The world needs new elemental shaman mechanics!

[Deleted]

On my struggle to decide on either rolling mage or elemental shaman (which has been on for 1 week and is still ongoing...) i have especially been looking at the different rotations offered by the different specs and came to following conclusion: fire/frost and elemental are not really engaging! What they basically break down to is spamming a filler spell until something procs and then use the proc.

Now, especially for Elemental, i have been thinking about how you could tweak the rotation a bit by adding a simple mechanic without drastically changing everything. And this is what i came up with:

I would have really loved to get sth. like the eclipse mechanic (e.g. elemental atunement) with maybe an additional earth-spell with cast-time. But as balance druids already stole this from us, i thought about sth. quite the opposite: You try to maintain a certain level of "grounding", which will decrease the cast time of your lightning-bolt/chain-lightning. "Grounding'" will get smaller by casting said lightning bolt/chain lightning, and gets bigger by using earth shock. You want to maintain a grounding level as high as possible.

The basic idea is that by throwing lightning you charge up yourself and therefore it gets harder to build up the electric tension needed to evoke it again.

So, while this will not change that much about our rotation, you might end up using your fulmination stacks earlier than after stacking up to 8-9 in order to maintain a certain level of grounding. Of course, looking at how fast fulmination stacks built up right now, this might need some tweaking of the proc chances etc.

I first thought about giving bonus damage to the lightning spells depending on grounding, but thought that this would work counterproductively to our mastery.



My goal with this is not necessarily to add further complexity to given rotations, but to include some "thinking" component on when to use certain spells etc. From this perspective i think that e.g. arcane is a very cool spec, as you have to decide on when to burn and when to conserve etc, although it is definitely really simple just considerung the amount of buttons you míght have to press.

I think that the linear damage progression from those "stupid" rotations like fire/frost/ele etc. are simply not as engaging as the non-linear rotations from balance/arcance and maybe the upcoming new mechanics for warlocks. I would really like to see something new in this respect for the other specs.

So, what do you think? Would be grateful for any opinions and also other ideas for new class mechanics!

[Endus]

On my struggle to decide on either rolling mage or elemental shaman (which has been on for 1 week and is still ongoing...) i have especially been looking at the different rotations offered by the different specs and came to following conclusion: fire/frost and elemental are not really engaging! What they basically break down to is spamming a filler spell until something procs and then use the proc.

Then you're not playing Elemental properly.

Elemental involves managing shock cooldowns proactively (not reactively, as you describe), as well as tracking multiple DoTs and Intellect procs for Fire Elemental use, and due to the nature of its cooldowns requires heavier attention to boss behaviour than many other DPS classes (popping an FET moments before a phase change is a massive loss of DPS for Elemental, for instance).

Elemental is an easy spec to play badly. I've got a Warlock and a Ret paladin I've run through LFR multiple times, the Warlock as both Demo and Destro, and Elemental is easily on par with both classes, arguably more complex than Ret overall.

[Unoriginal]

what endus says is true, i play a sub par ele shaman because my computer is terrible but i find my self tracking all this shit while watching the boss fight.

[Protoman]

I like that Shaman damage is simple, and for the most part effective. Its true that they don't have very many in depth mechanics, mostly just procs and fulm. But complex is not always fun, and extra resources/mechanics can sometimes be quite limiting.

For Elemental, or even Shaman in general, I would like to see another dot to manage. This would boost sustained DPS and help during mobility encounters.

My suggestion for this was to change up Elemental Blast a little bit....basically give it a 15 sec cd, and a dot component (every 3 sec for 15 sec). So maybe 2/3 of the damage would be upfront, and 1/3 as the dot. I also wanted the buff duration to last atleast 15 sec as well, if not 30s.....so you can keep the buff up but not required to use on cd, just to help Resto get more out of the ability without wasting a gcd every 12 sec.

I think it would add something interesting to the rotation, little more complexity but not all that difficult to maintain.

