lizard

little thought... well, let's see. we will get more from the agility stat, so we obviously are supposed to stack it. agility increases only your melee crit. items with agility rarely have int and tend to have less crit rating than str items. this leads to the following conclusion: in spite of the rating changes, our spell crit chance will stay very very low. that won't be a hell of a problem if maelstrom will actually work as it should but if it won't, our elemental devastation uptime will go down substantially.
second little thought: rogue leather will NOT become more valuable to us, as it lacks int and favors plain AP. instead we will be reduced to mainly hunter gear. (well, at least it's mail...)
third little thought: the deathknight class happens to depend on strength, so there definitely will be a LOT of strength gear in wotlk. all this gear (not the plate but jewelry, cloaks and weapons) is lost to us. while fury warriors, ret pallys and cat druids rejoice, we will spend our time looking for gear with hit, crit, int AND agi, which is... well... hunter loot.

last but not least: i feel strongly reluctant to accept the fact that, say, a ring with crit rating, int and spell power might become more valuable for us (a melee hybrid) than a ring with only crit and strength. what sense does it make to you that 1 point of strength is worth less in our itemisation than 1 point of agility OR 1 point of int?

P.S.: i do use capitals when i feel the need to do so. stop sending infractions.

P.P.S.: i also do realize that because of the rating changes, agility would have become less useful to us than it will be after the str nerf, but as far a i see it, there still will be four classes which prefer strength so the gear choice would still be there.

 

tadrinth

There are a good number of items which have both agility and crit rating, and most have a large dose of int and AP as well.
Armor - Items - World of Warcraft

After hit rating hits the soft cap at 9% for windfury pros, I think crit rating is the only other stat that affects 100% of shaman damage. This might make these items fairly desirable for enh shaman over items with armor pen or haste.

The synergy between flame shock, lava burst autocritting, and Elemental Devastation looks absolutely delicious. That should compensate for the lost crit from the agility changes.

Edit: On the topic of rings, capes, and neck items with strength, there are 13 epics with Str of ilevel 100+ that aren't pvp gear. There are 55 that have AP instead. Considering that DKs, DPS warriors, and cat druids only care about Str vs AP due to blessing of kings, it seems clear that Blizzard has mostly itemized these slots with AP and will probably continue to do so.

 

• ayb

There's still no reason to socket or enchant int, or even pick up gear with it. We'll just stacks loads of agility gems and get the same benefits plus more crit.

 

LazyJoe

As long as itemization is coherent with these changes at lvl 80 I don't see any problem.... Stacking agility sure won't give us lots of spell crit but unless spirit wolves suck we will mainly need crit for elemantal focus and devastation uptime, which will be covered by lava burst and maelstrom weapons. I find it more logical to share loot with hunters than with rogues or ferals druids. Actually because of itemisation and talent design we generally seek gear WITHOUT int, this looks like more absurd to me than a melee relying on agility instead of strength.

Blizzards wanted to create a melee/spell hybrid with the ret pally but clearly failed, now they want us to be this hybrid. Some may like it, some may not, but at least it is quite logical since we already have a lot of offensive spells available, and a spell-based talent tree.

 

lizard

1. there are merely 1-2 purples per slot disregarding hunter t6 in that list. some of them do not have hit rating on them
2. this list is hardly relevant for our gear choice half a year from now.

that is exactly my point. as crit rating will benefit melee AND spell damage, it most likely will become more expensive in terms of ilevel. thus, rogue gear will shift from ap and crit into more +agi. thus, rogue gear will still be a mediocre choice for enhancement shamans. if for some reason this will not happen, leathe rmight become a halfway proper alternative (which it already is tbh).

yes it does. but what if it will reset the swing timer? will it still be worth skilling then? especially when it turns out that a 1.3 offhand with ft will not cut it and we have to stick to 2.6 speed weapons? will we have to not only watch our wf cd timer but also our swing timers to do proper dps? i'm drifting off, i guess....

 

◊ Malan

What? No. Why would you assume the mana cost would be removed? Correction, it was reduced to mana cost.

Also Rounced and I confirmed that Maelstrom Weapon is resetting the swing timer. I put in a bug report AND a suggestion report.

Vyktianity already has over 75 billion followers. The first verse in his book "Gift of the Wild" is "In the beginning Vyk cast lifebloom and then maul."

 

tadrinth

The list I linked merely demonstrates that Blizzard is willing to create gear that has both agi and crit rating. In particular, the abundance of hunter tiered gear suggests that they are especially willing to itemize that combination for set gear. Therefore, if AP/agi/int/stam/crit items are the best for Enh shamans, that's probably what your Tiered gear will look like in the future. Lower tiers are deliberately itemized badly, so I wouldn't expect those stats on the first tier or two, though.

