panny

I tested this recently, and it's actually only 4.

Your personal unsupported opinions about PvP styles aside, do you even understand what the bug was?

There were three bugs with WF:

1) A WF proc on the OH would stop MH from proccing WF within 3 seconds.
2) A WF proc on any weapon would stop itself from proccing within 3 seconds.
3) Different ranks of WF would overcome point 1. It would also sometimes cause the offhand to proc the mainhand similar to Rogue sword spec procs (and vice-versa).

The WF5/WF4 "exploit" only overcame other bugs with WF. They fixed 3), but not 1) and 2). They surgically fixed the bugs that helped us while leaving the bugs that hurt us. That's the issue here.

 

Pater

(2) was never a bug - that was intended all along. But I agree that it's a bad idea. AFAIK, it was just implemented to prevent the odd insta-gib from chain procs. As one of the posters above said, a cooldown equal to the speed of the weapon would make much more sense.

 

• Relwin

With the increased stamina on TBC gear there is next to no way you are instagibbing any class in PvP if they're geared for PvP. If they're in stacked +damage gear and a clothie with 6k health, ok, maybe, sometimes. But even then it's rare enough not to matter. There really just shouldn't be a cooldown on Windfury at all.

 

panny

The intention was to stop WF proccing off WF, not for it to lock out any more procs for 3 seconds. As such, I regard it as a bug.

 

◊ Malan

WF proccing off WF was fixed ages ago, the 3 sec cooldown was to prevent getting a WF proc on every white hit. Not a bug, Blizz put that in intentionally.

 

panny

I thought they were done at the same time.

Either, if what you say is true, then it means the spell description of WF is wrong and is therefore still a bug. >:

 

◊ Malan

Panny, I'm still not sure what you are calling a bug. Blizzard has openly stated that the second cooldown was intentionally added. There is no bug with windfury, and the only thing the tooltip is missing is a statement that it cannot proc more than once every 3 seconds.

 

ildon

1) is not a bug. It's their design. You've already seen people posting numbers, dual windfury is still the best dps, even with the cooldown affecting both weapons.

 

Pater

I agree that 3 seconds is incredibly arbitrary, and that its arbitrariness has some probably unintended consequences with weapon speed and haste effects min/maxing.

I also agree that the tooltip description should accurately reflect the mechanics - including the cooldown. It should read something like

"Each hit has up to a 20% chance of dealing additional damage equal to two extra attacks with 445 extra attack power. Effect cannot happen more than once every three seconds."

But I also agree that I'd be even happier if the cooldown were tied to weapon speed, or were removed entirely. Then again, I take it that Bliz has a target DPS for the class, or at least a desired pecking order. As they tune us to that level, I'd rather our dps be reliable rather than spiky, because of the aggro issues. The 3-s WF cooldown is a step away from spikiness.

 

• Nite_Moogle

This is the part that really burns my bacon. I don't think that this cooldown was really well recognized until just after 2.0 hit despite claims from people that it had been there forever, and at some point a completely hidden mechanism was added to the game without so much as a whisper that has a colossal effect on how the class works in melee, especially when not dual wielding. Anyone who tries to use a two-hander and Stormstrike faces a nigh-impossible challenge of not wasting a potential Windfury cooldown between swings: you need a 3.9 weapon to get back-to-back procs when flurried (btw: there are zero 3.9 weapons in TBC) and at least a 2.0 to avoid two swings between procs. By the same token you ideally want all 20 potential procs in a minute, but you'd need 100 attacks per minute to do this meaning you'd need blisteringly fast weapons that don't even exist. Compounding matters is that there is no way to control which hand gets the Windfury proc which means that in the same two equal time spans, it's possible to see a difference of around 25% overall damage while getting an equal number of procs. The way that this mechanic is being handled and the number of ways to go about it that are not this blazingly stupid gives me a headache.

If 5/4 is pushing Shamans out of the range of DPS that they're intended to do, that's fine. Change the way the weapon buff works to make a little more sense, tell us how you are doing it, and maybe give us an option besides Windfury since no weapon buff has ever been viable at any level of gear above naked without involving a bug. Do not slip in a hidden mechanism and tell us there's no bug involved when the player base ends up screaming about it for three months. Windfury does not work as advertised, and until it does there is a bug, even if it is only the tooltip showing incomplete information.

 

Vernichter

This is the part of the implementation that is the silliest. It makes no sense from a designer's perspective or from a player's perspective to have this much swing depending on a random proc. For the designer, the randomness makes it fundamentally more difficult to balance out the class's DPS. From a player, it makes it more difficult to manage threat. There is no reason, whatsoever, for the mainhand and offhand cooldowns to be linked.

Of course, by a similar argument, it makes no sense for the CD to be weapon speed independent, given that the buff is already normalized for weapon speed. The entire mechanic is, in a nutshell, frustrating.

 

Coriolis

Just to state in simple terms why more haste can decrease your dps, it's quite simple really, if the haste effect moves your weapon speed from let's say 1.6 to 1.4 speed, then you've gained a slight amount of dps from your normal swings, but now two of your swings after a WF have no chance of proccing WF instead of just once, hence you loose a significant amount of dps.

