again, retail has that covered. I want LIGHTNING
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u/AckwardNinja 4h ago
I mean retail has been solidly in the lightning zone for a few years. LB hasn't been a good button for a while
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u/Gefarate 11h ago
The most iconic shaman line is literally "storm, earth and fire"... Fire is one of the totems... Lightning only is your headcanon
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u/TheLightningL0rd 10h ago
I feel the same way, Lava Burst is boring thematically. Obviously we already have fire totem from the beginning, with all that brings. Would be cool to have a lightning themed totem (I guess from the air totem?). Imagine what a chain lightning totem or lightning nova totem would be like.
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u/Ickyfist 11h ago
They should make lightning spells into a new school of air magic and then give us earth magic (boulder bolt).
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u/PersistentWorld 11h ago
I'm not the last air bender. Lava Burst is mega and incredibly satisfying. What you even talking about.
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u/kopecm13 9h ago
Chain lightning is the main reason I would play shaman.
It should not deal less damage than boring lighting bolt even on single target. There is a cooldown on it. If it is too hard to balance, just remove Lava burst
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u/Dashdash421 12h ago
Is there any dps spec people are happy with at 60? Some type of hunter?
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u/slothsarcasm 11h ago
Almost every other class has at least one dps spec that the community is largely in agreement will be good.
Shaman is the only one with two dps specs that people both predict will be in a bad spot at end game.
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u/jlapetra 10h ago edited 5h ago
Aggravated by the fact resto is already predicted to be best or second best healing, meaning the chances of getting anything but a resto shaman in raids are very slim.
But I will be honest, classic was also this way. 40 man raids where just a bunch of resto shamans dropping totems for their groups.
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u/Synthetsofetherlords 2h ago
Bad predictions then, enhancement is looking fine resto is looking fine.
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u/1998_2009_2016 8h ago
Warlock looks pretty good except that it's just dots and shadowbolt. More dots and you at least use a pet, and Shadow&Flame seems fairly competitive while adding a fair amount more complexity. Only complaints are that the soul fire execute mechanic seems useless, and deep aff/destro (wrack/incinerate) are not particularly close.
Shadowpriest also looks very solid just lacking aoe
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u/Magikazamz 8h ago
No, this is reddit, people will doompost about every little change to their class and act like it ruined and unplayable.
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u/Blitz-Lexikon 9h ago
Lol, no - no one is happy with anything, and everything is bad.
I'm of half a mind to save some of these threads as receipts when it turns out nearly everything is fine when we actually get access to the other 3/4 of the game.
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u/Willthwab 11h ago
Sorry, since the dev team only plays alliance (but hate dwarves), they don't know what to do with shaman. Please understand.
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u/Dr-Enforcicle 8h ago
the dev team only plays alliance
Is that why orc and undead had busted OP racials that had to be neutered to be even remotely balanced?
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u/tgaccione 8h ago
Tbf this kinda supports the point because horde having strong racials resulted in them instantly getting nerfed, and then humans getting an absurdly strong racial.
The past couple weeks of beta whenever somebody would point out how much more stuff the alliance was getting the retort was “yeah but horde racials are really good”, but now we’re back to alliance racial supremacy.
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u/Willthwab 6h ago edited 6h ago
Orc and Undead never had busted OP racials ever in WoW Forever because they were absolutely gutted to death before it even hit live.
Human on the other hand is going to release with absolutely busted racials. So yes, that is exactly why-1
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u/MeestaRoboto 11h ago
Because the real issues weren’t fixed - the FEEL of the class was always burst. They’re making ele flat casters like a mage or destro lock.
The other issue being spell power scaling.
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u/nextlevelmashup 8h ago
I mean destro lock has more burst atm with shadowburn conflag and death coil
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u/AckwardNinja 4h ago
I mean idk about other people but destro double crits was also a big burst thing in classic
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u/WiseMorning1 8h ago
I feel like most of the Elemental Shaman players here could have come up with a working concept of the spec by themselves. It's not THAT difficult that an entire team of devs struggles with it.
