Huh?

MD + MQ isn't a scaling benefit. It's a static benefit. An elemental shaman isn't going to get appreciably more AP as her gear improves, because there's no AP on it and intellect does not tend to increase a lot across tiers (unless the gearing paradigm changes considerably). MD + MQ basically represents a lump bonus that will hardly scale at all.

What this will do is make elemental shamans overpowered in weak gear (t7), possibly even nerfed because they're overpowered in weak gear (see the treatment shadow priests got due to their power in t4), and then comprehensively outscaled (again, see TBC shadow priests) as spell damage values increase and that 400-900 spell damage declines from 50% of total spell damage to 25% (or whatever, pick your numbers).

(You allude to this at the end (elemental shaman tapering off in t8/t9) so I think it's more or less just a rhetorical objection.)

Arcane mages and demo locks have similar talents that are based on stats (intellect in the arcane mage's case, pet stats in the demo lock's). They are good for the undergeared and then become increasingly marginal as gear improves. I don't think you want to be relying on that kind of mechanic to be viable, because it's going to cause you major problems in the hardest portion of the game (i.e., the end of it).

Well to be fair, that IS scaling, it's just very, very poor scaling. (It scales mainly via extremely static values, such as BoM, SoE, AI, MotW and Battle Shout) I don't believe we're meant to specc this way.

Oh yes "the shadow priest problem", scaling dilemma #1. That's exactly what we're seeing here, the funny thing is that at Blizzcon last year I recall them talking about Shaman scaling. "Arcanite reaper and beyond" was it? Yet a patch later (or something) they gave us a scaling nerf, Oh the logics.

Well what can be done?
a) An insane (and scaling) damage/group booster can be added to the high-Elem talents, maybe replace S, E & F.
b) Add a decent scaling component to the high-Elem talents, again maybe replace S,E & F - or even better added to Lightning Mastery (seriously this talent needs a buff).

The problem with option a) can be illustrated as the following;
Warlocks does 3000 dps, threat capped.
Shaman does 2000 dps, isn't threat capped. The shaman increases each warlocks dps by 20%, thus 600.
Warlocks + Shaman = 16400 dps
Just warlocks = 15000 dps.
A noticable win? But the extra dps isn't really added because the given bonus cannot be utilised due to threat.
So we're stuck at 3000 dps per warlock, making the grand total a "low" 14000 group dps.

So what I'm saying is, the buff needs to be balanced so that it justifies bringing a shaman (Neither should it force you to bring one, the difference could and preferably should, be minimal), but not to the far out that his dps suffers greatly to compensate. PS: The buff should obviously scale.

I'm sorry? I currently have a bit over 500 intellect. Compareable Karazhan shaman will have around 400 intellect. That's without the buffs, of course. The difference of 100 intellect can be added 10% from BoK, 10% from Unleashed Rage and 10% from 2/3 Flametongue. That's 130 attack power extra or 39 spell damage gained from intellect alone (which would be 13% scaling from intellect) The exact same 100 intellect would give an arcane mage 31 spell damage (that's including kings and arcane mind).

In other words, "static benefit" is only true if you look at it from the point of a classical shaman. Now, we don't really need that much mana to spam our rotation, so instead of going all out on intellect gems, we'll still desire a balance of other stats, but the figure does show that the scaling from MD + MQ really isn't that bad.

That said, we're looking at alpha talents here and chances are a large portion of this will change considerably before beta even, let alone retail. I do think we're in for quite a few tests once beta hits, though.

Also, I do wonder if we have the entire picture here. It is already now apparent that Elemental Weapon talent over at the Enhancement tree is wrong and must have been changed in some kind of way. Also, I'm quite sceptical if these PvP oriented talents will be balanced. I get the impression that Elemental Shamans can become slightly too tough with Hex, Astral Shift, Thunder and Lava Burst. However, I don't PvP.

Elemental shaman will never be strong unless they get an actual ability that allows them to cast. On my fresh 70 priest I run through season 3 geared elemental shamans (with shoulders) and they never get a cast off at me apart from some shocks that I heal away with my pom/renew. How is that right? You can't do that to any other class.

Well, I actually think we will get abilities that allow us to cast stuff. Astral Shift should help vs. melee hit interruption and melee in general. We have Improved Fire Nova totem that should give us yet another tool vs. melee. Frost Shock's chance to root targets in place, should once again help vs. melee. We have Thunder that yet again helps vs. melee. Hex should help be a handy tool to allow us either to heal up or to get enough time to load up a mighty Lightning Bolt. We have finally Flame Shock and Lava Burst as viable damage alternatives, if we are locked out from the nature school.

