Ocyr

I'll take a guess here, and say that the reason Blizzard is loading the Elemental tree down with PvP talents is specifically because it hasn't been a PvP powerhouse -- and according to several statements made by Blizzard developers in the past, it's supposed to be. The problem is that with no real damage talents and no drain abilities, Elemental still isn't going to be a powerhouse.

You don't win 2v2 by knocking someone off you once every 45 seconds, or by occasionally procing a GCD-duration root on them. You win by killing them or taking their mana -- and Elemental WotLK talents help neither.

 

Phlis

Indeed, if they really wanted elemental shaman to be PvP powerhouses, they would revert the casttime/lightning mastery change, keep paralysis, and up our spell damage coeffiecent to Warlock like levels. Being a pure "burst" dps class with a couple keep away abilities does work, maybe. I don't really PvP, but those were PvP changes to nerf our burst.

 

Yalingo

Well as you said even with the new "Pvp talents" the spec is still no good for PvP, Enhancement is still the way to go for that, but now Elemental just gets even worse for raiding as we'd be getting a grand total of 2 extra usuable talent points for 43/28 as opposed to 41/0/20, losing 6% talented spell hit. That spec also means skipping ToW as our fire totem is forced to be the new flametounge with the (stupid) change to WoA totem, so we're out another 3% talented spell hit. Oh and we'll also be losing 5% crit chance on LB/CL due to no longer taking Tidal mastery in the resto spec.

So now not only do we get Mail gear with less Spell dmg than cloth/tailoring sets we now also have to find an extra 9% spell hit from somewhere Just to break even with where we are in TBC.

I guess I could just go Enhancement like everyone else ;/

 

Graze

Paralysis going bye bye:
WoW Forums -> Paralysis

Anyone got a vid of the so claimed "awesome" new LaB animation?

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!

 

• frmorrison

Casters (and melee) in Wrath only need 9% hit to "cap" their attacks.


Doom and gloom is not a good idea.

 

Ocyr

This entire discussion is about to get turned on it's head.

[Paralysis is]Being replaced with something soon, along with a few other changes to deep Elemental.
WoW Forums -> Paralysis

If we're really lucky SEF is going to get moved, and Paralysis' replacement will be the new lead-in for Thunder and will be some substantially better damage multiplier than Paralysis was.

edit: beaten to it!

Also, I am thinking they are going to do something to break the 43/28 build via a new 44+ Elemental build that will do almost the same thing. They won't be able to nerf or even move MD+MQ without a major rework of the Enhancement tree, so the easiest thing will be to ... gasp ... improve the Elemental tree. Maybe I am delirious or something, but I think this might end up being the case ... now if only they get that god-awful SEF talent and stow it somewhere else, like where Paralysis used to be ... Paralysis' replacement needs to give more than 10% spell bonus to be worthwhile though. And maybe tone down the point requirements in Elemental tree while they are at it ... so many 3/3 talents and 5/5 talents, it's clogging the tree up like crazy.

 

Apaine

Good riddance... now as long as they keep 10% extra damage somewhere..... if it's less, then I'll consider it a nerf :/

 

Graze

I wouldn't mind if they bloated the Elem Tree with so many good talents that outdo Tidal Mastery, that way I could use my filler points somewhere else, like Imp. GW. But perhaps that's just me, it feels like it's a waste with 20 points in Resto when you only use 6 of them. (Okey I admit, I can't live without Imp. Ankh, that's just a must have).

I liked the idea of Paralysis apart from the [low] procc chance, could really help while grinding but I guess that's not really what it's for now is it. So I'm not gonna guess what might happen to my beloved specc, but we could point out some flaws at least.

• Elemental Oath fixes the utility issue, it's great, thanks.
• Elemental still suffers from pretty bad scaling.
• And as Ocyr pointed out, it's pretty bloated with many 5/5 talents "around the middle".
• The Flametongue Totem change contradicts Totem of Wrath.
• We still can't fight Nature immune mobs effectively.
• Spell pushback(!)
• Lava Burst is almost not worth using to us.

Minor issues:

• Lack of usable, reliable, spammable AoE. (I'm thinking Forked Lightning, /drool)
• Totem Range and duration.

Also; I still think Lightning Mastery is a really weak talent for it's position.

EDIT: Reports on the Beta forums claims Lava Burst can consume any Flame Shock shock on the target, not just your own.

