Hi, I'm Wûtz, I'm an Enhancement Shaman and I'm a PvPler. *windfury-wave*

(Joined WoW BC pretty late thus got the Season1 + PvP gear and the Season3 helmet and the gladiator weapons, beat a full Arena2 geared Hunter dmg-wise in Karazhan. Daily quest area PvP. Some 2on2 and 3on3 Arena, unfortunately not with the optimal build (I duo'd with a Disc Priest and a Ret Pala, my 3on3 team was Warrior + Priest. etc. pp.)

I put my account to a freeze a few months ago to join the Warhammer Online beta and will soon return to WoW (when WotLK releases or earlier [note to self: DON'T donate 2,500g to your former guild when you think you are leaving the game! Just DON'T! Ever! ;( ]). After spending some time with the new talent trees, I'm currently considering two builds.

(1) offensive build 11/60/0.
Max PvP damage, more relying on my healer, additional damage through improved lightning shield (+15% dmg, +3 orbs). High burst damage.

(2) Support-oriented build
Additional snare (Imp. Fire Nova Totem), ability to heal myself or others in emergencies (Eye of the Storm talent) - at the cost of Guardian Totems and improved shields. More durability, can stay longer in-fight (?).

Could you comment on those PvP-wise? Which spec would you prefer, and why? Thanks!

In addition to what Berg mentioned, we'll also have elemental focus working with the flame shock/lava burst synergy, so once you get a rotation going, a large number of our shocks and maelstrom casts will be focused through this talent.

All of our regen is through SR still, so that is what is going to limit our mana consumption, at least more than how large our mana pool is to begin with. Plus holy pallies will be judging (with the range bonus as well) for the haste bonus, so we should have JoW more than we do now (without a ret or prot pally in the raid).

This really isn't a good thread for PvP discussions. Just a quick thought though, Maelstrom Weapon might have reduced pvp viability because of resil. Plus, flame shock is not a good pvp shock. Generally Earth shock or Frost shock is a better use of that timer.

It strikes me that the change to Maelstrom weapon to allow insta casting heals as well as offensive spells would make for a useful PvP utility build, going 13 deep in resto for dispel resistance. With spellpower now as a unified stat from Mental Quickness, and MQs mana reduction potentially applying to the healing mana cost for a total of 11% reduction.

Everyone is assuming that

1) We are looking at balanced items. Diminishing returns on items which have very heavily stacked stats will limit min/maxing. But this means in balanced items we WILL end up with int AND agi together. Depending on the level of dimishing returns thats not necessarily a bad thing.

2) We are assuming the same or close to the same values in item budget. This is the big flaw IMHO. It makes sense with the combinations of crit hit and haste that the ibudget costs of these WILL go up. Which means regualr stats and AP will have more relative value in a purely melee environment (rogue/kitty gear comes to mind). If I were on the itemdesign team I would be putting more into Agi and AP for those sets, and soemwhat less into crit. You could then raise the agi/crit ratio for druids and rogues to bump their melee crit.

Assuming this to be the case, you will see less crit on rogue gear than mail, but more agi and AP. the mail gear for hunters and shammies would have more crit because of the types of ratations involved, but both classes would have a higher agi-> crtio ratio (which is what we have seen in the beta).

But obviously haste/hit/Crit/AP alone is not an option due to diminishing returns, so the mail will have Agi and int (hopefully in like a 2:1 ratio) to further bump the melee and spell crit, and to add AP and mana as needed. The key here is to balance the int (which is less useful when mana>0) so that shammies AND hunters both have similar mana usage. This will allow the int levels to be balanced in the gear to keep mana >0 and make the gear equally useful for both classes.


The value of agi/crit/int/AP can be debated all day long, but until we know the base item budget costs for these (Im assuming crit will change, and probably AP as well) we wont KNOW which one is better.


One last thing, agi vs int, I think the person who posted that above 30% int may have more value was thnking that with the very high 40 agi/1% melee crit value we have now (instead of 25 in BC) that the relative gains from melee crit % may be pretty close to the spell crit+ mana we gain from int. Witht eh FS/Malestrom/LvB autocrit that thinking may not be 100% true. Once again the numbers will play themselves out.

The problem is it's going to be very hard to get 5 crits on someone in 15 seconds. I don't want to say it's impossible, because there's always the chance that someone would be AFK and let you just wack away, but I wouldn't waste those 5 points on that chance. 5 points in toughness is probably a better use of points. The same is sort of true if you sub elemental. Elemental devistation is not a good pvp talent. The porbablility of you being in range of someone for 10 seconds, if you get a spell crit is so unlikely that 3 points in reduced damage from fire, frost and nature is a much better use of 3 talent points.

If this is like other stacking procs then that 15s refreshes itself after every crit. It is ridiculous to think you WOULDN'T see 1 crit every 15s, resilience or no. If you compare like gear to like gear, a shaman should have about a 14-18% crit chance in arenas.

