Personally, I think having enhancement spec work best with Spell Power would be a unique and interesting way to make a niche role. Yes, it trivializes Windfury and Attack power/white damage in general, but it brings something new.
Imagine that you could use what is considered Elemental only gear right now (hit, crit, SP), and change specs, not swap a single piece of gear (except your offhand), and do potentially more DPS at the sacrifice of range, thanks to dual wield.
Assuming the DPS is equivalent or better...
Things to consider (some are obvious):
1. FT now grants SP, so FT/FT is massive bonus (~550 @ 80 with 3/3 Elemental weapons)
2. Elemental Fury is lower in Elemental, making it accessible at 15 total in that tree. (2x crits!)
3. Thundering Strikes includes spell crit
4. Crit rating now applies to both melee and spells.
5. Hit rating now applies to both melee and spells.
6. Spell power takes massive advantage of Maelstrom Weapon, Lightning Shield, Flametongue proc, and shock damage.
7. Since critting with melee doesn't require melee gear anymore, all the melee crit triggers aren't affected.
8. Elemental Devastation is much more synergetic than before.
9. Super obvious... spells ignore armor!
10. Fights that require melee to stay out won't find you gimped. You are more effective at ranged than any other melee class.
11. Healing is still very good, you are just missing the efficiency and tools of resto. You may actually heal more in the short run thanks to dual wield.
12. DPS scales indefinitely with haste, instead of potentially gimping it thanks to WF cooldown.
13. You can still swap gear in those fire immune fights, or even heal or just lob LB, CL at range.
14. Lightning Shield hits for over 1k at level 70 with the glyph and talents. Static shock may prove to be instrumental in Enhance DPS.
15. Changing specs is no longer an impossible dream because you have no alternative gear.
Downsides
1. Fire immunity hurts dps a lot. Gear swap is the only way out unless you change roles to ranged or heals.
2. WF becomes forgotten or replaced.
3. (the big one) Blizz has up to now itemized WotLK as if enhance would be 100% AP based. Re-itemizing could be months in coming.
4. What about all my current Enhance gear?
5. I WANTED to be a rogue in mail! That way I could still stab the mobs but I actually get invites now! Stab! Stab!
6. Now you have to fight all those other shamans for gear, instead of just enhance and hunters. Resto gets priority in many places.
I've uploaded a new version (v2.40) of ShockAndAwe that now includes an option to suggest LvB or LB when you hit 5 stacks of MW. It also now has a LvB bar so you can see if its perhaps only got <0.5 sec before its off CD anyway and perhaps you think its good to wait that 0.5 sec (we haven't seen sim results on a stable build to know if any small wait is better or not).
I think they've done an outstanding job with making enhancement the only real hybrid dps spec. But if you push out the melee part too far, we're just a caster class stuck in melee range, which is the worst of both worlds. Now, Blizzard has certainly screwed things up before, Warlocks are a pet class and most of BC they didn't even use one. So it's possible they won't be bright enough to notice the enhancement shaman all running around in caster gear or using caster weapons. But it's clearly not the design intent of the class. When they say 40% white damage, that's just your normal swings, not specials like Lava Lash and Stormstrike. If white damage is down to 25%, something is out of balance.
Maybe a main hand caster weapon will be ideal, but trust me, you don't want it to be. Nothing in the game has more competition than caster weapons. And if the only one worth using is that main hand fist, you're going to be at the mercy of the RNG to get it anyway. Most likely since you are only really rolling against rogues for melee weapons it will be much easier to get a good melee weapon than a good caster weapon.
Another point in the melee vs. spell damage discussion: spirit weapons only reduces our threat from our melee attacks. While blizz has stated (somewhere) that they'd change this if we need to (and with tanks getting a buff in threat), the larger we make our % of damage be elemental, the faster we'll be threat capped.
Any spec without Elemental Focus I consider pretty suspect. It is essentially a flat -40% cost to all our spells, and even with replenishment I find myself going out of mana pretty fast weaving 5MW lightning bolts and chain lightning in between LvB in instances and grinding. We also guarantee a crit every 8 seconds so the uptime will nearly 100%.
Imp Shields is also a pretty marginal talent, and getting it at the expense of Imp SOE or weapon mastery is definitely sub-optimal even for a spell heavy style of play.
