The interesting ting to see will be the responses by the developers. Some are already fearing the dreaded 'working as intended' or 'known issue, working on it' responses that we have seen from blue posts in the past. Hopefully in this session they will have the common sense to at least elaborate to a greater extent and calm the concerns of the community some.
Posts are already going up discussing what questions should/will be asked so I am putting my opinions up as to what the most important questions are for us. A couple of these points are general for all shaman specs I will admit off the bat:
Scaling: This is an issue that has plagued elemental shaman since the Burning Crusade. The inability to scale up well as we move into deeper content is worrying. We are the only caster class without benefit to our spell damage from base stats such as intellect or spirit; the easiest method of scaling there is. With the latest improvements to Moonkin Druids giving them significant benefit from spirit, elemental shams are now scratching their heads wondering when we are going to get a bone thrown our way. Seems we are becoming the forgotten casters, and it is not a fun spot to be in.
Totem Viability: When WoW was in its early days, shamans were a necessity as the benefits that their totems bought to a raid group was unmatched. This presence has lessened consistently as the game has evolved until this latest expansion where, in order to make raid makeups more flexible, they have made almost every totem's benefits replaceable by another classes buffs. In essence this is a good idea, because the developers want this game to not restrict the player's experience based on their class. However, being the buffing class we are we have gotten a raw deal here as we now have non-unique buffs that are bulky and awkward to use in that totems have limited range and have to constantly be recast. I would imagine this will be the hot topic of discussion amongst all specs.
PvP: PvP is generally not a topic of discussion for me as I am far more into my raiding than anything else, but I do hit the BGs every now and again and am in a 'just for kicks' 2's team with my Boomkin housemate (we stay in PvE gear/spec and see how many we can win blowing heroism and spamming like hell!). I know like every other elemental shaman how incredibly vulnerable we are, especially to the likes of rogues/feral druids. We are easily stunnable and have literally NO way of getting out of CC apart from our trinkets. I do not have any huge issue with it, but I know serious PvPers are demanding changes to even the playing field a little.
These are the three biggest I can think of off the top of my head, but here is where I am turning it over to you. I have received emails from readers in increasing amounts (which I really appreciate, I might add!) but I am asking you guys to leave comments and let me know what you think about this whole Q&A deal. What questions do you have? Do you have any suggestions? Do you foresee us getting any changes? Hit the comments at the bottom of the post and let me and the other readers know.
- Puut
Posts
totally agree dude, Elementals gotten so bad that my officers are beginning to pressure me to reroll >_> I made a QQ post about it btw at http://www.tristanpej.com/Zap/?p=559
ReplyDeleteBegan as enhancement, switched to elemental for a raid guild spot and am never going back. As a PVPer mostly I must say that while we did recieve some nice buffs in 3.1, we could definitely still use some work.
ReplyDelete-Make Earthshield baseline.
-Tstorm removes stuns.
-Increase Hex range.
-Lower diminishing returns on Earthbind root.
-Unlink Earthshock and Frost/Flameshock.
Improve Shaman defensive utility and reduce elemental burst. This, in my opinion, would improve the ability of elemental to compete in small scale pvp and, more importantly, make the class more fun to play.
Tristan: I read your post, nice to see another blog featuring elementals.
ReplyDeleteDaren: Your points are good. A lot of the things you are saying are in line with the general sentiment of what is being said on all the forums. The changes to wind and earth shock have now been made official which is related to what you were talking about.
Your Thunderstorm removing stuns idea is creative too. It increases the ability of TStorm to be a anti-melee gank button. Which was the point of it in the beginning, right?