[Enhancement] Cataclysm Beta Changes (updated 11/4/10) - Page 5

Cronus · 07/30/10, 3:58 AM

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler

[...] However, we are going to increase buff totem range (and possibly other totem range) and we have figured out a way to make Searing Totem attack your target, instead of a random and probably inappropriate target.

Source: MMO-Champion BlueTracker | Still Time for a Totem Overhaul?

Rouncer · 07/30/10, 4:23 AM

You seem to have missed the really important part of that post.

Originally Posted by GC

We're fine with totem health given how easy totems are to replace. We also think it's fine to have to (sometimes) choose between a buff totem and a non-buff totem given how many different things a shaman can do.

So they aren't planning on doing anything about our having to give up SoE in order to use so many of our utility totems. Hopefully they change their minds since that is a lot more important then searing totem.

Divis0R · 07/30/10, 4:48 AM

The intended design is to make mana into a resource again. This target will be reached, no problem. The problem will be that we won't be a hybrid class anymore. Would you cast a heal that drains 25% of your base mana and use only auto-attack for the next 10 seconds to recover that mana ? Would you use any "fun"/utility ability that basically will lock you out of your rotation ? There was a reason behind Enhancement and Elemental specs having close to endless resources: we were many times doing other roles than just dps. Helping with a cleansing spell ? Sure. Interrupting ? Of course. Stoneclaw for dragging a mob off the healer ? Any time.

Now we'll be a bit more inline with the other classes that indeed spend some resources into doing utility stuff. The problem we have is that the resource cost is balanced around Elemental and Restoration that have Int on gear and a huge mana pool.

Brynmor · 07/30/10, 6:15 PM

Shamanistic Rage now causes your skills, totems, and offensive spells to consume no mana for 15 sec.

Any thoughts on this? I'm interested to know where they are going with Shamanistic Rage. I'm currently thinking that they may use the no mana cost affect to balance whatever AoE package they come up with for us. Being that we're a mana using class in a spec with a low mana pool and AoE being very expensive a mechanic to reduce our mana costs to nothing for a short time would seem to be a method to allow us to AoE without running ourselves dry.

I've also been thinking about the Unleash Wind problem lately. Maybe the mechanic that could be introduced to solve the issue of it being a ranged ability that is utilized at melee range is the same one Tricks of the Trade has. TotT can be applied at range to a target but the effect itself doesn't begin until the rogue begins attacking something. Maybe the same thing could work for Unleash Wind, having a "prebuff" of sorts. Using the current Unleash Wind buff as an example; "After your next melee attack you gain 20% melee haste for 6 seconds. 10 second duration". With a mechanic like that the ability could still be a melee effect but it wouldn't be completely wasted when used from range, you would just have to close the distance within the duration of the "prebuff".

Vesham · 07/31/10, 12:52 AM

New changes to the class masteries:

Enhancement - Increases all elemental damage done by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.

Divis0R · 08/02/10, 4:27 AM

Since I was able to do a bit of testing this week-end, I have more data. Also, since I've been shunned for having walls of text, I'll keep it short.

There will be no mana issue. Well, there will be if you spam AoE abilities and don't hit the target (PVP), but in the PVE scene, the mana usage and regain is pretty solid. You will be able to drop/re-drop totems, interrupt, throw an instant heal on yourself (Healing Wave) and keep your normal rotation without issues. The improvement I managed to spot is that there will be a very serious difference between single target dps and AoE dps. Both are sustainable, both look good, but you will need to switch totems and add/remove abilities from the rotation to be able to squeeze every little bit of dps.

I've ran around 20 minutes worth of dummy tests, tried both an AoE and a single target rotation, switching from single to multi and the other way around, and I didn't manage to dry myself out. Sure, there were moments when the mana pool hit the "under 1k" mark, but this was few seconds away from the SR cd, and when SR is up, mana goes up incredibly.

EDIT: The change to Enhancement Mastery solved the issue spotted by me. No need to cry "wolf!" when the wolf is dead.

Levva · 08/02/10, 6:01 AM

Originally Posted by Vesham

New changes to the class masteries:

Enhancement - Increases all elemental damage done by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.

This change to our mastery will make a huge difference, no more worries about will we have to only focus on ES or LB when we have gear stuffed with mastery stat. Now we have a chance of being more interesting and having to consider LvB when 5 MW and its off cooldown. This is welcome as it means a greater difference between an Enhancement Shaman that just bought the gear and mashes buttons and one who actually understands and can master the class.

Edit: Blue post "we have figured out a way to make Searing Totem attack your target, instead of a random and probably inappropriate target." (Source)

More good news.

Rouncer · 08/02/10, 2:15 PM

Originally Posted by Divis0R

Since I was able to do a bit of testing this week-end, I have more data. Also, since I've been shunned for having walls of text, I'll keep it short.

