After browsing the Rogue forums I'd been expecting the WF totem nerf.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Questions for Devs about Rogues.

I guess we'll have to wait and see how they buff us. This could be a step in the right direction for pvp as we will be less reliant on a totem we might not be able to use.

This was just posted on MMO-C (Beta build 13066). I'm assuming this means that it applies to Fire Nova now as well. The real question is if it applies to totems too. Hopefully the build will be deployed on the Beta servers soon.

They didn't specify that it was strictly instant spells that do damage, an instant GHW for 75% mana in pvp would be spectacular.

Unless they changed it, instant GHW is free for us anyway, as Maelstrom Weapon also affects the cost by 20% per charge, so far it still does so on the PTR, can't talk about the beta, though-

Well, the current version of Mental Quickness on Live works that way, reducing the mana cost of our instant spells (including Totems and Fire Nova, but not the MW5 spell) by 6%. So we can assume that this will be the same effect, just with a much larger number.

Edit: Patch is now active at Beta and it works like I thought. I have 25565 mana and a Fire Nova now costs 1288 and a Magma Totem 1054. Also the bugs with Flametongue's damage on hit and with Totemic Recall got fixed. Both work now again.

Edit: Some spells don't cost any mana at all now for us because of the reduction: Purge, Earthbind Totem, Grounding Totem and both Elemental Totems

Has anyone found a working shock and awe, or an alternative to this mod for cataclysm? Or, is everyone just using power auras or something like it for cooldown tracking?

Has anybody taken a look at how the fire elemental is working in the Beta? I hav a couple of questions on it:

1) Has the stats been updated for level 85? With LK, the FE was still using level 70 stats a good portion into the expansion. Hopefully this doesn't happen again, but better to call it out to Blizz if they missed it again.
2) How is the Fire Elemental's mana pool working? I know in Live, 80% of their mana regen was coming from Judgement of Wisdom, which isn't an option in Cataclysm. Is the FE mana starved now? Do they just have a massive mana pool now, or are they using some other mana regen mechanic? Honestly, I'm not even certain why in the world they have a mana pool, since they are already on a cooldown mechanic.

Has anyone confirmed is Searing Flames is still bugged in that there can't be two stacks of it from two different Shaman on the same mob? I haven't been able to find another Enhancement Shaman to help me test that on Beta.

I checked it pretty recently and it was definitely still bugged then.

It's even worse currently on the PTR, it doesn't even fire bolts, just sits there helplessly.

/edit Ok after some further testing, it doesn't seem to want to hit Target Dummies, but does hit other hostile targets. Need to do some further tests to see if it just doesn't go for neutral targets, or if it's just Target Dummies.

/edit2 Seems it's only Target Dummies that it refuses to fire at, it had no qualms firing at Jotun The Curse Bearer (elite neutral mob in Dragonblight). Apologies if I caused any panics with this post.

Fire elemental totem has exhibited that same behavior for quite a while now on live. I haven't tried searing on live to know what it does, but as its the target dummy I guess it doesn't matter that much.

Levva, I like EP ratings and find them very useful and think they will end up being very useful in Cataclysm just as they were in Wrath. They are an advanced value that does lack precision and that many use incorrectly. Still it does allow people to easily talk about their stat value shifts more coherently and it can be useful to help identify trends in stat value changes. Graphing functions are better but for us to talk about them still requires something and EP fills that role pretty nicely

As for the ratings from what I can hit is the most valuable but, once you get past the melee special cap, it's still barely more then half the value of agility, which actually is exactly what I was expecting with the changes. Following hit is going to be expertise and mastery but which is going to be more valuable is a bit up in the air at the moment but I think expertise will end up being a little bit better.

We are still talking about what is going to happen with the TTT article and how we are going to deal with the shaman forums to make things easier for our more novice visitors.

Dual Wield does not affects spells.
Draenei racial still exists but it is a personal buff only.
Hit rating is a Blue gem now

This is how I think the new rules are going to end up with reforging and how it works.

- All gem slots will be loaded with agility except to capture a significant socket bonus
- Significant socket bonuses that need yellow will use Agility + Mastery (Adept) gems
- Agility + Hit (Glinting) will cover the meta requirements if there is no upgraded version of a nightmare tear

Reforging
- Can only reforge one rating stat.
- It can't be reforged into a rating stat that already exists on the item.
- Resilience can NOT be reforged

- If item has no hit rating then reforge haste rating or critical strike into hit rating
- If item has hit rating then reforge haste rating or critical strike into expertise rating
- If item has hit rating and mastery then reforge mastery into expertise
- If item has expertise rating and mastery then reforge mastery into hit rating

Going over either the spell hit cap or the expertise cap should be avoided.