I am having trouble seeing the problem with being a "caster class stuck in melee range". In terms of how you go about playing the character, the type classification of your damage is irrelevant. You still run up to your target's ass and start flailing your arms at it, you still use the same set of moves, you still play like a melee class. As long as you can put out the kind of damage you are supposed to in the situations you're supposed to, using the same abilities in the same way as you're supposed to, what is the problem?
I can think of three important differences.
1) You get worse at damaging magic immune/resistant targets, and you get better at damaging physical immune/resistant targets. Seems like a fair trade to me, but I could see people favoring one or the other to some degree. If you toss in the flexibility to ranged nuke/heal on melee-unfriendly encounters this smells like a win for caster gear to me, but doubtless there is some similar advantage for physical damage that I'm missing.
2) You compete with shamans instead of hunters for armor, and with casters instead of physical dps for the rest of your gear.
--I see the armor change as a minor but nice change (3 specs want hunter mail, 3 specs want shaman mail instead of 4 and 2)
--the non-weapon non-armor change is pretty neutral (4 classes just want phys, 3 classes just want spell, pallies are 2/1 in favor of phys, druids are 2/1 in favor of spell)
--the weapon situation depends greatly on how well itemization is done but isn't inherently bad (put in nice staves for priests/druids, swords for 'locks/mages, and maces/fists for pallies/shamans, for nicely spread itemization; put in a bunch of crap plus some all-around-good maces/daggers and have caster loot hell).
3) All shaman specs can make use of the same gear instead of one of the specs requiring a completely different set. Right now, I can't think of a single advantage that needing completely different gear has over using the same gear for everything, assuming equal end result performance for the two implementations. Same gear allows for much easier spec switching though. Decked out in T8 dps gear and your buddies need you to heal an heroic? Wouldn't it be nice to heal that run using T8 gear instead of whatever motley assortment of greens/blues/low tier epics you hung onto "just in case"? Maybe not nice enough to expect the developers to rebuild the spec to favor caster gear over physical gear, but if it's just about there already and all they need to do is nudge it a bit further in that direction...
The biggest issue with being a caster in melee range is aggro.
Spirit Weapons only affects melee attacks and while currently we seem to be given a "pass" on threat mechanics I really can't believe that Blizzard intends that situation to exist when Wrath goes live.
So you lose the aggro reduction from being outside of melee range and the majority of your damage is unaffected by our talented aggro reduction, which seems like a nice recipe to get smushed on a fairly regular basis. Either that our you will end up having to restrain your dps to avoid pulling aggro which means you are doing less dps then you could be if you went for more melee damage.
Yes, currently tanks (on the Beta) output 4-5x the threat of any dps class but I really doubt that is what Blizzard wants, since I think they do like the threat management meta-game and don't really intend to remove it for WotLK.
The biggest issue with being a caster in melee range is aggro.
Spirit Weapons only affects melee attacks and while currently we seem to be given a "pass" on threat mechanics I really can't believe that Blizzard intends that situation to exist when Wrath goes live.
So you lose the aggro reduction from being outside of melee range and the majority of your damage is unaffected by our talented aggro reduction, which seems like a nice recipe to get smushed on a fairly regular basis. Either that our you will end up having to restrain your dps to avoid pulling aggro which means you are doing less dps then you could be if you went for more melee damage.
Yes, currently tanks (on the Beta) output 4-5x the threat of any dps class but I really doubt that is what Blizzard wants, since I think they do like the threat management meta-game and don't really intend to remove it for WotLK.
Actually they have said numerous times they want the exact OPPOSITE of what you think they want. They added the in game threat meter. They took out salvation and tranquil air. They intentionally BUFFED tank tps by a factor of 4. All of this with the stated goal of letting players worry less about 'pulling aggro' and more about making things go pew pew.
As an update to the earlier post on a lvl 70 build for levelling to 80 (ie: for 13th - end Nov) I've tweaked a few points and come up with Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft the idea being to take 1 in Feral Spirits at 71 and fill out Elemental Fury 72-76 followed by Unleashed Rage 77-80.
I'm not so sure static shock is all it's cracked up to be, obviously the lightning orb damage is a nice bonus, but with mana lost from both refreshing lightning shield and from not using water shield seems rather large. I know i was OOM'ing rather quickly on the PTR but with limited intellect. Has anyone on beta had mana problems on longer fights?