EDIT 2: Added an issue with AoE. Currently our totems are our only form of AoE. Totems that are easily destroyed, and easily overaggro a body pull, getting them destroyed. Also, if a totem kills something on it's own you do not get credit for it. They're also stationary, requiring you to run close to the mobs and drop them, should the mobs move, you have to follow and re-deploy. You get the general idea.

EDIT 3: Added totems, on some fights we all know placing totems can be very difficult, and with raid wide totems this will be even more important. The short duration also makes us having to spend alot of time to refresh them.

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!

 

Ocyr

1]Agree with reservations (EO is pretty weak, but "better than nothing")

2]Agree (can be fixed with a decent replacement to Paralysis ... something class defining that deals with Lighting spells -- Improved LO "Your LO's deal 5/10/15/20/25% more damage" would be about exactly on par with the power of other casters "class defining" end talent set)

3]Exactly

4]I'm OK with that change actually, it means that non-raiding shaman can skip ToW, and raiding shaman will get the FT buff from the Resto's

5]Agree. I really thought LaB was going to be a spammable 2.0 second spell to finally give us a viable, if somewhat weaker, 2nd school .. as it is, on an 8 second CD and with almost no support from our talent tree ... not so much .. though I just saw your edit, and if it consumes any FlS it will at least be workable in a rotation.

6]Agree there is a really obvious talent, that was severely nerfed, where this should be added ....

7]Agree, since it is on a 8s CD and gets limited talent support

8] ... and this is where it should be added. Lightning mastery should be giving 15/30/45/60/70% pushback resistance in addition to it's normal function, as compensation for the 50% nerf this talent received. It just makes obvious common sense.

If Blizzard can implement these, or similar, ideas into the deep Elemental tree I can see an actual real Elemental build being an acceptable replacement for 43/28 -- and I would love it, as 43/28 will doom Elemental Shaman to playing their Shaman exactly the same as they always have, with nothing new to make things fresh and fun.

[edit to below post] --my main problem with the lack of spell push-back, and this is where we run into phrases like "class breaking", is the plethora of PvE/raid boss encounters where there are Aura/AOE spell push-back effects. Elemental Shaman have no way of dealing with this, and it makes those PvE encounters very frustrating to play -- and impossible to deal raid-worthy damage through. Having EotS talent available for PvP makes no difference when eating pushback because of rapid AOE/debuff applications in PvE, and it shouldn't be an excuse for not getting true anti-pushback talents (after all Priests, Druids, Mages and Warlocks all have multiple ways to deal with pushback in addition to a primary 70% anti-pushback talent) .. I think that given all the raid buffs every other class brings to the raid, it's time to stop thinking about "primary caster vs support caster" and just realize that WoW has become a game where every class is a support class.

Warlocks, BDruids, SPriests and Mages all now bring loads of raid-supporting damage buffs and debuffs in addition to their primary-class damage abilities. Shaman need to be up-dated to reflect this new reality. Looking through WotLK, what I see is that every caster is a primary caster DPS combined with a support-class buffer. That's the new reality. Hopefully the Shaman Elemental tree with indicate that Blizzard is waking up to this new fact.

 

Graze

As far as spell pushback goes, let me breath my thoughts a little.

We're a mail class, we are supposed to be able to take hits.
We have very limited ways of stopping mobs to hit us.
Once they do, we can barely damage them, with multiple mobs, it is impossible.
With neither, it's really confusing and not really fun to play.

Hunters, the other mail class - no shield - but still capable of taking a hit.
They have multiple ways of preventing to get hit, also some ways to kite thanks to a smaller need to stand still. Running faster than mobs helps too.
Yet they DO have spell pushback resistance on their spells with a cast bar.
The problem here is that they can't shoot at stuff that's hitting on them, making it further confusing.

Compared to my Moonkin druid; my shaman can have big problems when trying to kill mobs. I cannot root, nor can I chose what spell school to use, nor cast a spell with pushback resistance.

EDIT:
To be quite fair, Elemental Shaman is exactly the same as Vanilla. We use LB, we shock when they come close (except back then a shock critt was 50% of someone's health). We drop totems. Apart from the fact that our totems have different names and gives us different feelings inside now it's all the same. We didn't get any Icelance, no Shiv, Shadowstep, Cloak of Shadows, Intervene - yeah you get the picture.

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!

 

Darian_TruBlade

I definitely share Graze's concerns. I leveled 1-70 as Elemental, and the biggest limitation to how fast I went was how much damage I could do before the mob reached me. If I could kill a mob before it reached me leveling/questing was fast and fun. Otherwise, it dragged a lot as I attempted to melee/shock down the last 25-50% health (both mana inefficient and time consuming). Now that I'm in T4 gear farming and whatnot isn't much of an issue, but until I reached that point things were quite painful.

