◊ Binkenstein

I am seriously laughing at anyone that is still trying to justify using a MD/MQ build at 80. Even going on spellpower alone, you'll need 1 AP for every 1.2 Spellpower you have to break even, and that isn't even considering missing extra crit chance, crit damage, mana back, etc.

<Sporks> quote of the day: "it's like the vague leading the blind directing the clueless guiding the stupid around here"
Yahtzee In short, no. In long, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Nite_Moogle The correct answer here is to blame Asgorath.
Nemesis This is the BB, temporal constraints are for lesser forums.

 

Sardaukar

Hmm, the new stacking changes just announced are not good news for raiding elemental shaman. The elemental shaman only stuff (Totem of Wrath and Elemental Oath) are both provided through multiple other sources and you only need 1 shaman for bloodlust the entire raid now. Gonna need some serious rebalancing if elemental shaman are going to have to get by on their raw dps alone.

 

• missiletoad

From this post, it looks like the whole mess of buff/debuff changes which were posted about last week are fleshed out a bit in both category and actual buff changes. There's so many things which will eventually effect Elemental shamans, so I won't attempt to go through it all. But, here are the directly relevant parts.

- Totem of Wrath: Now grants a flat amount of spell damage, and all enemies in its radius have an increased chance of being struck by criticals.
- Elemental Oath: Grants 5% spell critical strike to raid members.
- Bloodlust: Cannot be recast while caster has Sated debuff, and those with Sated debuff cannot be affected by it. (5min debuff)

Even without knowing the exact numbers on the upcoming Totem of Wrath, that they took the "Flametongue Totem + additional bonus" approach that we've been asking for is awesome. Elemental Oath being the new Moonkin Aura for shamans... hmm. Yay for more crit, but boo at the decreased synergy between Elemental and Balance. Bloodlust - while it definitely needed a sickness debuff if it was to be raid wide - got hit real hard. I'm hoping they shorten that debuff to 4 or 3 minutes.


e: Sardaukar, 2 shamans for Lust. They have said that they will be re-evaluating personal dps based on the buffs they contribute, for your other concern.

 

tufy

I've added the whole blue post to OP for now, will clean it out asap.

What I'm seeing is:
1. Heroism/Bloodlust became massively more powerful, but can be used less now (a maximum of around 2)
2. Attack Power buffs are greatly reducing the ap gain for MD+MQ, effectively killing what was left of the build
3. caster buffs and debuffs changed upside down. A lot of those changes (such as Elemental Oath, Imp. Scorch and so on) massively affect the relative raid dps. We'll need to carefully go through each buff and evaluate it. Yay, I just finished setting up (old) buffs and debuffs in my spreadsheet yesterday :p

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

princeinexile

Yeah sadly synergy with Boomkins is mostly gone now. Incentive to bring one of each to a raid is largely reduced. Our Wrath of Air's 5% spell haste trumps their 3% spell haste from Improved Moonkin Aura (and a second shaman's Windfury trumps the melee haste portion of that buff), and elemental oath and standard Moonkin Aura certainly won't stack. Having always enjoyed the mutual back-scratching between these two specs, I'm a bit sad to see it go.

Actually not to be alarmist, but if our damage output isn't awesome, I'm worried that we're not necessarily going to be all that desirable in a raid. A resto shaman can provide Wrath of Air totem, after all, and if there's already a Boomkin around, that cancels out Elemental Oath. Totem of Wrath's spell damage buff is redundant with a number of other buffs; its ability to improved critical strike chance against targets in its range is unique, but I'm not sure it's enough. It seems that they're intent on making sure it's balanced, though, so if our utility is severely impaired, I hope that our damage output will be consequently appropriately buffed.

 

Munorion

Wrath of Air and Improved Moonkin Aura are not exclusive to each other. The latter has been changed to provide a flat 3% haste to everything, it is the same as Swift Retribution in the paladin retribution tree.

 

Sardaukar

The problem is the elemental specific buffs, elemental oath and totem of wrath, are both canceled out by other buffs.

 

tufy

I've managed to go though the list now. One thing that bothers me is that it's either not complete or it is severely biased. For instance, Improved Scorch debuff was changed to a critical strike booster. This makes it useless for our Lava Burst, but more importantly, it doesn't stack with Winter's Chill (important for elementalist frostfire bolt specs). This means both debuffs from frost and fire won't stack. Additionally, a charge-based Focus Magic is in the same group as ToW, Flametongue Totem, Imp. Divine Spirit, etc. HOWEVER, neither Shadow Vulnerability (shadow priests) nor charge-based Improved Shadowbolt (warlocks) are anywhere to be found. Why not?

