[OFFICIAL] MoP Beta Build Changes Discussion Thread

[Kio]

Eh...Stormlash Totem kind of disappoints me only because of the name. I want them to change Lavalash to Stormlash and give us a resource based on Maelstrom Charges or something....

[Protoman]

Enh naturally doesn't have a large mana pool. If you take current mana pools I can use GHW 3 times b4 oom. I understand that I won't always have MSW * 5 but if you pop SR they are free for 15 secs. I do not PvP, so I am strictly talking PvE.

As a Hybrid class I think healing should be restricted by mana even if you go oom in 3 heals. You say it shouldn't but what about Cat/bear druids they go oom after a few heals also, same with Retadins. I don't really have to "off heal" unless 1 or 2 (depends on 2 or 3 heals) healers die on a fight. I am sure that the devs don't want Enh going oom after a min or two during a fight because it would damper our dps by quite a bit. Once I watch the vids I will have a better look on how he is going oom.

Yea, I know mana pools are small.....but going oom in 3 heals is pretty sad. HS costs more then GHW too doesn't it? And I don't think our mana pools are getting much bigger, from 85-90 either. Just saying a small buff to increase mana pool would be nice, to allow for heals if needed, as well as stuff like totems and purge along with our reg abilities. And inc mana regen for sure, 10% instead of 5% is a 100% increase which i admit might seem like alot, but again mana regen isn't supposed to be a big issue so I see no reason not to buff it. Not sure how well we will be able to stick on a target in PVP, but if uptime will be less cause of all the extra control/cc/escapes that classes are getting, then good mana regen is even more important.

[Eliot123]

I haven't really played as enhancement since DS came out but I love the spec and was planning on changing to it for MoP, would hate it if the mana system went back to WotLK-ish style, that was such a pain in ze backside.

[Taalyn]

Yea, I know mana pools are small.....but going oom in 3 heals is pretty sad. HS costs more then GHW too doesn't it? And I don't think our mana pools are getting much bigger, from 85-90 either. Just saying a small buff to increase mana pool would be nice, to allow for heals if needed, as well as stuff like totems and purge along with our reg abilities. And inc mana regen for sure, 10% instead of 5% is a 100% increase which i admit might seem like alot, but again mana regen isn't supposed to be a big issue so I see no reason not to buff it. Not sure how well we will be able to stick on a target in PVP, but if uptime will be less cause of all the extra control/cc/escapes that classes are getting, then good mana regen is even more important.

There isn't a reason not to give Enhancement some mana regen, Frost Mages just got 300% increase to their mana regen, which is on top of the insane level 90 mage talents. Some mana classes are simply having issues with the changes to regen. If Enhancement has them, they will likely get a boost to it.

[Protoman]

I haven't really played as enhancement since DS came out but I love the spec and was planning on changing to it for MoP, would hate it if the mana system went back to WotLK-ish style, that was such a pain in ze backside.

Yea, it was pretty annoying. Esp worse in PVP, had to waste SR to get mana back instead of for defense.

There isn't a reason not to give Enhancement some mana regen, Frost Mages just got 300% increase to their mana regen, which is on top of the insane level 90 mage talents. Some mana classes are simply having issues with the changes to regen. If Enhancement has them, they will likely get a boost to it.

I agree. I hope they buff both the mana regen, and mana pool. Would be nice to have lil more mana to play around with, so when we have some crucial moment that requires pinch healing, or use of totems/purge and other expensive abilities.....we won't oom too quick. For mana regen, they should double it to 40% chance to get 10% of mana back......with our only heal being HS, any use of it will quickly make us oom so we will need solid regen, plus with all the new extra control/cc/escapes that classes are getting, it may be harder to stay on target and maintain uptime for constant regen.

Checking out videos now to see just how true those statements about mana are.....so far only found Myriande's vids, but thats on a dummy and seems like mana usage is fine there. The complaints I hear are about dungeon runs where the group is chain pulling, or on bosses......if anyone knows of a video of a dungeon run with Enhance, I would like to check that out.

Found this one of the new jade dungeon with panda (ele) and hobbs running it....pretty cool looking dungeon:

[-Orion-]

Agreed, but that still doesn't change the fact that 17k bonus AP is much sexier than 5k :-P

Exactly :P
I know that its bonus AP, but still from 17k to 5k is a big jump, and +1k AP to MOP feels kinda low.