What is ele shaman fantasy? Lightning, fast bursty spells, big cleave, will have to think about mana management.
The last one was easy to fix. Just make clearcast proc from spell crits like in TBC, make it like a 2x 40% reduction system so an ele shaman can also decide to spend the second charge for a chain lightning without interruption.
If burst was a concern in PVP they could easily have reworked Call of Thunder this way: Each time you cast Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning you gain the Lightning Conductor effect, increasing your chance to critically hit with Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning by 1/2/3%, stacking up to five times. Lasts 8 seconds.
Reducing burst while increasing PVE damage is not difficult. A solution like this would also go well with the changed clearcasting talent.
Another idea for Reverberation: Reduces the cooldown of your shock spells by 0,2/0,4/0,6/0,8/1 second. In addition, the impact of your shocks causes the target to take 4/8/12/16/20% more damage from your next Chain Lightning. This effect is reduced for lower rank shocks. (In practice it will be something like for shocks with a Spell Rank of 10 levels or lower than the Shamans current Level.
The idea behind this: Spend even more mana for even more burst, but it's gonna cost you a lot.
Anyway, making elemental shaman functionable and keeping the classic identity is very feasible. So it's hard to understand why this hasn't happened.
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u/austinmcd 7h ago
Because bursty play styles is what people want, but it doesn’t translate to raid viable dps
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u/Fyvrynifl 5h ago
Correct, but ironically down ranking works really well. In TBC at least (didn't raid ele until then) I used r2 lightning bolt spam to proc big chain lightnings. I didn't use max rank lightning bolt except when it made sense to maximize throughput. E.g., I had a pot/drums/lust/other cds active or the boss was nearly dead and I knew I could finish sprinting rather than jogging.
I think something similar in classic could work, where you do extremely variable damage (as wild as the elements you could say). Use max ranks for short fights, low ranks for long fights and rely on procs to instant cast chain lightning to fill out the damage.
Edit: I know they deleted down ranking, but the above example makes it a big mistake imo rather than simply reworking the problematic classes/spells because it did have some really cool tech. And it is intuitive if you actually play the game, like you obviously get slower/more expensive spells for higher ranks. If you just don't boost to max and progress you naturally learn this.
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u/austinmcd 5h ago
Maybe one day, but for launch it looks like they’re opting to make low floors for all specs to give beginnner’s an opportunity to play all specs
I don’t like the furor shapeshifting change at all, but I get it
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u/Fyvrynifl 5h ago
Druids are weird, so I get the furor changes. Though if you explicitly give a talent worded to say you keep the energy then I think that makes that intuitive but w/e. I think shying away from ambition and complexity is a mistake though.
And let's be real, asides from weird tech like clam-weaving and maybe the more advanced things snapshotting dots with procs and cds, this game is not complex or mechanically ambitious. So simplifying it even further seems a bit silly to me. Like have some faith in your players.
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u/DShark182 12h ago
I personally don't hate Lava Burst. The CD is nice because it lets me weave in Lightning abilities so they're not completely ignored. Flame shock at 20 yards, when it's almost required for Lava Burst, is just insane though.
Comparing Ele to Shadow talents -
Mana issues are still a thing because mana talents are all locked in the RSham tree and require 5 points to even access. Shadow has them in the Shadow tree on the first row. Shadow ALSO now gets a 15% spirit buff.
Hit talents are again, in the Resto tree, Shadow has them in the Shadow tree. I'm just not sure why Resto is getting the hit talent node?
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u/Blurbyo 10h ago
Wdym, Shadow lost 10 yards of range as well with mind flay this patch.
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u/DShark182 5h ago
Welcome to Sham life, all our shocks are 20 yards but our lava burst and lightning bolt are 30 lol. So we have to go into 20 yard range to flame shock before we lava burst. And if we’re oom, we have to run into melee range to melee attack.
