Cataclysm Shaman Changes - Page 3

KraxisSingular · 04/08/10, 8:54 AM

Originally Posted by Vim

Enh POV:

Primal Strike and SS will share a CD like shocks do, so it wont be used except by Elemental or Resto at 85, which is an interesting idea (frostbrand on a backup 2h weapon against a melee, thunderstorm, nuke while snare wears off for example) . Mostly I am interested in increasing the Hybrid feel of the class. Instant heals or ranged attacks, as well as a Hot (switch to double Earthliving weapons while running away from damage/phase change, throw to a group member and CH) are steps in the right direction.

The idea of Flametonge imbue for enh and Unleash Weapon is weak seeing as the passive bonus ATM is increased Nature Damage (mayhap a rework of Rockbiter is in order?)

Yeah, the PS/SS interaction was clarified after I posted that. Makes sense, and less clutter.

The UW-FT isn't too bad after their other clarifications, since they want Maelstrom to work with Lava Burst. So the start of a fight looks pretty set.

FS->UW->SS and then use the first Maelstrom for Lava Burst. From then on it will become interesting to see if it is worth it to hold back on UW if there are only a few seconds until the next FS, or the delay of the Hasted attacks will hurt too much compared to the gain to Lava Burst (in relation to the gain to FS). Interesting indeed, though I'm leaning towards just using UW on cooldown unless it is very short until FS.

With the advent of Lava Burst for Maelstrom (and if we assume the cooldown remains as it is), then the Enhance Mastery bonus seems even more odd. I would think we could expect every other Maelstrom, if not more, to be Lava Bursts. Naturally it is possible the changes to the tree will be on the order of adding a lot of Nature damage somewhere, but I fail to see how. Good I'm not a dev I guess.

@Eyana: I don't think people were forgetting the heal, only that it was being considered inefficient for it's cost, or rather, very likely to be. I was actually thinking about it as a cast to drop on people if there was nothing else to do, however that was thinking in the mana terms we are used to, so I didn't think it was safe to assume yet. The 'running from bad stuff' use seems clear enough. You can't use your normal good heals while running (Spiritwalker's Grace not considered), so you bank some healing for the next to make up the difference. Fits very well with the idea that tanks can take more hits.

♦ masanbol · 04/08/10, 9:14 AM

Originally Posted by Exclemation

Totem of Wrath might still be a totem to place for ele shammies in certain situations, considering the crit debuff is currently provides for the raid.

There was no information about whether the crit debuff portion of the current totem would remain in the version being given to all three specs. We'll have to wait and see.

Mman · 04/08/10, 9:49 AM

Originally Posted by KraxisSingular

With the advent of Lava Burst for Maelstrom (and if we assume the cooldown remains as it is), then the Enhance Mastery bonus seems even more odd. I would think we could expect every other Maelstrom, if not more, to be Lava Bursts.

The problem with using Lava Burst is that at some point I would think it would do less damage than LB. The more Mastery/Crit we aquire on our gear the smaller the difference will be. Now, this gap might not be realistically fillable, but if Mastery is going to be a stat we want then I suspect it will be.

Totentanz · 04/08/10, 10:14 AM

Enh changes:

They could just move Stormstrike down the tree or making it a learnable spell at early levels (or DW even).
I don't think we need another melee special that just hits for damage, Stormstrike and Lava lash are more than enough imho (LL cooldown increase is also a nice change for me).

Unleash Weapon seems an interesting spell, maybe the effects could be funnier.

Spiritwalker's Grace is the more exciting change at the moment, opeing for some quite unusual mechanics (moving, casting and using instant abilities at the same time), though it is a bit in contradiction with Enhancment as it works now (with cast times getting shorteneed via Maelstrom Weapon stacks).

By the way, shamans use mostly Fire (Flame Shock, Flametongue Weapon, Lava Burst, Fire Nova, fire totems) and Nature (Chain Lightning, Lightning Bolt, Earth Shock) spells. Where's the Frost arsenal? Frost Shock and Frostbrand weapon are mostly pvp spells.

Flesseck · 04/08/10, 10:21 AM

Restoration PvP-centric opinions:

Unleash Weapon - Earthliving is a great addition, especially for Resto spec because we get another instant cast "Oh Shit" burst heal button; plus, it buffs our next healing spell. Like others said, per the description, it sounds like this could apply to anything, i.e. Earth Shield for a nice buffer/boost healing. I welcome that.

I'm very excited to hear that Spirit Link is being brought back on the development table. In theory, it should have great use by mitigating damaging, a la Paladin's Divine Sacrfice, yet it's targetable and I believe it was more potent in terms of damage reduction. Its implications are great in PvE and fantastic in PvP.

Spiritwalker's Grace seems to solve the mobility problems, again, especially for Resto because we don't have many instant cast spells or "Oh Shit" buttons besides Riptide and NS + Heal so this is a fantastic addition; to be able to move and heal is a blessing. As said before, I wish it was on a 1 minute CD or something but it seems like its use is still situational like if someone is LoSing you and they need a heal or you are taking damage and need to move to avoid incoming damage or kite.

