Paladia

I would very much appreciate it if someone in the beta took up the rebuffing annoyance with Water and Lightning Shield.

Currently, while grinding for an hour, I had to rebuff in rounded numbers;

Windfury Weapon x 4
Water shield x 280
Various totems x 120

So a total of 404 rebuffs during one hour and 280 of them really feels like only an annoyance. Water Shield has no mana cost any how, so why does it have charges? It doesn't make the game any more fun to rebuff it hundreds of times per hour, it doesn't add to anything at all, it is just very tiresome. The same thing can be said for Lightning Shield if they remove its mana cost.

Other class abilities were changed so they didn't have to rebuff as often but they were not even forced to rebuff 10% of what Shamans currently have to rebuff.

 

Noyx

I have to disagree. Water shield is essentially free mana, asking to lower the amount of "work" we need to do to get that free mana is a little greedy, in my opinion.

 

Paladia

You can call it what you wish, but what exactly does it add to the game that you are forced to rebuff it up 300 times per hour? There is enough rebuffing with the entire totem mechanics already.

You do not see this rebuffing concern with for example Invigoration or Hunting Party.

 

LazyJoe

It would become somewhat unbalanced in pvp if you had an infinite amount of charges.

Anyway what you describe isn't a shield anymore, it becomes an aura.

Reading Malan improves my english

 

WarTotem

Then again, you can't 'rebuff' Hunting Party or Invigoration in combat.

 

Sydane

Try to think of Water Shield less as a buff and more as an active ability. How many times an hour do you cast Stormstrike? Once Lightning Shield is mana free switching between them will probably be more common as well, and it becomes an even more interesting mechanic.

 

Toots Hepcat

Last I checked, warriors have it worst.

Battle/Commanding Shout every 2 minutes, Thunder Clap and/or Demo Shout every 30s. These abilities consume rage, directly impacting the warrior's ability to deliver damage. You can generate rage out of combat, but this requires a once per minute ability that flips a GCD and takes a second to spool up before you can shout. No heals except Bloodthirst, benefits of better armor offset by 10% additional damage in berzerker stance.

On the other hand, I don't know of any other class that can farm as long or as well as a shaman. Thanks to WS/SR we already have a near unlimited mana pool and can deliver 50-60% of our dps from autoattack alone.

Getting back 50 mp5, as well as a ton of mana per charge, is a nice ability. That it doesn't cost reagents or mana (like a priest's spirit buff or a paladin's wisdom) is even better. The tradeoff that you have to do something "annoying" to get this sweet benefit is perfectly acceptable to me, because a longer lasting buff would need to be rebalanced to be inconvenient in some other way.

In short: think of all the time you save by never having to drink, eat, bandage, pot or stock up on reagents. Then shut the hell up about how pushing a button is a waste of your time. It's way, way better than sitting motionless for a minute.

 

Skreekins

The lack of shaman additions to the beta lately has left this thread a bit dead. While we wait for something to theorycraft, I had a thought on how to help alleviate the rotation problem. i suggested it once before in this thread, but it was hidden in a wall of text and was also the last post on the page. This time, I did a bit of theorycrafting myself to assess the usefulness of such a change.

The Change: Add a .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 second reduction to all global cooldowns to maelstrom weapon in addition to its current effect.

The Theory: Since all of our active abilities have their own cooldowns or share cooldowns with other abilities, our DPS will not drastically increase with a GCD reduction since we do not have an instant, active spammable damage ability. What it will do is allow us more freedom in our rotations, allowing us to actually use our abilities as they come off cooldown without having to "block" our other abilities with another GCD. It is deep enough in the enhancement tree that other specs could not benefit from it, and it would have a beneficial effect on PvP as an enhancement shaman by allowing more control over our reactive abilities, such as earth shocking a cast or dropping a grounding totem. The PvP benefit would help to offset the decreased usefulness of the talent in PvP caused by resilience.

The Rotation: As already stated in this thread (mostly by Toots ) it is pointless to model a rotation with maelstrom weapon because it is so RNG dependent. Ideally, we want a rotation that allows us to shock and stormstrike as soon as possible while still leaving holes for totem refreshing, shield refreshing and maelstrom casts.

The illustration below is separated into 1 second segments to show the length of the GCD. The rotation assumes 2/2 improved stormstrike and 0/5 reverberation. We are assuming a standard earth/flame shock rotation. It is understood that you will only earthshock if flameshock is already on the target, and you will only maelstrom if flameshock is already on the target. Alternatively, you could flameshock every time. That is more of a DPS max/min issue though and I am only concerned about the rotation at this point.