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u/slothsarcasm 11h ago
100% I don’t mind lava burst. I enjoyed it a few times in retail like BFA. But it’s got terrible spell power scaling and if it needs flame shock then that spell needs to have a range increase.
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u/ChangeFatigue 12h ago
Not to mention that ghost wolf will almost always be necessary, so lock in 7 points in enhance for every build you consider.
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u/Fankine 10h ago
I mean you can still get both wolf and water shield + regen in combat so it should be alright at 60.
I completely agree on shock range and lava burst being too low dmg.
Too bad the ele sham community isnt vocal enough and doesnt have privileged streamer access to the devs, they deserve better
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u/rotzbua 9h ago
i agree, with watershield, combat regen, shadow in my group and all the manareg buffs we get it will be fine.
you can also dualspec in manatide, go only 4 crit and skip ghostwolf for superlong bossfights
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u/AckwardNinja 4h ago
if they go for retail lengths of fights you will be perma mana tide.
idk if they will but we are talking 4-10min raid fights
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u/Mountain_Cry6298 8h ago
I am once again asking for the removal of Lava Burst and to place the focus back onto Chain Lightning.
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u/SeriousLee91 1h ago
But hey, you can now spam 15secs of chainligthning and then sit for a minute to regen your mana back. Isn't that nice...
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u/GoodShark 12h ago
Not seen in this image is rogues. Because according to WoW Forever... they don't exist.
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u/EggPsychological4844 14h ago
I'm not an Elemental enjoyer, I play tank, but Neeko2Lo did a pretty good video last night that clearly explained the grievances he has with Elemental right now.
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u/Pale-Supermarket3217 10h ago
Wow, that guy is an idiot.
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u/EggPsychological4844 10h ago
Is he? As somebody who doesn't play Ele how is he wrong?
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u/Pale-Supermarket3217 9h ago
I’m not going to force myself to watch it again, but his complaints are ‘they nerfed my uncapped aoe button that was so overtuned it was high priority even in single target’, ‘my other aoe spell also isn’t good single target’, ‘I don’t like casting fire spells on my master of the elements’, ‘my aoe slow totem doesn’t root every tick’, ‘they named the dps cooldown the wrong name’, and I forget the rest. Also, he insulted the devs constantly and called them troglodytes for not making his aoe buttons good in single target? It’s weird that you came away from that video with a positive impression.
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u/austinmcd 7h ago
Big time. I want to hear ele mains out, but it kind of feels like they just want to one shot people.
Fair enough, but that doesn’t translate to PvE. So either your not raid viable with cheese one shots, or the spec migrates to a smoothened dps output
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u/SurroundOk3941 8h ago
When I think shaman I think big bolts of lightening, not lava. The playstyle should be more based around that
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u/tinylittlebabyjesus 7h ago
Kind of funny seeing a complaint about 20 yards as that's the range of Mind Flay. They do get a 20% increase in range though.
Also, to be clear, I don't really care that much, mind flay also slows, which is why it's 20 yards. But I remember it had some annoying moments like on the final boss in Kara, where you mind flayed at your own peril.
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u/slothsarcasm 5h ago
Ya it’s funny because FS is integral to our damage because it buffs lava burst which is now key. And then we have spells that increase the range of all our damaging spells except our shocks. So it’s like a conflicting design of letting us cast as far as others but requiring us to stand closer than anyone.
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u/Frames_Janko 2h ago
Flame shock does get the range increase with other elemental spells, though. 15 extra yards.
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u/CharismaDamage 2h ago
I wish the latest lightning bolt and chain lightning animations were in Forever!
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u/gottahackett 2h ago
They’re saving the big shaman changes for the announcement of shaman tanks. Elemental Taunt coming soon!
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u/DeadHorsesx 1h ago
I’ll say it, I really like the new EM, but everything else still ignores our issues. If we had our old elemental talent tree, with this new EM, reverted coefs, and maybe something like TBC clear casting on top of the mana regen talent in resto I would actually be pretty happy with that going into live, maybe not forever, but I would be okay with that being our jumping off point.
