5.2 Shaman changes

[Endus]

Since it just hit the main page, I figured I'd start a thread for discussion. First, the changes;

• Flame Shock Instantly sears the target with fire, causing (1,086 + 44.9% of SP) Fire damage immediately and (2,328 2,910 + 21.0% of SP) Fire damage over 30 sec. Damage has been shifted more to the initial strike (due to not needing the glyph), and duration has been increased to 30 seconds from 24 by default.
• Stormlash Totem Summons an Air Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster, empowering allies within 40 yards with lightning. 10 yard radius increase (tooltip fix; this was hotfixed in already)

Talents

• Ancestral Swiftness Passive: Increases spell haste by 5% and melee haste by 10%. 5% buff for melee haste.

• Conductivity: When you cast Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, or Healing Surge, allies within your Healing Rain share healing equal to 20% of the initial healing done. If your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Earth Shock, or Stormstrike damages an enemy, allies within your Healing Rain share healing equal to 50% of the initial damage done. Now heals based on healing/damage to ANY target, not targets within Healing Rain itself.

• Elemental Blast: Elemental, Enhancement: Harness and direct the raw power of the elements towards an enemy target, dealing (4,726 + 211.2% of SP) Elemental damage and increasing the caster's Critical Strike, Haste, or Mastery by 3,500 for 8 sec. Restoration: Harness and direct the raw power of the elements towards an enemy target, dealing (4,726 + 211.2% of SP) Elemental damage and increasing the caster's Agility, Critical Strike, Haste, or Mastery by 3,500 for 8 sec. I assume this is a typo, and that it's Enhancement that is getting an Agility proc from this and a slight damage boost, not Restoration.
• Elemental Mastery: 60 sec cooldown. 1 minute cooldown now, not 2 minutes, big buff to the talent. Still lasts 20 seconds.
• Stone Bulwark Totem Summons an Earth Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 30 sec that grants the caster a shield absorbing [ [131.3% of AP or 210% [164.1% of AP or 262.5% of Spell Power] ] damage for 10 sec, and up to an additional [ [43.8% of AP or 70% [54.7% of AP or 87.5% of Spell Power] ] every 5 sec thereafter. Decent buff; about 20% stronger as of 5.2
• Unleashed Fury Your elemental weapon imbues are empowered, granting additional effects when triggered with Unleash Weapon: Flametongue Weapon Increases the enemy target's damage taken from your Lightning Bolt by 20%, and from your Lava Burst by 10% for 10 sec. Makes this much more appealing for Elemental, but a slight nerf for Enhancement.

Elemental & Enhancement

• Shamanistic Rage: Shaman - Elemental & Enhancement Spec. Elemental gets Shamanistic Rage. 30% damage reduction, usable while stunned, 60s cooldown, lasts a full 15s, and the mana effect is pretty darn significant. Will also get to use the glyph, as well.
  

Major Glyphs

• Flame Shock: When you Flame Shock deals damage, it heals you for 30% of the damage dealt. The duration increase was baked into the spell, along with an initial damage increase, so this is just a new option, not a loss.
• Glyph of Purge Your Purge dispels 1 additional Magic effect. but has a 6,000/1000 sec cooldown. Adds a 6 second cooldown if glyphed, so it's a choice between spammable Purge, or highly effective single-cast Purge.

There's a lot of good in there, and the only thing that comes across as a nerf is the Purge glyph change. Everything else is pretty much what the community's been asking for.

Before you comment on damage numbers; this is still the first pass at the PTR and they typically get mechanical stuff in first, and numbers tweaks later. Plus, we need to see how the changes affect other specs, too; if most other specs get nerfs (I haven't read the full list yet), we may not need the kind of buffs we've been throwing around to catch up.

[Taalyn]

I was very confused at the Elemental Blast change for Restoration since there is nothing similar to what Monks and Druids have in regards to various stat conversions. I am hoping it is a typo.

I am very happy with the Flame shock changes. It was very poor design that current Flame Shock glyph was mandatory. The changes to Elemental Mastery and Shamanistic Rage are very nice for Elemental.

[KCguy]

Flame shock hits a little harder, has a longer duration and with the glyph, heals you. That's win, win in my book.

