Hopefully people can keep the beta forum posts bumped for the SE&F change/bug.
Its our only realistic hope of getting an answer - the alternative is to wait until the next beta build, and see whether its the tooltip that changes or the ability that changes back.
I have to agree with everyone that with the coefficient change elemental pve is in trouble. However if the coefficient change is reverted and flametongue effects all damage instead of just fire, we should be in a much better position.
Has anybody else been underwhelmed with the changes we've gotten to deal with melee in pvp? We're still a high priority target that goes down like a brick. Elemental could definitely use something like fiery payback or backlash, like a under 35% hp or 25% chance on physical dmg to make CL instant, to atleast make people hesitate before going after us.
I think they're expecting Thunderstorm to be the escape mechanism for eshams. Sadly, unless they make its cooldown down to the 15-20 second range a-la intercept, it's not going to really help.
Last edited by Graze : 09/24/08 at 3:30 PM.
Reason: clarity
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!
I know this is meant to be a place for reasoned debate, so I will try and hold back the QQing. Still seriously, I am just lost for words as to what they are doing here.
I do not see any way in which we can possibly hope our DPS scaling will keep pace.
Anyway, its up to you guys with Beta forum access now. On the EU Shaman forums I could write the most insightful thoughts on shamans ever written, together with the secret of cold fusion and the recipe for Coca-Cola and it still wouldn't get a blue response.
I know this is meant to be a place for reasoned debate, so I will try and hold back the QQing. Still seriously, I am just lost for words as to what they are doing here.
I do not see any way in which we can possibly hope our DPS scaling will keep pace.
Anyway, its up to you guys with Beta forum access now. On the EU Shaman forums I could write the most insightful thoughts on shamans ever written, together with the secret of cold fusion and the recipe for Coca-Cola and it still wouldn't get a blue response.
Agreed
With this change the last 6 points in Elemental are really subpar for PvE, and our scaling is gone. Please anyone with US beta and even normal us accounts make sure to keep the beta and ptr threads alive so we can get some kind of clarification to all of this.
Lava Burst doesn't scale with Crit, and has a very small benefit from Haste. It's potent enough that it'll scale decently enough just from the Spell Power we're bound to pick up. That said, it's not good enough to carry Elemental Shamans on its own.
Lightning Bolt has an effective 41.25% scaling/cast time. This is on the low end for DPS casters. Reference: Shadow Bolt - 46.5%, Incinerate - 46.9%, Fireball - 45.1%, Frost Bolt - 42.0%, Mind Flay - 46.3%. My calculations may be off; I didn't factor in crit, glyphs or odd talents like Incite and Fingers of Frost for other classes' scaling. Chain Lightning actually scales ever so slightly better than Lightning Bolt in terms of scaling/cast time, but is both extremely mana inefficient and still doesn't match the competition.
Unless there's some funky mechanic we're overlooking that Blizzard is privy to I'm not seeing how we're going to keep level with other casters.
Originally Posted by mmo-champion
Elemental Combat
* Stoneclaw totem also protects your other totems, causing them to absorb damage.
It'll at least be interesting to see how this one pans out. Useful for PvP, or when trying to keep that first Fire Nova Totem alive in PvE.
Whether it was needed or not, patch notes posted on World of Raids and WotLKWiki confirm this change.
My question would be, as someone who does not raid or pvp, and only does 5mans, I wonder if it's worthwhile to spend the points to pick up this and TS come 3.0/Expansion, or to perhaps look towards other trees for talents that might be more worthwhile.
It'll at least be interesting to see how this one pans out. Useful for PvP, or when trying to keep that first Fire Nova Totem alive in PvE.
It's actually salt in the wound, since tremor is still earth, the totem you want to protect the most.
What I would really love to see is an explanation or the train of thought that led to the current changes. It doesn't seem PVP related and surely not PVE related as the top end of the tree appeals to neither specs with the reduced knock up on Thunderstorm reducing it's worth considerably in arena play.
I can not imagine the change to chain lighting is intended to give shamans some form of AOE, but I can't think of any real alternative change. I am having a good laugh though when comparing SEF to Tidal Waves quality wise.
A road map or a rough sketch to the intended end result of the class would solve so many peoples aggravation.
Interestingly enough Lightning bolt went from the best scaling spell some time ago to the worst scaling spell now.
I remember reading something about removing Lava Burst from Lightning Mastery but it keeps being there, I'm in the middle of a raid atm, anyone able to confirm that it is really still there?
