Of course, I also can't help wondering that if they're planning to eliminate the need for spell hit on gear for shaman, why did they nerf our +hit talent from 6% to 3%? For that matter, why not simply increase the +hit we get from talents to the point where we can cap from talents alone?
Because Shamans are built on procs. It's a class doomed to randomness.
Because Shamans are built on procs. It's a class doomed to randomness.
I don't I could have put it better myself, and quite frankly, I hate it. I hope Blizzard finds a solution to this problem, taking a different (non-20% chance) approach with Wotlk and actually fix us.
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 don't I could have put it better myself, and quite frankly, I hate it. I hope Blizzard finds a solution to this problem, taking a different (non-20% chance) approach with Wotlk and actually fix us.
EF and LO don't bother me and it makes ele shaman somewhat unique. I'm rather undecided about EO really the thing that matters is the end results but it does annoy me that on some spells I will be hit capped and others not (although DW melee already deal with this). Personally I'd prefer some other mechanic if they don't what to give us a normal hit mechanic or better control over keeping EF up by lowering LaB CD or some such. I personally like that our new rotation will no longer be 1-2 spells just spammed whenever the CD is up and I woudn't mind controlling EO through this (assuming properly controlled we do good maintainable dps).
I don't I could have put it better myself, and quite frankly, I hate it. I hope Blizzard finds a solution to this problem, taking a different (non-20% chance) approach with Wotlk and actually fix us.
I agree that DPS shaman are very much prone to randomness (Windfury, much?), but that's absolutely intentional. It can be one of our big weaknesses (long streaks with no procs when you really need it), but it's also our biggest strength: the huge burst that both elemental and enhancement shamans can achieve. Elemental Mastery + Chain Lightning + a LO proc or two is huge in both fast AoE PvE situations and in arenas and mass PvP. Enhancement suffers/enjoys the same sorts of lows and highs. I don't expect Blizzard to change this at all, because it's our signature. Other classes can get better "sustained burst" (mages with Bloodlust, Icy Veins, Combustion, Flame Cap, and a trinket), but we have the potential to do a ton of damage in an extremely short period of time. It's just what we do, and we do it fairly well, just not entirely on command.
Might be, but it's a retarded system, as it doesn't assure the hit. This simply means elemental shamans will go for hit rings or weapons to cap themselves, dropping this talent.
Here's what I would do on Blizzard's place:
1. drop Elemental Oath altogether
2. Move Storm, Earth and Fire down to Elemental Oath's place, perhaps linking Lava Flow to it
3. Change Totem of Wrath to: "Summons a Totem of Wrath with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem increases the chance to hit with spells by 6% for all party members within 20 yards. For each hit % that the party member cannot use, this member is granted 1% spell crit instead.
4. Link Thunder to Lightning Overload
5. Add Lava Flow and Flame Shock (and flame shock only) to Storm Reach (rename to Elemental Reach if needed)
6. New 5-point talent in tier 10: Fiery Wrath: each time your Lava Flow crits the target, your party members gain 1/2/3/4/5% spell damage increase for 10 seconds.
Basically, Totem of Wrath is changed to full haste boost up to the point when the player is capped against current target, then it increases crit instead. Storm Reach boosts Lava Flow and Flame Shock, making it useful for pve. The new 5% spell damage increase, on the other hand, gives Elemental Shamans a reason to support through dps. To be honest, I'd rather see haste, but Boomkins are already getting that, so...
I never said it's a good system, I just said that I think that's what their goal was. I'm not entirely opposed to what you mentioned for possible changes, to be honest, I like some of them a lot, but again, this isn't a "I wish they'd..." post, I was just simply stating what it appears their goal is: to make us not need hit (due to sharing gear with healers) but give us a mechanic not unlike the way the rest of our class mechanics work (proc gogo!) to bypass the need for spell hit.
As a side note, we're not the only class who had a high base spell hit from talents get nerfed. Priests also had this change, and I had heard that mages were seeing less from talents too, though I'm unsure what they had to begin with. On the other hand, Warlocks are getting 5% that they never had from a Tier 1 talent. Seems balanced to me /sarcasm.
