I know what you ment, sjogren and I agree, the numbers are same for Empowered Fireball. The emphasis, though, was on empowered, i.e. an example of a set of talents among which frostbolt and arcane missiles are as well (thus, the emphasis was on the calculation and not the result). The wording on SE&F is exactly the same as on any of them, therefore, the effect should be as well. Now, either those talents are changed, SE&F is changed or wording is changed, but as it stands now, one can only consider it a miscalculation.

No idea why we're arguing, though, as we make the same point, just from different direction :p

Anyway, Flame Shock (with a tiny bug and new spell coefficients) and LB (with a few retests needed) covered, CL has pretty basic calculation, only Lava Burst remains for spreadsheets, but given it's currently bugged state, I'm leaving it until after fix.

I just don't see Thunderstorm or Storm, Earth and Fire being viable raiding talents, thus based on the current state of the talents, I'd probably go with a 46/5/20 talent pool.

46/5/20

Thoughts? Is there any viable reason to take Thunderstorm or Storm, Earth and Fire? The knockback of Thunderstorm seems to me too dangerous to use in most raid environments, and Shock spells are usually not in a raiders arsenal. Granted Flame Shock might be used in combination with Lava Burst, but since Lava Burst dispels Flame Shock to generate its auto crit, the added DoT damage that Storm, Earth and Fire gives to Flame Shock is not required.

Well, Perrito, you might want to use these talents for starters:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?shaman=

The first post in this thread is continously updated, mentioning the correct beta-patch. The posts previous to your own, also address and talk about the latest beta patch where SEF was changed to have a 25% "empower"-thingy for Lightning Bolt. In that regard, I wonder if not most of us here expected that you would be a bit more up-to-date when you post. Regardless, yes Thunderstorm might not be an optimal PvE raid talent, but remember that you will apparently no longer be able to chain-chug mana potions, so the 5% mana return might actually be worth 1 talent point.


EDIT:
Correction, Tufy/Natharia has actually not updated the first post to reflect the 8770 patch (the patch that housed the most overwhelming changes to Elemental Shamans). Well, it could be due to he linked to MMO-champion, which gives more or less all information necessary when it comes to the wotlk-talents.

___________________________


To address something completly different, I entertained myself with browsing the beta-forums for other classes and re-stumbled upon one of Koraa's old posts in the druid forum. He mentioned the developer's intention to "bloat" the talent trees, ensuring that you had to make tough decisions and sacrifices when you pick talents. This got me to think about the WotLK Elemental tree, and how "bloated" it is.

From PvE raid perspective, then I see tier 6 and tier 8 as bloated. In both tiers you want to place more than 5 talent points, thus potentially sacrifice talents further ahead. However, in the end it is only tier 8 that actually force you to decide if you want grab both Elemental Oath and Lightning Overload, or possibly place 5 points in Tidal Mastery. The reason why tier 6 doesn't create similar sacrifices, is due to that in the next tier, then you can get away with by just placing one single talent point.

In short, if the wish is to make the Elemental Tree "bloated", shouldn't there be one more PvE raiding talent at tier 7?

Hmm, well I wrongly assumed that the Blizz talent generator would be up-to-date. Apparently it is not. I was using Wowhead originally, but after seeing the differences between Wowhead and Blizz, figured Blizz would be the generator to use.

So much information scattered all over. Where can I find information on these changes to mana potion use?

It is the fact that the information is scattered all over the place that I don't wish to give you a hard time for not knowing it all. I'm personally pretty clueless about most of the new stuff in WotLK. Regarding the mana-potions, then I heard it from a fellow guildie who is Alchemist that it would not be possible to chain-chug mana pots. I didn't know about it before then, and now when I try to find the source, then it is next to impossible to find a blue line that mentions this effect. However, I did find the "source": Potion Sickness - Spell - World of Warcraft

Any ideas for what might be a good talent build in between the release of the WotLK talent patch and WotLK if you are a raiding elemental shaman? Seems a bit rough in terms of tradeoffs with just the level 70 talent points and how things have been moved around. Seems like just a bunch of tradeoffs in every direction, but perhaps just staying out of resto is a good idea for the interim period?

Also, how are we going to have to handle spell hit? Currently I'll have to go out and buy quite a few +hit gems unless I missed something about how hit is going to work.

(Apologies if this is a One Stop Elemental Shop question!)

I'm going something like this:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
or this
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Grab as many +hit items you can.