Btw, anyone know how enha will work with echo of the elements, I know its gonna proc LB's and healing surges and shocks, but what about static shock and the lighting shield it self, and perhaps anything else.

[CasualNoob]

Most "weapon scaling" abilities nerfed in MoP. WW is weapon scaling proc, and they nerfed bonus AP, not weapon scaling - it's still 3 strikes at 100% weapon damage. I think that's a "good nerf". Better lose some AP than one strike or weapon scaling.

[Liessa]

Did some basic testing regarding Stormlash Totem on my Enh shaman today.

I observed the following:
- using normal "rotation" the lowest hit was ~1300 and highest was ~7800 (unbuffed my shaman had 11k AP, 6k spell power, 20 mastery)
- seem to procs on every melee and direct spell hit
- DoTs do not proc it
- Feral Spirits or Elementals do not proc it
- scales with spell power
- scales with Enh mastery
- it can crit (very rarely though and Stormstrike didn't affect the crit%)

Take that with a grain of salt because my testing was very limited (5 min CD and 10 sec duration on the totem doesn't help) and cut short by a server restart.

[Deleted]

Did some basic testing regarding Stormlash Totem on my Enh shaman today.

I observed the following:
- using normal "rotation" the lowest hit was ~1300 and highest was ~7800 (unbuffed my shaman had 11k AP, 6k spell power, 20 mastery)
- seem to procs on every melee and direct spell hit
- DoTs do not proc it
- Feral Spirits or Elementals do not proc it
- scales with spell power
- scales with Enh mastery
- it can crit (very rarely though and Stormstrike didn't affect the crit%)

Take that with a grain of salt because my testing was very limited (5 min CD and 10 sec duration on the totem doesn't help) and cut short by a server restart.

Thanks for the info. I'm sure some logs would be helpful.

[Deleted]

Did some basic testing regarding Stormlash Totem on my Enh shaman today.

I observed the following:
- using normal "rotation" the lowest hit was ~1300 and highest was ~7800 (unbuffed my shaman had 11k AP, 6k spell power, 20 mastery)
- seem to procs on every melee and direct spell hit
- DoTs do not proc it
- Feral Spirits or Elementals do not proc it
- scales with spell power
- scales with Enh mastery
- it can crit (very rarely though and Stormstrike didn't affect the crit%)

Take that with a grain of salt because my testing was very limited (5 min CD and 10 sec duration on the totem doesn't help) and cut short by a server restart.

Although its good to know things like it crits, other numbers are kind of obsolete without extensive testing. It would take a good 100+ Totems worth of tests before you could make any real number assumptions about its DPS increase, and you also need to look into how it affects out classes (does it do more damage on slower casts? Or is the same no matter what and thus classes like Rogues and Monks will benefit from it far more because of more hits in the 10 seconds ect).

[Endus]

Although its good to know things like it crits, other numbers are kind of obsolete without extensive testing. It would take a good 100+ Totems worth of tests before you could make any real number assumptions about its DPS increase, and you also need to look into how it affects out classes (does it do more damage on slower casts? Or is the same no matter what and thus classes like Rogues and Monks will benefit from it far more because of more hits in the 10 seconds ect).

We also need to figure out if the procs have any connection to the damage of the ability proccing it; if it's a "10% of cast" damage or if it has its own relatively wide range of damage that scales independently, how it scales with Crit, whether there's an ICD at all (even if that ICD is 1s or so), a lot of little things that just aren't really possible to grab out of a couple test uses.

What we need are at least a couple dozen actual dungeon/raid logs where it's used extensively, to start to build up a baseline.

[Protoman]

Although its good to know things like it crits, other numbers are kind of obsolete without extensive testing. It would take a good 100+ Totems worth of tests before you could make any real number assumptions about its DPS increase, and you also need to look into how it affects out classes (does it do more damage on slower casts? Or is the same no matter what and thus classes like Rogues and Monks will benefit from it far more because of more hits in the 10 seconds ect).