Everyone else across the board got 3% from hit, regardless of whether they were at 0% or 10% before, except warlocks who got 5% for destro, 6% for affliction, and 0% for our agro-dump. That's a nerf to arcane mages, shadow priest, and affliction warlocks, a buff to destruction warlocks, and a nerf-bug-fix to frost mages. I suspect evening out hit preference is to further develop gear homogenization. You are correct, warlocks are still problematic, although I wouldn't be surprised to see that changed as well.
So, I made a sim, based essentially on the code I had made before. This includes spell damage, haste, a base of 10% hit from talents, and incriments from 0 crit, 0 haste to 50%crit 30%haste. The rotation used is FS CL LBx3 LaB, an 11 second Rotation. Also note, it counts all FS ticks, rather then 3/4 just because it's easier. I'm not going to post all the information, but I included stuff like damage%s for all spells, and EO uptime as a % of casts(total casts while under EO/Total Casts). Anyway, here's some of the basic stuff, I'll post more if people want:
--------------------
Spell Damage: 2000
Haste: 0
Hit: 93
Crit: 0
--------------------
Overall:
Damage: 3.18028e+010
Total Hits: 9.59714e+006
Total Crits: 1.64969e+006
Total Casts: 1e+007
Total Miss: 402863
Hit %: 0.959714
Crit %: 0.164969
Miss %: 0.0402863
Time : 1.92374e+007
DPS: 1653.18
Elemental Oath %: 0.329006
--------------------
Spell Damage: 2000
Haste: 0.3
Hit: 93
Crit: 0
--------------------
Overall:
Damage: 3.18028e+010
Total Hits: 9.59714e+006
Total Crits: 1.64969e+006
Total Casts: 1e+007
Total Miss: 402863
Hit %: 0.959714
Crit %: 0.164969
Miss %: 0.0402863
Time : 1.48365e+007
DPS: 2143.55
Elemental Oath %: 0.329006
--------------------
Spell Damage: 2000
Haste: 0
Hit: 99
Crit: 0
--------------------
Overall:
Damage: 3.31817e+010
Total Hits: 1e+007
Total Crits: 1.74965e+006
Total Casts: 1e+007
Total Miss: 0
Hit %: 1
Crit %: 0.174965
Miss %: 0
Time : 1.92374e+007
DPS: 1724.85
Elemental Oath %: 0.348965
--------------------
Spell Damage: 2000
Haste: 0.3
Hit: 99
Crit: 0
--------------------
Overall:
Damage: 3.31817e+010
Total Hits: 1e+007
Total Crits: 1.74965e+006
Total Casts: 1e+007
Total Miss: 0
Hit %: 1
Crit %: 0.174965
Miss %: 0
Time : 1.48365e+007
DPS: 2236.49
Elemental Oath %: 0.348965
--------------------
Spell Damage: 2000
Haste: 0
Hit: 93
Crit: 20
--------------------
Overall:
Damage: 3.6487e+010
Total Hits: 9.75988e+006
Total Crits: 3.3209e+006
Total Casts: 1e+007
Total Miss: 240119
Hit %: 0.975988
Crit %: 0.332089
Miss %: 0.0240119
Time : 1.92374e+007
DPS: 1896.67
Elemental Oath %: 0.597668
--------------------
Spell Damage: 2000
Haste: 0.3
Hit: 93
Crit: 20
--------------------
Overall:
Damage: 3.6487e+010
Total Hits: 9.75988e+006
Total Crits: 3.3209e+006
Total Casts: 1e+007
Total Miss: 240119
Hit %: 0.975988
Crit %: 0.332089
Miss %: 0.0240119
Time : 1.48365e+007
DPS: 2459.27
Elemental Oath %: 0.597668
--------------------
Spell Damage: 2000
Haste: 0
Hit: 99
Crit: 20
--------------------
Overall:
Damage: 3.75222e+010
Total Hits: 1e+007
Total Crits: 3.41901e+006
Total Casts: 1e+007
Total Miss: 0
Hit %: 1
Crit %: 0.341901
Miss %: 0
Time : 1.92374e+007
DPS: 1950.48
Elemental Oath %: 0.615763
--------------------
Spell Damage: 2000
Haste: 0.3
Hit: 99
Crit: 20
--------------------
Overall:
Damage: 3.75222e+010
Total Hits: 1e+007
Total Crits: 3.41901e+006
