[Enhancement] 3.1 changes - new rules in place - Page 16

Endus · 02/28/09, 3:18 PM

Originally Posted by Rounced

I could buy that argument if the spell wasn't tailor made for Enhancement. Look at how they moved things in the trees to make it all work, the developers original intention was for us to use Maelstrom Weapon with Lava Burst. They had issues with the scaling and pulled it so they could focus on more pressing issues affecting some of the other classes.

Also, IMO it's just bad design. If most classes are getting a skill useable by all trees, hybrids should be as well. It might be better for certain specs than others, but it should be useable and beneficial to all. If it's meant for one tree, it should be a talent deep in that tree.

Take Thunderstorm. They wanted it to be used be Elemental shaman. So it's talented for them. They should have done the same with Lava Burst if that was what they intended, and if they didn't, they should tweak things so it's useful for Enhance.

Our rotation really is pretty dead simple. I was using one of the randomspam macros for a while, while I settled into the spec (was Resto all through TBC), but it bored me silly and I'm now manually timing it. It's not so hard to manage that adding flame shock and LvB to the mix would screw us by giving us too many balls to juggle. Just two new items to add to priority; Flame Shock if debuff is faded otherwise Earth Shock, Lava Burst if CD is up otherwise LB with 5xMW. 6 items to track vs 4 isn't a huge deal, and I'd actually welcome the extra complexity.

Sansa · 02/28/09, 3:49 PM

Originally Posted by Endus

Also, IMO it's just bad design. If most classes are getting a skill useable by all trees, hybrids should be as well. It might be better for certain specs than others, but it should be useable and beneficial to all. If it's meant for one tree, it should be a talent deep in that tree.

<snip>

Did you read my post? My entire point is that most hybrid classes are *not* getting a skill that is usable by all trees. Shield of Righteousness (pallies), Savage Roar (druids). Priests get mind sear.. arguably, Mind Sear and Lava Burst are at least more viable for all shaman specs than ShoR or SR for pallies/druids (for instance, casting Lava Burst at the end of P1 on malygos as enh shaman) .

ETA: My apologies. clearly it was I who didn't read your post. I do disagree, however, that hybrids should get a skill usable by all trees as well. I suppose by that logic Divine Plea should have been the pally level 75 skill and ShoR should have been the level 71 skill. I don't think it's necessary that the level 75 skill needs to be something usable by all specs. Very few abilities are shared between hybrid specs in my experience.

As for Rounced's point, that may be. I don't know the history of Lava Burst. While I would love to see Lava Burst back on Maelstrom Weapon, I don't think it is necessary or dictated by any argument that it "should" be, whether because it's our level 75 skill or because it was intended to be that way.

Rouncer · 02/28/09, 3:58 PM

Originally Posted by Sansa

Did you read my post? My entire point is that most hybrid classes are *not* getting a skill that is usable by all trees. Shield of Righteousness (pallies), Savage Roar (druids). Priests get mind sear.. arguably, Mind Sear and Lava Burst are at least more viable for all shaman specs than ShoR or SR for pallies/druids (for instance, casting Lava Burst at the end of P1 on malygos as enh shaman) .

My response back would be that those other abilities are designed not to be really usable by an aspect of that class, Lava Burst was designed to be used by us and they pulled it from us because of scaling issues. Issues that are no longer applicable because of other changes they had made in the interim.

Malan · 02/28/09, 5:46 PM

Originally Posted by Sansa

As for Rounced's point, that may be. I don't know the history of Lava Burst. While I would love to see Lava Burst back on Maelstrom Weapon, I don't think it is necessary or dictated by any argument that it "should" be, whether because it's our level 75 skill or because it was intended to be that way.

LvB was originally designed to be an Elemental and Enhancement ability. It scaled too fast for Enhancement and Elemental didn't want to touch the ability during beta though. So it was removed from MW and then spiced up quite a bit through elemental talents and glyphs to be more attractive to them.

Shoshanee · 02/28/09, 11:51 PM

I may be wrong here, but I think Blizz implemented the FT normalization changes on live in the past few days.

My WF dps has moved from 4th to 2nd place and FT has dropped down to 4th where it used to be a solid 2nd. I was only rarely able to get WF up to 2nd place and only when by luck it hit and crit more than normal.

Now, FT seems to be constantly below WF no matter how badly WF performs. I am no longer getting the same dps out of FT as I was three days ago.

Can anyone confirm?

