photon01

I believe for straight up raid DPS ( and i know it is missing 1 point in imp wep totems, no static or SR, and no spirit wolves running around) this spec will be the spec that makes us OP:
War Tools :: Talent tree WotLK - Test

duel axes and lots of shocks and mana, and different inscriptions we'll be able to add to our spells... sounds like shamans will finally be moved back to the IWTFPWNDU category. The glory of enhance shamans will RETURN! :P

 

artic

...Interesting spec, though elemental warding over imp fire totems?

Anyways not my cup of tea.

But hex looks very interesting. Sounds like it does nothing if they stand still, but is a major hassle to moving players. Perfect for shamans and more balanced than I originally thought it sounded like.

 

photon01

lol ya i missed that it had a stun on it, heres the updated
War Tools :: Talent tree WotLK - Test

 

Rhaegal

That looks to me like a very gimped spec.

You have given up:
- Shamanistic Rage, the main reason we don't have mana problems. Without this, you'll blow through your mana bar on long fights and have to choose between shocking and Stormstriking when you get the mana. Not a good situation to be in.
- Static Shock, a decent source of steady DPS, probably at least 40 DPS at level 70 with the talents already in the tree.
- Spirit Wolves, which admittedly we don't know how good or bad they are, but are at minimum some boost to personal DPS for 30 seconds, and most likely a noticeable boost to raid DPS for the duration as well.

In the process, you've picked up:
- 6% extra damage on a 2-second cast spell that we will never ever use as enhancement.
- Some fair amount of mana reduction on shocks through elemental focus.
- Shock DPS boost equal to your spell crit rate. This is probably about 15%. For a current enhancement shaman with our breakdown of damage abilities, this correlates to a barely over 2% increase in damage, or ~40 DPS if you're doing 2000 DPS without it.
- Minimal extra usefulness in rare AoE situations.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

• Smithist

It's silly to argue about what we think our mana use at 80 is going to be like, but I don't think it really matters. We already know how huge the mana returns from SR are, and Focus is shaping up to a nice boon to mana as well. They're both only one point each and the opportunity cost of those points is so low (fractions of a second off shock cds) it's be silly not to get them.

 

Killme888

But that few fractions of a second is what keeps the elemental subspec rotation so well synced. And it's not like shocks are the reason why elemental sub-spec's mana gets drained so fast, it's twisting totems. Without twisting, you can't even spend half of your mana pool right now before SR gets back up, even with the change to using lightning shield, and if WotLK does in fact prevent twisting, I see no reason whatsoever to waste a single point into elemental focus that could make your rotation smoother otherwise.

 

Pitbuller

Static shock can proc when you do damage. Can it proc off flame tongue, wf, shock, flameshock dot? or even from itself.
2.6 and 1.4 speed weapons perma flurry and 10% haste = 1.52 attack per second.
shock per 5s = 0.2 attack per second
SS per 8s = 0.25 attack per second
WF from mh 2*0.2*0.8*0.55(mh/s) = 0.176 attack per second
total: 1.52+0.2+0.25+0.176 = 2.146 attack/s
proc/s = 0.06 * 2.146 = 0.12876
With buffs and debuss LS hits avarage 1000 so 129dps from static charge.
If it can proc fs dot +30dps
if it can proc of itself +8dps
Definetly great talent and this will win in raid dps battle when SS charges are important.

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

Niche

blizzard has removed the ability for other things to proc from themselves before so even if it manages to make it past release it will eventually be caught and fixed.



