Carnacki

Math is not really my strongpoint but are you factoring in the 20% extra damage from bonus spelldamage for starfire and 10% for wrath from 5/5 WoC?

 

Vishie

Yeah, it looks like I accidentally subtracted the 9% reduction twice for wrath. Correcting that, wrath works out to 8.94 DPM in the first scenario and 9.96 DPM in the 1400 spell damage scenario. So, Starfire still wins. It does get closer, though, which certainly could potentially make Eclipse more interesting in a mana-limited environment.

I also forgot about CoE. My guild doesn't have enough people to do 25-man content, and we rarely have a lock along, so it slips my mind.

Sorry for the false alarm...

 

Cycloni

Moonkin is looking better in everyway, except for nerf to improved moonkin aura..

But I just had a look at elemental shammy buffs, was that nerf to improved moonkin aura necessary at all? From where I'm looking, they're looking a lot more attractive now than balance druids.

It's funny, but I somehow feel that if they returned improved moonkin aura to the few seconds cooldown, that'd be fair even though the shammy do seem to have a lot more. Can anyone list the two specs and what they bring?

 

Carnacki

On another front, the 30% passive threat reduction seems like a great bonus, but have there been any hints about an active threat reduction for the expansion? Out of all the possible changes that is the one I've been most hoping for.

 

Axanor

You're going to want to see a Paladin for that one.

 

Benita

Im guessing we will see a hidden cd on the mana regen and then it works for those spells too, but if it slips through to live i'd rather live with the inconsistency as it's overall alot more powerful.

Shamans have only totems that just worked groupwide up until now. Paladins had a group aura, raid blessings and raid judgements. As for druid auras, they are not the only synergy effect. IFF, Earth and Moon, MotW, Thorns are also still there and would have to be compared if solo dps is the same.

Apples and oranges guys, only compare total synergy.

 

Lucitron

If you are comparing Wrath of Air Totem with the Imp. Moonkin Talent, then it might be worth to point out that Wrath of Air is a regular ability open for Restoration Shamans as well as for Enhancement Shamans. Wrath of Air is a totem that comes with the Shaman package, similarly to how instant HoTs, Mark of the Wild, Hurricane, Innervate etc come with the Druid.

Imp. Moonkin Talent is most probably designed with the mind to further encourage stubborn raid leaders to allow a hybrid class to dps rather than heal. I personally think that this talent manage to live up to that purpose.


Now, regarding the fear that Raid Leaders will take Elemental Shaman ahead of Balance Druids, then please notice that outside of the DPS, then Elemental Shamans bring Totem of Wrath (which as fire totem compete with Flametongue Totem), plus the Elemental Oath talent which is a 6% mana reduction & 6% spell crit buff to party members. I would say that Balance Druids manage to hold their ground very well in comparison and I would be really surprised if there will not be a quite dramatic increase of Moonkins in 25-man raids.

At 7:45, offices are empty. Some could get bored, but I stay calm, I know how to adapt. While waiting for them I have time to take a coffee.

 

IRAM

I was reading the thread from the beginning, at this point our concern i think is start discussing about how the new talents will affect the coeffients or starfire-wrath, how will work our aoe mechanic or how is going our mana regeneration.


Considering differents builds we have many options

- Aoe build, and aoe tanking

- Single caster

- Raid buffer and made conservative speccs for mana etc..


for the first coeffients for Starfire-Wrath

+6% from E&M +3% hit with spells+5.33% haste ( overr shaman for 8 sec )+4% IS+Eclipse mechanic

taking as values efejel spreadsheet and changing the values you can have a coefient for starfire 1.44 instead of 1.36, withouth considering Eclipse mechanic for a full caster wrath+starfire, that's a nice increase of dps,

for mana regeneration with new moonkin form and Omen.

( 30% crit x 2% mana)+ (6% 555 starfire rank 10)= 39.9 mana back per cast considering 10k mana pool

that are simple formulas no considering talented Moonglow.

i'll just open the treath to more advanced mathematics to figure how our numbers will be in the expansion considering our current gear. Just about how the talents, and spells will improve us.

 

Cycloni

Regarding Wrath, I always thought that Wrath was the higher dps spell, and Starfire the higher DPM spell. So when you had mana to burn you spammed wrath, but when you had to conserve you spammed starfire.

