Elemental Feedback - build 8770

This is a repost from the WotLK Shaman beta forum

I’m sure that most will have read my initial feedback that was posted by Malan in this thread: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...4749&pageNo=1&

What I’m going to look at today is how things have changed in 8770, and what issues/concerns may still be outstanding (bugs aside).

Summary of Previous Post

Issues from TBC
Lack of Pushback resistance
Filler talents required in certain areas.
No Caster earth totem
Lack of group Synergy
Minimal spec variations

Initial WotLK Viewpoint
Lack of Pushback resistance
Filler talents still required
No caster earth totem
Improved group synergy with Oath, but it’s party only and not much when compared with Enhancement
Sub-spec options reduced even more with the removal of Guidance
Rotations – LvB vs LB
Talent flaws: upper elemental

Summary of what I hope to cover today:
Pushback resistance introduced
Reduction of filler talents required
Still no earth totem for casters
Change to ToW improves synergy & usefulness of elemental shaman
Still a lack of practical subspec options (Tidal Mastery, AK/Imp Shields)
Rotations seem more balanced: LvB ~4-8% better but requires more input from the player.
Minimal elemental tree variation outside of pick two of call of fire/elemental warding/eye of the storm
Upper elemental talents fixed. Only “weakness” would be Lava Flows for a LB shaman.

This update has brought many new and good things for us. Pushback resistance that does not require us to be crit, Storm, Earth & Fire in a form that is useful to PvE and PvP shaman alike and the extra changes to Lava Burst talents (being affected by concussion, introduction of lava flows) means that there is a decent choice to be made as to whether you stay with LB or CL/LB rotations, or switch to FS/LB/LvB rotations. Also, the fact that Totem of Wrath now increases spell damage by 6% actually makes it a solid 41 point talent.

However, there are still a few points that I think could be improved.

Overview
Firstly, I think it would be important to know what the overall “plan” is for shaman in WotLK. Are we to be the “offensive buffers”, general support buffers, stand on our own as damage dealers/healers in our own right? Once we know the views of the development team we can start making informed feedback of the class as the beta progresses. For Elemental, it revolves around what our rotations “should” be and whether we are supposed to dps and heal in the same fight depending on circumstances.

The rotation question is more a question of whether the intended rotation is to make use of the new Lava Burst/Flame Shock mechanic, or allow us to make the choice between that rotation and our current bolt and chain rotations. If the first option is what is intended, it raises a question of why Storm Reach is still a talent, as both Burst and Flame Shock (with glyph) have a 30 yard range. On the other hand, if the choice is up to us, it makes the talent Lava Flows seem a bit weak for bolt users (14 spellpower per talent with the current max rank of flametongue).

Meanwhile, the healing question is probably best highlighted by the Elemental Focus talent. Currently it only procs off damage spell crits, but can be used by both damage and healing spells. While this is useful for the odd heal while on dps duty, it still doesn’t help in the emergency healer situations that we can find ourselves in. Since our mana efficiency is keyed around spell crits resulting in clearcasting, heals will rapidly deplete our mana reserves. A possible solution to this would be to make a higher tier talent (say Elemental Oath for instance) allow Elemental Focus to apply to heal crits as well. Alternatively, making this change to the base talent would open up interesting Restoration spec options, as well as allowing Elemental and Restoration shaman to use the same gear.

Once these questions are answered, we can look at our talents and abilities in more detail, and make more informed choices/feedback based on them.

Totems
We still lack an offensive caster-centric earth totem. Certainly tremor is useful in some situations, but outside of that there isn’t really anything to use. That said, there doesn’t appear to be a stat that could be enhanced by an earth totem, as spell crit, spell haste and spell power have all been covered by other elements. Possibly a new totem mechanic would be the solution, but as to how this would be approached is something I am unsure of.

Talents
Even after the changes to elemental talents, we are still left with minimal sub-spec options. These options are either to go with Ancestral Knowledge and then maybe Improved Shields, or to go for Tidal Mastery. There are no other useful talents in either tree for sub-spec options, however looking at other hybrids we can see there are a number of inter-tree talents (Druid – Feral offspec in Restoration is a good example). Aside from the obvious Elemental subspec for Enhancement, the same cannot be said for any other Shaman talent build.

Having options for difference subspecs, as well as a bit more variation within the elemental tree itself will reduce the current “cookie-cutter” feeling of the tree. Possible solutions inside elemental would be to have some bolt-centric talents and some burst-centric talents, while still keeping the current dps balance between the two. In terms of Enh subspec, the Imp Shield talent could affect passive bonuses from shields (which comes to another point that I’ll come to later), but outside of that I’m not sure what can be changed/added to allow this to happen.

As I mentioned earlier, there is also a lack of choice in the higher tiers in Elemental. The choice boils down to whether you want a third point in Lava Flows or a fifth point in Tidal Mastery, unless you are planning for a PvP spec. This seems to be contrary to the previous comment that trees were going to be intentionally bloated (see Koraa’s post here http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...o=1&sid=2000#2 ). Hopefully we will see revisions in later patches on this subject.

Abilities
In the talents section, I mentioned the Improved Shields talent. Currently it only affects the charge bonus, and I suggested making include the passive bonuses as well. However, at the moment Water Shield is the only one of the three to have a passive bonus. While Earth Shield itself probably shouldn’t have a passive bonus, adding a spellpower gain to Lightning shield would give us another active option to utilise (do we get more regen or more spellpower?), almost in a pseudo stance form (lightning for hard dps sections, water when running low on mana).

On a lighter note, I have to say that Thunderstorm is awesome! In fact, my only complaint would be that it’s on a 45 second cooldown. I will certainly agree that there will be fairly big PvP implications of the spell due to the knockback part, especially via cliff-punting, but as with any new ability, people can, have, and will adjust to such abilities. Any arguments to “nerf” this ability would need to provide a solution to both the mana issues that it addresses as well as the close range PvP survivability of Elemental Shaman.