EDIT: failed at reading comprehension, ignore me

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Lucitron

It is a quite big change for every class and spec, not just Elemental Shamans. My only disapointment is that apparently Blizzard decided to make the talented buffs that shouldn't stack to be very, very similar. This lose quite much of the individuality and originality of your buffs. The talents lost a lot of their shine, if they end up being a copy-paste of another class. To be a bit wicked, all that is left for Blizzard to do is to rename them so that they share the same name.

Take for example Elemental Oath and Moonkin Aura. If they are exactly the same or one is clearly the weaker version, then one person could just respec and drop the redundant talent. What I prefer and hope for, would be if Moonkin Aura was the familiar 5% crit aura, while Elemental Oath was changed to the degree that it offered perhaps 6% crit aura but with 80% up-time. I.e. they are similar enough to allow you a certain freedom to exchange one class with another, yet different enough to also allow you to have both in a raid.

In a galaxy far, far away, senator Palpatine just learned Lightning Bolt rank 12.

 

• Aeverius

Because they're now self-buff abilities?

(And yes, they're there in that post; look in the second list of abilities, where this change is mentioned.)

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

Ubik

Yes, its disappointing how they've mimicked abilities, but they are also mixing the buffs on classes.

For instance an Elem Shamy would bring
Elemental Oath same as Moonkin Aura so a moonkin,
Totem of Wrath(for spelldamage) same as Mage(Focus Magic), Improved Divine Spirit, Flametongue Totem and Demonic Pact - (of which we don't know who will be the best, but i would put my money on Improved Divine Spirit or Demonic Pact)
Totem of Wrath (for spelldamage) same as Heart of the Crusader(retri pala).

So if you don't have a Elem shamy you would need:
moonkin, holy (or disc?) priest or demonology warlock, retri pala
and any other shaman for bloodlust.

The buffs are kind of the same, but the combination of classes(and specks) is diferent.
What worries me is that for instance if you have a moonkin in the raid, you don't need to spend points in elemental oath. The same thing goes for other talents. You would have to speck acording to the raid composition.

And a question for those in beta:
If there are multiple Flame Shocks (including yours) on a target and you cast lava burst will all Flame Shocks will be consumed or only yours?

 

Roywyn

3k attack power at level 80 in blues from standard raid buffs seemed pretty doable in a 43/28/0.
That's 900 spell damage. That's a truckload of raw damage that the other talents won't compensante for in blue gear.

According to your formula, you'd need to have 3.5k spell damage without MQ to break even.

The raid buff/debuff categories change that of course.
Even then, with shout, str/agi totem, raid buffs, BoK, +10% AP and intellect conversion you shouldn't drop below 2k AP.
Which means that it would take 2-2.5k spell power to break even in the new situation.

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.

 

Graze

What about Stormstrike?

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!

 

Pitbuller

This can't be self only or Improved Stormstrike talent second effect(2 more charges) is then oddball. I hope that it's effect only (Lb or ES) or (shaman) but is raidwide.

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

Kaideq

I don't think you should be staring blindly at the spell dmg the MD/MQ build brings, you will need to be able to keep up your dps, not just have the potential to do a lot for a short period of time.
The MD/MQ build will give you different paladin blessings than a normal elemental build, likely dropping blessing of wisdom.
At the 2k AP example the 600 spell dmg gains will be surpassed fast, 70 dmg on flame tongue weapon and 25% of your spell dmg on LB will hit that easily enough if you factor in the mp5 from thunder and BOW.
You will likely not have the 5% crit from resto and be gemming for a lot of extra spell hit with the current talents,I don't think we will be sitting at the comfortable crit %'s we're on now.

I think we can safely shelve this build with the current buff/de-buff and hit talent changes.

Starchild Spacegoat Shaman in Beta

 

Othinn

Maybe I am missing something but currently Totem of Wrath is vastly superior to Heart of the Crusader ... the totem effects every hostile within 30yrds where as with Heart the pallie has to judge the target for it to be effective ... I would expect there to be a bigg difference given that ToW is a tier 9 talent and Heart is a tier 2

 

Ubik

Well yes. Totem of wrath brings spell damage and 3% crit to more mobs.
In a fight like in Mount Hijal that would be super, but versus bosses it makes no difference.

And if they have a priest with improved spirit then they won't need ToW. And a retri pala is a mana battery so its more useful.

What I think that it will happen is that the overall dps for a raid will be slightly lowered because of the buffs not stacking, but each class will be improved and the damage of each class will be equilibrated. thus you can play with who you want when you want. Speck according to the raid (I will have a boomkin, a retri pala and a holy priest in my raid so I have to figure out what to do with 3 talent points :P ) and have as much fun as we can while doing it

 

Graze

I'm absolutely furious about these changes.
We finally had something unique and good - and they not only scrap that idea, they scrap everything that comes every remotely close to create this "solution".