Total Casts: 1e+007
Total Miss: 0
Hit %: 1
Crit %: 0.341901
Miss %: 0
Time : 1.48365e+007
DPS: 2529.05
Elemental Oath %: 0.615763
--------------------
Spell Damage: 2000
Haste: 0
Hit: 93
Crit: 40
--------------------
Overall:
Damage: 4.08734e+010
Total Hits: 9.87395e+006
Total Crits: 5.016e+006
Total Casts: 1e+007
Total Miss: 126049
Hit %: 0.987395
Crit %: 0.501599
Miss %: 0.0126049
Time : 1.92374e+007
DPS: 2124.68
Elemental Oath %: 0.790163
--------------------
Spell Damage: 2000
Haste: 0.3
Hit: 93
Crit: 40
--------------------
Overall:
Damage: 4.08734e+010
Total Hits: 9.87395e+006
Total Crits: 5.016e+006
Total Casts: 1e+007
Total Miss: 126049
Hit %: 0.987395
Crit %: 0.501599
Miss %: 0.0126049
Time : 1.48365e+007
DPS: 2754.92
Elemental Oath %: 0.790163
--------------------
Spell Damage: 2000
Haste: 0
Hit: 99
Crit: 40
--------------------
Overall:
Damage: 4.14299e+010
Total Hits: 1e+007
Total Crits: 5.08721e+006
Total Casts: 1e+007
Total Miss: 0
Hit %: 1
Crit %: 0.508721
Miss %: 0
Time : 1.92374e+007
DPS: 2153.61
Elemental Oath %: 0.801959
--------------------
Spell Damage: 2000
Haste: 0.3
Hit: 99
Crit: 40
--------------------
Overall:
Damage: 4.14299e+010
Total Hits: 1e+007
Total Crits: 5.08721e+006
Total Casts: 1e+007
Total Miss: 0
Hit %: 1
Crit %: 0.508721
Miss %: 0
Time : 1.48365e+007
DPS: 2792.43
Elemental Oath %: 0.801959
So, what I think is shown is that Haste > Hit > Crit if you have Elemental Oath, and if you gear to hit cap, you do not need elemental Oath. A small example of this, not shown in the previous code:
What's shown here, is at this spell damage level, going up 10% crit increases DPS more then going up 6% hit, with EO, however, since hit% is easier to get through hit rating, I think the hit rating is a better investment, 40ish dps for 4 more % crit then hit. Haste is the very clear winner when comparing the three ratings, giving over 200dps for going up 10% vs about 100dps for crit and hit(if you increase hit to 10%, just to compare relative gains). I'm still not sold on the talent, it really is dependant on what gear we see from instances.
Oh, also, using a FS, CL, LBx3, LaB rotation, I got these numbers for damage%'s, they ended up being pretty standard no matter what:
Lightning Bolt: 37.28%
Chain Lightning: 14.31%
Lava Burst: 20.88%
Flame Shock: 20.23%
Lightning Overload: 5.88%
Also, assuming we can use another shaman's flame shock, Going with CL LBx3 LaB, gives worse DPS then FS CL LBx3 LaB, and LBx4 LaB is even worse, for 40crit, 0haste, 93 hit:
DPS with FS: 2073.45
DPS w/o FS: 2025.93
DPS w/o CL or FS: 1981.46
I think it's safe to assume FS CL LBx3 LaB is going to be the best rotation, and with 30% haste that becomes something like FS CL LBx4 CL LaB, which gives rediculously better DPS: 2718.29
The Barrier for an FS CL LBx4 CL LaB rotation is probably around 20% haste actually, dropping the GCD to 1.25, and LB/LaB cast to 1.667, for a 12 second total rotation time.
I don't want to believe Blizzard is meaningly forcing us to a 20 yards range, it can't be their meaning for us to use FS into our PvE rotations, Lava Burst is also a fantastic spell for PvP thanks to its critt mechanics but it's also useful in PvE because of all the scaling it gets from talents and debuffs, even having Storm Reach not boosting Lava Burst seems odd to me if it's at all meant to be a PvE spell at all.
