Enhancement in Shadowlands: We Got 99 Bugs and They Just Fixed One

Posted 2021/06/11 at 10:52 PM by wordup

Overview on the Maelstrom Weapon Swing ResetMay 19th hotfixMaelstrom WeaponEarth ElementalPrimordial WaveWhy it Was Really BadMaelstrom WeaponWindfury WeaponHot Hand

Maelstrom WeaponStormsurgeMaelstrom WeaponHow Long Has This Been Holding Enhancement Down?

The Windfury Totem SituationWindfury Totemor isn’tThe PTR Fix

June 2nd:
Windfury Totem - Summons a Windfury Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 2 min. Party members within 30 yds have a 20% (up from 10%) chance when they auto-attack to swing an extra time. - Verified on PTR, but inactive on live.

Windfury TotemWindfury TotemShamanWith the most recent PTR build on the 2nd of JuneThe Remaining IssuesWindfury TotemWindfury TotemWindfury TotemHot HandFatal FlourishAscendanceWindlashWindlashWindfury TotemWindlashfrom outside of melee rangeImbues Deciding to Stop WorkingWindfury WeaponFlametongue WeaponShamanWindfury WeaponShadowcore OilShaded Sharpening StoneRogueShamanBonus Lingering BugsFinally, this is a list of some of easier to explain/lower impact bugs that exist for individual spells or mechanics still live right now:

Sundering hits are supposed to proc Stormsurge (stated in the patch 9.0.5 notes here) - It still doesn’t.

Sundering and Ice Strike are our only weapon-based attacks that don’t proc the Flametongue Weapon imbue, but they do trigger all other attack-based procs (except for Sundering with Stormsurge - see above).

Crash Lightning has two (beneficial) bugs!

Shadowlands introduced square root scaling on a number of area of effect attacks as one way of throttling uncapped AoE potential (especially among melee specializations), and this was something that was added to Crash Lightning; however, it was only applied to the on-cast effect, and the splash triggered from Stormstrike and Lava Lash casts during the Crash Lightning buff are still entirely uncapped.

The splash effect from casting Stormstrike and Lava Lash during the Crash Lightning buff also generates Maelstrom Weapon stacks, while not triggering any other on-hit or proc effects (historically, only the Crash Lightning cast itself has been able to proc things). Either this is an accident or it should be triggering everything.

Casting NecrolordPrimordial WaveFrost ShockVisual glows have issues with abilities on the action bar:

If a Stormstrike is parried with Stormsurge active, the ability goes on cooldown but Stormsurge is not consumed, resulting in the Stormstrike icon continuing to glow - this is really jarring for players that expect for the ability to be available for use whenever it lights up.

This visual bug also applies to Venthyr's Chain Harvest despite being on cooldown if the shaman has 5 or more stacks of Maelstrom Weapon.

Lava Lash can sometimes fail at the tail end of Hot Hand procs due to the cooldown reduction buff expiring before the global cooldown latency finishes, leaving you with a dead global and a fizzled button press.

Spreading Flame Shock via Elemental Conduit with either the new VenthyrFrost ShockFlame ShockHonorable Mentions of Very Bad (but fixed!) Bugs so far in Shadowlandsfew clips floated to the top on RedditWindfury WeaponDoom WindsAscendanceUnruly WindsForceful WindsDoom Windssome logs still existWindfury WeaponStormkeeperMaelstrom Weapon

Isn’t made instant by Maelstrom Weapon, requires a hard cast set up, scales with nothing.

Made instant by Maelstrom Weapon, but doesn’t scale with stacks after.

Still instant, double dips on both its own buff + current Maelstrom Weapon stacks without technically consuming any, so required you to build back up to 10 stacks total due to scaling past the regular 5.

Excess scaling with Maelstrom Weapon fixed, and now only scales with up to 5 stacks present.

Patch 9.0.5: Reworked to only work on Chain Lightning, buffed up to 300% from 150%, but no longer scales at all with Maelstrom Weapon stacks present resulting in a net loss.

Chain Lightning

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Comments

Comment by RoguePostDoc

A hell of a job Werdup! Kudos to you.

Comment by Verenek

Keep up the good work Wordup, hopefully this will get some more eyes on the issues!

Comment by Tyloo

#PrayForEnhancementPlayers

Comment by Jabkha

Man I feel bad for you enhancement players. Before I make one I want this stuff fixed. Come on blizz this needs attention big time.

Comment by Sielinth

huh I guess I wouldn't have known about the imbues issue since I got used to refreshing them everytime I zone into somewhere (I swear this happened before)

as for stones / oils not working... I guess I've assumed that's how it is, it certainly was the case in TBC but I guess that's the benefits of having played the game for over a decade

Comment by Dessicuus

Enhancement is the one spec I have always wanted to play but can't justify it over a couple of the other melee that I play. It would be nice to see these things fixed and Enhancement be a bit more competitive so that those interested don't feel like we're opting into a constantly sub-par choice. I would personally love to play enhance/elemental or survival/ranged so that I can flex those fights that favor ranged, and play melee when it doesn't hinder the raid. Thanks for the amazing write up, Werdup. I sincerely hope some of these come to blizzards attention.

