PTR Build 7.1.5 build 23109

[Azzurri]

Doesn't look too bad, pretty good buffs. I guess the bump in CL and the talent help even out the 7% nerft to Hailstorm.

[skitzy129]

Does this put our talent selection in line with Live? I haven't followed the PTR roller coaster very closely.

[Anbokr]

Enh also got a flat 10% damage buff on the PTR that will be moved to base spells later. Pretty cray.

[wordup]

Enh also got a flat 10% damage buff on the PTR that will be moved to base spells later. Pretty cray.

No, this passive is just consolidating the changes that have already happened into one aura, these are not coming on top of what was already changed.

[skitzy129]

No, this passive is just consolidating the changes that have already happened into one aura, these are not coming on top of what was already changed.

Many class tuning changes for this build (and subsequent builds) are not likely to appear directly via datamining. Tooltip values for spells should still show their new amounts properly in-game, but many of these changes are being done in a way that's less apparent through datamining.

This indicates that they're separate as these changes were datamined in the traditional way, which they literally said in that same post wouldn't be the case for the changes being made through the aura.

They wouldn't have written that line if there weren't also changes we couldn't see.

[Anbokr]

Yeah, I interpreted it as the classes getting X% aura is just a flat buff that they want that class to get, to be distributed into base damage abilities at a later date. So fire mages are getting a 15% overall damage buff soon, Enh 10%, boomkin 4% -- separate from the talent/ability tuning that has happened.

Those mage buffs though man, I think they are going to be obscene in EN. Fire mages, despite the talent tuning, the crit nerfs, etc... they were still doing extremely well in the NH "testing" parses because most fights are very very favorable for specs like frost dk / fire mage / ele, lots of fights where "incidental cleave" is very strong. Enh/Ele and Fury warr probably going to be very good in NH as well.

[Northy]

Does Ele really not have Swelling Waves anymore?

[Deleted]

No, this passive is just consolidating the changes that have already happened into one aura, these are not coming on top of what was already changed.

I don't see anything indicating you are right. According to Wowhead, Enhance got a 10% damage buff to pretty much all abilities IN BUILD 23194.

Windsong Lightning Shield Boulderfist
Crash Lightning Flametongue Lava Lash
Lightning Bolt Rockbiter Stormstrike

And on top of that, another 10% buff to CL. And there were no buffs to Stormstrike to "consolidate". Those are just on top to all those changes.

That's also pretty fair considering we lost nearly 10% dps alone via nerfs to BF, HS (talent row) and 5% crit gone.

And that's not a 10% damage increase since some of our damage isnt affected by those buffs like Auto Attacks, WF, spirit wolves, artifact traits. More like a 7% buff.

Overall, we are (ignoring secondary stats changes) about +- 0% after all those nerfs and buffs.

[Deleted]

As I was saying everything they balanced will go back to the live version, FoA is now 40% and was 30% in the start, FB slightly buffed to live version almost, they dont know what to do so they are going back to base live setup and hoping that new shaman mount make ppl happy. I am hoping they revert Boulderfist change so we can be fake glass cannons that are squishy and die in 2 secs cause we are used to it.

[Rallaster]

It will be interesting to see what the final patch notes come out to be. Today's buffs seem fair and not to over the top! Thus far I'm loving Enh. Even with the RNG it seems limited.

[Deleted]

No those buffs definitely put us back in line. They basically just countered the recent nerfs specific to enhance.

I still like to see a fix for LL. We are still gonna dump with CL until we have 4p. LL either still needs a massive buff or simply proc SB. 4p cries for becoming baseline for tomb of sargeras.

[DesFolk]

The team wants everyone to feel heard and will continue to working on improving communication.

Except elemental shaman.

[Christhammer]

Boulderfist back to 6 sec. Fantastic! Rockbiter might be worth using though if they fix Hot Hand. Procs too rarely.

--Boulderfist recharge time back to 6 seconds
--Boulderfist no longer gives a bonus to critical strike
--Rockbiter generates 20 Maelstrom (from 15)

[Jotaux]

The 20 maelstrom buff to rockbiter and removal of the crit bonus make me wonder if we would take boulderfist. With traits we would be at 23 maelstrom per Rockbiter cast and I was already capping out with boulderfist at 25 before traits.

[Deleted]

Yeah, but now it really does what it's intended to do - to give you a slower rotation because you don't cast it *that* often. Maelstrom isn't supposed to be a big issue, though still something you have to manage. But now you get to choose if you want to have two charges that you feel obligated to use, or a spammable ability that you can cast if you are low on Maelstrom.

As we grow, we are probably going to see more and mor passive Maelstrom generation. More mastery and haste means more windfury procs, which means more mastery, and even faster melee attacks. A low ilevel enhancement shaman will have to worry more about their maelstrom, but most who have played since Legion's launch are already sitting at a very comfortable level of Maelstrom.

This change just makes Boulderfist a playstyle choice. You take it because you want it, not because you have to.

[MakeMeLaugh]

Good thing the CD is back to 6s, but I still want changes to Hot Hand. Maybe increase the bonus damage more like 200% but not make lava lash free, but cost 50% less, I don't know, it just feels clunky for the way enhanc plays now because of how much resource we generate.

Still nothing on landslide, but there's still hope...

[wordup]

I don't see anything indicating you are right. According to Wowhead, Enhance got a 10% damage buff to pretty much all abilities IN BUILD 23194.

Windsong Lightning Shield Boulderfist
Crash Lightning Flametongue Lava Lash
Lightning Bolt Rockbiter Stormstrike

And on top of that, another 10% buff to CL. And there were no buffs to Stormstrike to "consolidate". Those are just on top to all those changes.

