See, thats the issue I have. Of COURSE with a large tree you will end up putting most of the points into that tree. If you look at the enh spens people are talking about you will see a bunch with 50, 52 and 54 points in Enh. I dont consider that bloated at all. 0/71/0 would be bloated. After all 54 points is only a few more than the MINIMUM to get the top tier talent. Unless they change the prereq's you will always need 5 points per tier, so if you want to go deep into any tree you will end up with alot of points in one spec.
21/50/0 in particular looks at least competative. 50 points.....how is that blaoted? Would you rather you have crappy high end talents like elemental did a few patches ago and have to subspec fairly deep just to max your dps? Seems foolish to me.
You misunderstood my point. 54 points in the tree isn't bloat. When the majority of those points are spent the exact same way, including more than 5 points per tier, that's a problem. Look at the specific tiers that I mentioned, (5-8). It is not unreasonable to expect enhance shaman of all flavors (raid, solo, pvp, etc) to spend all 26 points in those 4 tiers. In such a case, there's no customization there.
In contrast, look at tiers 1-3. There are distinct pve and pvp talents in there, and thought both arena and raid shaman might spend 15 points here, they'd spend them in different ways. That's customization and choice.
The latest build is out!!! And it looks like they fixed the poor damage comparison of FS+LvB by...nerfing Lightning Bolt! Resto shamans rejoice though, you get 2 new ranks of Chain Heal. The Enhancement changes are nice at least. Too bad they announced their intentions to butcher the remaining parts of the tree!!
Elemental
• Lava Flows 3/3 - Increases the amount of bonus spell damage on your Flametongue Weapon by an additional 45% (down from 60%), and increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Lava Burst spell by an additional 24%.
• Storm, Earth and Fire 5/5 - Your Lightning Bolt gains an additional 10% (down from 25%) of your spell power, your Earth Shock's range is increased by 5 yards and the periodic damage done by your Flame Shock is increased by 50% (down from 100%).
• Thunderstorm 1/1 - You call down a bolt of lightning, energizing you and damaging nearby enemies within 10 yards. Restores 5% mana to you and deals 1450 to 1656 Nature damage to all nearby enemies, knocking them back 6 yards. (Now has ranks. Rank 4 is listed.)
Enhancement
• Maelstrom Weapon 5/5 - When you critically hit with a melee weapon, you reduce the cast time of your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Lava Burst, Lesser Healing Wave, Healing Wave or Chain Heal spell by 20%. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 15 seconds. (Now affects healing spells.)
• Shamanistic Focus - Reduces the mana cost of your Shock spells by 45%. (Now passive.)
Restoration
• Tidal Waves 5/5 - You have a 100% chance after you cast Chain Heal to lower the cast time of your next Lesser Healing Wave or Healing Wave spell by 30%. In addition, your Healing Wave gains an additional 20% (down from 25%) of your bonus healing effects and your Lesser Healing Wave gains an additional 10%(down from 25%) of your bonus healing effects.
• Ancestral Awakening 3/3 - When you critically heal with your Healing Wave or Lesser Healing Wave, you summon an Ancestral spirit to aid you, instantly healing the lowest health friendly party or raid target within 40 yards for 20% (down from 60%) of the amount healed.
Shamanistic Focus change effectively nerfs the ability by 15% for long fights but makes it better for trash. I don't expect anything to change. Using Hunter Gear gives us a lot more mana.
The change to Maelstrom Weapon won't see as much use as some would think. Most of the time, you will fire Maelstrom Weapon powered spells as soon as possible for maximum DPS. So the emergency would need to happen at the same time as your Maelstrom happened to proc.
A concern I do have is that Enhance shamans might be fighting for the same weapons as casters. With caster weapons showing more DPS on the current sim, it makes gearing up your raids take longer. You might be stuck with suboptimal weapons simply because they are available.
If caster weapons aren't available, you'll be looking for the slowest main-hand you can find and the fastest off-hand you can find. That's not exactly a recipe for success when it comes to weapon availability. That's even worse than now because you need two very specific types of weapons. The best off-hand will be 1.3 speed and how many of those will you see? For that matter, how many 1.4 speed will you see? Check out all the top daggers in the current expansion and note how many of them are slower than that.
