Spicy Meat Ball (A) vs 100 Buttons (B)

[Rezhka]

http://www.stormearthandlava.com/ind...al-shaman-hub/
^this is the reference on what would we have coming 7.1.5. Check it out for more detail.

Here are my thoughts about those builds;

Spicy Meat Ball build (A)

Gearing aspect.
(A) stats weigh is gonna be mastery > haste > vers > crit. Because (A) objective is to fling as much meatball as you could. And the only thing that actually affect LvB is mastery (eventhough this build also take Ascendance, but in the long run crit is useless on the sustain damage). And we all know stacking mastery is a lot more easier due to higher per point scaling than any other stats. So capped mastery won't be hard to achieve later.
With this mastery focus, which actually make mastery feels good again, is also affecting our OS optimized gears. Let it be Resto or Enhance, since both spec also have mastery build.

Gameplay aspect.
We'll still stick with our classic rotation and gameplay, except we'll see more LvB than we've ever seen before. Some may find it boring, but it's still deal decent damage anyway. So what's the deal?

Versatility (not as stats)
(A) with LvB dedicated talents along with mastery gear focus, offer more versatility on any type of fight. (A) have Ascendance for short burst fight type. FET will also have more uptime due to more LvB casts. On cleave fight, Multi FS + Elemental Fusion, allow us to be meatball turret I believe. With high CL overload proc as the filler. AoE heavy fight also work great on (A), because more mastery means more CL overload proc. More proc means more MS, means more EQ uptime. So yeah, this build is so versatile that you don't even need to change for everything except when you're min-maxing.

100 Buttons (B)

Gearing Aspect.
(B) stats weigh is gonna be crit > mastery > haste > versa. While crit is the focus, the stats scale doesn't actually support ele shaman to actually have high crit as the default. So it's gonna be hard to achieve high crit. It also doesn't support OS as good as (A), because neither specs are using crit.

Gameplay Aspect.
It's bloated and it's definitely need high skill cap to actually manage and min-maxing all of those cds and buffs. It maybe looks fun to some, but cluttered keybinds and buffs doesn't always mean fun. Since the number are also being baked, I wonder if it's gonna be actually "rewarding" to go with this build when it goes live. (B) has too much spike damage around that can potentially lead to nerf later. *cough* pvp *cough*.

Versatility
(B) might have better sustain damage over (A). But with mediocre crit build (rng is still rng), it can be the other way around. On long ST fight, (B) might be slightly better than (A) because of the sustained damage nature on the build. On cleave fight, I would say (B) is not as good as (A) due to the heavy ST spell that (B) have. On aoe fight, Aftershock may give more EQ uptime, but I can say high proc CL on (A) could also work the same way with this. So it maybe on par, or even slightly weaker.

I personally like the 100 Buttons build, because it actually involve all of the elements on the rotations (and I have the Nether Eye ring). But the gearing is what actually concern me. Because on the long run, why bother to try hard on one or two cases, when you can go for more convenient build that cover the whole cases?

So which build would you choose? Thoughts?

[Gunwolf]

So mastery will actually be good again for Elem? Is that confirmed?

If so that is good news. I think which build people will go depends on what ur offspec is. I would prob go with "spicy meatball" build... just cause mastery/haste is the same stuff that Enhance focuses on (and still good for Resto). But if I played Resto alot, I would prob have more crit so "100 buttons" would make more sense. Playstyle wise I think the "100 buttons" spec will be more fun... whcih I assume is the Icefury spec? The basic Elem rotation is pretty boring and Icefury does mix it up a bit, and like u said it uses all the elements which I think is great.

[Keltas]

I'm not really a theorycrafter, but for the icefury build wouldn't LMT be better than echo?
You'd need to miss what, 7? LvBs to make up for it (if you had high mastery and those gcd's would've been lbs otherwise). Plus LMT is immediately way more useful if the fight has any cleave or needs more burst, both of which are rampant in Nighthold.

I could be completely wrong, I just think it could be a very viable choice in that tier. I guess it probably will depend on your stats.

[FalcFalcFalc]

All builds were simmed and they are the most optimal from what we have available to us. Keep in mind that the Icefury build performs better than the Ascendance build unless you have the Belt. If you check the legendary portion of the guide, there is a table with all combinations of legendaries simmed against each spec.

[Celista]

Who comes up with these playstyle names? "Spicy Meatball" is pure silliness.

[WskyDK]

Gonna go LvB build since stat priority is basically the same as enhance.
It will certainly make it easy to go from melee to range based on fight

[FalcFalcFalc]

Like I was just saying, the meatball build performs significantly worse than Icefury without the Legendary belt. Read the entire guide, we put a lot of work into it. We had to release it early due to people finding the website before it was supposed to go live.

[Ghrog]

Well, I have been working with the 100 Buttons build (slightly modified) in the ptr and am enjoying it. I think the complexity would go way down once I create a TMW profile for it once our priorities are set in stone.

The build definitely seems more engaging and entertaining to play. Not that the Spicy Meatball is bad, it's just 100 Buttons is so different than what we've had.

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Who comes up with these playstyle names? "Spicy Meatball" is pure silliness.

I believe it comes from this meme that I have seen floating around...

[Gunwolf]

Well, I have been working with the 100 Buttons build (slightly modified) in the ptr and am enjoying it. I think the complexity would go way down once I create a TMW profile for it once our priorities are set in stone.

The build definitely seems more engaging and entertaining to play. Not that the Spicy Meatball is bad, it's just 100 Buttons is so different than what we've had.

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I believe it comes from this meme that I have seen floating around...

Hah... that is awesome. I have heard of LvB being called a meatball before since it looks like one when you cast it, but never seen that diagram. Very creative.

