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Enhancement Shaman State on Shadowlands Alpha - Reworks, AoE Improvements and Covenants
Pubblicato
27/06/2020 alle 00:01
da
wordup
Feedback and opinions on the current state of Enhancement Shaman on the Shadowlands Alpha discussing its reworks, AoE improvements, Covenant abilities and more!
Introduction - Rework or Revert?
So, after facing probably one of Enhancement’s darkest expansions with Battle for Azeroth, we’ve arrived at Shadowlands and we’re looking like one of the most drastically altered specs. Where we’re at right now is somewhere between a rework and a revert, taking the shell of Mists/Warlords Enhancement gameplay, and stuffing some of Legion/BfA’s core mechanics inside to create a whole.
The longest standing and most drastic issue - that being Maelstrom as a resource simply not being very functional - has been cut out entirely by simply removing it, and bringing back old faithful in
Arma del Maelstrom
procs to make
Dardo Fulminante
,
Catena di Fulmini
,
Eruzione Benefica
or
Catena di Guarigione
instant.
Roccia Dura
,
Marchio del Gelo
and
Lingua di Fuoco
are all gone (though the latter remains an imbue) and
Folgore del Gelo
/
Folgore del Fuoco
are making a return, bringing out a bit more of the melee/spell interplay style we had in the past. With the removal of Maelstrom as well, that puts us closer to the old design of being more focused on a cooldown rotation in our gameplay - playing to minimise wasted uses of skills rather than wasted resources.
Araldo della Tempesta
remains (although changed to just being a single reset on specials), as does
Schianto di Fulmini
which was one of the best additions from Legion along with parts of the talent tree remaining, but it’s got a decidedly pre-Legion feel.
About the Author
Hey, most of you know me as Wordup, I've wrote the Enhancement guide for the last few expansions and frequent the Earthshrine discord pretty regularly, and stubbornly still play this spec. I've raided under the name Werdup in <Echoes> for the last 3 expansions and probably will continue in Shadowlands, and you can find me on
Twitter
,
Youtube
and very very rarely on
Twitch
.
What has Changed?
While there are a lot of things that have changed, the most drastic things are:
Returning Core Abilities & Passives
Arma del Maelstrom
stacks - nice to see return and functions better than Maelstrom as a resource bar ever really did.
Folgore del Fuoco
&
Folgore del Gelo
- old classics that are basically just filler & maintenance, necessary to bring back.
Totem del Flusso Vitale
- really helpful to have an extra low cost support tool in our kit.
Totem della Furia del Vento
- unique Enhancement specific utility coming back that sets us up as a melee group buffer.
Catena di Guarigione
- great to see an alternative to
Eruzione Benefica
that can help out in group situations.
Arma della Lingua di Fuoco
&
Arma della Furia del Vento
imbues - mostly flavour to keep old hooks in that are used as tuning knobs for the main kit - necessary returns but could just be passives.
Removed Abilities
Lingua di Fuoco
and
Marchio del Gelo
(active abilities) -
Lingua di Fuoco
&
Folgore del Fuoco
have too much overlap so not sad to see it go,
Marchio del Gelo
could have come back as an imbue though instead of going entirely, but it does overlap with
Folgore del Gelo
a lot.
Roccia Dura
- won't be missed, boring filler especially with Maelstrom gone, and can just be replaced by other rotational spells with more, better hooks.
Maelstrom Resource
- spent the majority of its time being a failure since implementation, and won't be missed by me. It would take more work to get that functioning than bring us back to a state where we were functional in the past.
Talent Tree Changes
Obviously with a drastic rework to the way the spec functions, some talents simply no longer have a place and have been switched out. Big changes of note are:
Pugno di Roccia
is gone and replaced with
Fiamme Sferzanti
for
Sferzata Lavica
/
Folgore del Fuoco
synergy.
Scudo di Fulmini
baselined and replaced by
Detonazione Elementale
, which functions with
Arma del Maelstrom
.
Mano Ardente
has been reworked into a proc window that reduces the cooldown of
Sferzata Lavica
for 8 seconds.
Valanga
is gone and replaced by
Furia della Tempesta
, causing
Arma della Furia del Vento
procs to reduce
Assalto della Tempesta
cooldown by 1 second.
Level 60 (35 in Shadowlands) tier has been completely reworked with 3 new Shock oriented talents:
Assalto Elementale
-
Assalto della Tempesta
causes your Shock cooldowns to reset.
Tempesta di Grandine
- reworked to convert
Arma del Maelstrom
stacks consumed into bonus damage and AoE for your next
Folgore del Gelo
.
