testthewest

Isn't Frost the tanking spec? Isn't Blood the raid dps spec?
So if you have a balanced raid composition, which would include at least 2 of every class, my guess is that there will be a Frost and a Blood DK. Couldn't they provide all buffs?

About the on X hits for Maelstrom Weapon effekt idea:
I frankly don't see the difference to crit. It will be a bit less streaky, but not by much, as Flurry and Windfury tend to modulate the attacks per give timeframe.
Faster weapons won't be more powerful with on X hits mechanic instead of crit, since fast weapons will also accumulate crits faster.
I guess your thinking is scewed with internal cd (like WF, which makes slow weapons better).
I have not heard any reports about an internal Maelstrom CD.

 

Hothgor

I think if you examine the formula, you will see that it takes twice the hits to get a 'MW proc' with a 1.3 speed weapon as it does for a 2.6 speed weapon. The whole point of the idea was the let us work towards an actual gear 'goal' with regards to haste/hit instead of relying on the unbelievably streak crit rates. I do hope my fears aren't founded and we will be able to consistently cast LvB the moment its up. They seem to be 'tweaking' almost every class in the beta to make their 'rotations' better. It would be a step back to move enhancement shamans away from a set rotation and towards a completely random one, at least with their track record so far on such things.

As for the Death Knights 'stealing' our role, people need to keep in mind that one of their buffs is 'better' than ours, while one of ours is 'better' than theirs is. Additionally, we bring Bloodlust/Heroism, SoE totem and other raid enhancing utility. I don't really understand why people are afraid of being replaced by them: our raid benefits clearly outweigh theirs.

 

testthewest

Well, you are trying to imitate a ppm mechanism. Honestly: If you are for clear equip goals, I like the crit better. Everyone can clearly see: If I want more proccs, I need a faster weapon or/and more critrating.
I don't think more hidden and complex formulas are what enhancers need.

About the DK: I was only replying to those people who said: DK can't get it all in one specc without sacrifices. Simple solution: Bring 2!

 

dedmonwakeen

SimulationCraft updated with latest talent/glyph changes for Druid-Balance, Priest-Holy, Priest-Shadow, Shaman-Elemental, and Shaman-Enhancement.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Illundai

Unholy brings more to the table than Frost. I wouldn't bring a Frost DK over an Unholy DK atm.

 

Toots Hepcat

The best way to never have to worry about your raid viability, regardless of role or class or spec or buffs or nerfs, is to play as well as you can.

I would have a hardcore serious ret paladin over a mouthbreathing rogue any day of the week.

 

Melg

Is there any word on what Maelstrom is finally supposed to proc off (white only or specials too)?

 

panny

The revealed Glyphs for Enhancement (and Shaman in general) seem pretty lackluster. Quite a few of the other Glyphs address the weakness of the specific class and completely change the way certain skills are used.

I'm using a healing Glyph as an example since there's more to compare:
First impressions is that it's good, since we love Chain Heal. However, when you compare it to:

We can see, from sheer volume, that Glyph is outclassed. In addition, it addresses a weak point of Paladin healing.

If there's still time, I'd like to make a few more suggestions to be posted (focusing on Enhancement Glyphs).

- Your Stormstrike cooldown is increased by 2 seconds but has an additional 10% to proc Windfury
- Your Earth Shock has a 50% chance to stun the target for 2 seconds.
- Your Flame Shock's initial damage is reduced by 90%, but it's duration is increased by 50%
- Your Frost Shock's slow the attack speed of the target by 20%
- Your Lava Burst no longer consumes your Flame Shock effects on the target.
- Your Flurry effect is increased by 5% but only lasts for 2 swings
- Your Stormstrike has a 10% chance to refresh your shock cooldown (or vice-versa)
- Your Windfury Weapon attacks have a 10% chance to refresh your Shock cooldown (or vice-versa)
- Your Ghost Wolf ability is usable indoors
- After you use your Ghost Wolf you all attacks and spells have a 25% less chance of hitting you.
- Your Earthbind Totem has a 20% chance to root enemies with its radius.
- Your Grounding Totem has a 20% to not be destroyed when it absorbs a spell.
- Your Purge spell has an x% chance to dispell an extra buff
- Your Maelstrom Weapon now reduces the casting time by 25% instead of 20%.
- Your Stormstrikes now also strike an additional target (like whirlwind).
- Your Stormstrike reduce the movement speed of the target by 50%.
- Your Shamanistic Rage lasts an additional 5 seconds
- While under the effects of Shamanistic Rage, you cannot be stunned.
- Your Shamanistic Rage procs also heal you for 10% of your AP.
- You can now have two Elemental Shields active at once

