[Elemental] Fixing Lava Burst

Phlis · 12/12/08, 12:26 PM

Starting a new topic on the problems with Lava Burst and how to fix them, as the other thread is starting to get cluttered up.

Lava Burst, our most damaging spell has problems. It doesn't scale with crit. It has a long cooldown, 8 seconds, which devalues haste for Elemental Shaman because haste only becomes good at the points where you can fit another spell into the 8 second Lava Burst cooldown without pushing back the cast of Lava Burst by too much. Otherwise we actually loose DPS by taking too much haste/crit. While I think Lava Burst is a fun spell, and I like playing around with rotations, not scaling well with two of the four major caster stats is hurting Elemental Shaman DPS.

This needs to be changed. Elemental Shaman spells should scale with Haste. The problem is that many proposed solutions will also make us over powered in PvP, which would be a bad thing and cause further future nerfs. I'll list major proposed solutions here in this thread.

So far we have three, I believe:

A) Charges:

Mechanics: On every cast of Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning you gain a charge, when you reach 4-5 charges you are able to use Lava Burst.

Pros: Haste scaling improves, as the faster you are able to cast LB and CL, the more often you can get a LvB out. This solution makes the rotation a lot easier.

Cons: Bursty in PvP, scales with crit the same as Live. May be too good in PvP? Reactive Playstyle, need to pay attention to charges and availability of LvB.

B) Lightning Capacitor:

Mechanics: On every LB and CL critical you gain a charge, when you reach 3 Charges, you automatically cast an LvB with no cast time.

Pros: Scales with Haste and Crit, the faster and more often you crit the more quickly you throw out an LvB. Simplifies Rotations.

Cons: We go back to being a 2(1) button class. Too Bursty for PvP(chance of LB Crit, LO Crit, LvB Crit instantly against a target for 15-20k), Streaky, going too long without a crit causes no Lava Bursts to be cast, negatively affecting DPS on shorter fights.

C) Pyroblast:

Mechanics: Lava Burst's cooldown taken away, instead the spell is given a 5.5 second cast time. New talent, everytime you cast an LB or CL, 1 second is taken off of Lava Burst's cast time, stacks up to 4 times.

Pros: Scales with Haste, won't overpower PvP as Lava Burst cannot be used with Nature's Swiftness, Lava Burst hits even harder because of long base cast time and scales much better with spell power. Interacts well with Lightning Overload. Simplifies rotations.

Cons: Lava Burst becomes semi useless in Solo PvE content. Also may be overpowered in 5-10 man content, as the spell becomes even more powerful there.

Those are the current ideas for helping our dps by fixing the mechanics of Lava Burst. Currently I favor the Pyroblast idea, but other people's thoughts on the subject would be appreciated. Perhaps putting together a well worded post, with testing done on each of these ideas to see how it would affect our DPS numbers would be a good idea?

Donjo · 12/12/08, 1:04 PM

I think option 3 sounds really good. What do you think about a talent or glyph that also refreshed flame shock? Do you think it would be too overpowered?

Montegomery · 12/12/08, 1:38 PM

I think the Pyroblast option is very powerful. Piggybacking off of the Arcane Blast Buff, you could make it dispellable were it to be proven overpowered in PvP.

I still think it may be simpler to allow Lava Burst's cooldown to be affected by haste, but I suppose that might open up a can of worms Blizzard isn't interested in pursuing.

Ezareth · 12/12/08, 1:56 PM

Originally Posted by Phlis

Starting a new topic on the problems with Lava Burst and how to fix them, as the other thread is starting to get cluttered up.

Lava Burst, our most damaging spell has problems. It doesn't scale with crit. It has a long cooldown, 8 seconds, which devalues haste for Elemental Shaman because haste only becomes good at the points where you can fit another spell into the 8 second Lava Burst cooldown without pushing back the cast of Lava Burst by too much. Otherwise we actually loose DPS by taking too much haste/crit. While I think Lava Burst is a fun spell, and I like playing around with rotations, not scaling well with two of the four major caster stats is hurting Elemental Shaman DPS.

This needs to be changed. Elemental Shaman spells should scale with Haste. The problem is that many proposed solutions will also make us over powered in PvP, which would be a bad thing and cause further future nerfs. I'll list major proposed solutions here in this thread.

So far we have three, I believe:

A) Charges:

Mechanics: On every cast of Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning you gain a charge, when you reach 4-5 charges you are able to use Lava Burst.

Pros: Haste scaling improves, as the faster you are able to cast LB and CL, the more often you can get a LvB out. This solution makes the rotation a lot easier.

Cons: Bursty in PvP, scales with crit the same as Live. May be too good in PvP? Reactive Playstyle, need to pay attention to charges and availability of LvB.

B) Lightning Capacitor:

Mechanics: On every LB and CL critical you gain a charge, when you reach 3 Charges, you automatically cast an LvB with no cast time.

