Updated August 11

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.

April 16

Surge of Power (Elemental) now occurs after consuming at least 6 stacks of Fulmination.

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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!

Surge of Power (Elemental) now occurs after consuming at least 6 stacks of Fulmination.

In an upcoming build of Shadowlands, several changes have been made for both of the DPS Shaman specializations.

One quick note before discussing the specific changes to each spec, Searing Totem is being removed as a baseline button to all Shaman. Searing Totem was brought back in Shadowlands with the intention of Totems being a cool and iconic part of the Shaman class, but without significant redesign to the button to give it mechanical interaction and feeling impactful to press, it wound up feeling like just another cooldown you had to manage that didn’t have any excitement behind it.

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.

We have some significant updates in this week’s builds of the Beta and the PTR.

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.

In this week’s PTR and Beta builds, several changes have been made to bring the Maelstrom resource back for Elemental Shaman. Many months ago, we had opted to try not having a special resource on the Shaman class, and went forward with the plan to remove Maelstrom and rebuild Fulmination as the ability it was prior to the Legion expansion. Ever since the first Alpha builds, we have been watching reactions and listening to how people feel about using the Fulmination buff. Many changes were made to make more and more spells and abilities interact with Fulmination, any sort of randomness was removed, and we’ve wound up back in a place that feels almost exactly like Maelstrom, only instead of an easy-to-read resource bar on your unit frame, it’s hidden as a stacking buff in your buff bars.

After some discussion in the past weeks, we have decided to just revert the changes that replaced Maelstrom with Fulmination.

There are still a few remaining places where Fulmination may be mentioned, but those will either be changed to interact with Maelstrom, or be redesigned entirely in an upcoming build.

Thank you all for your testing and feedback!

Icefury buffed Frost Shocks should be generating 8 Maelstrom. The tooltip wasn’t updated to include this information when all of the Maelstrom generation text was re-added - that should be fixed in an upcoming build.

This is a bug that just has not yet been fixed. Spells should not gain any benefit from having more than 5 Maelstrom Weapon stacks when pressing the button.

There are no changes to bring back the Maelstrom resource for Enhancement Shaman.

In the next build, Chain Heal should be back to a 15 yd jump range.

All 3 of the things listed above are bugs that should be fixed before Shadowlands launches.

To clarify: this is just a tooltip error. The current build you have should still have a 10 maximum stack of Maelstrom Weapon. In-game, you are probably seeing two different buffs, one that stacks up to 5, and one that stacks up to 10. The one that stacks up to 5 will be hidden in a future build. The Maelstrom Weapon tooltip is just pointing to the wrong place for maximum stacks.

We hear there are some problems with Chain Harvest and this iteration of Maelstrom Weapon, that will be looked into and fixed as well.

Echoing Shock had a bunch of work done in the past week that should resolve these problems. I believe in the build that is being pushed today, regardless of what you did prior to pressing Echoing Shock, it should only actually do something with whatever button you press after activating Echoing Shock. Check it out when the PTR or beta realms are up and reply here if that is not the case.

Some covenant abilities may not fully work with it yet. The core Shaman buttons should be working with it.

Yes, Echoing Shock should once again work with Earthquakes.

There are no plans to change Flame Shock’s duration.

Feral Spirits are a bit weak right now, and the talented version has some issues where the different elemental wolves don’t interact with some abilities that they should be.

Hello! We have some updates in this week’s Shadowlands build.

Chain Harvest will now ignore targets that are under crowd control effects that break upon taking damage for the portion of it that deals damage to enemies.

Fae Transfusion has had the number of targets it heals reduced from 8 to 4 to match the number of targets to which the ability deals damage. The damage done by Fae Tranfusion will now be evenly split to, up to 4 targets, and Enhancement Shaman specifically will receive a stack of Maelstrom Weapon for fully channeling the ability.

Primordial Wave has been changed to be an instant cast ability, which should make the ability much easier to use in all situations, and has received a number of bug fixes.

With the build going up today, this shouldn’t be possible anymore.

The legendary item “Deeply Rooted Elements” can no longer activate from “bonus” lava bursts from either activating Ascendance, or from using the Primordial Wave covenant ability. In the build that’s going live today, you actually have to press Lava Burst to potentially proc Ascendance, or get extra casts from Primordial wave.

If that is not the case, please reply here with info on what abilities are interacting with each other to cause a whole lot of Lava Bursts to happen instantly.

Yes, this is a bug that has yet to be fixed.

One quick Elemental Shaman change was made this week:

• Echoing Shock (talent) can no longer duplicate the Venthyr Covenant ability Chain Harvest. The value of the talent combined with that Covenant ability were too strong together, so the interaction has been disabled.

For Enhancement Shaman, several numerical changes have been made to their base abilities to emphasize some abilities that aren’t performing as well as intended, and several adjustments have also been made to talents to help keep the value of talents on the same row much closer.

Some time ago, we made a change to reduce the effectiveness of all Maelstrom Weapon spenders by 50%, and we made the Maelstrom Weapon buff increase the damage or healing of these abilities by 20% per stack of the buff. This reduction has been reduced from -50% to -35%, which should increase the value and priority of your Maelstrom Weapon spending abilities. Additionally, Healing Surge is no longer affected by this -35% value anymore, but still retains the increased healing effectiveness and reduced cast time if you use the ability with stacks of Maelstrom Weapon.

Feral Spirits has been a damage cooldown for Enhancement for many years, but has been slowly pushed down to be less effective relative to your other abilities. In this build, we’ve:

• Increased the attack power scaling of the Feral Spirit by 250%, to make it feel more impactful to use as a DPS cooldown.

Several talents have some number tweaks:

• Forceful Winds Windfury damage bonus per stack has been reduced from 50% to 35%.
• Ice Strike damage has been increased by 75%.
• Lashing Flames has had its debuff duration increased from 12 seconds to 20 seconds.
• Hot Hand now also resets the cooldown of Lava Lash when the talent activates.
• Elemental Blast has had its damage increased by 25% for Enhancement Shaman.
• Hailstorm’s bonus damage to Frost Shock has been reduced from 35% to 15%.
• Fire Nova’s damage has been increased by 75%

The conduit Essential Extraction has been redesigned in this build. The previous version both increased the damage of Fae Transfusion and reduced the total time it took to channel the ability. This was increasing the burst damage of a channeled ability to a point where it was becoming difficult to counter effectively, so we changed it to instead reduce the cooldown of Fae Transfusion from 25 to 40 seconds, depending on the conduit rank.

One final change made in today’s build is that the Night Fae covenant ability Fae Transfusion should now generate 3 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon when you fully channel the ability, up from 1 stack. This should offset more of the loss of melee attacks made while channeling the ability and also give a nice guaranteed way to generate Maelstrom Weapon stacks when needed.