If we care about mana then shamanist focus is huge nerf. With elemental focus and shamanist focus shock could be free almoust 75% of time and rest 25% costed 40%. Thats only avarage 10% of total cost.
New Shamanist focus is passive 40% and stack with elemental focus. 75% cost 20% and 25% cost 60%. Avarage 30% of total cost.
Change triples cost of shock.
Without elemental focus shock cost is 0.55 / 0.4 = 1.375 higher than before.
Shamanistic Focus change effectively nerfs the ability by 15% for long fights but makes it better for trash.
I'm not sure where you're coming from here. At as low as 30% crit, which a good Enhance Shaman has unbuffed, you have a better than 75% chance of proccing Shamanistic Focus from your initial white attack and Stormstrike. Thereafter, you have a similar chance of proccing it again before Shocks come off CD. By the time you reach raid buffed figures of 40-50% crit, the uptime is 90-100%.
These figures apply whether you're on bosses or trash. So, can you please explain to me how a flat 45% reduction is better than a 60% reduction that will be available almost every time you can use it?
Have any of the Shamans in Beta seen how much Agility we are getting from Mongoose at level 80? Did a search, found that it had been asked 2-3 times here but never answered. I havent been able to find anything on it in the BB Beta post or the Rogue post either.
Shamanistic Focus change effectively nerfs the ability by 15% for long fights but makes it better for trash. I don't expect anything to change. Using Hunter Gear gives us a lot more mana.
The change to Maelstrom Weapon won't see as much use as some would think. Most of the time, you will fire Maelstrom Weapon powered spells as soon as possible for maximum DPS. So the emergency would need to happen at the same time as your Maelstrom happened to proc.
A concern I do have is that Enhance shamans might be fighting for the same weapons as casters. With caster weapons showing more DPS on the current sim, it makes gearing up your raids take longer. You might be stuck with suboptimal weapons simply because they are available.
If caster weapons aren't available, you'll be looking for the slowest main-hand you can find and the fastest off-hand you can find. That's not exactly a recipe for success when it comes to weapon availability. That's even worse than now because you need two very specific types of weapons. The best off-hand will be 1.3 speed and how many of those will you see? For that matter, how many 1.4 speed will you see? Check out all the top daggers in the current expansion and note how many of them are slower than that.
With the stated intentions of the dev's to have us be a melee class with WF as our weapon imbue, I highly doubt that you will see fast weapons with caster stats on them as the right choice come live, not to mention to have flametongue imbue on them. It goes completely against the philosophy of the class design.
However, it needs to be stated very clearly by someone with access to the US beta shaman forum that this is what we're looking at. I know that some people have already posted about this, but someone like Malan should really do it in a usual matter-of-fact-including-data sort of style.
Have any of the Shamans in Beta seen how much Agility we are getting from Mongoose at level 80? Did a search, found that it had been asked 2-3 times here but never answered. I havent been able to find anything on it in the BB Beta post or the Rogue post either.
The only answer I've seen is that devs have stated that Mongoose didn't get the Crusader treatment and will stay at what it does now.
Is it possible for say an Ele Shammy to consume your FS debuff on a target or is it only you that can consume it with LvB?
If it is possible for the FS to be consumed then if it were easy to track if your FS debuff was still on the target and you were doing a standard FS, ES rotation would it be wise to refresh the FS debuff before another ES?
I am thinking that keeping FS ticking for use with LvB might need to have priority over an ES. So if for instance you knew that your FS was down would putting it back up be better? Would it depend on MW stacks? Is it a situational thing? Would it depend on SS charges on target ie: buffing ES?
Or is simply keeping a FS/ES/FS/ES regardless of outside factors the best strategy. Is it possible to even simulate this?
Is it possible for say an Ele Shammy to consume your FS debuff on a target or is it only you that can consume it with LvB?
If it is possible for the FS to be consumed then if it were easy to track if your FS debuff was still on the target and you were doing a standard FS, ES rotation would it be wise to refresh the FS debuff before another ES?
I am thinking that keeping FS ticking for use with LvB might need to have priority over an ES. So if for instance you knew that your FS was down would putting it back up be better? Would it depend on MW stacks? Is it a situational thing? Would it depend on SS charges on target ie: buffing ES?
Or is simply keeping a FS/ES/FS/ES regardless of outside factors the best strategy. Is it possible to even simulate this?