My question would be, as someone who does not raid or pvp, and only does 5mans, I wonder if it's worthwhile to spend the points to pick up this and TS come 3.0/Expansion, or to perhaps look towards other trees for talents that might be more worthwhile.
So to answer your question, no SEF isn't worthwhile for raids (can't spam CL without going OOM really fast, not to mention CL scales really poorly with high-end gear). No, SEF isn't worthwhile for Arena. No, there isn't anywhere else to put the leftover points, just non-DPS talents. I have no clue what Blizzard is thinking. WWS reports already show Elemental Shaman doing no more damage than Protection Warriors in Naxx, and that was before the removal of the 10% coef. As it stands now, Elemental Shaman have recieved 0 new scaling damage talents, and have had their scaling reduced by 20% since tBC. So, 0 steps forward, 20 steps back.
And in my opinion, SEF sucks so much because they are trying to do too much with it, and burning up all their spreadsheet points on it.
Storm, Earth and Fire, your Nature and Fire damage spells gain an additional 3/6/9/12/15% of your spell power. Simple, easy, keeps everything scaling with gear, and the FlS/LaB rotation scales just like everything else.
That's most likely Bibi making changes to keep in line with what's in game atm.
TBH, I'd expect the CL CD reduction to replace the earth shock range increase rather than the LB empowerment portion of SE&F.
Shaman
Elemental
Storm, Earth, and Fire doesn't increase the effect of spell power on your Lightning Bolt but reduces the cooldown of Chain Lightning by 0.5/1/1.5/2/2.5 sec instead.
Elemental was doing more sustained DPS than any Mage or Warlock spec, which is why we had to tone down some of the talents. Going into WOLK we did lower the coefficient. It always had a higher coefficient because there was no nature damage debuff. Now that there is, we've fixed the coefficient to be more in line. There's a reason why Elemental Shaman have some of the highest burst damage in PvP, and it's because their base nuke does more damage than other classes. Other classes require debuffs like Curse of the Elements, Shamans don't (until after the WOLK fix).
So in this case, perception does not really match reality.
I really don't understand what he is talking about? When did we EVER do more damage than mages/locks?
Elemental was doing more sustained DPS than any Mage or Warlock spec, which is why we had to tone down some of the talents. Going into WOLK we did lower the coefficient. It always had a higher coefficient because there was no nature damage debuff. Now that there is, we've fixed the coefficient to be more in line. There's a reason why Elemental Shaman have some of the highest burst damage in PvP, and it's because their base nuke does more damage than other classes. Other classes require debuffs like Curse of the Elements, Shamans don't (until after the WOLK fix).
So in this case, perception does not really match reality.
That's the EXACT problem with Elemental right now, and Koraa doesn't seem to understand it. Because we're being balanced around base damage and burst, we have no scaling what-so-ever.
As for Elemental out dpsing a lock/mage, the last time I saw that, it was non-heroic Black Morass...
So to answer your question, no SEF isn't worthwhile for raids (can't spam CL without going OOM really fast, not to mention CL scales really poorly with high-end gear). No, SEF isn't worthwhile for Arena. No, there isn't anywhere else to put the leftover points, just non-DPS talents. I have no clue what Blizzard is thinking. WWS reports already show Elemental Shaman doing no more damage than Protection Warriors in Naxx, and that was before the removal of the 10% coef. As it stands now, Elemental Shaman have recieved 0 new scaling damage talents, and have had their scaling reduced by 20% since tBC. So, 0 steps forward, 20 steps back.
And in my opinion, SEF sucks so much because they are trying to do too much with it, and burning up all their spreadsheet points on it.
Storm, Earth and Fire, your Nature and Fire damage spells gain an additional 3/6/9/12/15% of your spell power. Simple, easy, keeps everything scaling with gear, and the FlS/LaB rotation scales just like everything else.
I think your right Ofan, blizzard is trying to do too much with one talent. Perhaps they should "relocate" some of the features of S,E&F to other talents; spread them around a bit. Either way I'm hoping this is just blizzard conducting a little experiment to see what happens. If they are paying any attention at all they will notice us lagging far behind the other caster classes and with any luck they will fix it before 3.0 goes live - fingers crossed.
Edit:
Elemental was doing more sustained DPS than any Mage or Warlock spec, which is why we had to tone down some of the talents. Going into WOLK we did lower the coefficient. It always had a higher coefficient because there was no nature damage debuff. Now that there is, we've fixed the coefficient to be more in line. There's a reason why Elemental Shaman have some of the highest burst damage in PvP, and it's because their base nuke does more damage than other classes. Other classes require debuffs like Curse of the Elements, Shamans don't (until after the WOLK fix).