The Fist specc change also confuse me, if Lava Burst meant to be an Enhancement spell? Why does the elem tree boost it so much? (Per say, Call of Flame may be an "enhancement talent" aswell as Elem. Devastation. but there's still Lava Floes). The end tier elem talents could(and perhaps should) boost our lightning spells, or remove the drawbacks for keeping the other rotation, or perhaps even provide us with a third nuke that outdoes the other effects, I don't know which would be the best. Relying on a shock seems wrong to me.
Also why stormstrike isn't a "passive" debuff by now is beyond me(Might I add why increase the charges if it's not meant WE'RE the ones who should be using them?), it feels like it's too much "enhance only" spells and talents going around now with elemental receiving little to no love.
Last edited by Graze : 06/21/08 at 6:15 PM.
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!
So, what I think is shown is that Haste > Hit > Crit if you have Elemental Oath, and if you gear to hit cap, you do not need elemental Oath. A small example of this, not shown in the previous code:
What's shown here, is at this spell damage level, going up 10% crit increases DPS more then going up 6% hit, with EO, however, since hit% is easier to get through hit rating, I think the hit rating is a better investment, 40ish dps for 4 more % crit then hit. Haste is the very clear winner when comparing the three ratings, giving over 200dps for going up 10% vs about 100dps for crit and hit(if you increase hit to 10%, just to compare relative gains). I'm still not sold on the talent, it really is dependant on what gear we see from instances.
Let's dissect those numbers a bit closer than what your first line states:
10% haste (157.7 rating) adds 217.58 DPS, that's 13.2%.
In your post before, 30% haste added 490 DPS, that's 29.7%
10% haste granting a lot more than 10% DPS doesn't make sense to me, especially with 30% haste granting about 30% DPS.
Did you maybe post the numbers for 10% haste and 99% hit? That what they look like.
For your (odd) 10% setting, that's 217.58 DPS for 157.7 rating, or 1.376 DPS per rating.
For your 30% haste setting, that's 490.37 DPS for 473.1 rating, or 1.036 DPS per rating.
6% hit (75.6 rating) adds 71.67 DPS. 0.95 DPS per rating.
10% crit (220.8 rating) adds 116.4 DPS, or 0.527 DPS per rating.
So, crit is about half as good as hit.
Haste with no base haste is 10% better or 40% better than hit, depending on which values are correct.
That also means the following if the "10% better" value is true:
Once you have 10% or more haste on gear, the value of hit is increases enough that hit is better than haste point for point, and you'd be better off gemming to cap hit instead of more haste) even with EO.
Storm Earth and Fire: 5% extra LO chance, 100% chance to add flame shock dot on lava blast hit (scaling for 1-5 points)
Thunder: on-target rather than on-self. Works on both friendly/hostile targets (friendly targets don't take damage obviously). Still restores 5% mana to caster.
I never said it's a good system, I just said that I think that's what their goal was. I'm not entirely opposed to what you mentioned for possible changes, to be honest, I like some of them a lot, but again, this isn't a "I wish they'd..." post, I was just simply stating what it appears their goal is: to make us not need hit (due to sharing gear with healers) but give us a mechanic not unlike the way the rest of our class mechanics work (proc gogo!) to bypass the need for spell hit.
I know, Mirranda. Call me a dreamer, but I'd say Blizzard is aware of this thread. If that is so, then pointing out obviously overpowered and obviously underpowered talents may help shape the class during alpha. Elementa Oath is just one of those talents that don't really make sense. Even if our gear lacks hit, I'll personally rather cap it with gems than get that talent. Why? Because I prefer to be certain that my next spell will be capped, rather than rely on a proc. If that means I'll need two gear sets again for healing and dps, so be it.
Originally Posted by Binkenstein
Two changes I would make.
Storm Earth and Fire: 5% extra LO chance, 100% chance to add flame shock dot on lava blast hit (scaling for 1-5 points)
Thunder: on-target rather than on-self. Works on both friendly/hostile targets (friendly targets don't take damage obviously). Still restores 5% mana to caster.