Originally Posted by Mochiloc
until I got home and was trying to figure out why I looked like I had been kissing the Tin Man all morning.
I'm not so sure static shock is all it's cracked up to be, obviously the lightning orb damage is a nice bonus, but with mana lost from both refreshing lightning shield and from not using water shield seems rather large. I know i was OOM'ing rather quickly on the PTR but with limited intellect. Has anyone on beta had mana problems on longer fights?
Lightning shield cost 0 mana. So you don't lose mana for refreshing it.
Anyway static shock is a stupid talent overall. If it worked with ALL shield and they would increase the proc rate(at least double it) then it could be a good talent counting also where it is placed in the tree.
Even with these changes it would still be a "passive" talent for the most part giving no new mechanic to the class.
Actually they have said numerous times they want the exact OPPOSITE of what you think they want. They added the in game threat meter. They took out salvation and tranquil air. They intentionally BUFFED tank tps by a factor of 4. All of this with the stated goal of letting players worry less about 'pulling aggro' and more about making things go pew pew.
No, they pulled salvation and tranquil air so that Paladins and Shaman were not required to be in a raid for the aggro reduction buffs. They have never said anywhere that they want threat to be a non-issue for dps classes.
They have said they will make sure that all the tanks are equally good at threat generation but that is a long way from saying they want you to be able to dps all you want without a care in the world of ever pulling aggro.
I'm not so sure static shock is all it's cracked up to be, obviously the lightning orb damage is a nice bonus, but with mana lost from both refreshing lightning shield and from not using water shield seems rather large. I know i was OOM'ing rather quickly on the PTR but with limited intellect. Has anyone on beta had mana problems on longer fights?
(EFB) Lightning shield costs 0 mana. Max rank Water shield is roughly the same mp/5 as a mana spring, unless you are being hit. It's not terribly bad, and you can switch from one to the other when the situation arises that you're either totally fine on mana or running dry.
Water Shield REAAALLY needs to be rolled into static shock as a way to make both it and Imp Shields more attractive. Otherwise I'll be skipping at least Imp shields, and probably static shock if I'm forced to raid without a blood DK (and as such need to spend the 5 points in UR).
Don't forget you can Wind Shock to lower threat now. If you have to, you can spam it every six seconds. If you have a lot of spell critical, elemental devastation uptime will still be fairly good just from the Maelstrom Weapon casts. You will be doing lower DPS than top of the line but it's doable.
I strongly suspect they will add threat reduction to Maelstrom Weapon or other deep enhancement talent when they decide to reduce tank threat capabilities. They'll look for classes that suddenly scream for mercy when they nerf the tank threat and handle each one based on what they want.
If you're concerned about it, put a suggestion in the Beta Forums for Maelstrom Weapon powered spells not to produce threat. It's an easy fix that instantly solves our threat problems and doesn't require much effort to implement.
Levelling:
Solo spec without improved ghost wolf is insane. Water shield is amazing when you get hits thats why static shock isn't brilliant at leveling. This spec work both solo and group enviroment. If you want take elemental focus and dump 3point at enhancement then also move 3 points out at convectiction.
Gearing:
If you fear about we stuck at elemental gear just look our t7 gear. It has so much agi/int/ap that there is 75% spellpower what elemental gear would give. Our spellpower ep value should be over 5 that we have to use that kinda gear.
Valorous Earthshatter War-Kilt
1125 Armor
+67 Agility
+66 Stamina
+66 Intellect
Red Socket
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Equip: Improves hit rating by 36 (0.97% @ L80).
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 51 (0.98% @ L80).
Equip: Increases attack power by 170..
Valorous Earthshatter Kilt
1125 Armor
+99 Stamina
+77 Intellect
Yellow Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Hit Rating
Equip: Improves hit rating by 42 (1.13% @ L80).
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 59 (1.13% @ L80).
Equip: Increases spell power by 98.
Enhancement gear have:
+67agility
+170 ap
=~304ep
Elemental gear have:
+11 int
+6 hit
+8crit
+98 spell power
=~161ep
Enhancement War-kilt have only 28spell power less than elemental kilt when you factor talents.
[(170+(67+66)*1.1) * 0.3] / (99+(77*1.1*0.3)) = 0.76
So our t7 kilt have 76% of elemental t7 spell power. Our gear is fine. Only spell power weapons can be competitive.