I then thought that the fixed Nature's Grace would mean you used Starfire on a proc regardless and on OoC proc you use Wrath. But if calculations are showing that now the reverse is true and that Wrath is the higher DPM and Starfire the higher DPS, that would be interesting. I would prefer it the other way round. Also remember that in raids you have stormstrike procs from Shaman and Curse of Elements from Warlocks buffing Wrath and Starfire respectively by 10%. Also you will use whichever one an an eclipse proc.

Regarding Elemental Shaman and Balance Druids, I found this on the wow-forums:

It doesn't look like balance druids are measuring up to elemental shaman to me, not with a nerfed Improved moonkin aura, forced to choose between the two, I wouldn't hesistate to take the elemental shaman instead, sorry, it just does more and the improved moonkin aura is not up often enough. I seriously think they should return it's cooldown to a few seconds.

And whiles Balance druids and elemental shaman are not mutually exclusive, surely balance druids kind a feel second rate, especially when with the aura as it was before that cooldown, they kind of felt empowered.

 

Lucitron

I think you could have left that at the wow-forum, since to my eyes it is just one long biased QQ post. It exaggerates the Shaman's abilities and has several outright "lies" as facts, while it downplays the Druid's abilities. Actually, I would urge you to remove it, since I don't see how it brings any value to this thread.


EDIT:
The people below have more or less answered your questions. I don't see any point to continue this discussion, since it is simply pointless. If you are not happy with your Druid and want to roll a Shaman, then please go ahead. Perhaps you will understand the differences if you get first hand experience.

At 7:45, offices are empty. Some could get bored, but I stay calm, I know how to adapt. While waiting for them I have time to take a coffee.

 

Vodrin

Before you try to dive out of the way of the moon falling;

1+2 prevents 4.
3+4+7+8 aren't exclusive of an elemental shaman and will be up if a restoration shaman was there. Are 3 shamans needed for the whole set of totems (not including totem of wrath)?

They aren't exclusive at all and give great synergy to each other. The shamans crit totems stacked with the moonkins aura gives the entire group a better uptime of the moonkin aura, and various on crit procs for sustainability. Earth and Moon increases damage for both classes and both scale well with haste, especially after the nature's grace change. They are both well worth a spot.

Is there anymore +hit aura/group talents from any of the classes?
4% balance of power, 3% imp ff, 3% wrath totem.

Assuming same resist mechanics as now leaves us with 6% hit to gather if we were grouped with an elemental shaman.

 

Cycloni

I'll edit out the opinion section of it, but it is rather compelling, surely it becomes increasingly harder to see what so called advantages or equalities druids have.

So if shamns bring more to groups than druids, which we agree they do, what do balance druids bring that is any better? I'm not QQing, but it doesn't seem a level playing field to me, and I doubt you can show it is as it stands, because I can't see it atm, the Shaman bring more buffs, have as much function if not more, as much dps if not more - overall just plain better, now to many this may not be a bad thing, afterall it is fitting that some be better than others, we do not all have to be equal, nor do we have to be the same, however do not expect all to be happy that they are not as valuable or as beneficial. With wow it is not enough to have enough use to be included, most aren't content with that, most want to be on par, equal but different.

Anyway what is so exceptional about roots indoors relative to shaman? Druids do not have slows which Shaman do and are very much a part of control, Shaman also have Hex, I think it's honours even in that department, it is not one of the things we can say druids have over shaman, and we all know it's more relevant in 5-mans than raids. Maybe next expansion balance druid players can get their hopes up with some nice looking stuff to finally after what would be four years underpar, finally be right their amongst the best... at least up until the nerf bat.

 

• Adoriele

There is ample evidence floating around on the BB that our spell hit table now matches that of melee: 9% base chance to miss, able to cap completely. Yes, that means no 1% dead zone. Given iFF and ToW, BoP will put us over the cap.

edit:
Yes, you are. There is no objective evidence that a shaman is better than a Balance Druid in any substantial form. That list is incredibly biased and gives a lot of contradictory information. Bloodlust is only available to Ele shammies now? News to me. Guess it's a good thing he remembered to list Innervate and Rebirth on the Druid side so that we'd get a fair shake.

Leave the Fox News style of predictions out of this, please.

 

Soultrigger

In the end, it is the most skilled players that will have a raid spot. \o/

Either way, druid balance in raid is another rebirth and all our others toys...

