Malan's Enhancement-a-palooza (8770)
by Malan | 12/08/2008 06:33:09 I'd been waiting for Feral Spirit to come off the NYI, but it seems that we're not going to see it for awhile yet, so I figure now is as good a time as any. I think everyone knows me by now, I'm Malan, I write/update the Enhancement Shaman wiki article over at the Elitist Jerks forum. I am not the mathematician who came up with all that stuff (that honor lies with many others) but I do a reasonably good job of synthesizing other people's results into an understandable format, and most importantly I was the guy who volunteered to do it and now I'm stuck with it. So that's me. When last we left in Alpha, Koraa gave a few responses to the Enhancement Extravaganza thread. Namely, that Maelstrom Weapon would ~probably~ satisfy our desire for a new attack style, that the first 2 tiers of the tree were being rearranged and looked at some more, and that they'd find a different way to add some pvp mobility rather than stacking onto Shamanistic Rage. I think those things were accomplished. Feedback broken into 2 posts just to improve readability. This post: Talent Tree "feel" and "flow." 2nd post: specific concerns griping and suggestions ======== Flow of the Tree ========= The standard builds for both PvE and PvP have a little variety in the first 4 tiers of talents, there are choices to be made based on play style and opponent. That's awesome, we like choice. Lets see more choice in the tree! Tiers 5 - 8 though, are all about uniformity, staying with the crowd, blending in, not standing out. In short, 8 of 10 talents in Tiers 5, 6, 7, and 8 are required for the spec, regardless of PvP or PvE. There is no choice there - this isn't a case of "too much good stuff to pick up" either, these talents are mandatory for play as they define our very viability as a melee role. Tiers 5-8 could really use some developer loving, possibly combining some talents, adding some new ones in their place that offer new PvE/PvP utility. Maybe add something in these tiers like a complement to the Resto tree's Cleanse Spirit talent (removes curses) and allow the Enhancement tree to remove Magic debuffs. In particular Elemental Weapons is a major sticking point for me, and its addressed in the next post. To reiterate, 8 out of 10 talents (over 20 talent points) are mandatory and offer no choice at all - these talents are Weapon Mastery, Elemental Weapons, Stormstrike and Improved Stormstrike, Dual Wielding and Improved Dual Wielding, Spirit Weapons and Shamanistic Rage. The rest of the talents just sort of funnel you in toward Feral Spirit. Static Shields is definitely an optional talent along with its complementing talent in Tier 2, and I think this is one area we'll see a lot of shamans differ their talent trees in. Its a scaling buff since it will scale with our Attack Power -> SpellPower conversions, so that's decent. Hard to know what to expect from the talent in a raid setting while giving up Water Shield since we're stuck at 77 and don't have a new Lightning Shield rank yet. Its a decent enough idea, but merits watching to see if its scaling at the right level. There's some angst out there about not being able to use Water Shield at the same time, but hey, its a choice you have to make and they both become situational abilities. I can understand that approach. Spectral Transformation is terrific, but I again raise the issue that Ghost Wolf is no longer a "travel form" for the shaman class as a whole - it is a vital mechanic to our survival in PvP (and sometimes PvE). As such, I think it that it merits that Spectral Transformation (Or improved Ghost Wolf earlier in the tree) should also provide the benefit of allowing Ghost Wolf to be used Indoors, so that it will work in any future indoor arenas, as well as in Instances. Adding the caveat of only increasing the speed by 30% indoors would bring the ability completely in line with the Druid Feral Swiftness talent. [ Post edited by Malan ] |
by Koraa | 27/08/2008 10:20:50 Good feedback, though a lot of it is nitpicky. I agree we could make some of the talents better, but you could say the same about any class. We could spend a year on Shaman talents alone and we'd still not be satisfied. One change we're doing to Anticipation is changing it to 3-points, and giving it disarm reduction. We are also most likely going to change Shamanistic Focus to make it a flat mana reduction in shock cooldowns. It's too spammy right now, and the class has too many on proc buffs. Edit: BTW, one thing I totally agree with is the Windfury Weapon concern. We'll see if we can make the ability less complicated/"mathy". [ Post edited by Koraa ] Class Designer |
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