There were no other changes to the gear.

All the Tier Sets and PvP sets and Linked PvP non-set honor pieces had all their strength turned into exactly twice that much AP (with the Strength being removed).

They could have at least exchange that awful manareg with agility.

Too much work, they are still exahusted because of retri paladin gear changes.
Also i think they will have to brainstorm for at least two weeks to come with some good idea for WF mechanic. Hoping it will not lead to something awful

i agree i am just hopeing the remove the shared main hand /off hand 3 sec windfury cd so was can have some better burst and i wont have to use flame tongue on the off hand sence alot of people are saying it better currectly i want them to prove it and show numbers!

I dont understand did they change them or not
your first statment condicts the second.

I think the point is all the tier gear's stats are identical except for the Strength on them which has been converted to AP.

Could windfury be made into a stormstrike like proc, equivalent to the thrash ability that a lot of npcs have. Then make elemental weapons give a greater AP buff to make up for the fact that a mainhand/offhand attack isn't the same as a double mainhand attack. Two handers would benefit from the increase AP in burst capability, but with reduced proc chance and resilience I can't see it being a pvp problem. It would be easier to model as either hand proccing has the same effect. Might be too similar to stormstrike, or might require a lot of tuning to make it comparable to current windfury in all it's complexity.

My personal suggestion is to change WF this way:

- MH only enchant(don't know if it can be done through coding, or through mechanic)
- raise proc rate. 30% looks a balanced amount because it raises it by 10%(equivalent to the amount lost in offhand, halved because offhand damage is halved)
- put back and increase the benefit of flametongue/frostband in elemental weapons to balance a little the loss in dps caused by the fact that atm Dual wielding WF raises your WF proc rate(36% for each hand)
- make it scale with haste. The perfect solution would be to give it a hidden CD equal to your current weapon speed(i.e. taking in account haste effects) increased by around 0.1 or more seconds if needed for latency issues. This way double procs of WF and "back to back" WFs would still be avoided. Even with the slower onehand weapon in game at the moment(2.8 speed) and no haste at all, the hidden CD would be lowered, giving more chances to proc.
This is not counting WF totem and flurry that all enhancement shamans can have up at any moment.

Advantages of this solution:

- WF can proc only from MH attacks, giving more consistent burst damage. When an offhand procs windfury two times in a row, you don't deal that much damage in 6 seconds because of halved damage + hidden CD.
- Options for offhand enchant: frostband for added snare(mainly pvp) flametongue for dps. Also flametongue would give more sinergy with static shock(doubles in fact the chance of proccing static shock from offhand because of FT proc) and with elemental focus/elemental fury(every FT crit would proc these abilities)
- WF scales with haste effects. 20% from wf totem + 30% from heroism would make it very powerful. Also for pvp purposes both buffs can be negated in some ways(dispel for heroism, kill the totem for WF totem) so it is not gamebreaking in arena against teams that know how to play.
- It would allow(or i should say would favor) faster weapons in offhand, solving itemization problems. There are many good fast dagger in this game.

Disavantages:

- It would be hard to give a good scaling to FT and FB weapons. A high modifier should be given to elemental weapons for both.
- There could be more dead times with no WF proc at all(but the scaling with haste + 20% haste given by WF totem would balance this overall).
- Faster offhand would give lower SS but hey: it is a choice after all. Like warriors that get more damage with whirlwind from slower weapons but prefer faster ones for better rage generation.

Don't know if such a change is overall balanced, but adjusting numbers here and there(proc rate, damage given to FT/FB by elemental weapons, etc....) it could fix many problems, while giving more options/utilies/sinergies.
In the end it would also make 2h shaman more viable in pvp because of WF increased proc rate, even if the hidden CD could be higher than 3.00 seconds sometimes. Not that i really care about it anyway...

What do you think?

Without being able to try it, it seems like a bar that fills up would be preferable. Or possibly if you want to keep the shrinking mechanic, have it change to a new color to show when instant spells are up. I spend most raids staring at DisqoDice right now, and I like obvious color changes to tell me when I need to do something. Although on the other hand, since I will no longer be watching for the twisting bar to disappear it may not be as confusing as I'm assuming.

thank you for your work

beside the color switching I would propose a combined bar with Lavaburst cooldown and Maelstrom charges, similar to the Stormstrike/Windfury bar, so you can see how long LvB-cd still is when instant is ready and eventually use a lightning bolt
another important bar could be the time your flameshock is still active on the target

Edit: ok, just noticed that all of that is already on your to do list...

At present even with the version you are using on live every bar shown is "use ability when the bar empties" ie: SS, Shock etc. I designed the maelstrom effect to be the same.