We also need to figure out if the procs have any connection to the damage of the ability proccing it; if it's a "10% of cast" damage or if it has its own relatively wide range of damage that scales independently, how it scales with Crit, whether there's an ICD at all (even if that ICD is 1s or so), a lot of little things that just aren't really possible to grab out of a couple test uses.

What we need are at least a couple dozen actual dungeon/raid logs where it's used extensively, to start to build up a baseline.

Didn't you read where he said "Take that with a grain of salt because my testing was very limited". We all know you guys won't be happy with any data until its been programmed into a sim and run 1000 times :P

From myrdinde's vid, he had up to 18k crit damage from stormlash, on a dummy tho.

I am curious about a few things as well....
-does it proc only from direct damage melee attacks, or on the melee swings as well? Seems like both.
-also curious if it has an icd, if it doesn't it will probably have one at 1s like endus was saying
-I think it does set range of damage, not dependent on how much damage you do....seems like its easier to balance that way
-It seems like it would benefit classes with shorter gcds or faster attacks like rogues, since it was proc'ing like crazy in the vid. If it can proc from melee swings and attacks, then a rogue type class would get some crazy DPS out of it, while a class that has 2sec casts would not......so maybe they will adjust it to do more for a casted spell, or 1.5s gcd vs 1s gcd to even it out. As well as add icd so you can only get 10 procs in 10 sec, making it far easier to balance and predict it's output.


Curious how they will figure out the discrepancy between a melee class with 1s gcd, to a melee class with 1.5s gcds, to a caster class with 1-1.5s gcd. Perhaps give it a set range of damage, a 1s icd, and let it proc off either direct dmg melee/spells, or dots. Since every class has a dot (I think), this would mean that all classes would get 10 procs, regardless of direct damage or a dot being the one to proc it.

[Deleted]

Didn't you read where he said "Take that with a grain of salt because my testing was very limited". We all know you guys won't be happy with any data until its been programmed into a sim and run 1000 times :P

From myrdinde's vid, he had up to 18k crit damage from stormlash, on a dummy tho.

I am curious about a few things as well....
-does it proc only from direct damage melee attacks, or on the melee swings as well? Seems like both.
-also curious if it has an icd, if it doesn't it will probably have one at 1s like endus was saying
-I think it does set range of damage, not dependent on how much damage you do....seems like its easier to balance that way
-It seems like it would benefit classes with shorter gcds or faster attacks like rogues, since it was proc'ing like crazy in the vid. If it can proc from melee swings and attacks, then a rogue type class would get some crazy DPS out of it, while a class that has 2sec casts would not......so maybe they will adjust it to do more for a casted spell, or 1.5s gcd vs 1s gcd to even it out. As well as add icd so you can only get 10 procs in 10 sec, making it far easier to balance and predict it's output.


Curious how they will figure out the discrepancy between a melee class with 1s gcd, to a melee class with 1.5s gcds, to a caster class with 1-1.5s gcd. Perhaps give it a set range of damage, a 1s icd, and let it proc off either direct dmg melee/spells, or dots. Since every class has a dot (I think), this would mean that all classes would get 10 procs, regardless of direct damage or a dot being the one to proc it.

Over on the US forums someone posted a quite extensive feedback on the stormlash totem. Based on limited data/testing granted but it's all we have at the moment.
Link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...4516173?page=2
Apparently if I read and remember correctly spells seem to proc a stronger effect and instant melee abilities also seem to proc a stronger effect than auto attacks. It doesn't seem to have an ICD and has a 100% proc chance but dots/guardians don't seem to trigger procs.

[Thalais]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6ODvoy47Ws
Watching the last part of this video, shows some insane AoE potential for Enhancement with the Echo talent.
He said the fire nova's actually had about 60% chance to proc and that is with 6 dummies. So this ability by a figure of math is around 10% per spell and stacks if you can use more than one spell thus increasing the chances? Not sure, I'm not sure how to do the math for this ability yet and I'm sure someone will once we have more data.

[Endus]

Didn't you read where he said "Take that with a grain of salt because my testing was very limited". We all know you guys won't be happy with any data until its been programmed into a sim and run 1000 times :P

The issue is that incomplete/insufficient data can very easily be biased, by nothing other than RNG and through no fault of the tester, though there are other factors as well that could be avoided potentially.

