Fun to Play, But Has Some Baggage - Enhancement Shaman Class Changes and Tier Set Review
Enhancement Shaman Going into Patch 12.1
After a pretty rocky start to Midnight and a tumultuous first season (including a slew of buffs), Season 2 brings with it a few target changes that, hopefully, will have us starting much better than last time:
Developers' notes: We're happy with Enhancement Shaman's gameplay going into Curse of Ula'tek. Our goal with these changes is to preserve that gameplay while improving performance outside of cooldown windows, where damage can feel weak. Strong interactions between Windfury procs and Maelstrom Weapon generation were making it difficult for the downtime between cooldowns to breathe.
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Lightning Bolt damage increased by 20%.
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Chain Lightning damage increased by 20%.
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Lava Lash damage increased by 15%.
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Stormstrike damage increased by 15%.
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Melee damage increased by 15%.
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Doom Winds now increases the chance of Windfury Weapon activating by 50% (was 100%).
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Hero Talents
- Stormbringer
- Totemic
- Surging Totem Tremor damage reduced by 15%.
- Surging Totem Surging Bolt damage reduced by 10%.
Before getting into the weeds of all the changes, I'd first like to say it's really nice to see a developer's note that actually comments on how devs feel about the specialization — something we've been missing since the first stages of Alpha. Regardless of whether the changes hit the mark or not, having some perspective on where they're at when it comes to Enhancement's development is very helpful when trying to understand the process behind its development over the first season. Before jumping into the analysis, these are almost universally buffs: Totemic gains roughly 3% in all situations (though loses 1%~ in mass AoE), while Stormbringer fares better, gaining 3–5% depending on target count.
While I don't think they've achieved what they're looking for here (and I definitely agree it needs adjustments to alleviate the focus on cooldown windows), I do strongly agree with them that the specialization's gameplay right now is very good. The rework in Midnight succeeded on a lot of levels from a mechanical point of view, but what was lost in the transition was rewarding feedback loops and, to some people, that hurt a lot. I intend to dig deeper into the cooldown situation later in this article, but first I want to tackle the new set bonus.
All 12.1 Class Changes and Tier Set Reviews
Tier Set Bonus
After a Tier Set in Season 1 that was, at best, whelming, the offering coming in Season 2 has a lot more mechanical implications than before. Having already seen a major improvement in the build released this last week, it's shaping up to be much better than our current option, though a little more complicated on the surface than it looks:
Enhancement Shaman Venomous Abyss Tier Set
- 2-piece — Voltaic Blaze causes your primary target to erupt in a Fire Nova every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. Fire Nova deals 200% increased damage to the primary target of your Voltaic Blaze.
- 4-piece — Fire Nova reduces the cooldown of Crash Lightning by 2 seconds, and increases the damage of your next Crash Lightning by 8%, stacking up to 5 times.
Off the bat, having a bonus built around Voltaic Blaze is definitely a bold choice. This has mostly sat as a filler button, and while good, injecting it into the already busy rotations of both Stormbringer and especially Totemic as a central focus means it's easy to overstep and make things complicated. There's a hidden opportunity cost for both the 2-piece and 4-piece here, pulling global cooldowns away from buttons that activate the Crash Lightning splash, creating a small amount of anti-synergy with the additional stacks provided by the 4-piece. Currently, Stormbringer is heavily favored by both bonuses, since it actually has the GCDs to integrate Voltaic Blaze as a priority while making use of the Crash Lightning CDR. Totemic on the other hand has more of a struggle juggling all of its competing effects with this added on top. The Apex Talent, Storm Unleashed, also adds in some difficulty for maximizing the cooldown reduction as well, as procs often prevent you from keeping it on cooldown while CDR is cycling.
That's why the change to the 2-piece this week was so important. The previous iteration having a killswitch whenever a second target arrived (removing the 200% damage multiplier entirely) meant that the most consistent value provided by the 2-piece was extremely sensitive to even the smallest add being nearby. With the change, it's a much stronger universal set, but the value is heavily weighted toward that 2-piece (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). These types of bonuses that are contingent on hitting a single target have been tried before (most notably in early Aberrus testing) and weren't fun then, so I'm very happy to see Blizzard catch that and pivot before it hits live servers.
With these changes in mind, this set is looking to be a solid addition to rotational gameplay, making it even easier to consistently remain GCD locked, while also shoring up the value of a button that was previously on an island. It also gives a good reason to have Fire Nova talented in single-target, allowing for an even easier flex into cleave than we already have. It's worth mentioning that, while the bonus is improved by the talent, it's not a mandatory swap, since the 2-piece is self-sufficient with its own Nova procs. While it's likely both trees can fit it in due to the weak central block of talents, it's nice to see a less forceful implementation of a talent-locked tier set. It looks to be a solid all-rounder bonus, providing meaningful damage in virtually all combat situations through active gameplay while even adding in extra priority damage to boot.
The State of Enhancement
With a season under our belt seeing Enhancement in a live environment, I'd like to take the chance to revisit some of the issues that came up in Alpha and Beta that still haven't really been addressed. I'm also going to highlight a few other hot topics across the community that really could do with some attention to sand off the rough edges people consistently draw issue with. To start, I want to wheel back to the bluepost and talk about our cooldown situation.
Cooldowns Cooldowns Cooldowns
Enhancement has had a lot of different damage profiles over the years, but in particular in Midnight it's very aggressively pivoted into a cooldown focused all-or-nothing specialization. Some people love this (and, with the way Midnight has gone, not having big cooldowns is a massive disadvantage), but I think in this transition Enhancement has lost something that was, previously, one of its biggest strengths — flexibility. The blue post even states that they're trying to shift some damage out of these windows, but the only thing that took a noticeable hit was Totemic through the Surging Totem nerfs (though mostly offset by other buffs), and was also the only tree impacted by the Windfury Weapon reduction during Doom Winds in mass AoE.
The dichotomy that was set up in The War Within (in between all the reworks, rocky tuning and misfires) had us with a burst oriented tree — Stormbringer — and a more sustained option, Totemic, echoing the unique two-build style we had in Dragonflight. Instead now, the only thing that differentiates them is whether you want 2-minute burst or 1-minute burst, but both of them have all-or-nothing profiles centered around cooldowns. There's no option to diversify your damage profile or lean toward sustain damage, not helped by how limited the number of talents on our current tree is. Neither Hero Tree has a major difference in how they deal damage or path through the tree, with the only major difference being Totemic needs to pick up Hot Hand. Normally, this would be a talent "tax", but because what few options are available are so limp, it barely matters. Which tree wins in the current landscape comes down to how a couple of key mechanics are tuned against each other, or if a fight/dungeon significantly favors the respective cooldown timings they're locked to.
It's a shame that previously distinct trees that provided choice between each other — within their own hero tree and on the specialization tree — have been diluted so much. Instead, they often both use the same cookie cutter loadouts with one or two superficial swaps. Currently, the choice is driven entirely by whether you play Ascendance timers for Stormbringer or Doom Winds timers for Totemic, because neither tree offers a meaningfully different playstyle outside of their respective cooldown windows.
