PTR Build 7.1.5 build 23109

[ehxy]

Don't forget that secondary stats on gear will not grow very much as the expansion moves on, just look at the Nighthold gear compared with your current gear and you will see that while agi jumps like crazy the secondary stats grow maybe 1/10th as fast.

That'll definitely keep stormstrike in the running. I guess if that's the case then the secondary nerfs that will hurt our elemental abilities making these 'make other talents great again' campaign a bit less interesting unless they do some serious number buffing.

[EolasDK]

That'll definitely keep stormstrike in the running. I guess if that's the case then the secondary nerfs that will hurt our elemental abilities making these 'make other talents great again' campaign a bit less interesting unless they do some serious number buffing.

At this point stormstrike is always going to be better because of the double hailstorm and flametongue procs, unless there is something I am missing.

[ehxy]

AS wasn't nerfed. Please stop spreading misinformation.

I think what they are referring to is

"Ancestral Swiftness Increases haste by 10%. Shaman - Level 60 Talent. 6%. Shaman - Level 60 Talent."

in PTR 23038 that you would not see in the recent PTR notes. It was datamined? So whether it's actually enabled is entirely something else.

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At this point stormstrike is always going to be better because of the double hailstorm and flametongue procs, unless there is something I am missing.

Definitely agree

[Volitar]

I think they should probably tune down Hailstorm's damage a bit, if they intend to keep it at 20 MS cost.



Here you go: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...2#post43306382

Keep in mind that there are shaman changes posted in a few different places in that post.

I really hope they don't nerf Hailstorm. AS and LS are both passive and boring as fuck

[RuneDK]

I really hope they don't nerf Hailstorm. AS and LS are both passive and boring as fuck

Hailstorm isn't entirely great either. It's a gcd every 17 seconds....and the damage is basically passive.

[Volitar]

Hailstorm isn't entirely great either. It's a gcd every 17 seconds....and the damage is basically passive.

Yeah I guess still feels much more active than both other talents tho, also adds a free slow to your rotation and gives you more chances for storm bringer procs which you can feel.

[Darleth]

AS wasn't nerfed. Please stop spreading misinformation.

What? Of course it was nerfed.
They first nerfed it shortly before the pre-patch hit and again with the last (not current) PTR patch by 4%.

As you've said. Stop spreading misinformation.

[Gunwolf]

I think it'd be far better to just make AS and LS competitive with Hailstorm. The thing I love about Hailstorm is that it is both a strong and consistent source of damage, which is something I think this spec needs more of.

That whole tier is pretty boring.... its all basically just more passive damage. HS is an extra button but still just adds passive damage.... I mean is there really much difference between LS orb procs every few sec, or bonus frost damage on melee swings? I kinda wish they would get rid of LS and replace with a much more interesting talent (but keep LS as a minor glyph, for flavor lol). I don't mind AS, its a good choice for people who want simpler rotation and it still gives good overall bonuses to damage and procs.

Considering stormstrike doesn't benefit from our mastery outside of more stormbringer procs due to it not being elemental damage whatsoever it will probably lean more towards this way as mastery on our gear goes even higher. It was something mentioned in the scaling thread a week or two back that we might actually lean away to our more element inclined abilities because stormstrike just does not benefit like our elemental abilities will. To me this is a serious flaw in the class design because we'll not be performing lavalashes for stormstrike procs we'll be actually doing it because it's superior damage and stormstrike will be the filler. As a possibility. Obviously agility will raise it but if mastery hits more and more break points it would be interesting to see what our end game rotation will be after this round of changes.

I see people mention this all the time, that our mastery should work on SS or that SS will scale poorly because it doesn't work with mastery..... and I just don't think its true personally. I see a very similar argument from Frost DK's as well regarding their Obliterate (physical damage) vs their mastery (frost damage).

