Shaman Wishlists for Dragonflight Talent Tree - Elemental, Enhancement, and Restoration

Dragonflight Posted 2022/07/10 at 8:30 AM by Jaydaa

Shaman Wishlists for the Dragonflight Talent TreesElemental Shaman Talent Tree WishlistWith five of the class trees and their respective spec trees being released, now is probably the last time to think about what shamans actually want to get out of the new system.

This new progression system hopefully fixes some of the rotational and power-level problems Elemental Shaman's kit currently has and fix some of the current unplayables.

To be clear, this is a wishlist. We are not looking into what talents are **likely** to see a return but rather what new abilities and changes to talents we would like to have in the new trees to balance out the spec.

Shaman in general or Elemental and Restoration specifically are in a weird position for their class trees with a lot of abilities overlapping between their two specs but not necessarily working well for Enhancement.

Class Tree

Gust of Wind

Gust of Wind is an old ability from Legion which offered shaman some well needed mobility.
Basically being equal to a goblin jump, it works both as a cancel for falling damage as well as a good burst movement ability.

Unleash Elements/Unleashed Fury

A community favorite that could easily make a return for Dragonflight. With the resto variation Unleash Life still existing in the game, this would be an easy choice for the class tree. For Elemental specifically, this would make a lot of sense if we get to keep Primordial Wave, amplifying that effect further.

Earthgrab Totem

Currently only available to Resto Shamans, getting a root class-wide would actually provide some useful CC for shamans, at least for dungeons.

Graceful Spirit

Improving Spiritwalker's Grace is currently only relevant for Elemental and Resto, but can still be made to work in the talent tree.
While the Cooldown Reduction is not really necessary for most fights, especially with our current mobility, it's still nice to have. More importantly, getting 20% movespeed during Spiritwalker's Grace can actually mean the difference of getting where you want to and being caught in a weird spot. This could be further expanded with Spiritual Resonance.

Elemental Tree

Structure

A personal wish is to either get rid of the Elemental pets or commit on them and actually use them.
Having pets that barely do damage, can not be properly controlled and bug out in most fights is just a terrible situation.
In the current tier these problems have been amplified a lot by the very high uptime on those.

To solve this, I would suggest splitting the elemental tree roughly in thirds, seperating Fire, Nature and Earth.
Fire offers single target and Funnel, Nature offers Maelstrom generation and Haste, Earth increases the damage of spenders.

Elementals

Furthermore, replace the Elementals themselves with a short duration buff, similar to Ascendance. The aesthetic of spawning an Elemental or Elemental Lord could still be kept even when it is functionally redundant.

Fire Elemental: Channel the Essence of Fire, increasing the tick rate of Flame Shock by 100% and make Lava Burst hit all targets that have a Flame Shock active for 15 seconds.

Storm Elemental: Channel the Essence of Lightning, gaining a stack of "Conductivity" per cast of Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolt. Each stack of "Conductivity" increases the chance to trigger an overload with Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt by x%. Lasts for 15 seconds.

Earth Elemental: Channel the Essence of Earth into your target, increasing their armor by an amount. Furthermore they emit an AoE threat aura.

Lava Shock

For the last few expansions, Elemental usually lacks any kind of substantial niche. During BfA this Azerite trait offered some solution for this, amping up our funnel damage in single target and on low target counts, actually making casting Flame Shock a net gain in AoE.

Lightning Rod
While this talent was highly debated during it's existence, I personally believe that it still gave Elemental moments that were memorable. Reintroducing it, would require making it controllable. E.g. you could make it an upgrade on top of Stormkeeper and have it proc on your current target whenever you cast Stormkeeper.

Deeptremor

While the current iteration of Deeptremor Stone can easily fit into the general Shaman Tree, I want to suggest a new variation that fixes some of the problems that arises from our big spender being a positional ability.

Deeptremor: Casting Earth Shock on a target applies a debuff to the target that pulses AoE damage in an 8 yard circles.
If the target dies, Deeptremor jumps to another target in range.

