Still numb in disbelief that a few weeks after FINALLY making elemental shaman a viable source of raid dps Blizzard chucks yet another nerf their way. Anyone have some theory-crafting on exactly how bad this is going to hurt the sustainability of elemental shaman in a longer fight?

I think I am going to be sick... almost finished the horrible grind of getting my LW up to 375 for the elemental set and now I will probably stay resto anyway.

Well, i still believe an elemental shaman is a viable source of raid dps.

Assume that you have 40% Crit chance buffed with Totem of Wrath:

if you cast LB 100 times, 40 of those will only cost 40% mana, so a reduction of 60%.

40*0.4=16% mana reduced.

Before 2.1: 40% reduction
After 2.1: 16% reduction

So unless i am making a bad mathematical error (it isn't my strongest point) the EF nerf is quite huge. A loss of 24% mana reduction will hurt our viability in long fights alot. In my opinion a 100% reduction might have been a bit overpowered but a nerf to 80 or 75% would have been a lot better. Now stacking Crit rating has become quite useless, since even with a very high crit rating (40%) EF only gives 6% more mana reduction then the old Clearcasting of 10%.

But does this make Elemental Shamans obsolete in raids?
If you go for the T4 4 set bonus and you don't mind using a lot of super mana potions i do believe it is still possible to do a good sustained DPS. Having the Alchimist Stone (+30% on mana/health potions) also helps.

It's not a DPS nerf, just sustainability. It's basically halfway between the 2.0 version and the 2.03 version in terms of how long you can chuck lightning bolts. It's still very good grinding and 5-man DPS, it's just not going to be sustainable on raid boss fights anymore, which is probably fine considering that shaman get better returns off +dmg than any other class when casting lightning bolt.

Euhm so we shouldn't be able to cast LB since we get good return on +damage? I do not believe that has anything to do with the matter at hand. As a elemental shaman i should be able to do a respectable amount of sustained DPS. The only thing that this patch will change, is the amount of mana pots i will need to use in order to fullfill my class role.

They are also supposedly "re-tuning" all TBC bosses, so with a little luck, chain chugging will be enough to get us through most fights.

Needless to say, I don't hold much hope. And of all the changes to spring on us, I'd much rather have the WF fix be a surprise than this. I too have spent a ton of time and effort leveling my LW skill after dropping 370 JC/375 Mining after discovering the Netherstrike set (still kicking myself for not even thinking to look into LW earlier).

double post lag

Also if you factor in the time that your not going to be outside the 5 second rule on repetitive procs then this change will basically be the same thing as we had before minus the added feature of knowing your clearcasting right after you cast.

Assuming the average Shaman has a 20% crit rate, this change is trying to put the new EF in-line with the orginal EF, saving 10% of your mana.

At least the new Badge totem gives 25 mana off LB (10 more than the level 60 item), so that helps sustainablity a bit.

Just to be sure, but i don't read the patch note the same way you are..
"Elemental Focus": This talent now reduces the cost of the next damage spell by 60%. It will also now trigger from bonus spells cast by "Lightning Overload".

I understand that instead of a 100% cost reduction, you get a 60% discount.

So it's a 40% nerf, not a 60%...

I mean with your exemple and 40% crit, before nerf it was 40% (40%*100%) mana discount, now its 24% (40%*60%). Still a huge nerf, but not as bad as you seem to indicate.

Am i wrong? Will the 300LB cast after a proc cost 120 mana (300*(1-60%)) as i understand it or 180 (300*60%) as i understand you math? Someone on the PTR to tell us?

It isn't straight up math if I understand it correctly because now at no point will we be out of the FSR due to back to back casts because all spells will be costing us mana no matter what.

Its pretty harsh, i was expecting a buff from the patch, and this has me pretty demorilised. The change won't effect 5 man dps at all, but raid bosses elemental already struggles on because of the lack of raid debuffs, and no curse to negate partial resistances we arn't going to fair to well. Having unlimited mana almost made up for the lack of all those things.


Not being able to go out of the 5 second rule is another little nerf from the change, aswell as the tier 4 set bonus will undoubtably be eaten by a clearcasting bolt now. Remember Shocks and chain lightning cost a LOT of mana, the previous effect made them very awsome to use after a proc, Now its still going to cost as much as a LB.

Absolutely. And I don't think we're alone in thinking that would've been the approach they were going to take to retune EF.

Just like WF, however, the fix they chose is one of the worst available options. What a shock.

WTB Devs that actually play the game they're "fixing", PST.

Ummm... I'm a mage and I already have to chain-chug mana pots to dps gruul. 30% chance to clearcast, especially considering FSR regen, was just simply out of line.

Well, give me mana gems, Evocation, mage armor and +15% mana regen in combat and i won't complain about the EF nerf

Yeah, I'm not sure comparing a class with evocation, mage armor, and conjurable mana gems is fair. (to say nothing of the varying DPMs of mage spells).

I already have to drink quite a few mana pots on a boss fight of any length, and I don't think my gear is particularly bad(18% crit pre-talents; maybe a little low, but that's still 29% of casts I was getting for free). Everyone is cheering about the death of consumables, and all I can think about is how much more mana pot farming I'm going to have to do just to keep up with prot warriors with windfury with the new devastate = /.

I'm 36/25 right now (been honor grinding for pvp gloves) but now I can't see how 30/31 won't be better in every way for PVE.

Ok, compare to hunters then, who don't have any of those things, or even passive regen talents, but also chain chug mana potions

edit to be more constructive: yes, it's a shitty situation and I'm sorry for your loss of efficiency - but you're not going to be alone in having to chain mana pot.

Especially for a 1 point talent only 11 deep in the tree. 60% mana return on your next spell is still damn good for being that shallow in the tree (try and find a talent that shallow that's as powerful in any other tree). Any real fix should be a lot deeper in the tree than EF, and it's not out of the realm of possibility something else will change later if this isn't enough.

I just don't see how that's relevent. I doubt very seriously Blizzard set out to impact non-elemental focused shaman with this change. There aren't many enhance/resto shaman who went 11 points deep in elemental and then loaded crit to sustain damage DPS in PvE. This change impacts heavy elemental shaman who primarly contribute to PvE group efforts in the form of casting damage.

Thus, it wouldn't mean a damn thing if they moved it from tier 3 to tier 5, or tier 6. The tier is meaningless because of the synergies of the deeper tier talents (lightning mastery). It's not the presence of this talent low in the tree that's the problem (for blizzard), it's the 100% mana return. It's tree positioning has about nothing to do with it.

No, I'm not speaking in the future tense. I chain chug mana pots right now, often even when the raid lead does me the kindness of putting a shadow priest in my group. I expect to do it even more in the future. It doesn't even have to be a "particularly long boss fight", I can go oom in ~90 seconds if I don't pot.

What type of pots are you using? I do chug mana pots but only Unstable/Major mana pots. Since they cost very little i really don't mind using them. I only hope we won't be required to chain chug Fel mana pots, because that would be enormously expensive

I'm honestly really surprised by the number of dedicated Elemental Shamans out there. I tried it for a while and it's good damage, but...it's probably the most mindless drag I've ever experienced raiding. Takes even less skill than Frost Mages in vanilla WoW.

Well its true Hunters have a lousy mana regen and do need to chug mana pots, but what relevance does that have to Elemental Shamans? We are pure Mana casters like mages/locks/shadow priest so mana is everything to us. A hunter can still do dps (lousy dps i know) even with low mana. And with the pet buffs you might be able to do even more.