NiltaSWC

A lot of good stuff so far in this thread, but I think there is a train of thought we haven't gone down yet.

I think we should all be asking ourselves, "What do the leaked talent trees say about WOTLK encounter design and PvP vs Death Knights?" If you have looked at more than just the elemental Shaman tree, it seems as though many specs are getting new AoE abilities from talents. Heck even rogues are getting a bit of AoE with Murder Spree.

All this AoE makes me think that we are in store for a raid game that includes far more AoE fights than we have seen in the past. (Not to mention giving a means to counteract DK army of the dead ability) I think it really fits with the lore to have more than a few fights where a raid faces countless undead at the same time, WoTlk is the zombie expansion afterall.

If AoE is a bigger part of the game I think that ele shaman will find that their utility wil come from having both an AoE Knockback and an AoE stun proc (Totem) I could be totally wrong.. but that's just my two cents

As farf as my thoughts on the talents as leaked for Ele shaman overall.. I still want to see another Raid Synergy talent ..but otherwise I like most of it

 

Blackburn

9% miss on specials, 28% DW miss rate, 6.5% dodge, 25% glancing blows (there is parry too, but you should be DPSing from behind and not experiencing it most of the time... except whenever boss turns around to cast something on another target, such as a hateful strike). So compared to melee, 17% caster resist rate seems pretty easy to counter, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to change.

 

Rhaegal

Combined with the fact that spell hit converts to percent better than melee crit does, I wouldn't look to see caster base resist rate go down either. On a related note, despite all the reports of melee and spell hit and crit ratings being merged into one stat, I don't think I've seen anything stating explicitly whether or not the rating-to-percent ratio will remain lower for spells than it is for physical. Is this known yet?

[e] Also, this was linked in the enhance thread, specifically noting the video under the Media tab: WotLK Information Wiki: Shaman
Most of that is irrelevant here, as it shows enhancement abilities like the spirit wolves and static shock. However, you do see the shaman casting Lava Burst, which is what makes this relevant--there was a question earlier in the thread that I don't think ever got answered about whether Lava Burst had travel time (like fireball) or not (like scorch), for the purposes of spell rotations. At least in its current incarnation, it looks like it definitely is fireball-like, which is consistent with the tooltip description.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

Blackburn

This still doesn't address the issue of Ele shaman being used as a buff bitch while they spend most of their time healing. They'd be nice buffs no doubt, but they're all passive (with the exception of Thunder once in a while) hence making what the shaman does the rest of the time irrelevant. As someone else mentioned already, Elemental needs an active buff similar to Enh's Unleashed Rage, something like 46-50 pt talent that increases party's +dmg by 2/4/6/8/10% for 6 seconds every time the shaman crits with any of his damaging spells. This talent would scale nicely with both the shaman's crit rate and the rest of the group's gear. At 40% crit rate it would give about ~80% uptime. Now all of a sudden the Ele shaman is both useful to his group and is required to be doing his primary job, DPS, to bring that utility to the group. That way you'll bring a worth while buff to the raid and won't get pigeon holed into healing all the time as a DPS spec.

 

Vernichter

Well, on the plus side I do not think that the "buff bitch" role is a legitimate concern for elemental shaman. In 10-mans and 5-mans a hybrid playstyle is legitimate, but that it would be wholly separate from a buffing role. Furthermore, it does not make sense to bring an elemental shaman in a buffing role for large-scale raid content. Totem of Wrath is the only group buff gained by specing elemental, and Totem of Wrath and Mana Tide are mutually exclusive. While an active-DPS perk like Unleashed Rage, Moonkin Aura, or Crusader Strike would be nice, but passive buffing would also be viable.

"Mass dispel now 10 targets (up from 5)" - Playered
"Clearly a nerf to Zul'jin bear phase -- more catering to casuals, and it sickens me." - Praetorian

 

Blackburn

Some of your brethren seem to think otherwise, clearly stating concerns over: 1. being brought to raids, 2. being brought to raids for their DPS buffs, while being used for healing.