Hope springs eternal, however. More talent changes and Glyphs should change the game a fair bit.

 

• Binkenstein

Which is what I thought it would be.

@Zana: The rotation dilemma will be an extension of the current LB/CL vs LB one, but adding in a FS/LvB question into the mix. I'd initially estimated LB spam to be superior at 2100 spellpower, but after noticing that Scorch was changed to 10% from 18%, it's reduced to ~1300 spellpower. This suggests that LvB is going to be an Enhancement spell rather than an Elemental spell.

I also posted (well, got Malan to post for me) a general reply/review of current elemental stuff here. The irony is that I got a beta key this morning, so when I login tonight & update char names, I'll be able to post there myself.

 

Graze

1300 seems alot more reasonable, yet I think we'll see some changes to Lava Burst viability soon enough, despite my previous claims on whether it'd be an elemental spell or not, I think it's silly if it was meant for Enhancement together with Mealstorm Weapons.

Also gratz on the beta access, I can't seem to have the luck^_^ get a vid on the LvB animation, I've heard it's ace. Waiting for the new changes with great hope.

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!

 

Zanadarn

I have to say, I really do hope the 'shaman pass' adds a lot more damage modifiers to elemental. While I generally assumed that nature being on CoE and the moonkin thing would even things out, the sheer amount of additional modifiers going around in other classes trees (the new mage trees for instance) makes me wonder how we'll make up for all that.

 

Torgol

The problem with this statement is that not all raids are 25-mans. Many elemental shaman (myself possibly included, depending on what level my raid group decides to focus on) won't necessarily be able to count on having a resto shaman around to back them up in a 10-man. And while, yes, the easier difficulty means the group could probably do without either flametongue or totem of wrath, whichever you choose to give up, why should we have to? With this expansion, they just gave enhancement shaman the ability to drop every crucial melee dps totem without any necessity for awkward totem twisting or any other rigamarole. So why would they then go and stick us in the position of having to choose one totem or the other, when both are quite valuable? It just doesn't make a great deal of sense.

 

dedmonwakeen

Based upon observed bizarre mechanics of Improved Shadow Bolt and Ignite, I believe it has been proven that a direct-damage spell is fully calculated at cast-time, but not reported until it arrives.

Depending upon lag and cast distance, you may very well get the 100% crit bonus AND still have Flame Shock get its last tick.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

tufy

Well, tbh, right now in Beta, things either die before they reach me, get frozen and die or, if they actually manage to reach me, fly right away again. Since Frost Shock is now on the target pretty much all the time (25% freeze chance is pure love), Paralysis didn't really come to effect anyway.

Let's see your points:

1. Agreed, though it was somewhat bugged (not sure if yesterday's patch fixed it, I was checking other things and hunted mounts before the raid :p)

2. Well, not necessarily. CoE gets nature debuff (10%), Boomkins provide 6% nature boost and Stormstrike is getting upped to 4 charges. If Paralysis' 10% spell power boost remains, scaling shouldn't be an issue. Tbh, I'm more worried about sick mana costs than damage output (I'm actually using TBC talent ranks because the wotlk ranks drain my mana like crazy).

3. That it is, there's a quite a few talents that don't really deserve being 5-point. Storm, Earth and Fire is a perfect example of a great 3-point talent around tier 7 or 8, but it's nowhere near good enough for 5-point tier 11 talent.

4. ToW should be Earth, simple as that.

5. This is going to sound wacky: I haven't met a single nature immune mob in Northrend yet. I've been soloing Earth Elementals and Air Elementals yesterday (northern Fjord area) using Lightning Bolt and Thunderstorm. It may be a bug, it may be that their immunities aren't in game yet. Bear in mind, though, that I'm currently only level 74 (RL + raiding prevents serious leveling right now), so Niamee and others will be able to be more precise with this. We will definitely have an easier time with Nature immune mobs, but aye, this is still an issue, if such mobs are put in game.

6. A problem, definitely. However, there are more creative solutions than "gives you 70% chance to resist spellpushback". My thoughts are going from a separate skill (Wind Wall) to addition on Stoneskin Totem to a talented bonus on Water Shield and so on. There's loads of solutions.

7. Actually, it's an insanely good mana saving and dps boost spell. It has one tiny problem, though - 20 yard Flame Shock range. Again, there's a number of solutions that might solve this.

