Lookit is right here. Pushback is supremely irritating for all casting classes, though some more than others and some specs have protection from it. You could make the argument that the extreme damage melee classes drop on casters if they stay in melee range is sufficient balance. But when all but one casting class have built-in escapes (Shamans being the exception, and I'm aware that in an Arena situation many escapes aren't reliable) it's imperative that they be punished twice for staying in melee range. Healers are a slightly different situation--it's no coincidence that every single healing class has substantial built-in pushback protection, able to reach 100% under certain conditions (Conc Aura, Earth Shield, PW:Shield, Barkskin). Healers aren't masters of their fates as much as DPS casters, so this makes sense. I don't think pushback is a flawed mechanic.
Edit: Arcane Shot can dispel Divine Shield? I wasn't aware of that, but if so that's stupid and should be changed.
It could on the PTR, but I'm pretty damn sure it doesn't dispel on live. And it only dispelled if the Arcane Shot was shot at the moment the DS was cast, aka latency issue.
That's a myth and realistically only happens if you get a parallel cast, and parallel casting of dispels has been accidentally removing iceblock/DS invulnerability for near on forever. It's really just impossible to do intentionally, but sometimes it can happen by accident if you're spamming dispels.
I was under the impression that some items that had On Equip effects, but which were shown and processed as On Use effects so they could not be activated or benefitted from, would be changed to be On Equip again, but I cannot find this change in these notes...
(item example: Robe of the Moccasin - Items - World of Warcraft)
Last edited by Justician : 12/03/07 at 4:56 PM.
Reason: typo :(
That's a myth and realistically only happens if you get a parallel cast, and parallel casting of dispels has been accidentally removing iceblock/DS invulnerability for near on forever.
Mass Dispel or bust, I'm afraid.
Must have been latency in the one case that I've seen it happen. Probably the same effect that would allow purge to remove DS a while back. Thanks for the clarification.
I find the Hemo change really disappointing. I'm running a non-optimal hemo trispec for raid/pvp duties. Hemo is accounting for roughly 27% of my personal damage in most recount graphs over time. This will amount to a roughly 3% reduction in personal damage for me. I simply haven't seen any justification for this. Has anyone found a blue post that says exactly why they are testing/planning this?
I've heard lots of hypothesis, but not seen anything hard. Some are saying it's because some rogues are % modifier stacking with shadowstep and dirty deeds to achieve huge crits(seeing how there's a 40% modifier added below 35% here). Then others are saying it's because AR/Prep pvp builds are doing too much damage in burst. Then there are the people that think it's because hemo marginalized combat raid builds(which i think is preposterous given the rate of energy generation and SS superiority per strike of that build as well as other things). I'd really like to know the why behind this, because I've not been able to dig it out of the blizz forums.
From my experience it seems a drastically unnecessary change, especially if they keep hemo normalized to 2.4.
I find the Hemo change really disappointing. I'm running a non-optimal hemo trispec for raid/pvp duties. Hemo is accounting for roughly 27% of my personal damage in most recount graphs over time. This will amount to a roughly 3% reduction in personal damage for me. I simply haven't seen any justification for this. Has anyone found a blue post that says exactly why they are testing/planning this?
I've heard lots of hypothesis, but not seen anything hard. Some are saying it's because some rogues are % modifier stacking with shadowstep and dirty deeds to achieve huge crits(seeing how there's a 40% modifier added below 35% here). Then others are saying it's because AR/Prep pvp builds are doing too much damage in burst. Then there are the people that think it's because hemo marginalized combat raid builds(which i think is preposterous given the rate of energy generation and SS superiority per strike of that build as well as other things). I'd really like to know the why behind this, because I've not been able to dig it out of the blizz forums.
From my experience it seems a drastically unnecessary change, especially if they keep hemo normalized to 2.4.
I suspect it is because rogues could spec AR/Prep and have the best of both worlds - a great PvP build that lost out only slightly in DPS to the reigning PvE build. For a long time, combat swords has been the undisputed champion for raiding. However, now that you can spec AR/prep and get some truly excellent PvP utility while losing very little overall contribution to raid dps, an overwhelming number of rogues did so. I think the sub tree suddenly became much more popular than Blizzard had foreseen, and they decided to reign it in a bit, by lowering the personal dps of hemo. We'll have to see what happens with the debuff portion, because if that is significantly buffed then perhaps all the rogues who respecced (myself included) will not be so disappointed.