Esplosione di Fuoco
- returning, causes all active
Folgore del Fuoco
s to erupt for AoE damage to nearby targets on a 15 second cooldown.
Furia dell'Aria
is gone and replaced by
Custode della Tempesta
, which can use
Arma del Maelstrom
to become instant.
The tree in general seems about half way toward being done, and is in general sporting a lot more desirable talents than the BfA iteration did. Seeing
Pugno di Roccia
and
Valanga
gone is great, and seeing more interactive AoE options in
Tempesta di Grandine
and
Esplosione di Fuoco
is also really exciting to see. Having more defined synergy lines that actually work with strong parts of the kit is something the spec achieved for a very brief period in BoD with certain Azerite builds, and to see that be executed without needing a borrowed power system is something I'm holding my breath for.
Covenant Abilities
Right now the full scope of how impactful covenant choices are is limited by us not being able to see the entire system due to Soulbinds and Conduits not being present yet. Currently, the covenant you select will give you one class tailored active ability, and one signature generic ability shared among all classes that join.
For Shaman, our abilities (sans one) are mostly focused around being flexible AoE cooldown tools that work both for Damage and Healing at the same time. Their delivery methods and opportunity costs differ, as does their strength (for now), but the roles they fill mostly sit in the same camp. In some cases this is a blessing meaning that we are less impacted strictly by the locked-to-your-choice system. it does raise questions about how samey they are and how easy it is to math out the ideal, and also reduces experimentation with some of the more targeted choices because of that.
Kyrian
Totem del Vespro
:
Summons a Totem that lasts for 30 seconds with 3 charges of AoE Damage (triggered by offensive abilities), and 3 charges of AoE Healing (triggered by healing abilities) that can also be recast to reposition it at your cursor. My personal favourite due to it being very non-invasive in a now quite robust toolkit, and extremely flexible for both single target, AoE, and healing utility. Letting you prime this for your AoE to augment a quick burst, while also letting the 3 healing charges sit for when needed over the next 30 seconds (say, a quick low-GCD
Totem del Flusso Vitale
) to give a quick burst of support makes for a pretty engaging ability for how simple it looks on the surface.
Evocazione: Factotum
:
While a 3 charge on-demand Health restore (on a cooldown) is nice, the extent of how useful this is becomes mostly tied to a binary “can the Bleed/Disease/Poison removal effect be used effectively”. That means to accurately judge whether this has any real combat use then mostly depends on us seeing all the content to come, otherwise it’s a pretty bland choice. Having a buddy who can repair your stuff and let you swap talents is nice though.
Necrolord
Ondata Primordiale
:
1.5 second cast that deals damage and applies
Folgore del Fuoco
to your target, and causes your next
Dardo Fulminante
cast to also hit all targets afflicted by
Folgore del Fuoco
(including an additional bolt on the target you cast on), also works with
Arma del Maelstrom
’s cast time reduction. Of the 4, this is the only one that provides no healing or utility, which personally I think immediately puts it at a disadvantage. There are some obvious synergies that have opened up now that
Esplosione di Fuoco
has returned alongside some other
Folgore del Fuoco
oriented tools. The AoE component however has some question marks now that so much has been loaded into
Catena di Fulmini
(which this will now displace 2 casts of in AoE to make use of) that we’ll touch on later, but right now this is a big question mark for me.
Forgiatura della Carne
:
Given that over the past 2 expansions one of the hottest topics surrounding Enhancement is its survival, this is immediately an appealing choice as it’s the only one that directly grants that. The channel time however is very tangible given we still have a busy rotation so finding time for this will be a downside. Having a big overshield that can be combined with defensives to potentially let us soak damage we’d otherwise have to opt out of opens up something we’ve been unable to do though.
Night Fae
Trasfusione dei Silfi
:
3 sec channel that creates a ground targeted AoE that deals Nature damage over the duration, then can be reactivated to heal for 25% of damage dealt to 8 nearby allies. This is one of the ones I really dislike mechanically right now. If there’s one thing a melee doesn’t want to do, it’s be rooted in place to channel for 3 seconds and open themselves up to danger to make use of a tool - especially one on a long cooldown that has value loaded into that small window. This feels like it’s exceptionally bad for Enhancement in particular for all of the Shaman specs due to our vulnerable placement in encounters. We also rarely do have a full 3 seconds to stop and channel this without having cooldowns pile up and displace damage elsewhere. Auto attacks are also stopped during the channel (reducing
Arma della Furia del Vento
/on-hit effects triggering) which is extremely detrimental. I’d rather see this be a placed Earthquake style effect so we’re still mobile and it doesn’t lock us out of maintaining our cooldowns now that’s our playstyle focus. The stored up burst Heal however is pretty great, and probably the one saving grace of the ability right now, especially due to the control you have over it.
