Elemental Wotlk Talents discussion - Page 23

Juice · 07/30/08, 11:23 AM

My concerns, and therefore, crying would likely be focused on PvP. Based on history, I have no reason to believe Blizzard will fix imbalances in PvP, regardless of how obvious they may be today. I also realize it's silly to extrapolate 10 levels and 2 tiers ahead and try to draw conclusions. Thunderstorm is fun, but I don't believe it will overcome a broad damage nerf to elemental pvp in the form of a coefficient change. Their first implementation of Paralysis revealed what I consider a lack of understanding about elemental shaman in pvp (arena). The boost to LB's coefficient is great, but 15% chance to proc on LB is ridiculous. Better to give us an active skill to use with a cooldown. Elemental Shaman don't need more exposure to the RNG to be competitive in arenas. By the same token, the 25% chance to root on FS was silly. More RNG exposure at the cost of an interrupt. If we spec that deeply, FS should root 100% of the time.

The lack of pushback protection is staggering. Of course, we'll wait and see...

Daidalos · 07/30/08, 11:26 AM

Originally Posted by tufy

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

I don't think they need to nerf it I would be happy with some additional scaling talents so that perhaps with lvl 80 naxx gear deep ele would out damage ele/enh builds.

Nite_Moogle · 07/30/08, 11:40 AM

Originally Posted by Juice

The lack of pushback protection is staggering.

This is a pretty tricky thing to manage. A shaman in mail AC with a shield is a tough nut to crack compared to a cloth caster with no shield. In PVE grinding in green gear against single normal mobs you can just stand there and burn them down ignoring pushback. You're just not in any danger standing there getting wailed on in circumstances that would spell certain doom for a cloth caster that wasn't drain tanking. The inability to frost shock kite in PVP removes one of the top defenses that elemental has in PVE, but the added mobility from ghost wolf going instant also makes ele a lot tougher to kill if you don't go the NS route. Even with something like 50% passive pushback protection the prospect of killing ele before you get killed in non-dogpile situations becomes a lot tougher for melee classes. If anything spell school lockouts are even worse as there's no fallback for damage if you have nature interrupted, though lava burst may cover some of this deficiency. Thunderstorm actually brilliantly solves one of the biggest problems the class suffers from: getting dogpiled.

Quasar · 07/30/08, 11:40 AM

Originally Posted by tufy

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.

The trouble is that if you let Blizzard keep laying bricks in a way that builds a shoddy house you don't want to live in, it may become too late to get anything fixed. I'm not suggesting that the pitchforks be dusted off every time a rumor floats, but constant feedback is the key to getting anything done. They don't always listen but at least it's there.

Juice · 07/30/08, 1:45 PM

Originally Posted by Nite_Moogle

Thunderstorm actually brilliantly solves one of the biggest problems the class suffers from: getting dogpiled.

Well, 2 things...

Thunderstorm is brilliant. Well thought out ability that is extremely useful defensively and offensively. Very useful in, not only interupting the heal of your enemy, but also knocking them off the bridge so they have to spend 5 seconds running back to LOS for their team mate.

Secondly, getting dogpiled is not an elemental shaman's bigest problems. It's true that our deep elemental talents seem to be designed to make sure we are not the most attractive in the field (6% reduced physical damage, astra phase shift, thunderstorm, etc). But it's not our lack of ruggedness that keeps us from being a good pvp spec in arenas (which, according to Blizzard, means balanced around 2s and 3s competition more than 5s). Things like our high susceptibility to LOS, lack of healing debuf, very limited mana for extended fights (drain vulnerable), inability to control our opponents (Hex may resolve), GCD battle, susceptibility to pushback, etc. make us an undesired class and spec for 2s and 3s.

Even in 5s, I never get dogpiled. I'm simply not the most attractive target on the field most of the time. I'm worth focus shocking, petting, or devoting a rogue to - because that means my dps is cut by significantly, but I'm seldom the train target.

I accept this is a tricky thing to balance. However, I'm not viable (same as some other classes) in 2s/3s arena right now, and that's something Blizzard needs to address. At least in WotlK, moving between Resto and Elemental will be much less painful, so it's easier to branch out to be effective in 2s/3s.

Mirranda · 07/30/08, 3:49 PM

Originally Posted by 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

No offense taken. That's what I get for posting at 4am. I'll think before I post next time.