It is the fact that we get several tools against melee that make me believe that we actually got too much PvP talents. Of course, if Elemental Shamans are totally chanceless in PvP, then this assumption will be utterly wrong. Now, the screams from people that PvP leave me with the impression that the Shaman class in general is a weak class, but this is sort of countered if you look on the class representation graphs. With nothing else to base my assumptions on except the graphs, I would say that TBC Shamans are not that terribly broken. We probably need a few tools to help us survive, but did we need all these tools? I doubt it.

Ok, I better once again post my disclaimer. My interest for PvP is zero, and my experience is just as low. This is just guesses based upon rumours in a thread of promises.


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Addendum

Ok, I yield (in comment to the two posts below).

Now, would it not be quite ironic if the new WotLK talents fall short even when it comes to PvP? Afterall, almost every new talent is PvP-influenced.

I was just about to say the same, neither is the root anywhere near as reliable as you'd want it to. 20 yards on Thunder, it's both shorter range and on a longer cooldown than any of the melee classes abilities to catch someone. Without a way to clear snares we're still gonna be sitting ducks.

Elemental Shaman are not strong pvp classes in small scale PVP in TBC and I see no compelling reason to believe that is suddenly going to change enough to make them overpowered in small scale pvp in WotLK. Curse of tongues, line of sight, pushback (fuck you pushback) and mana longevity are still going to be significant problems for them. The new talents and abilities certainly show some improvement, but contrasted with the improvements other classes are getting, I don't expect elemental shaman to suddenly be a good 2s or 3s class/spec.

The best part of WotLK for elemental shaman will be that they can simply respec to resto for arena without a gearing change. So if you want to play 2s or 3s as a non-enhancement shaman, you'll likely have to go resto. I don't see blizzard fixing the problems with elemental shaman in 2s or 3s. If you're playing 5s, elemental is viable.

Based on personal experience: yes, we did. Elemental Shamans are a curious class - on the one hand, they have the most massive potential dps output of ALL classes (that includes mages). On the other hand, we are so easily locked down that all the burst doesn't make a difference. Elemental shamans do well in 5v5, because we function as a sort of support + tank - we offer enough to be a valuable team asset, but most of the fight we'll keep running around purging things and shocking stuff or stomping totems, much like a resto shammy would. The difference from a resto shammy is - if we're left alone, enemies die, so in a way, being elemental ASSURES that you'll be tanking.

Now if we look at graphs, you'll notice that the number of shamans in lower brackets crashes - the reason is in exactly that easy-to-lock-down aspect of the class. This is where all the pvp tools come in - they give us a chance to breathe, a chance to contribute to the team. The main question now is - are those enough to give us the time we need to kill enemies or are they just gimmick abilities that won't change a thing? Only time will tell, imo. Too much is changing to make an informed guess here.

All it takes is little changes. The pre-bc elemental shaman was a top-notch 1v1 and small scale pvp class, not much changed and soon it was broken. Of course, it also depends on the changes to every other class, so it's really impossible to tell (wtb beta!).

Having a strong instant should do wonders for the pushback and LoS problems, and a cc that will allows us to set up a combo is amazing. I don't see elemental shaman being a good class for a dps+healer setup for the same reason shadow priests aren't good for that - not a ton of cc, no real ability to outlast. But in terms of 1v1 or double dps setups, elemental is looking much improved.

A lot of it will have to do with how good lava blast turns out to be. I'm also concerned about the functionality of astral shift, but if it's somewhat forgiving it could be great.

Personally I'm leaning towards a 51/20 toughness build for elemental pvp, though I'll probably end up staying resto in the end ;p

Meh. It's hard to know how good they were pre-bc because our only measuring stick was world pvp and BGs. Today, those things aren't even considered when talking about relative PVP strength. Anyone that says their class is good or bad based on performance in BGs is promptly mocked. In any case, it's not worth debating how good they were, the fact is a lot changed between now and then. Rogues and druids changed significantly and other classes generally improved in pvp strength (oh hay warlocks). Shaman trended downwards in power as a pvp class, with elementals losing strength in TBC pvp signficantly relative to other classes. Recently enhancement has been improved, but that's not the topic of this thread.

The new abilities look like steps in the right direction. No idea if it's enough, but it's a reasonable bet it's not too much.