War Tools :: Talent tree WotLK - Test

assumptions:

* rogues will prefer GoA over WF thus leaving the arms warrior as the only WF preferer meaning they lose 4 to 1 in a standard melee group.
* twisting is removed from the game.
* enhancement shamans will be able to be hit capped in melee and have a med-high (8-12%) casting hit rating due to hit rating changes. similar story with crit rate now on shocks through melee crit gear.

the build i'm anticipating being cookie cutter but with some freedom in elemental tree with the 2 points in warding and 1 point in focus. i don't see unless lava burst is huge dps why enhancement shamans would interrupt their melee to cast a 2 second shock so the lava burst talent doesn't look appealing. if this changes to instant cast 3/3 Call of Flame will be mandatory and shocks will change to FS/LB leaving the SS debuff for elemental shamans/boomkins or your lightning shield procs through static shock.

skipped ISR pvp toy very minimal pve usage. elemental focus should take care of our mana problems.

one thing i do worry about is with shocks becoming a higher % of our dps due to moving to elemental subspec and gaining more hit and crit from rating changes is our threat since spirit weapons does not reduce casted threat. just a guess here, but i'd say our threat will go up by at least 5-10%. more shocks, more hit/crit, unlimited mana, no twisting to interfere with shock timing.

 

Fearlezz

I think I will spec this way:

War Tools :: Talent tree WotLK - Potential Raid Dps Build

If you assume there will be no totem twisting, this should be the best raid spec imo (imp ghost wolf is for progression into the next talent tier, you could just put it into dodge or +int if you want)

 

Niche

see what i mean about my cookie cutter comment? i posted the same setup above. i'm actually surprised this thread made it this far without this build being linked.

 

Shinok

What follows here is my attempt to theorycraft regarding Static Shock. Looks to be a great talent for PvE and PvP assuming it doesn't have an internal cooldown on the offensive procs, and if the procs go off on all sources of damage and not just melee swings. I realize it's heavy on the assumptions and probably would have been better on an Excel spreadsheet, but I'm trying to approximate its usefulness. Looking for feedback as to the accuracy of my estimates:

For all calculations we assume 100% flurry uptime, a non-raid environment, 100% stormstrike effect uptime, no procs off lightning shield from shaman being attacked, Static Shock procs cannot proc themselves, and no hidden cooldown between Static Shock procs. It also assumes the shaman has Reverberation. These calculations do not count raid buffs/debuffs, and is meant to be a 'base' calculation for a solo shaman.

How Many Swings per 10 Seconds?

2.6 speed MH with WF:

-Assume 100% flurry uptime, becomes 2.0 speed. WF every 5 swings so WF every 10 seconds repeating.
-To simplify we do not put in 3-second rule into account.
-Every 10 seconds, you get 5 flurried swings and 2 WF swings.
-Every 10 seconds, you get 1.25 attacks from Stormstrike, which is down to an 8 second delay with new talents. We assume WF can proc on stormstrikes, every Stormstrike there is a 20% chance of a WF proc, so each stormstrike has an expected value of 0.40 extra attacks.

2.6 speed MH with Windfury total: 5 auto attacks + 2 WF swings + 1.25 Stormstirke + 0.4 Windfury Stormstrike Attacks
Total: 8.65 expected attacks per 10 seconds -- real number lower b/c of 3 second rule on windfury and the fact that 100% flurry uptime is impossible at normal crit rates.

Total if Offhand: Take away the 0.4 swing from stormstrike because your OH and MH can't proc WF on the same stormstrike due the 3 second rule, so it's only 8.25 expected swings per 10 seconds if the calculation is for the offhand.

1.3 speed OH with Flametongue:

-Assume 100% flurry uptime, becomes 1.0 speed. Flametongue procs as a separate attack with every attack. 10 auto-attacks plus 10 flametongue attcks for every 10 seconds on the offhand.
-Every 8 seconds, Stormstriking gives us an extra 2 attacks from the offhand, which normalizes to 2.5 attacks per 10 seconds.