Animorfosi
:
Generally this shares too much space with
Lupo Spettrale
to really have that much use for us. The instant displacement could however be useful on certain encounters, but this looks like the weakest of the 4 on the surface.
Venthyr
Raccolto a Catena
:
2.5 sec cast that deals damage to 5 targets and heals 5 allies, and the cooldown is reduced by 5 seconds for each time it critically strikes, also works with
Arma del Maelstrom
’s cast time reduction. This is very hit and miss for me, on one hand a higher capped version of
Catena di Fulmini
could be really interesting if they load in the hooks onto it but right now it’s very bland as a double sided damage/heal cast that displaces your usual spenders. It’s also less flexible than something like
Totem del Vespro
by loading everything into a single global at once, but this is at least functional and is mostly just held back by numbers right now.
Porta delle Ombre
:
While everyone is talking about this, generally our mobility is good enough for what we do. If it’s good for dealing with a specific mechanic or type of content, it’ll be good for a lot of other classes due to exclusively that purpose, rather than something innately weighted to helping us with something we lack.
Theme of the Changes, and How it Plays
The most important thing to know when approaching Shadowlands Enhancement is that the gameplay has slightly shifted. It no longer relies on a builder/spender resource gameplay style with a heavy focus on procs, and is more oriented around a rotational cooldown cycle between a number of different abilities and some procs to bridge or fill. This means instead of being a top to bottom priority list, we’re more trying to settle into a flow of making sure we mitigate downtime and waste of cooldowns, which for anyone who only started in Legion might find jarring. I am however of the opinion this is for the better - Maelstrom never functioned adequately to warrant the change from the Warlords gameplay we settled into, and this gives a lot more wiggle room to tweak and adjust the rotation and add hooks that aren’t just “pray for
Araldo della Tempesta
, spam
Assalto della Tempesta
”. AoE has also added a lot more active gameplay to activate our tools -
Catena di Fulmini
having multiple hooks has created a nice flow when extra targets are added as I’ll touch on in the section below.
Lupi Spirituali
now also generates 6
Arma del Maelstrom
stacks over its duration and, while it's still a pretty tame cooldown, it feels a whole lot better than the small amount they'd generate in BfA that we didn't really care about. I’d say we’re well over half the way there to mending the long term issues that Enhancement’s core gameplay has been struggling with since the shift to being heavily
Araldo della Tempesta
focused, and am hopeful this direction will continue moving forward.
Talent Changes
The talent tree has also seen some pretty significant improvements, but still has a ways to go. With
Roccia Dura
being gone we’ve cut loose two big offenders in
Pugno di Roccia
and
Valanga
, and had some good additions with
Fiamme Sferzanti
and
Furia della Tempesta
. We now have a pretty pronounced set of synergies in different paths between a more storm oriented build, and a fire oriented one throughout the tree which is exciting to see.
Tempesta di Grandine
’s recent change providing
Arma del Maelstrom
->
Folgore del Gelo
damage opportunities also does a lot of heavy lifting to the rotation and is an incredibly well executed talent with a lot of flexibility, and
Esplosione di Fuoco
has potential assuming some mechanical issues are addressed making the level 35 tier interesting to dictate your priority Shock cast. The final talent row is still ultimately a sore spot through and through sadly, and nothing has really been done to modernize it with the new systems.
Impact of June 11th and June 18th Builds
The 11th of June build that added a lot of the more significant changes was one of the most overwhelmingly positive batches of tweaks I’ve ever seen Enhancement have. Removing
Roccia Dura
is jarring at first, but there are enough other tools to fill the empty space now Maelstrom isn’t a limiter, and the amount of synergistic loops added was great.
Schianto di Fulmini
+
Catena di Fulmini
having interplay makes AoE have a skill cap, and some talent swaps letting us focus more on playing the rotation correctly with
Arma del Maelstrom
loops to mitigate downtime amplifies the ability of the player to exert control over how the rotation flows compared to recent iterations. All in all I think we’re moving in a better direction. The June 18th change to limit
Arma della Furia del Vento
back to only Main Hand strikes however has rescinded some of that smooth flow, and done a lot of damage to what was looking like a net positive and felt unnecessary to do. I hope we’re moving more toward a direction where
Araldo della Tempesta
droughts don’t feel as disastrous as they have in the last two expansions and this is a blip caused by trying to force
Arma della Furia del Vento
/
Arma della Lingua di Fuoco
dual imbues, and am cautiously optimistic that this is the case.