That's also pretty fair considering we lost nearly 10% dps alone via nerfs to BF, HS (talent row) and 5% crit gone.

And that's not a 10% damage increase since some of our damage isnt affected by those buffs like Auto Attacks, WF, spirit wolves, artifact traits. More like a 7% buff.

Overall, we are (ignoring secondary stats changes) about +- 0% after all those nerfs and buffs.

Sorry didn't see the extra drop down on the wowhead notes. This is nowhere near breaking even, this is a significant buff (where you pulled a flat 10% nerf from with the original changes before this I'm not sure, but overall reservedly I was seeing somewhere around 5% considering FoA was pulling us back up). The downside is it effectively reverts all of the positive talent changes and puts us right back at the start of a cookie cutter build with virtually no options. This is likely going to net around 5%~, potentially more depending.

[Lowland]

Sorry didn't see the extra drop down on the wowhead notes. This is nowhere near breaking even, this is a significant buff (where you pulled a flat 10% nerf from with the original changes before this I'm not sure, but overall reservedly I was seeing somewhere around 5% considering FoA was pulling us back up). The downside is it effectively reverts all of the positive talent changes and puts us right back at the start of a cookie cutter build with virtually no options. This is likely going to net around 5%~, potentially more depending.

I'm not so sure it's going to be a net gain in DPS after taking into account secondary stat changes - though I know they are still tweaking those so it's a bit hard to evaluate what the final result will be.

I think Enhance shamans should be wary of the secondary stat nerfs. We scale so well currently that a lot of our power comes from secondaries (we have two secondary stats that are worth almost as much, and sometimes as much, as agility). We're definitely going to be one of the specs that feels the stat changes more than others. I'm particularly concerned with any significant loss in Stormbringer procs, which would be difficult to off-set just by having relatively more agility, since so many of our DPS mechanics are tied to Stormbringer/Stormstrike.

In fact, looking at the specs that got buff auras - I would guess these auras are intended to address, at least in the part, the nerf in power that certain well-scaling specs are going to see as a result of the secondary stat changes (in addition to direct nerfs to talents/abilities).

[Imnick]

The opposite is true actually.
They reduced the amount of stats given by each point, but buffed gear above 805 iLevel to give more stats.
The classes that suffer from this change are those that need to hit specific caps of crit/mastery/haste and those that do not get much benefit from their primary.
Neither of these really apply to us. Agility is always either our best stat or very close to our best stat.

People who are stacking loads of one stat are losing a lot of stat. We on the other hand favour item level over most other criteria, so our drop in overall DPS is actually much lower, because we get a lot out of our primary stat anyway.
We're still sitting pretty after any adjustment to secondaries.

I think it's more likely that the aura on Enhancement is intended to counter nerfs to our level 15 and level 60 tier of talents, so that the ideal talent in that row can be nerfed without doing too much to the base spec, although right now it's kind of overkill.

[Lowland]

Boulderfist back to 6 sec. Fantastic! Rockbiter might be worth using though if they fix Hot Hand. Procs too rarely.

--Boulderfist recharge time back to 6 seconds
--Boulderfist no longer gives a bonus to critical strike
--Rockbiter generates 20 Maelstrom (from 15)

Losing the 5% crit on Boulderfist is a MUCH bigger nerf than the extra 1.5 seconds on its recharge.

I wish people hadn't whined about the longer recharge time. It really wasn't a big deal. At higher gear levels you're generally getting enough Stormbringer procs and have enough other higher-priority abilities to hit that Boulderfist sometimes sits at 2 charges for a GCD or three anyways (basically until you need to refresh the Boulderfist/Landslide buff), and we aren't a resource-starved spec so losing a little extra maelstrom with the longer recharge was no big deal.

Edit: That said, I'd personally be happy switching to Hot Hands or Windsong anyways as long as those are viable alternatives and our power level isn't going down as a result.

- - - Updated - - -

The opposite is true actually.
They reduced the amount of stats given by each point, but buffed gear above 805 iLevel to give more stats.
The classes that suffer from this change are those that need to hit specific caps of crit/mastery/haste and those that do not get much benefit from their primary.
Neither of these really apply to us. Agility is always either our best stat or very close to our best stat.

People who are stacking loads of one stat are losing a lot of stat. We on the other hand favour item level over most other criteria, so our drop in overall DPS is actually much lower, because we get a lot out of our primary stat anyway.
We're still sitting pretty after any adjustment to secondaries.

I think it's more likely that the aura on Enhancement is intended to counter nerfs to our level 15 and level 60 tier of talents, so that the ideal talent in that row can be nerfed without doing too much to the base spec, although right now it's kind of overkill.

I would love to be wrong, for the record.

I understand your point too about specs that won't be able to hit stat caps now, but it's not accurate that we favor ilevel right now. I regularly pass up on armor that's +10 ilvls above what I'm using if that armor has a large crit bonus because haste and mastery provide so much power. +15 ilvls with a large crit bonus usually ends up being a slight (~1%) DPS upgrade over armor with haste/mastery in my sims. I say this just to point out that mastery/haste really do provide a lot of our power.

And while I know they upped the stat budget on items above ilevel 805, my understanding is that most specs will still net out with slightly lower secondary ratings compared to live, in favor of more primary stats.

Thus I'm still worried about losing Stormbringer procs. We have Wind Strikes, Unleash Doom and Stormflurry procs that we'll lose as well, and just having Stormstrike hit harder with more agility probably doesn't make up for that (which is part of why I thought the aura might be intended to address this).

I've been waiting to test things on the PTR until more of the secondary stat changes are in, so I'll acknowledge this is a speculative concern on my part.

Edit 2: Words...