Sydane

The much vaunted "complexity" that was lost was the ability to slip in an extra lightning bolt while Lava Burst was on cooldown. That's it, that's all that has been lost. Now you wait a bit longer for an instant LB cast to come up while doing exactly the same thing you were doing otherwise. This is not a complicated game. It will never be a complicated game. It is fun. You stay out of the fire, you push a couple of buttons, you plug some numbers into a spreadsheet, and you succeed.

Those of you on the bleeding edge get there by figuring out encounter mechanics far more so than character mastery, and even that is often as much brute force and strength of will as anything. Quite frankly, the guys coding the sims have contributed more to improvement of the shaman class than all the rest of us put together times a hundred, and no amount of dick shaking, asinine posts, yelling at the devs, or claiming how you want things to be is going to change that. How about we all go back to playing Blizzard's class and quit pretending we're more important than we really are.

Empathy does not imply approval.

 

Enervate

I don't want it to be complicated necessarily, I just want it to be interesting. The way it stands now it's hardly different from what I'm doing on live and and I'd like it to be different. Doing Loatheb on beta before all these changes was a hellaciously fun orgy of buttonsmashing, and me being the way I am, I'd love every fight to be that way, including having to move out of the proverbial fire.

 

Toots Hepcat

Maelstrom Weapon *IS* a change to the way we play, no matter what it triggers, and it can't be macroed. So's wind shock. Twisting is a total of 12 actions per minute; lava lash and faster SS ALONE are 11.5 actions per minute. No matter what the MW proc rate, you will be doing more than you are now.

What's with all the macro hate? Are you telling me you don't have FS & ES macroed right now, or that you don't have WFT and GOA macroed together? Is using a timer mod that much better than macroing?

Seriously -- if you're looking for a class where playing exactly right matters, try playing a warrior. It is genuinely hard to find a great arms warrior because optimum DPS requires a strong sense of timing.

 

Enervate

I have a twisting macro. It's the only castsequence macro I've ever used or will use. I'm glad 3.0 is coming soon so I won't have to use it anymore. And macro'ing your shocks is idiotic.

 

slant

Once we've determined a mathematically optimal rotation, why would you feel it's "idiotic"? You really hit four separate buttons to drop totems every single pull?

I agree with Sydane in that the complexity was strictly limited. It wasn't about complexity, dropping those big LvBs was fun.

 

Enervate

Idiotic was a bit harsh.

I'd rather just use two hotkeys for them in case flame shock resists, etc.

 

Bai

Someone buy Sydane a beer, please.

I've only been keeping up with this thread every other day or so, because of the lack of mature conversation. Waiting, then checking this thread, skimming through the short posts that mostly all say the same thing; to finally find some researched either by Sim or by Beta, level 70 or 80 (any new information to bench our classes changes is good) is what this thread should be about. The Blizzard forums are where the "general players", like warriors who for fronted the Nerf to our Flurry, post to whine and cry about changes they don't feel are correct for "their" class.

As Sydane noted, and even GC on _many_ posts; Blizzard takes constructive feedback (which has been few and far between on an overall assessment) and uses what they feel is workable into BLIZZARD's game. Not into "our" game. We play their game and thats the bottom line.

On a topic more tied to this thread: The suggestion that MSW should function slightly like a melee version of Lightning Overload was a fantastic idea. Having it still scale with Crit, maybe not on a 100% level but something close to it (It has to be controlled somehow because a PPM is going to be unpredictable and sporadic. A chance on hit that is on beta now is going to favor FAST(er) weapons. A 100% chance on Crit will justify gear too sternly.); and having the instant cast DAMAGING Spell do partial damage with less (obviously because of less damage) or No Threat, would be a big talent and fluff push to make Elemental and Enhancement more like the polar opposites of each other. Ranged vs Melee. But obviously still all contained in the same class.

Balancing healing spells into all of that I think still comes at an awkward impasse due to it's impact on PvP.

All of the new deep talents are redefining the classes in the game. MSW, more so than our new "Dps Timer and situational party saving" Wolves, is the new mechanic for Enhancement. The ability to cast instant anything is very powerful. Especially being a melee based "support" class. As that word and reference in general to Shamans is slowly fading away, (Support) any changes that are pushing our DPS into a more frontal limelight and not so much a "We need you for the other real DPS to do their job," are all great improvements.