ToW counting as a debuff to match it against Heart of the Crusader is just a horrible idea. This should be redesigned, move the critt buff to ToW and the debuff to Oath could be a fix.

I just got an invite, ran around and tried out the new stuff and it was quite enjoyable, despite the obvious problems with S,E&F. Until this brutal murdering of class diversity I was looking forward to the new content.

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!

 

Darian_TruBlade

I can understand the frustration, but I see this as a good thing overall. The sheer volume of buffs/debuffs was getting absurd. From both logistical and balance perspectives it was becoming a nightmare.

Class diversity has taken a significant hit, I'll give you that. Blizzard might have kept some sense of uniqueness to each buff while still approximating the same function rather than the wholesale duplication we see. However, I think that "brutal murdering" is overkill. Synergy was only one part of what made classes noticeably different, not the be all and end all of it.

 

Kyuki

Well with removing uniqueness and generally the buffing ability of hybrids, pure classes will be whining when hybrid DPS gets increased, and we'll see a decrease in DPS again, and very little else to bring to the table. Causing another nightmare that was vanilla wow and pigeon-holing.

I really hope they finetune this ALOT. Even though the idea of reducing the amount of stacking could be good in a sense, I think this is probably a bad approach. Instead of removing certain buffs from classes (which will give uniqueness in turn) they added more?_?

They want 2x10 and 1x5 of each class. Getting 3 shamans is moot in almost all scenarios with these changes for example, no matter spec. What these changes does is to go back and look at the roles and what people bring to the raid, and it's boiling down to Personal DPS for all classes and specs. Why even have more than one caster class and one melee class and one type of healer?

I dont know, I'm sceptical about these new raid debuff changes..

 

tufy

To be honest, I agree with Graze on this one. I mean, the idea is nice and if the buffs remained unique, I'd go with it. But come on! Boomkin + Retri Pala can replace pretty much everything an elemental shaman will throw out? That's just lazy of Blizzard, flat out lazy.

Besides, there's like 3 months till wotlk launch. There's no way in hell they can see all effects of this change, so there's no way in hell this can be balanced before.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Medicine Man

I'm with Graze and Tufy. Lazy and uninspired change on Blizzard's part.

The real problem is the proliferation of class synergies and raid buffs. DKs, with their multiple class specs, were just the tipping point in this regard. If you look at the big picture, Blizzard has been steadily undermining their own support model between classes as they add more synergies. Their answer to this problem finally reaching critical levels is to completely jump the shark and make every class a support class, regardless of their primary role.


Ok. This raises several questions in my mind:

#1 -- Is it even possible to have specialized classes, like rogues, under this model.

If they are to be specialized, they must do more raw damage. If they do more raw damage, is not the ideal raid one stacked with them? I'm not sure how its possible to even have specialized classes under a support model like this.

#2 -- How is Blizzard planning on developing new interesting skills for classes in future expansions?

The primary effect of this buff homogenization is to make them adverse to having unique abilities for any one class. This is going to make future class growth a very dull affair.

#3 -- Doesn't this change put up new barriers to certain classes cooperating?


One consequence of this change is that the support class as such will be effectively dead. I suspect I may be one of the few people disappointed by this, but I am. Having originally rolled a shaman to play the "combat-engineer" role, this is a bit of a let down.

 

Lucitron

If you check the Moonkin thread, then there are screams that Elemental Shamans + Shadow Priests will make Moonkins obsolete.

Personally I feel just Blizzard took the wrong path when they made every buff so freaking similar.

What I would have loved, would be if they had created different buff-types. First the generic buff, which has 100% up time and which affect all schools of magic (or alternatively, both melee and spell casters). This buff is the "weak" bottom line, like for example Curse of Elements. Then we have specialized buff that just affect a limited part, like only two schools of magic, or just spell casters and not melee. This buff is a tiny bit better than the bottom line buff, and will of course overwrite it but only for the specific parts that it buffs (like the example with Arcane Intellect and Fel Intellect). Finally we have the third type, and that is the temporary version that doesn't have 100% up-time. This buff is the strongest out of three types, and the brief duration or in-frequent times when it is up, then it will overwrite the other two types.

Building up buffs like this should allow each class to feel a bit special and unique, like that they are contributing to the raid with more than just dps or healing. It would make talents to mean something. Now? Well, apparently if there is a Moonkin in the raid, then we can save some talent points and ignore Elemental Oath. It is a bit ironic if the developers have put down loads of hours to design an interesting talent, and then up comes another design team and kills it.

In a galaxy far, far away, senator Palpatine just learned Lightning Bolt rank 12.