[Nitwit]

Flame Shock's initial strike damage is unchanged unless I'm reading something wrong.

[Socialhealer]

/instant boner.

LOVING the sham rage, good for pvp and pve
flame shock healing glyph....PLEASE thats nice again both pvp pve, i know the damage isnt huge but every little helps.
stone bulwark improved...i do like that for pve for ticking damage like heroic will it really shines as u get 100% of its use.
EM...very interesting, could it now beat echo...especially with engineering every 1 minute a bloodlust 1920 int...ascendance...wowowow very nice.

EB/UF i hope they will be about equal, i've grown attached to EB really UF ehh i dunno, maybe i'd learn to like it but ever since it was added its felt crap so i guess i have a bad history with it.

[Pum]

Flame Shock's initial strike damage is unchanged unless I'm reading something wrong.

You didn't read anything wrong, but to clarify for you, basically we don't need to have the Glyph of Flame Shock in a PvE setting anymore (optinal glyph). Which means, we won't have any damage reduction on the initial damage of FS and will won't have to cast FS as often as the duration increase has become baseline, which means more Lightning Bolt's wheyyy!

It will be interesting to see how this effects Ancestral Swiftness overall though, because to me, the changes to Elemental Mastery seem to make the former talent slightly redundant in comparison. (Ele PoV)

---------- Post added 2012-12-22 at 02:50 AM ----------

EM...very interesting, could it now beat echo..

I'd like to see how this plays out too. Although fight dependent, Echo was always going to be better as the tiers progressed, but it seems EM could challenge that now.

[Regorill]

Some of these changes look real good coming from an Ele raider. I haven't crunched the numbers but I suspect EM on 1min CD will be the favorite talent of the tier for straight dps if it remains unchanged. This alone leaves me really happy simply because I'm tired of the huge RNG dps swings ele suffers from right now - removing our dependency on echo proccs is a step in the right direction.

UF change seems meh, it's a step in the right direction again to making it competitive with EB but I'm not sure its enough. My thought on UF talent all along is just have talent provide the buffs it does now, but also increase the damage/healing done by UE by 100%; that way it wouldn't be painful to fit into a rotation.

Flameshock glyph change is nice on the basis that I don't have to run with that glyph 100% anymore, but I don't really think the healing is going to be very useful for raiding at all. Currently my flameshock ticks for (off the top of my head) ~8-9k/tick, doesn't seem like 30% of that would have very much of an impact.

[binkenstein]

You didn't read anything wrong, but to clarify for you, basically we don't need to have the Glyph of Flame Shock in a PvE setting anymore (optinal glyph). Which means, we won't have any damage reduction on the initial damage of FS and will won't have to cast FS as often as the duration increase has become baseline, which means more Lightning Bolt's wheyyy!

It will be interesting to see how this effects Ancestral Swiftness overall though, because to me, the changes to Elemental Mastery seem to make the former talent slightly redundant in comparison. (Ele PoV)

---------- Post added 2012-12-22 at 02:50 AM ----------



I'd like to see how this plays out too. Although fight dependent, Echo was always going to be better as the tiers progressed, but it seems EM could challenge that now.

Actually, it means "free glyph slot"

[Glyphtics]

In regards to Enhance:

The slight nerf to Unleashed Fury could mean that Primal Elementalist / Elemental Mastery with a haste build could pull ahead. Not having to glyph Flame Shock is a definite bonus, and can potentially equate to DPS increases in certain circumstances. I imagine Elemental Blast change is either Intellect for Restoration, or Agility for Enhancement, 3,500 Agility will be nice. I wonder if they will ever buff the secondary stat portion of EB, because it doesn't scale as well as PE or UF.

[Pum]

Actually, it means "free glyph slot"

Unbuffed my FS does 6.1k+ per tick, so if the FS glyph was implemented now (without the buff to FS DoT damage), I'd be healed for just over 2k per tick, which seems pretty useless.

[Endus]

Flame Shock's initial strike damage is unchanged unless I'm reading something wrong.

As mentioned, the initial strike will be higher since we're no longer glyphing it; I've updated my comments in the first post to better reflect that.