Also, I'd love if someone would make the suggestion that our Shocks be delinked. Long gone are the days where two shocks would be a third of someone's health.

 

Sydane

Not only that, but the more complex and dynamic playing a class is, the more the quality players stand out and the ones that have dominated charts just by mashing two buttons will slip to the bottom. Having an unpredictable rotation is better for quality players everywhere. Don't we all want to play classes where the theorycraft goes beyond just what gear to use?

On that note, if you know your rotation will always vary, then any talent that reduces cooldowns gives you more flexibility and options. No, you won't see the maximum theoretical benefit of the talent. But it is far better to have two skills off the cooldown and get to choose which one will help you more at that moment, than to have every skill on cooldown and just be sitting and waiting for something to happen. Of course, you have to weigh that against what you are giving up by taking the talent points, but it isn't going to be a simple matter of one being worth XX dps and the other being worth YY dps.

It seems clear that Blizzard is making strides towards having classes be more dynamic and less cyclical. Whether or not they can manage to do it remains to be seen.

 

Toots Hepcat

It has been my point all along that the playstyle surrounding MW will be necessarily reactive. All these "must LvB every 8s" posts have ignored the fact that even with a high crit chance, streaky RNG will frequently have you waiting 10s or more to cast that spell, and you certainly wouldn't hold a rotation for several seconds.

You might be able to maintain a rotation if it relied less on the placement of MW procs, but again, you'd probably do more DPS being reactive.

As for ability speeds -- it may be necessary to sacrifice either fast shocks or fast strikes; fast shocks offer greater potential DPS, but fast strikes offer more gains per point.

Being able to drop UR would be unfortunate for farming, but 5 extra points is nice.

It looks like Blizzard is planning to counter some of the "tree bloat" decision making blues by making the decision obvious if you have a good raid makeup. That's pretty cool.

 

WarTotem

Wouldn't it be better to make more fights dynamic instead of the class mechanics? Because if the gameplay of the class itself already becomes complicated or atleast requires a decent amount of attention, would that not make the boss fight mechanics rather boring?

Reason I bring this up is that if a boss fight is as complicated as your DPS 'priority list', then another player simply spamming a rotation doing 90% of your DPS will be able to focus on the fights itself far more. The 10% DPS extra you do would bring instantly vanishes when you keep standing in a fire because you were checking your cooldowns and not what the boss was throwing your way. I can tell from both personal experience as well as my time raid leading that 'dynamic' classes lose quite some DPS on fights requiring them to pay attention to their environment.

That is exactly the reason why I am going for only 1 point in Imp Stormstrike in my expansion build. I have no intention of dropping 6 talents so I can get a 8s SS & 5-5-6 shock cycle. I might lose 10% DPS on stormstrike/shocks, but that is still only 25% of my DPS and those 6 talent points needed do not warrant it. Besides, being able to have a fixed cycle will allow me to consume Maelstrom buffs faster, making up for lost DPS. I will only ever have to decide either Stormstrike vs Maelstrom or Shock vs Maelstrom, while someone in a Reverberation build would have to take all 3 into account at once and react just as fast as me.

Btw, as for UR goes, with the current amount of (melee) DPS spots open it's not a matter of who in the raid specs for raid buffs, but who specs for raid buffs gets in the raid. DKs have 1 buff that affects Hunters, so do we. If I was to make a choice between 2 melee, I'll take the one with the raid buffs along, even if they might not always stack with others.

