[ELE] Do most Elemental Shamans generally agree...

[Kissthebaby]

Not using kill command ever in a bm hunters rotation in its current state is also "only" a 3% dps loss but no hunter is gonna stop using it. .

this is 100 percent not true.

[Emophia]

Yes elemental ever not been simple? I kind of feel like that's its thing.

[tusker]

Do most Elemental Shamans generally agree that the way damage is allocated between our damage dealing abilities is what it should be?

I have recently picked up my shaman again after a long hiatus, and in elemental I find that on single target, LvB makes up 40% of total damage and LB 20%, and all other abilities (Fulm, FS DoT, ES, FS, etc.) divided into miniscule little slivers of damage.

For AoE, Chain Lightning is comprising some 75~80% of my damage. It seems out of whack to have some spells doing so much damage and other spells doing so little in total.

When I play my other ranged specs/class that i commonly play (Balance, Shadow, Aff/Destro/Demo, BM) their damage sources are fairly evenly split between 5~10 total sources of damage; say the top spell does about 15% and bottom spell does about 10%.


I mean Elemental in general does great damage, but it just seems spell balance is really off.

++++

I tweeted to GC about exactly this a few weeks back, but never got an answer. Okay, so I play elemental and resto for my 10man HC guild. I don't mind Elemental, but it's an awfully simplistic spec. I tweeted to GC though, asking if it was any kind of concern that LB and LvB are 70% or so of our damage on single target fights (if you include overloads). That just seems ridiculous. I understand a lot of people like Elemental for the way it is, but surely one or two other things could be changed or added to spread out the damage some and make things at least a little more interesting.

[Grubjuice]

i don't mind the rotation per se, i like the number of buttons pressed in the rotation, but what i don't like is literally an aesthetic issue

I literally don't like the LOOK of my recount pie chart having 2 huge spells each worth 40% of damage and 5 more spells each worth 4%, it's an ugly pie chart


and yes, i know my complaint is entirely derived from own OCD.

[Taalyn]

I think this is why many people like Elemental Blast. Adding this into the rotation just feels right, else you only have 2 casted spells, ignoring lava surge procs, and an instant in Fulmination. Unleash Fury would feel right too if it was a cast time. When I take Primal Elementalist for AoE heavy fights it feels wrong she I'm not actually AoEing as all I cast is Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst.

[BlissfulBlithe]

Passives:
• Shamanism has been buffed to increase Lightning Bolt's damage by 100% up from 70%.

Core:
• Flame Shock now deals 3250 [+250% of SP] Fire damage up from 2910 [+210% of SP] over 30 sec.
• Earthquake now deals 1050 [+30% of SP] Nature damage up from 361 [+11% of SP] Physical damage every 1 sec. In addition, Earthquake's damage is exponentially increased by 10% for every enemy affected by it up to a maximum of 10 targets. Cast time reduced from 2.5 sec to 2.0 sec.

Totems:
• Your Searing and Magma Totem now benefit from haste, critical strike and mastery rating.
• Magma Totem now deals 498 [+10.5% of SP] Fire damage up from 298 [+6.7% of SP].
• Searing Totem now deals 180 to 200 [+15% of SP] Fire damage up from 60 to 80 [+11% of SP].

Best I could think of without having to reiterate a lot of our mechanics mid-expansion...

[Kralljin]

Passives:
• Shamanism has been buffed to increase Lightning Bolt's damage by 100% up from 70%.

Core:
• Flame Shock now deals 3250 [+250% of SP] Fire damage up from 2910 [+210% of SP] over 30 sec.
• Earthquake now deals 1050 [+30% of SP] Nature damage up from 361 [+11% of SP] Physical damage every 1 sec. In addition, Earthquake's damage is exponentially increased by 10% for every enemy affected by it up to a maximum of 10 targets. Cast time reduced from 2.5 sec to 2.0 sec.

Totems:
• Your Searing and Magma Totem now benefit from haste, critical strike and mastery rating.
• Magma Totem now deals 498 [+10.5% of SP] Fire damage up from 298 [+6.7% of SP].
• Searing Totem now deals 180 to 200 [+15% of SP] Fire damage up from 60 to 80 [+11% of SP].

I would stop posting such things shortly before a Patch release or something without saying that you made these things up, people could take it for real and then get mad.

But honestly, to keep Elemental in place they had to nerf Lvb into oblivion, and the last thing this spec needs is a 30% Shamanism buff in my view.

Also, buffing FS is a no go in my view, i despise multi dotting and i am fairly happy that it's no real dps gain as Elemental, not every spec should be a multi dotter.

My ideas:
Make Fulmination more interesting, buff it's damage by 100%, 50% is dealt instantly and 50% over 7 seconds
Buff Unleash Elements to surpass Lb, buff it's initial damage and let the next lvb deal ~50% additional damage

[Digger Dave]

My ideas:
Make Fulmination more interesting, buff it's damage by 100%, 50% is dealt instantly and 50% over 7 seconds
Buff Unleash Elements to surpass Lb, buff it's initial damage and let the next lvb deal ~50% additional damage

So your idea to balance shaman is to make them even more bursty?

