tufy

Oki, I have a wee bit time now, so let's check out the talent and spell changes:

1. "PvE Square" (Elemental Oath, Lightning Overload, Totem of Wrath, Paralysis) requires one talent point too much. Filling that, you need 46 talent points. Thunderstorm costs additional 6 points on top of that, bringing you to 52 talent points required instead of the usual 51.

2. Storm, Earth and Fire is underwhelming for tier 10 in elemental.

3. You can get MQ, Lightning Overload, Elemental Oath and ToW, only sacrificing Paralysis from "essential talents":

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...02300000000000

It is a good alternative to more traditional builds:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

4. New Hex is better for PvE, but worse for PvP. We have to figure out what to do with 15 seconds between end of its duration and end of cooldown.

5. Flametongue Totem currently adds 73 +dmg to party. That's less than Wrath of Air offered, it's a fire totem (same as Totem of Wrath) and it doesn't get boosted by talents. Flametongue Weapon remains unchanged.

6. Lava Burst is only superior to CL and LB if target has Flame Shock up. This forces Elemental Shamans to stand at 20 yard range, making Storm Reach essentially useless for PvE.

So, what can we do here?

a. One point should be removed somewhere in "PvE square". Best bet is Paralysis squeezed down to two talents.

b. Totem of Wrath should add this effect to any fire totem or alternatively, it should be an earth totem.

c. Storm, Earth and Fire should be changed completely. Shock system should be removed, instead this talent should boost Flametongue and Wrath of Air Totems by X% (note: both Windfury and Strength of Earth are talented, Wrath of Air and Flametongue Totems are not).
Alternatively, Paralysis moved up to tier 10, upped to 5 points, Storm, Earth and Fire moved down to Paralysis' position and reduced to 2-point talent. It won't make any difference to MQ builds, since they don't have Paralysis, but it will make tier 10 more wanted for both PvE and PvP. Totem upgrade talent should be added anyway to bring support boost in line with enhancement.

d. Lava Burst and Flame Shock should be added to Storm Reach. Alternatively, those two talents should be extended in range by Paralysis or Elemental Precision. In any case, Flame Shock should be extended to 36 yards if we are to have use of Storm Reach. Alternatively, Storm Reach can modify Flame Shock or Lava Burst in some other way, making the talent useful in pve.

EDIT: one more thing: MMO yesterday posted two JC-unique gems. One of them gives 45 stamina and the other gives 50 attack power. Level 70 versions are 18 stamina and 24 attack power. Comparably, we're looking at roughly twice the stat value compared to level 70. If we can extend this to the rest of the stats, we get a nice base for calculations. Let the number twisting begin.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Graze

Initial thought. I walk around on about 600 int fully raid buffed. Is 1200 too much to assume for a T7+ level 80 char?
If not, we're looking at 120 mp5 from US, I doubt we can afford much less than 5/5 of this talent.

Rank 8 Water Shield (level 69) is 50 mp5, can we expect to get ~100 mp5 from this at level 80? Lightning Shield damage went up about 32% So about 70 mp5 is my guess.

I'm a shaman, a conduit of the ancient forces of nature. A master of the elements, except fire, water or earth really... nor do I have any REAL control of nature. But I do hurl bolts of lightning!

 

Leppa

Here is another build, Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
whit some + mp/5 and some extra mana. I loose some spell crit whit this build but i think
the +mana gain is some time better.

 

Foxx2405

First of all, you cant make totem buff talents that far in the talent tree.

Second of all, flametongue totem DOES have a talent for it. Its in the first tier of enhancement, under Enhancing Totems.

I agree with most of your other points though. [/quote]

 

Phlis

Why not? Strength of Earth and Flametongue are teir 1 enhancement, Windfury is Teir 5, Mana Spring/healing Stream are teir 4. The talents which enhance vital totems are much lower in the trees to basically ensure no other build can have them. Having a deep talent which improves Wrath of Air gives another reason to bring Elemental Shaman to raids.

I like tufy's ideas. I think we can lose a point in Elemental Oath honestly. Making that a 1 Point talent would work out really well. I think SE&F needs to be changed, maybe if they rolled Lava Flows 10% increase to Lava Burst into it, it would be better. Maybe remove paralysis and put that in there too, and have a talent like Wrathful Totems which improves Totem of Wrath and Wrath of Air in paralysis' place, a 2% increase to each(2 point talent if Elemental Oath is kept 2 points), with a 10% boost to LvB, CL, and LB in SE&F might be enough to make speccing deep elemental better then 43/28. Of course that talent would be overpowered as hell, but it really needs to be to counteract MD+MQ's synergy with Elemental.