Ah ofc - I've only been testing addons on the beta not actually questing so I am still lvl 70 and unable to use LvB thus I hadn't noticed the CD on it. That will be vitally important.

I shall also do some brainstorming to see how best to include Flame Shock debuff on your target notification. Adding a LvB bar and another Flame Shock debuff bar might be too messy as it would be longer than the LvB (8 sec) bar. Plus that would up the display to 7 bars. Perhaps only add 1 more bar a LvB bar that shows CD on LvB with a numerical display next to the shock bar or on the LvB bar of time remaining of the flame shock debuff.

I guess part of the design decision will come down to some theory crafting. eg: if Maelstrom is at 5 stacks and LvB is off cooldown should you use LvB immediately if Flame Shock is on target or should you wait until just before last tick of Flame Shock. ie: FS debuff present or absent might be enough, the length left might not be important if theorycrafting shows its better to LvB as soon as you can to start re-stacking Maelstrom.

Has anyone who is doing sims looked at any of these sort of timing issues as to when is best to use a LvB? Should you wait for last tick of FS debuff to get max duration of it? Or does LvB immediately you have 5 stacks of maelstrom so you can start renewing stacks of Maelstrom give better DPS?

As an aside I found it fairly easy to get 5 stacks of maelstrom on even the most lowly Northrend mob. I was of course not trying to do max dps to try to stack it (I left out shocks and SS's) otherwise the mob (lvl 68) would die too quick for test to see MS stacks. However it was very simple to get 5 stacks of MS within the timer, which leads me to think that timing LvB will be an important part of our DPS cycle.

Levva: about LvB usage.
Lavaburt adds only 40dps now over lightning bolt when testing with Tukez sim. Buff/debuff change really hit hard to LvB. Imp. scorch is 10% spell crit now. CoE include nature damage now. Raidwide moonkin aura/elemental oath. All those benefit Lb over LvB. We have to wait all buffs/debuffs revamp and see what are the final values. If these numbers stay I think LvB is just Elemental devastion uptime tool.


Edit: Elemental fury looks promising now. 185dps or 6%. Even if 51 pointer suck we still get good replacement.

It would be nice if it was changed to a generic "shield" timer - since we may be using LS instead of WS (for Static Shock use or whatever). Maybe have it a different colour (yellow?) if LS is up in addition to the blue when WS is up. Less important but nice would be to have it also show another colour (green?) if earth shield is up on you.

For this - I'm not in beta, so I can't say how useful it is, but do you really need to know how many stacks you have? I'd imagine it would either be - you have 5 stacks, do something with it - if you don't have 5 stacks up, who cares? In that vein, I'd prefer to see the bar missing/empty when you have no buffs, the faded colour when you have 1-4 stacks, and then the more obvious - do something about it - colour when you get to 5 stacks, with the bar ticking down the duration left on it (15 seconds?).

I don't use the other bars, so I can't comment on them - but the only other thing which I might find useful would be an ED indicator. Hidden if not in combat, pale if it's up with the length of the bar the duration, full colour when it's not up. May help to keep track of whether the next MW should be used on LvB, or it could be spared for a LB/CL if there looks to be plenty of time left.


On a different note, a question to any high-level beta testers - is threat a non-issue now? Enh still has no way of reducing threat from spell damage, but the % of damage from spells is (?) increasing in Wrath due to MW and the push to Ele subspec (for those of us who were resto previously)... but there seems to be very few posts about it (being horribly threat capped without salv was never fun in 5s and heroics, and I'd prefer to avoid seeing that again if possible).

This was planned, good idea about Earth Shield.

Worth playing with to see what is the most intuitive, the aim after all is to have a minimalist warning that's intutitive so you can keep an eye on all your cooldowns in one place. The point of the bar countdown though is that you are seeing the CAST TIME of a LB, CL or LvB spell as affected by Maelstrom. As the stacks increase the cast time decreases. However you may be right it may be that its simply better to show the time remaining on Maelstrom and the number of stacks, then "light it up" when an insta-cast is available.

Hmm I find SS bar (with hidden WF cooldown bar) & Shock bar the reason for using the addon. The watershield is a nice reminder but nothing too special.

Not sure about the ED indicator. Surely the best DPS is using the best dmg spell whenever its available. the fact that LvB should refresh ED is a plus. However I don't think you could have "plenty of time left" for a LB/CL as you would consume the Maelstrom stacks and it would normally take longer than the 10 sec ED duration to get 5 stacks back. A bar that shows you something you have little control over (getting a spell crit) isn't that useful is it?

