Wow... there is only a need for two Shamans. And you want that to be three, am I right? I hope not.
What gives you the right to be needed so much more than other classes? There is room for 2.5 raiders per class. So if we need three Shamans every time where do you want to take the last raider? Which class is less worthy? And why is it fair that that class is less worthy than you?

No you have a right to be needed with two raiders, just like all other classes. Two of a class should provide the best possible synergy, three should decline that synergy. And luckily Blizzard seems to have understood that with the 30 yards on totems. In endgame TBC you have lived a charmed life of being supremely stackable at the cost of the rest of us. I think it is only fair that you return to the position we have. No more, no less.

Now, I understand that you are up against a healing spec and a super support spec. That is tough competition. But with all the AoE healing being dished out to healers, Resto Shamans might not be as vital as before. A Resto Shaman or a Druid/Paladin/Priest/whatever, all fair and even (obviously we don't know if it is like that yet), so perhaps that second spot could go to an Elemental. And if the Elemetanl can't come a Resto is good too. I don't thik that Restos have a major advantage over Elementals this time.

Keep in mind I only used scaling talents that were easily factored. Advantages like Lunar Guidance, Owlkin Frenzy, Eclipse and R-AoE were not factored (so it isn't as close as you think).

That said, the only point of that post was to show how much work needs to be done to bring the Elemental Tree up to level with the Hybrid build (a fair bit).

Personally I am somewhat optimistic; if Blizzard totally fails to rework the Elemental tree in a suitable manner, we currently have a decent Hybrid build to fall back on (even if it represents 18 more months of vanilla-WoW play-style, boring as that is at least it is viable) - and if Blizzard actually brings the Elemental Tree up to par with the Hybrid build in a manner that is scalable and brings new abilities to the table, well this could be the first time in 4 years that the Elemental Shaman build has had something that changed the class play-style significantly.

So unless something happens out of left field, we will either get boring but decent, or exciting and decent.

Of the three main concerns I have:

-scaling (pve and pvp)
-spell push-back resistance (pvp mainly, but several tBC pve encounters hurt elemental shaman due to their lack)
-viable second school of magic (non-CD-tied spell, pvp important, pve somewhat important)

we'll have to see what the shaman talent tree overhaul brings, and what inscriptions bring.

edit: the just-announced 60% nerf to Nature's Blessing (100% nerf for spell damage purposes over Live, 10% nerf for healing purposes over Live after factoring in the new heal coefficients) shakes my faith in MD+MQ remaining a viable fallback. I don't know if they were doing that to specifically nerf the 0/28/43 heal-power build that has been circulating around the forums (and chose the Resto Tree as their nerf target), or if they plan on nerfing shaman spell power across the board.
Nature’s Blessing no longer increases spell damage from Intellect, and the effect has been reduced to 5/10/15% from 10/20/30%.

On the upside, totems now have 30 yard base range and totemic mastery has been removed from the game. Honestly, the biggest thing 43/28/0 was going to give up was that one talent. Now it's baked in. Good change, and about time.

Maybe test it out this way? I don't know. It really does make sense for them to lower the hit cap if they're combining healing and dps caster gear.

No they haven't. Unless there's mysteriously a patch that I haven't got, but still allows me to log into the server
Comparing the scaling of a 2 second spell with a 3 second spell is always going to show the 2 second spell as having "less" effect per spell.

The important thing to remember is that cast time is important here too.

0.65 bonus per second for a 2 second spell = 1.3
Same bonus for a 3 second spell = 1.95

I've already spelled it out for you, not sure how to be clearer without repeating myself:

Those numbers assumed:

100% Stormstrike debuff uptime (impossible buff for Elemental Shaman)
and every other possible buff in a perfect-for-shaman raid setting

and did not include baked in buffs to other classes, like:
Eclipse
Lunar Guidance
Owlkin Frenzy
Nature's Grace
et cetera (because those talents are more difficult to factor, depending on a near infinite variety of situations and gearing levels)

The scaling numbers will not be as close as I put them, and nowhere near as close as you think they will be. I know what you are saying, and I didn't say anything to the contrary of your theory-crafting -- but you are conveniently ignoring some facts that have been previously stated in order to make your point. Yes, the differences aren't huge when you factor in some impossible buffing for Elemental Shaman and ignore some baked in talents for other classes.