Levelling:
Solo spec without improved ghost wolf is insane. Water shield is amazing when you get hits thats why static shock isn't brilliant at leveling. This spec work both solo and group enviroment. If you want take elemental focus and dump 3point at enhancement then also move 3 points out at convectiction.
Same spec I am planning on starting WotLK with except I move 2 points from Ancestral Knowledge into Earth's Grasp since I like having a stronger Stoneclaw totem in case I manage to pull more then I can handle and the 2 points in Ancestral Knowledge really won't help much until I get more intellect then I have on my current gear.
Oh and I place 5 points in Concussion instead of Convection since I'd be using Water Shield so mana shouldn't really be too much of an issue.
and any Enhancement spec without Weapon Mastery just screams "fail".
Despite the fact that this statement qualifies as "useless post", I will rebut none the less.
The idea behind the build is to put 100% of your gear toward spell mechanics. If you have 0 AP directly from gear, and your main hand is a spell weapon, would 10% to weapon damage for 3 talents be worth it? It seems incredibly unlikely.
Originally Posted by Shabadu
Any spec without Elemental Focus I consider pretty suspect. It is essentially a flat -40% cost to all our spells, and even with replenishment I find myself going out of mana pretty fast weaving 5MW lightning bolts and chain lightning in between LvB in instances and grinding. We also guarantee a crit every 8 seconds so the uptime will nearly 100%.
A solid point. We could easily take one out of Call of Flame and add Elemental Focus.
As for the rest of the comments on Static Shock, I was personally seeing 920 lightning shield dmg per orb (after Unleashed rage, Stormstrike debuff)in my testing at level 70 on the PTR, with middling SP gear (1097 unbuffed) and 3/3 improved shields. With the 20% glyph, and when FT weapon actually increases nature damage, this will be upwards of 1100. This is just level 70. I can't test on a training dummy on the PTR since they are all level 80+, but presumably the 6% proc rate is sound.
Since it's easier to calculate, lets round the all 9 charges dmg up to 10000. Both my weapons are under 1 sec after flurry and WF totem, but let's round them up to 1.0. 8 sec CD on SS, and lets just say we lava lash the second before that, so we count the same number of LL and SS over a given time. SS is 2 attacks, LL is one. Mathematically, it takes 150 attacks to proc all 9 orbs. Every 8 seconds I generate 19 attacks. Assuming none miss, that means it will take...
150/19 = 7.9 8 second periods, or about 63 seconds. 10000dmg/63 sec = ~ 159 dps. ... Zero mana cost, 1 GCD. If the shield gets removed on its own reactively (cleave, etc), you basically bump the DPS significantly.
Since it's easier to calculate, lets round the all 9 charges dmg up to 10000. Both my weapons are under 1 sec after flurry and WF totem, but let's round them up to 1.0. 8 sec CD on SS, and lets just say we lava lash the second before that, so we count the same number of LL and SS over a given time. SS is 2 attacks, LL is one. Mathematically, it takes 150 attacks to proc all 9 orbs. Every 8 seconds I generate 19 attacks. Assuming none miss, that means it will take...
150/19 = 7.9 8 second periods, or about 63 seconds. 10000dmg/63 sec = ~ 159 dps. ... Zero mana cost, 1 GCD. If the shield gets removed on its own reactively (cleave, etc), you basically bump the DPS significantly.
WOW!!! You move so many goal posts there to make it "easier to calculate". Seriously you can't just "round up" and change stuff and hope to make a serious point when debating with the nitpickiest of the nitpickers on this thread. You need to be 100% precise, and yes I'm well aware that often doesn't apply to my initial posts
As Malan says you really need to test the ideas on the sim to see how it pans out. So please sim your suggestions and see where it lies in the grand scheme of things, report back your findings, add to the debate, tell us if you spot inconsistencies in the sim or Blizzard's implementation of a skill or talent that we need to alert them too. Enjoy your time here but be prepared to back up anything you say with HARD numbers and NOT rounded up "easier to calculate" stuff.
If you take the time to simulate your ideas and present your results you will find a willing audience to debate your ideas.
Originally Posted by Rounced
I think that comparison is insulting to Arcane Mages.