Personally I don't see the trade-offs as that rough. As you already concluded, the best deal is to stay out of Restoration, or rather, do not spend 20 points there. I think I can relatively safely say, without crunching numbers, that Storm, Earth & Fire talent is far, far more important than Tidal Mastery. In the end you will end up with 50 or more talent points in the Elemental Tree, 5 in Ancestral Knowledge and perhaps 5 in Totemic Focus. The biggest change is really the loss of 9% spell hit from talents. In short, you need the following spell hit ratings to cover this loss:

Level 70 - with WotLK talents
164 - Horde Shamans & no Moonkin around
152 - Ally Shaman & no Moonkin around
126 - Horde Shamans + Moonkin's Imp. Faerie Fire
114 - Ally Shaman + Moonkin's Imp. Faerie Fire

After this it is just a question of trading Enchants, Gems or outright gear for Spell Hit.

I'm confused, are we just getting the talents in this content patch, or will mechanics be changing, too? For instance, will totems be going raidwide already (I'm guessing not)? Will wrath be switching from spell damage to spell haste, or does that not happen until the xpac? Until flametongue weapon actually increases our spell damage, for instance, I don't see the point of including Lava Flows in an interim build. My understanding is that we are just getting the talents and a few other features, but that the mechanics of our totems and weapon buffs are staying the same until xpac. Am I wrong?

If the pre-BC content patch was any indication we'll see mechanics rolled in with the spells and talents. If memory serves the BC downranking nerf was included in the 2.0 patch. You can expect all spells to be updated to their WotLK version in 3.0. Flametongue Weapon will increase your spell damage.

This is actually a point of concern for many. As it stands the WotLK downranking nerf is hitting Shaman and Paladins quite hard in terms of their healing longevity (Priests less so, and Druids are relatively unscathed). There are big questions on Warrior viability in fights where full avoidance is necessary (such as Illidan with his Shear) even though crushing has been moved up one level. In short, while everyone's generally excited about getting the juicy WotLK talents and spells, there are still unanswered, concerning questions.

The most likely thing is that everything changes.

New talent trees. New spells, like Earthliving weapon or rank 1 water shield at level 20+.
New mechanics - downranking, raid wide buffs (because the new talents build around that as well).
New Flametongue mechanics, new totem mechanics (ToW, WoA, FT, Windfury, etc.).
Potion sickness or whatever happens with it in beta, Pet/Mount summons.


Just think how patch 2.0 went. All new talents, spells, mechanics.
There were level 70 mobs at Karazhan dropping "Server first level 70 greens!" and Netherweave.
Jewelcrafting was implemented - there were patterns on vendors - you just couldn't train it in the old zones.

Even Horde/Alliance got Paladin/Shaman Tier sets from MC/BWL.

I'd expect it to be "Everything but Death Knights, Northrend access and leveling past 70." just like the 2.0 patch.

Very much so

I thought hitcap was 9% now?

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t27016-e...23/#post836437

Every class, except Balance Druids, have got a serious cut in spell hit. Elemental Shamans lost the most, closely followed by Shadow Priest, however the rule remains that every dps tree now offer 3% to spell hit. The number of gems and items that Elemental Shamans need to collect is no more different than what a Mage, Warlock or Shadow Priest must gather. Of course, Elemental Shamans might relatively have a tougher transition period during the gap when patch 3.0 is released and the expansion goes live, however I'm certain that we can survive that.


EDIT:
An addendum to Daidalos' post below. I feel that I should point out that the transition period I'm talking about, is the time between the WotLK talents are released and the expansion pack is in the store to be bought. I.e., the few weeks when you can't level up, but where you've new cool talents to play around with. Some folks might be busy just preparing for the expansion, grinding mats, checking out the latest builds on PTR and so on, while some folks might do an odd TBC raid just to check out the new WotLK talents. In the regard to the latter, then yes we will lack spell hit, however I for one think that is such minor matter that I don't see the point to bring it up, and even less so, to spend effort and energy complaining about it.

There are conflicting reports and evidently the issue is that older pre-wotlk spells are functioning as on live but spells learned in lich are functioning with a 9% hit cap (for lvl+3). I am going to assume that it means that all spells are moving to a 9% hit cap but there hasn't been any blue posts I know of to confirm this but its logical.

While leveling with talents you will be hit capped on most mobs and with a bit of hit on your gear you will probably be hit capped on mobs a few levels above you as well. I'm 78 right and so far I'm pretty sure I have missed 0 spells while leveling (I do instances as resto so I don't run into hit problems on bosses). If you really think you are going to use all of your gear at lvl 80 and raid with it you could just replace some gems and be fine. Even the new green gems are better than current epic gems.