In other words, Blizzard has some work to do in order to make the Elemental tree as viable at damage scaling as, say, a Balance Druid's tree -- otherwise 43/28/0 will remain the spec of choice whether Blizzard wants it to or not (unless they break the MD+MQ build somehow, of course). And personally I agree with all the Shaman players what would rather have a PvE-viable Elemental tree -- Thunder is the first new and exciting ability that Elemental Shaman have ever received, it would be a real shame if the Elemental tree was so weak that taking Thunder would render an Elemental Shaman weaker in raids and pvp than if they ignored it.

If 9% hit is indeed confirmed cap on +hit, then 3 shamans are indeed compulsory for all raids.
Given that ele shaman and moonkin druid are only classes that bring raid wide spell +hit.

If however they keep ~18% hit for spells, and make +hit available on gear, like it's in BC. Then nobody needs +hit buffs, since everyone will just gear to cap +hit - since it is most efficient stat to gear for.

Other solution is keeping ~18% hit needed for spells, do not make +hit available on gear, and force people to gem for +hit. Then you'll still come up short on +hit, and need +hit buffs to cap it.

[edit: I clarified the original post back on p.22 to clear up the misunderstanding you seem to be continuously making]

I have several times now said that nowhere do I state that spell cast times do not play a factor.

Here is what you keep ignoring, that are not being factored into the numbers (just looking at specifically Balance Druids to keep this focussed):

Nature's Grace: you are ignoring it.

Eclipse: you are ignoring it.

Lunar Guidance: you are ignoring it.

Owlkin Frenzy: you are ignoring it.

I stated I was leaving those talents out because I couldn't accurately account for how much scaling they would add [I edited in to make this extremely clear, some additional comments] -- but they do add a lot of scaling. Your numbers leave them out and make no mention of the fact that you are ignoring several significant scaling factors. Part of this confusion is no doubt my fault since maybe I wasn't clear enough that I wasn't factoring in certain non-linear scaling talents (though I did state things like the numbers wouldn't be scientifically precise, apparently I wasn't being clear enough).

Stormstrike debuffs: you are assuming an impossible 100% uptime (the same as I did, just to give the Elemental Shaman every possible factor and even impossible factor in it's benefit).

When we stop ignoring baked in talents, and stop assuming impossible buffing scenarios, the scaling gap grows larger. Which makes your point moot/irrelevant.

My point remains true in all scenarios: The Elemental tree top end needs a fair bit of work to be as viable as the 43/28/0 build where PvE is concerned, and to scale as well as other casters (also where pve is concerned). Not an impossible amount. Maybe not even a huge amount. Just a fair bit of work. Something that blizzard has acknowledged as possibly being true (though what their idea of a buff to the tree is, remains to be seen).

Just the fact that your numbers show Elemental Shaman with WotLK talents to be scaling even with other classes **ignoring many of their WotLK talents** pretty much has made my point for me, though.

I'm sorry, could you actually include all these things that I am apparently ignoring in the numbers that you are using to prove your point then?

Also: beta seems to be missing the totemic mastery change, but it's been "blue posted" so I expect we'll see another patch soon

I think he means the only real scaling we have is LO, lightning mastery and elemental oath and compared to other class's trees we fall out short a lot with the band aid coefficient removed.
Even if we get a talent like paralysis back, we will be on par at lvl 70 not 80.

Is a perfect example of were it goes wrong imo, instead of a static buff a scaling buff, like windfury, would be far more in character and provides shamans with their scaling. Just to clarify, I don't want a WF effect for spells, just a scaling weapon buff.

The initial remark Ocyr quoted by Koraa is quite off as well, the band aid was not introduced because we did not have a curse or whatever , we never had one. It was because they made mistakes on the lightning overload change and we drastically plummeted dps wise.

Ok, since I'm being insulted by Ocyr via PM on how I'm wrong and such, lets review his math then?

Firstly, the "scaling" would be incorrect.

Call of Thunder does not add a flat 5% gain. It adds 5% crit. Certainly, going from 0 to 5% would be a 5% gain, but going from 35% to 40% is a 3.7% gain. So the assumption here is incorrect. This means that gains from Tidal Mastery, half of Totem of Wrath are also incorrect.

Elemental Precision is not a 3% gain either. It's slightly higher than that (0.99/0.96 = 1.03125). The same will be true for the hit portion of ToW.

Elemental Oath (assuming one also has CSD) will give a 227% crit, so at 40% crit we will see 1+(1.27*0.4)=1.508 vs 1+(1.09*0.4)=1.436, so a gain of 7.2% from that talent.

The other thing is that it is important to remember that % gains multiply, so from external sources we would see 1.06*1.1*1.05*1.2=1.469, or a 46.9% gain from said debuffs. This again multiplies with Concussion to give 1.543

Now, ignoring Paralysis as it is being removed, we have our 0.714 spell co-efficient. Multiply that by 1.543 we get 1.102 damage per spellpower ignoring crits. Including crits we see 1.662.