1.3 speed OH with Flametongue total: 10 auto attacks + 10 Flametongue attacks + 1 stormstrike attack + 1 stormstrike Flametongue attack
Total: 22 expected attacks per 10 seconds -- real number slightly lower b/c of the fact that 100% flurry uptime is impossible at normal crit rates

Shocks:

-Every 10 seconds, you get 2 Earth Shocks if you have 5/5 Reverberation (reduces shock cooldown from 6 seconds to 5 seconds)
-If using a Flame Shock / Earth Shock rotation with 5/5 Reverberation, you get 2 shocks per 10 seconds and an extra 3.33 attacks per 10 seconds due to Flame Shock ticks

Totems:

-Every 10 seconds, you get 5 searing totem attacks, assuming Searing Totem can proc Static Shock.

Grand totals:

WF/WF and 100% Earth Shocks: 8.65 MH + 8.25 OH + 2 Shocks = 20.9 attacks per 10 seconds. (25.9 with Searing Totem)
WF/FT and 100% Earth Shocks: 8.65 MH + 22 OH + 2 Shocks = 32.65 attacks per 10 seconds. (37.9 with Searing Totem)

WF/WF and Flame/Earth Shock Rotation: 8.65 MH + 8.25 OH + 2 Shocks + 3.33 Flame Shock ticks = 24.2 attacks per 10 seconds. (29.2 with Searing Totem)
WF/FT and Flame/Earth Shock Rotation: 8.65 MH + 22 OH + 2 Shocks + 3.33 Flame Shock ticks = 38.0 attacks per 10 seconds. (43.0 with Searing Totem)

How much damage will a Lightning Shield Orb do in WotLK?

Things to take into account:

-Base damage of a Lightning Shield Orb
-Spell Damage from Mental Quickness (30% of AP = spell damage)
-Self-buffs modifying spell power (totems, shouts, unleashed rage)
-Spell damage from Mental Dexterity (1 int = 1 AP)
-Coefficient of Lightning Shield (1/3)
-Spell Damage from Static Shock bonus (3% spell damage increase when Lightning Shield is active)
-Talents from Improved Lightning Shield talent (+15% Lightning Shield damage)

The Calculation:

-Lightning Shield (Rank 11) - 895 mana, 380 nature damage.
-Huge assumption incoming: Assume that in WotLK at level 80, you'll have ~2000 AP unbuffed
-Assume 300 Intellect at level 80, converts to 300 AP. Remember the new Ancestral Fortitude now increases total Intellect by 6%. In this calc I just assume you have 300 int after the 6% bump.
-Unleashed Rage bumps the aggregate AP from 2300 to 2530 AP
-Flametongue *supposedly* adds X spell damage in WotLK, but we assume 0 for now since the value is unknown.
-Mental Quickness is 30% of AP, so 2530 * 0.3 = 759 spell damage
-Lightning Shield spell damage coefficient is accepted to be 1/3, so 759/ 3 = 253 extra damage per orb

With an assumed 2000 unbuffed AP, we project a shaman with UR will do 380 + 253 = 633 damage base.

We assume that LS bonus damage talents are additive but assume Stormstrike effect bonus is *not* additive with those talent bonuses:

-3% extra spell damage from static shock
-15% extra damage from Imp. Lightning Shield

633 * 1.18 = 747 damage per lightning shield after talents.

Stormstrike effect now lasts for 4 charges and is reapplied every 8 seconds, so more than enough charges for earth shocks and multiple lightning shield procs, assuming moonkin, elemental shaman, and rogues are not stealing your charges.

Formula to easily calculation LS damage with variable AP and intellect calculations:

LS Damage = [[(((AP + (Int*1.06)) * 1.1 UR * 0.3 MQ) + X damage from Flametongue) * 0.33 Per Orb] + 380 Base] * 1.15 Imp LS + 1.03 Static Shock * 1.2 Stormstrike

Reduces to:

LS Damage = [(((AP + Int*1.06) * 0.11) + FT/3) + 380] * 1.416

Marginal DPS Contribution from Static Shock:

[(((AP + Int*1.06) * 0.11) + FT/3) + 380] * 0.085 = additional damage per swing/shock/DoT tick from Static Shock

Final Calculation: [(2000 + (283 * 1.06) * 0.11) + 380] * 1.416 = per orb damage

896 damage per orb on a Stormstriked target

With a 6% chance to proc, this adds 53.76 expected damage to each attack/DoT Tick/Totem attack.