PS: That reminds me, does anyone know if there is a thread/discussion up yet about which (de)buffs stack and which don't? Would be an interesting compendium rather then having it tucked away in some class's beta discussion thread.

 

Sydane

The buffs/debuffs that stack seems to be changing with every update and they have made it clear that they are still adjusting it and not entirely sure how far they want to go with it. At this point the only effect seems to be that every single class is QQing about loss of utility and raid slots.

One thing I firmly believe is that we will see fights increase in complexity in regards to raid movement and positioning. The changes made to raid wide buffing only emphasizes positioning all the more. I see no reason why increasing individual complexity should impede encounter complexity. There may be no more totem twisting, but I'd fully expect having to pull up and relocate totems far more often. In 10 mans, dropping a totem in range of the casters and healers seems fairly likely as well.

After all, why should Blizzard just rest on their laurels after Sunwell and not do anything creative until Icecrown? I'd love to see the first boss in Ulduar be the most challenging and complex fight yet, especially on the 10 man side.

 

Toots Hepcat

More flexibility for raid makeup is a VERY GOOD THING that should result in more full raids. Having a spot that's YOURS is unfair to 24 other people when YOU can't make it, and it's also tough on guilds to mandate class makeup.

How many guild have fallen apart because they lost tank type A, or support class type B, and had to quit raiding for a few weeks while a replacement was found?

The other benefit of this is making it easier to maintain a smaller guild. Small guilds (of, say, 25-35 players) tend to have less loot drama, tend to be tighter knit and can be more progressive as a result. Being able to recruit "Enhancement shaman OR melee DPS Death Knight" gives more flexibility for finding members and thus leaves fewer members on the bench.

And again -- if you are the best enhancement shaman you can be, you gear up correctly and play reactively and strongly raid-oriented, you will be in high demand.

 

WarTotem

@Sydane; I'm only worried that fight complexity might favor certain classes more then other because of the way they do DPS. Even a 6y old can download an addon with stat weights in and make a macro to spam all raid long, which would make going to raids as hard as getting wellfare epics. If I specced Resto in the expansion, I could probably do half the raid-healing by just keeping the tank targetted, as both Chain Heal and Ancestral Awakening will do my job for me. A Druid simple won't be able to do that. Granted that this is not directly relevant to the talent choices within a certain class/spec, it's the idea of certain classes/specs requiring more skill/attention to do their job that I am concerned about.
If a DK was a no-brainer to learn and Enh Shamans require massive theory crafting (**cough** WF CD **cough**), some guilds would be more likely to recruit just the DK, as the chance that an applicant will know his class or can be thought within a week's time is far greater then with a Shaman.


@Toots: Skill > Class is ofcourse the direction we should be going, I'm not debating that.

I'm actually liking the new non-stacking buffs. e.g. All tank classes have a 20% melee swing reduction, allowing free choice of tank(class) as currently any raid without a Warrior(even as DPS) is far harder then with one. It also allows for stronger buffs per class, such as new WF totem, as it will not stack with anything else anyway, thus preventing buff stacking.
The fact that this change was actually needed as it is now impossible to pick every possible class buff in a raid without having sufficient healers, is a sign that Blizzard acknowledges the power of hybrid classes for raid setups. But I think it's a bit too early just yet to talk specifics about raid setups.

 

Mman

I think the problem I have with nonstacking identical buffs is not an issue of having a spot in the raid. My problem is that if I have points in say, unleashed rage, it will be wasted if another class has specced for that same buff. I suppose blizzard could design encounters with this in mind, like having split dps, so having 2 spots with the same buffs would be beneficial. But unless raids radically change, all melee will be within range of each other for 95% of the time.