[Tedie]

Mmmm..I just don't get where you are coming from runey. There are SO MANY detailed elemental guides out there for shamans. One of my mains is indeed a shaman and I play both elemental and enhancement. The point is none of the guides are wrong..you just have to get used to the playing style. Elemental shamans are ridiculous man...you should be doing at least 14-15k plus dps in heroics with all heroics blues...it isn't hard at all...as for a mage I can't say anything as mine is only 80... But one thing I do know is an elemental shaman is one of the easiest things to play..just watch your dots, cooldowns, and procs. If you want something a little harder try enhancement..they can be a challenge at times because there is NO ROTATION. Just priority when cooldowns are up.

[Daws001]

I agree with you. Ele's rotation is rather boring and I'd like to see something extra added to it to spice things up. Personally I love the negative mechanics seen in Arcane (mana costs becomes too intense) and what they're working on with Destro (their extra resource is killing them!). I'd like too see something like that given to Ele.

I like the idea of modifying Fulmination. Makes sense for a risk-return mechanic. Since health and mana have already been played upon, I'd like to see something new for Ele. Maybe movement, casting speed, cds, or something. I don't know, but I'm all for Blizz trying something new with Ele.

Also, Enhance should get earthquake

[ShadowJester]

ele should get an extra resource bar that has 2-3 resource orbs, that fill with an element type (air,earth,fire,water) depending on the spells you cast, and then they should have a new set of spells that change what they do depending on what element charges you have saved up. so lightning bolt would give an air charge, lava burst a fire charge. then the new spell lets say element assault, that cost 2 element charges would either (air, air) - casting speed plus nature dmg, (fire,fire) - consumes flame shock dealing dmg + something about time left on FS as well as burning 5% of targets resource. or (air,fire) consumes 3% of targets resource and gives it to you as 3% haste something like that. then they could add more spells covering more of the elements (im looking at you earth and water!) so more combos could be worked out.

[Teriz]

Elemental's mechanics are going to be a lot better in MoP. Just be patient.

[reyareya]

ele should get an extra resource bar that has 2-3 resource orbs, that fill with an element type (air,earth,fire,water) depending on the spells you cast, and then they should have a new set of spells that change what they do depending on what element charges you have saved up. so lightning bolt would give an air charge, lava burst a fire charge. then the new spell lets say element assault, that cost 2 element charges would either (air, air) - casting speed plus nature dmg, (fire,fire) - consumes flame shock dealing dmg + something about time left on FS as well as burning 5% of targets resource. or (air,fire) consumes 3% of targets resource and gives it to you as 3% haste something like that. then they could add more spells covering more of the elements (im looking at you earth and water!) so more combos could be worked out.

great idea, could synergize with MoP t6 elemental blast talent.

[Northy]

Elemental doesn't need new mechanics, they just need to not be 2nd rate mages. Don't get me started on Ele PvP...

[rdaccord]

Don't get me started on Ele PvP...

Ele is fine in pvp, we need to be a lil squishy to compensate for our silly amount of burst.

[Northy]

Ele is fine in pvp, we need to be a lil squishy to compensate for our silly amount of burst.

Ele is fine in PvP? The representation numbers say otherwise.

[Deleted]

Ele is fine in BG's, thanks to Thunderstorm mostly. Ele is not fine in arena, at all.
And we're totally 2nd rate mages, in both PVE and PVP. Anyone denying that is really deluded.

[Glyphtics]

Then you're not playing Elemental properly.

Elemental involves managing shock cooldowns proactively (not reactively, as you describe), as well as tracking multiple DoTs and Intellect procs for Fire Elemental use, and due to the nature of its cooldowns requires heavier attention to boss behaviour than many other DPS classes (popping an FET moments before a phase change is a massive loss of DPS for Elemental, for instance).

Elemental is an easy spec to play badly. I've got a Warlock and a Ret paladin I've run through LFR multiple times, the Warlock as both Demo and Destro, and Elemental is easily on par with both classes, arguably more complex than Ret overall.

Damn you make Elemental sound a lot harder than it actually is..

[Totemtroll]

I agree, we need another spell in our rotation, it would help!