The "Selfless Buffer" bonus may or may not come our way; but really...with everything else that has changed for the better, do we _really_ need it? Taking everything in that is in our arsenal now, and what is yet to come (weeks more of Beta patches and updates,) the overall attitude should be more towards adapting and understanding what Blizzard is giving us instead of trying to find all the pitfalls first.

 

mek

I'd just like to remind everyone to think before they post. Sydane, we are in beta right now, and classes and specs are very much under construction; believe it or not, Blizzard values discussion and feedback on their changes and nothing is set in stone. If you are not interested in discussion and feedback, maybe you should not visit this thread.

Bai, I'm not sure what the point of your post was, but you said effectively nothing other than getting your facts wrong: MSW has already been changed to a PPM mechanic. It does not favour faster weapons (as of next build).

Do we "need" a selfless buffer bonus on Unleashed Rage? Well, do we "need" to play this game at all? The real question is, will the talent have any use in a 25man raid setting as it stands? The answer is no.

 

Skreekins

I admire your optimism, but I honestly do feel like a lot of the negativity and harshness that is coming from the shaman community right now is somewhat justified. Whether or not you believe the supposed history of shaman getting continuously screwed over or not, this beta has not been kind to us.

I agree with you in that we need to look more on the positive side. Some really great things have happened for shaman in the beta. Unfortunately, as much as I want to sing Blizzard's praises they are certainly making it difficult. While this is Blizzard's game, we as subscribers are fueling their billion dollar income. Their goal as developers should be to make the player base happy which will retain subscriptions as well as entice new subscribers, not just do whatever they want and disregard the player base.

Their job is impossibly difficult and I wouldn't want millions of people chasing me with pitchforks. But when the player base gets together and presents blizzard with a valid concern, such as totem killing macros, and offers a myriad of possible solutions and the ultimate fix is the stoneclaw thing, it really looks like they aren't trying very hard. We needed a complete tear down and rebuild like the paladin judgment/seal system thing. We got [Shaft]. People should be allowed to vent their frustrations to the developers as we do technically supply their paychecks.

This is all a moot point though. Useless Post Infraction incoming

 

boneblood

Sorry to jump on an older post....

Glyph of Earth Shock

Yes, it only affects Earth shock - but that's the only shock in our rotation now. You can pick up UR after all ;-)


EDIT: Heh - just spotted my error (reduces global cooldown). Ignore this post.

 

boneblood

I think the biggest problem with the developers is not their ability to absorb feedback. Their problem, at least for this patch, is time itself.

Blizzard don't usually deadline releases, choosing (wisely) to wait till it's in a good enough state. Having a major patch out on live in 2 weeks with an expansion following some 4 weeks later doesn't give them time in beta to implement new talents based on feedback. Riptide is an obvious culprit of this, as they have admitted it wont even have an in-game effect till after the expansion.

The class needs a going over and time devoted to our class defining ability: Totems. They have admitted this, too, wont happen. It really does appear to be 1 step forward, 1 step back.

I guess it's a matter of pressing on and providing as much feedback as we can - but people are within their rights to vent. They are paying customers.

 

Taowth

Yes and no boneblood, 4 weeks can be a good amount of time. The 3.0 patch isnt any different than updating the core to LK, while the expansion itself merely provides northrend & lvl 80 relevant data etc, then on release they just unlock it on the servers.
So the 3.0 patch doesnt really do anything to their ability to change things, it just means theres a bit more hassle in the update process, meaning theres much more time inbetween updates, rather than small patches changing a bunch of things they have to spread it out to larger patches changing a broad spectrum at once.
They can still make "major" changes even so close after release. Dont forget, shadowstep was introduced in 2.0.9.

 

• Philondra

I see a lot of posters here claiming that with the recent nerf to MW stacks not applying to Lava Burst that earth shock will now be the only shock in our rotation. Currently, the TTT tells us that flame shock is better damage than earth shock, but given that a lot of the surrounding mechanics have changed, I wanted to revist the math so that we could determine if the status quo holds up for WOTLK or if straight ES spam is the way to go.