I think most shamans are really much more upset about the manner in which this nerf is applied rather then the nerf itself, since it is, frankly, freaking annoying. I don't mind the math so much since doing math rather more complicated then this is sort of what I do for a living but I don't like the pain it's going to be to hunt for slow weapons. You now have two choices as I see it:

1) Double WF with the slowest weapons possible, don't get haste effects if you can get AP/crit/hit instead. If you're using WFx2 with different weapon speeds then more haste will practically always lower your WF dps somewhat (although it would probably increase your overall dps- marginally). Because of the slow weapons the returns from SR and JoW will be lower. Also finding two slow weapons is going to be quite hard. Infact since I think they will make the slow mace/axe from gladiator rewards MH only next patch the slowest epic OH you can currently get in the game will be the crafted runic hammer, 2.4. There are some slower blue weapons that can be put in OH though.

One thing that may (maybe) help us get some more dps is using two weapons with the same (slow) speed... this way you will be guaranteed that you will only miss one chance to proc with both weapons... whereas with different speed weapons you could have it happen where you proc WF with let's say MH, then OH hits twice in the time the cooldown is up. I'm also wondering what happens with the cooldown if you use 2 same speed weapons - if they both proc at the same time, does only one proc? Which one?

2) MH that is slower then 1.5 with all your haste effects and a very fast OH using RB or FT whichever is higher damage. So long as you have WF on only one weapon all weapons with speeds 3-1.5 should have the same WF dps (they all get on attack that won't have a chance to proc), so you don't have to worry so much about your MH's speed. Relatively faster MH speed and much faster OH speed will allow for more SR/JOW procs and it will be much easier to find these weapons.. although looking at the tests people have done this seems like it's going to be worse for damage. But hey, alot easier to find weapons like this since nearly all MH are slow and OH fast because that's what rogues/wars want.

 

berg

Here is my whine about the change.

I bounced back and forth from resto to elemental from 2004-2007 so I never had stormstrike. But I remember vividly on the forums an unending chain of threads about stormstrike bugs and stormstrike mods and how to make stormstrike work properly. I always thought it was completely absurd that players needed to go find some 3rd party mod to use their 31 point talent effectively.

Well guess what?

With this change we will all have little 3rd party addon timer bars so that we can wait until just after the cooldown expires to trigger stormstrike.


So what have they done?

1) the fast weapons that work so well with Unleashed Rage and Judgement of Wisdom are now completely horrid.
2) shaman will once again need a 3rd party addon to use stormstrike properly.
3) enforcing a completely bizzare game mechanic where a gear upgrade can potentially harm your dps.


It is hard to support a game mechanic that complicates the game, especially if it does so in counter intuitive ways.

The good thing is that all of the arena weapons seem to be 2.6 as well as fools bane and decapitator from karaz. So getting hooked up with same speed slow weapons will not be too much of a burden.

 

stinkfot

I totally agree with you on this one.. i absolutely dont mind a slight dps nerf.. but the way it's done is totally horrible.

And what bugs me even more is that i was going all out haste, and so far i paid like maybe 2k gold to level my bs to 375 and i spent some 900gold on my mace.. that gold could have been spent on my fast mount instead as my mace is after the change a whole lot crappier

 

Kiln

I question other shamans reasoning that the ability to heal automatically warrants substandard dps compared with other dps classes. The game only has 4 basic types of encounters, PvP, Solo, 5 man, and raids. Enhancement shaman are already the bottom of the barrel for dps in any type of PvP environment. Other than fury warrior, the other dps classes also solo PvE content better. In five man instances, the ability for dps to CC has far outweighed the enhancement shamans heal. This leaves only the raid environment where it might be a concern. Even for raids, the enhancement shaman’s weaker threat modifiers (15% reduction white melee damage) create a very effective limit on damage output.

 

Coriolis

Well, you have a point kiln, but in my experience rogues without my buffs and at the same level of gear with me were infact lower dps then me, or at best about equal (maybe they sucked, maybe they were specced bad, maybe I'm wrong, but the difference in dps was small). Now for a 5 man you may argue the added utility from stuns/sap outweighs the other side benefits of a shaman but I find that to be highly situational. What about fights where purge and poison/desease totems are useful (doing heroic slave pens for example the ability to clear poison on the entire party immediately is quite nice on the last boss)? Being able to blow heroism on every boss fight and get him down alot quicker? Certainly in some instances (particularly those with alot of multi-mob humanoid trash) our lack of CC really hurts, but we have our good points too, apart from damage and healing.

 

◊ Malan

Do we know if the changes to windfury are in the patch today?

 

• Nite_Moogle

They aren't in the notes.

Though of course given the history of this problem that means absolutely nothing.

 

• frmorrison

I am sure some enterprising Shaman will get to the Blasted Lands for some parsing to find out, but Blizzard does enjoy having the stealth changes.

 

◊ castille

It doesn't take an enterprising shaman -- everyone will know if they never see 4 WF procs in a row in the first fight, really.

One thing I see is everyone talking about flametongue weapon. Why does no one use Frostbrand? I don't have a shaman of my own, but I borrow my wife's from time to time.. and frostbrand is consistently hitting much, much harder than flametongue at 70...

 

◊ Maniq

Because it is a Chance on Hit, not per hit proc?

 

• Nite_Moogle

Flametongue damage = Frostbrand damage / 4
Flametongue proc rate = Frostbrand x4
Additionally Flametongue gets slightly better results from +dmg since the coefficient is the same for both and is applied per hit.

You are suffering from Big Numbers syndrome, please install two damage meters and call me in the morning.

 

Miaxi

So, does anybody from the US know if this bug-fix went live in today's patch yet? (I know this was already asked but I'm curious.)

 

• Nite_Moogle