Tectonic Charge/Fulmination

One of the biggest problems with the current iteration of Elemental in Mythic+ dungeons is the necessary time to ramp up.
Even in the best case scenario with Stormkeeper available, the first Earthquake is usually at the earliest the fourth global of the pull.

A solution to this would be to link the effect of Echoes of Great Sundering directly into the Maelstrom generation.
This would only work in connection with the current Maelstrom and is not a replacement for it.

Tectonic Charge: Generating Maelstrom with Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolt generates the same number of Fulmination stacks. Casting Earthquake spends all stacks of Fulmination and deals x% more damage per charge consumed.

Volcanic Rage

Another approach to solving the ramp time issue, reintroducing Volcanic Rage, possibly as a flavor/upgrade of Liquid Magma Totem, would give us a good option for applying Flame Shock in AoE. This only works if spells benefiting from it are being kept or reintroduced.

Enhancement Shaman Talent Tree WishlistWhen it comes to Enhancement and Dragonflight, there's a lot of room and different directions the spec could be taken. To begin with, for reference myself and a couple of other Enhancement players Rusah and Surge compiled all the possible effects that could potentially come back and it clocked in at around 250 different talents/bonuses, because Enhancement has gone through a number of different iterations and reworks over its lifetime. This is to preface that while the following list is a fairly short list of things that we came up with as the "ideal" things WE would like to see, don't be surprised if something you really like from the past isn't there, because there's simply so many options to choose from. Rest assured though most are probably things that could work, so we'll see what happens when the tree releases!

Part 1: Tree Structure

Firstly for the specialization tree, thinking how the different paths could function comes first before looking at the specific things on the table worth bringing back. Enhancement has so many directions that it could take down the tree due to the different elements and aspects of the spec alongside the various focuses and iterations over the years; but in terms of a "three line structure" the released trees have taken, I could see the the layout orienting itself in the following way:

Left Path - Stormstrike / Windfury Weapon & Physical (Wind/Nature) style abilities, e.g. Crash Lightning, focusing on strikes
Center Path - Feral Spirit and Maelstrom Weapon related effects
Right Path - Lava Lash, Shocks & Elemental (Fire/Frost) spells, e.g. Fire Nova

Sepulcher showed how well a Feral Spirit oriented build can be with enough different overlapping tools working together (and there have been A LOT over the years), and making that the heart of the tree in the center that can be deviated from depending on preference or style sounds like it could work out really well. Conceptually you can see how this could function in the recently released Feral tree with the build-your-own-Berserk design, which I could see working in a similar way for Feral Spirit given the number of effects that that can be pulled from over the course of the abilities history.

The two side paths can have seperations between the more Stormstrike / Windfury Weapon oriented strike abilities, and our Elemental crossovers with Maelstrom Weapon, Fire Nova and Shocks. With this structure we could dip in and out of either side while still keeping access to a cooldown and pick and choose which parts we want to improve. One thing that has always been well received when it's happened is diverse builds for Enhancement because there's often hidden synergy that comes together. Playing into that with the tree seems like a free win alongside being relatively easy to pull off considering how well themed portions of the kit is. Obviously, this is purely speculation but laying this framework down is crucial to do before looking at the things we'd like to see stick around or return.

Part 2: Generic Shaman Talents

These are old talents that we've previously had access to that I think could fit as neutral talents for all specs (especially since some of them are already available to both others), alongside some nice tools that historically played well with good crossover, and could encourage crossing paths between all three spec trees.

