Enhancement: Live vs PTR (Sims)

[Deleted]

One thing to consider for Nighthold are artifact traits. There are currently only two dps traits available:

+Windfury Damage, +Lava Lash Damage. So if you get a very good LL damage, HH is going to get even better. And Akainu actually forces you to go HH anyways and all enhancers i know have them (incl. me, all 3 have Akainu, none has Twisted Nether...).

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Which part of my MS is Ele did you miss? I have that gear because I gear for Icefury 7.1.5 build and not for ENH, ENH is my 2nd OS after resto. So what's wrong to hope crit could be at least a little bit better for ENH (so i don't have to have 2 sets of gear).

In case you didn't miss it, Icefury build gears for Crit>Mastery in 7.1.5

I have no clue what you wanna tell me. I answered your statement that your crit chance actually matters for enhance. For enhance, crit is just a stat on your gear, it has no effect on your rotation or talent selection. And your statement about enhance losing crit on PTR is absolutely pointless. We have no procs on crit, everything can crit. If anything could matter, it's the mastery/haste ratio.

I got Crit/mastery gear from Ele so for me Windsong would probably be better than Boulderfist for me since Enh lost a lot of crit on PTR.

[Deleted]

One thing to consider for Nighthold are artifact traits. There are currently only two dps traits available:

+Windfury Damage, +Lava Lash Damage. So if you get a very good LL damage, HH is going to get even better. And Akainu actually forces you to go HH anyways and all enhancers i know have them (incl. me, all 3 have Akainu, none has Twisted Nether...).

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I have no clue what you wanna tell me. I answered your statement that your crit chance actually matters for enhance. For enhance, crit is just a stat on your gear, it has no effect on your rotation or talent selection. And your statement about enhance losing crit on PTR is absolutely pointless. We have no procs on crit, everything can crit. If anything could matter, it's the mastery/haste ratio.

Then you quoted wrong part because you quoted the part where i was talking about ele

Underlined part - I guess you meant ele?

Also I expressed [B]hope/B] that crit would become more valuable. It's not about rotation but DPS. If you lose 10% crit from what you have now then naturally Crit stat weight will increase. I don't know if it will increase enough to at least warrant some gearing towards it but it will increase.

The more of a certain stat you have the less valuable it becomes. Opposite is also true. With 10% crit lost I would like to see crit being in more demand than it is now. Especially combined with Windsong and after BF nerfs.

[Metaslave]

Crit isn't bad, it's just the worst stat. For me on live, haste is worth 13.81 dps while crit is 11.14. That's not a huge difference.

[Imnick]

Crit is Enhancement's worst stat for sure and you don't want to prioritise it, however saying that it is worthless is over exaggerating it.
Enhancement doesn't have any bad stats, we scale pretty well with basically anything that can turn up on gear. Optimally. you want haste/mastery in every slot but realistically crit is usually worth 70-80% of the value of your other stats on live right now. It's already usually an upgrade to equip any item with +15 iLvls regardless of stats, might be that after the PTR is pushed this drops to +10.

Also @Klatar the only things not buffed by the aura are Hailstorm (already nerfed so it's not going to be 16% of your damage anyway), Unleash Doom, Doom Vortex, and Feral Spirits.
If those skills combined are 40% of your damage then I hate to say it but you are doing something wrong

[Deleted]

If enha is 5% lower than on live doesnt mean it's in a place it should be?

[Deleted]

Crit is Enhancement's worst stat for sure and you don't want to prioritise it, however saying that it is worthless is over exaggerating it.
Enhancement doesn't have any bad stats, we scale pretty well with basically anything that can turn up on gear. Optimally. you want haste/mastery in every slot but realistically crit is usually worth 70-80% of the value of your other stats on live right now. It's already usually an upgrade to equip any item with +15 iLvls regardless of stats, might be that after the PTR is pushed this drops to +10.

Also @Klatar the only things not buffed by the aura are Hailstorm (already nerfed so it's not going to be 16% of your damage anyway), Unleash Doom, Doom Vortex, and Feral Spirits.
If those skills combined are 40% of your damage then I hate to say it but you are doing something wrong

Maybe you dont know how much of our dps is tied to other abilities?

On a sidenode, they nerfed hailstorm by another 25% in this hotfix, so that alone is a 2.5% dps nerf to all hailstorm builds. So we are still by 4 to 5% nerfed from live to PTR.