But again, Blizzard just doesn’t get it. They’re too smart for us and we’re all apes who clearly just don’t know better and are just missing out on the profound potential of Lava Burst that it will just not lie down and die. We still have our mana issues, we still do low damage, worse damage now due to Nova nerf, projection is still not fun to play with, and Chain Lightning will still not be fun to cast when it is so weak. This spec will absolutely still suck donkey nuts
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u/KiwiFew 10h ago
I'm playing Shaman for class fantasy and fun. 🤷♂️
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u/slothsarcasm 8h ago
I still might especially for pvp. Love the dwarf shaman vibe. But shit if I don't know I'm gonna level it to 60 and then abandon it for another class that has a dev who cares watching it.
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u/LordSkandalis 13h ago
I’m fine with the lava burst if it’s actually a real BURST and not just another mechanical crutch thrown in for variety. But all I really want is to see those big yellow numbers from my chain lightning — and I don’t even need any elemental mastery for that.
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u/Sadlychosen 10h ago edited 10h ago
Besides damage/mana values not being tuned. What is actually wrong with elemental? Flameshock got a longer duration via talents. Elemental Mastery is back for a cool new CD that will really shine on AOE. (This is a lot better than the Old Elemental Mastery in Vanilla for PVE and most likely BGs) Water Shield got changed to proc from crits Lava burst is an addition to the rotation.
Shamans look to be in a fine place rotation wise. The only thing that kind of sucks is the 20 yard range Flame Shock but Shadow priests also got nerfed with 20 yard range Mind Flay ( It sucks but this might be a design decision on their end)
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u/Recktion 10h ago
They're mad their biggest nuke spell lost more than 75% of its damage and has worse scaling than before.
Idk why the devs refuse to buff chain lightning and just make lightning bolt a filler spell.
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u/Sadlychosen 10h ago
I said that the numbers are messed up, that will get fixed. I don't know if Chain Lightning will get buffed back to being better then Lightning Bolt in ST but for Cleave and with Elemental Mastery it will be really fun to press.
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u/HarpyPiee 6h ago
The new elemental mastery basically guarantees chain lightning stays weak. They can't have a strong, instant cast, 15 second duration, chain lightning be strong or else it would be insane in pvp. That change is a pretty definitive nail in the coffin of anyone hoping for a big chain lightning buff
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u/moredros 6h ago
It doesn't make it instant cast, so it won't be a problem in pvp. Casters standing still and chaincasting has plenty of counterplay. Chain Lightning hits like a wet noodle and still costs a lot of mana. While water shield will help with mana, having to constantly recast it will majorly affect Ele's sustained damage.
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u/DuggerX 1h ago
That's the thing, we dont want chain lightning to hit like a wet noodle. I think most people here would give up any version of EM, lava burst, and overload just to get original chain lightning feeling back. I want it to shock and devastate my opponents when Im allowed to get it off.
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u/WineDarkFantasea 10h ago
The design is the main issue- historically ele has been a decision making spec focused around a high mana cost for high damage return. Spells like chain lightning that look and sound amazing were dangerous buttons for both you and the enemy, you risk ooming yourself but can reach very very high levels of burst.
The new design seems to backtrack completely on this philosophy- we’re now low damage, fast casting immobile turrets. Overload means that our damage has to be scaled back even further, and chain lighting having reduced mana cost and coefficients means that it’s only useful in heavy cleave strictly as an aoe spell.
TLDR: ele used to be a big number spec that required planning to spend mana in huge damage burst windows with big chain lightning casts.
Ele now is an immobile fast caster that will fill the screen with lots of low damage hits. This is also very bad for PvP but that’s another conversation.
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u/Chronoblivion 6h ago
I don't know that I'd call "cast chain lightning on cooldown if you have enough mana for it" much of a decision.