Single Target vs. AoE Gameplay Flow Changes Compared to BfA
The specializations flow relative to BfA is immediately different and most will notice it quite quickly. It plays in a similar fashion to Warlords Enhancement, and will probably require a slight adjustment. Instead of us focusing entirely on
Assalto della Tempesta
, with everything funneling solely into maximising the number of casts of a single ability, we spend our time trying to mitigate ability cooldown waste by cycling between things efficiently and bridging gaps with
Arma del Maelstrom
casts. With the gear reset and squish, there is some downtime here or there that exists if you have a complete drought of procs or mis-manage spell cooldowns, but it’s relatively infrequent with some practice (
for reference average time between GCDs on the PTR is around 1.6~ seconds, which I think is totally within reason at no Haste
). It does however bring back some of the old “piano player Enhancement” style, where there’s a lot of individual spells being used in single target between
Assalto della Tempesta
/
Sferzata Lavica
/
Folgore del Fuoco
/
Folgore del Gelo
/
Dardo Fulminante
/
Schianto di Fulmini
(which is now a frequent flyer as a filler at all times).
When it comes to AoE, we have seen some extremely good improvements when it comes to how actively we engage with it, instead of BfA’s “keep
Schianto di Fulmini
up and just do what you usually do”. This is where the
Catena di Fulmini
changes that happened on the 11th of June comes up - those being that each target hit by it now increase the damage of your next
Schianto di Fulmini
cast by 20%, and reduce its cooldown by 1 second. This gave us a very smooth cycle of
Schianto di Fulmini
->
Assalto della Tempesta
->
Catena di Fulmini
in a clean package buffing each other, as the
Tempeste Crescenti
still exists to keep
Assalto della Tempesta
relevant. This is augmented even further if you add in
Tempesta di Grandine
to the mix creating a really tight, smooth AoE gameplay loop that feels extremely rewarding to play with.
Remaining Problem Points
Currently the biggest remaining problem is mostly centered around where
Arma del Maelstrom
casts are meant to land - are they supposed to be the big payoff moment in the rotation as the slow build resource system implies or gated filler? Personally I think placing it firmly as a pseudo finisher gives it more impact and sets it as a firm focus to the “battle mage” style we had in the past, but tuning will dictate this and right now it’s placed more as filler. There is also a question of how frequently
Araldo della Tempesta
is supposed to be occurring now following the June 18th change for
Arma della Furia del Vento
moving it back to Main Hand only - it’s gone from roughly 5~ triggers per minute down to 2-2.5, making it extremely rare and fairly unsuitable as a rotation bridge that it was before this change. I personally preferred having less focus on its strength by making it more frequent, which had the knock on effect of making the feeling of helplessness during proc droughts far less pronounced when compared to previous iterations.
Talent Flaws:
Following the June 18th nerf now the two Windfury talents in
Venti Vigorosi
and
Furia della Tempesta
feel a good bit less solid due to them operating better with more frequent procs rather than stronger ones, but mechanically they are solid and are mostly going to be decided when
Arma della Furia del Vento
settles.
Detonazione Elementale
really doesn’t seem to have the payoff for the extra rotational demands compared to the alternatives.
Maestria nei Totem
’s change screams placeholder to me, because right now it’s effectively pointless especially relative to what it competes with, and I hope this isn’t anywhere close to a finished design otherwise it makes very little sense taking up a talent spot as it is extremely unlikely to see use outside of some extremely unusual potential Legendary or Soulbind designs. This also goes along with some of the other duds in the tree such as
Carica Statica
and to some extent
Scudo di Terra
. Now, it and
Scudo di Fulmini
are exclusive on the Shaman and while the
Arma del Maelstrom
generation from it is not a dealbreaker, it's very tangible when in melee combat, making
Scudo di Terra
feel even weaker than it already does in BfA.
Esplosione di Fuoco
sadly really needs some support when it comes to
Folgore del Fuoco
- tab targeting shocks is an extremely demanding playstyle (especially if paired with
Fiamme Sferzanti
/
Mano Ardente
) for relatively low payoff, especially given that
Esplosione di Fuoco
still comes with the constraints it used to with adds dying before you get to detonate. In many cases it clutters the rotation and feels claustrophobic to juggle two debuffs alongside your regular rotation, and the desync due to
Esplosione di Fuoco
's long cooldown (even though its Hasted) that can happen with your
Folgore del Fuoco
s active can lead to moments where you're just a hair away from getting an extra hit, but it fades as you cast it.