Pros: Scales with Haste and Crit, the faster and more often you crit the more quickly you throw out an LvB. Simplifies Rotations.

Cons: We go back to being a 2(1) button class. Too Bursty for PvP(chance of LB Crit, LO Crit, LvB Crit instantly against a target for 15-20k), Streaky, going too long without a crit causes no Lava Bursts to be cast, negatively affecting DPS on shorter fights.

C) Pyroblast:

Mechanics: Lava Burst's cooldown taken away, instead the spell is given a 5.5 second cast time. New talent, everytime you cast an LB or CL, 1 second is taken off of Lava Burst's cast time, stacks up to 4 times.

Pros: Scales with Haste, won't overpower PvP as Lava Burst cannot be used with Nature's Swiftness, Lava Burst hits even harder because of long base cast time and scales much better with spell power. Interacts well with Lightning Overload. Simplifies rotations.

Cons: Lava Burst becomes semi useless in Solo PvE content. Also may be overpowered in 5-10 man content, as the spell becomes even more powerful there.

Those are the current ideas for helping our dps by fixing the mechanics of Lava Burst. Currently I favor the Pyroblast idea, but other people's thoughts on the subject would be appreciated. Perhaps putting together a well worded post, with testing done on each of these ideas to see how it would affect our DPS numbers would be a good idea?

I don't think any of these changes are overpowered for PVP. In fact I think they nerf Lava Burst for PVP. One the best things about having a guaranteed massive crit in lava burst is the fact we can use it when we need it. Having a prequalification for "charges" is a limitation that decreases the usefulness of lava burst in PVP.

Rarely in PVP are we chain casting ANY spell as this usually ends with us being, pummeled, CCed, or counterspelled.

Those three suggestions are definately PVE oriented and I think they make our case in PVP worse.

What whe need is a change that not only helps us in PVE with our scaling issues, but helps balance us in PVP as well.

What we need is SEF to make Lava Burst Instant Cast. In PVP our #1 issue is our main damage comes from casting, and we have no defenses against interrupts and silence, and counterspells.

The solution to this is to give us another instant cast spell that isn't a shock which we usually have to save as our interrupt.

Instant Cast Lava burst will not help us with the haste issue. The only way I honestly see Blizzard fixing haste is by making haste affect all cooldowns as well. Shaman are not the only class affected by negative haste, therefor they need to make the change to ALL spells/abilities.

fandros · 12/12/08, 2:29 PM

Haste will ALWAYS be a dps increase although we don't scale as well with it as other casters.

Njald · 12/12/08, 2:30 PM

While I agree with the premise of this thread that Lava Burst lack of scaling from two of the common stats on caster gear I think a discussion of how to fix it would at best be a interesting mindgame unless we get any sort of indication that the developers share our sentiment.

With the 3.08 changes incoming you might be able to read into the changes to spellpower that the 20% added to Lava Burst as opposed to the 10% on lightning is such an acknowledging from developers. It could be their attempt for a solution in that these changes could be seen as a way to compensate for the lack of critical strike rating scaling on Lava Burst with added spellpower scaling.

The core issue with lack-of or negative hastescaling still remains though and will be even more pronounced when Lava Bursts new spell power conversion rating makes it an even bigger "must-cast" when cooldown is up.

Getting Blizzard attention will require some good mathcraft. A lot of classes have itemstats that do less for them in certain situations and haste being less than perfect will not raise any eyebrows.
If the issue ever will be adressed I would urge the conversation to start with the problem that elementalshamans top dps strategy will be waiting instead of casting in certain situations. And these situations need to occur for enough different gear levels and in enough formats (pvp,5man,10man etc) for it to be a general issue.

lordfafoin · 12/12/08, 3:05 PM

Fandros, haste currently does NOT always yield a DPS increase. Refer to Bink's graphs. At certain points in the haste curve we actually lose DPS because of clipping and / or waiting for cooldowns.

Icashizzle · 12/12/08, 3:37 PM

Haste certainly doesn't always increase your DPS, but I'm confused as to how we keep saying it can decrease your DPS.

If all you've done to your gear is increase the haste on it (w/o giving up any other stat) then you'll never lose DPS from clipping or waiting on cooldowns: you can always perform precisely the same rotation you were doing before hand and put out precisely the same dps you used to in that 18 (-ish) second rotation. You just sit on your thumbs more during your rotation.

The only way I can see losing dps is by giving up other stats in order to increase your haste. I'm not defending our current haste situation here, but merely not understanding how we could actively lose dps as opposed to merely plateauing.

Ghando · 12/12/08, 3:41 PM

I don't think there's such a big mountain to climb to convince devs that the spec and associated mechanics need work. They know our damage is really low. They can see the numbers just like we can. We've determined (we think) why our scaling sucks and it's ultimately because Lava Burst mechanics make haste rating (and crit rating to a lesser extent) just not that valuable. A substantial part of the problem is spellpower scaling badly as a result of fast-casting nukes and repeated nerfs to the coefficients of those nukes, and the Shamanism changes will address that. We believe those changes will ultimately fall short unless Lava Burst mechanics are altered to allow better haste scaling. Crit scaling is probably okay, since 65-70% of our damage DOES benefit from it.