Just to clarify, that's from my current PTR sim the percentages not affected by those buffs:
Hothand/ESL (top DPS for me with Akainu)

Forstbrand(Hailstorm) 10.1%
Hrrific Slam (SA trinket) 2.5%
Autoattacks 4.8%
Old war 2%
Stormlash 9.5%
Unleash Lava/Lightning 3.2%
Wolves 5.8%
Doom Vortex 1.5%


That'S about 39.4%, that's pretty close to 40%. So they buff 60.6% of our dps by 5.45% (=63.90 + 39.6% - 2.3% = 101,0% = 1% buff). Current sims suggest we were 5% behind compared to live, now it's about 4%. Not that much of a buff for a HH build.

For the WS build + FOA, it is:
Frostbrand 11.6% (10.6% are Hailstorm)
FOA 6.1
Horrific Slam 2.6%
Doom Vortex 0.9%
MH+OH 5.7
Old war 2.0
Stormlash 4.3
Unleash Lava/Lightning 5.0
Wolves 6.4

That's 45.6% not affected by that buff. Same calculation: (54.4% * 1.0545 + 45.6 - 2.65 (Hailstormnerf) = 100.31 => only 0.3% buff.

Unless Lightning Shield or AS turn out to be better than Hailstorm, we got barely a buff today. Depending on spec, it's 0 to 1% dps buff.

(And just did the same for a BF spec, turned out the same (11.4+2.7+1.3+5.1+2.0+4.5+2.2+5.2+5.9=40.3% not affected by that buff, but the hailstorm nerf was a 2.6% nerf to overall dps, so 59.7*1.0545 + 40.3 - 2.6=100.65%, so 0.65% buff.)

So there's some misinformation here. It was just a very minor buff.

LS and AS builds got definitely buffed, but they were already behind pre hotfix. So that balances one talent row and the 6% buff is just to counter the next Hailstorm nerf.

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If enha is 5% lower than on live doesnt mean it's in a place it should be?

Is this sarcastic? Enhance has to be worst melee dps because ele is worst ranged DPS?

For mythic raiders, enhance is already midpack melee dps. Just look at TOV alone:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/12#dataset=95

and fiht specific:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...t=95&boss=1962
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...t=95&boss=1958
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...t=95&boss=2008

Enhance is midpack melee dps. So why nerf midpack melee dps? In its current state, we would drop to the bottom of melee dps - and our aoe is still the worst of all melees ingame. So we'd be bad at single target and very bad on AOE. Seems fine?

Just go vie some numbers:

My live profile without legendaries sims at 511k. My best PTr build at 482.9k. This build (WS+Tempest+FOA) gets only a 0.35% buff, so it gets up to about 485k. And that's mostly due to all those huge nerfs on PTR (10% crit gone for BF, 5% for HH and WS and Hailstorm got huge nerfs too). That's over 15% dps loss, the buffs didnt compensate at all because (like i said previously) that 16% buff affects only 55-60% of our dps).

[Hareem]

How much did Enh AOE get buffed in the current iteration of the PTR?

[Deleted]

Hailstorm was overnerfed...

[Nitwit]

Hailstorm was overnerfed...

How far behind LS/AS are you seeing it?

[Lowland]

On a sidenode, they nerfed hailstorm by another 25% in this hotfix, so that alone is a 2.5% dps nerf to all hailstorm builds. So we are still by 4 to 5% nerfed from live to PTR.
....

Enhance is midpack melee dps. So why nerf midpack melee dps? In its current state, we would drop to the bottom of melee dps - and our aoe is still the worst of all melees ingame. So we'd be bad at single target and very bad on AOE. Seems fine?

That Hailstorm nerf is pretty savage, and honestly confounding. I'm really disappointed they keep nerfing Hailstorm. It shouldn't be equal to 2 passive talents, nor should it really even be that close (the ~2-3% gap we've been seeing should be it). Give us a reward for using the active talent, or give us a 2nd active talent to compete.

They've got the balance on our talents down pretty damn well I think (Hailstorm excluded, and I wouldn't mind if they buffed Earthen Spike so it was generally optimal and shared the same relationship w/ Landslind that Hailstorm does with Ancestral Swiftness). The biggest issue right now are the numbers. It's looking like we're going from top of the middle tier to middle of the bottom tier unless they pump up the numbers. Reverting the Hailstorm and Ancestral Swiftness nerfs would be a good start.

[Deleted]

How far behind LS/AS are you seeing it?

