Dragonflight Shaman - Blue post

A blue post was released regarding Shaman talents in Dragonflight.

 

Hello again, Shamans!
In today’s new build of the Dragonflight Alpha, we have several adjustments to talents in the Shaman Class Tree intended to reduce the overall defensive and mobility kit of Shaman, which has crept up due to the new system allowing for previously impossible combinations. We’re happy with new talent combinations, but the mobility and defensive power in the tree exceeded our target for Shaman, and individual talent power was above budget compared to other classes.
Elemental
We’ve continued to make minor tweaks to the Elemental tree, based on feedback. This week we focused on improvements to Primordial Wave. It’s generally avoided outside of AoE in the current design, so our aim is to improve its overall value in various game modes to increase build diversity.
We attempted to address node pathing pain points for Storm Elemental with Primal Elementalist. There is now a path available towards Primal Elementalist that doesn’t require sinking more than a couple points into talents unrelated to a Lightning-focused build.
Electrified Shocks is an experiment we’re excited about for Icefury in AoE, and we’re continuing to make adjustments to it. We’ve increased the duration of the Icefury buff which should be an overall improvement to its gameplay given the window was previously hard to fit your Frost Shocks in. We’ve also reduced the number of targets hit and increased the duration of the debuff on enemies, as the intent is for there to be weaving gameplay between Chain Lightning and Frost Shock.
Flames of the Firelord is a niche talent, mainly used for PvP or some AoE builds and we felt it best to combine its functionality with Flames of the Cauldron.
Magma Chamber has moved as its generally more versatile than Searing Flames. Its damage bonus has also been increased.
Talent changes for Elemental:
  • Flames of the Firelord has been removed, and its effect is now attached to Flames of the Cauldron.
  • Flames of the Cauldron now reduces the cooldown of Flame Shock by 1.5 seconds and Flame Shock deals damage 15% faster.
  • Icefury buff duration increased to 25 seconds (was 15 seconds).
  • Electrified Shocks makes Frost Shock hit 3 additional targets (was 4), and the debuff duration increased to 6 seconds (was 4 seconds).
  • Magma Chamber Damage bonus increased to 0.7%/1.5% per stack (was 0.5%/1.0% per stack).
  • Tumbling Waves has been removed from Elemental and replaced with Rolling Magma.
  • Rolling Magma causes Lava Burst and Lava Burst Overload damage to reduce the cooldown of Primordial Wave by 0.5/1.0 seconds.
  • Splintered Elements increases Haste by 10% per stack (was 6%).
  • Fire Elemental once again increases the duration of Flame Shock by 100% while active.
  • Coming soon:
    • Heat Wave - Casting Primordial Wave triggers Lava Surge immediately and every 3 seconds for 12 seconds.
Restoration
We also made some adjustments to the Restoration tree to improve accessibility to damage/utility focused talents without needing to talent into throughput.
We’ve swapped Resurgence and Lava Surge to allow for damage-focused builds to not require talenting into increased mana regeneration.
3 Aug 2022