I like some of these suggestions for various reasons, especially the "Pyroblast" suggestion, and I acknowledge that many of these won't work for reasons like PvP balance, keeping Lava Burst usable as on-demand burst damage for Resto and Enhancement specs, that sort of thing. What I just thought of, though, is along the lines of the new Thunderstorm minor glyph (2% extra mana returned, removes the knockback). What if Blizzard devs used glyphs to balance broken mechanics for certain specs? Glyph of Lava could be changed to accomodate this, and its bonus spellpower could be applied to Shamanism to compensate. Glyph of Lava would implement, say, the Pyroblast idea: removing the cooldown but jacking up the cast time, causing successful Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning casts to reduce the cast time.

fandros · 12/12/08, 3:41 PM

The dead zones are a myth. The difficulty is modeling this is that the ideal wait time is hard to calculate.

If you use something like this.

LvB Damage / (Wait Time + Cast Time LvB) = (LvB Damage + LB Damage)/(LvB cast time + LB cast time)

You will calculate a wait time in which you have equal dps over an period of time in which your dps is greater then your average.
Why does that matter?

Simplified numbers for this example.

LvB does 1k
LB does 500 dmg
.25 secs before you can cast LvB

Option A
LvB DMG / (LvB Cast Time + Wait) = 444.4 dps
Option B
(LvB DMG + LB DMG) / (LvB Cast Time + LB Cast Time) = 428.5 dps

but wait after the LvB both cast 5 LB = 2500 dmg over 7.5 secs
Option A Totals 3500 dmg over 9.75 scs = 359.0 dps
Option B Totals 4000 dmg over 11 secs = 363.6 dps

His graph shows dips because the perfect wait time is hard to calculate and can't be determined by just comparing "high points" in a rotation. Haste scales pretty linearly tell a friend.

Phlis · 12/12/08, 3:47 PM

Originally Posted by Ghando

What if Blizzard devs used glyphs to balance broken mechanics for certain specs? Glyph of Lava could be changed to accomodate this, and its bonus spellpower could be applied to Shamanism to compensate. Glyph of Lava would implement, say, the Pyroblast idea: removing the cooldown but jacking up the cast time, causing successful Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning casts to reduce the cast time.

I don't know, that seems like something pretty complicated to be added as a Glyph, it really feels like a Talent too me.

Also, yes, I mainly care about PvE here. I really could not care about PvP concerns in this discussion. If you wish to talk about PvP things, make a different thread please.

Santillan · 12/12/08, 4:22 PM

My idea is much more simple:

Add a talent that converts crit% to crit bonus damage to Lava Burst.

Ezareth · 12/12/08, 4:29 PM

Latest Elemental Changes Just in:
Hopefully this won't get buried here.

Here is what we are thinking about to try on the PTR for Elemental:

Elemental Oath -- In addition to existing effects, now increases spell damage done by the Shaman by 5/10% while Elemental Focus Clearcasting is active.

Elemental Mastery -- Overhauled. Now increases the Shaman’s critical strike chance by 20% for 30 seconds. Cooldown remains 3 minutes. We recognize this might be a slight nerf in certain PvP situations where players relied on the shaman to nuke an injured person to death. Still, I'm betting most shamans will prefer the new design.

Glyph of Lightning Bolt -- No longer affects cost. Now increases damage by 4%.

/facepalm

I don't like the Glyph at all, it is almost a wash with the FT glyph, and Elemental Mastery change while nice in PVE will be is terrible for PVP as it will purged/dispell or worse spell-stolen.

Tarwin · 12/12/08, 4:44 PM

I like the reduce cast time idea, but it would essentially take the spell away from restos which I'm sure would cause a whole nother thread of QQs.

The idea I had originally was have Lave Burst crits place a debuff on us that causes Lava Burst not to crit until 8 seconds have passed or 5 other spells have been cast... something like that. That would make the Earth Shock glyph interesting at least, and we would have a spell to cast, even if it won't crit, against nature immune mobs. It would still make LB, CL and shocks the spells of choice between LvB casts in PvE, and it should have little effect on PvP.

Icashizzle · 12/12/08, 4:57 PM

Originally Posted by Tarwin

...place a debuff on us that causes Lava Burst not to crit until 8 seconds have passed or 5 other spells have been cast...

It would have to be # of spell casts or some such because if it's just an 8 second debuff, that would be effectively identical to the current situation except for the off case you're fighting nature immune mobs. You would still avoid casting LvB for those 8 seconds in favor of a LB that could crit and those 8 seconds would not be affected by haste or any other stat so it may as well be a cool down.