This means one of us has wasted talent points that would could have spent for more personal DPS. Either that or one of us would have to respecc before the raid, which would totally suck logistically for a raid leader. Of course, some raids will probably not worry about min/maxing and simply take whoever is avaliable for certain melee/healer/tank etc. But you know some people will min/max down to the individaul talent level, and then there are always something to determine which is better. If I skip the buff and can get 8% more personal DPS or the DK skips the buff and gets 4% mroe DPS it is better for me to skip.

I think there are way better ways of fixing this without making our buffing talents trivial. Remember when blizzard were really into making pally and shaman buffs the same? This is the exact same thing. But, if Blizzard continues down the path they are going I think there are a few things they can do to make it better. For one, allow buffing talents to stack on a personal level. Blood DK's AP buff might not stack with my unleashed rage for the raid, but in a situation where you have both allow the buffs to stack for the people actually giving the buffs. That might be a bit overpowered for us, at least it doesn't make our talent feel absolutely wasted in those situations.

E: sorry if this went a bit off topic. I uses a shaman as an example, but it really has to do w/ all classes, with us as a specific example. Still, I think it is an important aspect of the game for enhancement shaman, as I have always felt that melee buffing is one of our defining abilities.

 

seamusmc

I'd suggest reading the DK beta forums. Blizzard's goal is for all of the DK trees to be equally viable tanking and pve dps trees. A DPS blood build wouldn't grab the blood tank talents, while a blood tank would give up some blood dps talents. Similar to the way feral druids will pick talents to emphasize dps or tanking.

Blizzard is really trying to open things up as far as raid makeup, this is why the warrior's fury tree is getting tank talents and tanking specs are getting more dps. The threads are kind of interesting and there are some hell bent on getting a tank only tree.

I imagine all DK's will be in Frost Presence for tanking, but that has nothing to do with the Frost tree. The description you allude to was dropped from the WOTLK web page before WWI.

I do find it disappointing that is appears Blizzard is going to give DK's abilities that seem to be taken from the shaman playbook. Again there are some good posts from the designers in the DK beta forum explaining why they don't want to give every class unique abilities that are required for a successful raid.

 

kaasi

I for one am not worried about a DK taking my raid spot. Let them have identical buffs, they not only will need to be able to do my job they will have to be able to do it BETTER.

Considering DKs start at 55 and can not leave the starting zone till they have completed ALL starting zone quests
I and most of the better shaman will be 80 and raid ready long before your average DK

 

WarTotem

Then you will buff them for the other 5%. Or when the other guy dies. Or when he thinks exactly the same and says "hey, you can proc your buff way more then I can proc mine, so yours has a better uptime, you should be speccing it, not me!".

I understand your PoV about possibly wasting talent points in a group buff that will not always matter, but on the other hand, most builds currently have imp GW, which doesn't matter in raids yet most would take it anyway for those cases it DOES matter.
And personally, as a raid leader, I would rather have 1 person in my guild do 2-3% less DPS but double the chance that I can grab someone with 10% AP for the melee then have that person do a bit more DPS, but have me depend on a single person to show up for raids everytime. In the end it's simply making sure that the raid get their buff. And for a guild officer, someone with the talent is more useful then someone without. As the guy with the talent might only really buff 5% of the case, but that other guy buffs people 0% of the cases

Don't forget that from the DKs PoV you make his buff 'useless'. Considering another class with an 'identical' buff making yours pointless is rather pessimistic. I rather see it this way: Assume both you and the DK guy are able to join 80% of the raids, randomly divided. In the end, 96% of all raids will benefit from either buff. Since you both have an equal attendency rate, you both have equal importance in that 96%. Thus, you bring your buff for 48% of all raids, more then half of what you would do on your own. Not to mention that on any fight where you have to separate, the raid coverage, thus usefulness of having 2 buff spammers, becomes even higher.

PS: If you find your role as melee buffer so important, you should be the one speccing UR, as you also bring mana spring/healing stream, SoE and FT on top of the buffs comparable to the ones the DK has.

 

Ubik

have you considered that now
1 agi = 1 ap + some crit
1 str = 1 ap
1 int = 1.1 ap + some crit.