So in this case, perception does not really match reality.
Elemental was doing more sustained DPS than any Mage or Warlock spec, which is why we had to tone down some of the talents. Going into WOLK we did lower the coefficient. It always had a higher coefficient because there was no nature damage debuff. Now that there is, we've fixed the coefficient to be more in line. There's a reason why Elemental Shaman have some of the highest burst damage in PvP, and it's because their base nuke does more damage than other classes. Other classes require debuffs like Curse of the Elements, Shamans don't (until after the WOLK fix).
So I guess all of the Elemental Shaman raiding Naxx 25 are lying, and have been fabricating their WWS logs somehow, because not a single report has shown Elemental Shaman significantly (more than 1-2%) ahead of the Protection tanks.
The actual spells, in order from most powerful base to weakest base:
1. Starfire 1028 to 1212 Arcane damage
2. Fire Ball 888 to 1132 Fire damage and an additional 116 Fire damage over 8 sec.
3. Arcane Blast 912 to 1058 Arcane damage
4. Frost Bolt 799 to 861 Frost damage
5. Incinerate 727 to 845 Fire damage 6. Lightning Bolt 715 to 815 Nature damage
7. Smite 707 to 793 Holy damage
8. Shadow Bolt 690 to 770 Shadow damage
9. Wrath 553 to 623 Nature damage
Please note that of the spam-able main nukes in this game, Lightning Bolt ranks a lowly 6th on the list, just above Smite, in base damage.
Lightning Bolt actually comes in below Wrath, and only 5th on the list, for base spell damage adjusted for talented casting time.
Of note: Lightning Bolt has the least talent modifiers to it's damage (only 2) of ALL spells listed.
edit: I posted the list of numbers on the PTR forum and received an immediate account ban for, and I quote "Your account has been banned: Attempting to talk to developers on the wrong forum." Really? The PTR forum is the wrong place to give PTR feedback?
I imagine they were basing it off internal builds, but I don't know what would account for the large discrepancy unless there's some sort of bug that they encountered.
This is exactly why communication is utterly important. How many weeks have been spent with this utter schism between our thinking and Blizzard's thinking?
As much as I'd like to get in a tizzy, we need to calmly request an explanation of what exactly indicates to them that Elemental Shaman are capable of out DPSing Warlocks and Mages. Maybe there's some mathematical miracle we aren't aware of, maybe they're testing solo DPS and as such we have buffs the other classes don't. Whatever it is we need to find out what's causing the schism and come to some understanding.
maybe they're testing solo DPS and as such we have buffs the other classes don't
Maybe. between Elemental oath (GROUP BUFF), Totem of Wrath (GROUP BUFF), Wrath of Air (GROUP BUFF) and Mana Spring (GROUP BUFF) in a solo, self-buffed only testing environment Shaman might look like they are competitive. The problem is, in a raid environment our raid buffs become trivialized as a number of other classes bring in part our utility (added all up, we actually have no unique raid utility) -- and thus in the raid environment we see what every beta tester has proven -- Shaman are dead last in damage.
we need to calmly request an explanation of what exactly indicates to them that Elemental Shaman are capable of out DPSing Warlocks and Mages. Maybe there's some mathematical miracle we aren't aware of, maybe they're testing solo DPS and as such we have buffs the other classes don't. Whatever it is we need to find out what's causing the schism and come to some understanding.
Ive started 2 threads on the US PTR forum asking for more details about the S,E&F change and a clarification on Korra's post. Both were deleted within 5 mins and needless to say I'm not impressed.
Last edited by Storms : 09/25/08 at 12:19 AM.
Reason: Grammar
I realize emotions are high, but if you post useless crap that amounts to crying about something you don't like, I'm going to regulate your ass off these forums.
Cry on someone else's forums. Post useful discussion points here.
I think the best discussion point I can suggest right now is that someone with decent writing skills, a beta account, and access to some damage logs combines them together, in such a humorous, insightful and clear way they can't be ignored.
At best I have 2 of those 3 things, so I can't help, but I strongly urge anyone who can to do so. And try and keep the anger out of it, or you give them a reason to ignore it.
I can definitely feel why people want to go off crying, this is the worst Ele has ever looked to me right now. I haven't been so angry with WoW since we were learning Archi and certain raid members thought it was a fire-walking course.
09/24/08, 9:48 AM