 

erragal

Give that this is true: Will there even be spell hit itemization? If there is, there may not be very much of it. It's certainly possible we could be expected to get spell hit entirely through gemming. (Assuming you don't run with both a moonkin and an elemental shaman)


As for people comparing us to elemental shaman: you're not looking at the whole picture. Ignoring the fact you're including things that ALL shaman bring to the raid (as other reasonable people have pointed out), you're also looking at quantity instead of quality.


Improved Faerie Fire is 3% global hit on a boss in debuff form. No need to stay within a specific range. It works for physical AND spell hit, for every dpser AND every tank. There is no single raid utility I'd rather have than this right now (Except for the totally specced ret aura in wotlk, which looks awesome) It doesn't jump out at you though. It's not flashy and haste, so people seem to dismiss it. (EDIT: Made an unsubstantiated qualatative statement at first )


Just looking at that list and tossing out the things that apply to all shaman, I would consider us a little better off than elementals at base. But then when you add in the other general shaman buffs, I'd say it's a very equal comparison.

And why does everyone seem to forget we're now a fairly potent aoe class? At this point we're the third strongest aoe damage class. And every three minutes, we may have the strongest burst aoe potential depending on how Starfall works out. Why is that never brought up in our favor? Elemental shaman do not have the consistent aoe damage that we have.

Personally, I'm really excited to be able to contribute as a main aoe caster. No more tab switching moonfires on aoe packs!

 

• Adoriele

Likely there won't be any Hit itemization on caster gear, to keep things on par with allowing Healers and Casters to use the same stats. With 6% hit being standard de/buffs for the raid, and most casters having some form of +hit talent for more than the last 3%, we may not even need gems to finish capping.

Also, you're forgetting Thunder for Ele shammies. It may have a cooldown, but it does mean they have more to do than spam CL on cooldown as well.

 

erragal

I'm not so sure about thunder for aoe, however. Thunder is 45 sec cd IIRC, with a much larger knockback distance (Enough to potentially cost a lot of aoe damage from Seeds/channeled spells.); From what I was reading in the elem shaman speculation, they wouldn't even go that far in the tree for a proper raiding build.

I don't see how that could compare to 20 second typhoon, 50% bonus damage hurricane (Assuming you're specced for aoe), and starfall. If nothing else the huge attack speed debuff from hurricane makes aoe packs SAFER for everyone.


I agree that there's likely not to be ANY hit on armor slot pieces with the gear consolidation. It would be interesting if they completely removed hit from ALL itemization (Even rings/cloaks/trinkets). They almost have to leave it on gems in case a raid chooses not to run with a moonkin or an elemental shaman (Particularly in ten man raids). There's always the possibility of adding it as a bonus stat on relics and wands, also.

 

Erdluf

Can you post a link to someone who's done the testing? I did a bit of searching in other caster forums and couldn't find it.

It does make sense with heal/dps gear issues, and also nerfs to Mage/Priest Hit talents.

Also, do you know if Spell Hit will start using the Hit combat ratings (25% more Hit Rating required for 1% hit)?

 

Benita

Thats not how recruitment works. If you want to have druids a fair chance of entering raiding guilds (before anyone can tell how skilled someone is) you need to have an even playing field. Balance concerns sure are important but the discussion who is bringing what to the table is so complex in detail that i have yet to see a coherent post thats actually grasping the basics.

 

• Adoriele

Unfortunately all the testing I've seen is in the BB. I'll do a search at work to see if there's anything lying around the internet, though. As for ratings, Spell hit and Melee hit have been merged as predicted, but I'm not sure what the coefficients are. Not too worried about it, as those will change all the way to 80 anyway, and the current cap on Beta is 77, but I'll keep an eye out.

 

princeinexile

Balance druids should not fear missing out on a raid spot. They bring excellent utility that in my opinion (having both a moonkin and an elemental shaman) is absolutely comparable to elemental shamans. Smart raid leaders would be well-advised to bring moonkins to raids. We still significantly buff casters in our party, as well as boosting raid-wide hit, and elemental shaman, enhance shaman, and arcane mage dps. Any elemental shaman who doesn't campaign strongly to have a boomkin along in the raid is shooting herself in the foot, because a boomkin represents a huge boost in elemental shaman dps, currently and even more so come xpac.

The nerf to improved moonkin aura just makes it less potent; it's still an amazing buff. With crit-heavy classes stacked in the moonkin's party, it means the buff will be up minimum 12 seconds out of every minute. That's at least 20% of the time, and it presumably stacks on top of Wrath of Air.