So basically, avoid the use of Flame Shock and a ranged AoE? Both are a good solution, aye, it allows us to remain at 30 yard range and still get our own personal "Flame Shock" and it allows us to participate in AoEing with Thunder. However, I would point out that in this case, Flame Shock's dot would run out before Lava Blast would be ready again (8s cooldown). It also doesn't solve the issue of Lightning Reach being fairly useless in pve right now.
Of course, while thinking about this, we should also consider the pvp application - a 51/20/0 build will be pretty powerful as it is, a ranged AoE knockback would be pretty sick on top of that.
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
Storm Earth and Fire: 5% extra LO chance, 100% chance to add flame shock dot on lava blast hit (scaling for 1-5 points)
Thunder: on-target rather than on-self. Works on both friendly/hostile targets (friendly targets don't take damage obviously). Still restores 5% mana to caster.
S,E&F needs to be sacked/redone, it forces us to a 20 yard range (Our FS will do considerably more damage, feel like we're "supposed" to keep it up with this talent) because of the damage increase, and the other effects are complete lack lusters (example: 25% chance to root for a 45(!) point talent? Compared to Frostbite this is insanely poor) furthermore I do not (want to) believe this is Blizzards intentions to force us this close to whatever it is we're shooting at.
The Thunder idea is nice, 5% mana is still barely another spell though, in PvE a 5% mana restore (50mp5-ish?) for a rather silly global cooldown useage.
45 sec CD is also too long for it to be any AoE option, we also don't know how knockbacks affects mobs, it could get us into trouble.
I'd make it good for PvE by adding an effect that in some way increased your partys spelldamage/damage done. Even if it just evened out to be 5% overall damage increase for the fact of having a "thundering" Elem shaman in the group.
I cannot stress this enough; the top-elemental tree tier(s) needs more party (or more preferably, raid) utility.
Also a more generic note on our claimed new Hex spell; The duration is way too short in PvE to make it a good CC.
Originally Posted by tufy
However, I would point out that in this case, Flame Shock's dot would run out before Lava Blast would be ready again (8s cooldown). It also doesn't solve the issue of Lightning Reach being fairly useless in pve right now.
Flame Shock dot lasts for 12 seconds. Also yes, Storm Reach not affecting LaB is a disappointment. Perhaps Lava Floes should increase LaB's range as well as damage.
Last edited by Graze : 06/22/08 at 6:47 AM.
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!
Let's dissect those numbers a bit closer than what your first line states:
10% haste (157.7 rating) adds 217.58 DPS, that's 13.2%.
In your post before, 30% haste added 490 DPS, that's 29.7%
10% haste granting a lot more than 10% DPS doesn't make sense to me, especially with 30% haste granting about 30% DPS.
Did you maybe post the numbers for 10% haste and 99% hit? That what they look like.
no, the numbers correspond with the stats listed. I think the main thing is that this isn't paying attention to cooldowns, so haste is a little skewed to the positive. 10% haste just increases the entire rotation by 10% and it's still counting full Flame Shock ticks rather then 3/4 or fewer. The code is straight C++ and very easy to manipulate. I can post the entire thing if people want to see it, and/or try out different combinations for themselves. 2000 spell damage may be a bit high, considering current possible shaman spell damage levels, something like 1200-1300 would be more acurate for teir 7 raiding, possibly. Though, with the combining of spell damage and healing, I think all caster dps classes are going to see a decent sized boost in available spell power.
Originally Posted by Graze
S,E&F needs to be sacked/redone, it forces us to a 20 yard range (Our FS will do considerably more damage, feel like we're "supposed" to keep it up with this talent) because of the damage increase, and the other effects are complete lack lusters (example: 25% chance to root for a 45(!) point talent? Compared to Frostbite this is insanely poor) furthermore I do not (want to) believe this is Blizzards intentions to force us this close to whatever it is we're shooting at.
I'm pretty sure thats exactly what Blizzard is aiming for. We're going to have to use Flame Shock. S,E&F would be a better talent if it increased Flame shocks range by 10yds, but either way it's still a very large dps boost at the moment. Flame Shocks dot is about 75% of Flame Shocks total damage with that included, and according to my sim, flameshock will be about 20% of our total dps in WotLK.