As you can see, over six stormstrikes there is not a single instance of overlap. I could continue the pattern, but I think it is sufficient to say that if the cooldowns end up interfering with eachother and you have to choose one or the other it will only happen rarely. All of the white boxes in the GCD row are free GCDs where you are just autoattacking. These are where you would refresh your shield, drop a totem, cast a maelstrom spell, use heroism/bloodlust, use Feral Spirit, etc. All of these spells would also have a 1 second GCD, making the whole thing much less complex. I may do another one with 5/5 reverberation later, but I am at work and wasted a lot of time on the first one already .

The end result is a dynamic rotation where we still need to pay attention to our debuffs and maelstrom stacks to choose when to cast or which shock to cast, but it isnt so mind numbingly boring that we can macro the whole sequence to one button and spam it. All in all, we wouldn't be getting anything that rogues, cat druids and death knights (in unholy presence) don't already have.

[e] removed my edit because I was wrong

 

Orlgin

The latest testing on Beta indicates that it still takes 17% to cap spell hit on a mob 3 levels above you. This will dramatically change the value of hit rating for us since it won't be nearly as easy to spell cap as we thought.

This testing was listed on the Combat Ratings thread.

This indicates we need 558 Hit Rating on our gear to be spell hit capped. (assuming you're horde. Alliance need 525). If you took DW specialization, you now hit 95% of your attacks (not counting dodge/parry).

The crit rating to agility ratio has changed some from Burning Crusade to WoLK. If you look at BG gear now available and the shaman melee gear for BGs there, you get more crit rating and less agility on each piece. If this holds true for the PVE gear (more crit rating, less agility), this also changes the value of spell damage (Agility affects melee with the exception of the ap boost boosting spellpower, critical rating affects spell damage and melee damage equally).

Crit rating will take 45.9 to raise spell critical and melee critical by 1%.

Because our contribution from spells will be increasing in WoLK, it's likely that these two stats will be stacked first. I'm thinking that our gemming philosophy will be:
Red - Agility
Yellow - Hit
Blue - Expertise + Stamina

Because chances are, Hit and Expertise will come up short.

Expertise becomes 32.79 rating for 1% Dodge/Parry mitigation

As for Glyphs, the Earth Shock one is quite good (- 1 sec GCD for Earth Shock) considering how GCD hungry shamans will likely become.

Glyph - Strength of Earth grants 1% melee and ranged critical strike chance will be asked for by the raid.

Glyph of Lightning Shield (+20% damage to Lightning Shield) will be great in builds with a fast weapon as it raises Static Shock damage by 20%.

Those are 8820 ones and are hopefully current (things change fast around here).

Editing: the blue pvp shaman melee gear has an agility: Crit ratio of 1.1. Brutal Gladiator Leggings, as an example, has a 1.31: 1 ratio. That's what I'm talking about. It's a noticeable difference when you're looking for it.

 

Pitbuller

Entry end-game blue pvp-set.
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...hamanmelee.jpg
Stats look same as hunter pvp gear in live. Just like we assumed. Total lack of hit hurts spell little bit but we allways can go gem route.

Skreekins proposal: "The Change: Add a .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 second reduction to all global cooldowns to maelstrom weapon in addition to its current effect."

I have thinked this alot. This is just what we need. Maelstorm weapons need some another perk. Five point talent relyes five crit to cast one spell. I like this talent but it could be more beefier. Both pve and pvp side. PvE: Both imp SS and shock cd talents suffer becouse we can't gain full benefit. PvP: Our reactive defensive skills are pain to use if counter take same time or longer than attack we try to counter. Anybody tryed cure rogue poisons?

I don't wan't to cry but looks like it's only thing that makes blizz give buffs. If you have looked what warrior did get. They get everything what they asked. Maybe it's time to start asking more to ouer class or we stuck with what we got now. First thing what I want is 1.0s GCD.

Ps. Earth shock glyph would be huge.

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

Skreekins

I couldn't help myself! here is a 2/2 imp stormstrike and 5/5 reverberation rotation:



The problem with this is that you get a one second shock delay every 16 seconds. Assuming my math is correct (it may not be) and you only get a 1 second delay every 48 seconds without 5/5 reverberation...

5/5 reverberation would give you 11.25 shocks per minute
0/5 reverberation would give you just under 10 shocks per minute (not perfect because of the 1 second delay at 48 seconds)

Someone gifted with numbers please check my math. Assuming I am correct, 5/5 reverberation could easily be overshadowed by spending those points in improved shields instead for a static shock damage increase.

This is kind of exciting to me. Is there anything I am missing here? Any room for discussion? Worth having a beta tester pitch the GCD reduction to the devs?

 

Toots Hepcat

Who's we?

To my knowledge, you're the only person who's ever even considered hit capping. Math doesn't predict it; it still lists crit rating as superior.