There will be no mana issue. Well, there will be if you spam AoE abilities and don't hit the target (PVP), but in the PVE scene, the mana usage and regain is pretty solid. You will be able to drop/re-drop totems, interrupt, throw an instant heal on yourself (Healing Wave) and keep your normal rotation without issues. The improvement I managed to spot is that there will be a very serious difference between single target dps and AoE dps. Both are sustainable, both look good, but you will need to switch totems and add/remove abilities from the rotation to be able to squeeze every little bit of dps.

I've ran around 20 minutes worth of dummy tests, tried both an AoE and a single target rotation, switching from single to multi and the other way around, and I didn't manage to dry myself out. Sure, there were moments when the mana pool hit the "under 1k" mark, but this was few seconds away from the SR cd, and when SR is up, mana goes up incredibly.

But, I've managed to spot another issue. That issue is "Mastery". It says "increases nature damage". Well, in the rotation I've put up, there was only one source of nature damage, and that was Earth Shock. Lightning Bolt will be used so infrequently that it can't be even considered as being part of the rotation. Basically, you will use FS while closing in, SS, LL, LvB(if MW is 3 or higher) and ES, while having Searing Totem down. MW will hardly ever hit 5 stacks before LvB ends it cooldown, and since FS will always be on target, it's better to go for a LvB crit instead of using LB with MW. The even point would be where LB non-crit gets very close to the LvB crit, due to mastery.

Some more tests will be made, to verify this. If they do verify my fears, then we'll have a very weak mastery, even with the 20% damage increase at 0 mastery.

Were you testing on a pre-made or a copy of your shaman? If your shaman did you reset all talents before copying to the test server?

If you didn't do all that then your data is skewed a bit and unreliable. Shamanistic Focus persists as a talent unless you are using a premade or don't have anything talented when you copy to the test server. Doesn't matter if it was only in one spec or not although it may not be present if you copied over while in a spec that didn't have that talent specced.

Easiest way to confirm is to do a bit of simple math. Earth Shock is 18% of base mana. Base mana at level 83 is 13997 so the shock should cost around 2500 mana, mine is a lot less then that.

Arzja · 08/02/10, 7:42 PM

Originally Posted by Rouncer

Easiest way to confirm is to do a bit of simple math. Earth Shock is 18% of base mana. Base mana at level 83 is 13997 so the shock should cost around 2500 mana, mine is a lot less then that.

You forgot to subtract the mana you gain from intellect. So our base mana at 83 is 11997. Which results in an Earth Shock of 2159 mana. Add in Convection and you get an Earth Shock costing 1943 mana, which is what mine costs. Just so people don't start thinking their mana costs are all messed up.

Personally I'm not seeing any mana issues myself unless I throw out a lot of heals though.

Rouncer · 08/02/10, 11:44 PM

My earth shock is 971 mana at level 83 so it sounds like something might be a bit bugged for my character. It's also something that others have been reporting along with the fix being what I mentioned about pre-mades or removing all talents before copying.

Levva · 08/04/10, 5:40 AM

Has anyone done any testing of how our crits work out. I'm thinking for the 4-6 weeks we will have patch 3.9 where we are still raiding ICC in particular, but obviously also for level 85 (I appreciate we cannot get to that level yet).

The way I see it we are losing intellect from gear and hence spell crit, this will therefore impact ED uptime. Can anyone provide feedback on any testing done to see how that pans out? It seems to me that our spell crit, ED uptime and therefore melee crit will be a lot lower with the changes. Is there any compensation? Has anyone pointed this out to Blizzard?

Rouncer · 08/04/10, 7:53 AM

Lava Burst easily makes up for the ED uptime, Hothgor has math on the DD forums showing that we will always want to use MW5_LvB for single target. He thinks that indicates a need for a cooldown reduction on lava burst so we won't have to wait on charges, my impression is that MW5 is going to end up being below SS and LL and UW so that waiting a second on the MW5 won't be an issue. Sim will probably be necessary to show who is actually right.

The increase in spellpower from taking mental quickness to 50% along with the loss of elemental fury means that the loss of spell crit isn't really such a big deal.

Edit - after thinking it over a bit more, I've decided that Hothgor is right on this one. Getting a string of lucky maelstrom weapon procs should be considered a good thing and not a point of frustration where you either waste procs waiting on LvB to get off cooldown or cast a suboptimal spell instead. I'm thinking now that they should just incorporate a cooldown reduction directly into Maelstrom Weapon. Something like this;

Maelstrom Weapon Rank 3
When you deal damage with a melee weapon, you have a chance (higher than rank 2) to reduce the cast time of your next spell with a base cast time of less then 10 seconds by 20% and to reduce the cooldown of lava burst by 0.5 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 30 sec.

Making it a pro-active reduction so if you cast with 4 stacks then the cooldown on lava burst is 6 seconds.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> [Shaman Feedback] MW and LvB vs LB is the thread and it's well worth a read.