What I can add that could be very useful is a separate frame for an uptime tracker that tracks ED, UR & Flurry uptimes (any other uptimes that need tracking?), and shows them as separate percentage bars. Perhaps with two values per bar - last combat period - totals for this session.

Ah you must have missed the new blue post - ref MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies

So it replaces our ES rank 1 effect of spell interrupt, and lowers threat. A wonderful new shock, of course testing will be required to determine the value of threat it reduces. Remember that the API now gives EXACT threat figures so no estimation required, write a small test code, cast the spell determine the effect.

In passing - totems affecting the whole raid is a welcome buff too.

Levva,

Just my 2 cents on the structure of the addon from a non beta tester

1) Having a countdown for stacks seems kind of backwards. It would seem to be more intuitive to show a bar with MW stacks, and maybe a bar 'pulse' when you get 5 (which is in your suggestions)
2) Having the WS in the same list seems very useful, I like that and the color idea alot. ( a pulse here to indicate when Ws goes awqay is also a useful thing)
3) I like the idea of the dual bar MW/LvB combo.
3a) One additional idea would be able to set the spell to use with MW (LB, LvB, CL)

4) As for the ED bar being too many, perhaps a secondary set of bars with ED, UR, and flurry uptime. These could even be on a seperate anchor. These are all passive but vitally important to Enh DPS and cycles
5) For Watersheild, MW, and Flurry, putting the number of orbs/stacks/flurry attacks inside the bar would also be very useful. that was the bar tells both the uptime and number remaining.

As for Flurry and UR, they don't have any influence on what we are gonna do (ie, next attack/spell to choose), it is intersting to have statistical data about their uptime to optimize our gearing, but its useless to know that during a fight (and really, who cares about UR, even with low gear it has almost 100% uptime when you can continuously hit).

@Hothgor: Shouldn't you be special hitcapped in your first test due to Dual Wield Specialization anyway?

I understand that Threat isn't perfected yet on the Beta. It's possible that this may not be a problem.

I'm concerned that, in order to manage our threat, we need to gimp our DPS. Unless Wind Shock reduces a ton of threat, we may be forced to use suboptimal cycles just so our threat can be kept in check.

While Slow/Fast may produce more DPS, it generates more threat per damage than current models.

If we are threat capped, current rules likely will apply. Slow/Slow weapons, hit capping specials, and using Maelstrom Weapon only to Lava Burst to ensure proper Elemental Devastation uptime. Instead of using reverberation to increase damage, you'll be subbing in Wind Shock to reduce your threat. This will increase the damage you can do in a threat capped fight.

We'll see what the future holds.

Orlgin, if we are constantly threat capped then Blizzard, hopefully, will make an adjustment to windshock or whatever to account for this.

However, no matter what, we will spec for the highest potential damage and adjust our dps down to whatever is required for a particular fight. This is what we do now if you have threat issues (ie, skip a round or 2 of shocks). Now we will be able to put in a windshock for a quicker threat drop.

Also, if it turns out that slow/fast is higher dps for much greater threat, I don't see why we couldn't just swap in a slow offhand for fights that we have to worry about our threat if it means we can increase our dps w/o increasing our aggro.

Its a bit to early to tell what the stats weights should be as we are still having weekly patches on the beta that alter available spells, talents, abilities etc.

Once the patch 3.0.2 goes onto the PTR then we will have a proper chance of telling. My estimate will be that the PTR will be up on the 12th or 19th September and will run 4-6 weeks, although possibly 8 if there are early problems, before going on live.

So you will have at least a month to alter any gear to max out new stats for raiding existing content. Although my guess is that once patch 3.0.2 hits the live servers it will be a maximum of 2 months before WotLK hits the shops.

This all suggests we are looking at a live 3.0.2 patch late October/mid November and a WotLK launch possibly pre-Xmas or early New Year.

My advice, do not worry about gearing up for the expansion. What is the point when it will not last you very long. It also means that you will gimp yourself now because our required stats are changing so much. Besides, stats will be weighted at lvl80, not level 71-79, so the values really won't be helpful for leveling.

The other thing to consider is that stats and ratings drop off horrible as you level. The only thing that does not devalue is AP. If you want to make your gear work for you now as well as having it be as expansion-proof as possible simply go for whatever items have the most raw AP on it. Stay away from pieces heavy on strength because the value will decrease in the expansion. Agility is a good stat to look for now because it is useful now but will be more useful in the expansion. Ignore intellect. We will never gear for intellect unless something major changes. The intellect to ap talent is simply an AP bonus. If you need to gem an item put AP gems in it for the best value. +hit, crit, expertise, etc. all devalue quickly when leveling so they will not be as important until you hit 80.

e: not sure if you are looking to gear up for leveling or for raiding 3.0 as a 70. Either way, my advice is the same.

