Hero Talent Showdowns in The War Within
Frost DK
Havoc DH
Restoration Druid
Augmentation Evoker
Beast Mastery Hunter
Arcane Mage
Brewmaster Monk
Holy Paladin
Holy Priest
Shadow Priest
Outlaw Rogue
Subtlety Rogue
Enhancement Shaman
Affliction Warlock
Protection Warrior
For more information on Hero Talents coming in the War Within, check out our Hero Talents Overview.
The War Within Hero Talents Overview
Elemental Shaman in the War Within
In this post, we will be analyzing the state of Elemental Shaman in the upcoming expansion. We will look at the new extension of the talent system called “Hero Talents”, what they are, how they affect your gameplay experience, and how they are performing on the beta right now. To do so, we contextualize them with the rework we just received and the resulting “new” builds we will most likely be playing in “The War Within.”
If you are undecided about whether Elemental Shaman is the spec for you in The War Within, I hope to give you some insights and help you make your decision.
Hero Talent Showdown: Farseer vs. Stormbringer
While leveling your Elemental Shaman in The War Within, you will be getting access to two new talent sub-trees called “Hero Talent Trees.” You will decide between 2 different “sub-specs” that differ in gameplay and general focus regarding spells and rotation. Stormbringer revolves around casting Lightning Spells, including a new spell Tempest that replaces your Lightning Bolt every so often, which is exclusive to Stormbringer Shamans. Farseer Shaman, on the other hand, relies on the “Power of the Ancestors,” summoning your Ancestors in the form of pets that mimic your spell casts every time you cast Primordial Wave or Ancestral Swiftness.
Farseer
Farseer gameplay does not significantly differ from your regular rotation. Both enablers, Primordial Wave and Ancestral Swiftness, are to be cast on cooldown as much as possible. Access to these spells can be increased via Flash of Lightning, which significantly reduces both spells’ cooldown in builds that spend most of their time casting Lightning Bolt. In Lava Burst-focussed build, we are instead using Routine Communication for a chance to spawn additional Ancestors.
Stormbringer
Stormbringer revolves around Tempest and the Lightning-School spells we have access to. While doing your normal rotation, you will use Awakening Storms procs and the Maelstrom spent to give you access to Tempest. It further gives you various buffs like Unlimited Power and Supercharge to passively increase your damage done.
What’s Changed?
Everything really. But also nothing.
Blizzard reworked most of the talent tree since they first released our hero trees. This rework saw the removal of some of the more problematic talents like Primordial Surge and Windspeaker’s Lava Resurgence, the return of some fan-favorite talents from across the history of Elemental Shaman (welcome back Earthen Rage), and the introduction of some new or changed talents that do mix up the general philosophy in some ways.
For a very much non-exhaustive list, here are some of the most prominent changes:
A lot more focus has been put on the Elementals, increasing both their power as well as their availability. Icefury has been changed to a proc, triggered by Lava Burst, limiting it mostly to fire-focussed builds. Our mastery Mastery: Elemental Overload has been reworked, moving a lot of its power into a passive damage buff and only keeping a little bit in the provided overloads. And last but not least, the return of Ascendance. Ascendance was never actually removed, sure, but the choice node it was positioned on made it unappealing in almost every case. Now, it has been moved and can be taken in combination with Deeply Rooted Elements, making it a pretty good choice for fire-based builds.
Farseer
Farseer Shaman has gotten only minimal changes in the tree, so the basics here stayed the same throughout the beta. The most significant impact was a change to Flash of Lightning, which now affects Primordial Wave. Makes sense, considering it is an Elemental spell. This makes Farseer Lightning a lot more attractive and is a good change overall. This does a lot to alleviate the split within the spec. We are not only using one specific hero talent for Fire builds and another for Lightning builds. We actually have access to a hero tree that can utilize any kind of build that you want to throw at it, … as long as it runs Primordial Wave and Ancestral Swiftness of course.
Stormbringer
Lightning is dead. Long live Lightning.
With the rework and the associated changes to our mastery and Icefury, the Dragonflight version of the Lightning build is pretty much dead.