This also means if Searing Totem counts as a damage source for Static Shock procs, it adds 26.88 DPS.

Scenarios

See previous section for calculations of attacks per second. We divide by 10 to find out average 'attacks per second' in order to derive a 'damage per second' boost from Static Shock. Add 26.88 DPS for searing totem to each calculation if you want to count that.

WF/WF, Earth Shocks only, no Searing. 2.09 attacks per second * 53.76 damage per attack = 112.36 DPS from Static Shock procs, 139.56 DPS if counting Searing
WF/FT, Earth Shocks only, no Searing. 3.27 attacks per second * 53.76 damage per attack = 175.8 DPS from Static Shock procs, 202.68 DPS if counting Searing

WF/WF, Flame/Earth Shock rotation, no Searing. 2.92 attacks per second * 53.76 damage per attack = 156.98 DPS from Static Shock procs, 183.86 DPS if counting Searing
WF/FT, Flame/Earth Shock rotation, no Searing. 4.3 attacks per second * 53.76 damage per attack = 231.17 DPS from Static Shock procs, 258.05 DPS if counting Searing

Keep in mind shaman can uses maces now for a 5% chance at a 10% haste proc for 10 seconds, but for now I'm not going to calculate that because sometimes, even I get sick of these calculations.

Anyway, with an unbuffed shaman, Static Shock is adding a range of 112 to 258 DPS to a shaman's attacks. Calculations of course need to be done to see if the extra Static-Shock-attributed DPS from switching from WF/WF to WF/FT and ES/ES to FS/ES is worth the sacrifice in absolute DPS. (One could argue that putting a fast mace in the offhand or a fast fist in the offhand to trigger more weapon specialization procs would help mitigate the loss in DPS from having a slow OH, but that's a whole new analysis.) Anyway, this is very interesting and definitely a significant boost to DPS.

 

Toastradamus

I know that the patch notes only said that the elemental tree was ready for testing, which implies that the enhancement and resto specs will still see changes, but I can't help worrying about gear. Blizzard is obviously trying to homogenize and get specs/classes to share, and a lot of people are already saying that enhancement will want hunter gear now instead of rogue gear, and while that may be a step up for us it still isn't actually what we want, is it?

Hunter gear is very agility-heavy and they have practically no use for strength, but for us agility is just a weaker form of crit rating (much weaker in wotlk when rating gets us spell crit too). Unless something else changes for us we would still want all of that agility replaced with strength, no?

Hey, improvements are improvements, and I'd rather tool around in hunter mail than rogue leather, but I was (and still am) really hoping to get gear that truly fits us instead of settling for gear designed for someone else that sort of fits us. Unfortunately I don't see that happening (outside of tier pieces and the like) in the next expansion unless something changes to make us value agility as something more than just really crappy crit rating.

I guess they could make us really want dodge...

 

Niche

Nice post Shinok. One thing I saw from another thread was that balance druids have a chance (or maybe 100%) to apply a 10% nature damage debuff that can stack 3 times for a total of 30%. Now, the question is does that stack with SS? If it does nature could become a major player in raid magic damage, and could potentially make ES/ES the preferred choice instead of ES/FS rotations (although if ele shamans are able to consume our flameshock debuff with lava burst it should still be more dps overall to use ES/FS). 50% nature damage increase if both debuffs are up, which i'd just guess would be around a 60-80% uptime if the druid talent is a guaranteed debuff like imp. scorch, or 40-60% if it is a 33-66% chance to apply (also depends on duration which i haven't seen yet).

re: toast

I agree the stat mixing and converting is getting a bit ridiculous, but at least they are working on it. One way they could fix agility for us is to give us a higher coefficient, something that would equate it directly with crit rating or maybe slightly higher to offset its' inability to increase caster crit rating.

