tufy

Bad call. There's a number of fights with CC close to you and people dragging mobs away from raid - this would mean Totem of Searing Wrath would easily pwn a sheep if the dpsed mob gets out of range, limiting the use of that totem.

I don't think Blizzard wants to remove the need to choose - I believe their goal is to reduce the number of totems, removing the less used ones or combining them with others. Therefore, I doubt Healing Stream and Mana Spring will be combined. If anything, I'd love to see Healing Stream changed to a temporary totem that heals for greater amounts of damage (something like Tranquility in Mana Tide totem version). It's still a totem, so destroying it would cancel healing in pvp, while in pve such temporary healing burst could be useful, as resto or any other spec.

So basically, "grounding totem" for deadly throw or aimed shot? I love the idea, tbh.

Sentry totem should get stealth detection. Something like a 5 sec pulse that breaks stealthers or a stationary paranoia or something. Earth and Fire Elementals aren't THAT bad, Fire Elemental is decent dps boost and Earth has its uses soloing. I'd also like to point you to palas, who only got Crusader Aura, one seal and a damage or tanking boost that disables their main defensive ability. Compared to that, Water Shield, Wrath of Air and Heroism kick the crap out of pala buffs.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Tana Umaga

Stoneskin and Windwall need both to be changed to percentage based damage reduction, like 5-10-15% or 10-20-30% or whatever is balanced. That would also be a good change to whatever totems we have that work against scaling (SoE, GoA and probably nearly anyone else). Two expansions is already enough for Blizz to notice totems are still stickied to pre-TBC numbers, completely obsolete and unscaling.

Edit: Sorry, skipped line above about % based reduced damage. What do you mean by saying encounters would be made with that % in mind? You mean Blizzard would take that into account and so make raids tougher? I hadn't actually thought about that, you are probably right... but wouldn't that mean that Blizzard has made past raid encounters with the effects of WF totem, GoA, Priest's Stamina buff, MotW, Blessings and all these into account? That hasn't stopped those buffs from being welcomed and needed in raids...

 

Anedris

If the buffs are taken into account in designing the encounter, of course the buffs are needed (and therefore welcomed) to beat it.

It's just how the game goes though. It gets more and more complicated and because someone will put all the pieces together to their maximum effect, Blizzard designs encounters that require that precise allocation of pieces to challenge those people. And so we assemble 5 shamans, a retadin, survival hunter, arms warrior, affliction warlock, etc. etc. to tackle an old fellow named Brutallus...

 

Paladia

Of course, but just adding a % based reduction adds nothing to the game for anyone, nor does it make the game any more reactive or fun. If it was instead made like a grounding totem effect, at least it has an active used which adds some variation to an otherwise unactive routine.

 

Darian_TruBlade

Blizzard gave Battle Shout and Unleashed Rage and totems as examples of buffs potentially going raid-wide at the WWI. That's an additional 376 AP, and an overall multiplying factor of 1.1 (assuming you're in range).

So that 1411 ap becomes 1965.7, upping the total gain to ~590 spell damage.

 

Anksunamun

The new rank of battle shout is "Battle Shout (Rank 9)- Increases attack power by 550."
Also don't forget that we will have another rank of SoE (they gave us rank 6 at lvl 65 so we should gain rank 7 in WotLK).
Paladins will have another rank of BoM :"Greater Blessing of Might (Rank 5) - 635 mana, increases attack power by 300".
Mages: "Arcane Brilliance rank 3: Increases intellect by 60."
Druids will have a +5% effectivness on MotW (from 35% to 40%) and they will gain another rank: "Gift of the Wild (Rank 9): 2295 mana. Armor increased by 750, attributes increased by 37, resistances increased by 54.

Those abilities and spells will increase our spelldamage more than 590 so just think about how many items you will need to gain 3% spell hit and 5% spell crit and how many items you need to gain over 600 spelldamage..

Elemental shamans maybe will have more spelldamage than every other caster in game.

 

Tana Umaga

Agree, but what is intended here is no fun, is to give an existing totem some utility (wich it hasn't now). The actual Rank 8 Stoneskin totem reduces damage from a melee strike by 43. If you are hit for 2000 damage, I don't think 43 makes a difference (although it could may well be). 15% reduction, e.g., makes a 300 discount a bit more desirable (although still not enough to survive a long time, during some fights it could grant you a pair of extra strikes). I know it is "same ol' lack o'fun", but at least it is a bit more useful (a bit).

Edit: Although OC I'll be pleased with the "grounding effect". I just try to defend the "minus %" mechanic as a viable one, not as the fittest.

 

Graze

Like the posts above; As far as PVE goes, if there's a buff that grants 15% (or so) damage reduction, they'd just make the bosses hit 15% harder (or so) and it wouldn't bring anything to the table.