[Raxz]

I'm not gonna enjoy 100 buttons being mandatory just because it's literally so many buttons that it fucks with the way I generally set up keybinds. My shaman is going to have to be set up differently than all my other characters. The way I usually have it is arbitrary nonsense of its own kind anyway, but still. It's what I'm used to.

Or I might reroll even though Ele is becoming good now. I've rerolled purely on a "how the class plays" basis before.

It's just funny how they said they were going to work on "improving feel" and are actively making it worse for some classes.

[Gunwolf]

I'm not gonna enjoy 100 buttons being mandatory just because it's literally so many buttons that it fucks with the way I generally set up keybinds. My shaman is going to have to be set up differently than all my other characters. The way I usually have it is arbitrary nonsense of its own kind anyway, but still. It's what I'm used to.

Well, I dunno about mandatory... if you really don't like it, then just play the LvB spec. They say the difference isn't all that much.... plus their is a 3rd spec on the website for lightning rod which is for M+ only. I think its pretty cool that there are a few different builds and playstyles that people can go with..... but the MAJOR improvement for me is that Mastery is actually good again so I can share the same gear that I use for Enhance.

Do you use a naga gaming mouse? Or any of the 12button mouses? I use it for WoW and it is awesome for freeing up some keybinds, you can have a tier (3 buttons per tier) for abilities you use all the time, a tier for dps cds, and a tier for defensive cds. Then your keyboard can be just your main rotation stuff or whatever. Shift modifiers help alot too.

I am kinda looking forward to the Icefury spec.... I didn't realize that Elem Blast was part of that build too, which will make it even more ability cd heavy, but should be alot of fun to micromanage and visually interesting to look at. Plus, players can always adjust stuff around.... like if they don't wanna manage both Icefury AND EB then they can keep Icefury and pick Primal Elem, or keep EB and pick Ascendance, so they only have to manage one of those abilities while the other is instead a strong 3-5min dps CD that can be used for bosses and stuff... making the rotation easier overall. Not sure how overall DPS would be effected, but I would assume it will be fine for dungeons where having a CD will be useful while in raids you want that consistent DPS.

[Arachnofiend]

I'd like it best if I could do the Spicy Meat Ball build with Elemental Blast, to be honest... Maybe they could swap around EB and LR?

[Gunwolf]

I'd like it best if I could do the Spicy Meat Ball build with Elemental Blast, to be honest... Maybe they could swap around EB and LR?

See what the DPS difference is, if its not much by trading off Ele fusion for EB then just do it. Won't have as much synergy but if it is still competitive DPS and more fun to play then I'd do it.

I don't think they will swap anymore talents for now... seems like they have a good balance from what I can tell. Both the L75 and L100 tier have one ability talent (EB and Icefury), one consistent DPS talent (ele fusion and lightning rod) and one DPS CD (primal elem and ascendance). Seems like it will provide some interesting choices, tho only time will tell.

[Wilwind]

See what the DPS difference is, if its not much by trading off Ele fusion for EB then just do it. Won't have as much synergy but if it is still competitive DPS and more fun to play then I'd do it.

I don't think they will swap anymore talents for now... seems like they have a good balance from what I can tell. Both the L75 and L100 tier have one ability talent (EB and Icefury), one consistent DPS talent (ele fusion and lightning rod) and one DPS CD (primal elem and ascendance). Seems like it will provide some interesting choices, tho only time will tell.

EB in the ascendance build doesn't exist because in every legendary combo where EB+Asc beats EF+Asc, it loses to IF, and where IF loses to EB+Asc, EB+Asc loses to EF_Asc. So EB+Asc spec just gets lost in the no-man's land.

If you really want to use EB, go for it, just don't go around trying to say ele is bad and you can't compete when also using a subpar spec like half the yahoos have been on live when they're in a mythic+ specced Asc like, "I can't beat tank in AoE" while specced pure ST.

[Rezhka]

I'm not really a theorycrafter, but for the icefury build wouldn't LMT be better than echo?
You'd need to miss what, 7? LvBs to make up for it (if you had high mastery and those gcd's would've been lbs otherwise). Plus LMT is immediately way more useful if the fight has any cleave or needs more burst, both of which are rampant in Nighthold.

I could be completely wrong, I just think it could be a very viable choice in that tier. I guess it probably will depend on your stats.

Because EotE allow you (and you should) to weave in LvB in between your Icefury's buffed Frost Shocks. So they are also buffed with Elemental Focus. Gotta get used with it, since t19 4pc bonus is really give considerable damage boost. Not only on FrS, can always weave in LvB before casting any hard-hitting spells like ES or Icefury itself. And Even EB. Besides more LvB also means more MS regen, more uptime to FE, and More damage for sure. But yea, it's kinda optimized for ST fight. When it comes to cleave or aoe, the setup could be anything up to your preference.

[Happyducky]

Going to try both, but I'm curious which build would be better for a setup with 0 legendaries since my luck sucks lol

[Hivey]

I'd like it best if I could do the Spicy Meat Ball build with Elemental Blast, to be honest... Maybe they could swap around EB and LR?

I'm exactly the same. I feel that the spec needs EB in there to make the rotation interesting

[Shammyrock]

Meatballs for me even though I have the ring, Icefury just doesn't feel fluid to me

[Sharkcrap]

Going to try both, but I'm curious which build would be better for a setup with 0 legendaries since my luck sucks lol

Icefury does around 15k more DPS than the meatball build with no legendaries. But meatball build gets better with nighthold 4pc (since you'll pretty much always have EF)

[Hivey]

Icefury does around 15k more DPS than the meatball build with no legendaries. But meatball build gets better with nighthold 4pc (since you'll pretty much always have EF)

It is a harder rotation though, so real world results may not be as good on average. Even if the fire spec is mathematically worse, many may still perform better with it.