They will not make crit rating more expensive due to the merger of spell crit and melee crit. This would have profound balancing effects on classes that do pure physical or pure magic damage. If anything, they might make crit rating cheaper, because I don't know of any class that gems for it.

Maelstrom will either work or they'll put in a new talent. Blizz has gotten a lot better at this sort of thing, and the testers have gotten a lot better at figured out that sort of subtle bug and then screaming about it. I don't think they'll let it get to live while broken in such an obvious way, especially when its a talent rather than a set bonus. I could be wrong, especially as its currently broken. If it does go live in its broken state, its going to be extremely hard to time, considering a 2.6s weapon with flurry and WF totem will be down to 1.7s.

Assuming that the maelstrom/lavaburst/elem dev combo does work as intended, then there's no big reason to stack crit rating and thus no real issue with wearing hunter gear. It will probably still be a great stat, but hit rating will probably be more useful to prevent your lava bursts from being resisted.

On a different topic: Does the merge of haste rating and spell haste rating reduce the global cooldown on shocks? Not that enhancement shaman are particularly global cooldown limited, but that may have some implications for things like Reverberation, especially with the new Wrath of Air providing 10% spell haste. It's also going to be very weird if Stormstrike and totem drops are physical and keep the 1.5s GCD while shocks and instant Lava Bursts have a hasted cooldown. Or did Blizz change totems to a 1s GCD?

 

Killme888

That's what the CURRENT itemization is like, in WotLK we're basically going to want the same gear hunters do, so there would be more items itemized that way.


What makes you think it would be more expensive? There's no reason to think it would, and every screenshot of loots thus far shown has indicated otherwise. And if for some god knows what reason they change it to make it cost more itemization points, all the pure melee/casters would cry and would get reverted.


I have faith that it won't reset your timer even if it does as of now, they HAVE to make it not otherwise there's no point in even taking the talent, and they'll know that. There's no reason to think that it'll set swing timer after all the testing is done.


I think this whole lower spell crit rating is way overblown because:

1. About 10-13%~ of our dps is from shocks, but a large percent of that is flameshock, which is basically all we're gonna be using in WotLK, spell crit doesn't even affect the dots component

2. Instant Lavaburst is basically what's gonna keep Elemental Devastation up, while a shock crit certainly helps, but it's nowhere near a guaranteed crit (would need test to see if Lavaburst with flameshock up could get resisted)

3. We'll probably get even more melee crit which would benefit us so much more when we itemize/gem for agi instead of str

 

◊ Malan

My hypothesis right now is that the gem order will be: Gem for Hit until you reach the Spell Hit cap. Gem for Agility after. Change any gems from Hit to Agility anytime gear takes you over the spell hit cap. Same as rogues.

Vyktianity already has over 75 billion followers. The first verse in his book "Gift of the Wild" is "In the beginning Vyk cast lifebloom and then maul."

 

Killme888

They'll probably be pretty close, depending on if lavaburst can get resisted or not.

But looking at the current Sunwell agi AEP, lower it to the higher agi -> crit ratio and add 1.1(kings), you'd end up with around 2.66 AEP. Sunwell hit value is 1.8, I REALLY doubt buffing 20%~(estimated with current shock values + lavabursts damage) is enough for a 0.86 AEP increase.

 

◊ Malan

I stand corrected from earlier - Lightning Shield does indeed, cost 0 mana.


HAHA Static Charge is horribly broken right now. No internal cooldown on the proc, I run up to a mob and all 6 lightning charges discharge in under 2 seconds. Average hit of 675, thats over 2k dps from LS alone.

[e] Its ignoring the 6% proc rate and is using a 100% proc rate apparently. Must be NYI, but fun as hell right now!

Vyktianity already has over 75 billion followers. The first verse in his book "Gift of the Wild" is "In the beginning Vyk cast lifebloom and then maul."

 

Skiace

Depending on how mana issues work out, spell crit could be important for getting Elemental Focus procs, since Lava Burst isn't affected by Shamanistic Focus. Alternatively, they could rework SF to include LvB/LB/CL.

 

tadrinth

Since Lava Burst is a guaranteed crit, you could simply alternate lava bursts and flame shocks and have every Lava Burst get the -40% mana cost Clearcast. This would get you the 9% melee crit buff while using much less mana, since you'd cut Earth Shock's cost out as well. This might be useful in mana-limited situations.

 

Roywyn

Sounds hilarious! Reminds me of BC beta when Arcane Missile channeling never broke.
Run to a mob, cast AM for half a second, then turn around run away while the missiles keep shooting. Stop to recharge every 5 seconds and coninue runnning. Fun times!