Echo of the Elements: Out of all things on the list this is something I personally would love to see return, preferably in the old state of an extra charge to Stormstrike and Lava Lash at a minimum. Since we shifted to a proc based gameplay style, the lack of retention tools for said procs has shifted our gameplay too far toward just desperately trying to not waste them - this is also the reason why during Shadowlands Alpha increasing Maelstrom Weapon charges to 10 instead of 5 was such a crucial quality of life change. This formed the crux of the WoD gameplay style to hold over the Lava Lash resets of the time, and would vastly improve some of Stormbringer's issues (and as mentioned later some of the Primal Lava Actuators + Fire Nova mechanical issues).
Unleash Elements: Adds some thematic weight and active input to imbues for the whole class and especially Enhancement considering it's a primary aspect of the spec. This was an excellent mid-range rotational cooldown that had some strong decision making, especially in a world where the Unleashed Fury talent could be mixed in. This seems like a slam dunk to have in the combined tree because the buffs given can be tuned to encourage the press for all 3 specs in different scenarios. In the current iteration of Enhancement as well with more effects than ever being tied to auto-attacks, the instant burst of speed from Unleash Wind fits perfectly.
Ancestral Guidance: This was one of our defining tools in MoP, and was still relatively useful in WoD. The reason it was taken away (I assume) is the input lag caused in WoD from all of the Fire Nova hits + Multistrike, but generally that appears to be long gone, and our offhealing tools have effectively disappeared compared to the past which is sad. It would be nice to see this return to add that utility back to some degree.
Vital Accretion: One of Shadowlands' standout Conduits, it was an excellent addition to bolster our defensive issues from the past and added a good reason to press Earth Elemental outside of being an emergency taunt when things go wrong. This also played out well for all specs (aside from Elemental's awkward issue with being unable to have double Elementals active at the same time) as a strong tool, so fits well here.
Totemic Projection: This is a very specific and niche part of the kit but an off-GCD way to move already placed totems around as a utility talent somewhere in the tree would be nice to have considering Windfury Totem's limited range - and also comes with great uses for things like Capacitor Totem in PvP situations, and (for Resto) Spirit Link Totem to make full use of the cooldown. Low impact, but removes a point of frustration.

Part 3: Enhancement Specific Talents

The sheer number of things that could fit into here is huge, but trimming it down to a few that would fit into each of the 3 aforementioned trees is what we've aimed to do here. The goal is to add cohesive capstones/core parts of each build that would create synergistic but distinct playstyles based on what has worked in the past, while allowing for a bit of mix-and-match that allows for the tree to work well together. This is complicated because the spec has been reworked a lot over the years which diminishes the importance of old pillars that builds were formed around, but these are things that would either be excellent to see return or hurt to lose going forward:

Shamanistic Rage: The day this went away at Legion launch was the moment we started having some survival issues. This has been somewhat remedied recently, but this was such a good button for durability it's hard to not hope it comes back. It also has some good overlap to cover issues across all gameplay styles (including PvP!) as an extra DR tool + Mana return - something that we can sometimes struggle with when healing. I would justify this as a spec-specific option due to us requiring additional durability as a melee, and the other tools both other specs have access to that we don't currently in comparison.
Primal Lava Actuators: This spent a lot of Shadowlands as a throwaway largely because we lacked a way to spread Flame Shock, but the moment that was added this immediately shot to the top of player enjoyment as a build, opening up AoE and funnel options alike. It's reminiscent of the Lava Lash focused playstyle of WoD, and going forward can reduce downtime at lower gear levels due to the value of CDR early on. Seems to me like an excellent pick to cap off a Lava Lash oriented side of the tree.
Primordial Wave (plus Splintered Elements): Similar to the above, this struggled before Flame Shock spread happened but once it did it clearly became the most mechanically interesting Covenant ability available. When you throw in the legendary - Splintered Elements - the synergy bursts of Haste provides with the rest of the toolkit especially in AoE makes for a strong candidate to bring back.
Doom Winds (Mix of Shadowlands and Legion versions): Shadowlands had this as a dominant aspect of the spec at launch, and the mid-range cooldown nature of it makes for a flexible option due to both its burst design and the resource flood it causes. The overriding criticism from most players however seems to be attaching it to casting Windfury Totem - which can be fixed by taking us back to the Legion iteration of an off-GCD button that's a shorter, but more potent burst of Windfury Weapon strength. I would also say that while the original version existed before Forceful Winds was introduced which probably caused the late Beta nerfs; should it return it should keep the Shadowlands aspect of working with abilities, but improve the strength relative to now or scale with Mastery (to prevent us trying to dodge a stat entirely). At the same time to keep things even, it should likely also have a shorter duration or be limited by number of swings/abilities that can trigger it per cast.
T20 4pc: Comparing this to the long standing dead talent in Crashing Storm (even if it looks cool!), this is significantly more active and encourages the Stormstrike feeding Crash Lightning and vice versa gameplay style. This would fit perfectly on a strike focused side of the tree, and allows for more nuanced gameplay decisions of holding casts for larger burst vs. sustained AoE depending on how you spend the stacks. It would also bring Crash Lightning back into the mix as a good AoE button, rounding out a more Stormstrike oriented side of the tree with a mix of Burst AoE and funnel all in one.