The grounding totem idea sounds really fun though. (given you have time to react, say if you're within GCD from a frost shock, the deadly throw would still hit you, totem gcd removal anyone?)

Also to further comment, with raid wide totems the Elem shamans' role becomes less unique. with nothing that "forces" him to be active in combat, he could be a buffbot/support healer even further (now actually ToW could make it "worth while" having a non-healing specced healer(old retri pala) just because of the buff he brings by just doing nothing. As far as I can see it, this has to change.

Furthermore the "spellpower" specc seems a little flawed, it might be the best for dps output, however it feels like Blizzard won't allow it(Given they actually care enough in the first place), kinda like they didn't allow Prep/AR for rogues(I believe this was it) and will change it somehow. And by change I don't mean making Thunder the supreme Elemental talent, I think changes to the enhancement tree comes closer to mind.

I'm a shaman, a conduit of the ancient forces of nature. A master of the elements, except fire, water or earth really... nor do I have any REAL control of nature. But I do hurl bolts of lightning!

 

Lucitron

Personally I think you should really ask yourself what you want to achieve with a totem.

I mean, melee groups have Strength of Earth (and I assume the merged Grace of Air/Strength of Earth totem will be an earth totem), so Stoneskin is basically a totem for casters. In this regard, giving it a percentage would probably be an overkill. You could give it a fixed armor rating, and it might work better. Another solution could simply be to radically change it so it offers 30% chance to resist hit interruption or something similar.

Well, as I mentioned in an earlier post, there is a huge pool of solutions, which is why I feel it is easier to just highlight potential problems. The current problem is not really that Stoneskin and Windwall should be merged to simplify totem management. Afterall, if they want to simplify totem management, then they could just remove those two totems and most folks wouldn't notice it. The problem is really that there is no good earth totem for spellcasters.

 

Ocyr

Yes, that was TS point. However, keep in mind that Shaman do not get what every other caster in the game gets (things like Curse of Elements, Shadow Weaving, et cetera), and we do have to going 28 points into our melee tree to gain enough spell power to partially offset that. Sort of a negative counteracting another negative. The primary casters also get damage multipliers to their critical strikes that Shaman lack.

I look at it as, having more spell power doesn't make Shaman better than them -- it just gives Shaman a way to partially offset everything that they got and Shaman didn't get.

 

Skippert

True, but don't forget as mentioned earlier:

- +6% nature (and arcane) damage debuff on target from a balance druid's Nature's Fury.
- +20% nature dmg from stormstrike, now with 4 charges per 8 seconds
- Lava burst scales with Curse of Elements and will have an extremely high average critchance with an enhancement shaman keeping flameshock up

So although we don't fully use COE etc, with the above three changes, overall (including +spellpower) elemental raid scaling should go up significantly.

 

Paladia

With windfury totem giving a buff instead of a weapon buff, rogues will even more aggressively use poison, hence the stormstrike debuff will most of the time be eaten before another shaman has any use for it.

I think it is sad Blizzard has not fixed this (making poison not eat Stormstrike charges), it is just a sloppy game mechanic at the moment.

 

Tana Umaga

Once again, then why not remove Staimna Buff, or Blessing of Kings? This thought seems a nonsense to me. I know SoE is better, but there are situations where damage reduction is good, so that's the point: a wide array of totems to choose situationally (damage reduction could be ok in RoS phase1). What we have now is not an alternative. A %-based DR could be.

I like, though, a different approach on Stoneskin/Windwall. Grounding effect seems nice. Armour, well... isn't armour a damage reduction? So what? Damage reduction is bad, but armour (which gives armour reduction) is good? I don't get the point.

When I ask myself what do I want from Stoneskin, I realize I want something that makes me tougher, hence the name. I don't give a damn how does it work, be it absorbing, reducing, or wahatever, as long as the mechanic is tested, balanced, and playable. I don't want to see Blizzard discarding a totem just because it doesn't work properly. That would show little love from the devs, going the easy way and just eliminating a problem, thus taking choices from us instead of fixing whatever choices we have that were wrong.

So if they (or you, or we) truly believe that a totem that mitigates physical damage is not needed because encounters would be designed tougher, then yes, give casters (into which I plan to reroll after WotLK) some love and make the Earth slot worthy for them. But be careful, because if they give us another totem, they could make raids tougher just because they know we are going to use it...

Edit: typos, sorry.

 

Darian_TruBlade

Time for some more mathcraft.

My Orc Elemental Shaman has 105 Str and a total of 330 AP unbuffed. 23 of that Str is from starting stats, meaning he gained 82 Str over 70 levels. We can roughly assume that we'll get another 11 Str on our way to 80, upping base AP to 352, 376 with Kings.