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u/Sadlychosen 9h ago
Why would you think that? Spell just need to be tuned to hit harder. I've played every version of classic Ele. Classic/TBC rotation is garbage. Ele is getting a more involved rotation and an insane CD in Elemental Mastery that shines in Cleave.
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u/WineDarkFantasea 9h ago
The problem is that the damage can’t be tuned with this design, or ele would be extremely overpowered- that’s my point. The spec is moving away from huge chain lightning crits to popping a cd, standing still, and spamming lots of small, fast casted lightning bolt hits with even smaller overload hits. The design is the issue for me here not the tuning. Some people like this play style, which is fine, but I’ll be moving to mage because the play style it feels more like classic elemental to me.
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u/WiseMorning1 8h ago
Basically exponentially more mana cost for smaller and smaller gains in base damage. You can do your 3x LB10 and 1x Chain Lightning rotation single target which is the highest dps rotation, but it costs a ton of mana. Or you take it a slight bit slower and ditch the Chain Lightning. But what if there's another target. Or do I use LB4 (or even LB3) and just use clearcasts for Chain Lightning? Or do I use Rank 1 Chain Lightning, which costs the same mana as an LB10 but does more damage against two targets as long as you have good spellpower? Tons of decisions. Yes sure this is a play-style that just emerged and probably wasnt planned out, but why not just build on this.
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u/nextlevelmashup 8h ago
They can increase ele haste as much as they want but you still flinging wet noodles around, they need to fix the SP scaling/base damage instead of dancing around it.
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u/Kind_Reaction_8463 6h ago
honestly i think ele shaman looks pretty cool mechanically after the patch. maybe the damage and numbers are still weak, but that will certainly be fixed if needed. i don't know why everyone is dooming so hard about it lmfao.
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u/Infernalz 9h ago
I literally saw a post here the other day suggesting this exact talent tree reworked and now that they implement it, everyone is bitching about it? Holy shit this sub is so dogshit now.
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u/Oedipus_TyrantLizard 8h ago
As someone who has been pretty deep in the shaman posts - I did not see any posts asking for the changes we just got.
I think the consistent theme has been to hold more true to the classic Ele fantasy of high burst on CDs. (AKA restore chain lightning as a high cost high burst spell that’s good for single target).
But the recent changes took a different direction while simultaneously not addressing core damage issues.
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u/slothsarcasm 8h ago
Maybe the same people who liked it weren't the same people here? I also guarantee that post probably included buffs to chain lightning, an increase to flame shock range, and/or some passive mana regen in the ele tree.
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u/Lucroarna56 7h ago
Crazy how I played enh shaman the entire beta. I top every dps meter. I 1 shot alliance all day. I feel overpowered.
But if I hadn't played, I would read this, and assume the class doesn't do anything at all, and shouldn't be considered.
Crazy how mis-information and lying blatantly can sway people's opinions.
The OP is not a reliable source. Ignore everything they post entirely, and just play the game for yourself.
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u/slothsarcasm 5h ago
Me when I don’t read
Edit to add: they nerfed fire nova to the ground also bro. That was the only reason we ever topped a meter. That or the 30’level cap keeping windfury as the best spell in the game and our class quest weapon as the best in the game.
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u/ChipsHandon12 5h ago
Even in other games i might win all the time with characters people consider weak but i could be much better with buffs. Maybe other characters really are better off comparatively.
I'll play a shaman whether it's shit or great and make it work.
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u/Spinax_52 7h ago
Well yeah their best talents and spells are beyond level 30
This whole conversation about elemental shaman has been absurdly stupid to me. The spec was never good until 40 in vanilla. People out here really complaining about a class not being good when we only have 21 of 51 talents points available and no end game gear
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u/slothsarcasm 7h ago
Comments like these are soooooo stupid. The same comments were made about warrior rage gen, just misunderstanding the entire argument and being willfully ignorant.
1st. This isn’t era, it’s not meant to be. Specs are not meant to suck at level 30.
