Updated 11 August
Elemental Shaman
The current version of Fulmination and Seismic Thunder in Shadowlands has a lot of different abilities generating a lot of different buffs, making things feel disjointed. In this Beta build, we’re removing Seismic Thunder entirely, and pushing more of the core abilities to interact with the Fulmination mechanic.
- Chain Lightning (and overloads) that strike two or more targets now generate one stack of Fulmination.
- Lava Burst (and overloads) now generate one stack of Fulmination.
- Earthquake’s cast time is reduced by 20% per stack of Fulmination, up to a cap of 100% reduction (instant cast), and Earthquake’s damage is increased by 20% per stack of Fulmination, up to 160%. Earthquake now also consumes all stacks of Fulmination when cast.
The recent Totem Mastery redesign hasn’t turned out as well as we hoped, so we’ve scrapped that talent entirely and shuffled some talents around for Elemental Shaman:
- Elemental Blast has been moved to the level 25 row in place of Totem Mastery.
- Aftershock now only works from Earth Shock casts and no longer has any interaction with Earthquake
- Echoing Shock now only duplicates targeted damage or healing spells.
To replace the empty spot left by Elemental Blast on the level 15 row, we have added a new talent, Static Discharge.
- Static Discharge is an active ability with a 30 second cooldown that requires you to have Lightning Shield active. Using Static Discharge will cause some quick zaps of Nature damage to strike enemies over 3 seconds, prioritizing any target that is afflicted with your Flame Shock debuff.
Enhancement Shaman
We’re happy with the last big round of changes to Enhancement Shaman from a few weeks ago, but had a few talents that aren’t working out. Similar to Elemental, Totem Mastery has been replaced on the level 25 row, and the Cycle of the Elements talent has also been replaced on the level 35 row.
New level 25 talent: Ice Strike – 15 second cooldown. Strike your target for Frost damage, snaring them by 50% for 6 seconds. Ice Strike will also reset the cooldown of your Flame and Frost Shock spells.
New level 35 talent: Elemental Assault (passive) – Stormstrike deals 15% increased damage, and generates 1 stack of Maelstrom Weapon.
10 June
Elemental Shaman:
- Fulmination has been changed to be a guaranteed proc from Lightning Bolt and Lightning Bolt Overload.
- Chain Lightning has been decoupled from Fulmination entirely, but still grants Seismic Thunder stacks.
- Earthquake’s base damage has been reduced significantly, but Seismic Thunder now also increases the damage of Earthquake for each stack of Seismic Thunder consumed when cast.
- Fire Elemental’s previous interaction with bonus Fulmination proc chance has been redesigned. While Fire Elemental is active, the period of Flame Shock is reduced, which increases the DPS of any active Flame Shock debuff and also increases the chance of gaining the Lava Surge effect. Additionally while Fire Elemental is active, any newly cast Flame Shock will have its Duration increased by 100%.
- Lightning Shield will now grant the Shaman a charge of Fulmination when it deals damage to an enemy.
- Echo of the Elements no longer grants a second charge of Healing Stream Totem for Elemental Shaman. This is more of a bug fix, but noting here as it is a moderate change to available utility of the Echo of the Elements talent. This talent is unchanged for Restoration.
The changes above should make Elemental Shaman feel quite a bit more control over what will happen as the result of pressing their abilities.
Enhancement Shaman Core Ability Changes:
- Rockbiter has been removed from the spec.
** This is a big change we’re trying out. Rockbiter in Shadowlands basically only serves as a GCD filler. With the removal of Maelstrom, and Flame Shock and Frost Shock becoming class-wide abilities that are also on a short cooldown to fill empty spots, there was a lot of competition in the ~6 sec cooldown space of available buttons. Without Maelstrom, Rockbiter didn’t have any strong interaction with the rest of the Enhancement toolkit, and shock spells are much more iconic to Shaman. This is an experimental change, please try things out in combination with the changes below and let us know how things feel. - Lava Lash is now learned at level 11, down from level 22. Base cooldown increased to 18 sec (was 12 sec)
- Lava Lash now gets upgraded at level 22 to have its cooldown reduced to 12 sec (was 18 sec)
- Stormstrike’s cooldown has been reduced to 7.5 sec (was 9 sec)
- Maximum Maelstrom Weapon stacks have been increased from 5 to 10.
- Each stack of Maelstrom Weapon now grants increased damage and/or healing to the abilities Maelstrom Weapon effects in addition to the cast time reduction.
- Abilities that are altered by Maelstrom Weapon have had their baseline damage or healing values reduced.
- Stormbringer no longer causes your next Stormstrike to not incur a cooldown.
- Feral Spirits now grants one stack of Maelstrom Weapon immediately when pressed, and an additional 5 stacks over the duration of Feral Spirits.
- Each target that you hit with Chain Lightning now both increases the damage of, and reduces the cooldown of your next Crash Lightning.
- Windfury Totem radius increased from 12 to 30 yards.
- Windfury Weapon and Flametongue Weapon no longer require you to click the button, then click a weapon on your character sheet. They automatically apply their effects to an appropriate equipped weapon.
- Lightning Shield now has a 50% chance to grant you a stack of Maelstrom Weapon when it deals damage to an enemy.
- Flame Shock and Frost Shock have their cooldowns shortened with your current Haste.
Enhancement Shaman Talent Changes:
- Boulderfist (talent) has been redesigned and renamed to Lashing Flames (Passive). Lava Lash now increases the damage of your Flame Shock on the target by 100% for 12 sec.
- Landslide (talent) has been redesigned and renamed to Stormfury (Passive). Each time Windfury Weapon activates, the cooldown of Stormstrike is reduced by 1 sec.
- Hailstorm (talent) renamed to Cycle of the Elements.
- Searing Assault (talent) redesigned and renamed to Hailstorm (Passive). Each Stack of Maelstrom Weapon consumed increases the damage of your next Frost Shock by 50%, and causes your next Frost Shock to hit 1 additional target per stack of Maelstrom Weapon consumed. Maximum 5 stacks.
- Overcharge (talent) redesigned and renamed to Fire Nova. 15 sec cooldown. Cause all of your Flame Shocks to erupt in flames, dealing Fire Damage to up to 6 targets near your Flame Shock Targets.
The above changes to Enhancement Shaman are a lot to take in, but we feel that the combined list of changes will make your abilities feel like they have a purpose and interact with your toolkit in meaningful ways instead of just dealing damage.
In this thread, we’re discussing Shaman class changes coming in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.
Read more about initial class changes in the World of Warcraft blog.
This initial post will be updated periodically throughout the Shadowlands test. Please check back here for information about further updates to this class as they are made.
Thank you for your testing and feedback!