[quote=Mman;877631]The other thing to consider is that stats and ratings drop off horrible as you level. The only thing that does not devalue is AP. If you want to make your gear work for you now as well as having it be as expansion-proof as possible simply go for whatever items have the most raw AP on it. QUOTE]

Yea makes sense really, guess Im worrying about nothing. All my stuff will be replaced by the time I hit 80, then maybe we will know what stats are best for us.

Appreciate the thoughts.

This is the post I made on my forum, but since it requires registration I'll just repost it here, hope that nobody will mind. Did it mostly so I can see what gear will be good for SWP raids so I don't bid 2k dkp on Felmyst leather pants if Kalcegos mail ones are gonna be better for me etc. Also, did it to help guildies with enh shaman alts or offspec gear so it's written a bit "light" to be easily understandable. I just wanna stress that I got no beta access so all the "3.0 stats" were calculated by napkin math. If you see some obvious mistakes please point them out, this was done in a short amount of time so mistakes are very much possible.



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Taken from Methods of Madness forum:
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Gear choices with 3.0 patch


With the 3.0 patch comming closer, all the classes will get new talent trees and their specs/gear will have to be balance a bit to get the max out of the new specs. While 90% of them won't see a change how they are affected by the new stat merging (Hit and Spell hit rolled into just "Hit", Crit and Spell crit into just "Crit" now, Haste and Spell Haste into just "Haste"), not only will hybrids get the most out of it, enhancers will also get new stat conversion.

As of 3.0, enhancers will see the following changes (combat ratings):

This was done so enhancers got some benefit from using hunter gear wich was always inferior to most rogue gear.

To bring the stats change into bigger picture, here are the values:
All of this is based on some napkin math, will know the exact values when I transfer Kop to the test realm when 3.0 Patch hits it. Also, I turned all Str gems into Agi because it looked like the best stat now, not knowing what AEP values will look like, but again, I'll work on exact values once I can get on the test realm.

Not only the stat values have changed, the spec will also look much different now. The current spec takes 16 points in resto for 3% hit with attacks and spells, 30y totem range and 25% less totem mana cost so twisting is even possible. By removing twisting (Str and Agi rolled into "Strength of the earth" totem, WF no longer gives additional melee attack but 20% flat out melee haste), making the totem range 30y by default and removing the 3% hit talent, enhancement has no reason anymore to put even 1 point in resto subspec.

The new subspec will now be elemental (5% more damage from shocks, Elemental devastation (+9% Melee crit for 10 sec after a Spell crit) which now also gets the benefit of the new stat merge (Crit = Melee & Spell crit etc). That 1 missing point in the linked spec will go in the Enh tree for either Feral spirit or Static shock, depending on what will bring more dps, .

By taking these values and talents into the new Shaman 3.0 patch simulator (100000 simulation hours, most raid (de)buffs not included since they're changing a lot atm) what I get is this:

As you can see, much has changed. The stats for enhancers have been turned upside down. Here is the upgrade list for live and 3.0 patch:

Before 3.0 gear ranking with my current stats
After 3.0 gear ranking with stats change*
*Str value of 2 was used only because all of the Enh shaman T6 will be changed (1 Str = 2 AP) to make a better comparison between T6 and other items, ignore the score for nonT6 items with Str on it


Biggest changes I can spot from just taking a glance at those lists:

• [Choker of Endless Nightmares] from Supremus becomes the best Enh shaman neck in game.
• [Starstalker Legguards] from Kalcegos climb from 317 AEP to 396 AEP and even overtake [Leggings of the Immortal Night] which were by far the best legs in game.
• [Stormrage Signet Ring] Illidan ring, from being the 3rd best ring in game falls even bellow [Ring of a Thousand Marks] KZ prince ring
• [Bold Crimson Spinel] is no longer the best gem, but one of the worst

These are just a few changes that will rock the Enh shaman world, from gear choices, enchants and gems. The calculations are still not 100% perfect but also not tha far off. They should get even better as the test realm with 3.0 patch testing comes up.


Hope it was an interesting read, will update this thread in the near future when more info is available.

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Fearlez re-run the sim and edit your post then with correct numbers. Expertice and hit rating have way bigger ep at 3.0. I have tested that sim over and over and those aren't right numbers. You have inputted some stats wrong. Check how much you have expertice and how big is expertice ep range and make sure that hit ep range + hit don't go over spell hit.

Also correct hit number line:
1 / 0.079 = 12.6 Not correct for melee hit.

Edit:
I runned sim and there is results:
Still wondering why haste goes that low.