 

Graze

The name; 'Storm, Earth and Fire' sounds like the ultimate Elemental talent to me, like it should make every attack deal additional fire and/or nature damage and do 10-20% more in total. (Having a spell deal more than one "type" of damage is possible since 2.4.3)

This quote explains it somewhat:
Shamanism and nature worship - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Even if it just applied to our Lightning Spells it would be a really cool idea, allowing us to fight nature immune mobs( as for example the Shadow+Nature type damage completely bypasses Shadow Ward). and perhaps even grant us a nice damage boost. I have no idea how spells like these could be balanced, but even without all that just a small % modifier would be a nice treat.

I'm a shaman, a conduit of the ancient forces of nature. A master of the elements, except fire, water or earth really... nor do I have any REAL control of nature. But I do hurl bolts of lightning!

 

Lucitron

Don't know if that is a bad thing. Personally I actually enjoy when there is no clear cut path, and would not mind if the "PvE Square" would be bigger so that you end up with a certain desire to place far more points in the Elemental tree.


As could be seen above, I've a bit of different view here. Personally I feel that Elemental Shields and Astral Shift could be merged into one talent (6% passive damage reduction, and 30% when you're stunned, feared or whatever). Then they could introduce a new 3 point PvE talent that boost Flametongue Totem and Wrath of Air Totem. You now get the scenario that you've to weight a bit if your personal dps is more important than the groups - if you want Tidal Mastery or the Imp.Totem-talent-thingy.


Once again I've a bit of different view. I don't mind that they want to spice up our dps-cycle with Flame Shock and Lava Burst. What I dislike is the poor range of Flame Shock. One solution could be to boost this talent to be a 2 point talent, and move it to tier 4 as a replacement to Imp. Fire Nova Totem (which I find to be a bit sub-par now when it can't stun). The tier 10 replacement talent could be a 5 point "Lava Flow" talent that boost the range of Flame Shock with up to 10 yards and Lava Burst's and Flame Shock's damage with 10%.


Addendum:
Regarding b) and d), then I agree. Totem of Wrath should be an Earth Totem, or baked into a passive effect for all fire totems. Storm Surge should work on all of our important spells in our dps cycle, i.e. it should set the range of LiB, CL, LaB and FS to 36 yards.

At 7:45, offices are empty. Some could get bored, but I stay calm, I know how to adapt. While waiting for them I have time to take a coffee.

 

Darian_TruBlade

Last I checked in I had stated again my concern that MQ&MD would bork Elemental Shaman scaling, but I could be wrong.

Looking at Fel Armor, whereby Warlocks will gain 180 + 39% * Spirit in Spell Power, it's entirely likely that it won't be an issue. Assuming Warlocks achieve 500 spirit at T7 raid buffed, they'll have a base of 375 spell damage. This is in addition to the mana regen they also get.

It may very well be that MQ&MD is in the cards for going Live, though I maintain that it would be nicer if we had a reason to take SEF.

 

B-Dawg

Our 10th tier talent should be something related to our new fire spells; in my opinion 10th and 11th tier talents should be class defining talents and SE&F is not a class defining talent. If we are expected to include Flame Shock in our rotation, then its range needs to be increased, or maybe Elemental Shamans will just have to fight at shock range come WoTLK - making Storm Reach a PvP talent only.

I also don't understand why they are making us choose between totems again - ToW vs. Flametongue. I guess if the raid is rolling with a Resto Shammy and Flametongue affects everyone in the raid, there really isn't a problem, as long as you're in range of the Resto's totems - bringing totem range back as an issue. What they should do is add an improved ToW talent increasing the effectiveness of ToW and adding spell power to it and having it scale. It's about time our spell damage totem scale, 73 spell power isn't going to cut it in WoTLK.

 

Mmootimus

Well done to all those doing the theorycrafting.

I'm going to have a "for those of you who just got home from work" moment, as our sports presenters like to say. The story so far seems to be:

- The best PVE DPS build currently leans heavily on Enh, to make use of MQ+MD. This is a pretty seismic shift, as we have always had Resto as our 2nd tree. No one entirely sure yet if this is "intended".
- Our end-tier Ele talents still look lacklustre, and quite PVP focussed. SEF in particular looks very poor.
- Elemental oath does at least give us another group buff, which as hybrid buffing class is a littler overdue, but welcome
- There is the possibility of a major shift in cast rotation to include Lava Burst and FlS, although the lack of range on FlS, and the fact nothing buffs it makes it less than desirable currently.
- We are going to need spell hit a lot more than in TBC.
- Mana requirements currently seem prohibitively high, however there is a lack of clarity over mana regen in the meta game as a whole.