My major concern, and thus the whining post, is and always has been the lack of 2 things, 1 a pushback stop, and 2, survival against CC. I don't know what people's experience is with pvp, and I know this is mostly a pve discussion in which neither of these hold precedence, but the two biggest problems I've ALWAYS had is, as sad as this sounds, survival against melee. Before the expansion, this wasn't a problem because shock crits were about half of someone's life. With the Stamina mass increase with TBC, this isn't even 10% of someone's life. As such, since we're a 'tanking class' in terms of pvp, we shouldn't really have any real 'escapes' but we should be able to do something wihle we're 'tanking.' Thus the need for pushback is a must. Already been strongly covered here though.

Second was the survival against CC. Shaman have zero CC, Zero ability to dispel CC (save fears with Tremor), and minimal survival if focused on while CC'd. Astral Shift (the current, 'new?' version) I think is a step in the right direction as it allows for at least survival against rogues and possibly mages, though mages are much easier to deal with than rogues. Unfortunately, that's about all it gives you protection against. If I wanted to spec 48 points deep into a tree to live against rogues, I'd go spec resto. I think this talent needs some work done to it still, maybe reduce the damage reduction but have it be while stunned, snared, or rooted.

PvE wise, I'm still not impressed very much. EO is the only really truly impressive talent thus far.

Lucitron · 07/30/08, 4:40 PM

Post #542 by: Tufy
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

Had a discussion several months ago with my fellow Mages and Warlocks regarding helping out with the AoE by using Magma and Fire Nova Totem, versus keeping Totem of Wrath up and just nuke the big bad guys. After some rough number crunching I came to the conclusion that the Magma Totem will just not add enough juice to warrant that I use it instead of Totem of Wrath.

I have however noticed that in Mount Hyjal, then Chain Lightning keeps my head above the water and I place myself above all other single target nukers. I could however of course not reach the same output as Mages and Warlocks. In WotLK it appears that Blizzard are open up the AoE field, by allowing Balance Druids and Shadow Priests to have AoE spells that can be spammed. With this in mind, I had actually hoped to see a 3 point talent in the Elemental Tree that reduced the cooldown of Chain Lightning to 0 sec, which is an elegant solution to give us our very own AoE spell.

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Post #544 by: Ocyr
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

Some days ago I visited the Moonkin WotLK thread where one poster continously cried about how poor Moonkins were in comparison to Elemental Shamans, just due to Imp. Moonkin Aura was far inferior to Wrath of Air. I had the stance it was a totally pointless comparison, since he was comparing talented buff versus a regular buff that an Enhancement Shaman or Restoration Shaman could bring. It was an argument he didn't accept though.

Now, I feel that your list comes close to making the same error with comparing apples and oranges. Well, it is possible that it is I who am making the error here, when I assume how Blizzard treats dps-buffs.

I've the belief that talented buffs are there to open up 3 raid slots for the same class in a 25-man raid, if each one has speced deep in their own talent tree. If two of the talent trees are very strong, then the third needs to be equally strong to compete. If we consider Feral Druids and Restoration Druids, then we have two specs that both offers the Druid to enter two of the rare roles in WoW, tank and healer. Balance Druids needs talented buffs to offset this favouring of the two other talent trees, such as Imp Moonkin aura. It doesn't need to be a static 10% spell haste, which some argues for over in their thread. It just needs to be a nice enough boost to make Moonkins popular, that you want all three.

Elemental Shamans are in a slightly different position. We are competing versus the wanted healer role, i.e. Restoration Shaman, and the quite highly melee buffing Enhancement Shaman. Here in TBC this spec balance has been offset due to the fact that it has been very profitable to stack Shamans like there is no tomorrow. This will hopefully change with WotLK.

The question now is not what other classes get, but if the current regular Shaman spells and talents makes it profitable to go with 3 Shamans, with different talent specs, in a 25-man raid?

Personally, I feel that with raid wide totems, you only need 2 Shamans, due to we currently have basically one set of melee buffing totems and one set of caster buffing totems. This puts the Shaman class in a bit of tough situation, since too many talented buffs in one spec might push out one of the other talent spec. I feel the best solution would really be if the caster totems had been split in two, one for healers and one for ranged, then you would automatically want 3 Shamans in the raid.