Rouncer · 03/01/09, 12:12 AM

Originally Posted by Shoshanee

I may be wrong here, but I think Blizz implemented the FT normalization changes on live in the past few days.

My WF dps has moved from 4th to 2nd place and FT has dropped down to 4th where it used to be a solid 2nd. I was only rarely able to get WF up to 2nd place and only when by luck it hit and crit more than normal.

Now, FT seems to be constantly below WF no matter how badly WF performs. I am no longer getting the same dps out of FT as I was three days ago.

Can anyone confirm?

Go test it.

It's really simple. Flametongue damage is a constant based on weapon speed so hit something with no gear and then hit something with gear and compare and you can easily tell the coefficient and that will tell you if the change is active or not.

rava · 03/01/09, 1:28 AM

Originally Posted by Shoshanee

I may be wrong here, but I think Blizz implemented the FT normalization changes on live in the past few days.

My WF dps has moved from 4th to 2nd place and FT has dropped down to 4th where it used to be a solid 2nd. I was only rarely able to get WF up to 2nd place and only when by luck it hit and crit more than normal.

Now, FT seems to be constantly below WF no matter how badly WF performs. I am no longer getting the same dps out of FT as I was three days ago.

Can anyone confirm?

Are you looking at all of the x factors? I really can't emphasize enough how many variables go into your DPS. Buffs/Debuffs/Fight Length/Group Composition/RNG are all major factors. Check average FT hit values between the two parses, compare crit rates with various abilities, look at your raid comp and see if physical/elemental debuffs were present; without a side by side of WWS/WMO I can't really provide a whole lot more help. I haven't noticed any decrease in FT damage doing Walrus dailies or the random heroic I get roped into, and I'm willing to bet you just have inconsistent results ala rng.

astralorderZ · 03/01/09, 4:54 PM

Has anyone been testing WF mechanics on the PTR?

My first test: 100 Haste on gear, WF Totem only, WF MH Imbue only, 4pc Valorous Bonus, Flurry 5/5, using WF glyph
Kel'Thuzad's Reach / Angry Dread

1002 Melee Strikes
152 Windfury Strikes (or 76 procs)

My 2nd Test: 28 Haste from weapon, No gear, Flurry 0/0, no totems, using WF glyph
Kel'Thuzad's Reach / Angry Dread

1001 Melee Strikes
122 Windfury Strikes (or 61 procs)

My 3rd Test: No Haste, No gear, Flurry 0/0, no totems, using WF glyph
DW'ing level 14 white dagger 1.3 speed

1002 Melee Strike
112 Windfury Strikes (or 56 procs)

My 4th Test: 100 Haste on gear, WF Totem only, WF DW Imbue, 4pc Valorous Bonus, Flurry 0/0, using WF glyph
DW'ing level 14 white dagger 1.3 speed

502 Melee Strikes
126 Windfury Strikes (or 63 procs)

The most interesting thing I noticed is that occassionally WF weapon proc'ed consecutively in what seemed like significantly under 3 seconds. This was especially prevalent during test 4.

I know my testing methods are weak, this was basically to have some numbers to add into a post that primarily focuses on an intuition:

Something about WF is different.... My guess would be the ICD is scaling with Haste or has been reduced in some other fashion.

I would really like some feedback from people who are better at testing and theorycrafting than I am...

Skiace · 03/01/09, 6:34 PM

Originally Posted by astralorderZ

Has anyone been testing WF mechanics on the PTR?

My first test: 100 Haste on gear, WF Totem only, WF MH Imbue only, 4pc Valorous Bonus, Flurry 5/5, using WF glyph
Kel'Thuzad's Reach / Angry Dread

1002 Melee Strikes
152 Windfury Strikes (or 76 procs)

My 2nd Test: 28 Haste from weapon, No gear, Flurry 0/0, no totems, using WF glyph
Kel'Thuzad's Reach / Angry Dread

1001 Melee Strikes
122 Windfury Strikes (or 61 procs)

My 3rd Test: No Haste, No gear, Flurry 0/0, no totems, using WF glyph
DW'ing level 14 white dagger 1.3 speed

1002 Melee Strike
112 Windfury Strikes (or 56 procs)

My 4th Test: 100 Haste on gear, WF Totem only, WF DW Imbue, 4pc Valorous Bonus, Flurry 0/0, using WF glyph
DW'ing level 14 white dagger 1.3 speed

502 Melee Strikes
126 Windfury Strikes (or 63 procs)

The most interesting thing I noticed is that occassionally WF weapon proc'ed consecutively in what seemed like significantly under 3 seconds. This was especially prevalent during test 4.