As it seems stacking int gems will give more AP than the rest. I am just curious to see how will they deal with the conversion of int and agi into crit. I think agi will still give melle crit and int will give spell crit. Aaaand agi has a better conversion into crit than int.

With the lvl 70 conversion it will be something like
1 agi = 1 ap and 1/25 crit
1 int = 1.1 ap and 1/80 crit.

So wich one would you prefer?

(also keep in mind that we might need a huge mana pool to sustain complex rotations)

 

testthewest

I guess it more a problem for the DK. Basicly every raid that has an enhancement shaman has a big sign saying:
We don't need you DK's!
Since every advanced raid has an enhancer, it is not looking good for DK's.

Wouldn't it be a solution making those unstacking buffs only partywide again? So you could put the DK in the tankgroup, and the enhancer in the meleegroup? Furthermore, in a 10 man raiding, you only needed one of those two, giving you the flexibility that 10-man raiding needs.
On another note: Isn't it strange that DK copys more or less only the enhancer-skills? Wouldn't it be more interesting if he had the feralcritaura an windfury-buff, instead Unleashed Rage and Windfury?

 

Cronax

Don't forget, there's also a very high probability that we will get multiple talent specs in some shape or form. This will also allow for more flexibility. Say we get two specs. One person might make two specs dependant on wether or not they need to provide certain buffs, another might spec resto in one and enh with another to make sure they can heal when needed, a third might spec enh/ele so he can be ranged or melee DPS depending on what's best for that particular day. So even if you DO allways want one particular spec in the raid, it's much easier to fill one spot with multiple people. For instance, if you have two enhancement shamans, just make them both take a different subspec and no matter what you need you can always field them. All classes will have this sort of flexibility provided people will collect the gear sets, but most if not all people already collect second gearsets for offspec in BC so in that respect not much will change, just the ease with which the respeccing can happen.

 

KnThrak

Depending on how the endgame works, there might not be s spot for a second, Enhancement Shaman or not.

SQUEAK.
-- (The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

 

Shokkina

It looks like you did forget one gem: AP gems.
If you like so much the idea of having high AP, then gem for it. Gemming for int to have AP is a waste of gems. Yes you have the additional benefit of crit with spells, but you can have both melee and spell crit with crit rating. I think the balance in red/yellow gems will allow you to gem in red slots for Agi and in yellow for AP+crit rating. This way you have a high AP, high crit melee and still good crit with spells. Also remember that to go from 1 AP per INT to 1.1 AP per INT you have to use 5 additional talent points. I think i will spend 3 just because i am forced to do so to go down the tree.

The advantage of a higher mana pool is not that great. Maybe in pvp has some uses, but in PvE what is really important is mana regen.

To avoid making another post i would like to tell Malan that i read his post on beta: WoW Forums -> Malan's Enhancment-a-palooza (8770)
First of it all there is a little error: with static shield, i think you did mean static shock.
Also i did find a good idea for Maelstrom weapon in Wotlk wiki forum you could add to your suggested changes to it:

Maelstrom Weapon
When you critically hit with a melee weapon you have 20/40/60/80/100% chance to gain a charge, lowering the cast time of your next Lava Burst, Lightning bolt or Chain Lightning by 20%. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 15 seconds.

This way even 1/5 spent in Maestrom Weapon will give the chance to get istant cast, but on average the charges will be stacked 5 times slower than with 5/5.

 

Wundorn

Has anyone built and tried this yet? How accurate is it, compared to beta?

Is there a version for BC that we can test against live, or compare to Yo!'s?

 

WarTotem

And the DKs will carry signs saying: I can tank trash where needed!!

@Ubik: your value for agi crit is wrong, they're changing it to 40 agi per %crit at lvl 70. And with decent MW/ED usage, melee crit > spell crit

Cronax, that would mean losing the possibility of having a Resto off-spec ready though. But can't really comment a lot about it, since the 2-spec case is far from implemented.