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Post #551 by: Juice
My concerns, and therefore, crying would likely be focused on PvP. Based on history, I have no reason to believe Blizzard will fix imbalances in PvP, regardless of how obvious they may be today.

As I've stated previously, I'm a totaly novice if not even less when it comes to PvP. However, what I've seen so far strongly supports my belief that PvP balance is far harder to achieve than PvE balance.

If you accept this belief, then you might accept that the logical way to achieve balance is to first go for PvE Balance, since this should be relative easy to achieve without needing a large testing population. A simple damage calculators should quickly show how well different classes scale, after that you can just extrapolate if the damage plus the stuff that class and talent spec brings, will be wanted enough for a precious raid slot. This has more or less already been done in this thread, though the calculations don't compare their results with how other classes or talent specs fare.

What about PvP then? Well, if you have the PvE balance set in stone, is it not then just to see what stops you from adding that PvE muscles to a PvP setting? I.e. just see what stops you from playing your char, or how other classes avoid your abilities, and then fix it. Simple, eh?

Binkenstein · 07/30/08, 4:47 PM

@Ocyr: Take those figures, and divide by non-hasted cast times. You'll find they all come out relatively even.

Treylah · 07/30/08, 6:50 PM

Originally Posted by Lucitron

Personally, I feel that with raid wide totems, you only need 2 Shamans, due to we currently have basically one set of melee buffing totems and one set of caster buffing totems. This puts the Shaman class in a bit of tough situation, since too many talented buffs in one spec might push out one of the other talent spec. I feel the best solution would really be if the caster totems had been split in two, one for healers and one for ranged, then you would automatically want 3 Shamans in the raid.

I think this might be jumping the gun a little bit until we are aware of what fight mechanics will be prevalent in WoTLK progression. While it's certainly worth discussing balance amongst shaman specs and shamans with other classes in a raid - there is still an issue of totem coverage for all casting and healing classes. *If* the MD/MQ build continues to be viable after the elemental polish pass that the dev's promise, elemental shamans will lose out on totemic mastery. Totem-coverage is reduced in half.

I'm trying not to take words literally, but "raid-wide totems" is misleading since you still need to be in range of them. Casters and healers by nature cover a larger area. So the issues here are a) what shaman is providing the caster totems (an MD/MQ or an elemental/resto or a full-resto shaman) and b) is one caster/healer shaman enough to provide raid-wide coverage for a particular encounter. In this respect, I do not see much problem in the redundancy of totems-of-choice between a resto-shaman and an elemental-shaman.

tufy · 07/31/08, 5:11 AM

Originally Posted by Lucitron

Had a discussion several months ago with my fellow Mages and Warlocks regarding helping out with the AoE by using Magma and Fire Nova Totem, versus keeping Totem of Wrath up and just nuke the big bad guys. After some rough number crunching I came to the conclusion that the Magma Totem will just not add enough juice to warrant that I use it instead of Totem of Wrath.

Let's assume the lock has 1500 +dmg and the shaman has 1300. Let's also assume there's 8 mobs in targeting area (a nice middle for MH AoE) and the SoC goes off the moment it lands (likely). That's (1200 + (16,6% x 1500)) x 1.1 (Demonic Sacrifice was nerfed to 10%) x 8 = 12751 damage every 2 seconds or 6375.6 dps. 3% of this (from ToW, assuming locks are capped) is 191.27 and 4 locks in group is 765.07 dps given by ToW.

Now, let's say our shaman pops Magma Totem. I never tested the exact coefficient, so I'll take a risk and rely on an early TBC post on these forums, which claimed the bonus to be 66,7% for the full duration. That would be (97 x 10 + (66.7 x 1300)) x 1.15 x 8 = 16901 damage in full duration or 845 dps.

Obviously, if the locks are not capped, ToW is better. If they are, Magma is better. One further interesting note here is that Magma Totem deals amazing 33% mora damage per mana point that SoC does. Of course, that has little meaning, as the warlock will just lifetap away, but still.

Lucitron · 07/31/08, 8:11 AM

Obviously, if the locks are not capped, ToW is better. If they are, Magma is better.

I believe I stand corrected. Well, to my defense, I did those calculations way back during SSC and Morogrim. My spell damage was not that good during the time. Perhaps time to dust of ol' Magma Totem again.