The problems still seem very similar. Tempest works as a way to break up the monotony of spamming Lightning Bolt but also locks you out of casting Lightning Bolt entirely, which sometimes breaks up the rotation in a way that is not too pleasant. Removing Icefury from Lightning builds has already helped this problem a lot, getting rid of the most limiting “damage window” that the spec relied upon, but the general issues are still very much unchanged.
And the Winner Is…
- Class Fantasy & Visuals: Stormbringer (Winner)
If somebody asks, “What makes Elemental Shaman special?” most people’s answer will probably mention Chain Lightning’s spell effects and the visuals of overloads in some way. While Stormbringer by itself doesn’t really amplify the animations, Tempest’s animation is hardly discernable in a fight; the additional overloads from Supercharge are definitely noticeable. Farseer, on the other hand, is indeed more noticeable with multiple “grandpas” standing next to you, chugging Lava Burst at your target, but they don’t really personify what I expect when I hear “Elemental Shaman.”
- Fun & Rewarding Gameplay: Stormbringer/ Farseer (Tie)
It’s a … tie?
If we are looking purely at the hero trees, Farseer has a distinct lack of impact on the rotation and gameplay. The ancestors themselves are almost entirely passive with its enablers. Primordial Wave and Ancestral Swiftness are being used on cooldown, and the damage just happens without any adaptions to your rotation. The cooldown reduction on the Elementals is neat but doesn’t really impact any gameplay decisions, either.
Stormbringer in comparison seems nearly oppresive. While tracking the various Tempest triggers is not necessary, it is very helpful for optimal play. Keeping track of your current stack count of Awakening Storms, the Maelstrom spent for the default Tempest trigger, as well as the timer on Rolling Thunder is a lot to manage while you are also trying to manage boss mechanics and your standard rotation. But, on the other hand, being able to play around those different procs, maximizing each of them, is a very rewarding playstyle when you can manage it; the only drawback is that this is not represented in your damage numbers.
All in all, Stormbringer is significantly more interactive but also just overloaded with things you need to keep track of and is lacking the damage right now to actually feel rewarding. Farseer, on the other hand, is just not interactive at all, but also non-intrusive and requires little overhead.
- Difficulty: Farseer (Winner – Easier)
Judging the difficulty of a Hero Talent sub-spec can be done on a few different levels. If we are looking purely at the gameplay at the moment, neither of the hero trees requires significant effort to play around. Farseer is essentially entirely passive and just happens while you do your normal rotation. It further doesn’t impact your decision-making either. The only thing that a player needs to be aware of is that they are losing a very minor movement globally because Nature’s Swiftness (or Ancestral Swiftness in most cases) has turned into a rotational button.
As I just mentioned in the previous category, Stormbringer needs you to be aware of 3 different timers and counters to actually get the most value out of the hero tree, which need to be somewhat kept in sync with your rotation, and furthermore can throw some unexpected changes into your rotation that you need to be aware of and account for. For example, if you are casting Stormkeeper to get some instant casts, cast a spender to get the additional overloads from Surge of Power, and then get pushed over the Maelstrom threshold by this cast, you suddenly and unexpectedly active Tempest, which means that your next Lightning Bolt cast is not actually going to be an instant via Stormkeeper as you expected, but instead will be a hardcast that you need to stand still for.
- Defensiveness & Utility: Stormbringer (Winner)
I could honestly put either hero tree here. Neither of them feels particularly impactful in either of those categories, and any significant benefit comes with a massive disclaimer.
Let’s look at Stormbringer first: Shocking Grasp can be quite impactful in a kite meta, or whenever slows are actually needed. Sadly, it sometimes happens that slowing enemies is actually detrimental to your group. Even though this talent is not alone with this issue, other specs have this problem with their whole kit (Hi Frost Mages), it still potentially limits the viability of this tree. To be fair here, the removal of the Sanguine affix makes this much less of a problem at the moment, but we will see in which content it will lead to issues first.