We still have yet to definitively see how hit works in the xpac. I suspect, given the changes to hit mechanics of many of the classes, that improved faerie fire will also be something hugely desirable for raids (much much more so than it is now), and since moonkins are the only ones specced deep enough into balance to get it, that will be yet one more reason to bring them.

Like most of the other specialized classes, there probably won't be much incentive to bring more than one moonkin to a 25-man raid (same goes for elemental shaman), but a raid without one will be significantly gimped. No other class will be able to compensate for the loss of dps and utility a moonkin would have brought to the raid.

 

Mateus

Someone have been able to test if the Owlkin Frenzy would work as a passive buff whenever we take damage? Or it's only when we are currently targeted and attacked with melee/spells?

 

Carnacki

Taking the shammy list someone did and doing side by side with a druid...
1. 3% spell crit -- 5% spell crit (~5.9% if you still use the old Idol)
2. 3% spell hit to group [Wrath totem] -- 3% spell hit to raid (impFF on target)
3. 10% spell haste [Wrath of Air Totem] -- Haste buff from crits (still not sure how this will work in final)
4. 73 spell damage [Flametongue totem] not possible to use because it's same totem as Wrath.
5. 6% spell crit damage bonus to party [Elemental Oath] -- 6% damage bonus to arcane/nature with E&M
6. 6% spell cost reduction to party [Elemental Oath] -- 2% mana return of crits.
7. 70mp5 to group or raid [Mana Spring Totem] -- Innervate to key people (shadow priest or healer)
8. 30% haste for 40 secs (10min cooldown) Blood lust -- Nothing to compete with this one.

The match-up is pretty favourable to be honest. We lose out in some things, but we're better in others.

And on the plus side we still buff melee & hunter hit (impFF) and therefore DPS, we still buff tank threat with the same spell. We have a battle res so the elemental shaman can keep going after they pull agro We reduce the chance a tank has of being hit by a couple percent with IS. MotW is becoming much more potent, no other class (except paladins) can buff the melee as much - the figures I've seen are ~52 to all stats. So thats 52 more agi and str to rogues, fury warriors and enhance shaman before you add the benefit of kings. Plus ~75% resist to all schools. And it's passive there is no need to reapply like the totems to gain benefit. Therefore a dead moonkin still helps the melee whereas a dead shaman doesn't. Admittedly a resto druid or feral can also apply the same buff. But spreading buffing duties is a good thing.

And in practically every discussion I see about bringing balance druids into raids the fact we *can* heal is usually ignored. I'm not far into BT (only up to Supremus) so I'm not sure how it goes at the very highest level, but I often throw heals at the start of a fight or during a fight if things get hectic to help stabilise before switching to DPS. It allows our raid to run with one less healer than usual and keep a solid DPS instead. I see that as being even more viable with the changes to spellpower meaning my 1500 raid buffed damage would be 3750 raid buffed healing with the expansion.

In the end it still depends on how the changes end up when the expansion is finally released, but even now it's looking like balance druids have a much better shot at a raiding spot than ever before.

 

Saraya

Augh, I hope that's the end of the Shaman Druid discussion.

Owlkin Frenzy currently procs off the most random stuff. It does proc off melee and direct damage spells(there are an awful lot of casters in northrend... kind of missing balance of power for the spell evade). Haven't purposely sat in any channeled spells long enough to see any procs. It also procs off random quest items and sitting in town fires(although those seem to proc all sorts of reactive abilities regardless).

One additional thing I forgot to mention was that our level 70 mark of the wild was slightly buffed although the tooltip does not reflect this. Talented mark gives 24 to all stats.

Haven't had a chance to play on the beta server since last time so I've still been unable to check the haste and debuff stacking issues.

Here's my current checklist of stuff to check/test next time I can get on:
1) Stacking of Shaman Totem and Improved Moonkin Aura
2) Stacking of Curse of Elements and Earth and Moon
3) Hit rate conversion

 

Lucitron

Should brought up this in the Shaman WotLK thread, but since you were about to test it, might I suggest that you also run a test with party set to a raid, and the Druid and the Shaman in different groups?

There is a bit of confusion if Totems are raid wide or not. They were mentioned as raid wide in the alpha, but it was not mentioned in the beta. The players currently beta testing the Shamans have not verified either or.

EDIT:
Scratch that, found a plausible explanation after a bit of searching on the forum. Pity I can't delete my own posts here.

At 7:45, offices are empty. Some could get bored, but I stay calm, I know how to adapt. While waiting for them I have time to take a coffee.