Talk:Original Warcraft Shaman (5e Class)

Adjustments for Enhancement

So original Vanilla Shaman actually didn't have Lava Lash, but its main ability was Stormstrike. Crash Lightning did not exist then, but in the current build it does empower Stormstrike, so a reset from it isn't to bad.

The phrasing for Lava lash and Ascendance for enh are strange, I'm updating them with what I believe they are saying, if I'm wrong please message me.

RE: Adjustments for Enhancement

Looks good. I was mostly making edits based off of Legion Shaman abilities as that's what I had easy access to. Stormstrike makes sense to me. Balancing between Warcraft's obvious "gameyness" and D&D's roleplaying is a touch difficult imo.

-Saviordd1

RE: Adjustments for Enhancement

Oh I fully agree, btw I wanted to ask you about the earlier change you did making it were there are no features on levels with a higher level spell gained. I've noticed for Enh it makes the early levels horribly slow. I would love to find a way to help that. I'm thinking having Stormstrikes bonus imbue damage scaling with spell level would help some, but still doesn't quite hit there yet. Any ideas or suggestions would be wonderful!

Looking at it, I'm thinking making Extra Attack a class feature at level 5, instead of an Enhancement only ability, would help the feeling. It really won't be much of a buff if any to the other specs, plus it fits in with other standard classes. I could also see a weapon attacks count as magical being an easy feature to toss in. Beyond that maybe doing a new group of totems at level 7 could help, or maybe a subclass feature at 9.

-Reishkhan

RE: Adjustments for Enhancement

Yeah that was on purpose. In D&D 5E classes shouldn't get new abilities the same level they access a new level of spells (So for example at 5th level they get access to 3rd level spells).

When I found the page it had a maintenance tag mentioning this so it was my first thing to fix to make the page normal. Again this is where WoW design and 5e design don't mesh well as a WoW player wouldn't see an issue with this.

I have a player in my current campaign running an enhancement shaman and the first few levels aren't as slow as they look on paper. Remember that leveling up in 5E is pretty quick up to level 4ish to avoid the pitfalls of early death (usually gaining a level a session in my experience). At third level they get more spells and a whole new spell level, 4 they get commune with the elements (which is very important for RP) and far sight (Both good for RP and mechanically), and 5th they get more spells a lot of which deal good damage. Enhancement can be a monster.

If I'm honest it may be a little OP in some respects. Note the table, every level a Shaman either gets new spells, a new elemental binding ability, or a shaman ability. Resto and Elemental need more work for sure though, as it stands they're kind of bland. I'm not sure what giving them an extra attack would do though, as it doesn't add much flavor and risks overpowering them since multiple spells a turn can annihilate middle level monsters and enemies.

-Saviordd1

RE: Adjustments for Enhancement

I didn't realize classes weren't supposed to get higher spells and features on the same levels, it happens so commonly on PHB classes.

On the extra attacks per attack action, it wouldn't allow Resto or Elemental to cast more spells, they still only get one action to cast spells in, but then we would be going against the design principle of not combining spell levels and features.

What would you think about having the 'using higher spell slots for higher imbued effect' on Imbued weapon allowed right off the bat. That would make the spells feel a lot more impactful. Balance wise, the damage cap on the higher lvl spell slot weapon imbue gets pretty ridiculous. During Ascension you can end up doing 100D6 damage per turn, which is.....amazing. I'm thinking dropping down to a D4 would help that out without making it feel useless at low levels.

Also any thoughts on the Stormstrike scaling with Spell slot expended idea?

-Reishkhan

RE: Adjustments for Enhancement

It surprised me too! But if you look at the PHB most of the spell slingers follow the rule like Wizards and Druids, though some hybrids don't (Clerics for example). Either way it was listed as a fault so I'll follow that.

I agree with your idea of using higher level spell slots easier if it's balanced to D4 instead of D6. Also maybe ascension on Enhancement should be changed to avoid the 100D4 situation, any ideas?

Also apologies I may have missed it, do you mean stormstrike scaling or imbue weapon?

-Saviordd1

RE: Adjustments for Enhancement

Yeah I was rather spastic with my previous post. So to have the ideas more organized.

Imbue Weapon, have spell scaling baseline, damage is 1d4 baseline, increase to 1d6 at 12, and 2d4 at 16.

Stormstrike, scale with spell baseline, 1d6 extra elemental damage per spell level.

With those two I believe Enh as a subclass is pretty solid, though I am working on the balancing of it. That will take some time as I run numbers and such.I will look at Elemental next. It may be difficult to get a good feeling spec from the original WoW version, since it was pretty bland then, but I might be able to get some heat to it!

Actually I'm going to work on shields and Ascendance next, I just really really realized how ridiculous shields are.

UPDATE: I found a way to balance enh Ascendance. Instead of boosting the attack action, it allows us to take an action to do three ranged strikes with our melee weapon(s). That reduces the damage massively when combined with the imbue weapon nerf, but allows it to feel impactful because of the utility. The range thing air elemental form actually does in game. Lastly taking this direction ensures somebody dual wielding can't take an extra attack and bust the balance.

I was thinking of having Ascendance effect the shields, just so the spec feels more fluid, but shields have to be revamped for that. Since this is more or less your page Saviordd1, and you seem to be active on it, I'm not going to make any changes unless you approve them, so please just say yah or nay to any ideas and I will implement them in.

-Reishkhan

RE: Adjustments for Enhancement

Apologies for vanishing for a month, it's been hectic IRL.

I agree with your changes to imbue weapon and stormstrike, assuming that how it works now is Stormstrike goes up with spell level, whereas imbue weapon stays at those levels. Correct?

As for the other specs I'd feel free to use abilities from later expansions. The point is to be fun, not a direct 1-1 of the WoW Shaman class after all.

I agree with your changes to Ascendance as well. They need a ranged cap on them however, how about 35 feet? Just slightly more than the average running speed in game.

Looking at the shields they definitely need a rework, I'll give them a more in depth look in the coming days and make suggestions.

-Saviordd1