Our mastery will never work on SS.... that would mean mastery effects all our abilities basically, which makes it too similar to Agility. Stormstrike scales well enough off Agility/AP and weapon damage (or ilvl in this case w/ artifacts). If it doesn't in the future, they can simply buff SS to bring it up to par. SS has lots of bonuses like double procs, plus our mastery does kinda effect SS by allowing more SB procs. So yea, I don't think it will be an issue.






Regarding the patch notes.... I am excited. We are getting more buffs.... was expecting nerfs honestly but they haven't really given us many so that makes me happy. Earthen Spike with zero MS cost? Might be worth trying now. The BF nerf isn't a big deal if u ask me..... its pretty obvious they are gonna nerf it because everyone uses it and won't use the other talents. I personally feel like BF should have been baked in as it seems integral to a smoother playstyle, but if they wanna keep it a talent I guess its fine. The buff to windsong may help with more variation as well on that tier.

Fury of Air.... I'm not a big fan of this talent honestly, just seems rather boring and I don't like the constant wind swirls.... I wish it had a stronger snare or some other utility to make it more noticeable. I would have liked it if Sundering was a good choice for single target, while CL aoe for dungeons... and maybe Fury of Air for utility in PVP or something. Sundering is usually the go to for PVP too which is cool.... glad they lowered the MS cost, would love it if they made it a narrow cone instead of line to make it bit easier to pull off.

[ehxy]

It was answered already that agility scales on gear much higher than our mastery in the upcoming content but thanks gunwolf hopefully someone who will actually read what was discussed will get caught in that massive TLTR.

Earthen Spike might be ZERO MS but I'd have to know how much damage I would lose out on in a 20 second window basically ES damage + inc. dmg from debuff vs. 20 seconds of landslide's agility buff on our attacks calculation window. It might even be pretty close and might come out on top in on demand damage when there is only a small period of uptime available. There aren't that many fights where you don't have a decent amount of uptime but on short fights it might come out on top overall for sustained 5 minute encounters it might be just the difference enough to justify the whole mythic + spec and raiding spec.

[Deleted]

No. Why? Is enhanc overpowered or something? I rather have better, competitive talents in that row instead of simply nerfing one option which is a nerf to the spec overall, since the other 2 options won't be at the same level of the current hailstorm.

No, not at all. But Hailstorm is. On any given fight, Stormstrike is ~32% of my total damage. Frostbrand is 17,44% of my total damage (based on a recent Ursoc log). The next one down the line is Windfury Attack with 7,71% of my damage.

If a single talent does almost 1/5 of our total damage, does that not show that it's overpowered? I would maybe expect it from a level 100 talent, but not a level 60 talent. There is no way on Azeroth that Lightning Shield or Ancestral Swiftness could amount for 17% of our total damage, and buffing these to match Hailstorm feels wrong. Especially with the changes incoming, it might make more sense to tune Hailstorm down a bit, rather than buffing the other talents in the row.

Then again, I also think we should nerf Tempest a little bit, because it's one of those talents that are obscuring our other talents and abilities. That doesn't mean other talents shouldn't be buffed (we definitely need some number tuning if they mess with Tempest as it is right now), but when almost half of our damage comes from just two abilities, it locks us in to a very specific spec.

Don't forget that secondary stats on gear will not grow very much as the expansion moves on, just look at the Nighthold gear compared with your current gear and you will see that while agi jumps like crazy the secondary stats grow maybe 1/3rd as fast.

For example the difference between an 880 helm and 905 helm is about 451 agi while the total secondary stat difference is only 144, secondary stats will definitely outweigh base stats just by looking at this model, but it won't matter because the secondary stats just won't be available in the kind of numbers you are expecting. Blizzard hooked us up with a ton of secondary stats early, and we won't be getting a ton of them later on.

Nighthold is still considered part of the first raid tier, though. So when we go into the Tomb of Sargeras and Argus, the ilevel difference (and thus the items) will probably still be significant. Remember how your stats were at 800, and compare them to how you were at 850. It was a pretty significant change in stats, and that will happen at 900 and eventually ilevel 950.