And, often enough that it's an issue, people will see one brief amount of testing, assume that the results are indicative of reality, and the ideas that spring forth get embedded into the consciousness in a way that is INCREDIBLY difficult to fight against.

We had this same issue, about a year ago, with the way people were using worldoflogs.com data in ways that weren't mathematically sound, and it had become so ingrained that I was being attacked for trying to explain mathematical truths because those truths disagreed with people's incorrect preconceptions. I had to be "wrong", because everyone was using stateofdps.com's top 200 numbers as gospel therefore they must be correct and mathematical theory didn't matter. I fought against that for months, and finally wrote up that lengthy description of exactly what the issues were, mathematically speaking.

And to reiterate; this was never an issue with stateofdps.com. Those folks knew the issues, mentioned the issues in their own FAQ, but the community didn't bother to read it and if I dared to bring it up, people got angry.

It took that sticky post, and the not-directly-related launching of raidbots.com which happened to fix the issues by providing different parsing options, to finally get the community turned around on the idea. Now I see people for the most part supporting the "all parses" option over "top 100", and while the arguments otherwise still pop up occasionally, they're not that hard to deal with, and the community mostly self-regulates on the subject now.


And that's why I'm so insistent about jumping on potentially misleading mathematical theory. I've seen how easily people can pick it up and run with it, and how difficult it can be to try and change an incorrect "fact" when the community's decided it's true. So I try and head it off at the start.

When I say "the numbers aren't sufficient", I'm not saying "you shouldn't have bothered" to the person who did the testing, I'm saying "we can't conclude anything concrete from this, yet" to everyone else.

[Protoman]

The issue is that incomplete/insufficient data can very easily be biased, by nothing other than RNG and through no fault of the tester, though there are other factors as well that could be avoided potentially.

And, often enough that it's an issue, people will see one brief amount of testing, assume that the results are indicative of reality, and the ideas that spring forth get embedded into the consciousness in a way that is INCREDIBLY difficult to fight against.

And that's why I'm so insistent about jumping on potentially misleading mathematical theory. I've seen how easily people can pick it up and run with it, and how difficult it can be to try and change an incorrect "fact" when the community's decided it's true. So I try and head it off at the start.

When I say "the numbers aren't sufficient", I'm not saying "you shouldn't have bothered" to the person who did the testing, I'm saying "we can't conclude anything concrete from this, yet" to everyone else.

Yea, I know you just trying to help maintain a statistically accurate report of data. People do tend to just read the first reports they see and claim them as absolute fact. Was just teasing you lol, hence the :P

Here's the post from the link Castozor posted, done by Ashunera, it also has some troubling info about our mana regen as well:

I have confirmed that Primal Wisdom is being triggered by everything as it should be. It still seems like a lower proc rate off specials than it should be, but that, again, is anecdotal. Auto attack proc rate is fine.

It is definitely no longer a mana positive situation ever, though. I guess the minor reduction in max mana, and the minor increase in mana costs has shifted the balance in the other direction slightly. At any rate, the mana regen would need to be increased to about 7% per proc or ~55-60% proc rate to be mana neutral. Either that, or you'd need around 50% melee haste. I sure hope this isn't their way of making haste good >.>

Regarding Stormlash Totem:

-Is affected by Attack Power and/or Spell Power
-Does not proc off dot ticks and guardians.. not sure about dot applications, will need help with that one. Not sure about actual pets either.
-Is not affected by weapon damage, but is normalized based on weapon speed.
-Has a 100% proc chance on direct damage, auto attacks, strikes, and spells.
-Is not triggered by damage procs such as Vial of Shadows, Rathrak or No'Kaled. Stormlash, however, can trigger Rathrak's effect, so I assume all effects that proc on spells along with it. Does not seem to proc melee effects.
-Can be a critical strike. Seems to be spell crit chance regardless of the strike that triggered it.
-Deals significantly higher damage with spells than melee auto attacks. Also seems to treat melee strikes as instant spells, doing much higher damage with strikes than auto attacks.
-Seems to scale based on the base cast time of a spell.
-Not triggered by Flametongue Weapon. It is triggered by Static Shock, but due to the delay in Static Shock hitting your target after the attack that triggers it, Stormlash fading after the SS or LL but before the LS hits can prevent it from triggering off any given Static Shock proc.
-Is triggered by Windfury Weapon and uses an "instant attack" coefficient
-Seems to be affected by Enhancement's mastery, but due to its fairly high damage range, it's hard to test for clear results.