Did some sims. For HH, Tempest, FOA +LS, it looks like this:
AS 511k
LS 507k
HS 497k
No talent 481k
No talent, but keep Frostbrand up 461k

Sims done without Akinu and include 4p T19.

Problem obviously is: keeping Frostbrand up alone costs 4% dps (20k in this case). Hailstorm is only 36k dps. 36k -20k = 16k net dps gain, so only 3.5% dps gain. Lightning Shield is nearly 6% dps gain, AS over 6%.

If you equip Akainu, you deal the same dps with AS and HS. So Akainu makes HS viable, but WS+AS and HH+AS are less then 300 dps behind....

So the legendary legs or the chest are betterfor single target.DPS. Because they are better stat sticks...

Buffing Hailstorm back to 28% isnt enough. HS would still be 2k behind AS. That hailstorm nerf is straightout stupid.

[MakeMeLaugh]

That hailstorm nerf was out of nowhere, what the hell? Is it more punishment for those that have the ring? Lol.

[Deleted]

And in before APL is blamed: i played a lot around apl, moving hothandbuffed LL, changing LL priority, moved FOA uptime, implemented requirements for SS (so that FOA casts went down to 1.1 per fight). Not keeping up FB with Hailstorm is always a dps loss.

Unless i did stupid stuff, dps barely changed. And the difference between HS and AS always stayed.

[Lowland]

Buffing Hailstorm back to 28% isnt enough. HS would still be 2k behind AS. That hailstorm nerf is straightout stupid.

Agreed. They should revert Hailstorm and Ancestral Swiftness back to what they are on live and keep Lightning Shield buffed to be competitive with AS.

[Rouncer]

For an alternative perspective, I'm thrilled if I won't have to spec hailstorm next patch. Enhancement is so much more fun, to me, without needing to deal with frostbrand refreshing.

[Gunwolf]

Agreed. They should revert Hailstorm and Ancestral Swiftness back to what they are on live and keep Lightning Shield buffed to be competitive with AS.

The hailstorm nerf I kinda understand since everyone spec'd it and it was obviously the highest DPS.... but then why nerf AS? It wasn't exactly OP, and it would have been the next best alternative. Plus LS was buffed so it almost seems like they want us to pick LS.

For an alternative perspective, I'm thrilled if I won't have to spec hailstorm next patch. Enhancement is so much more fun, to me, with needing to deal with frostbrand refreshing.

While I was still leveling I did roll with AS and enjoyed the simpler rotation... but at 110 once I saw how much better hailstorm was I got used to it and didn't mind using it at all. I suppose if LS or AS ends up being better after the patch then it won't be all that bad since it frees up the rotation again, plus these days with how often SS procs we still have plenty of stuff to push. I actually miss the graphic effect of LS, it was always a signature of shaman that helped set them apart from the other classes.... and I'm curious how it would synergize with Earthen Spike but we'll see. I just hope the nerf to HS isn't too much since both LS and AS are totally passive, and HS let people who wanted a more busy rotation the option to have that.

[Dahti]

So if I'm reading this correctly, using hailstorm (even with ring of twisting) will be a dps loss?

[Fitsu]

For 1st tier talents though, I'm assuming HM will be the go-to when paired with our 4pc or do we not even get that? It seems like a pretty signifcant upgrade, considering it means much higher uptime on wind strikes & much more consistent DPS (1 thing I hate atm is just sitting around waiting for SS to proc, trying the 4pc + HM on PTR I was constantly weaving between LL & SS which made the spec overall feel just so much better).

Also if we're using HM, do we rockbiter even if we're max maelstrom assuming there's nothing else to spend a global on or just AA?

I also don't understand how FoA can be behind? I mean, it hits harder. Crashing Storm ticks for ~11k while FoA ticks for ~28k.

[MisterBigglez]

I wouldn't mind the HS nerf, but I have to take it to allow two legendaries to work correctly...maybe I shouldn't complain cause I have two legendaries but its a little annoying to have to take a worse talent just to make an item work. Its kind of an indirect punishment :P

[Deleted]

FOA falls behind for BF builds right now. Sundering sims currently best for BF builds.

But i didnt put a lot of into bf/foa optimization. The problem of BF + FOA is the MS costs. FOA costs 180 ms/minute and it dropps off whenever you have bad procs.

So putting restricions like not using ss under 55 ms is a dps increase for BF +FOA.

I put most of my APL optimization into HH builds so HH sims best for me. HH APL is imo close to optimal because it clearly favors certain talents.