 

Vernichter

No one will bring an elemental shaman to primarily heal in 25-mans as the talents currently stand. It is plausible to bring an elemental shaman to heal for a portion of a fight and then switch to DPS - they appear to be as good or better at role-switching than either Disc Priests or Balance Druids - but that kind of a hybrid role would make elemental shaman desirable and unique, not undesirable. But irregardless of that point, the idea of a buff-bitch is reserved for situations where the spec would bring a buff so powerful that it would overcome the negatives of performing an offspec role. That's exactly what happened with Retribution paladins in early WoW, as Blessing of Kings was so powerful that it easily made up for their deficiencies in healing. There is absolutely nothing in the elemental tree to suggest that kind of playstyle. The only unique buff elemental shamans provide is ToW, which is only slightly better for DPS than Mana Tide + improved Mana Spring + Searing Totem, which is what the same group would get for DPS from a resto shaman. The very real concern is not that Elemental shaman will heal; it is that those shaman will not get into raids unless they respec to restoration.

Elemental shaman will either be viable ranged DPS for 25-mans or they will not be, and the current talents appear to be short on damage/scaling and group utility. Moderate improvements to one or the other (or both) should be sufficient for justifying the spec in 25-man content.

"Mass dispel now 10 targets (up from 5)" - Playered
"Clearly a nerf to Zul'jin bear phase -- more catering to casuals, and it sickens me." - Praetorian

 

Medicine Man

I'm not sure if anyone has tested this on the Alpha server, but I wonder if the talent Elemental Oath is intended to be a counter to Nature (or Fire) immune targets? Timely use of Elemental Mastery with a diligent flame shock/lava burst rotation could keep focus-casting up enough to sustain lightning dps against an otherwise untouchable target.

 

Jonny_Monroe

does elemental oath cause you to bypass immunities? I was under the impression it simply provided +spell hit (thereby making it utterly useless).

 

Darian_TruBlade

That was my impression as well.

However, even if it did act as immunity penetration it still feels more like a gimmick and less like an actual DPS talent. Unless Nature/Fire immune mobs are ubiquitous in WotLK raiding, you'll respecc for this talent until you progress past the boss that requires it. If that's the talent's purpose, 90% of the time it's rather worthless.

Elemental Oath seems like an attempt to remove the need to Shaman to take Spell Hit. What other casters invest in Spell Hit we could theoretically invest in Spell Crit. However, our own talents work against this. With 9% Spell Hit easily gained through talents, not to mention raid buffs, Elemental Oath simply fails.

Unless there is some unmentioned benefit to going over the hit cap being introduced in WotLK, Elemental Oath is simply lackluster. Then again, if they turned all our other Hit talents into Crit (with Totem of Wrath's Spell Hit either reducing party mana costs or increasing damage) it could work out anyway.

 

Graze

I don't think you'd ever hit with a Lightning Bolt a nature immune mob even if you had 300% hit.

Elemental Oath is just wierd, the thing about hit is that it's supposed to be reliable, however you can't really achive 100% EF/EM uptime, thus making this talent pretty useless.

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!

 

Phlis

Yeah, the main problem with Elemental Oath is the same problem Totem of Wrath has for all other casters. They can't count on it always being there(ie, The Shaman Dies, not in an Ele Shaman group) and because of that always need to gear to hit cap without Totem of Wrath. We're going to essentially be in the same boat. If we can't count on 100% uptime we'll have to gear for the hit cap anyway otherwise we're gimping out own DPS when EO isn't up. Because of this, putting points in the talent seems like a waste of time.

In fact, This seems to me like the way to build an elemental shaman if the talents do not change. Storm reach becomes useless because of the necessity to use Flame Shock in rotations. Elemental oath is completely useless because we need to gear under the assumption it won't be up 100% of the time. Besides moving around trash points(Unrelenting Storm->Elemental Warding, points in resto to Totemic Focus), I don't see much variation on this theme unless shaman caster gear has a very large amount of crit on it.