Pretty satisfied over the changes, but still a little disappointed with the dispel mechanic changes.

Chongar · 04/08/10, 10:45 AM

The Enhancement mastery doesn't strike me as well thought out and will likely end up changing before release, assuming this doesn't fall into the hands of "changing every number in the game". It's also a very glaring boring scaling mechanic (what they're trying to move away from) in comparison to the other two Shaman trees and others.

With the Mastery system, we're also considering removing a number of talents that grant passive bonuses, such as Mental Quickness, [...], and others, to allow players more freedom to choose more interesting talents.

Finally give Enhancement viable AoE via MT/FN.
Make Enhancement PVP viable with Frostbrand.
Add LvB back to Maelstrom Weapon (more Fire damage for Enhancement).
Remove MQ from talent tree.
Make the tree-specific Mastery a passive Nature damage bonus.
Place a channeled Nature damage AoE ability in deep Elemental.

It's all so counter-intuitive to the point that I can't help but think there's conflicting designs going on here.

KraxisSingular · 04/08/10, 12:00 PM

Originally Posted by Mman

The problem with using Lava Burst is that at some point I would think it would do less damage than LB. The more Mastery/Crit we aquire on our gear the smaller the difference will be. Now, this gap might not be realistically fillable, but if Mastery is going to be a stat we want then I suspect it will be.

It is not unreasonable that Lightning Bolt would hit harder and crit harder as people get geared up. But even with the highly inflated gear that is running around now (specs nearing 100% crit and such) Enhancement spellcrit chance isn't anywhere near 100%, not even 50%. Specifically Blizzard mentioned that crit was too high right now, and there is the expanding Hit/critdepression going on too. So Lava Burst with autocrit should be viable for a very long time. That's a thing I wouldn't worry about. Especially not if the Mastery bonus gets changed, as would seem logical to us now (but again, who knows how the Enhance tree will look, so other Nature damage might sneak in).

Boondok · 04/08/10, 2:08 PM

Originally Posted by Chongar

Place a channeled Nature damage AoE ability in deep Elemental.

It's all so counter-intuitive to the point that I can't help but think there's conflicting designs going on here.

Indeed, Earthquake could very well end up like Thunderstorm in its aoe usefulness. But this is only based off of current movement/aoe encounters, which may be nothing like Cataclysm encounters. Also, if this is like Thunderstorm in that its radius is based off the shaman, it supports standing in melee range which Blizzard has already stated they do not want happening.

Fcukstar · 04/08/10, 3:54 PM

Q: Elemental doesn’t want to drop Searing Totem at range. We want to drop Magma Totem.
A: Searing Totem needs to do more single-target damage than Magma. That said, if we’re happy with the ability to occasionally place totems at range there is no reason it couldn’t apply to any totem. Imagine, “After using this spell, the next totem you drop will appear at the feet of your target.”

This is an interesting change for the Enhancement GCD-busy rotation. Currently, Magma Totem is generally the best fire totem for us to drop at all times (unless the target has an air phase for something like BQL). If searing totem does indeed eventually do more single target damage than Magma Totem, we'll be dropping it far more often for any sort of single-target fight. And thankfully, since Searing's duration is far greater than Magma, that basically fills my request of having to refresh short-duration totems less often, thus freeing up more of our rotation.

Telumehtar · 04/08/10, 4:41 PM

From the perspective of Enh:

Something to consider about UW-FT before considering it useless/lackluster, especially since we don't know how spells are going to shake out on damage just yet.

UW-WF+FT is in itself a direct damage attack which if they lengthen the cool down on Lava Lash, and give incentive to use Searing as our single point go to totem, UW will easily find a place within our rotation. The added oomph from the haste gain, and bonus fire damage just secures it even more firmly.

Thus far the natural reaction that we have for UW-FT is for us to use it in conjunction with Lava Burst. Especially since Lava Burst will be impacted by MW from early descriptions.

But consider that if Flame Shock is impacted by haste and Crit in a similar fashion to what they are describing in the Warlock and Priest write ups, that Flame Shock may be a candidate for the UW-FT synergy. To make matters even more interesting, given the highly variable nature of Flame Shock damage (since it will now be impacted by Spell Power, Crit, and Haste(which is also a Mastery for Enh)) there may be tiers of gear where FS is the go to after UW-FT while at other tiers Lava Burst may be the go to.

Also consider that the 15 second cooldown on UW would make for a nice jive with a 5/5 Reverberation for purposes of a neat rotation.

-Abakus- · 04/08/10, 7:49 PM

[Elemental]
If I'm not mistaken, while you could use Unleash Weapon for every other Lavaburst, I think it would be preferable to use it before casting Flameshock, assuming the +20% applies to the whole dot (which is most likely will) since it's higher DPCT (and the same cast time).

