Warning for Endus: 6. Do not post unless you have something new and worthwhile to say.

constantius · 06/30/09, 12:45 PM

Post: [Enhancement] For your Health!
User: Endus
Infraction: 6. Do not post unless you have something new and worthwhile to say.
Points: 0

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Stop wishlisting in your posts. We're not interested in what you think would be nifty and cool.

Original Post:

Originally Posted by Mengus

With all those stats, we can't hope to compete with another class that doesn't have to worry about so many different stats, and get extra STA on their gear compared to us

The issue, however, is that we should be able to achieve a competitive level of DPS while ALSO maintaining a comparable defensive set.

Right now, we're at a rough parity on the DPS performance side, while being far substandard on survivability. This is just as bad, though not as immediately obvious, as a class that has rough parity on survivability, but substandard DPS. While we may perform well while we're up, there's a much smaller margin for error meaning it's much more likely that an Enhancement shaman will die over any other class; we have worse survivability than most clothies talent- and ability-wise, worse than or only comparable hit points to those clothies, and we're melee, where there's more damage being dished out and more AoEs to eat/dodge, unlike those clothies. Armor's a non-factor aside from tank-level amounts, and the vast majority of the damage we have to deal with is non-physical, regardless.

All this adds up to an imbalance. One the HP readjustment doesn't make up for.

I'm not asking for Paladin-level survivability or health, with immunity bubbles and plate-level armor and 30k hp as Retribution. I'd be happy being as resilient as a Rogue. Heck, look at the only other mail-wearing class, Hunters. A quick Armor check shows that a guild Hunter who is pretty close to my gear level (slightly under, really) shows him at about 2500 health more than me. He's Marks, as well, so no 10% stamina talent from Survival. And, of course, being Armory, this is before raid buffs; I typically see hunters at about 27k health when I'm at about 22k.

Another issue is that we DON'T have more DPS stats than others, on our gear. We have more POSSIBLE stats, but in most cases, we will have less of each than someone who needs fewer (aside from hit and expertise, of course). And, even so, most of our gear is shared with Hunters. They've got little use for Expertise, but any other physical DPS mail is fair game. If they aren't having a hit point issue, then it means it's something inherent to our class, not our gear. Hunters have the same Agi/Stam/Int layouts on their tier gear, so if we're falling short on Stam, it's not gear-related. It's class.

Honestly, I think we need a slight revamping. The easiest place to do this without grossly changing the class would be to add a damage mitigation to our shields. This would remove any issues with gear itemization or need to adjust things in the future, while only affecting a couple abilities that we're maintaining on our characters for other reasons regardless. For PvP, if it hasn't been done already, adjust dispels to pull charges rather than the whole spell; I know Earth Shield was getting this change already (and I have no idea if it works that way for LS/WS yet; don't PvP much). If we have roughly a 15% health deficit, then a 15% damage mitigation would be plenty.

Alternatively, adjust some of our mitigation talents to be more attractive. If Elemental Warding had a damage-increasing aspect, it might be an attractive alternative that shaman wouldn't feel was "wasting" points on defense. Survival hunters have this in their trees, as an example; Survival Instincts reduces damage taken by 2% per point as well as a boosting crit on some abilities by 2%, at the same talent tier as Elemental Warding. Toughness would be unattractive, except it's necessary to Hunter Vs Wild, which is not only a solid AP boost, but is based off the stamina that Toughness increases.

Or a mix of the two. If we can talent without losing DPS for 6% damage mitigation, in Elemental Warding, then a 10% mitigation effect on our shields would be plenty.