Please flame me if I missed anything

 

B-Dawg

You know, I've never even considered going as far down as MQ in the Enhance tree for Elemental PvE, but after reading a lot of these posts it seems a lot of people think this is the way to go - so far. This is the raid build I was considering...

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

I really think there is going to be change in our trees because I can't see Blizz expecting Elemental to go that far down into the Enhancement tree for a raiding spec. Just to get as far down to MQ means we aren't putting 3/3 into Paralysis, which is a talent I think Blizz expects to fill out for a PvE spec. Unless they are really pushing hybridization in WoTLK. Alot of things just don't make sense yet.

 

Ellerain

This, in a way, mirrors paladin situation with Holy's desire to dip heavily (23 points) in Retribution to obtain Sheath of Light. I'd say this is side-effects of buffing different trees to prepare them for Beta testing and will be remedied, but it just may represent concious design intent. This may turn out good if:

(1) 'Full' 50 (51) points spec in primary tree is as viable as 'heavy dipping hybrid'.
(2) Main focus of both specs stays the same, meaning neither Full nor Heavy Hybrid spec does not converts from Damage to Utility (see: Maelediction).

With these two conditions met we will see variety inside spec while not making Heavy Hybrid essentialy 4th spec in regards to 'what every raid should have'. Currently Sheath-botting seem to satisfy these conditions, while Elemental MQ does not. Another point to note here is that 3rd hybrid class, Druids do not see valiable hybrid spec emerging (RestoDreamstate probably can be ignored).

Chaos, panic and disorder - my job here is done!

 

Ocyr

Why would you ignore the most powerful arena hybrid build in the game? Serious question. Most Elemental Shaman would give their left n*t to have talents like a Balance/Resto Druids.

And btw, Mmootimus I think you summed it up quite nicely. The one thing I'd say though, is that Intellect is getting the "stamina treatment" from Blizzard in WotLK, so don't let those high mana costs fool you. The gear from WotLK I've seen so far has oodles of it -- level 70 blue quest rewards with more Intellect than T6 shoulders, for instance. (by nearly 50%)

 

Ellerain

Because I am thinking about raid viability, not PvP. The problem with alternative specs emerging in PvP is not really interesting, because there are no direct analogies in Arena to "must-have N members of <class X>" problem in raids.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my job here is done!

 

Jakuniku

So yay, I just got into beta. I'm not particularly well geared (mostly S1 and kara), but let me know if there's anything you want me to test. I'm going to try solo leveling/questing with this spec I think.

52/4/5

Once I get enough points to hit tidal mastery then I'm planning on respeccing more into resto to get that.

 

tufy

Oki, managed to get Nathaira over to Beta yesterday a bit past midnight. I only had time to test a few general things and get a feel before I went to bed.

1. Thunderstorm is awesome. It really is. However, the cooldown means we'll still be far from an AoE class. Perhaps, with Stoneclaw + Fire Nova + Magma Totem + Thunderstorm, things will be eased up. However, it returns mana and counts as another spell interrupt, both of which are win. Additionally, it usually buys you enough time to get off a lesser healing wave (which, btw., actually HEALS now! ) or a chain lightning.

2. Elemental Oath is a must-have. 6% crit damage and 6% mana cost reduction are up all the time. With Lava Flow, we'll be able to keep it up at will indefinitely.

3. Storm, Earth and Fire is crap in practice too. Sorry, there's no other way to tell it. If Thunderstorm wouldn't need it, I doubt anyone would pick it. I've launched 9 Frost Shocks at the enemy, one of which rooted it and by the time GCD was over, the target was moving again. The only conditionally useful part of the talent is earth shock range. I don't know.

Oki, so I ended up with 52 points in Elemental. Now what? I've had 9 points remaining, with additional 10 coming while leveling. To be honest, I don't think the answer is such a clear-cut "resto!" anymore. I mean, sure, for raid you'll want 4% extra crit, totem range, possibly lower mana cost on totems. But for leveling, I'm leaning towards getting Ghost Wolf and Mental Dexterity, as this will give me fairly reliable melee and escape option, along with more mana and better water shield. Furthermore, putting points into enhancement leaves me with 6 extra points which I can use on Eye of the Storm and Elemental Warding. Alternatively, Enhancing Totems would be a good idea too. We'll see later today, when I'll actually go into Northrend and try it out there.