Not positive since I haven't tested it out personally (and refuse to log into my shaman till they fix Windfury Weapon) but Koraa said back during the Alpha test that only your Lava Burst could consume your Flame Shock DoT.
This one of the biggest groundbreaking changes to enhancement shaman mechanics since the WF fix. Stormstrike Debuffs are now only useable by the shaman who debuffed the target. No more rogues/hunters eating charges. It is unfortunate for our Elemental and Boomkin friends, however.
Originally Posted by Koraa
I'll look into it... note that Stormstrike only buffs the Shaman's damage who cast it, not other Shaman. Similar to how Haunt works.
Now how does this affect us? Well let me ask a simple quest: Why would we ever use Lava Burst again? With 20% crit from gear, about what most shamans have via crit rating on gear post change anyway, We will easily be seeing 25-30% raid spell crit rates. Earth Shock and MW Lightning Bolts will probably give us 80+% uptime for elemental devestation. Couple that with the fact that all our static shocks, lightning bolts and earth shocks benefit, while LvB is currently gimped spell coefficient wise, and it's a whole new ball game.
This one of the biggest groundbreaking changes to enhancement shaman mechanics since the WF fix. Stormstrike Debuffs are now only useable by the shaman who debuffed the target. No more rogues/hunters eating charges. It is unfortunate for our Elemental and Boomkin friends, however.
Now how does this affect us? Well let me ask a simple quest: Why would we ever use Lava Burst again? With 20% crit from gear, about what most shamans have via crit rating on gear post change anyway, We will easily be seeing 25-30% raid spell crit rates. Earth Shock and MW Lightning Bolts will probably give us 80+% uptime for elemental devestation. Couple that with the fact that all our static shocks, lightning bolts and earth shocks benefit, while LvB is currently gimped spell coefficient wise, and it's a whole new ball game.
Thoughts?
nailed it on the head.
only reason to use lava burst now would be if you were having issues with Elemental Devastation uptime or in PvP to force a crit. Basically will be Flame Shock and Lava Burst till you are spell hit capped and running a decent crit rate and then shift to pure earth shock/lightning bolt spam. Didn't see that one coming at all.
See the other post today?
Spectral Transformation vs. Earthbind Removing Snares
- I get snared, I hit Ghost Wolf, it removes the snare vs..
- I hit Earthbind, it instantly removes the snare.
How is that different? Sure, you can instantly kill the totem by attacking it (costing the person who did it a global cooldown) or I could dispel your Ghost Wolf (also costing a global cooldown). It also instantly dispels snares of anyone around you (your Spirit Wolves for example). Has a lot more depth than just Ghost Wolf removing snares...
Love the snarky attitude from Koraa with those comments. [sarcasm]No the cooldown on Earthbind wouldn't make that any less effective and having your Feral Spirits vulnerable to snares and roots and stuns should be just fine since your Earthbind can protect them too.[/sarcasm] Really starting to truly dislike him/her/it.
Not positive since I haven't tested it out personally (and refuse to log into my shaman till they fix Windfury Weapon) but Koraa said back during the Alpha test that only your Lava Burst could consume your Flame Shock DoT.
This was certainly bugged in the last build. I was pounding away at the boss dummy along with multiple other shamans and lava burst would consume any flame shock on the dummy.
Since there is a lot of disscussion of builds posted have you guys been considering builds without SR. It seems crazy but if another buff is better no reason to waste the 5 points. Both DK and Trueshot are better but DK's have stated their uptime is not as good as SR.
This one of the biggest groundbreaking changes to enhancement shaman mechanics since the WF fix. Stormstrike Debuffs are now only useable by the shaman who debuffed the target. No more rogues/hunters eating charges. It is unfortunate for our Elemental and Boomkin friends, however.
Thoughts?
I'm think that they need to change improved stormstrike then. Unless you spec static shock you will never get more than two nature damage spells off before you stormstrike again. Make it increase the damage of the charges or something.
Speaking of static shock, I wonder if it's dps is enough to make up for the lost dps from wasting stormstrike charges with it? It needs to do more than 20% of the dps from lightning bolt and earth shock to be a clear winner (this is assuming a worst case scenario where stack shock ate all the charges).
This was certainly bugged in the last build. I was pounding away at the boss dummy along with multiple other shamans and lava burst would consume any flame shock on the dummy.
