Enhancement Mastery on the long run

[dyancp]

Hello all, i've been following these foruns for a while now and have a concern with the future of enhancement:

How will our DPS scale with gear?

Since Stormstrike isn't affected by our mastery (at least i think so, and i know almost everything else is affected) will we remain competitive through the expansion? Or will we suffer from DK syndrome on previous expansions and see our dps become comparatively worse with everyone else?

PS: Sorry for bad english, non native speaker here

[angeleg]

We always scale worse than most other specs, so yeah expect our damage to go down compared to everyone else as the expansion progresses.

[Sylfaine]

Could be worse, you are not elemental shaman.

[Imnick]

Enhancement actually scales pretty well this expansion.

Stormstrike is affected by Mastery because Mastery means you get to use it more often.
Windfury is affected by Mastery the same way.
Everything else is also affected by Mastery because it's elemental damage.

Don't worry about Mastery. Many specs have far more specific Masteries than we do.

[asamu]

Enh DPS scales fine with gear. SB and WF proc more with more mastery, which indirectly affect their damage, if not by as much as it does for frost/fire/nature damage.

That said, ~60% of Enh shaman DPS (assuming hailstorm) is elemental damage and scales with mastery, so the fact that it's not affecting SS damage directly doesn't matter too much. 10% mastery would still be a ~6% increase to damage.

Since every class will be scaling ~ the same with main stat and vers. The fact that we have 2 stats that are nearly as high priority as main stat is huge.

Enh actually scales quite a bit better than many other classes (such as DHs and monks) based on stat weights from simcraft.

[Deleted]

Most of our abilities are affected by mastery, either directly or indirectly. While mastery doesn't do anything to Stormstrike's damage, it does increase to our Stormbringer proc chance. And if you are running with Ascendance (I don't know why you would, but still) then mastery increases your damage while in Ascendance. Mastery also increases our Windfury chance, which gives you more swings, which in turn also procs Stormbringer more often.

Heck, I'm more worried that we will have so many Stormbringer procs that it will almost invalidate the rest of our abilities. Right now, Stormbringer doesn't feel like a bonus, it feels like something we are expecting to be up all the time, and when we don't get the proc, we feel like our DPS suffers for it. It does, of course, because so much damage is centered around those chain procs of Stormbringer.

I would love to see a re-balancing of our abilities so that Stormbringer is less important for our damage - that it returns to feel like a bonus when it pops. But there are a lot of numbers to tweak, and I don't see that happening anytime soon. But if enhance gets even more Stormbringer procs, it might make the spec feel pretty one-sided.

Random idea:

Instead of resetting the cooldown on Stormstrike and reducing the mana cost, how about Stormbringer is a stacking buff that we consume? Something like:

Each of your main hand attacks has a x% chance to grant you a charge of Stormbringer. Each charge reduces the Maelstrom cost of your next Stormstrike by 10 and it's damage by x%.

This would mean that the cooldown on Stormstrike would not be reset by Stormbringer, putting Stormstrike back to its base 16 second cooldown (I mean, really, how often does Stormstrike's cooldown actually run out, compared to a Stormbringer proc?). In those 16 seconds, we would be stacking up Stormbringer charges, which reduces the cost of Stormstrike and also increases the damage, making it a hard hitting ability that we use every 12-16 seconds (depending on haste).

But this obviously requires a lot of tweaking, since our Unleash Doom is a chance on casting Stormstrike, and not guaranteed, and we have traits that increases damage dome by Stormstrike, which might need to be changed to "Each target hit by Crash Lightning gives you 1 charge of Stormbringer", or something like that.

The plus side of this is that we would be casting cheap, very strong Stormstrikes a couple of times each minute, rather than spamming Stormstrikes, and we would have surplus Maelstrom for Lava Lashes (making LL worth casting), and we might even have enough MS left over to look into other talents (such as Fury of Air).

Anyways, loose idea, pretty much just rambling.. :P

[Rahkhun]

Most of our abilities are affected by mastery, either directly or indirectly. While mastery doesn't do anything to Stormstrike's damage, it does increase to our Stormbringer proc chance. And if you are running with Ascendance (I don't know why you would, but still) then mastery increases your damage while in Ascendance. Mastery also increases our Windfury chance, which gives you more swings, which in turn also procs Stormbringer more often.

Heck, I'm more worried that we will have so many Stormbringer procs that it will almost invalidate the rest of our abilities. Right now, Stormbringer doesn't feel like a bonus, it feels like something we are expecting to be up all the time, and when we don't get the proc, we feel like our DPS suffers for it. It does, of course, because so much damage is centered around those chain procs of Stormbringer.

I would love to see a re-balancing of our abilities so that Stormbringer is less important for our damage - that it returns to feel like a bonus when it pops. But there are a lot of numbers to tweak, and I don't see that happening anytime soon. But if enhance gets even more Stormbringer procs, it might make the spec feel pretty one-sided.

Random idea:

Instead of resetting the cooldown on Stormstrike and reducing the mana cost, how about Stormbringer is a stacking buff that we consume? Something like:

Each of your main hand attacks has a x% chance to grant you a charge of Stormbringer. Each charge reduces the Maelstrom cost of your next Stormstrike by 10 and it's damage by x%.