8. Well, we do have AoE, it's just totem based :p Solo, I found a great combination of Fire Nova, Chain Lightning, Thunderstorm and some Magma Totem in there to cover the gaps, works like a charm. Even on Live (Hyjal), I use a combo of Fire Nova and Magma Totem, which, combined with Chain Lightning, make our AoE dps superior to everyone except Warlocks and Mages. So it's really not THAT bad. The impact on mana is less friendly, of course, but we share that with mages :p

9. A definite problem there. Range should be increased, but I'm not really sure what to do with duration. If they increase it, mana cost will go up, messing things up on mobile fights. If they don't increase it, we're stuck with redeployment every 2 mins, but for less mana.

10. And you would be right, it's compareable to tier 1 or tier 2 talents for most classes. It needs a bit of oomph. Perhaps Paralysis' 10% damage boost can be included in it.

11. Chain Lightning is a form of semi-AoE too, though only on 3 targets. It's vastly superior to other forms of AoE when only 3 targets or a small group is present, though.

12. My personal tactic with totems - drop Stoneclaw, drop Fire Nova. Stoneclaw prevents Fire Nova from being destroyed and by the time it hits, the tank should have enough aggro so you can drop Magma Totem. Problem solved.

13. This is where Thunderstorm comes in. If you use it once before the mobs are dead, you tagged it and the mob is yours. If you're in group, someone else can tag the mobs for you, if you're the sole AoE, though, using Thunderstorm won't make a difference.

14. It's the same with any channeled AoE spell (druids, mages). The only class not suffering from this is locks with Seed of Corruption.

Just my honest opinion.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Paladia

Another problem is that the 20 minute damage cooldown may actually cause the raid to lose dps if you use it, making it even more useless than it already is.

 

Ocyr

Lightning Bolt always had a higher coefficient than similar bolt spells. This was because there weren't as much/any nature damage debuffs. Now that they exist, we're restoring Lightning Bolt to it's intended coefficient. Your DPS in a raid setting will if anything be higher with these changes. -Koraa

That got me thinking about whether Elemental Shaman are headed towards some sort of equality with other casters where scaling is concerned.

All classes now gain benefit from CoE, so comparing scaling damage talents, for 1 point of damage on gear they gain in damage value;

For instance, take an Elemental Shaman (51/0/20) and common talents / raid buffs (granted, this isn't going to be 100% accurate, but I looked at every class exactly the same so any scaling errors will be replicated equally):
Concussion: +5%
Call of Thunder +5%
Elemental Precision +3%
Lightning Overload +10%
Paralysis +10%
Totem of Wrath +6%
Tidal mastery +5%
Elemental Oath (at 40% crit rate) +2.4%
Earth and Moon +6%
Curse of Elements +10%
Misery +5%
Storm Strike (at 100% uptime) +20%

The Lightning Bolt coefficient is 2.5/3.5 = .714

So every 1 point of spell damage at base gains an Elemental Shaman 1.34 damage

compare to similarly reviewed [edit: and to be very clear, since this apparently has confused someone significantly -- I did not factoring in non-linear scaling talents like Lunar Guidance, Eclipse, Owlkin Frenzy, Nature's Grace, et cetera because 1) there are too many variables that would require a complete spreadsheet, and 2) see 1 -- that said, those talents are a significant source of scaling to their class(es) and thus will cause those class' scaling numbers to be much larger than I am showing them here]:
Destruction Warlock: 1.66
Balance Druid: 1.62

Compare Elemental Shaman dps buffs to the raid:
3% crit
3% hit (spell only)
6% crit damage (2.4% damage increase at 40% crit)

Warlock:
10% spell damage

Balance Druid:
Decrease enemy chance to hit by 2%
3% to hit (All attacks)
5% to crit
~5% haste
+6% damage to Nature
+6% damage to Arcane

------

Looking at the scaling vs the raid benefits/buffs, I think true Elemental Shaman are going to come up real short as WotLK is currently shaping up. The entire Elemental tree was balanced around having a .857 spell coefficient. Now they have a .714 spell coefficient and the tree has not been buffed to rebalance it. And to anyone that thinks Curse of Elements with Nature makes up for it: .714 x 1.1 = .785 a full 9% less scaling than we used to have. Add in Paralysis (yes I know it is being replaced, but just to show where another 10% gets us) and we're at .863 -- basically break-even with where we were 4 years ago when the game launched.

If you think that Elemental Shaman from 4 years ago will be viable in a WotLK raid, please raise your hand.