Using my normal priority, I did a few test runs of Stormlash Totem and it seemed to be doing about 140,000 damage per use as Enhancement at 85, self buffed on a target dummy. Ballparking it, it will do around 80-90k for most specs due to no mastery benefit, and nowhere near as many actual "strikes" landing during a 10 second window (SS causes 2-3 procs, WF causes 3 procs, LL causes 1-2).

Damage numbers:

Completely naked auto attacks with the base 8 mastery - roughly 80
Fully dressed (gear roughly the same as my armory):
Auto attacks
3.2 2h speed - 3600
2.6 1h speed - 2800
1.5 1h speed - 1500
Unarmed - 2000
Strikes - 8000 (16k per SS, 24k per WF, +8k per Static Shock)
Instant spells - 8000
Lightning Bolt (MW5 and hard cast) - 12000

Keep in mind this is from extremely limited testing, with variables that weren't very controlled, it's just to give people an idea of what to expect.

So it seems like it procs from almost everything, with varying amounts of damage. Scales based on weapon speed< melee strikes+instant spells< casted spells.

Sounds like a very potent cd, and might be hard to balance. Wonder how it stacks up against different classes, and factoring in blust. I still think it would be easier to give it a 1s icd, proc off anything, and that way every class will have 10 procs and the damage range can be set to like 8000-12000. Would give it a predictable damage boost for all classes. Although, it would also devalue haste for the cd which might be something they wanted to consider and incorporate.

As for the mana problem, I hope this is just a bug and the mana return off instant attacks will get buffed, or the return will be buffed to 10% from 5%. SS's mana cost is supposedly pretty high, hopefully that gets toned down as well. If this is supposed to make us value haste, its probably the worst way to go about it.....and I'm not comfortable with being mana starved as a DPS class with a lack of emergency cds to regain mana. I can deal with a small mana pool (I guess), but not low mana regen.

[Ize]

God, was so many pages i needed to read to catch up with this threat since last time i looked at it.

Frostband v Flametongue, all the agruements mentioned relate to Enh but I wouldnt mind them really reworking FB into something worth using by elemental & mayb resto as well tho ELW, perhaps the +7% SP on FT just needs to be removed and worked into our passive abilites and there be a new effect for FT altogether as well, somewhere were all specs can consider using either and even switching as needed.
Maybe instead of untieing the +40% LL with FT it should be +20% or something?
Allow the FB snare to proc on spells as well and maybe make FrostShock hit 2-3x harder if the person is already slowed by the FB proc? (Its would require a bit skill /timing to get that bonus dmg) and maybe where FT procs Flame Shock ticks can be buffed in someway for increased dmg?
I dunno, just rambling a bit now, sorry.

The T6 Elementals, yeah they spells are channelled for 10s (doesnt say there is a CD at all so assume you could break the channel and reapply straight away).
The thing everyone has forgotton so far is that the elementals have mana pools as well, it might not to possible to spam that all the time based the mana costs if it and how they regain mana themselfs, until we get access to using them we wont know.

The new Stormlash totme looks good, its a nice unqiue raid CD we can bring, again until we see a lot of log / numbers, we wont know how powerful this could be also remember warriors are also getting a +30% crit unquie raid CD as well so it shouldnt be see as a us getting a unquie must have 'BL' type skill again, perhaps blizz also has plans other classes will also get unquie mini CD like this as well? tho too many coudl be a bit hard to keep balanced

[Protoman]

God, was so many pages i needed to read to catch up with this threat since last time i looked at it.

Frostband v Flametongue, all the agruements mentioned relate to Enh but I wouldnt mind them really reworking FB into something worth using by elemental & mayb resto as well tho ELW, perhaps the +7% SP on FT just needs to be removed and worked into our passive abilites and there be a new effect for FT altogether as well, somewhere were all specs can consider using either and even switching as needed.
Maybe instead of untieing the +40% LL with FT it should be +20% or something?
Allow the FB snare to proc on spells as well and maybe make FrostShock hit 2-3x harder if the person is already slowed by the FB proc? (Its would require a bit skill /timing to get that bonus dmg) and maybe where FT procs Flame Shock ticks can be buffed in someway for increased dmg?
I dunno, just rambling a bit now, sorry.