If you know both classes, they're not really hard. In fact, warlocks right now are a shadow of their former self and kinda underpowered save for imba (and sadly only really viable) SL-SL-Felpuppy combo. Mages can be tricky, but if you know what they can throw at you, they're manageable. Rogues, though... ouch.

Eye of the Storm >>>>>>>> Hunters. It takes one hell of a skill and luck on hunter's part to beat an elemental shaman, with out without 50% spellpushback on LB.

From what I've heard, it's a 5/10/15% increase of your total +dmg. So kinda like Shadow and Flame (locks) or Empowered Fireball (mages), but for all spells, with the drawback of blocking oil use.

One thing i regret though is having to throw 7 points into enhancement when I respec for PVP. Well I really don´t need to, but instant ghostwolf is so useful...

edit: abbreviations deleted.

Yeah, it's going to suck if it overwrites oils, especially me being an enchanter >< . What if they make it like how WF will work though...like how rogues will be able to have a poison + WF. It would only be fair to have flametonuge work the same way with oils imo.

Personally, being a cheapskate I wouldn't say no to it overwriting oils, giving a hefty amount of damage instead.

But now that we know that it's giving a raw amount of spell power, we can assume how the talent is going to work, namely increasing this static effect by 15%.
Read more in this post:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t27016-e...p5/#post784723

Edit: Well from what I've seen it as, only the totem will give a "buff", whilst the shaman spells work as they do now, perhaps they'll change that though, we can only guess so far.

This needs to stop. It's not going to be total spell damage. It was explained during the WWI announcements, from mmo-champion:
Flametongue will have +dmg attached to it, Lavaflows will increase that by 15%. We don't know how much it's going to be yet.

What makes you say that? I would assume that the +dmg from FT would be higher than that of an oil.

You cold just have said Tauren Shaman and you'd still be right in your assumption.

actually, the exact wording was "spell damage bonus" and while that could mean "bonus spell damage effect", I doubt that was ment on the panel. Either way, the wording is questionable to say the least.

But let's assume you're right - this would mean a low level shaman would lose both early weapon enchants that boost his melee dps, but would instead gain a small +dmg and/or heal bonus (depending on when earthliving is first introduced).

What's even more interesting is that this basically pushes elemental shamans into a classical melee combat when they can't cast spells. In other words, attack power from intellect becomes pretty much a must.

It doesn´t really need to be so. While it is true that MQ is clearly better than LF, due to that formula through wich we arrive at the conclusion that we would need a +2800 spellpower bonus from FT to be woth it, it doesn´t really mean oil is worthier than FT. That is, if the new Spellpower oil gives +200spp and FT gives +300spp, obviously FT will be used, even though this is far from the 2800 needed to make LavaFlows a good talent (which would be, i assume, dropped)

Something that's been bothering me is what problem Lava Burst actually solves. If I recall, one of the larger reasons Elemental Shaman wanted another spell school was for situations like Hydross, for which Lava Burst is a woefully inadequate solution.

In fact, I'd almost say the spell seems more oriented for PvP, where we could guarantee a crit and thus boost our mana efficiency and burst. In PvE it only seems to complicate our spell rotation for little reward and make us dependent on Enhancement Shaman for our full DPS potential. Synergy isn't bad, but it doesn't seem clear what's being gained.

Air Elementals.. Earth Elementals... yeah, having a second spellschool nuke is needed for these situations, mages thought they were in the same boat, when really they have THREE different nuke schools, I think it's ridiculous how they get a whole new spell to completely go around this problem, which they didn't even have in the first place! Lava Burst is a slap in the face as far for solving this problem goes.

In PVP, we had a different issue, when locking down our nature school we couldn't to jack, this spell gives us atleast something, in addition to it being a powerfull spell alone, with the unique critt mechanics. Moving our healing (the 'waves') into frost school would be another, perhaps more overpowered, fix. From the initial looks of it, Lava Burst works fine in this regard.

Lava Burst is a spell with cooldown, which means you basicly HAVE to benefit from it, or it would fail horribly, all the scaling we see suggests this will be the case, so far so good - it makes having a rotation useful. If it didn't have a cooldown, it would either thanks to talents become "the new nuke", this would be a bad idea, because we have so horribly "many" talents that in that case would improve our lightning spells in vain. Having it with the role Molten Blast used to have, ie. a spammable lesser damage spell, would but it in a position of where searing pain is to the destro lock, usable sometimes, like Hydross for us as an example.

It's a pvp spell that happens to have some pve appliance.