Yeah I guess still feels much more active than both other talents tho, also adds a free slow to your rotation and gives you more chances for storm bringer procs which you can feel.

I agree, Hailstorm should still do more damage than entirely passive talents, but maybe not quite as much damage as it does right now.

It was answered already that agility scales on gear much higher than our mastery in the upcoming content but thanks gunwolf hopefully someone who will actually read what was discussed will get caught in that massive TLTR.

Earthen Spike might be ZERO MS but I'd have to know how much damage I would lose out on in a 20 second window basically ES damage + inc. dmg from debuff vs. 20 seconds of landslide's agility buff on our attacks calculation window. It might even be pretty close and might come out on top in on demand damage when there is only a small period of uptime available. There aren't that many fights where you don't have a decent amount of uptime but on short fights it might come out on top overall for sustained 5 minute encounters it might be just the difference enough to justify the whole mythic + spec and raiding spec.

I think ES looks very good at the moment. 15% more damage with an uptime of 50% - you just need to make sure you use your cooldowns like Doom Winds after you have cast ES. Also, consider for a moment which abilities Earthen Spike synergize with:

Stormstrike (and echos of Stormstrike)
Unleash Doom (half of the spikes anyways)
Lightning Bolt (heh)
Windfury procs
Crash Lightning

And we have a number of talents that work well with ES too:

Windsong
Boulderfist/Rockbiter
Lightning Shield (heh)
Ancestral Swiftness (sort of)
Tempest, Overcharge and Emp. Stormlash
Crashing Storm, Fury of Air and Sundering

So on paper, 8% agility "all the time" might be better than +15% physical and nature damage "half the time", but at the same time ES hits like half a truck, and you can pair it up in some interesting ways to get most out of the buff. I haven't done the math, but I think ES is slightly stronger than Landslide is right now - right as it should be, when you compare a passive ability to an active ability.

[mrinvisable2]

atm recent notes arent up on ptr

[MakeMeLaugh]

No, not at all. But Hailstorm is. On any given fight, Stormstrike is ~32% of my total damage. Frostbrand is 17,44% of my total damage (based on a recent Ursoc log). The next one down the line is Windfury Attack with 7,71% of my damage.

If a single talent does almost 1/5 of our total damage, does that not show that it's overpowered? I would maybe expect it from a level 100 talent, but not a level 60 talent. There is no way on Azeroth that Lightning Shield or Ancestral Swiftness could amount for 17% of our total damage, and buffing these to match Hailstorm feels wrong. Especially with the changes incoming, it might make more sense to tune Hailstorm down a bit, rather than buffing the other talents in the row.

Then again, I also think we should nerf Tempest a little bit, because it's one of those talents that are obscuring our other talents and abilities. That doesn't mean other talents shouldn't be buffed (we definitely need some number tuning if they mess with Tempest as it is right now), but when almost half of our damage comes from just two abilities, it locks us in to a very specific spec.

No, stop this overpowered thing as an excuse. Yes, buff the other options instead of nerfing what people already use god damnit. I think NOBODY cares about lightning shield, so it's about time they remove that completely, make it baseline to elemental and enhanc shamans(but only deal damage when attacked) and put something there completely new. But it's obvious that they went 100% lazy with this, since they are just buffing it instead of showing new ideas to the community or simply trying new things.

Now, AS can be buffed to be much better, and it doesn't have to be simply more haste. Why not make it interact with crit as well, like give 10% passive haste and an aditional 1% crit everytime stormstrike crits to a max of 5%, or make it increase nature and physical damage by X% stacking Y% everytime we crit with something, or even mix a little of both. Why not buff it? It's already an underused talent that should be BUFFED and not nerfed(I wonder what the hell they were thinking when they decided to nerf it).

Stop trying to nerf something just to show "how good" the other options are. If enhanc was overpowered and needed to be toned down, then yes of course, hit those talents that are making it unbalanced, but that's not the case.