Back on topic - the agi:crit ratio. The numbers you posteed before were not useful to determine it.
Could you do the following:
Post a screenie of this window in your current gear http://elitistjerks.com/attachments/...08_083723.jpeg
Remove 1-2 items with agility but no crit (Angelista's/Hyjal rep rings) and repost that same window.

Since agiliy (and intellect for spells) provides some random amout of base crit at 0 agi (or at 10 actually) that we can't determine, those ratios, we need the info for 2 different amount of agility and calculate from their differences.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput
This assumes Rune of Razorice and Slow for Torment unless noted as "No TtW".
More detailed at http://elitistjerks.com/923110-post2775.html

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.

 

Skiace

Doh! This seems obvious now that you mention it.

 

LazyJoe

Don't forget we lose 3% hit from resto, and the passive 20% haste gained from windfury. That alone will raise the AEP value of hit rating if you consider only white hit's dps.

Anyway the main reason we will be stacking hit is because a resisted lavaburst will have a very high probability to break elemental devastation's uptime. And to land another lavaburst you'll have to get again 5 stacks of maelstrom weapons, this is nowhere near as negligible as a resisted shock.

Its a bit the same for rogues, they don't need hit rating so much for the direct dps gain, but rather for the dps they gain through combat potency. Funny thing, if all these new spells/talents works fine we will have something very close to rogues cycles : maelstrom weapons being combo points, elemental devastation being our slice'n'dice

The only thing that bothers me is that lavaburst looks like far better dps than chain lightning. I hope this will change, or that the spell coefficient gets adjusted so chain lightning produces mroe damage. If lava burst becomes the "worst dps spell that you need to use only to keep elemental devastation and elemental focus up", we will have a very rich and dynamic dps cycle. But from what i've seen lavaburst will do similar damage and have the same spell coefficient as chain lightning, with its guaranteed crit and better raid buffs (scorch + curse > stormstrike) I fear we will be forced to use a simple flame shock - lava burst rotation for best dps.

 

Paladia

As expected then.

I know they changed the slow on frostbrand to 50%. Does it still proc both elemental devastation and flurry? Does it proc more often? Does it still just gain a 10% benefit from spell damage?

Depending on the answer it could be a viable off-hand alternative, at least for pvp.

 

Densor

Remember that moonkin will be providing a +6% nature damage debuff as well, not that it compares with CoE and Imp Scorch, but it does exist.

 

Tornaz

I suspect this would be the expected cycle if your raid leader wants to maintain Stormstrike Charges for Elemental Shaman/Moonkin usage.

 

Revdarian

Meh the only problem i have with the change to our stat weights is the regemming cost.

From all i have seen my current gear can hold me up to around lvl 76 at the very least, but on that gear i am using 10 assorted epic gems all relating to str, all those gems will need to be changed to either 10agi or 5agi5hit or 10hit, looking at low gem costs on my server and thinking a guildie will do the cut for free it is a 300g/gem cost, 3k total.

In light of that the cost of re-enchanting our gloves and bracers is nill, so all i want is for them to put up a gem trader or something.


Edit to add:
Customize Item Score Multipliers - Thottbot: World of Warcraft

Is more or less how the stat weighting is looking in my gear, accounting for crit rating, hit rating and haste rating changes (the change in haste is more due to WF totem stacking with flurry).

 

Phlis

The more interesting question is whether resto(without the talent) will also drop it, and if it will stack with Enhance's talented version like Mana Spring Totem already does(talented Resto vs Elemental) or if it will be like Wrath of Air Totem which doesn't stack if an Elemental Shaman in T4 drops it vs anyone else dropping it.

If it stacks, guess what? Thats the enhancement fire totem.

Edit: A second interesting thing: If Enhancement shaman are speccing into the Elemental tree for Elemental Devastion and Elemental Focus, and Elemental shaman are speccing into Enhancement for Mental Dexterity and Mental Quickness, then that means Restoration shaman will be the only ones with 30yd Totem Range. So, If Enhancement Shaman Drop Windfury Totem, and Elemental Shaman drop Wrath of Air, then Restoration shaman may be able to drop Tranquil Air totem from 30yd range to cover casters, maybe melee, but excluding tanks. Especially if Elemental Shaman are standing at 20yd range anyway, because of Flame Shock and Lava Burst. It's a weird synergy, Enhancement drop flametongue, it only has 20yd range, and will affect Elemental Shaman who are at 20yd range.

Of course that all depends on fight mechanics and whatnot. But it's still interesting to me.

 

Paladia