Same. I was testing specifically with top TBC LB rank on Dragonblight level 73 mobs with my level 70 test toon, didn't really think of new ranks having different hit. I'll have to repeat the tests with my main toon, comparing TBC and WotLK ranks of LB + how Lava Burst acts; expect report later today (provided someone doesn't beat me to it while I'm at work :p)

My main was a rogue until a month or so ago, so forgive me if I'm missing some bit of common knowledge that everyone else has already. That being said, rogues in the know always treated melee +hit just like any other DPS stat. It was slightly better point for point than most others, but given the fact that there are a limited number of items out there and you can't balance them out exactly how you wanted to meant that some item might not have any +hit but were still really good items. As an easy example, if an item had 20 agil and another had 10 hit, you'd be an idiot to say "hit is better" I'm going with that item.

All of which leads me to my ele shaman question, what is special about spell mechanics versus melee mechanics that it is totally necessary to be AT the hit cap? I mean, if I had a kit that missed 50% of the time but hit twice as hard and a gear set that never missed but only hit half as hard, wouldn't that lead to the same damage? So wouldn't resocketing +damage to +hit be the same sort of thing? That is, you won't get as many resists but you're trading less damage per hit to do that.

Well, just like you said. +hit gives more "bang for the buck". 8hit is better dps than 9dmg until capped (using rare gems as an example) so if you're not hitcapped it's worth gemming for hit. Of course sometimes there are spells you really really don't want to miss with (spellsteal for mages on the Maulgar fight comes to mind, but so does tranq shot for hunters back in the days), but as far as raw dps goes, it's no different for casters than for rogues.

Heya, I've been following this thread since the steady flow of WotLK info started and just want to thank all the frequent posters for their math and insight. I did have a question though about the pre-WotLK patch. What are the, if any, ramifications of us not having access to Lava Burst when this patch goes live. I would just think that our new and improved talent tree is at least in part balanced with that spell in mind. From what I've seen Lava Burst is available at level 75, so I was just curious how not having it will affect DPS. And would this make the MQ/MD build no doubt superior since Lava Flows and Call of Flame will be semi-useless? Of course if I'm wrong about the level we get Lava Burst please correct me

That's part of it, but not the whole deal.

Spells work under a two roll system*. The game first rolls to see if your spell misses, and then rolls to see the overall affect (including crit). This means that all misses never give you the chance to crit, and as such you won't crit as often as you would were you capped. Mathematically, you multiply your crit chance by your chance to hit to find your true crit chance (e.g. 25% Crit * 83% Hit = 20.75%).

So in addition to the greater chance to hit with spells and the DPS associated with that, Hit will also (though unintuitively) increase your chance to crit.

*Data and combat log codes suggest that Melee specials are also on a two roll system, but Melee classes have an easier to reach soft cap at ~9% where specials no longer miss.

MQ/MD isn't particularly viable at 70, you sacrifice far too many important talents. See the following build:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Elemental Mastery, Elemental Oath, Lightning Overload, Totem of Wrath, SE&F, and Thunderstorm are all lost for MQ/MD at 70. Sacrificing all those utility/scaling factors completely negates the minor benefits one gains from MQ/MD.

A more likely 70 build would be this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Lacking Lava Burst doesn't impact talent choices too much, as there is still benefit to Lava Flows. You do free up points from Call of Flame, but that's about it.

So far as I know, you are correct about the level we get Lava Burst, however I still would not advocate attempting to pick up the MD/MQ build at 70 or while levelling from 70-80. The reasoning behind that is that it takes 28 points in Enhancement to get the full benefit of MD/MQ, and at 70 that leaves you only 33 points to spend in Elemental, meaning you'd have to sacrifice Elemental Oath, Lightning Overload, and Totem of Wrath, not to mention any of the new higher level talents in the tree.

The usefullness of the MD/MQ build is really predicated on being lvl 80 and on being in a raid environment where you'll be getting enough AP boosts to get a significant amount of spellpower from the talents. With just your base AP in Elemental gear, it won't net you much of a benefit. Thus, not a terribly useful build for levelling, and I wouldn't think it would really be all that successful even in raiding between the 3.0 patch and the expansion release. You simply sacrifice too much to get it, so far as I can see.

Edit: Darian beat me to it. That'll teach me to post without refreshing the thread. >_<