Anyhow, to my knowledge Maelstrom Weapon has NOT changed to allow instant cast heals -- it was changed to ONLY allow instant cast damage. The talent tree on wow.com does not reflect the most recent in-game tree -- the one on wowhead et al does. If there is a disconnect between Blizzard's documentation and the game, the game is always correct.

Besides with the increased spell crit chance and with the new haste associated with a windfury totem, shaman will probably be running around with a fast offhand with flametongue (or maybe frostbrand) imbued on it. Which will hit much more frequently, allowing for more crits (per unit time) and so increasing the uptime of Maelstrom Weapon.

I am in the slightly odd position of being able to build a car....... yet rather unsure how to drive it.

Thanks to the folks on this forum (particularly Toots) I've added Shaman support to my simulator...... including support for most WotLK mechanics. But....... I'm uncertain how to drive it.

This is the priority list I am currently using:

actions=windfury_weapon/auto_attack/strength_of_earth_totem/grace_of_air_totem/shamanistic_rage/stormstrike/lightning_bolt-maelstrom_5/flame_shock/earth_shock/lightning_shield

"windfury_weapon" puts on the weapon imbue.... obviously, this will only get executed once

"auto_attack" merely starts the main/off hands swining (or "restarts" if you put a non-instant-cast spell in the rotation)

the "maelstrom_5" qualifier says to invoke the spell (LB in this case) only if the buff has reached a 5-stack

Would someone mind offering a good WotLK action "priority list"? Assume that conditional-logic of any kind could be used to qualify the specific actions.

Also, an armory link to someone who understands enhancement itemization would be very helpful.

Thanks!

I think what you're asking is which abilities contribute the most DPS and in what order.

Stormstrike is first, because it has a good chance to proc windfury, and this will remain our primary DPS cycle.

Maelstrom would be next, because the spd conversion (and, eventually, the auto crit from LvB) will be the highest; also, we want to expend the charge so we can start building the next one.

Then Shocks, alternate flame and earth

Then lightning shield.

Then Searing.

Then SR (every 2)

Then totem refreshes (every 2).

Ok... As I've previous said... Why in the hell would you even think of that? Only hybrid classes benefit at all from that, and even then, it's not an "OMG WE"RE OVERPOWERED NOW" increase. There is no way they're going to increase the itemization points for it considering all the pure physical or caster classes would essentially get nerfed, and why would they want that?

Thanks! That was exactly what I was looking for.

One clarification question:
Totem refreshes are Strength of Earth, Windfury, Mana Spring?

EDIT: Removed lazy question.

Please mate, just read this thread before repeating old questions.

Wouldn't it be:

SS
Mael
FS
LvB (if full mael)
CL (if full mael and no FS up)
LB (if full mael and no FS or LB)
SR
Totems


Assuming they fix the swing timer of course.

If they peel you with a 4 stack just cast the spell, very hard to interrupt a 0.4 second cast, and then shift to GW and get back in the chase.

you have a point about nerfing the pure classes, but how can you NOT think this wont create a problem with hybrids? It would essentially mean that pallies and shammies get double the bonus per item point. Druids not so much since they cant cast much in kitty and bear.


so for the same cost as today I am getting increase in my spell hit/crit/haste AND my melee spell hit/crit/haste.


I suppose that you might argue that since you can only do one thing at a time its not that huge of a bump, and you may be right. But it would not suprise me at ALL if bliz did change the costs.

My apologies. I got lazy. Trying to cover -all- the classes in the sim makes for a crap-ton of reading.
Still.... No excuse for being lazy. Question removed from post........

FS should always be up (see prev. post re: mana util, 5 stack should happen at most once every 8s and either way the autocrit means it's worth waiting the stack until LvB is up)

Why would we ever cast chain lightning in single mob situations? The reason elementals add CL into the rotation is for the faster cast time; a single LB will get more out of our spell damage.

Finally: I'm guessing even if they DON'T fix the swing timer issue, we'll still be using Maelstrom unless we do massive amounts of offhand damage. A swing timer like quartz can be used to minimize the MH penalty of the reset.

Also there was no competitive Arena systems back then that would be ruined by introducing new talents without the proper levels and skills required to balance them.

I really doubt we'll be seeing the new talent trees before Wrath.

What? Arena is going to be "ruined" sometime, no matter what, whether by folks leveling to 71 and no longer being competetive or by the patch. Again: the IT cost of releasing both the expansion and the newest patch on the same day, not to mention the time sink of everybody respeccing, means that the value of an early patch is greater for everybody. Arena folks can go cry on the wow forums; they're going to anyway.

There would also be either a Searing Totem (every 60 sec) or Flametongue Totem (every 120 sec).

I doubt we'll be using Flametongue. Remember: we have 20 yd totems now. The only folks in range will be other melee types, of whom only shamans and paladins can use the buff, and for us 84 spell damage does not out perform the DPS of Searing.