Also consider, Shadow Priests are already stuck at 24yd range(I believe) because of Mind Flay, which is about the same range we would be at with a 25yd Flame Shock. Being that close is still at caster distance for threat, it just means we'll have to react quicker to fight mechanics.
heh partly ignore the above, the sim was having a problem with data loss, these should be better numbers, each test ran 5 times, there's about a ~0.5DPS variation due to RNG.
At 13% crit, eo has a 51.28%ish uptime, and is giving about 4% hit. Using Flame Shock and Lava Burst is upping total crit% to about 27.3%, which is including the fact that Flame Shock can be resisted, and Lava Burst will not always crit because of that.
I'm pretty sure thats exactly what Blizzard is aiming for. We're going to have to use Flame Shock. S,E&F would be a better talent if it increased Flame shocks range by 10yds, but either way it's still a very large dps boost at the moment. Flame Shocks dot is about 75% of Flame Shocks total damage with that included, and according to my sim, flameshock will be about 20% of our total dps in WotLK.
Also consider, Shadow Priests are already stuck at 24yd range(I believe) because of Mind Flay, which is about the same range we would be at with a 25yd Flame Shock. Being that close is still at caster distance for threat, it just means we'll have to react quicker to fight mechanics.
If I recall correctly, Mind Flay was changed to 30 yards with wotlk, because Blizzard learnt that ranged classes are just that; ranged. Or did they? (Edit: I'm not quite sure where I heard this, I might be horribly incorrect) Or did we suddenly become a DoT class? How come our "rotation" got so much more complicated all of a sudden?
Last edited by Graze : 06/22/08 at 8:18 AM.
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!
S,E&F needs to be sacked/redone, it forces us to a 20 yard range (Our FS will do considerably more damage, feel like we're "supposed" to keep it up with this talent) because of the damage increase, and the other effects are complete lack lusters (example: 25% chance to root for a 45(!) point talent? Compared to Frostbite this is insanely poor) furthermore I do not (want to) believe this is Blizzards intentions to force us this close to whatever it is we're shooting at.
The Thunder idea is nice, 5% mana is still barely another spell though, in PvE a 5% mana restore (50mp5-ish?) for a rather silly global cooldown useage.
45 sec CD is also too long for it to be any AoE option, we also don't know how knockbacks affects mobs, it could get us into trouble.
I'd make it good for PvE by adding an effect that in some way increased your partys spelldamage/damage done. Even if it just evened out to be 5% overall damage increase for the fact of having a "thundering" Elem shaman in the group.
I cannot stress this enough; the top-elemental tree tier(s) needs more party (or more preferably, raid) utility.
Also a more generic note on our claimed new Hex spell; The duration is way too short in PvE to make it a good CC.
Flame Shock dot lasts for 12 seconds. Also yes, Storm Reach not affecting LaB is a disappointment. Perhaps Lava Floes should increase LaB's range as well as damage.
You missed the point. If S, E & F adds a flame shock dot to lava burst, then you don't need to be in 20 yard range.
Thunder works out to be 55.5 mp5 with a 10k mana pool. I wouldn't be surprised if we're looking at 15-20k mana pools at level 80. Even if we discount the mana return, a small knockback would be a useful ability in AoE or AoE tanking situations.
Yes, I'd prefer to see some form of group buff later in the tree, but if one has not been added then there might not be.
This reminds me of why I didn't post in here before, and will refrain from doing again.
If Lava Burst is instant? Why does the deep elemental tree boost it so much?
In their current state, a twisting enhancement shaman will have basicly no gcd's left for a burst, however if they fix this exploit in wotlk(like they said), this spell does make a little sence, except what I wrote just above. I ponder though, why not another strike? Why a spell? What good comes of it?
The FS consuming part of the Lava Burst spell does make a little more sense as enhancement spell, disregarding the raid synergy part, I have a feeling our melee brothers will be able to outplay us in spellcasting aswell thanks to the rating and spell power changes.