Feral Spirit Oriented Talents

These are bulked together because the core of Feral Spirit needs a lot of support throughout the tree to actually fit the bill of a primary path. While the ability has had as a somewhat rocky life over the years, Sepulcher showed that with enough things it can actually fit as a key aspect of the spec as a whole, and created an interesting sustained damage playstyle people enjoy. Leaning into that further sounds like a good idea given the visual flare and spec fantasy it provides, and the key aspects that I think are needed to make it work as either a fully fledged main build, or something we can dip in and out of depending on the preferences elsewhere in the tree are as follows:

Alpha Wolf: Of all the things that I think needs to come back, this is probably top of the list. One of our biggest issues is a lack of any AoE interaction with our primary cooldown in Feral Spirit, and this allows them to actively deal damage to multiple targets when cast. This was a staple trait on our Doomhammer in Legion, and while it could be shifted around as to how it's activated, or how active our input is to triggering the effects, having a way to convert our cooldown into multi-target situations is crucial.
Witch Doctor's Wolf Bones (and indirectly, T28 2pc): Wolf Bones carved out a strong gameplay space that Feral Spirit previously hadn't explored by making it a significantly more frequent cast, thus opening up the choice between sustained damage vs. worrying about how strong the cooldown is. This could serve as an excellent mid-tier talent to a Feral Spirit oriented tree, but could also play as an either/or option with an improved T28 2pc that spawns wolves randomly instead on Maelstrom Weapon spenders. In that scenario we could have the choice between more frequent but consistent casts, or random spawns rotationally, solidifying it as part of our class identity and allowing other talents to hook into it.
T17 4pc / T28 4pc: These both fit the same bill (either T17's Windfury Weapon procs, or T28's Stormbringer procs) of empowering our wolf spawns to directly trigger things that we can make use of. Baseline Feral Spirit simply lacks the direct feedback to the player while being an underwhelming flat damage cast vs. its cooldown, so these bonuses both serve as excellent ways to kick it back to us and feel like we're empowered after using it.

Conclusion

There's a whole lot that can be pulled from the older Shaman trees, and especially for the Enhancement tree over the years, so knowing what direction this goes is kind of impossible. Without knowing where the focus is on the spec and what's considered the most successful or engaging iterations from a developer perspective, it's a shot in the dark with the amount that could be brought back. That said, there's a wealth of options to create cohesive lines in the tree without having to default to some of our historically dead talent options that with some luck will go away now the space is at more of a premium. Hopefully the right choices are made to theme things in a way that lets people either rigidly focus on one aspect, or flexibly jump between different elements - after all, that's what Enhancement was always meant to do.

Restoration Shaman Talent Tree WishlistWith the new talent system coming out, there is a lot of ways this redesign can end up. This is more of a personal wish list rather than a real talent design attempt - as I'm not much of a game designer.

Current Restoration Shaman talents are in an interesting spot, as there are barely any dead or unused talents. Looking at M+ and Raid talent usage, the only one that is actually unused is Surge of Earth. Downpour and Flash Flood have very low representation, for the most part because they share a row with Cloudburst Totem, while Deluge and High Tide popularity depends on the tuning of Chain Heal.
But change is coming and maybe it brings some modernization of the whole kit with it. One thing it could do well is shifting the Resto Shaman kit to be less dependent on group size, or at least being able to adjust to group size. Smaller groups mean that spells like Healing Rain lose effectiveness, Chain Heals might not jump and Healing Tide Totem doesn't scale into 5 mans at all.