We don't get ANY additional benefit out of hits -- no rage, no energy, no mana return. Thus, hit will be less valuable than doing more damage.

 

Gurth999

I don't think 3/3 elemental shields would make up for 1.5 shocks/minute on its own. I think static shock would need to be around 300dps (without the shields talent) for that to happen.

 

• Daler

I believe he's referring to reaching the spell hit to optimize the Lava Burst -> Elemental Devastation cycle. I also believe he's greatly overestimating the shift in total DPS % that will be contributed by Lava Burst.

 

Skreekins

i just realized that I am wrong about the 48 seconds thing. I forgot to take into account that the shock rotation begins 1 second after the stormstrike rotation.

At any rate, that is beside the point. The point is that 1s GCD would be immensely helpful to enhancement shaman and there is plenty of precedent to give it to us as a melee class. It would completely solve the issue of our abilities interfering with one another (*cough*huntersclippingautoshot*cough*). Unfortunately Koraa doesnt read this board. If only someone who read this board also had the ability to post in a place that Koraa actually reads....

 

Pitbuller

Those are 70lvl values with my gear without lavaburst. Hit rating value will be higher than crit rating wihout doupt. But is hit > agi or 2*ap is another discussion.
Spellcrit rating 0.10ep 0.04dps
Spellhit rating 0.62ep 0.23dps

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

Kyrryth

I don't think the PvP set is necessarily indicative of precisely how our tiered sets will be. After all, a large portion of itemization points are spent on resilience, and hit rating isn't as essential in PvP as it is (theoretically) in PvE since the spell hit cap against players isn't nearly as high as it is against raid bosses.

Though, certainly, if we don't receive a lot of hit rating on our gear there is the gemming/trinket/jewelry route.

That aside, I'm pretty excited to see a lack of MP/5 on the set!

1 second cooldowns could be a hard sell. It's true, we don't have a lot of abilities that could take advantage of it, but it's still a dramatic change. I do think it would be an improvement to our rotations, but maybe taking Stormstrike off the GCD with Imp. SS would be a better solution?

All of our rotation problems tend to stem from the fact that 8 seconds is an awkward cooldown. I remember someone suggesting taking only 1 point in Imp. SS to have it match up with Shocks, but that would lower our DPS output which is a non-choice. Making Imp. SS remove Stormstrike from the cooldown would solve these issues, as it would no longer clip our Shock rotations and having fewer GCDs would enable us to more freely utilize the dynamic possibilities of Maelstrom Weapons. I don't think it would be that overpowered; in PvP we're already bottom of the barrel melee and while our issues aren't DPS related, I don't see this becoming an overpowered ability, and in PvE our DPS is already subpar to other melee and this wouldn't be a hugely substantive DPS increase. From a lore/flavor standpoint, the logic could be that it makes your weapons move as quickly as lightning, or something. I think it works out fairly well.

Having each point in Imp. SS reduce the cooldown by 2 seconds would work, as well.

 

Hothgor

I'm sorry Toot, but numerous shamans here and on the Beta Forums have all stated that they believe hit rating will be the most important rating to stack until you reach the spell hit cap. 520ish for Horde, and 488ish for Alliance. Of this, both sides will need a MINIMUM of 98ish hit rating to hit cap their specials at level 80. In TBC, hit rating became unimportant once you hit capped specials because that was only affecting ~45% of our damage. In WotLK, hit rating is vastly more important because it will be affecting ~65-70% of our damage, even more so if we use an offhand flametongue enchant over Windfury.

 

Orlgin

It appears I need to add more detail to my reasons why hit is valuable since Hoots is challenging this.

More Hit adds:

1) Elemental Devastation - Less hit reduces Devastation uptime.

2) Fast off-hand. If you're using one, FT weapon scales directly with haste and hit rating.

3) Static Shock DPS. Every miss you have lowers it's DPS value.

4) Maelstrom Weapon DPS. Every miss lowers the total number of hits reducing the charges you can achieve. Lower uptime on Elemental Devastation also reduces this.

5) More shock damage. Every miss reduces your DPS directly.

Okay, think like a caster for a moment. Spell hit is literally the best stat until it is capped. Why? Every single attack uses it. Now Hit rating works the same way for us. Every single DPS source you use that isn't Stormstrike or Windfury is affected by it.

Critical Rating doesn't give as good returns.

1) Your melee criticals add 100% damage but your spell criticals only give 50% more damage.

2) Fast offhand doesn't get as much effect either since FT will only crit for 50%.

3) Static Shock DPS is not affected at all by critical rating.

4) The percentage of Windfury/Stormstrike damage (which is affected by critical rating but not hit) is going down a lot.

5) Maelstrom DPS is affected less by critical rating because Lava Burst is a guaranteed critical.