You will not spec resto in WOTLK as an enh shaman, with melee/spell merge elemental dev. is really nice and easy to get. Also speccing for reverberation LvB looks really perfect IF its changed to instant (since we clip the last tick anyway).
Short summary: Elem/Enh will 99% likely be the standard enh spec.
You missed the point. If S, E & F adds a flame shock dot to lava burst, then you don't need to be in 20 yard range.
Thunder works out to be 55.5 mp5 with a 10k mana pool. I wouldn't be surprised if we're looking at 15-20k mana pools at level 80. Even if we discount the mana return, a small knockback would be a useful ability in AoE or AoE tanking situations.
Yes, I'd prefer to see some form of group buff later in the tree, but if one has not been added then there might not be.
This reminds me of why I didn't post in here before, and will refrain from doing again.
No I did not miss the point entirely, the talent in it's current stat is not very good. It's a good idea (yours) however it would just mean someone has to apply it at the beginning of each fight, not too much of a hassle but you'd also have to reapply it should it fall off. I believe it would also be considered overpowered in PvP with a spell that by itself guarantees it critically hits.
Also the idea only solves a convenience problem and not the whole "concept" problem which I feel is greater and think needs to be addressed.
The knockback part on Thunder used in AoE would only create hassle, the point of AoE tanking is to keep the mobs on you, not throw them away.(Even in a normal AoE situation you'd just ruin it for everyone else knocking the mobs away from the AoE area, creating distance between them and thus destroying the seeding/arcane explosion/blast wave/hurricane process. Sorry for not putting these background thoughts into text in my earlier post.
Last edited by Graze : 06/22/08 at 8:26 AM.
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!
Flame Shock dot lasts for 12 seconds. Also yes, Storm Reach not affecting LaB is a disappointment. Perhaps Lava Floes should increase LaB's range as well as damage.
Right. Don't know what I was thinking :p
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
These talents so far are "meh" at best, so far. Storm, earth, & fire is something we've been asking for for a while - an added effect to our shocks. I think the freeze from frost shock should have a longer duration, the added range for earth shock is not really needed...it could have a 25% to silence the target instead, and flame shock should have a 25% chance to disorient the target as well as the added damage. I think Lava Burst was included mainly for PvP reasons since we complain about being counter spelled out of our nature school and not being able to do anything, but I would have liked to have seen it not been on a CD at all. I also would have liked to have seen a talent to buff our damage all together based off a % of our intellect. Oh, and pushback resistance of course. Again, like people have mentioned, there is nothing to help elemental with group synergy. Totem of Wrath will be severely obsolete once WoTLK hits, not like it isn't already. It'd be nice if they added a talent right below ToW to buff its crit & hit percentages to let's say 6% and maybe add haste to it also. We're only in Alpha though, so things will change and maybe things will get added.
If I recall correctly, Mind Flay was changed to 30 yards with wotlk, because Blizzard learnt that ranged classes are just that; ranged. Or did they? (Edit: I'm not quite sure where I heard this, I might be horribly incorrect) Or did we suddenly become a DoT class? How come our "rotation" got so much more complicated all of a sudden?
Mind Flay is currently 20 yards range (24 with Shadow Reach). The leaked talents and abilities show the next spell ranks of Mind Flay with a default range of 30 yards (36 with Shadow Reach).
Regarding our rotation got a bit more complex, then that is no big surprise. Folks have been asking for something more than LB-spam and that Blizzard resurrect Molten Blast. Now we get Flame Shock and Lava Burst to our dps cycle. I didn't really see all pvp changes coming though, since I always got the impression that Enhancement was the most vocal in that regard. Well, this is alpha. I can understand if Blizzard is loath to make Earth Shock and especially Frost Shock to 30/36 yards spells, but those two spells are however not of interest to our dps cycle. I.e. perhaps it is not impossible to get better range on Flame Shock.
Addendum:
Rumour has it that Blizzard is testing to make the totems (along the side of Prayer of Healing and Warrior-shouts) give raid-wide buffs. This would make Totem of Wrath far more powerful. Though, it might still only affect 5 targets. The leaked information was mainly talking about Prayer of Healing.
06/20/08, 2:34 PM