I know my testing methods are weak, this was basically to have some numbers to add into a post that primarily focuses on an intuition:

Something about WF is different.... My guess would be the ICD is scaling with Haste or has been reduced in some other fashion.

I would really like some feedback from people who are better at testing and theorycrafting than I am...

If you wanted to check the wf cooldown for haste scaling, you should use a combat log parser to identify the shortest time between procs. This is how the initial cooldown lenth was pinned down from what I remember. You should do long tests with no talents and varied amounts of static haste on gear. You might also test several different weapon speeds.

Rouncer · 03/01/09, 6:42 PM

I'm not sure what is going on with Windfury to be honest but I don't think it is only on the PTR.

I did some testing on Live and got some very strange results when testing naked. I figured it was something about the glyph but not sure what and didn't have a chance to really do anything conclusive.

300 hits with a 3.8speed weapon with glyph in place gave an 18% proc rate, then when I removed the glyph and over the next 300 it was 24%. But then I realized Flurry would drop the swing time under 3 seconds (barely but enough) so that could be messing with the results so I did a sideways offhand run and just Lava Lashing for 100 hits I had 24 WF hits or a 12% proc rate. Actually didn't have a single proc for almost 20 hits.

Then the next Hundred showed a 17% proc rate and then 10 man Naxx started so couldn't do anymore.

The screenshot is of the first 100 with the 12% proc rate (the 2 melee hits were at the very end when I turned to move away and meleed before I got out of range - no WF from that).

That is without the glyph but even so shows something strange may be going on or it could simple be I was very unlucky and had a horrible string of RNG.

Kromjin · 03/01/09, 6:42 PM

Totem slot

With the change to Stormstrike CD, what are thoughts with regard to Totem of Dueling vs Totem of Hex? I know it is debateable at the moment which is better, but with a longer CD on SS, the 60 haste uptime goes from 80% to 60%, assuming SS is used perfectly on every CD. I'm at work so unable to link or sim anything.

kronchev · 03/01/09, 7:34 PM

Originally Posted by Kromjin

Totem slot

With the change to Stormstrike CD, what are thoughts with regard to Totem of Dueling vs Totem of Hex? I know it is debateable at the moment which is better, but with a longer CD on SS, the 60 haste uptime goes from 80% to 60%, assuming SS is used perfectly on every CD. I'm at work so unable to link or sim anything.

I haven't done any testing so I'm talking out my ass, but Hex always looked like it would be better. Unfortunately I have never seen it drop and the ele's I've talked to have also seen it once.

/edit: A quick Enhsim run shows them equal, considering Dueling is actually going to be "worse", Hex looks better.

rava · 03/01/09, 8:06 PM

Originally Posted by Kromjin

Totem slot

With the change to Stormstrike CD, what are thoughts with regard to Totem of Dueling vs Totem of Hex? I know it is debateable at the moment which is better, but with a longer CD on SS, the 60 haste uptime goes from 80% to 60%, assuming SS is used perfectly on every CD. I'm at work so unable to link or sim anything.

Has it not been identified that the SS cd being 10 seconds is a bug and will be corrected before it goes live? [Bug]Stormstrike | PTR | WoW Blue Tracker | World of Raids

Skiace · 03/01/09, 8:19 PM

Originally Posted by Rounced

I'm not sure what is going on with Windfury to be honest but I don't think it is only on the PTR.

I did some testing on Live and got some very strange results when testing naked. I figured it was something about the glyph but not sure what and didn't have a chance to really do anything conclusive.

300 hits with a 3.8speed weapon with glyph in place gave an 18% proc rate, then when I removed the glyph and over the next 300 it was 24%. But then I realized Flurry would drop the swing time under 3 seconds (barely but enough) so that could be messing with the results so I did a sideways offhand run and just Lava Lashing for 100 hits I had 24 WF hits or a 12% proc rate. Actually didn't have a single proc for almost 20 hits.

Then the next Hundred showed a 17% proc rate and then 10 man Naxx started so couldn't do anymore.

The screenshot is of the first 100 with the 12% proc rate (the 2 melee hits were at the very end when I turned to move away and meleed before I got out of range - no WF from that).

That is without the glyph but even so shows something strange may be going on or it could simple be I was very unlucky and had a horrible string of RNG.

100 hits is no where near a sufficiently large sample size to draw any meaningful conclusions.

kronchev · 03/01/09, 8:30 PM

So can somebody explain how "3/6/9% more expertise" works in their current version of UR?