Juice · 07/31/08, 9:24 AM

It's academic only, but I find the time required to travel to the magma totem deploy position and then back to non-melee range and the potential for the mobs to be tanked slightly off-position of the magma totem's AE range completely overwhelms any potential advantage. Bottom line damage seems to be higher if I just keep ToW deployed and keep mashing LB and CL.

Torgol · 07/31/08, 9:36 AM

Originally Posted by Lucitron

Personally, I feel that with raid wide totems, you only need 2 Shamans, due to we currently have basically one set of melee buffing totems and one set of caster buffing totems. This puts the Shaman class in a bit of tough situation, since too many talented buffs in one spec might push out one of the other talent spec. I feel the best solution would really be if the caster totems had been split in two, one for healers and one for ranged, then you would automatically want 3 Shamans in the raid.

I think the totem situation is a little more complex than you're assuming. True, we can basically divide our totems into a "caster set" and a "melee set," but getting all of those buffs up on the right people at the same time is trickier than you'd think. As Treylah pointed out, totem range is still somewhat limited. Keeping everyone in range to get the buffs will be difficult if raid encounters continue to encourage mobility and spreading out to the extent that the BC encounters have.

At the very least, there will be problems with providing totem buffs to hunters, since enhancement shaman are likely to only have 20 yard totem range. As a result of that, you may well want a shaman in the ranged/healing group dropping the new SoE/GoA totem and the new Windfury, just for the hunters.

Currently, there's also the fact that our caster totems are divided, at least a little, since Totem of Wrath and Flametongue are mutually exclusive. With all this in mind, I wouldn't be surprised to see an elemental shaman dropping Mana Spring, WoA, and ToW, and a resto dropping SoE/GoA, Windfury, Flametongue, and maybe Healing Stream or an extra Mana Spring for better overall coverage.

Apaine · 07/31/08, 2:02 PM

If indeed there is only 9% +hit to be covered, blizzard could force people's hand by simply not designing any +hit on gear anymore. Every caster and melee gets 3% +hit from talents. Other 6% can come from buffs - 3% from moonkin, 3% from elemental shaman.

So, if raid leader wants hit capped raid group, they have to take a moonkin and they have to take one ele shaman to do it.

----

PS. I think melee gets actually closer to 5% hit cause they can't use the totem bonus (spells only).

Montegomery · 07/31/08, 2:33 PM

Originally Posted by Apaine

If indeed there is only 9% +hit to be covered, blizzard could force people's hand by simply not designing any +hit on gear anymore. Every caster and melee gets 3% +hit from talents. Other 6% can come from buffs - 3% from moonkin, 3% from elemental shaman.

So, if raid leader wants hit capped raid group, they have to take a moonkin and they have to take one ele shaman to do it.

----

PS. I think melee gets actually closer to 5% hit cause they can't use the totem bonus (spells only).

To "force people's hand" Blizzard would have to remove hit gems from the game. If it's not a base stat on gear people will simply gem for it.

The principle is actually being demonstrated with leather gear. See this post from the Rogue thread.

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t26242-r...34/#post835589

Effectively, because it would be detrimental to Druids to have copious amounts of hit on their leather, Blizzard is expecting Rogues to socket for hit.

Phlis · 07/31/08, 3:21 PM

Originally Posted by Apaine

If indeed there is only 9% +hit to be covered, blizzard could force people's hand by simply not designing any +hit on gear anymore.

If it's 9% necessary hit from gear, then we're already hit capped before a moonkin. According to MMO-Champion Elemental Percision was changed from 3% hit, 30% threat, back to 6% hit, 10% threat, as in what it is on live servers. People in beta Comfirm or Deny this? If it's the case then, 6% there + 3% from Totem of Wrath and we're hit capped before any gear, which works out pretty well if they're combining Resto and Elemental Gear.

Montegomery · 07/31/08, 4:06 PM

Originally Posted by Phlis

If it's 9% necessary hit from gear, then we're already hit capped before a moonkin. According to MMO-Champion Elemental Percision was changed from 3% hit, 30% threat, back to 6% hit, 10% threat, as in what it is on live servers. People in beta Comfirm or Deny this? If it's the case then, 6% there + 3% from Totem of Wrath and we're hit capped before any gear, which works out pretty well if they're combining Resto and Elemental Gear.

Personally, I'd rather it be the other way around. You can't gem/itemize for threat reduction, and unlike Warlocks, Mages and Hunters we don't have a threat dump.