On a completely offtopic tangent, I think its exciting that it feels like our class is becoming essentially a battle mage capable of laying down the damage either melee or magic that reminds me of the first time I did Scarlet Stratholme and the fear those mobs created.

 

Rouncer

First off capitalize your "i"s. Just makes you look like a dumbass.

Re Balance Druids - 6% not 30%. The debuff is 2% and it stacks 3x. Keep up to date with the info before spouting it all over the place.

That little bit of incorrect information aside, please don't throw around numbers like that unless you are actually willing to sit down and pull out a calculator or a spreadsheet and figure out the potential realities instead of just typing out whatever hot air is dancing between your ears.

One last thing, Flame Shock has it's own debuff slot per shaman. Which would seem to imply that Ele Shaman won't be eating our Flame Shock ticks with Lava Burst but rather that they will need to cast their own Flame Shocks to take advantage of the guaranteed crits. Since Lava Burst has a cast time it probably won't find it's way into the Enhancement repertoire except as something to use if you get rooted and the target is out of melee range.

 

Niche

Or instead of being a Nazi you could point me to the post that says 2%. The post I saw said 2/4/6/8/10% with 5 talent points stacking 3 times. Perhaps this post was incorrect, but if it is, am I at fault for discussing it? No.

And my capitalization has no bearing on my intelligence. The moderater already gave me an infraction I could care less about. I've never capitalized when typing informally such as this informal forum. My posts are clear and easy to read so get a grip and deal with it. I'm going to try to capitalize from now on, but it's not in my nature so my apologies if it doesn't happen.

I'm not about to take the time to calculate things like uptime for talents that aren't final and are based only on conjecture. Last I recall this is a discussion forum, not a 'facts only' forum. The estimates are plausible enough for discussion so there it is.

Regrowth and rejuvenation also have their own slots per druid, but swiftmend can be used by any druid to consume the spell. Your point is not made by this argument. Warlock conflagrate specifically states 'your immolate', but so far Lava Burst does not. I didn't say that we would be the ones to cast Lava Burst, those would be from our elemental shaman friends, we would just provide the flame shock. We will have to wait to see if they restrict it to self only. Until then no answer can be sure.

 

Rouncer

Capitalization makes your post more readable and shows us the readers that you at least are willing to take the time to press the "shift" key when you wrote the post.

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t26297-d...ew_discussion/

Druid WoLK post - first post has the calculator

War Pirate :: Talent tree Druid

Look at the tooltip for Nature's Fury.

As for Lava Burst, don't you think it would be a little ridiculous for Elemental Shaman to not only mooch the charges from our Stormstrikes but also to steal the ticks from our Flame Shocks. Also what if there are 2 Enhancement Shaman in a raid, does the single Lava Burst eat all the remaining ticks of all the Flame Shocks. What if there are 10 Enhancement and 1 Elemental.....I hope you can see the reason why it would be an issue.

Swiftmend gives all the remaining HoT ticks of the spell it consumes as healing, Lava Burst eats the remaining charges and gives a guaranteed crit. Guaranteed crit would not equal enough damage to offset the loss of all those Flame Shock DoTs if it ate all the Flame Shocks on the target.

I can't see Blizzard being blind enough to let something like that go live.

 

Niche

Lava Burst would only consume 1 flame shock debuff, just like the other 'consume' spells. I personally wouldn't mind if an elemental shaman used my SS charges as well as my flame shock dot if its for the greater good, which it would be superior raid dps. Is it better to get 20% more damage on a 600 lightning shield proc or a 5000 lightning bolt crit? Is it better to get 420 fire dot damage or make a lava burst a guaranteed approximate 4-5000 crit?