He currently has 400 Int in ~T4 gear. We'll assume that 500 Int is baseline when we start raiding at 80. Adding 97 Int from AI and MotW and throwing in Kings, we get 657 Int/AP.

The new rank of BS will give 687.5 AP (talented). We'll assume BoM isn't talented (at least until we see Retribution talents) so that remains 300 AP. We don't know what SoE will give yet, but we'll assume a modest 20% increase to 103 Str. With Imp SoE and kings, that's 263 AP.

Finally, Unleashed Rage is another 1.1 factor on the final result. Giving us the following:

(376 + 657 + 687.5 + 300 + 263) * 1.1 = 2511.85 AP
2511.85 * .3 = 753.5 SP

Beyond the fact that Spell Damage/Power is almost always the best damage stat, rough calculations estimate the itemization value of 5% crit and 3% hit to be less than half of this. The question becomes whether reduced Totem cost and increased rang is worth something on the order of 300 item values.

As a bonus Orc Shaman, like mine, get both AP and SP from their racial. At level 80, it will give 163 SP and 322 AP which in turn grants an additional 97 SP for the duration.

What I wouldn't give to have my Shaman in the Alpha. >.>

 

Paladia

Just curious as you factor in all those buffs, do you intend to stay at 20 yard range?

 

Darian_TruBlade

If it affords me 275 extra SP, I certainly would.

There are a lot of current fights that would screw that up, such as Prince and Al'ar, but even if you lose BS and UR on a few fights you're still better off with 480 SP than 3% Hit and 5% Crit.

 

Anatta

One thing to consider is that forcing us to 20 yards may be an intentional move in order to ensure that the now-raid-wide totems are placed in a more centralized location (rather than 36 yards from the mob and out of range of tanks/melee).

 

Apaine

That and the tranquil air totem would no longer work as it can do now - ie - placed in a dps group to allow -50% (with salv) threat reduction and giving warlocks free reign on their threat caps.

Tranquil may find a very limited use if it applies to whole raid, but you will most certainly want it to be 20 yd only.

 

Lucitron

Restoration Shamans don't have any incentatives to move closer, so most pro-spellcaster totems will be placed around the 35 yard marker.

It is possible that the Elemental Shaman might find himelf as a complimentary totem placer, adding a weird mix of melee and spellcaster totems, to fill out whatever is missing. For example, with Death Knight and Paladin tanks, there might be a certain incentative to have both Windfury Totem and Wrath of Air for the melee classes.

 

Anksunamun

We should use the new rotation with FS and LaB but we have no new "shock's range" talent at the moment so elemental shamans will stay at 20 y range ( you can use items like this one to improve the shocks a little bit [Brutal Gladiator's Mail Gauntlets]).
Anyway we will not take storm reach because it's useless for now

Another thing to consider: if you want to try this elem/ench spec you should not want your totems' range improved to 30 y because they will affect also melee members, including tanks. Nobody wants a tank with tranquil air totem.. so you should cast totems at 25 y range (using pvp gloves) and then use the new rotation including FS and LaB.

The new talent "Storm, Earth and Fire" has been created to outfit pvp and pve solutions but we could use only the last one, referring to FS.

Now let's see what we get and what we lose:

Classic elemental spec (51/0/20 - 50/0/21 ...)
periodic damage done by FS is increased by 100%
+15% spellpower and +10% damage to FS and LaB (+6% to LaB)
+3% spell hit
+5% spell critical
totems have 30 y range
use of thunder? 5% mana gained every 45 seconds
use of NS?

New elem-ench spec (43/28/0)
+10% spellpower and +7% damage to FS and LaB (down from 10% to 7%, we still have +6% on LaB)
no spell hit
no spell critical
mana gained from water shield increased by 15%
+6% intellect
mana cost of instant spells reduced by 6% and 600-700.. spelldamage

In the first case we have improvments to FS, critical for LB and CL only + spell hit applied to all spells
Use of thunder or NS but they are situational

In the second case we have improvments to our mana regen, more intellect and the huge amount of spelldamage is applied to ALL spells we cast.

In conclusion more damage to FS or 600-700 spelldamage to ALL spells? well.. I prefer the second one

In a 12 sec rotation it's better have only 1 spell with improved damage (remember that we will not use the last tick of FS!) and +5% crit to LB and CL or it's better have 6 spells with improved damage? (FS, CL, LB, LB, LB, LaB) ?

The answer should be obvious. We still need some crit and spell hit? I'll be happy to use a lot of spell crit and spell hit gems (I don't need damage gems anymore ^_^)

 

Paladia

You forgot trueshot aura, which will most definitely be taken if it would give 225 ap to the entire raid within 45 yards, provided that they make it a raid wide buff.