A Look Back at Elemental Shaman in Dragonflight & War Within Wishlist - Editorial
With the sun setting on Dragonflight and The War Within on the horizon, our Elemental Shaman Writer, HawkCorrigan, offers a retrospective highlighting Elemental's journey in Dragonflight and shares their hopes for the spec's next evolution with a War Within Wishlist.
Dragonflight Retrospectives & War Within Wishlists
Frost DK
Restoration Druid
Augmentation Evoker
BM Hunter
Fire Mage
Protection Paladin
Assassination Rogue
Restoration Shaman
Affliction Warlock
Elemental Retrospective & War Within Wishlist
After close to two years, I want to look back at Elemental in Dragonflight, compare it to previous iterations of the spec, and look into the future of the spec in The War Within. What changed for the better, what changed for the worse, and what lessons can be learned from the spec design in Dragonflight?
We will examine the new talent system, tier sets, how removing «borrowed power» systems impacted the spec, and some of the inner issues the new approach unearthed.
The nature of this article, and the frustration felt during this expansion in terms of performance and design, will greatly overshadow this article, possibly putting it in a more negative light than is fair to the developers. Nevertheless, I believe Elemental needs a consistent vision and intention behind its design, which it currently lacks, and some analysis of how it is supposed to fit into today's PvE meta.
TLDR: This article is too long; give me the goods
Synergy vs. Spell Identity
- Tier Sets, which focused on either Lava Burst or Lightning Bolt, removed most choice from the talent tree, divided the player base, and led to inorganic gameplay decisions.
- Spenders do not feel impactful because most of their numerical value has been moved into generators. This leads to frustration regarding the