Remember, Flame Shock's base duration is 18 seconds, and since haste won't decrease it's duration, we'll get to use it for every FS. While it may be true that it'd be unused for 3 seconds when it comes off CD, LvB also has a cast time so it's not likely you'd be able to cast 2 lava bursts in less than 18 seconds.

Also, the warlock dot-clipping thing will almost surely apply to Ele as well, since Blizzard clarified that it would also apply to spriests, so clipping our last FS tick so we can LvB right away will be 100% the way to go.

Lastly, I'd also like to see Spiritwalker's Grace on a 1min CD/5sec duration, since I think 10s would have a lot of it's duration wasted.

[Enhancement]
I wonder what Unleash weapon will be like for WF/WF if that's ever used as opposed to WF/FT. I also kind of feel like Enh got screwed out of having an interesting 3rd Mastery bonus. "Nature damage" isn't nearly as intersting as say, deep healing, or Elemental Overload (or any of the other 3rd bonuses from other classes).

Chongar · 04/09/10, 1:16 AM

Originally Posted by Boondok

Indeed, Earthquake could very well end up like Thunderstorm in its aoe usefulness. But this is only based off of current movement/aoe encounters, which may be nothing like Cataclysm encounters. Also, if this is like Thunderstorm in that its radius is based off the shaman, it supports standing in melee range which Blizzard has already stated they do not want happening.

I hadn't even thought of that, good point. I was more considering how contradictory the whole spell arsenal is for Enhancement given the possibility of no AP->SP conversion and our mastery being nature damage only.

davek · 04/09/10, 2:57 PM

Originally Posted by Boondok

Indeed, Earthquake could very well end up like Thunderstorm in its aoe usefulness. But this is only based off of current movement/aoe encounters, which may be nothing like Cataclysm encounters. Also, if this is like Thunderstorm in that its radius is based off the shaman, it supports standing in melee range which Blizzard has already stated they do not want happening.

An interesting question WRT to Earthquake is: does it supplement Thunderstorm or supplant it in the AoE damage department?

Because it's going to be a talent, the overall intent could be to provide you with a "pure" DPS AoE, as well as one that's ranged, and then either remove or substantially reduce the damage component of Thunderstorm to make it more primarily a defensive cooldown to throw of pursuit in PvP and mana regen mechanism in PvE to address the idea that you're not supposed to be melee casting.

-Abakus- · 04/09/10, 4:05 PM

(Character stats and numbers taken from my armory + Zap!)

Hypothesis: Using Unleash Weapon will require us to drop 1 GCD between Lavabursts before Flame Shock in order to ensure it's up. Optimal use is on Flame Shock rather than Lavaburst because of a higher Damage per Cast (DPC). Since we'd normally fill with LB or CL, I figured I'd use UW to replace 1 CL in our rotation and see how it affected dps. (i.e., is it really any good?)

Notes: An 18s hasted, critting Flameshock was used. More haste will increases UW's benefit since FS will get more out of it than CL. CL will likely get more out of mastery, assuming Elemental Overload doesn't apply to Flame Shock.

In regards to UW:

Flame shock DPC = 20 388
UW bonus = 0.2 * 20 388 = 4077 extra FS damage

Chain Lightning DPC = 10 059

10 059 (CL damage per cast) - 4077 (Bonus damage from FS per cast) = 5982 (Minimum required damage from instant portion of UW in order to not be a dps loss)

SP coefficients for spells with extra abilities (Insect swarm hit debuff, Frostbolt snare, etc.) typically are penalized by 5%, so assuming normal coefficient rules, it'll be as follows:

Coeff. = (1.5/3.5) * 0.95
C = 0.407 or 40.7%

(ES and FrS are 38.58% for reference)

Raid buffed, Zap! puts me at an averaged SP of 4430, and ~59% crit.

Using this crit rate, average non crit damage would have to be 3762

3762 - (4430 * 0.407) = Required base damage in order to not be a dps loss
3762 - 1803 = R
1959 = R

Conclusion: Unless there are some serious talents buffing some part of UW, I don't likely see this as being used in our normal dps rotation. Our shock's untalented base damage is in the ~900 range, granted this has a longer CD. Tstorm has ~1500 base damage, and is on triple the cooldown. It will, however, be useful for "supercharging" a dot during a transition phase (eg. Remorseless Winter, Sindragosa Air Phase, etc.) or when extra burst is needed (eg. H Bloodbeasts, H Putricide phase transitions), or during movement (SwG is on CD).

**Important note**
I know we don't get UW at 80, and thus it won't be used in ICC at all. However, I'm using level 80 numbers as a reference since at 85, spells will probably (?) do similar damage relative to one another.

Spenda · 04/09/10, 4:53 PM

It seems that a lot of Enhancement folks are underwhelmed by what Spiritwalker's Grace provides. Obviously people are missing the biggest advantage this spell offers to Enhancement. For years Paladins have been able to avoid certain death with their bubble-hearth. Now Enhancement Shamans have Dog Sprint-Hearth! You can laugh as you sprint away from combat while casting Astral Recall! Did you really think the 10s of uninterrupted casting was an arbitrary length?