Granted, we don't know what threat will be like in WotLK, so perhaps the 3% hit will be more useful. But even then, it just means we won't benefit from a Boomkin's FF.

Croaker · 07/31/08, 4:09 PM

Originally Posted by Juice

It's academic only, but I find the time required to travel to the magma totem deploy position and then back to non-melee range and the potential for the mobs to be tanked slightly off-position of the magma totem's AE range completely overwhelms any potential advantage. Bottom line damage seems to be higher if I just keep ToW deployed and keep mashing LB and CL.

Definitely. I observed the same thing back when I was in MH. The fact that you're missing potential LB and CL time to move into position for totems is without a doubt in my mind detrimental to RDPS.

• frmorrison · 07/31/08, 4:35 PM

Originally Posted by tufy

Obviously, if the locks are not capped, ToW is better. If they are, Magma is better. One further interesting note here is that Magma Totem deals amazing 33% mora damage per mana point that SoC does. Of course, that has little meaning, as the warlock will just lifetap away, but still.

Adding crit to SoC bypasses the AoE cap or at least used to when I played. That trick doesn't work for Mages though.

Also, Warlocks are the most mana inefficient class due to Life Tap and the new Fel Armor, so comparing damage to mana from Warlocks to another class is moot.

tufy · 07/31/08, 5:05 PM

Originally Posted by Phlis

If it's 9% necessary hit from gear, then we're already hit capped before a moonkin. According to MMO-Champion Elemental Percision was changed from 3% hit, 30% threat, back to 6% hit, 10% threat, as in what it is on live servers. People in beta Comfirm or Deny this? If it's the case then, 6% there + 3% from Totem of Wrath and we're hit capped before any gear, which works out pretty well if they're combining Resto and Elemental Gear.

After 1000 Lightning Bolts fired at level 73 mobs around Dragonblight (do you have ANY idea how hard it is to find them?), I've come to a result of 15.3% miss rate, which is consistent to expected Live values for a level 70 Draenei shaman without hit gear or talents. We can safely abandon the 9% rumour.

Mirranda · 07/31/08, 6:24 PM

Originally Posted by tufy

After 1000 Lightning Bolts fired at level 73 mobs around Dragonblight (do you have ANY idea how hard it is to find them?), I've come to a result of 15.3% miss rate, which is consistent to expected Live values for a level 70 Draenei shaman without hit gear or talents. We can safely abandon the 9% rumour.

Unless they haven't implemented such mechanics yet. It is a beta. I wouldn't be surprised if what you say is going to be true though even through release.

Montegomery · 07/31/08, 6:34 PM

Originally Posted by Mirranda

Unless they haven't implemented such mechanics yet. It is a beta. I wouldn't be surprised if what you say is going to be true though even through release.

Except this was a rumor started by players reporting lower than expected miss rates. While one can hope that perhaps Blizzard will make such a change we have no official statement or hints from them that this is their desire. The foundation of the rumor, specifically that this was already how it functioned in the beta, is now removed.

However, the removal of the unsurmountable 1% still seems intact.

Daidalos · 07/31/08, 7:04 PM

Originally Posted by Phlis

If it's 9% necessary hit from gear, then we're already hit capped before a moonkin. According to MMO-Champion Elemental Percision was changed from 3% hit, 30% threat, back to 6% hit, 10% threat, as in what it is on live servers. People in beta Comfirm or Deny this? If it's the case then, 6% there + 3% from Totem of Wrath and we're hit capped before any gear, which works out pretty well if they're combining Resto and Elemental Gear.

That may be true of a upcoming build but the current build is still 3 hit 30% threat reduction.

Mirranda · 08/02/08, 5:37 AM

Originally Posted by Darian_TruBlade

Except this was a rumor started by players reporting lower than expected miss rates. While one can hope that perhaps Blizzard will make such a change we have no official statement or hints from them that this is their desire. The foundation of the rumor, specifically that this was already how it functioned in the beta, is now removed.

However, the removal of the unsurmountable 1% still seems intact.

Ah, thanks for clearing this up for me then. I must have missed the origin of the claim.

Also, don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but all friendly totems have had their default range increased to 30yds, up from 20, and totemic mastery (talent) has been replaced with Tidal Force.

Tana Umaga · 08/02/08, 8:00 AM

And what does Tidal Force do?