 

Esoth

I don't understand why you would do 3/3 Ancestral Healing for elemental. If you have to offheal, my guess is that it is most likely aoe damage, which is very rarely mitigated by armor. It seems to me that 4/5 totemic focus would be a better option.

 

Phlis

See, that shouldn't be your focus. I said, besides moving around trash points in Resto to Totemic Focus, or moving points out of Unrelenting storm I don't see much room for variation. Those points don't really matter at all. Totemic Focus is useless if you have a shadow priest, in the same way Unrelenting Storm is useless. For DPS purposes in a raid enviroment it doesn't matter.

 

Esoth

Ok, ok, I will admit to nitpicking. The rest, mostly, makes sense.

 

tufy

I'm continuously expanding first post, the data was added into it based on this video yesterday, including the 8s duration of Hex (if I timed it right, that is :p).

I've come up with a build very similar to your own, except I dropped Reverbation in favor of Elemental Warding. The remaining two points went into Improved Fire Nova totem, shorter delay + stun may make the totem a wannabe Blastwave. I also maxed out Totemic Focus at the expense of Ancestral Healing and Improved Reincarnation, but that totally depends on totem mana costs in WotLK.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

joe_in_hell

What do you think about an build like this?
I liked the old shaman, bringing (burst)damage in melee and with casts while wielding a big 2hand axe

 

Dra

or this? Assuming we can consume an enhancement shaman's flameshock debuff, we won't have to shock. This build would give 0.318 spelldamage per intellect, would make us beg to be put in the melee group (lots of spelldamage from battleshout and unleashed rage), paladin's would go crazy from our cries for blessing of might and ironically, we'd have a usable earth totem in the form of strength of earth.

 

count

What we need to consider is that having access to a talent that gives you 100% extra chance to hit with an uptime in the area of 70% will devalue the value of hit to the point where it is possibly the hit will be worth less then the other dmg stats.

With a 70% up time on elemental focus/oath we will effectively be hit capped 70% of the time and any point spent on spell hit during that time will be wasted.

There will be a sweet spot for hit where the resist rates from the time without elemental oath and damage lost from being spent on hit in stead of dmg/haste/crit while hit capped from elemental oath that will maximise the total dmg output. I leave the calculations to some one with better knowledge of the exact mechanics and scale values for hit and the other dmg stats.

 

Munorion

I think this will depend a lot on how the change to Weapon Specialization plays out:
"When you crit with a fist weapon, reduces the cast time of your next spell by 20%. This effect can stack up to 5 times.".

This might lead to enhancement shamans consuming Flame Shock themselves a lot more.

 

Paladia

Elemental oath seems severely messed up in its current state. Why would you ever want to put more than one talent point into it? A 50% increase in hit chance would be just as good as 100% unless you face a mob that is 10 levels your senior.

Also, do not count on using the FS of melee Shamans, as fist weapon specialization is being changed to decrease casting time of the next spell by 20% on a critical strike (stacks 5 times). Hence they will utilize their own FS in order to LaB to keep elemental devastation up.

What really has to happen in the elemental tree is make the talents both useful for PvP and PvE. As it stands now, ToW is completely useless in PvP and pretty poor in PvE. If it was changed to something useful and something that actually gave the Shaman an initiative to DPS, quite a bit of problems could be Fixed. Such as "On a critical strike the partys casting time is decreased by 10% for 4 seconds" (just an example).

The five points required for Call of Thunder, Lightning Mastery and Lightning Overload is in my opinion quite excessive, especially for such a minimal effect on so few spells. The astral shift talent is alright in its function but seems to have a very hefty cooldown for such a high tier talent.

 

Pitbuller

With 0% hit from gear and 75% uptime for Elem focus(50% effective crit) you got 98% to hit with elem oath.
With +7% hit from gear you got 99% to hit.

Look very poorly invest. 7% convert only 1% effective.
With only 2(edit: maybe even one point is enough and then you can get all other talents ass well) talent point you get 6% hit and this cost only one point at Tidal mastery.

Elem oath also gives 100% to hit after lavaburst crit so no missed flame shock and ruined rotation ever.
We are only class who got hit scaling from crit.

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

Graze