The new Flame Shock glyph is interesting for PvP, but I don't see using it for PvE unless we really don't need anything else; the heals will be pretty minimal and won't be worth glyphing for, for the most part.

I'd like to see how this plays out too. Although fight dependent, Echo was always going to be better as the tiers progressed, but it seems EM could challenge that now.

One of the big issues with EM was the difficulty in managing cooldowns; on a 2 minute CD, it could be stacked with the first Ascendance, but the second would either require delaying EM or not waiting to stack the two.

Changing it to 1 minute means you don't have to delay anything and it'll mesh nicely with most cooldowns.

On a related note, between the new EM and SR, we'll have both offense and defense CDs on a 60 second cooldown for PvP, which is a good boost.


Also; there were two "Hotfix passive - new" entries in the datamining, and I have no idea what those were so I simply deleted them. But remember; early days yet, we may see more tweaks.

[Nitwit]

As mentioned, the initial strike will be higher since we're no longer glyphing it; I've updated my comments in the first post to better reflect that.

Well, enhancement didn't use the glyph half the time anyway, so for us the initial damage is unchanged and we're just getting the positive aspect of the old glyph baked in.

The new Flame Shock glyph is interesting for PvP, but I don't see using it for PvE unless we really don't need anything else; the heals will be pretty minimal and won't be worth glyphing for, for the most part.

Could be useful on AOE fights for enhancement, since we can have flame shock ticking on several targets at once.

One of the big issues with EM was the difficulty in managing cooldowns; on a 2 minute CD, it could be stacked with the first Ascendance, but the second would either require delaying EM or not waiting to stack the two.

Changing it to 1 minute means you don't have to delay anything and it'll mesh nicely with most cooldowns.

It'll also be hilariously overpowered compared to the other talents on the tier unless they reduce either its duration or the haste provided as compensation for the cooldown reduction, but these are still very early notes, so I think we can safely assume they won't have overlooked that by the time the patch goes live.

[zenga]

I honestly can't see elemental mastery in it;s current form making it live. Yes for ele, but no ff way for resto shaman in pvp. Do you realise what it means giving the best healer in pvp a 20s 30% haste CD every minute?

[Northy]

If heals are free during Shamanistic Rage that's neato. Healing as Ele is like a mana siphon. Does it affect Healing Surge?

[zenga]

If heals are free during Shamanistic Rage that's neato. Healing as Ele is like a mana siphon. Does it affect Healing Surge?

Sham rage only affects offensive spells afaik.

[Northy]

Sham rage only affects offensive spells afaik.

...and back to flaccid.

[Tiberria]

I honestly can't see elemental mastery in it;s current form making it live. Yes for ele, but no ff way for resto shaman in pvp. Do you realise what it means giving the best healer in pvp a 20s 30% haste CD every minute?

It's also going to probably be too strong for PvE resto. Echo of the Elements is already complete garbage for Resto, and was not at all improved. With the change, it's going to be pretty obvious that you will want to drop Ancestral Swiftness, reforge to 2015 haste, and use Elemental Mastery on CD, ensuring that Ascendance and Healing Tide are used with it up.

[Endus]

Sham rage only affects offensive spells afaik.

That said, we get a ton of regen from Rolling Thunder. Negating the mana costs means that, if you run yourself low by spamming heals, you can pop SR and regen a silly amount of mana. With a 5+ target AoE pack, I'd expect that you'd be able to fill yourself from almost zero to full mana by the end of it.

Even for PvP, it'll help offset the overall mana costs by increasing our regen.

[Northy]

I doubt the change to Unleashed Fury will bring it up to par with Elemental Blast for Ele. 10% damage bonus to Lava Burst seems miniscule, would like to see that moved to maybe 25%.

[Mithgroth]

Thanks Endus, for putting up the effort to arrange this thread and changes.
In b4: These are PTR changes, not the full list.