- Leveling: Farseer (Winner)
To be completely honest, either spec will perform well enough in leveling content, and you will not notice any significant differences in your survivability or leveling speed, in my opinion. Farseer works better in Single Target, while Stormbringer is better in AoE, so depending on your playstyle and leveling speed, either could be better for going faster. My personal choice here still goes towards Farseer. Getting better burst on the opener via the Ancestors spawned by Ancestral Swiftness and Primordial Waves, as well as the third charge provided to Lava Burst, are pretty good for Single Target mobs, while also being pretty okay for AoE. Stormbringer, on the other hand, relies a lot on random procs and spending specific amounts of Maelstrom, which means that its damage windows are going to be happening in situations where it’s not optimal for you.
- Mythic+: Stormbringer (Winner)
Basically, there is no competition in this category. With Ancestors only able to damage up to 3 targets, Farseer struggles significantly in AoE. The Elemental CDR provided by the tree barely matters in AoE either because Skybreaker’s Fiery Demise already provides all of the CDR we need.
Stormbringer on the other hand, not only increases our AoE spells more than Farseer does, Tempest also scales with target count a lot better being uncapped and triggering overloads on each target hit.
- Raid: Farseer (Winner)
With the huge fluctuation the hero trees have seen over even just the last week, we have not tested the current iterations of the hero talents in the context of the current spec balancing on any bosses. We can probably make some educated guesses anyway.
Farseer is the higher Single Target damage, works better on low target cleave, and is also mostly deterministic when its “burst phases” are happening.
This doesn’t mean that Stormbringer will not see play in raiding. Especially considering the fact that e.g. the last raid boss features quite a lot of AoE, it is reasonable to assume that Stormbringer will see play there regardless. I still think that Farseer will be the preferred hero tree on most bosses.
- Best Overall: Stormbringer (Winner)
With the slightest of margins, I will be giving the win to Stormbringer today.
I am personally not a big fan of the hero talent, to be quite honest, but I can hardly deny that it is the more interesting, more fitting, and just more aesthetically pleasing hero tree. While it is overloaded with various things you need to keep track of, you still feel in control of all the damage you do and rely only a little bit on pets and other “external sources”.
While I personally enjoy the lack of impact that Farseer has because it allows me to actually interact with the spec itself a lot more, I can’t really say that the flavor is really hitting home for me. The Single Target provided by the “grandpas” is really good, but having a hero talent tree that is functionally useless on AoE is pretty disappointing. Personally, I also dislike how this tree turns Elemental into a pet class. With 40%+ of your damage being done by pets, I don’t consider myself in control of my damage anymore, even though the damage done by the hero tree is still completely controlled by my own spell casts.
Hero Talent Feedback
Farseer
Farseer works …. in Single Target. While it’s not particularly flashy, it does its job well. Being able to play different builds with the hero tree is a big plus in my book and generally qualifies the tree as being very well-designed in that regard. In my opinion, it is definitely necessary to address its AoE output. Adding the additional two targets to its Chain Lightning casts would be a good step in the right direction. Another suggestion would be to enable this tree to also do AoE damage in Fire builds, which rely on Lava Burst spam, by making the Ancestors smarter and allowing them to also cast AoE spells when the player is using Single Target spells. Maybe this could be done, similarly to the Enhancement talent, where the ancestors are “primed” with a Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning cast. Maybe this could work off of the number of active Flame Shocks. Maybe it is feasible for the game to actually detect groups of enemies and just choose the correct spell by itself. Who knows.
Stormbringer
Stormbringer is excelling in AoE and, as such, seems to be the preference for Mythic+. Its Single Target currently seems to be a bit behind, but I am convinced that this is feasible to address with balancing changes and without any mechanical redesign.
A concern I would very much love to see addressed is the choice node Storm Swell/Arc Discharge. While I understand that Blizz is trying to put a minimum number of choice nodes into their trees, having to choose between Tempest being functionally useless on certain target counts doesn’t feel good. Combining these two nodes so both of them are active at all times, or just removing the enemy count requirement, would definitely increase the fluidity of the gameplay, especially in Mythic+, and just make the hero talent feel better.