6) It takes 32.789 Hit to raise it 1%. It takes 45.905 crit rating to achieve the same effect.

Hit is 140% more efficient for everything it affects. (45.905/32.789)

Once we have enough critical that flurry uptime isn't an issue, hit rating is better.

If you can show me the math that says critical rating is better, I will revise it. The whole point of this thread is to improve DPS. I don't intend to ruffle feathers. I just want to improve things for everyone.

 

Skreekins

@ Orlgin

Many of your reasons for saying that capping hit is better than crit contradict known game mechanics. In addition, it has been shown by pretty much every run on Yo!'s sim that crit rating has a higher EP value than hit rating currently. Things will change in WotLK, but it is far too early to try and definitively say that hit has more value than crit when all of our abilities are still subject to change and nobody is higher than level 77. This entire discussion is moot and should stop.

@ Kyrryth

While removing stormstrike from the GCD would also alleviate a lot of our rotation problems, it seems awkward and contradicts what blizzard has done in the past. Very few abilities do not trigger a GCD, and of those abilities none of them are damaging abilities. No GCD on stormstrike would allow it to be macroed with other damaging abilities for unbelieveable burst/mind numbing boredom. Consider the implications of stacking maelstrom and unleashing a crit lava burst while simultaneously stormstriking and proccing windfury? Damaging abilities have GCDs so they cant be stacked this way. You could also simply macro stormstrike to a flame/earth rotation macro and have the dreaded "1 button raider" scenario with an occasional mealstrom attack (one additional button).

In addition, it negates the PvP elegance of the blanket GCD reduction. Maelstrom is currently a bit sub par for enhance PvP because its effectiveness is limited by resilience. Adding this extra benefit would give the arena players a reason to take the talent, even if they didnt regularly use maelstrom casts in their play due to the lack of a full stack.

As I mentioned before, rogues, cat druids and death knights using unholy presence all have 1 second GCDs. This isn't a problem because their ability to due damage is held back by their energy/runes/runic power. A mana using class with a 1s GCD would normally be completely overpowered, but enhancement shaman are the exception because our ability to do damage is held back by our cooldowns. These melee classes obviously have a 1s GCD for a reason. We too are a melee class and would greatly benefit from the same treatment.

 

• Raut

If the shared spell/melee hit is in effect, we'll see a bump in hit EP. It's closing in on crit with SW gear. In WotLK it will count towards your successful MaelX5+LvB thus Elem Dev and 9% crit. Given a sim able to calculate this, hit should increase. After all, it contributes to heavy ElemDev uptime. Cap sounds utopical though.

Baby, you can hold my balls.

13:17 < Kalroth> gays on men tv? I love that channel

 

Hothgor

People need to STOP thinking in terms of TBC mechanics and START thinking in terms of WotLK mechanics. Virtually every class mechanic has been changed now. New atributes are giving us attack power. Crit, Hit AND Haste are all affecting spells AND melee mechanics, and our total damage breakdown has changed from 45% white / 30% WF / 10% SS / 10% Spells to 30% white / 20% WF / 10% SS / 40% Spells.

As it was mentioned above, hit rating now affects ~70% of our total damage instead of only 45%. So many more spells and abilities now rely on a successful hit or crit that its ridiculous to not at least want to spell hit cap ourselves. Everyone is running around quoting Yo's this, Yo's that. Unfortunately it doesn't work with WotLK just yet. There IS another simulator that is showing just how important hit is. It also seemed to indicated that FT weapon enchant is now the best offhand weapon enchant in the game that we can get bar NONE.

People who are arguing against the re-evaluation of our stat weights remind me very much of the Vanillia WoW 2 hander crowd riling against DW Shamans.

 

• Raut

People need to stop tossing unsupported claims around. Enhance hasn't gotten anything game breaking except the str/ag conversion. We'll still calculate around WF, SS and auto attacks. The added bonus now is that we can theroycraft around Elemental Devastation. If your crit suffers from you trying to hit-cap yourself, you will see your DPS going down the shitter.

Hit EP will increase, it will not become the most important stat to gem or gear for. Maybe it will be at some point, when your gear reaches a SW equivalent in WoLK.

Bottom line is: There are still too many unknown factors to claim stuff like "hit cap r bestest evar". And even if all the facts are on the table, we still have a too complex DPS model to make so napkin math on DPS. Since we have no sim, this is all guesswork.

Baby, you can hold my balls.

13:17 < Kalroth> gays on men tv? I love that channel

 

Skiace

I dare say it's too early to make a call either way.

It is a bit odd however to see everyone jumping all over Orlgin for saying something that Malan casually proposed (without any fuss) about a month ago in this very thread.

 

Paladia

It should be noted that dual wield specialization increases the chance to hit, not just with melee attacks.