The next problem is that to get a true comparison we need to divide by the cast time to see gain per second. 1.662/2 gives 0.831.

I will ignore the "non linear scaling" things that Ocyr did, to make a comparison easier.

Moonkin: Starfire.
Moonfury: 10%
WoC: 20%
Earth & Moon: 6%
Misery: 5%
CoE: 10%
Imp Scorch: 10%

So that's a 1.778 modifier for starfire, with a co-efficient of 1 (base cast is 3.5). Since Moonkin also have a 100% crit damage bonus, we can use the 1.508 crit bonus figure from earlier. This gives 2.681 effective damage per spellpower.
However, starfire has a 3 second cast compared to our 2 seconds, which gives 0.894 damage per spellpower per second.

Not much different from our 0.831 is it? (remember that I did not include paralysis).

So you ignored 4 Druid damage-increasing talents, and your result "proving" that Elemental Shaman will scale as well as everyone else, is that Balance Druids scale 7.5% better than a currently-talented 51/0/20 Shaman would...

And, per you, you ignored 4 WotLK Balance Druid talents that would actually buff their DPS values higher.

Thanks for proving my point -- oh and classy move bringing up the Private messages.

Since they were, you know, "private" and are even labelled "private" I won't bring up the garbage you were writing.

New Talent: Tidal Force- Increases the critical effect chance of your Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave and Chain Heal by 60%. Each critical heal reduces the chance by 20% and lasts 20 seconds.

Source

I'd guess that he was talking about the same talents you were talking about 1 post earlier:

I find it odd that you are so dismissive over your stated variance in scaling, since it is larger than the difference between the #1 and #13 DPS spots in my guilds last Sunwell WWS report (Kalecgos through Mu'ru). In other words, the difference that your math is showing, binke, when extrapolated to a Sunwell clear, would give the Druid a 29% larger lead in damage over the Shaman, than the difference between my guilds #1 and #13th placed DPS.

And, as you said, that is "ignoring" several key Druid DPS talents.

After a month plus bancation, it is nice to see my 43/28 build is still de jour, because if blizzard is relying on people like binke for beta feedback the elemental tree isn't going to get the love it needs. That much is certain.

The talents Concussion, Lightning Overload, and Elemental Oath are the only scaling that Elemental gets unless you go deep into enhancement for Mental Quickness. I think we all agree at this point that this isn't sufficient which is why Blizzard is taking a second look at the tree.

I have a hard time believing that they will nerf Mental Quickness. For elemental though, it is quite good. The scaling that it provides is quite incredible. In addition to the above, you get these:

33% of Int ---> Spellpower

This alone is amazing. For an example, I chose the Cowl of Gul'dan. It has 43 int, 74 spell damage, and a 5 spell damage socket bonus. Right now, this is a beefy 79 spell damage assuming you gem for spell haste. But with this scaling, it now is 93 spell damage (43 * 1.1 * 0.3). This is a 17.7% increase in spellpower.

30% of AP ---> Spellpower

This one is interesting. Not only does this give you more buffs available to use, but some of them scale. Unleashed Rage, for example, gives a flat 10% AP bonus.

Here's a question for you: If you time it right and you are using Flame Shock (to combo with Lava Burst), can you squeeze in a melee swing during the GCD? If this is the case, all that AP means you actually can hit for something worth noting. This would dramatically change the value of shocks as all shocks would be: Shock + auto swing.

Yes, that means you are in the melee group. It also means you are in the best position to get AP buffs. It makes threat more of an issue so if threat cap is an issue, this won't work. With the change to Haste (both melee and spell), Windfury Totem providing 20% melee haste, this might actually work.

Having Unleashed Rage means you get 36% of Int as spellpower.

Could someone verify if this works in Beta (auto attack during shock GCD)?

EDIT: Missed Mirranda's Post, redundant text removed.

Orlgin, I don't really see Elemental Shaman as caring about meleeing in raids, even if they can hit sufficiently hard with all of the Enhancement talents. This requires them to be in melee range, which means their totems are buffing the melee and not casters, and makes them susceptible to all the anti-melee mechanics a fight throws at the raid.

For example: Aran. The constant silences would make it impossible. Gruul. More melee means more cave ins to dodge. Void Reaver. The pushback alone would make casting strenuous, let alone the damage. etc. Basically, having all the detriments of both a caster and a melee at the same time doesn't add up well.