Thanks for the link to the druid calculator I scanned the threads for a balance thread and didn't locate one. Not sure why I didn't look in the feral thread. The info I had previously wasn't from a calculator, but a simple post.

 

Malan

Allow me to inject a moment of reason into this (ridiculous) thread. These talents were just released in the alpha test. While its totally cool to point out "Oh look, talent XYZ interacts with talent ABC and Ability EFG in a broken way," its pretty silly (polite way for me to say "really fucking stupid") to just spam the thread with posts that read "Here's the build I intend to raid with, based on talents that will be in testing for the next 8-12 months, and based on my total lack of knowledge about what other abilities we'll be getting." The guy above, Shinok, who did some math on Lightning Shield and its potential DPS, that's a cool thing to be doing right now. The guy who built a talent tree (based on "getting more mana" but took 2/3 points of Elemental Warding instead of 2/5 points in Convection), is kind of pointless.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Illundai

Easy now tigers. I just made this thread to get a little discussion on the road about how we feel about the new talents, doing some theorycrafting even when possible (like above with Spirit Shock, good stuff). We're a pretty straightforward class with loads of theorycrafting in the background, so let's just keep doing what we do best alright?

Has anyone thought about how the new cooldown on our Stormstrike is going to affect our DPS or even our rotation? I mean, right now I try to time my Stormstrikes with Windfury cooldown as it's clearly more DPS. But, now it might not be worth holding out on that Stormstrike and just do it every cooldown? Which might have some consequences on our rotation? Let's just assume that totem twisting is gone. Even then an 8 second rotation of Stormstrike with 5 seconds shocks. That's going to collide quite often.

 

PSGarak

Conflicting cooldowns means that you play your class via spell priority rather than a rotation, kinda like affliction warlocks. Whether WF is on cooldown or not may juggle spell priority for shocks vs stormstrike when the two collide, but in general if WF makes stormstrike worth waiting for it always makes it worth waiting for, because outside of the cooldown the probability density of a windfury is a memoryless distribution. It might change (probably lessen) the absolute advantage, but I don't see how it can inflect whether it's the optimal decision or not.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Lujaar

8 sec stormstrike, 5 sec shocks, assuming you prioritize stormstrike:

0.0s - SS
1.5s - shock
6.5s - shock
8.0s - SS
11.5 - shock
16.0s - SS (cycle repeats from here)
16.5s - shock up, on GCD
17.5s - shock

16 second cycle, with 1 second of cycle damage every 3 shocks. You're shocking every 5.33 seconds. This is interesting because it makes 5/5 Reverb functionally equivalent to 4/5 Reverb.

Now with twisting:

0.0 - SS
1.5 - shock
3.0 - WF
4.0 - GoA
6.5 - shock
8.0 - SS
11.5 - shock
13.0 - WF
14.0 - GoA
16.0s - SS (cycle repeats from here)
16.5s - shock up, on GCD
17.5s - shock
19.0 - WF
20.0 - GoA...

You don't get any extra cycle damage this way, but you're alternating a 10-second twist with a 6-second twist. Definitely doable with Judgement of Wisdom, but I can see mana problems without. You also never have a spare GCD, meaning you'd have to drop something to refresh shields or other totems.


The other option, like I said in an earlier post, is to run a 10-second shock / twisting cycle, and weave in stormstrike in the 3.5 seconds between two shocks. After you shock, you'd hit stormstrike as soon as windfury came off cooldown. If you hit stormstrike late in the time window, the cooldown would still be short enough that your next stormstrike would come up at the beginning of the time window. You'd only be stormstriking every 10 seconds, but the extra windfuries would probably make up for it.