The other angle is that it would seem they want to encourage a diversity of specs in a raid by making it worthwhile to bring 1 hemo rogue for the debuff and the rest combat.
I suspect it is because rogues could spec AR/Prep and have the best of both worlds - a great PvP build that lost out only slightly in DPS to the reigning PvE build. For a long time, combat swords has been the undisputed champion for raiding. However, now that you can spec AR/prep and get some truly excellent PvP utility while losing very little overall contribution to raid dps, an overwhelming number of rogues did so. I think the sub tree suddenly became much more popular than Blizzard had foreseen, and they decided to reign it in a bit, by lowering the personal dps of hemo. We'll have to see what happens with the debuff portion, because if that is significantly buffed then perhaps all the rogues who respecced (myself included) will not be so disappointed.
The other angle is that it would seem they want to encourage a diversity of specs in a raid by making it worthwhile to bring 1 hemo rogue for the debuff and the rest combat.
This (both of these) is my theory as well. If you haven't been on the receiving end of 2.3 AR/Prep yet, it is monstrous in Arena--even when applied against geared opponents--and yet still excellent for raid damage. There is no subtlety necessary; you go in and don't stop swinging until your target is a pile of bloody rags. The spec angle is also important to Blizzard in that it makes distinct a 'role' for the Hemo rogue, Affliction warlock, retadin, lolcat, so on.
I think the true overlap of AR/Prep builds to raiding is a bit overstated. Spending the minimum amount of talent points in order to obtain both talents, in addition to Hemorrhage, only leaves 8 points left to put into the Assassination tree. Talents distributed in this way precludes the ability to pick up Relentless strikes, which extremely beneficial in maintaining a proper finisher rotation. The raid build which I use 11/27/23, and variants seem to be, from everything I've read, the competitive raiding build. The similarity being that they both use Hemorrhage as the main combo-point generator, and thus, any change aimed at altering the effectiveness of AR/Prep will impact the Tri-spec raiding build.
For the convenience of everyone, I've narrowed down the stupidity of this post and several others like it.
Also, I've an idea born from this particular abridgement - STOP WHINING ABOUT AN UNIMPLEMENTED CHANGE.
I asked a question looking for the actual Blizzard justification behind the change on ptr. Everyone is speculating and I'd like actual facts on which to judge this rather than make hasty conclusions based on the speculation that is running rampant. So you're drivel directed at my question is of 0 value and not even context appropriate considering I neither whined nor cried over this ptr change. Reading comprehension is your friend internet tough guy.
To the other people posting, you're speculating like everyone else and I'm looking for a blue post laying out why they've changed hemo on ptr. Not speculation, but an actual statement by blizz so an actual fact based argument could take place. I simply haven't been able to find one anywhere to know what they are thinking. I've sifted through rogue and ptr official forums, looked at some wow news sites that post blues and I can't find anything. Maybe it's buried somewhere on the european site like the ptr notes, I dunno.
For the AR/Prep hypothesis crowd, that combo existed prior to 2.3 only it focused on Sinster Strike rather than hemo. I even had a build with daggers using Backstab in a stun chain that could work quite well if stuns held the target on average geared bg players, but of course was very weak against high resil. 0/40/21, 0/31/30 and other specs you can play around with are pretty much in line with current hemo builds for burst dps. I just don't think as many people had considered it until the chance of season 3 to upgrade weapons in 1 shot came with the change of s1 weapons to honor. There was 0 lag time between weapons which made it an ideal time to try out other specs so many have given this a shot. I think the significance of the weapon upgrades some have gotten has gotten lost in the shuffle. The change from 71ish dps dungeon weapons to 91ish season 1 for 27k honor is pretty massive and very achievable even for the casual gamer. In my battlegroup it seems most chose Mace spec, because the number of mace rogues is gone through the roof on the horde pugs and they are very visible on my server for ally. Anyway, new hemo isn't much different than an old ar/prep spec that will still exist even if this change goes live. Those pvp focused rogues will still be putting out big crit potential swings every ar energy tick.
I was going some sword variant no matter what with s3 and loved being able to pickup group/pvp friendly stealth upgrades(extra sap range is very helpful when coupled with 5 more stealth levels and 15% stealth speed upgrades). Now I'm wondering why this change is on ptr, how likely it is to go live and how will it impact my spec if it goes live since it's servicable, though far from optimal pve/pvp spec. The lack of interaction on the part of Blizzard is really not helping people at all.