Some of the Arcane Mages I can think of need insulting
Simulate it and find out, otherwise the conjecture is right up there with "Arcane must surely be the best mage spec!"
I think that comparison is insulting to Arcane Mages.
So basically you are planning to do Elemental Shaman level dps but in melee range and without Elemental Precision to reduce the threat of any of your spells. Tell me how that will work from a threat standpoint if they balance threat levels for an Elemental Shaman to take into account being at 30+ yards and having Elemental Precision in their spec.
Durnitol is using Lightning Knives theory. Melee gear is much better in most cases because of Agility.
Agility is the stat that makes the system work. It adds AP which fuels the melee attacks which converts to spellpower for the spell attacks. It adds melee critical which fuels the melee attacks which increases the proc rate of Maelstrom Weapon which increases the number of spell attacks. It enhances all of the damage done by the shaman.
I got my best results when I took hit to spell cap, expertise capped, and then added equal numbers of haste, agility, and critical rating. Using melee gear and a slow caster weapon in the main-hand had the best results for me. Windfury/Flametongue is the best way to go according to every experiment I've done.
With that setup, I use a priority system of:
1) Stormstrike
2) Maelstrom if it's up.
3) Lava Lash
4) Earth Shock (with glyph to cut GCD)
5) Other GCD ability
I don't use Flame Shock in my tests now. It's DoT duration isn't very long (being consumed by burst) and the auto-critical lava burst is paid for with a substandard spell eating a stormstrike debuff. Earth Shock just is better in my opinion taking up much less GCD, crits better, and is a better use of a stormstrike debuff. I may lose some elemental devastation downtime since I'm relying on natural spell critical but if that results in better damage, that's fine.
That's all I got. My results varied widely and I don't want to post results that may be outliers. If anyone has a lot more time than me and can check it more often, I'd be very happy. Hope that helps.
But Lvb + FS is a feedback mechanism; You increase your melee crit rate by 9% thus fueling Mael and potential LB spam. I believe this may be why a "perfect" rotation as such may be utopian and even a priority list may be highly situational.
It's possible to simulate, but I'm not sure you can do it in EnhSim. Getting the most out of your rotation would be anticipating when you would use LvB and cast FS early enough for it to let the DoT tick long enough. With current CDs I guess FS directly after LvB, but given the asynchronous CDs letting the DoT tick is probably less actual DPS than fitting an ES in between.
All in all it seems like enhance will be far more cooldown watching than twisting ever was. Personally I was quite upset with the news that twisting was removed as we were looking at one 10sec and one 6sec(back in the resto sub-spec days) and that was it. Several relatively short CDs and having to give thought to what you should select next, and not just the highest base damage ability if off CD, may set a new benchmark for playing enhance decent or good.
Baby, you can hold my balls.
10:10 < buu_> Raut: You are a hero of the internet.
I'm not so sure static shock is all it's cracked up to be, obviously the lightning orb damage is a nice bonus, but with mana lost from both refreshing lightning shield and from not using water shield seems rather large. I know i was OOM'ing rather quickly on the PTR but with limited intellect. Has anyone on beta had mana problems on longer fights?
Did you grab Elemental Focus? I was ooming horribly in both solo and dungeon runs just after they put in LL and fixed MW - then respecced to pick it up, and it made it a *lot* better. I'd consider it required at 70, picking up the dogs at 71. You're not getting guaranteed crits with LvB, but I (at least) have been critting with spells enough to have it up a fair deal.
I don't use Flame Shock in my tests now. It's DoT duration isn't very long (being consumed by burst) and the auto-critical lava burst is paid for with a substandard spell eating a stormstrike debuff.
/picardfacepalm
The reason you use Lava Burst every time is to guarantee Elemental Devastation doesn't drop off. Some of you people absolutely amaze me.
Anyway, unfortunately I was unable to run any tests last night as we didn't raid on Beta, so it looks like the next real raid tests I'll be able to run will be tomorrow as we'll be clearing Sunwell tonight.
Hopefully I'll be able to run some good DPS tests in Naxx tomorrow with slow/slow WF/FT.
[13:30] <JerleMinara> zyla you're cute you should've come to blizzcon
[13:31] <frot-prime> yeah you could have had sex with a dickgirl
[13:31] <Zyla> wouldnt be the first time
09/23/08, 12:47 PM