 

Shinok

Just realized I was dumb and forgot to take into account misses and resists in my calculations, but we don't know how the ratios and weights between AP, crit rating, agility, hit rating, and such will change, so as Malan cautioned, I'll just leave my rudimentary analysis as is for now and not go too crazy with the theorycrafting. I just want to add some additional thoughts regarding the changes in WotLK and what it could mean for us. Speculation abounds here, but I'd like to know your thoughts:

1) Based on the current values, the mana cost of our new spells went up by more than 100% over their current max rank values, and damage definitely did not increase by that much. Of course this may not matter at all depending on how much they decide to scale Int and AP on gear, but I definitely did a double take when I saw the initial values. An example:

WotLK: Earth Shock (Rank 10) - 1170 mana, 849 to 895 nature damage.
TBC: Earth Shock (Rank 8) - 535 mana, 658 to 692 Nature damage.
Original WoW: Earth Shock (Rank 7) - 450 Mana, 517 to 545 Nature damage

118% mana increase, 29% damage increase from TBC to WotLK
18.8% mana increase, 27% damage increase from WoW to TBC

Of course, the original TBC and WoW mana costs of shocks were created before the existance of the incredible Shamanistic Focus talent, so they may think that with the option to use mana potions, BoW, JoW, and SR, shaman are *too* mana efficient in raids. Either that, or they're attempting to create a niche for the enhancement shaman in PvP -- on par and possibly stronger damage-wise than pure classes until the shaman runs out of mana as a result of their incredibly expensive shocks and other spells. Of course, I'm not sure how other classes were impacted in terms of mana cost from TBC to WotLK, so this may be a universal change based on Blizzard's expectations of new mana pools, increased usefulness for spirit, and more potent mana recovery mechanics.

2) This has been discussed, but crit rating will now be much more desirable than agility whereas right now, they are basically interchangable. Of course, this could/will change depending on what the agility per crit% and crit rating per crit% ratios are set to for WotLK. If Blizzard wanted to give enhancement shaman and ret paladins a relative 'boost' in DPS to pure classes, they would keep the crit rating : agility : crit% ratio about the same as what it is now. Hit rating will also see an increase in relative desirability.

3) Due to the combining of magic and melee hit/crit rating, depending on how Blizzard balances the crit and hit stats, they can intentionally buff hybrids via how they handle these new ratios. I'm very interested to see what they do. Do they keep the crit rating : agi : crit% ratio stable from TBC? Or do they think to themselves that it would overpower hybrids in PvE and as a result design agi to be 'better' than crit rating for getting crit? Warriors and rogues have this in TBC -- agility gives them a lot less crit than crit rating does compared to many other classes, but AFAIK, all classes share the same crit rate : crit% conversion currently (not to say this won't change, and changing that ratio would be the easiest way to make sure hybrids don't have too much fun in WotLK). IMO, the way Blizzard sets the ratios will be a referendum on how they see the ever evolving role of hybrids in WotLK and it is something to keep an eye on.

4) My hope of Blizzard's design philosophy:

WoW = hybrids are a novelty and not viable
TBC = hybrids are now viable
WotLK = hybrids are just as good as 'pure' classes in their respective roles? With so many viable hybrid classes now, and 10-mans available for EVERY dungeon, I'm of the mindset that Blizzard might think that there's no way to expect a guild to bring 1 of each class, especially for 10 mans. Therefore, they might just think 'this slot can go to an enhancement shaman, blood DK, or combat rogue, and the raid will not notice a difference'. As a result, maybe they'll finally bring hybrid DPS up to 100% parity with pure classes' DPS instead of the current 90% we see now. Just a thought/pipe dream of mine.

 

Lyre

<3 that sexy weapon specialization.

I feel like the wolves might be more of a pvp pet then a pve.

A bleed effect to keep rogues out of vanish and re-stunlocking.
Push back for casters while Focus Firing a healer in arena. Mainly when ES is on CD.

Maybe MH axe and OH mace would be the better approach for the weapon spec to maintain a hasted speed and still deal up the MH damage. Much like a second flurry.

 

Malan

I was wondering about that, it seemed a little odd that LS would do anywhere near as much as 250 DPS!

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

• Aeolian

Edit: Remove this.