The Good:

• No nerfs (yet) because of resto. I believe the whole community was sick of seeing it as much as I do.
• Talents are being looked at.
• Flame Shock and passive healing: Good solution to encourage active play and survivability, while eliminating a mandatory glyph. However I expect the heal to be tuned around hunters' animal bond glyph or slightly less.
• Arrived a bit late, but still: Shamanistic Rage. Rejoice!
• Unleashed Fury was twice beneficial than other specs for Enhancement. Good to see it nerfed a bit, pushing us to think over the other two. However I still believe Primal Elementalist should provide perminant pets to be on par with other 90 talents.

The Bad:

• Nothing to address silence vulnerability yet. This is very important since every class has one sort of their own thing:
  Before jumping in like: "Just because every class has it...";
  
  Druids are strong against polymorph, rooting/snaring.
  You can't really fear a priest or a warrior.
  DKs are actively immune to CC and they are known as having many anti-caster tools.
  Rogues can be immune to magic or dodge like hell for a short time of period.
  Nobody would disarm a feral.
  Mages can't really be stunned.
  
  List goes on, I hope I'm more clear on what I'm talking about.
  For all the time, Shaman was strong against two types of CC: Fear and Silence. Silence is totally gone and since fear-based classes mostly have a silence, our superiority for fears had a huge hit in a single blow.
  
  I think this is something to be addressed and I even find these type of stuff quite great since, everyone has a weak and a strong point on this kind of thing. And it pushs to develop on-fly tactics in PvP depending on the comp and situation.
  
  
• I do have a feeling that purge cooldown is put just because community QQ. Purge might be powerful or not, that's not my point. However I'd rather see the glyph turning it into a mass dispel with a cooldown instead. It addresses so many issues: reduces its effectiveness in PvP and gives the raid an alternative on those annoying moments when you don't have a priest and need something AoE dispelled in PvE (Vaults trash, HoF Mel'jarak).
  
  I think I could just adapt and live with this if I didn't have any doubts that this is just because of community QQ. Because it's just designed 100% as the purge QQ thread OPs said.
  
  
• Totem talent tier needs changes. We should wait and see on this, my most optimistic guess would be they are aware that tier needs to be worked on but don't have a final decision yet. I hope Blizzard doesn't think that totem tier is fine.
  
  
• Too much haste. This is bad in the big picture.
  We are more bursty now, which we never need after Ascendance (which is easily the best DPS cooldown in the game). I'm unsure if we need more burst in the days while Blizzard is trying to tune down the burst in PvP. It might be possible for a Troll shaman to stay in Bloodlust-level haste for almost 1 minute. Also all these haste buffs will cause us to be GCD locked sooner or later.
  
  I really disagree on Elemental Mastery change, it could be "10% haste and 10% mastery (maybe spirit for resto?)" instead. Having a personal Bloodlust every minute can cause more serious stuff instead of just being a buff to the class.
  
  
• I have no faith in Stone Bulwark, hopefully I'll be wrong about it.
  
  
• Enhancement rotation is too complex now. With the Elemental Blast buff, the spec started to feel overwhelming since we have two fillers to juggle. I don't know how it could be simplified more, but when you add Elemental Blast to the current rotation, it is possible to see the whole action bar on different and short cooldowns.
  
  This arguement can lead to "l2p" or "reroll if you find it hard, it's easy lol", but I believe Enhancement skill cap is getting higher and higher with all the decision making you are supposed to do depending too much on buffs, procs and arranging spell cooldowns while trying to align burst cooldowns and everything.
  
  I personally enjoy very much of this, but it might become tiring if I'm leading a raid or some bosses (mostly end bosses) depending too much concentration. I know many specs and how they work, only a few of them feels close to being as complex as Enhancement.
  
  Maybe it's just me.
  
  
• Resto mastery should be changed at once. Blizzard should acknowladge the obvious problem, even if it's mid-expension.
  PvP side-effects are very well known already, but the design doesn't make much sense to me in PvE too.
  
  It's absolutely too good when the content is new and people are learning the fights, taking extra damage. But once your raid gets better and minimizes incoming damage, it's not really cool anymore.
  
  I don't get it, a healer should have good times and not-so-good times but that shouldn't depend if the boss is on farm or in progress, or simply to personal errors. It can depend on boss types, positioning, resto healing rotation, tank healing or raid healing, but simply not on this.