Restoration Tree
I'll begin with our Resto specific tree, as its easier to talk about. One thing that would be great: Current baseline abilities being moved into talents, ideally making them optional pick ups.

Healing Rain
Something like Healing Rain is in most cases a great spell but there's always the odd fight / dungeon where there is barely any chance or reason to cast it. Having the ability to instead put a point into something that helps with whatever the encounter requires could be a good start to help get out of the "Stacked Raid Healer"-Niche.

Item - Shaman T21 Restoration 4P Bonus
With Healing Rain in the talent tree, this old tier set would be a great follow up option to further empower it, granted that it is an encounter where you actually cast single target spells.

Healing Tide Totem | Ascendance
Another base spell that I could see being changed to a talent is Healing Tide Totem. For example as a toggle talent where you can either pick Healing Tide Totem or Ascendance, giving you a choice between 2 strong cooldowns for different situation, where Ascendance is more suited for either stacked groups or small groups and Healing Tide Totem. for anything that is more spread.

Ancestral Vigor | Ancestral Protection Totem
Both are great spells and on progress its interesting to consider whether you want the constant health buffs or a cooldown for a specific point in the fight. Having it as a talent node to pick up either one or the other works great for that, while moving Earthen Wall Totem to somewhere else in the tree or baseline.

Earth Shield
I was personally never really a fan of this ability, and would rather have it gone - but an avoidable talent in the generic talent tree would also be a good option.

Shaman Tree
Speaking of the generic tree, lets get to that. Some flexibility here for more damage or healing contribution could go a long way towards having many situational choices in talent options.

Covenant Abilities
Seeing as all the released Dragonflight talent trees have at least one covenant ability in them, its very likely we too will get one. Honestly not sure which one I'd look forward to as they start to feel pretty weak once you take away the soulbind interactions and legendary additions, especially Chain Harvest. I'm fully expecting Primordial Wave to return as that one worked well for all shaman specs and would be a great pickup for Resto Shaman in its usual niche - spread encounters. Something like Chain Harvest is also realistic but I'd be fine without any of the other 3 covenant abilities showing up.

Gust of Wind
This is one of my most wanted spells to return as it was some fantastic mobility and meant that you didn't have to play goblin just to be able to get around. I think the low 15 second cooldown was a bit much as sometimes you could almost move around a fight by just pressing Gust over and over :)

Ancestral Guidance
Ancestral Guidance should be an option for all Shaman specializations again. It was one of the most fun interactions, whenever you were able to combine it with other strong buffs, that I've experienced playing Resto Shaman. The ability to have it smartly pick up injured raid members was in perfect synergy with something like Ascendances blind healing, allowing for a more efficient cooldown overall.

Echo of the Elements
One day this will be baseline, maybe. No matter where this talent ends up being, It'll be hard to pass on selecting it.

Unleash Life
Might be fun if this is merged back into Unleash Elements with both healing and damage benefits, maybe depending on what you cast. But this is more of a minor change and its fine somewhere in the Restoration tree too.

Conclusion
There's many more talents and changes that I could have mentioned, and more that I've seen being talked about. But this should be enough to give an idea of possibilities - realistically whatever the developers decide to do will likely look nothing like these ideas, and it might be better for it.

12 3…5

Comment by Storml1ngGust of wind. Please.Comment by DasronAwwww no mention of wanting vesper totem :( come ooooon!Comment by Phatymcdaddyferal spirits should just be changed to ele spirits baseline tooComment by Itssquiggleswhy TF would you want to choose between tide and ascendance? Tide is set, forget, do mechanics, ascendance shines in stacked healing.

Both are critical to m+ builds and do very different tasks. You crazy. The current choice between wellspring and ascendance is perfect.

chain harvest or necrolord? do you even m+ at all? No decent m+ shaman wants either, they want vesper totem.