Well, Ele's only benefit from FT currently is the 7% spell damage, and the unleash effect which buffs their flame shock/lvb. That is partly why I suggested FB have 3-5% spell damage as well, so they can switch to FB in PVP and not lose all of their bonus spell damage, but still trade off some damage potential with the unleash effect for a snare.

I think the +40% LL should be untied completely, and baked into the base ability. It's simply too good of a buff, for our strongest attack and our main source of burst in PVP. Like I said earlier, FT has a permanent slot on our OH imbue.....in PVP Enhance would rather switch their WF for FB then trade FT for FB. Even with the loss of the bonus LL damage on FT, FT would still be the superior imbue if you want more DPS.....and so switching from FT to FB would still be a tradeoff of damage for utility, just not as drastic. FT would still be preferred OH in PVE, but FB would see alot more use in PVP then it does currently, and you can still use FT if you want even more DPS in PVP and have partners for control. So I see no reason why they shouldn't remove it at this point.

As for another effect on FT. I think my idea of FT buffing our flame shock dot and fire totem damage would be good. It fits the "fire theme", but benefits all classes, and would be something that has more effect in PVE where you try to keep 100% uptime on both dot and totems, whereas in PVP its not as important and so trading FT to FB would not make you lose out much on your most effective abilities, like LL or LvB.

For FB proc'ing on spells, I have seen that suggestion before. It would be cool, but probably unnecessary. RNG snares aren't all that fun, and you still have frost shock, plus if using FB the unleash effect for another stronger snare. There is also ebind, and for ele tstorm also slows. If FB provided some bonus spell damage, I think you would see more Ele using it in PVP, and if FT did not give such a big bonus to LL damage I think you would see more Enh using FB in OH for PVP. The 40yd snare is reason enough, and if talented you get a sprint which will really make the imbue shine in PVP. Unfortunately, FT is simply too useful for both specs with the bonus to spell damage and LL.

Support the change to FT/FB!!! Or it will be ignored again in MoP!

The T6 Elementals, yeah they spells are channelled for 10s (doesnt say there is a CD at all so assume you could break the channel and reapply straight away).

Not sure but I think it has a 1min cd, so cd can only be channeled one time while the Ele is out.

perhaps blizz also has plans other classes will also get unquie mini CD like this as well? tho too many coudl be a bit hard to keep balanced

It's a possibility. Like you said, Warrs have a similar unique raid buff.....so they might be designing a few more for other classes.

[Endus]

Well, Ele's only benefit from FT currently is the 7% spell damage, and the unleash effect which buffs their flame shock/lvb. That is partly why I suggested FB have 3-5% spell damage as well, so they can switch to FB in PVP and not lose all of their bonus spell damage, but still trade off some damage potential with the unleash effect for a snare.

Minimizing the impact of a choice is not, in and of itself, good design.

I think the +40% LL should be untied completely, and baked into the base ability. It's simply too good of a buff, for our strongest attack and our main source of burst in PVP. Like I said earlier, FT has a permanent slot on our OH imbue.....in PVP Enhance would rather switch their WF for FB then trade FT for FB. Even with the loss of the bonus LL damage on FT, FT would still be the superior imbue if you want more DPS.....and so switching from FT to FB would still be a tradeoff of damage for utility, just not as drastic. FT would still be preferred OH in PVE, but FB would see alot more use in PVP then it does currently, and you can still use FT if you want even more DPS in PVP and have partners for control. So I see no reason why they shouldn't remove it at this point.

You just spent a paragraph explaining why imbue choice was a bunch of interesting tradeoffs for Enhancement, and that they should therefore make the three choices more similar so it doesn't really matter which you use.

I can't agree.


They could perhaps give us extra flexibility, but the only thing I would want to see in this regard, really, would be to have imbue spells not cost a GCD. This would improve our ability to swap on the fly by changing it from three GCDs (one to switch, one to Unleash, another to switch back) to one GCD and proper attention to your imbues.

[Deleted]

I'm with Endus on this one. GIVE NO-GCD IMBUES!