Reference: Shaman: Enhancement

DISCLAIMER: I'm a translator, not a mathematician. Please double-check my math for obvious errors.

ASSUMPIONS:
* ES10 does 845-895 (avg. 870) damage and has a coefficient of 0.42.
* FS9 does 500 damage upfront and 556 damage over 12 seconds.The coefficient of FS is 0.60.(EDIT: fixed)
* We are in a sandbox environment with no resists, crits, or glyphs.
* We are using a 20/51/0 talent setup including 3/3 elemental weapons (+30% spell damage from FT weapon). As we are only comparing the damage of a single FS vs a single ES, reverberation is not relevant at this time, and as we are ignoring crits for the time being, Elemental Fury is likewise not taken into consideration.
* We are dual wielding weapons using WF/FT.
* The enhance shaman is using a melee gear setup, with 3.5k attack power (yielding 1050 spell power from gear, plus 274 from Imp FT Weapon = 1324 spell power)
* 100% Stormstrike uptime (+20% nature damage)
* The CoE+Malediction effect (or its equivalent) (+13% spell damage)


Single ES: (0.42 * 1324 + 870) * 1.33 = 1896.69 damage
Single FS: (0.60 * 1324 + 500 + 556) * 1.13 = 2090.95 damage

Without crits, a single FS will still outdamage a single ES if the DoT is allowed to run its duration.
EDIT: However, the difference is slightly less than 200 damage, and it would appear that at any reasonable amount of crit ES will overtake FS, making ES spam superior to the current practice of weaving FS and ES. See below posts.

 

boneblood

Providing your co-efficients are correct (can a beta tester confirm those?) then your conclusion is also correct.

However, since crit now effects both spell and melee (and the Thundering Strikes talent now does the same) then running with 25% crit is more than possible. Given that crit only affects the initial damage component of Flameshock, ES works out better.

As Rounced said:

Not a lot of difference, but ES's damage is all upfront. The DoT component of FS can be resisted even after the initial hit, so it's numbers will drop a little in a non-sandboxed environment.

 

Gurth999

The coefficients are wrong.

Flameshock's coefficient has been tested as 0.60, .21 initial and .39 on dot. Earthshock also is slightly more than .42 but that's not that important. As soon as you add any reasonable amount of crit (25% is almost a bare minimum with raid buffs and thundering strikes) earthshock will pull ahead. With 25% crit earthshock will already be ahead of flameshock with the sample spell power used.

<edit> Even scaling better on spell power flameshock will stay behind through more than 2000 spell power. If you scale up crit the lead just gets bigger.

 

• Philondra

Yeah, I saw Rounced's numbers earlier, but I was wondering the extent to which 25% crit is a reasonable estimate. Our melee crit will still be higher than our spell crit, given that we are going to be gearing for agility more than intelligence; the question is one of where exactly the spellpower and crit intercepts threshold lie, because Rounced's calculations show only a damage difference of ~1% even at a (relatively high?) spell crit rate of 25%. If we take the same spell power and assume only a 20% spell crit rate, then Flame shock drops from 2242 to 2206, but Earth Shock drops even more, from 2273 to 2181, and all of a sudden flame shock is back on top.

The numbers are very, very close either way, and I am not convinced that Earth Shock spam is superior to an FS/ES rotation. Glyph of Flame Shock *would* make Flame Shock the clear winner even at higher crit rates (one additional tick = an extra 334 damage), but the overall DPS gain from that Glyph is very, very low and is not worth using in its current state.

EDIT: Thanks for point me to the coefficients, Gurth. I was going off the enhancement TTT coefficients, which are either incorrect or out of date. Looks like under the current mechanics flame shock has gone the way of the dodo.

 

Gurth999

25% crit should be a bare minimum in a raid. 10% scorch 3% ToW (or equivalent) 5% elemental oath (or equivalent) for raid buffs. 5% from thundering strikes would leave you needing to find 2% from gear/stats/base.

 

Rouncer

I used the wowwiki for the coefficients.

Spell damage coefficient - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Which they are showing as 15% on the initial Flame Shock hit and then 52% on the DoT.

Earth Shock no longer has a binary nature, no spells are binary anymore, so there is no need to be concerned on that front.