For those curious to start playing with the 2.06 ALPHA* version of the sim I loaded up my current Beta stats and attached them to this post. I haven't reforged too much yet and my trinkets are much better the two I listed but until we get trinkets into the sim those at least give a proper impression for trinket strength. My current trinkets, one is a chance on casting a harmful spell to increase spellpower by 1926 for 15 seconds (Stump of Time) and the other is a Use giving 1605 agility for 20 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown (Unsolvable Riddle).

I'm using PvP helm and glove for the 2pc and for the meta socket so pve geared stats of equal ilevel should be much better.

*Keep in mind that while Ziff is doing a phenomenal job it is still an ALPHA version so there is much wrong with it at the moment. It definitely isn't handling lava lash properly yet and the GUI will report you as being over the expertise cap even when you are not. Also we don't have proper armor values for level 85 bosses yet either which will skew some things too.

Interesting you suspect we shouldn't cap spell hit? That would be just as well as 1742 is a massive amount of a stat to try to achieve.

On EP values, I do understand where you are coming from however can I put in a PLEA that we do NOT use them for trinkets. We know from empirical testing with the sim throughout Wrath that using EP numbers with trinkets was just meaningless. For comparing where you might want to go with gemming/reforging it has a place. For comparing two trinkets or tier bonuses EP values are just utterly meaningless.

I wouldn't mind if the TTT had sections on EP values explaining how to use them successfully, I'd even write it for you. However when it comes to trinket and set bonus comparisons we need to get people to understand that with the complicated proc types of trinkets today that EP values have no place and they need to use the sim.

I found a rather odd bug today involving talented UE-F and FS (build 13117). I tested FS damage baseline, with UE-F, with 1/2 Elemental Weapons UE-F then with 2/2. I clicked off FT after using UE to take the extra spell power gain from it when talenting into Elemental Weapons out of the equation. Here are my numbers;

DD:
1461
UE 1752
1/2 1826
2/2 1899

DoT:
547
UE 655
1/2 710
2/2 683

Elemental Weapons with UE-F works on the FS DoT now, but as you can see with 1 point the DoT is at 130% while at 2 points its at 125% when it should obviously be the opposite. I made a bug forum post for it here.

Also, once again I cannot find any other Enhancement Shaman on Beta to save my life. If someone gets a chance could they see if Searing Flames makes two stacks yet? Thanks ahead of time.

I'm not sure about capping spell hit but considering the strength of agility as a stat I doubt it will be the priority it is for us now. <EDIT> Just to clarify since people might be misconstruing this, capping spells is going to be our highest priority, it just won't be worth giving up agility to get it done.

I can agree about trinkets and tier bonuses. I never used EP for those and just always stuck to dps increases for them, well sometimes for trinkets but never for tier bonuses. I don't even know where I would start trying to work out a EP type comparison between set bonuses.

Currently I'm decked out in 346 gear and what I did was to reforge for hit and expertise with 2 30 hit gems for socket bonuses. Everything else is either 35 agility or alg/mastery.

Currently sitting on 1320 hit rating and 454 expertise.

Looking at the tier set and some of the raid vendor gear hit should come quite naturally with can be forced giving up crit/haste.

This of course is just based on current gear in game

Edit: Brynmor if you're on Mekka, feel free to pop me (Bondy or Bondytank - Alliance)

I've been playing around on the PTR since it looks like we're getting ready to release, and I don't know if I'm just "doing it wrong", or if my dps should be so much lower. Since searing totem won't attack a dummy, I tested my dps on a live dummy with no fire totem up and got 6.5k dps. Hopped over to the ptr and I'm only just hitting over 5k.

I've read through the thread and haven't really seen too much conversation about this, the only thing I picked up along the way is that we'll no longer be stacking haste in cat, back to stacking ap through AGI, would regemming all my haste make that much of a difference?

Yes, once you include the damage boost from consuming searing flames stacks with lava lash as well as the boost to the totem's own damage.

Thanks, I dropped agi in pretty much everything and it bumped my dps up to about 5.8k, so searing should make up the rest. What about reforging? I've been messing around with it, the first thing i tried was converting all the haste I could to mastery but that didn't really seem to make much of a difference.

Did you remember to go to the trainer and learn mastery?

I tried the same thing: spell hit capped, 26 expertise, agi in everything. This put me a little over the DPS I've seen in live. Then I tried reforging all of my haste (and some crit) to Mastery. I added ~380 mastery rating, but the change appeared to be a complete wash. I also tried out beta 7 of enhsim 2.0 and the changes also appear to even out there too.

You're able to match the dps you get on live? The closest I've gotten is 500 dps less, when you tried it was searing totem attacking the dummy or not (when I tried the ptr out not long after it went live it was, hasn't been working for awhile now though).

Edit: Yeah, I definitely did train for mastery, went back on to double check