Comment by Haelthyr

While they're fixing these, they should also make WFT just a baseline aura rather than cast. Seems unfair to be required to use a global ever pull on it.

Comment by Cankayra

Buglands :S

Comment by Crusadyr

And that is simply my biggest gripe with retail World of Warcraft. We are 8 months into the expansion and Blizzard is worried more about making covenant legendaries that are going to be massively ignored by players in 9.1 since 95% of the legendaries are not able to compete with current legendaries. That was more important to them than ACTUALLY balancing the covenant abilities like they said they would do before Shadowlands was even in beta.
Don't even get me started on how every class' talent tree has multiple USELESS talents that are so useless that we don't take those abilities in ANY situation. And these abilities have largely been like this since Legion.

Blizzard needs to start fixing the garbage they already put out before they start worrying about adding more garbage that needs to be fixed.

Comment by Cyberdark

I'm kind of miss the easy to play bfa enhancement

Comment by R3play

I can totally relate to you. Blizzard is indeed worried about making Covenant legendaries (that will be probably useless up to the point where we can get 2 legendaries equipped at the same time, obviously even after that). I am playing an Outlaw Rogue since the beginning and it still feels slow, weak, and is just a laughable shadow of what Combat was back in dem ol' days. I'm also playing Enhancement Shaman and although I love how my screen is just glowing off of procs and love how the spec is nearly entirely focused on striking your foes with those damn sick lightnings, these bugs make the class feel rather clunky. I don't know man...:D

Comment by RoguePostDoc

Agility for devs to fix bugs n balance the existing ones r not really there sadly. They cant do weekly patches to fix bugs, it's more like biweekly or whenever bugs become so serious.

I even wonder if there's any internal testers for classes n specs. Look how Sub, Surv, Enhan got shafted at the end of the first season.
At least Sub n Enhanc got something in the beginning, but Surv got almost zero changes. And they come out to interviews n say we r happy. BS.

Comment by Kamill

Thanks for the article! Guess I made the right call switching to BDK at the end of BfA after playing enh since WotLK, I would have felt even more miserable. It is incredible how many bugs are there and how the current Blizz are unable or unwilling to fix them. It really does look like they are treating us like addicts, thinking that we'll need a fix of wow no matter how they keep diluting it and switching the real thing. I could easily anticipate them fixing the beneficial bugs and leaving harmful ones untouched, coz I have only have these kind of expectations.

Comment by couchpotato2013

6 months and 20 days (201 days) so far actually since launch.

Comment by Diehexe

Thanks for the effort Wordup.

My worry is they will fix the beneficial bugs and leave others which will probably cause a huge dps loss for enhancement for m+ -The only field spec is actually competitive-

In addition to the article, enhancement -may- need following changes;

1- Back to old roots. Great. So where are our ‘enhanced’ wolves that have few beneficial effects such as stun, healing and rush?

2- Back to old roots. Perfect. Where is the magma totem? What is fire nova without the totem or lava lash spread? Why it feels like people who ‘designed’ Shadowlands enhancement have never played enhancement before?

3- Back to old roots. Awesome. What the hell is Stormkeeper then? Why not moving earthen spike to Stormkeeper’s position in the talent tree and make the spec good on single target situations and create a better synergy between Ascendance?

4- Back to old roots. Brilliant. Then why lightning shield is completely useless for PVE? Where is the overcharge and actual small but effective nature damage?

5- Don’t you guys track some sort of player data and realize that Ice Strike is literally taken by no one. Even for pvp it’s completely useless due to its requirement for an additional keybind and low benefit / cooldown return.

6- Why Hailstorm got nerfed literally in 3 weeks between end BFA and Shadowlands launch? That people often question its legibility between pure single target talent Elemental Assault even for aoe situations.

7- In addition, why Ascendance is throwing wind frisbees? Why can’t we get a good visual effect such as in old, good times?

Comment by MadHatt0r

Pretty sure bugfixes will be there Soon(tm).. for the beneficial bugs :^)

Comment by GarrusN7

Honestly, I wish Frost witch legacy was made more viable. I'm not a fan of relying on windfury dmg from Doom Winds. Like like spamming stormstrike like Frost witch allows you, but it being a non viable choice sucks ass.
Hell, im in a fan of ascendance since it changes your appearance to some ugly ass model. Make feral spirits viable again, make specs have more choices. It is so simple!

Comment by dabone1337

6 months and 20 days (201 days) so far actually since launch.

You need to count since prepatch.

Comment by IceWolfDK

The return of imbues is a clearcut example of 'be careful what you wish for' in regards to unpruning. Stuff was removed for a reason over the years!

Imbues have always been a pointless maintenance buff that never should have returned. Likewise with Flametongue for elemental that actually contributes nothing for spellcasting.

Elemental is a cautionary example of absolutely wasted dev time. Where they went back to the pre-wod state without the maelstrom bar. But performed so poorly that despite lenghty work on it, it was a consistent downgrade in power. So they ended reverting to the maelstrom bar which was a relief for me.

Comment by Risingdoom2657

Wow blizz can just copy this to a "supposed to work like this" post and don't have to fix it xD

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