Levva · 08/05/10, 11:36 AM

My initial thoughts on LvB with MW5 is that we may well end up with similar high MW5 proc rate and thus we will use LvB with MW5 when available, but if we hit MW5 and LvB is on cooldown then we will do a MW5_LB. ie: my gut feeling is that using a MW5 stack asap will still be desirable, the choice will be LvB if its off CD (or almost off CD) vs LB.

There might even be a finesse, where the ED uptime risks dropping off if you don't wait and so it MAY pan out that we should wait on a MW5_LvB if LvB is ALMOST off CD and will come off CD before ED drops. ie: it might be better squeezing in something else if ED will drop off in 1.5-2.5 seconds. Then using the MW5_LvB to keep it up if LvB has 1-2 sec left before its off CD.

With an 8 sec LvB and a 10 sec ED duration and typical MW5 stack being sub 7 seconds (this might be different at lvl 85) then it seems to me managing the timing of the CDs may be really tricky.

davek · 08/05/10, 12:45 PM

Bunch of changes that are applicable to Enhancement in the new Beta build.

We start off with: "Searing Totem now prefer to target enemies that are afflicted by your Flame Shock or Stormstrike effects.", which turns target swapping to take advantage of Searing Flames + Imp LL on a fight like Putricide into the hideously convoluted mess of landing one of the former on the burst target and then re-dropping Searing Totem - hoping that your SS and/or FS on the boss doesn't relatch the Totem and it instead grabs your new one. If this isn't spec dependent - ie: FS for Ele and SS for Enh - then an interesting question to be answered is: "does it roll against every existing buff/dot when the totem drops?", because that could make getting Searing Totem where we want it really messy.

Ancestral Knowledge has been taken behind the barn; in it's place is Acuity which increases all Critical Strike values by 1/2/3% (the WoWTal has it as 5/10/15 - one assumes this is a just not properly updated yet and still using AK values).

Improved Fire Nova has been moved to Tier 3 - with Call of Flame as a pre-req - and is now out of range even if you wanted to burn mana and push that button for a burst AoE fight. If it makes it through to Cat, we would likely have to fall back on the Glyph if that's what required.

Reverb is back in Tier 2 Elemental for PvP folks.

Hex now lasts one minute which, presuming they don't throw a 1.30 cooldown on it at some point - means we can actually keep Elementals (with the addition of the Banish-esque spell whose name I can't recall), Beasts and Humanoids locked down in Cataclysm.

Static Shock now only procs from PS, SS, or LL but the proc rate has been correspondingly increased to 15/30/45% to compensate. Which, essentially means it's another embue to proc from those attacks now. Question in the air: does/can it proc from both hands on a SS?

Finally, they've added a talent that's called Totemic Reach to Tier 2 Enhancement that increases the range of our Totems by 15/30%. I'm sure someone else here has a more appropriate comment for that than I could....

Rouncer · 08/05/10, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Levva

My initial thoughts on LvB with MW5 is that we may well end up with similar high MW5 proc rate and thus we will use LvB with MW5 when available, but if we hit MW5 and LvB is on cooldown then we will do a MW5_LB. ie: my gut feeling is that using a MW5 stack asap will still be desirable, the choice will be LvB if its off CD (or almost off CD) vs LB.

There might even be a finesse, where the ED uptime risks dropping off if you don't wait and so it MAY pan out that we should wait on a MW5_LvB if LvB is ALMOST off CD and will come off CD before ED drops. ie: it might be better squeezing in something else if ED will drop off in 1.5-2.5 seconds. Then using the MW5_LvB to keep it up if LvB has 1-2 sec left before its off CD.

With an 8 sec LvB and a 10 sec ED duration and typical MW5 stack being sub 7 seconds (this might be different at lvl 85) then it seems to me managing the timing of the CDs may be really tricky.

When working out your MW stacking speed keep in mind that we won't be stacking haste rating in Cataclysm. It's losing that bonus 30% to the melee portion and the 3% straight haste raid buff that affected everything multiplicatively is also gone. Agility will be worth 2 AP + melee crit so it is going to be the one to stack once we cap what needs to be capped.

So figure on maybe 5% max haste in raiding trim. Then decrease spell and melee crit substantially. I'm figuring on entering raiding at around 15% melee crit and 7-8% spell crit unbuffed when looking at the rating requirements. Combined it should have our stacking rate at around 9 or 10 seconds when we enter the first raid zone.

Then when you look at the damage figures for the spells versus the melee attacks and include that new static shock change, MW5_anything should be around the middle of the priority list. Meaning we should be hitting it around every 10 seconds or so so the cooldown on LvB shouldn't be a problem except when lusted or when we get lucky. Which is why I like Hothgor's idea of a cooldown reduction tied directly to MW so that when we get lucky it doesn't feel frustrating.