As for the Glyph are you trying to do a Flame Shock, Earth Shock, Earth Shock rotation? What would be the point considering you would be losing SO much to gain that one additional tick. Which would you give up the 8% additonal stormstrike debuff (which was not included in my original post so that's another 8% in Earth Shock's favor if used) or the 1% melee and ranged crit from Strength of Earth (raid ain't gonna like you there) or maybe the 2% spell crit from Flametongue or the 40% increased AP to Windfury weapon (not really sure yet which is better but I know I will definitely using at least 1 of those).

So I'm a bit confused what exactly you are trying to show with your post? If you saw my earlier post what was the point in posting your little bit of sandbox math, especially without taking the time to even get your coefficients right.

Crits make Earth Shock better then Flame Shock, 25% crit rate in a WotLK raid is very low. You should be doing at least 35% crits (50+% is actually more likely) with all the changes and with the new buffs you will have access to. Crits are also 200% and will cause a much greater disparity between the 2 spells and that is all in Earth Shocks favor.

The hit rate will affect both Flame Shock and Earth Shock equally. Partial resists will also affect both of them equally which is why I didn't involve them in my little bit of math earlier.

If you are going to take the time to post something like that, at least have the courtesy to make sure that you are using the correct coefficients instead of just muddying the water with idle and incorrect speculation.


Just as an aside - this is from a combat log of a level 70 Brutallus with the new mechanics.

WOW Meter Online �*�兽数据在线 - More logs!!!!!!

note the crit rate of Earth Shock. I really don't think we will have any issues getting over 25% with the new raid buff mechanics in place.

 

• Philondra

Regarding the Glyph, I had mentioned in my original post that although it would make flame shock better, that in reality you would have to give up too much to use that glyph in its current state. I'm pretty sure that we're both in agreement that it's not worth using unless it were to be revamped.

Additionally, with regard to the coefficients, this forum's own TTT shows a .67 coefficient for FS; the elemental Shaman thread testing linked above shows 0.60; you have chosen WowWiki, which also shows 0.67. I originally did my calculations with 0.67 shown in the TTT but then redid them when it was pointed out that elemental shaman testing had shown that 0.60 was accurate. I'll do some coefficient testing again on the PTR this evening to double check. But if I was originally using the wrong coefficients, then it looks like you were too.

EDIT: Either way, it looks like flame shock would never outscale earth shock outside of a 5 man.

 

BigZ

So has anyone run the numbers on which glyphs will be most beneficial with the anticipated changes? For a raid Srength of Earth and...?

WF weapon
SS
FT Weapon

Which two first at 70 and then which one to add at 80?

 

Sprout

Regarding the whole FS/LvB thing, what I dont understand is why they did not take the simplest route to fix the fact that LvB wwas doing too much dmg. Just put elemental fury back up high in the elemental tree.

Poof, our dps goes down, LvB crits are not crazy high, and at the same time we become more melee dependant because ED uptime pushes melee crit.

 

Enervate

FWIW, I'm running with 27.83% crit unbuffed atm on beta, in mostly Naxx gear. 25% is easily attainable and 30% isn't too far off.

 

Rouncer

Won't know until they release the new version of Maelstrom Weapon and we get to see what they have chosen to set the PPM rate at.

More likely then not it will be SoE, SS and WF but won't be able to definitely prove that either way until we learn more about MW's mechanics.

Finally, just as a note to Philondra.

You said you read my post and in that post I clearly stated that crit and the 200% critical strikes from Elemental Fury played a large role in why Earth Shock would be superior to Flame Shock. Once you read that you came here and attempted to prove that I was wrong but did it without incorporating the critical strikes into your equations. That is very lazy and really unproductive. If you want to get involved in the conversation great, but at least have the common decency to attempt to add to the discussion instead of just muddying the waters with such a completely useless post.

 

Malan

I've never used a macro for shocks, twisting, or totem dropping. Nor a mod that automates any of it for me.

Way more than that easily achievable. I had a 41% crit rate on the paper doll in a 5man today with ED up, and I'm still wearing almost entirely my sunwell/BT gear at 80 still. I wouldn't be surprised that a properly geared shaman with Naxx gear might approach 50-60%.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Adremmalech

/bump