Assalto Elementale
also really doesn't seem to have a place, as downtime isn't pronounced enough to make this appealing compared to the other AoE alternatives. I'm also not sure moving it and allowing it to pair with
Esplosione di Fuoco
would help either, as the rotation is cluttered enough as when you add
Folgore del Fuoco
juggling in, so this seems a bit undercooked and maybe not worth keeping around.
Tempesta Infuriante
feels a little better with the AoE rotation improvements, but it's still always going to have the looming issue of being static and very non interactive. I'm still not a fan of this talent, but it's arguably in a better place than it was in BfA now it doesn't have direct design space competition against
Furia dell'Aria
.
Custode della Tempesta
is very strange, and while it does have hooks that let the bonus damage scale with
Arma del Maelstrom
stacks present without consuming them, it feels like a real slowdown in the rotation to get the payoff from it, alongside being quite easy to actually miss out entirely on the window if you fall into a Maelstrom drought just afterward. Having all these quirks alongside having to compete with a versatile choice in
Scissione
that also helps fill occasional rotation holes makes it a really hard sell for me. This could however maybe be alleviated by having it become an amalgam of the original proposed
Sovraccarico
and
Custode della Tempesta
, instead of making casts instant it gives you bulk
Arma del Maelstrom
stacks on activation with a trickle afterward.
Lastly the final talent row in
Spiriti Elementali
/
Aculeo Terrestre
/
Ascesa
all feel fairly low impact as cooldowns now because there’s no real strong synergy at play to fill our biggest hole of high damage cooldown moments. With the move away from
Assalto della Tempesta
as the focus
Ascesa
isn’t as punchy,
Spiriti Elementali
without Maelstrom’s flexibility to alter your rotation are binary and bland, and
Aculeo Terrestre
clutters the rotation and is too sustained to be punchy - and it seems like it and
Detonazione Elementale
are one talent fractured into two.
Survival Still not Addressed
One of our longest standing issues from Legion and up still remains, we’ve had no real moves made toward more survival which has been a sore spot for a lot of players. Our self healing availability has also been hit with a switch to
Arma del Maelstrom
- while the individual casts are a bit more impactful it now costs us significantly more to use them and the resource is much less freely available. We did however get
Totem del Flusso Vitale
back, which is a nice return to fill some time for a bit of support. Realistically though, we may still end up feeling like we’re lacking more freedom in how we navigate more damage intensive scenarios.
Utility and the Impact of
Totem della Furia del Vento
A big problem we’ve had to contend with historically is that any utility Enhancement may bring, Elemental and Restoration can also bring it without being a fairly vulnerable melee class.
Totem della Furia del Vento
seems like Blizzard’s answer to this, and while on the surface it’s great to bring back something that has so much history with the spec, how powerful it is entirely depends on the group you’re playing with and how mandatory it ends up feeling. Does it have room to be strong? Definitely, but where it ends up remains to be seen right now and whether it’s enough to justify having us solely for that is mostly at the behest of our damage tuning vs. other specs. At least it’s something though which is more than we’ve had before.
Conclusion
My personal opinion from the recent builds is that the future is looking bright for Enhancement, especially compared to the where we were at this stage of the BfA development cycle. It’s probably going to take a little getting used to for newer players to the spec who got attached to the
Assalto della Tempesta
spam, but ultimately that it
removes the awful feeling of when it just refuses to proc
, is a net positive assuming you’re willing to invest in the new style. The single target situation is something that is rough around the edges and I think is going to see further iteration, but I can't praise the buttery smooth AoE gameplay enough. It's no exaggeration that I would call it one of the best and possibly most engaging AoE flow the spec has ever had (and it's had a lot of them) because the abilities all play into each other, and seeing synergy executed so well is such a delight compared to how basic
Schianto di Fulmini
is on its own and how much lifting it's had to do for so long.
Some of the highest praise I feel you can give for an Alpha spec is that there are parts of it I genuinely miss when switching over to playing Live, and that sentiment rings true right now for us.
More interactive gameplay, more skill expression and a bit more flexibility is ultimately something the spec has been lacking since Legion’s rework, because we never really saw any drastic updates since then and it really does go a long way. With a few more touch ups, some polishing to tuning and a bit of attention to detail we could end up in a very good state,
however
we aren't there yet (especially when it comes to the talent tree). Most importantly though for me, from a mechanical standpoint we are greatly improved and have a much more freeform and fluid slate to work with than we had in BfA. We have more tuning knobs, hooks and density than the single
Araldo della Tempesta
pillar we've been leaning against for 4 years, and that's a great place to be from a developmental standpoint.
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