Overall the resto comments are nonsense and I really hope they fall on deaf ears.Comment by GaiffeGive us shaman tank! :)Comment by OmarcominSkyfury Totem for Elemental.Comment by CoromaruI have to disagree with Earth Shield. I love earth shield I just wish it was more of a tank cooldown or had more impact on how you play.Comment by Thorr1992I feel like since Shadowlands with other classes returning to their roots for example, warrior back to dual wielding one handers and DK with 2h or dual wield, I want to see the return of 2h enhancement and lava lash being an ability you can talent into. I do miss 2h enhancement back in the BC and Wrath days. Gameplay on enhancement has become so boring and needs a major change. I can hopefully see totem utility returning, but won't hold my breath. Another big change I would love to see is the return of wrath feral spirits being able to heal. Just so much blizz has a chance to do.Comment by MurzacAwwww no mention of wanting vesper totem :( come ooooon!Comment by YensVGBlizzard can you please fix the elemental pet already, no need to wait for next expansion.Comment by ItssquigglesAwwww no mention of wanting vesper totem :( come ooooon!Comment by BuffyangelWhat an odd resto shaman piece. First and foremost, keep vesper totem. The cool-down is short and the heals and dps multi functionality super useful. I really enjoy planting it, watching the charges, moving it etc, and managing it against cloud bursts timings. If the dps had to be lowered a little (if there’s no conduit buff) it would still be good because it does super mobile instant heals too. I don’t want it or other things gutted tho.

I also rely on healing totem. I use Ascendence a lot more, but if I’m giving up a major cool-down it better be worth it. Third boss on Sanguine depths for example has me going through more than one big healing CD. Choice node between Ascendence and Well Spring makes more sense.

My wish list is for vesper totem and perm earth ele to be there, though the ele is unlikely. Resto shaman is also insanely fun in torgast. Imagine if spirit link worked as a dps link too. Or we could pick the storm cycle talent. Torgast powers could have feed into these trees a touch.

There’s so many great things that I’m scared we’ll lose fun, powerful talents, replaced with less fluid weak options. I hope static charge is still present. Also, the conduits like extra health when earth ele is up etc I’ll also miss. Will DF have good skill CD variety with the dragon houses like covenants offer? Currently, It’s in such a good spot, I’m worried. Really enjoy playing rSham in m+, I enjoy the interrupt, and instant heals (riptide stacks, cloudburst, vesper). Compared to my rDruid it’s a fun change, with more noticeable passive heals/dps. Hopium is strong rn.Comment by ejlejlKeep fae transfusion for enhancementComment by visconwowProblem with vesper totem is that it was complete trash for elemental and enhancement as they have to cast heals to proc it. All of the covenant abilities so far have been in the base class tress so if they were to re-add vesper totem it needs to either be ONLY in the resto shaman tree or change how it works for elemental/enhancement. Overall the primordial wave is the better choice as all classes used it, or re-add chain harvest.Comment by Raynurupersonally i just would like to have ALL totems avaiable for all specs..
what ever happend to the Fireball totem which was supposed to be avaiable to all specs but didn't even brought back.
Totems were what made Shamans stand out visually from other classes...
and now you barely have the need to use them...
oh ..a fourth spec would have been great..
you know a TANK spec based on earth..
We have Damage (Fire)
Support (Wind)
Heal (Water)
Tank (Earth) would just make SENSE..
but nooo apparently only Druids get that for...what reason?.

Sorry i am still a bit sad.
Started as a Shaman in 2004 and still am shocked how many Totems and Abilities we lost since then...Comment by mythicow+1 for Gust of Wind, I beg. So fun. Their excuse for removing it that "it was too similar to blink and we want classes to be unique" doesn't even make sense anymore considering they literally gave every class a blink if they want it this expansion with Night Fae. Not to mention it's just like goblin's racial, on a shorter cd, which most classes can be. Movement abilities are fun, they should never remove fun abilities, its a game, let us have fun.Comment by BuffyangelAll of the covenant abilities so far have been in the base class tress so if they were to re-add vesper totem it needs to either be ONLY in the resto shaman tree or change how it works for elemental/enhancement.Comment by Vacuummancer
rDruid has convoke and swarm in the spec tree, not base class tree.Comment by the9tailI always loved the animation for boulderfistComment by DaibakuhaKeep fae transfusion for enhancement

12 3…5