Lava Burst is gone, lightning is back: why Shaman players split over the final changes

Two threads went up on the US forums 19 minutes apart, on the day before launch. "My shaman brothers we did it!" Finnal wrote at 04:14 UTC on 3 November. At 04:33 DatSikChili opened another, titled "Just kill Ele shaman?" Both were reacting to the same Shaman section of Kaivax's development notes, posted at 03:20 UTC. We've read all four of the threads below, and we haven't tested any of this in the game.

What actually changed

The Elemental lines are short. Lava Burst is "Removed. Replaced with Call of Thunder, which increases critical strike chance of Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning by 5%." That turns around the 16 October notes, which moved Lava Burst up to the 21-point gold medal and removed Call of Thunder. Elemental Mastery is now Lightning Mastery, and Lightning Overload rises to a 10/20/30% chance from 3/7/10%.

The spells themselves moved too. The top rank of Lightning Bolt gains 80% base damage. Chain Lightning now takes 2.5 seconds to cast, and its primary target takes about 145% of a comparable Lightning Bolt's base damage for about 225% of its mana. Shocks go back to Classic Era base damage, which the notes say is higher than the previous beta values.

Further down, under Enhancement, is a line that gives only the move: "Improved Ghost Wolf moved from 2nd row to 4th row."

The notes don't explain any of these individually. The nearest things are class-wide remarks: Blizzard says it has "raised damage on classes across the game", and that some of this round reflects areas where it was "likely hasty in turning to Burning Crusade- or Wrath-era solutions". Neither names Lava Burst.

"Big chain lightning"

For one side this is a homecoming. "[W]e got big chain lightning back! we got our shocks back!" Finnal wrote. Kishr said they prefer "the lightning mage playstyle" and count the removal as a win. S4br1n4 says the change decided their main: "I'm basically only playing shaman now specifically because they fixed it to lightning only." And they don't think much was lost, calling this version of the spell "just a red lightning bolt every 10 seconds".

"The most boring caster"

For the other side, something they were looking forward to has gone. "Entire reason I was even wanting to play a shaman in forever was for lava burst," DatSikChili wrote. BasedChadman replied to Finnal directly: "You successfully got the slight modicum of depth and an actual rotation removed from the most boring caster class in the game." On the EU forums, Mave objected on class fantasy and on the name: "the tree class calls them elemental shamans, not lightning shamans".

Not everyone unhappy wants the spell back. Xorph says the removal is "not so much the problem as it is what they put in its place", calling 5% crit "the most bland thing I could think of for a capstone". Schellenhans wanted a new lightning spell in Lava Burst's place. So part of this argument isn't about Lava Burst at all, but about how many buttons Elemental ends up with.

The worries both sides share

Mana comes up even among people who like the changes. Lommatik is glad something was done for Elemental, but points at Chain Lightning's higher cost and calls the spec already the most mana-hungry caster. Hanzgroober, who thinks the changes are fantastic, still allows that mana "might be an issue", though they doubt it once you have Intellect gear and Restoration talents. The notes give a new mana figure for Chain Lightning and none for Lightning Bolt.

Others ask what a lightning-heavy kit does in a bad matchup. Radon expects Elemental players to be back on a non-elemental spec against Nature-immune creatures, and Finnal answers that the buffed shocks mean Flame Shock and Frost Shock can kill wind elementals. Sarxify worries about being spell locked in PvP. These are forecasts from players, and the notes don't address either.

Ghost Wolf

This is the complaint that crosses the split. Rhela thinks the DPS changes are good but calls the Ghost Wolf and Totemic Projection changes "concerning". Geryboy likes the patch but not this. Ugro gave it a thread of its own, "Blizzard trolling shamans".

The cost is easy to count. Our talent planner needs 5 points per row, so row 2 took 5 points in Enhancement and row 4 takes 15. With both ranks, that goes from 7 points to 17. At one point per level from level 10 and with no Talented perk, a Shaman putting everything into Enhancement gets there at level 26, not level 16. Finnal, otherwise delighted, says "not getting imp ghost wolf at level 20 is going to suck".

Elemental feels it differently. Ugro says you can't take it as Elemental "if you also want to take water shield". By the planner's rules, at 51 points, Improved Ghost Wolf (17) plus Water Shield on Restoration's third row (11) leaves 23 for Elemental. That reaches row 5, where Lightning Overload and Call of Thunder sit, though not both in full, and stops short of Lightning Mastery on row 7. So the two can coexist, in a much shallower Elemental. Whether anyone should build that is a separate question, and we aren't answering it.

Our planner lists the talent as cutting Ghost Wolf's cast time by 3 seconds at rank 2 and allowing it indoors. That wording comes from older licensed data, because the notes only move the talent.

The notes don't say why it moved, and no Blizzard poster in these threads does either. Deadlights guesses Enhancement is meant to close distance with it while Elemental uses Earthbound to keep enemies away. Chrysaliss thinks the point is making it exclusive to Enhancement, and doesn't mind. JayLaPomme says it "just killed all 3 spec in pvp"; Ibux argues, in another thread, that Blizzard "does not balance around PvP in a game without rated PvP".

What this can't tell you

These four threads held 105 replies when we read them at 12:20 UTC, with no Blizzard poster among them. That's a loud sample of people who chose to post, not a count of Shaman players, and neither side has the numbers to call itself the majority.

Nor can anyone settle it yet. Saren points out that "most of us have a level 30 point of view on things". Blizzard says that "with the exception of bugs and serious outliers, we don't plan on making big tuning changes between now and the opening of the raids next month", and that it expects "a large tuning pass" once it has enough data. That's a plan, with exceptions written into it, rather than a promise that nothing moves.

For now, if you were rolling Elemental for Lava Burst, the notes say it's gone. And if your plan counted on Improved Ghost Wolf early, it's worth opening the trees and counting again.