Base Elemental Shaman Gameplay & Talents
Talking about the gameplay of Elemental Shaman always depends very much on the talent builds (and hero talents) we are talking about, so let’s start with the overarching issues that affect all builds and go from there:
Echo of the Elementals only procs if an Elemental expires. As such, it is optimal to expire your Elemental as soon as possible with a cancelaura macro, which leads to some very weird behavior. Having to keep track of your Elemental cooldowns all the time and canceling them as soon as possible not only affects your buffs like Wind Gust, but it also just feels unintended to be required to jump through such hoops.
Looking at the gameplay a lot of it seems very familiar: In Fire builds, we spam Lava Burst, which is provided by Ascendance and Deeply Rooted Elements. We spend our Icefury, preferably when buffed with Master of the Elements, and spend our Maelstrom before we overcap.
In Lightning Build, we are spamming Lightning Bolt, only use Lava Burst to buff our spenders, and focus on buffing Lightning Bolts with Surge of Power, especially when Stormkeeper is active.
Fire-based builds are the more “balanced” version here, but still very quickly degrade to only spamming a single button due to the positive feedback loop provided by Deeply Rooted Elements. While they might be slightly too “fire-heavy” right now, they are the most promising version in my personal opinion.
The biggest change is the increased access to our Elementals but this doesn’t really affect your gameplay. You use them when you can, keeping your Unity buff active and dont interact with them at all.
Should You Play Elemental Shaman in the War Within?
Predicting the future of Elemental Shaman is one of the hardest things to do. Receiving a rework was usually a pretty good indicator for “above average strength” of a spec in Dragonflight. Considering that Elemental Shaman is receiving its changes between expansions, it seems much more likely that we will end up in a more reasonable spot right out of the gate. Every week has brought significant balancing changes that not only changed the “best builds” and the “best rotation” but also just completely turned the performance of Elemental Shaman on its head.
What we can say for sure is this: As a result of the rework, Shamans got a big buff to their survivability and the addition of a new raid buff. This new raid buff increased the need for raid groups to run a Shaman, and considering how anti-melee the next raid tier seems to be designed, Elemental has a pretty good chance of having a guaranteed spot in a lot of groups.
If we are looking at Elemental’s actual gameplay, the situation looks a bit more bleak: The changes done as part of the rework make a lot of sense on paper. Adding some power into the Elementals and making them act like another sort of cooldown was very much asked for. Removing some of the Lava Surge producers in Windspeaker’s Lava Resurgence and Primordial Surge was more than necessary. Changing Icefury from a static “movement enabler” to a dynamic proc that can break up heavy Lava Burst rotations is a divisive change for sure, but it plays pretty well, in my opinion.
It becomes problematic when the changes themselves work against these goals. The combination of Ascendance and Deeply Rooted Elements, with the increased uptime of Fire Elemental, makes Fire-build still just spent a lot of time casting Lava Burst (For reference, a full fire build spends roughly a third of its time still just spamming Lava Burst; much better than Dragonflight but still a lot). On the other hand, being able to opt out of Lava Burst talents completely means that “Lightning only”-builds are feasible (and with current numbers possibly optimal), where Lava Burst is not completely ignored but only used to buff spenders and most of the rotation consists of only spamming Lightning Bolts.
The Elemental Shaman community has been split over the course of Dragonflight, with many different groups of players now wanting to get different playstyles out of the spec, and as such, some players will be upset by any change that is happening.
About the Author
I’m HawkCorrigan or Hawk for short.
I play Elemental Shaman on a semi-hardcore level on Draenor, primarily focusing on PvE content.
Usually, you can find me lurking around the Earthshrine Discord as one of the Elemental MVPs, answering various questions,
or hanging around Simulationcraft, where I maintain Elemental Shaman modules.
I am also one of the active maintainers for Storm, Earth and Lava.
For more information on playing Elemental Shaman, please see our class guide updated for The War Within Pre-Patch:
Elemental Shaman Guide
About The Author