To the other people posting, you're speculating like everyone else and I'm looking for a blue post laying out why they've changed hemo on ptr.
Right, and what Kaubel is telling you is that there has been no official confirmation on this. If you're looking for a blue post, you're better off searching the official boards.
‘So tonight to shush you how about if I say I have administrative bones to pick with God, Boo. I’ll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I’m not crazy about. I’m pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I’m not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I, Boo.’
What I hope they do in this patch is fix the quest reward items that they buffed in 2.3. When they added spell damage/healing to a lot of gear, they screwed up and made it a Use effect rather than an Equip effect. I'm leveling an alt right now and I've had to shard at least three would-have-been upgrades because of this.
The 1 or 2 charge per dispel alongside the 30 second CD could actually work. As Gurg has mentioned you will still have the downside of not being able to always instantly earth shield if the opposition change focus target, but that is a strategic twist that I think could be acceptable if it takes 5 purges/10 spellsteals to remove. It could also gain a secondary use as cover for even more important magic effects like BoP, innervate or pain suppression.
Most importantly it wouldn't be totally disregardable by 90% of even 2 vs 2 setups like it is at the moment.
In the current version of patch 2.3.2 we added a 30 second cooldown to earth shield and lowered the mana cost by approximately 50%. We have decided to temporarily revert both of these changes until we address the dispel issue, which will likely be for patch 2.4.
In short, earth shield will not be changed in patch 2.3.2.
For now it appears that they are listening at least to the shamans who have a major issue regarding Earth shield and the dispel mechanics which make it weaker in power compared to some of the other 41 point talents.
This (both of these) is my theory as well. If you haven't been on the receiving end of 2.3 AR/Prep yet, it is monstrous in Arena--even when applied against geared opponents--and yet still excellent for raid damage. There is no subtlety necessary; you go in and don't stop swinging until your target is a pile of bloody rags. The spec angle is also important to Blizzard in that it makes distinct a 'role' for the Hemo rogue, Affliction warlock, retadin, lolcat, so on.
This is simply not true. The arena 'AR/Prep' spec (check my armory) is very sub par for PvE damage. It's way below a full combat spec, and is nothing like the Trispecs people ARE using Hemo in for superb raid damage.
Just so there's no misunderstanding: there is NO single dominant PvE/PvP spec for Rogues. If anything, the problem is simply that the best (but totally different) PvE and PvP specs for Rogues currently involve Hemo.
The change is justified on the basis of keeping Combat on the just preferable side for Raiding DPS, as they did with Combat Daggers way back at 60 because of the positional requirement.
The current problem in my eyes is just that: Daggers are currently marginalised in serious PvP AND not the preferred spec in PvE either. This Hemo nerf does something to bring it into line with other specs, but when Rogues are hardly that viable in most 5v5s even now, nerfing their only viable spec doesn't feel like the right way to do things.
Personally I would've slightly nerfed Hemo / Trispec for raiding only, to about the extent (3%) they have now, but keep the AR/Prep spec for PvP as powerful as before (alternatively: buff ShS to viability). And at the same time add something more to Assassination for PvP to bring it up to full viability- the lack of prep (i.e. 2 snare breaks/1 escape instead of 4/2, plus no 90 sec Blind) would need a fairly hefty counterweight...
That would give rogues (who I freely admit already have some of the best balanced talent trees already) great Mutilate choices, solid Combat or Trispecs as ultimate PvE builds and deep and medium Subtlety builds for PvP too. Yum.
That would give rogues (who I freely admit already have some of the best balanced talent trees already) great Mutilate choices
Perhaps I've just been living under a rock, but I was under the impression that Mutilate was not a superb DPS spec for PvE.
In short, earth shield will not be changed in patch 2.3.2.
This is good. I could understand nerfing ProM spam because it was a baseline spell, but Earthshield is a 41-point talent that deserves to be *powerful*.
That being said, I can't help but be a little cynical about how a lot of Shaman changes are getting reverted. I have nothing against legitimate complaints against legitimately unbalancing changes, but the pages full of "dot" posts during the interrupt-on-DR announcement made me a little sick to my stomach, and now this.
It is because the interrupt on DR changes would have crippled shamans. Perhaps it was overboard, but there has never been a lot of blizzard involvement in the shaman forums. They have also really shown they don't understand for the most part the issues facing the class, so they make changes that really don't make sense, and only by the forum as whole bitching does it get them to revert it.
