[2022] Feedback: Shaman

With the Shaman talent trees in Dragonflight, we want to hone in on some core concepts that are unique to the class. Totems have long been a special thing for Shaman, and we’re giving some new options to manipulate your totems position, radius, duration, cleanse poisons, or even potentially reset the cooldown. We’re bringing back Alpha Wolf for Enhancement Shaman, spreading some Stormkeeper functionality to Restoration Shaman, and trying out a new variation of Elemental Blast for Elemental Shaman, where it replaces Earth Shock as a more expensive Maelstrom Spender. All three of the Shaman specializations have a distinct style of play, and we’re hoping the new talents allow you to focus on your important totems, utility, and style of damage or healing you enjoy.

Please use this thread to post feedback on the Shaman class, once you’ve tested it in the Dragonflight Alpha.

Thank you!

Hello again, Shamans!

In today’s new build of the Dragonflight Alpha, we have several adjustments to talents in the Shaman Class Tree intended to reduce the overall defensive and mobility kit of Shaman, which has crept up due to the new system allowing for previously impossible combinations. We’re happy with new talent combinations, but the mobility and defensive power in the tree exceeded our target for Shaman, and individual talent power was above budget compared to other classes.

Elemental
We’ve continued to make minor tweaks to the Elemental tree, based on feedback. This week we focused on improvements to Primordial Wave. It’s generally avoided outside of AoE in the current design, so our aim is to improve its overall value in various game modes to increase build diversity.

We attempted to address node pathing pain points for Storm Elemental with Primal Elementalist. There is now a path available towards Primal Elementalist that doesn’t require sinking more than a couple points into talents unrelated to a Lightning-focused build.

Electrified Shocks is an experiment we’re excited about for Icefury in AoE, and we’re continuing to make adjustments to it. We’ve increased the duration of the Icefury buff which should be an overall improvement to its gameplay given the window was previously hard to fit your Frost Shocks in. We’ve also reduced the number of targets hit and increased the duration of the debuff on enemies, as the intent is for there to be weaving gameplay between Chain Lightning and Frost Shock.

Flames of the Firelord is a niche talent, mainly used for PvP or some AoE builds and we felt it best to combine its functionality with Flames of the Cauldron.

Magma Chamber has moved as its generally more versatile than Searing Flames. Its damage bonus has also been increased.

Talent changes for Elemental:

• Flames of the Firelord has been removed, and its effect is now attached to Flames of the Cauldron.
• Flames of the Cauldron now reduces the cooldown of Flame Shock by 1.5 seconds and Flame Shock deals damage 15% faster.
• Icefury buff duration increased to 25 seconds (was 15 seconds).
• Electrified Shocks makes Frost Shock hit 3 additional targets (was 4), and the debuff duration increased to 6 seconds (was 4 seconds).
• Magma Chamber Damage bonus increased to 0.7%/1.5% per stack (was 0.5%/1.0% per stack).
• Tumbling Waves has been removed from Elemental and replaced with Rolling Magma.
• Rolling Magma causes Lava Burst and Lava Burst Overload damage to reduce the cooldown of Primordial Wave by 0.5/1.0 seconds.
• Splintered Elements increases Haste by 10% per stack (was 6%).
• Fire Elemental once again increases the duration of Flame Shock by 100% while active.
• Coming soon:
  • Heat Wave - Casting Primordial Wave triggers Lava Surge immediately and every 3 seconds for 12 seconds.

Restoration
We also made some adjustments to the Restoration tree to improve accessibility to damage/utility focused talents without needing to talent into throughput.

We’ve swapped Resurgence and Lava Surge to allow for damage-focused builds to not require talenting into increased mana regeneration.

Thanks again for your testing and feedback!

From the development notes for today’s Alpha update:

• Elemental
  • Earthquake – Damage reduced by 25%.
  • Chain Lightning – Damage increased by 25%. (Elemental only)
  • Lava Beam – Damage increased by 25%.
  • Lightning Bolt – Damage reduced by 20%. (Elemental only)
  • Lava Burst – Damage reduced by 20%. (Elemental only)
  • Earth Shock – Damage reduced by 20%.
  • Elemental Blast – Damage reduced by 20%. (Elemental only)
  • Lightning Rod – Deals 20% of Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt damage (was 25%).
• Enhancement
  • Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
  • Stormstrike now replaces Primal Strike.
  • Doom Winds now does some minor damage when you activate it.
  • Ice Strike’s Frost Shock buff now highlights Frost Shock
  • Alpha Wolf now works with Chain Lightning, rather than Crash Lightning.
  • Improved Stormbringer renamed Stormblast.
  • Unruly Winds chance raised to 100%.
  • Ascendance is now a choice node with Deeply Rooted Elements.
  • Thorim’s Invocation now remembers whether you last used Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning, and will use that spell instead of always Lightning Bolt.
  • Chain Lightning Rank 2 has been added into the Chain Lightning/Crash Lightning interactions and is no longer a talent.
  • New Talent: Crashing Storms – Chain Lightning jumps to 2 additional targets, and also increases Crash Lightning damage by 40%.
  • Forceful winds is now 45% damage per stack (was 35%).
  • Gathering Storms is now a 1-point talent (was 2). Value increased to 15%, and there’s a maximum of 10 stacks of Gathering Storms.
  • Hot Hand is now a 2-point talent (was 1).
  • Elemental Assault adjusted to be 10/20% Stormstrike damage (was 7/15%). Maelstrom weapon chance is now 50/100% per rank.
  • Lava Burst is affected by Enhancement mastery.
  • Primal Primer is no longer an option on the tree.
  • Hailstorm now gains bonus damage from up to 10 Maelstrom Weapon charges spent to work better with Overflowing Maelstrom. The bonus targets is still capped at 5.
  • Nature’s Fury now works correctly with the immediate damage from Ascendance.
  • Feral Spirits is now a 90 second cooldown.
  • Elemental Spirits no longer reduces Feral Spirit cooldown.
• Restoration
  • Water Totem Mastery – Consuming Tidal Waves reduces the cooldown of Cloudburst, Healing Stream, Healing Tide, Mana Spring, Mana Tide, and Poison Cleansing Totem by 0.5 seconds (was 0.25 seconds).