Since there is a lot of disscussion of builds posted have you guys been considering builds without SR. It seems crazy but if another buff is better no reason to waste the 5 points. Both DK and Trueshot are better but DK's have stated their uptime is not as good as SR.
I'm thinking it will go like this.
10 minutes to raid start.
Any Hunters coming? 3 ok, any of you specced MM? None of you??? DAMN IT. /random for who is respeccing, yes the enhancement shaman has to roll too. Lowest roll gets to hearth and respec and get summoned back.
I'm very sick of Koraa, and the seemingly haphazard way that suggestions get taken along. Have these people no ideas of what makes the class work AND be a unique playing experience? It's nice that they listen obviously, but it doesn't seem to be very hard to impress an idea upon them, which is worrying for game balance in general. But that said, if stormstrike gets to mean "20% extra damage on 4 of your spells hitting", then that will be insanely nice.
Fair trade 3500 mana per two min for 21.5dps.
But they have said that lava burst will be boosted and if stormstike would change to all spells then we actual want cast Lava burst.
I'm very sick of Koraa, and the seemingly haphazard way that suggestions get taken along. Have these people no ideas of what makes the class work AND be a unique playing experience? It's nice that they listen obviously, but it doesn't seem to be very hard to impress an idea upon them, which is worrying for game balance in general. But that said, if stormstrike gets to mean "20% extra damage on 4 of your spells hitting", then that will be insanely nice.
After reading a lot of changes since the beginning, I'ld think the answer to your first question is plane "No". Remember that Shamans were originally not created to DPS and adding Einstein's paradigm that "a problem cannot be solved within the mindset that created it" the solution lies outside the dev team, which is .... us basicly.
As for Stormstrike goes: Just like the old Warrior Imp. WW talent, I don't see a point in a second point in Imp. SS anymore. IT's been proven countless of times on Warrior and Retridin forums that a rotation with 9 & 6 sec CD abilities works far better and that 1 second off that 9 provides 0 DPS extra. And personally, I don't see that 4th charge being used a lot, even with a fast OH with Static Shock. The damage gain from the debuff is not good enough to warrant another talent point really. Hell, the Glyph, giving a total of 24% over 3 charges, is not even worth it anymore if you only use it for personal DPS. Maybe if they changed Stormstrike to work on Static Shock, LB, LvB and all shocks, it would be a nice change (note how I left out flametongue weapon there :P)
On UR and proc talents in general:
I order raid buffs in 3 categories:
1) Auras and Buffs: As long as everyone stays out of the fires, everyone has the buff
2) Abilities: Triggerable abilities that buff everyone in range, e.g. totems or Warrior Shouts (or 3/3 Imp. Scorch)
3) passive effects/procs: buffs that are up 99.X% of the time you are DPSing, but still fall off once in a while.
Now obviously, #1 is the best as you don't need to do anything to get the buff except for not dieing. Then again, if you're dead, you can't DPS anyway, so that's a 100% uptime as long as you live. Most of the talents that grant such an ability are usually 1-pointers and get a large amount of talent budget.
#2 is something you can work into a rotation of some sorts to provide guaranteed 100% uptime at the loss of personal DPS.
The last one, #3 is something you have no control over and you can only hope that it procs enough to get as close to 100% as possible.
The problem here lies with the fact that because #3 is inferior to other similar talents, there where other classes/specs provide this buff with a mechanic that is ranked higher, your talent is mostly a waste. As such, my suggestion would be to provide these talents with an additional, but small, benefit for personal DPS, so that that 1% uptime you lose still makes that talent worth it. In the case of Unleashed Rage you could e.g. improve Stormstrike or Shock damage by 1/2% per talent point. Both are only a relatively small part of our DPS, but provide you a reason to take the buffing talent regardless of what other classes you bring.
Good example of what I'm talking about: new Judgement of the Wise for paladins. Because it's inferior to shadow priest/surv hunter uptime, no retridin would spec for it if he mainly does 25-man raids where either of those other classes/specs are expected. But because there now is a self-only part on the talent, most (if not all) Retridins will probably see this talent as on par when adding both raid-wide and personal gain together. The balance here lies far towards personal gain though, I'ld expect an addition to other proc-based talents to give less personal increase, due to a higher uptime of most proc-based talents.