2nd. We already have the numbers available and can see all the talents. they do not help the core issue
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u/Spinax_52 6h ago
Bro you’re complaining about a class not being balanced during a level 30 cap beta. You have no clue whatsoever how they will play at end game or DPS rankings during the raid no one has played yet. You’re just complaining to get upvotes on Reddit. It’s hilarious you would try comparing warrior rage generation, something we know and can test how it works, to elemental shaman balance at level 60
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u/DuggerX 1h ago
Unless ele shaman gets set bonuses that basically break the game its not good. Just because we are capped at beta dosnt mean our brains stop working. We have all the spells and talents. Gear can only have so many stats and they would be similar between classes. Literally only set bonuses on raid gear at this point fixes the issues and that is shit design if that is the case
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u/slothsarcasm 5h ago
The core design is shot. Lightning bolt, CL, and LB have the worst spell power coefficients in the game for casters, and the spec is designed around flame shock while increasing the range of every spell you regularly cast except that one which is 20 yards. Chain lightning, the favorite spell for everyone who likes ele, is no longer viable as a single target. Not to mention we literally can look at the mana costs of spells at 60 right now and recognize the issues on the horizon.
But based on your response you’re gonna not read that and play dumb
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u/Steel_Serpent_Davos 13h ago
YOURE ONLY LVL 30
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u/slothsarcasm 13h ago
Such a dumb argument when we have the spell ranks and numbers already available up to 60. The math can be math’d right now. This is ALWAYS a dumb argument.
Also: who tf thinks a spec shouldn’t be functional by level 30?
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u/HomelessFlea1337 12h ago
Agreed, oh you enjoy elemental? Simply wait until level 40 before your cast times can actually be lowered, someone most casters can talent into at level 10.
Gameplay is complete ass while leveling? Well what if some miracle cure is discovered at 60, at an unknown time, in an unknown patch that may never occur.
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u/Tainxxx 10h ago
Elemental alacrity you can get at lvl 15, wtf you’re talking about. I agree ele needs some rework, but let’s try to at least be coherent here. Reducing your cast time is accessible on the 2nd row
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u/AdInfamous662 10h ago
You're right, a nerfed version of elemental alacrity is certainly there. For our brand new 2.5 second lightning bolt to go to 2 seconds instead of a 3 second cast going to 2 seconds.
No hit, no mana recovery or regen not even crit is in the tree anymore lol. Watershield is one of the funniest changes because for some reason we want both resto and ele to stop what they're doing and use a gcd to eventually get 6% mana back after 3 critical.
You need 32 talents invested to get the crit and the 31 talent (this is just hilarious) and this isn't even touching our current abysmal spell coefficients that cannot be buffed in a meaningful way because a) lightning overload and b) maelstrom weapons.
You can nitpick at the guy above but if you think ele shaman tree was put together with any semblance of an actual spec then you are far divorced from reality
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u/Jordykins850 8h ago
This is what I’m saying man.. it’s a caster dps spec.. but mana regen, crit or hit are not in the tree..
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u/SirSukkaAlot 11h ago
this and for example balance druid can be played fine without any talents and talents only add to the spec, you cannot play elemental untill you got idk at this point like 40lvl or maybe even high 50s
absolutely terrible
this new elemental mastery seems great, but there is nothing exciting going on for ele
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u/shoopahbeats 13h ago
If you’re able to read and comprehend talents and abilities, you can get an idea of how a class is designed and will play
Maybe you have trouble with this
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u/Gulbeleglim 14h ago edited 14h ago
Elemental had a broken leg. Instead of fixing it, Blizz cut the leg, and gave it a cool crutch with flame decals. At least, others could help it push its raid wheelchair (totems)
Elemental spent weeks claiming they wanted their leg back and fixed. So yesterday Blizz made the crutch extra cool with decals and chrome finish, and forced the other foot to go barefoot for reasons. For good measure, they also removed the wheelchair.
Meanwhile, next door, Mage was sad their sneakers got dirty, so Blizz gifted it a Lamborghini.