This would mean that the cooldown on Stormstrike would not be reset by Stormbringer, putting Stormstrike back to its base 16 second cooldown (I mean, really, how often does Stormstrike's cooldown actually run out, compared to a Stormbringer proc?). In those 16 seconds, we would be stacking up Stormbringer charges, which reduces the cost of Stormstrike and also increases the damage, making it a hard hitting ability that we use every 12-16 seconds (depending on haste).

But this obviously requires a lot of tweaking, since our Unleash Doom is a chance on casting Stormstrike, and not guaranteed, and we have traits that increases damage dome by Stormstrike, which might need to be changed to "Each target hit by Crash Lightning gives you 1 charge of Stormbringer", or something like that.

The plus side of this is that we would be casting cheap, very strong Stormstrikes a couple of times each minute, rather than spamming Stormstrikes, and we would have surplus Maelstrom for Lava Lashes (making LL worth casting), and we might even have enough MS left over to look into other talents (such as Fury of Air).

Anyways, loose idea, pretty much just rambling.. :P

If you made that change like literally half of the time you would just be sitting waiting for one of your 3 buttons to come off cooldown lol.

you could actually macro the entire rotation into a cast sequence macro too. 14-16 seconds is way to long for a main ability like that. for it to deal the same damage as what the system is now it would probably 1 shot most things including players in wpvp lol.

[Deleted]

Yeah, probably. I was just toying around with the idea a bit to bring an alternative. Because the issue with Stormbringer as it is right now is wasted Stormbringer procs, and the fact that we are getting so many procs that it leaves little desire to cast anything else.

Imagine if a stack of Stormbringer reduces the MS cost of Stormstrike by 10 - at four stacks, Stormstrike would be free (and hit like a truck). As it is right now, if we get a single Stormbringer proc (and are using Tempest) we have three Stormstrikes coming for a total of 80 MS. If we instead had a free (heavy) Stormstrike once every cooldown, the rest of our MS could be spent on spamming Crash Lightning and then Lava Lash, making Doom Vortex a little bit more desirable to get.

But it would also require a rework of the cleave effect from Crash Lightning, as it currently just does 100% weapon damage to all targets - if we cast a lot less Stormstrikes, we need that cleave from other sources, and spamming LL wouldn't result in nearly as much cleave. That is, unless we go back to how Crash Lightning was first proposed, where it's a percentage of the damage Stormstrike/Lava Lash does, rather than just a flat 100% weapon damage.

[sebax313]

imagine that with better and better gear when we still prio the Mastery/haste stats. We have the legends the ring and LL bonus one. That HIGH rating numbers for mastery and haste makes so much dmg increse for LL and haste reducing nearly to 1sec GCD with neverending mana. Nobody will care for stormstrike and we will change our talents.

[Deleted]

Something is going to happen, at least - only one of our Tier 19 set pieces has mastery/haste - the rest is either mastery or haste and then either crit or vers. So I'm very interested in seeing where our Mastery/Haste levels will be when we're raiding Nighthold.

Most likely it will be just fine - we will have around the same mastery/haste as we do currently, but with slightly higher crit, most likely, which just serves to increase our damage. So I'm not really worried about "Too much mastery" anytime soon, but it would be nice if they could make crit slightly more desirable for us (imagine a crit giving 1 MS or something).

[Deleted]

And what about SS buffing next LL and vice versa, rotation where you will benefit from alternating these spells (monkish style).
Or if you use 3 SS in a row your next LL will be on crack and auto spawn that golden tornadoes.

Someone in another thread mentioned that LL can even extend duration of our enhancements HS/FT.
I personally would welcome to buff FT only once and then refresh it via LL. FT is free anyway, and It sometimes just feel sad to press this button and Ll could use some love.

Im not afraid of scaling this expansion, but it probably will be a long one so we will see.
Now it doesnt seem like we will do poorly.
But maybe elemental spec will save us at the end

[Nithian]

The facts that mastery buffs such a large portion of our damage combined with how many secondary stats are so close in weight to our primary stat means everything will continue to compound and enh will scale extremely well.

[Deleted]

Could all of you cut out the feelycrafting please? ._. Looking at stat scale factors across all specs at various item levels it's pretty clear that Enhancement scales fine, seemingly better than average.

[Hinfa]

One thing that people tend tooverlook, and a major source of our scaling this expansion is Wind Strikes trait (+% attack speed for 3 seconds after the SB proc). The more SBs you get - the higher your attack speed is - the more SBs you get. Right now I get about 35% uptime on a boss like Ursoc, and I can see this number rising with haste and mastery.

[Tribs]

One thing that people tend tooverlook, and a major source of our scaling this expansion is Wind Strikes trait (+% attack speed for 3 seconds after the SB proc).

Good point. Even AskMrRobot is telling me to drop from an 880 relic to 870 just to get one more point into Wind Strikes... but I'm loathe to do it even though it is so tempting.

[Devious009]

Wind Strikes is worth 4 ilvls only so no you shouldn't drop from an 880 to an 870 relic

[Nitwit]

Wind Strikes is worth 4 ilvls only so no you shouldn't drop from an 880 to an 870 relic

A rank of Wind Strikes is worth ~4 weapon ilvls. An 880 relic is +52 ilvl and an 870 is +49 (difference +3 weapon ilvl).

[Devious009]

That is correct and I was mistaken thanks for pointing it out