Even if you could get a melee hit in every 8-10 second cycle, the damage you do isn't going to scale well with your gear choices, and having you there will likely be more onerous than any raid is going to want to deal with. 20 yards away isn't bad, but standing side by side with the Rogues strikes me as far fetched.

I'm gone for a day and there's almost a flamewar here :p Now, now, guys, let's keep this civilized and within proof parameters.

Will do, but it would be unlogical to have 16% resist without gear and no resist with 9% hit. Imo.

EDIT: ah, 5 shots into the test, I realized just why the rumour surfaced. You see, resists are now stated as "miss", not as "resist" anymore. If he would be counting misses, he'd get the correct number.

So in other words - "working as intended". MD/MQ might be interesting quirk build viable for early content... but late game - "normal" 51+/x/x builds will dominate.

Question is - will it really be as static as you say. 30% of the intelect will be converted to spelldamage - and that will scale with better spellcaster gear. While not itemizing for str/AP - the MQ true potential is missed.

Caster weapon DPS does scale with Wrath, about half as much as the DPS of non-caster weapons.
The main factor is that you can up to 2.8k AP from just raid buffs and some normal intellect on gear.

That means your melee for up to 300 DPS. With Wrath of Air and Windfury and a 1.6s weapon, you could get a swing during the GCD of a shock without Flurry. (Cast time spells reset your swing timer.)
So, your damage of shocks would increase by around 500 of the melee damage, which could make them worthwile if you can stay in melee and your raid can stand in range of your totems in melee. It's still a very minor amount of damage.

Mental Quickness doesn't really scale, you're correct. But you can get about 900 spell power from it from raid buffs and some common intellect on gear.
If if you had 4k spell power in a high-gear raid setting, Paralysis would be worth ~550 spell power and 4% crit would be worth about ~200 spell power, still not closing the closing the cap.
You'd break even at ~5k spell power, which I'm not sure of whether it can be reached this expansion.

So, while "900 spell power" doesn't scale, it still provides enough benefit that it'll be dominant for this expansion.


But they're changing deep Elemental, and I'm sure they'll try to address MQ for elemental builds

Moving MQ a single tier higher would break 43/28/0 build. Moving MQ lower, next to flurry, would make top elemental tiers viable. It's all just a question of what they are trying to achieve.

KraxisSingular, would you care to moderate your post please? I find it actually a bit offensive, as if you are lashing out at me here.

If you got the impression that I wanted Elemental Shamans to replace Hunters or some other class, then I can only say that I'm sorry that I didn't explain it better and that there was no need for you to go on the defensive. I want the situation that for each class, then their 3 talent trees should be equally viable for 25-man raids. This goes for Shamans as Hunters as Warriors. Further I've the belief that to ensure that the 3 talent trees are equally viable, then we should not get a situation where it becomes either favourable to stack a class higher than 3, or that it becomes unfavourable at all to stack a class.

In the first case with a 'stackable' class, like we have currently in TBC for Shamans, then you get that one class eats up the raid slots of other classes. In the second case where it is unfavourable to bring more than 1 or 2, then you have a class that is volounteering to have its raid slots eaten. This will in extension impact how raid viable a talent tree is. If you can stack a class like mad, then you will make a relative weak talent tree raid viable just due to the added benefit of adding yet another chap of this blessed class. If it is not favourable to go with 3, then you're causing an internal competition between the talent trees for this specific class, where one or two talent trees will draw the short straw and stand as losers.

With the last WotLK notes, then I've the impression that Enhancement Shamans can be quite secure in getting a raid slot, while Restoration and Elemental Shamans will compete about the second slot, where there will be no third price for the loser. This means that if Elemental tree gets too many buffs, then it will knock out Resto and vice-versa. The simplest solution in my mind was to offer a third price, i.e. make it favourable to bring 3 Shamans, which I felt could be easily achieved with a set of pro-caster totems.

Now, this is how I percieve the situation for Shamans and Elemental Shamans in specific, but it should be possible to more or less apply this on every class.

If you are going elemental mastery, you /really/ want to be close to the mellee if possible, unleashed rage, deathknight +str buffs, battleshout, ect. thats a few hundred spellpower you are passing up if you aren't.

If there was a third set of useful totems then the third shaman will be all but required. Raid-wide buffs are enormously powerful when there are 24 other people.

The current design seems fine. 2 shamans provides the totems and the third shaman provides another bloodlust and his or her own spec-specific buff. This is the model for most classes - the first two warlocks provide the curses, the first two paladins provide the blessings, and so on.