[Gunwolf]

No, stop this overpowered thing as an excuse. Yes, buff the other options instead of nerfing what people already use god damnit. I think NOBODY cares about lightning shield, so it's about time they remove that completely, make it baseline to elemental and enhanc shamans(but only deal damage when attacked) and put something there completely new. But it's obvious that they went 100% lazy with this, since they are just buffing it instead of showing new ideas to the community or simply trying new things.

Now, AS can be buffed to be much better, and it doesn't have to be simply more haste. Why not make it interact with crit as well, like give 10% passive haste and an aditional 1% crit everytime stormstrike crits to a max of 5%, or make it increase nature and physical damage by X% stacking Y% everytime we crit with something, or even mix a little of both. Why not buff it? It's already an underused talent that should be BUFFED and not nerfed(I wonder what the hell they were thinking when they decided to nerf it).

Stop trying to nerf something just to show "how good" the other options are. If enhanc was overpowered and needed to be toned down, then yes of course, hit those talents that are making it unbalanced, but that's not the case.

I agree with LS being a baseline spell... it was baseline before and honestly there was no reason to make it a talent. I wanna see them bring back lightning and water shield for all shaman... it was a signature spell and easy way to identify a Shaman out in the world. But yea, LS has to be the most dull, boring passive damage ability out there. We already have AS for passive haste, or Hailstorm which feels more active but is also essentially just more passive melee/frost damage. That whole tier is pretty passive, so I would prefer maybe a more active or situational ability instead of LS.

I don't get why you are so against nerfs tho. Ideally they should buff other talents to make em better choices instead of nerf the "best" talent to make it worse.... but that is not always possible. Like Qieth mentioned, Hailstorm makes up a significant portion of our damage.... so where LS might only be 7% of overall dmg, HS will be like double that at 15% for example. That is clearly not balanced, but it makes more sense to nerf HS and buff LS to be around 10% rather then buff only LS to 15%ish cause now you have a passive damage ability that does ton of damage for no effort. So sometimes "balance tweaks" are needed, as long as its not too drastic then I don't mind it.

As for AS.... I actually ran with AS for a while till switching to HS for raids. I kinda like it, its a boring passive but the rotation was simpler and it let me focus on other stuff. I think adding another buff to it is a decent idea. The 10% haste (or 6% currently right?) is a pretty good passive bonus but something extra like crit seems like a good idea. Maybe a small bonus to crit and crit damage, also passive, just to make it more diverse in buffs (and still be useful when crit % alone is less useful).

Another option is to perhaps add the classic "Make your spell instant on a 1min CD" active use and keep the passive haste buff as well. They may need to tweak it a bit, so say it supercharges the spell as well since we already get instant LB and heals. So LB would do way more damage and apply a dot or something, heal would heal for double, and Hex could apply a secondary debuff like a silence or something.

Then again, I also think we should nerf Tempest a little bit, because it's one of those talents that are obscuring our other talents and abilities. That doesn't mean other talents shouldn't be buffed (we definitely need some number tuning if they mess with Tempest as it is right now), but when almost half of our damage comes from just two abilities, it locks us in to a very specific spec.

I don't wanna see Tempest get nerfed but it is a really good talent. I honestly can't imagine playing without it, its like our echo of elements and just makes things more smooth.... plus with how integral SS is and how many buffs it gets thru various talents/traits it just seems like the obvious choice. You would think this is one of those talents they were talking about when they said that some talents might be baseline.... stuff like boulderfist and tempest just seem too useful or integral to give up.

I think ES looks very good at the moment. 15% more damage with an uptime of 50% - you just need to make sure you use your cooldowns like Doom Winds after you have cast ES. Also, consider for a moment which abilities Earthen Spike synergize with:

Yea, ES looks much better now. I have said in the past that it would have good synergy with Overcharge and could see that be useful in PVP to go ES>Overcharged LB combo.... but in order to work the ES talent would need to cost less MS and have range buffed to 20-30yds. Still hoping they buff the range of ES so we can pull that off.... could totally see a PVP talent to make that work as an execute type ability at range.