And that's the concern I had, after reading that post. The core of the Elemental tree took a nerf, Blizzard said it wasn't a nerf, they were proved wrong and propped it up with a bandage fix -- and now they are ripping the bandage off. But, from looking at how the talent tree was completely ignored, it appears the damage is still done. As things currently stand, deep Elemental Shaman -- even with CoE and even with 100% SS uptime assumed -- won't be playing the game at anywhere near the same level as other casters. And their raid buffs aren't anything special anymore, either. Every class is in the buffing game now, and they all do it just fine.

So, I'm not sure that any mere replacement for Paralysis is going to fix this problem. This problem is caused by Blizzard nerfing the talent that the entire Elemental tree was balanced around, and then instead of rebalancing the tree they slapped a coefficient bandage on the problem. Now that they are taking the bandage off, the Elemental tree remains out of balance. All WotLK appears to be doing, is bring Elemental Shaman (as opposed to Hybrid Shaman) casting back up to level 60 strength. That isn't a good thing, when we're going to be raiding level 80 content.

 

Mirranda

Deleted.

Pretend I typed something witty.

 

dedmonwakeen

So far I've only implemented Druid/Priest/Shaman and I've found that the hybrid-dps classes seem to be on par with each other.

The trouble with the Elemental Shaman is that MD/MQ is significantly stronger...... which is just broken. (There are too many easy non-gear methods of increasing attack power..... especially now that many of the group buffs are raid-wide.)

If the fix to deep Elemental is to bring it on par with the MD/MQ hybrid build, then you guys will sit even with Boomkin/SPriest.

Feel free to check out the "SampleOutput" wiki on my site for details....... (It includes Nature support for CoE and the change to Improved Scorch.)

Now that the Mage revamp is (hopefully) reasonably complete, I'll implement a primary-dps class and see how far back on bus we hybrids have to sit....

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

• Juice

There's going to be a strong temptation to do a fair bit of QQing about the recent modifications. I advise you to choose your posts carefully. Keep the discussion intelligent and constructive, and focus on facts. No one cares if this means you will reroll or play an alt or spend the afternoon crying. Ocyr's post above is a reasonable way to express displeasure with the current changes. I'm not asking you not to express yourselves, but bring something of value for your fellow readers to the discussion.


I was going to post something about elemental shaman, but I can't do it without violating the forum's whining rules, so I'll stop right there.

 

Nacht

Curse of Elements isn't a "gains addition 10% of spell damage," it increases total damage from those schools by 10%. That means it's not a coefficient mod, it's a total damage mod, including base spell damage. Be careful in your analyses, because you're getting things wrong. If you're going to get negative about things, at least get the math right.

And on that note, with the exception of current Paralysis implementation on beta, coefficient mods have been additive, not multiplicative. See empowered fireball as an example.

 

Daidalos

Ele are def lacking but I think before any more of ele qq I'm going roll x class gets started we should at the very LEAST wait till the deep ele revamp is done. They didn't just say they were reworking paralysis they said they were taking another look at deep ele so bink and myself will wait and provide tests when that happens. I think from the blue posts I've seen they are aware of less than desireable reasons to spec deep ele for pve so lets at least give them a chance to fix it. (Also thunderstorm is insanely fun so if you were actually playing the beta it would be hard to qq too hard)

And yes CoE is a huge raid buff for us even after loosing the .08 to the coef.

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

 

tufy

Well, fact is that QQing doesn't really help. We know where we stand - MD+MQ is clearly superior to full elemental spec and while that spec starts ahead of the rest, the scaling is poor. We also know that Blizzard promised us a "polishing run". A good example of such a run is current fire mage changes, while still not good enough, they made the fire tree considerably better than it looked originally.

If we look at the big picture (live vs. beta), overall I'd call it a gain. The raid now has a reason to bring shamans into raid thanks to Elemental Oath. We also have no idea what impact glyphs will have on the spells and rotations (judging by druid ones, inscription will make a huge difference). So here we stand with half done tree and make claims "omg, I'm gonna reroll" and so on. With all do respect, Mirranda, that's like seeing the first brick of your house being laid and claim "tear it all down, this is an ugly house!" let's wait and see what happens. If we're not pleased with changes, we can go there and shove PROOF to Blizzard, something that worked before (LB and CL coefficient). If not, then all the QQ will have been for nothing.

As for Thunderstorm, aye, Daidalos. To be honest, I now pray on Blizzard to nerf MD+MQ, so I can take a raid build with it

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.