It is because the interrupt on DR changes would have crippled shamans. Perhaps it was overboard, but there has never been a lot of blizzard involvement in the shaman forums. They have also really shown they don't understand for the most part the issues facing the class, so they make changes that really don't make sense, and only by the forum as whole bitching does it get them to revert it.
I understood the implications of the DR change with regards to Earthshock and Shaman as a whole; I understand how Shaman have several issues right now that aren't really being addressed by Blizzard (or at least in as sweeping a manner as other classes) and I even understand how "bitching" is more or less necessary to get Blizzard to perk up and listen, but I abhor the means by which the Shaman community went about it.
10% coefficient penalty on Fireball and Frostbolt - Mages posted pages and pages of math, theorycraft and WWS reports, indicating that Mage DPS was not as powerful as Blizzard's testing (whatever it was) made it seem to be.
Fanaticism's 30% threat reduction at all times - Paladins got a good discussion going on the merits of finally getting enough threat reduction to be competitive DPS as opposed to losing the ability to offtank when you're already sunk 40+ points into the DPS tree anyway.
DR change - Shaman resort to making posts composed merely of ".", as well as singling out what was rumored to be Kalgan's Warrior character and mailing him fish.
I hope you can see the stark difference there.
Of course, this is getting quite off-topic and pertains more to the community as a whole as opposed to the merits of the changes themselves, so I'm willing to drop the subject.
If you actually look at the forums, or used to look Shamans have a LOT of decent posts and theorycrafting to back up concerns, it just gets flooded away by the random spam and complaints. A lot of people that bothered to do maths and so on to back up their concerns kinda... left. It wasn't very pleasant to post constructive things on those forums just to see it get torn down by random retards. Not to mention the lack of response to it.
Nevertheless, it's offtopic and I'm glad they are reverting the ES change, not to mention they adress the need of it having a protection against being purged so easily.
10% coefficient penalty on Fireball and Frostbolt - Mages posted pages and pages of math, theorycraft and WWS reports, indicating that Mage DPS was not as powerful as Blizzard's testing (whatever it was) made it seem to be.
Fanaticism's 30% threat reduction at all times - Paladins got a good discussion going on the merits of finally getting enough threat reduction to be competitive DPS as opposed to losing the ability to offtank when you're already sunk 40+ points into the DPS tree anyway.
DR change - Shaman resort to making posts composed merely of ".", as well as singling out what was rumored to be Kalgan's Warrior character and mailing him fish.
I hope you can see the stark difference there.
And yet, flinging shit seems to have headed off the changes successfully! All the theorycraft postings in the world didn't stop mages from getting coefficient reductions and subsequently enduring them for >10 months of TBC and 2 major content patches in spite of numerous WWS parses - it took 2.2 and nearly all the raiding mages in WoW speccing to Arcane to compete to change that. Same thing for Ret and threat reduction. In a single month, the shaman community, by resorting to shit-flinging, has managed to head off two horrible nerfs to their class successfully.
Some things are more obvious than others, it doesn't take 10 pages of theorycraft arguments to explain why DR on interrupts screws earth shock: if you earth shock someone for a 2 sec silence, your partner's cspell gets cut in half, which results in an overall negative for you having shocked. Similarly, there aren't that many spreadsheets I can make that describe mathematically why changing earth shield to a 30sec cd is a bad thing, or why it needs dispel resistance. When mathematical arguments needed to be made, such as for the 2.3 elemental rework, they were made in great fashion.
Saying that the entire community is "shit-flinging" , all shamans post "." as an argument, or that the community decided that the best course of action was to mail Kalgan fish is first ridiculous, secondly offensive, and thirdly pointless. Are you saying that the changes shouldn't have happened? That posts here and other places were unfounded and incorrect? Or are you just complaining that the correct changes were made and, in doing so, generalizing the entire shaman community as a bunch of apes?
As far as Earth Shock on DR for silences and such, they could easily split them into two "categories" (not that one ends up as much of a category) and put ES on its own, much like stuns and kidney shot. Not that I particularly want any of them on DR at all.
I am aware that there are already a couple of threads talking about this, but as there has been alot of concern over this change I thought we could do with a blue one.
In the most recent 2.3.2 patch notes we added a 30 second cooldown to earth shield and lowered the mana cost. We have decided to temporarily revert these changes until we can address the dispel issue, which will most likely be in patch 2.4.
Earth shield will not change at all in patch 2.3.2.
12/03/07, 3:08 PM