If Unleash Elements were to become rotational it would most likely come from a large Flame Shock buff.
Multi-dotting is definitely a dps gain currently. Not only is FS a lot of damage for one global, but your Lava Surge procs are multiplied by the amount of active FS's. Why would you not multidot?

[Volitar]

I liked it better when LVB felt like it did damage. Spell is too watered down with Ascendance existing (I wish they would ditch it and give us a better CD)

[BlissfulBlithe]

So your idea to balance shaman is to make them even more bursty?

If Unleash Elements were to become rotational it would most likely come from a large Flame Shock buff.
Multi-dotting is definitely a dps gain currently. Not only is FS a lot of damage for one global, but your Lava Surge procs are multiplied by the amount of active FS's. Why would you not multidot?

I was going to add my suggestion for Unleash Flame to be a damage over time effect on the target rather than a lame 30% increase to the target.

I would stop posting such things shortly before a Patch release or something without saying that you made these things up, people could take it for real and then get mad.

But honestly, to keep Elemental in place they had to nerf Lvb into oblivion, and the last thing this spec needs is a 30% Shamanism buff in my view.

Also, buffing FS is a no go in my view, i despise multi dotting and i am fairly happy that it's no real dps gain as Elemental, not every spec should be a multi dotter.

My ideas:
Make Fulmination more interesting, buff it's damage by 100%, 50% is dealt instantly and 50% over 7 seconds
Buff Unleash Elements to surpass Lb, buff it's initial damage and let the next lvb deal ~50% additional damage

No one should take any bit of information as fact unless they see a proper source, as I did not post. These are some band-aid fixes I thought of that might help our situation.

A 30% buff to Shamanism's Lightning Bolt is an increase to our sustained damage, so is buffing Flame Shock's damage, it's high damage and we have to multi-dot anyway for Lava Surge procs. What are you complaining about? Do you even play a Shaman?

Besides, I'd be most excited for the Earthquake and Totem changes as they're pretty lacking at the moment.

I like your idea on a change with Fulmination, its damage needs to be regulated. I'm sick of it swinging like a pendulum from 50k to 250k.

- - - Updated - - -

I liked it better when LVB felt like it did damage. Spell is too watered down with Ascendance existing (I wish they would ditch it and give us a better CD)

Agreed, I feel this for Enhancement and Elemental, Restoration seems to feel fine.

[tusker]

They've been fixing and changing little things with all three shaman specs in such odd band-aid ways (maybe less so for Resto), though that accounts for the fact that it's mid-expansion. I feel like they put off making REAL changes for the launch of a new expansion, then realize mid expansion that, wow, again there are problems -- though of course this happens with other classes too.

Still, Shaman doesn't need these little tweaks here and there, they need some significant help in places, but I feel they're reluctant for a number of reasons, mainly because (and they've said this about other classes) they fear they'll "alienate" people who are accustomed to the way things are. I understand that, but across the board improvements doesn't mean you have to change things entirely... to me, enhance and elemental seem too patched together over from the past few expansions. One of their designers just needs to sit down already and prune out the crap that's bland or left over, or doesn't scale, etc... and then go through with changes, fixes, and additions.

[Deleted]

Not using kill command ever in a bm hunters rotation in its current state is also "only" a 3% dps loss but no hunter is gonna stop using it. neither should any shaman stop dropping a ST.

I don't see how your statement really has anything to do with mine. All I was pointing out was that searing totem was a very forgiving mechanic in terms of numbers, in a sense that if you delay it or not drop it at all you won't even mention it on your dps/damage done because the variance on procs/crits is already a lot higher than the numbers searing totem provides. Same with BM hunters apearantly, it means if they kill command every 9 seconds instead of 6 seconds it'll be barely noticeable.
Nobody is argueing to NOT use those, it's a dps increase yes. Just saying that it's hardly a vital part of the rotation and doesn't add a lot of damage and definitly won't make or break your output, unlike for example keeping flame shock up.

"Dps" is not as important as "damage done". Dont get them confused.

Searing totem may not add a lot of DPS. But it does a pile of damage for 1 gcd and almost 0 mana.

DPS is just damage done divided by fight length. I don't get them confused, they're related and mean same thing.

[Kralljin]

So your idea to balance shaman is to make them even more bursty?

Obviously this "changes" wouldn't go live before next expansion, so in terms of pvp things will be different.

But personally i am not against small burst windows, even in PvE, to me Lb can hit like nothing, sustained dmg is something for Dot classes to me.

Multi-dotting is definitely a dps gain currently. Not only is FS a lot of damage for one global, but your Lava Surge procs are multiplied by the amount of active FS's. Why would you not multidot?