In parallel, I'm making first spreadsheets to compare damage outputs. Unfortunately, a lot has changed for all classes, so any kind of raid comparisons will have to wait a bit.

EDIT: oh, playing on Nathaira, alliance side.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Phlis

Tried MD+MQ yet? Might as well spend some time, maybe try and get like a ZA together or something just to try it out.

 

Roywyn

I'd love to know how the crit bonus works, could you do a simple test?

1) Remove your hat (CSD meta can mess it up) and any other spell damage procs.
2) Cast a Flame Shock crit without Elemental Oath proced. Note the damage.
3) Proc 3 stacks of EO, and then cast a Flame Shock crit. Note the new damage.

Since Flame Shock has a fixed damage, we can see whether it multiplies your total damage of the crit by 1.06, or whether it interact only with the bonus crit damage, or if it works like the CSD meta and has some odd interaction with crit talents.

Thinking about it, I think it might be useful to do this test a second time with a CSD meta to see how they interact.


It would be nice if you or anyone else could do this quick.
Thank you in advance


Edit: Wow, that was quick, thanks a ton!

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

tufy

Well, we have a guild running right now, so I guess some raiding will happen eventually (prolly end of the week, as we're doing Kil'jaeden on Live). Problem with MD+MQ testing right now is that if you want to get MQ, you have to cut on Elemental Oath, Lightning Overload and ToW. At the very least, I'll need level 74 to test Elemental Oath, but the true power of the build is only really noticeable at level 80 when you can get all key talents.

Was already on the list for today's testing Though my intention was to find out if it works like flat 6% or if it multiplies like CSD does.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Graze

See if you can figure out if Paralysis sets the LB coef. to .81 or .89

Edit: As far as I've checked around the 'fun factor' of Thunder is/seems awesome, however the usefulness is quite questionable.

I'm a shaman, a conduit of the ancient forces of nature. A master of the elements, except fire, water or earth really... nor do I have any REAL control of nature. But I do hurl bolts of lightning!

 

Daidalos

I have a beta key now as well. I won't be able to start until later tonight but anything else you want to to check just post in here and I'll test it if no one has gotten to it.

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

 

Jakuniku

One thing I've noticed is that elemental oath doesn't proc off your lightning overload crits. It's not a hidden cooldown or anything, my regular lightning bolt hit, the overload crit and no elemental oath. I reported it as a bug but I guess it could be intended.

Thunderstorm definitely seems like a pvp and soloing talent. With my gear I've had it crit for about 2.4k. The mana return isn't anything special. The knockback is further than I expected though, if I had to guess, I'd say it's about 20 yards with storm reach.

Edit: Actually I think storm reach affects the range of the thunder effect around you, not the knockback.

 

tufy

The coefficient wasn't tested yet, but my informed guess is that it was not changed, because I'm critting 4k or even more (live crits are about 3,5k max). I have just tested Elemental Oath, though. 617 hit, 1234 normal crit, 1345 Oath crit. Rejoice

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Roywyn

I guess that was without the CSD meta, since the regular crit was 200% of 617? Just making sure.

So ... 1345/617 = 218% +/- 0.15%. It gives 18% crit damage bonus, with the Shaman version of "Ruin" (+100% crit bonus damage).
18% = 6? Yes, that's pretty old math actually, we had that with RED and CSD.

It seems like it does the following:
100 hit => 150 untalented crit => 150*1.06 = 159 EOathed crit =>
splits into 159 = 100 base + 59 new crit bonus =>Elemental Fury adds 100% to the bonus =>
The total crit damage then is 100 base + 59bonus * 200%EleFury = 218 damage.

Having a CSD meta is additive to EO, increasing your initial crit to 150*(1+0.03+0.06), resulting in a 227% crit total.

Behaviour at the moment:
Elemental Oath increases 200% crits to 218%, the 6% increase uses the same mechanics as the CSD meta.
The CSD meta stacks additively, so you'd get 227% crit like having 1+2=3 CSD metas active.
Thanks for the testing, Tufy

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

tufy

Ye. I used Don Carlos' hat :p

Aye, same observation and my guess is, it's intentional. With Lava Flow, we'll keep it up anyway.

I did. Seems to be 27% increase, i.e. summed value of 3% (CSD) and 6% (Ele. Oath). Checking again as soon as I can log on (there's currently login server issues).

P.S.: It's not important really, but it's a fun record 3.5k Thunderstorm crit

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.