Feel free to leech my ideas if you want to post them on the beta forums, I don't have access myself, which is kind of dissappointing as you don't always need to gather data yourself to work on them and yield some interesting results you might want to share with others.
Originally Posted by Pitbuller
Why do you want challenge simulator with napking math?
But they have said that lava burst will be boosted and if stormstike would change to all spells then we actual want cast Lava burst.
They actually nerfed Lightning Bolt to make Lava Burst look better:
Storm, Earth and Fire 5/5 - Your Lightning Bolt gains an additional 10% (down from 25%) of your spell power, your Earth Shock's range is increased by 5 yards and the periodic damage done by your Flame Shock is increased by 50% (down from 100%).
But another thing, is there anyone around who can post on the beta forums and wants to point out for Blizzard 2 things that really bother me?
First, Shamanistic Rage has to be split up into 2 different talents. In TBC it was just a quick and dirty hot-fix to slap the damage reduction on it, but this talent just fails with the choice of either reducing damage taken or getting mana back when you need it. There is no single reason why this can't be split up in 2 different talents, one for the mana regen, and one for the damage reduction.
Just shows how much Blizzard really cares about our spec since they haven't thought about doing that yet.
And then there are those Spirit Wolves. They just got implemented without any feedback about them from Blizzard. The NYI is gone and Blizzard didn't say that they are still working on them, so we have to assume they stay like that or what? I am surprised there isn't more complaining about them on the beta forums, seriously, in their current state, who is gonna using them? They have little use in Arena and none in PvE.
The damage output is a joke, Spirit Hunt heals for almost nothing, Twin Howl is a dismiss button (how long are they gonna stay alive if you taunt a mob in heroics/raids?) and Bash is so much worse than Warstomp, what's the use of a 2 sec stun every 3 minutes? Only Spirit Walk looks good at the moment.
And don't give me the shit about "it's still Beta, when WotLK comes live all will be great", half our abilities aren't even working and they already started nerfing us...
As it stands, we get Hex, Maelstrom Weapon, Lava Burst and those Dogs in WotLK. Hex was long overdue for obvious reasons, Maelstrom Weapon is our only real new toy, Lava Burst is slowly transforming into a casual ability to activate Elemental Devastation and the Spirit Wolves I have commented on above already.
Beside that we get radom cosmetic changes, more charges on Stormstrike / Lightning Shield and Totem adjustments don't require a new expansion to justify them.
I know, I am whining here a lot, but to be honest, I am more and more disappointed by WotLK. TBC wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed boosting my melee group above the caster group in raids with my buffs and totem twisting. Our buffs got sold out to other classes, twisting is gone, all thats left is Maelstrom and those low dps wolves? Great...
With the new Lava Lash ability, we will easily consume 4 charges of Storm Strike every 8 seconds as we will get 2-3 Lava Lash procs during that time alone!
- Elemental Fury and Call of Thunder are switching places. Call of Thunder will be a 1-point talent, and Elemental Fury will be a 5-point talent. For Elemental Shaman this won't mean much, for Enhancement it means they can have easier access to 100% spell crit damage.
- Lava Burst's cast time has been increased to 2 seconds, but Call of Thunder will reduce that cast time by 0.5 sec with 5 points. Thus, the coefficient of Lava Burst has been improved to match it's new cast time.
- Lava Bursts base damage numbers have been significantly increased.
Enhancement
- Mental Quickness and Unleashed Rage have swapped places.
- Spectral Transformation renamed "Earthen Power". It causes your Earthbind Totem totem to have a 50/100% dispel all snare effects when it pulses.
- Weapon Mastery: Now a 3-point talent (4/7/10%)
- Stormstrike - New animation, also now increases all Fire, Frost and Nature damage done by the Shaman instead of just Nature.
- New Talent (Tier-8) - Lava Lash: You charge your off-hand weapon with lava, instantly dealing 75% off-hand Weapon damage. Damage is increased by 25% if your off-hand weapon is enchanted with Flametongue. 3 second cooldown. 4% base mana cost. (Also note: Lava Lash does Fire damage, also procs Maelstrom Weapon)
- Maelstrom Weapon: Can now be used for Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave.
- Feral Spirit - Many bugs with Spirit Wolves fixed, also increased the damage done by the Spirit Wolves
09/10/08, 11:49 PM