Situations where you can succesfully multi dot as Elemental are quite rare because FS has to run it's full duration and multi target Encounter often involve heavy Cl usage which makes dumping LS charges AND keeping FS running on multiple targets quite hard.

Multi dotting as Elemental is possible but mostly in theory as in reality such encounters hardly exist.

Secondly, the Dps gain is really minor compared to real multi dot classes.

A 30% buff to Shamanism's Lightning Bolt is an increase to our sustained damage, so is buffing Flame Shock's damage, it's high damage and we have to multi-dot anyway for Lava Surge procs.

Sustained dmg by buffing a filler is quite boring, it's like buffing auto attack for melees.

What are you complaining about? Do you even play a Shaman?

Nope. /sarcasm off

I like your idea on a change with Fulmination, its damage needs to be regulated. I'm sick of it swinging like a pendulum from 50k to 250k.

Seems like you picked the wrong spec, Elemental is about unpredictable high spike damage, if you want sustained, solid damage you might want to try a Dot class as soon as they replace UVLS with SoO trinkets.

[Endus]

DPS is just damage done divided by fight length. I don't get them confused, they're related and mean same thing.

No, they do not mean the same thing.

This is why, when evaluating what spells are highest on priority lists, the primary value used is damage per cast time. Not per second; the DPS of a spell is totally irrelevant here. Just the damage dealt, and the cast time to trigger that damage. This is why Searing Totem is so high on Elemental's priority list; it provides more damage for the cast time spent casting it than almost any other spell you have. It only provides a small amount of DPS because it's effectively a 60-second DoT that can't be on more than one target at a time, meaning you only cast it once a minute. That's not relevant to whether you should use it, though, because once every minute, it's the strongest spell you could cast at that moment. Because its DPCT is through the roof.

I mean, if you're okay just AFKing and hitting random buttons, rather than trying to actually push your DPS as much as you can, sure, stop casting ST. But you're not the kind of person, then, who should be participating in class optimization discussions, or discussing top-tier raiding.

Because at that level, 1-3% of your DPS is huge. That's the kind of margin that can make or break your performance. It's about almost doubling how far behind Elemental is from the average, currently. If you don't care about your performance, that's fine, but plenty of players do care about their performance, particularly when their spec is already struggling a bit.

[Roose]

I love elemental's damage breakdown. It is so much fun that it makes LFR tolerable.

[Eliot123]

I liked it better when LVB felt like it did damage. Spell is too watered down with Ascendance existing (I wish they would ditch it and give us a better CD)

I couldn't agree more.
Overall I like elemental being ''simple'' without boring stuff like Inquisition to keep up or god forbid to be similar to Demonology, though having Elemental Blast as ele-only spell would be kinda cool (and getting a new last-tier talent).

[Digger Dave]

Situations where you can succesfully multi dot as Elemental are quite rare because FS has to run it's full duration and multi target Encounter often involve heavy Cl usage which makes dumping LS charges AND keeping FS running on multiple targets quite hard.

Horridon, Council, Tortos, Magaera, Primordius, Animus, Twins, and Ra-den (depending on how you handle the add) are all fights in this tier where you can keep at least a 2nd full duration shock up for most of the fight. Not exactly rare.

[Txiv]

No, they do not mean the same thing.

This is why, when evaluating what spells are highest on priority lists, the primary value used is damage per cast time. Not per second; the DPS of a spell is totally irrelevant here. Just the damage dealt, and the cast time to trigger that damage. This is why Searing Totem is so high on Elemental's priority list; it provides more damage for the cast time spent casting it than almost any other spell you have. It only provides a small amount of DPS because it's effectively a 60-second DoT that can't be on more than one target at a time, meaning you only cast it once a minute. That's not relevant to whether you should use it, though, because once every minute, it's the strongest spell you could cast at that moment. Because its DPCT is through the roof.

I mean, if you're okay just AFKing and hitting random buttons, rather than trying to actually push your DPS as much as you can, sure, stop casting ST. But you're not the kind of person, then, who should be participating in class optimization discussions, or discussing top-tier raiding.

Because at that level, 1-3% of your DPS is huge. That's the kind of margin that can make or break your performance. It's about almost doubling how far behind Elemental is from the average, currently. If you don't care about your performance, that's fine, but plenty of players do care about their performance, particularly when their spec is already struggling a bit.

to put it another way, you cant think of it as "do i drop searing or do i lightning bolt" you have to think of it as "what is more damage, dropping searing and after 1 minute the total damage of all my spells plus the damage searing did or no searing, all my spells and one extra lightning bolt". the answer is always the former.

[Tecnice]

I couldn't agree more.
Overall I like elemental being ''simple'' without boring stuff like Inquisition to keep up or god forbid to be similar to Demonology, though having Elemental Blast as ele-only spell would be kinda cool (and getting a new last-tier talent).

wtf is up with your sig.?

[Rafal]

I love ele shaman's big burst.... if I wanted to wither things away with little bits of damage here and there Id play a warlock or a shadow priest