Earthen Spike might be ZERO MS but I'd have to know how much damage I would lose out on in a 20 second window basically ES damage + inc. dmg from debuff vs. 20 seconds of landslide's agility buff on our attacks calculation window. It might even be pretty close and might come out on top in on demand damage when there is only a small period of uptime available. There aren't that many fights where you don't have a decent amount of uptime but on short fights it might come out on top overall for sustained 5 minute encounters it might be just the difference enough to justify the whole mythic + spec and raiding spec.

Yea, I can see it being better for dungeons and shorter fights, while Landslide is better for raids w/ high uptime on bosses. Or it may see use in PVP like Ascendance does. I think that is much better talent tier design as it gives some flexibility based on what u are doing.

[nazrakin]

No, not at all. But Hailstorm is. On any given fight, Stormstrike is ~32% of my total damage. Frostbrand is 17,44% of my total damage (based on a recent Ursoc log). The next one down the line is Windfury Attack with 7,71% of my damage.

If a single talent does almost 1/5 of our total damage, does that not show that it's overpowered? I would maybe expect it from a level 100 talent, but not a level 60 talent. There is no way on Azeroth that Lightning Shield or Ancestral Swiftness could amount for 17% of our total damage, and buffing these to match Hailstorm feels wrong. Especially with the changes incoming, it might make more sense to tune Hailstorm down a bit, rather than buffing the other talents in the row.

Then again, I also think we should nerf Tempest a little bit, because it's one of those talents that are obscuring our other talents and abilities. That doesn't mean other talents shouldn't be buffed (we definitely need some number tuning if they mess with Tempest as it is right now), but when almost half of our damage comes from just two abilities, it locks us in to a very specific spec.

I think all of our throughput tiers should be worth ~10-15% increase, they should all feel impactful/transformative regardless of what level they are unlocked. 17% is higher than that but the number you see on your damage meter is not the actual value of the talent. That number is boosted by both BF+Landslide and it has both an opportunity cost in terms of GCDs+Malestrom that neither LS or AS have. ~12% is what simming my char suggests Hailstorm is worth and that seems reasonable to me, for comparison LS is worth 6% and AS is around 10%.

[Nyoken]

Whats with the fucking EQ nerf???????????

[Troopsmith]

Whats with the fucking EQ nerf???????????

EQ's damage per tick was increased. I think it's going to be better overall; when you have a lot of CL going on, you can spit EQs out faster than they can expire. Making them hit the same but over less time should balance that out, as well as give higher DPS.

[Nyoken]

EQ's damage per tick was increased. I think it's going to be better overall; when you have a lot of CL going on, you can spit EQs out faster than they can expire. Making them hit the same but over less time should balance that out, as well as give higher DPS.

Hmm ok then that's nice I suppose...

[SwayOfTheAbyss]

Hmm ok then that's nice I suppose...

Its nice because.. the idea is.. EQ isnt worth it unless the adds are on it for the full duration. This is definitely gonna help our cleave. As ele, I cant wait for this patch.

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The problem with ele, it seems right now, is its hard to be competitive in mythic unless you have a very specific formula. My simmed 876 shammy is only peaking at like.. 330k. I have my start priority right, I just dont have the specific combination of legendaries, trinkets, and other gear to make that 400k+ dps happen. I hope this patch with loosen up the git gud equation.

[Iralevitas]

Whats with the fucking EQ nerf???????????

how can say this is a nerf? its actually a buff, the same amount of damage in 6 seconds instead of 10 seconds

[Nyoken]

how can say this is a nerf? its actually a buff, the same amount of damage in 6 seconds instead of 10 seconds

All I see/saw in the notes here is that it now lasts 6 sec instead of 10. Didn't have a clue the ticks per sec was increased, henceforth this not being a nerf