Shaman opinions and some questions that GC could answer for us.

[Drobnic]

This post is simply to give a place to ask questions for shaman that you want Ghostcrawler to look at. Every day I look on the home page for mmo-champ and there a tons of posts on every other class but never anything about shaman. Be it upcoming changes or whether shaman are in a good spot right now.

I know for a fact that ele dps is one of the very lowest this so far this xpac and I haven't seen many fixes coming for it. Are there any plans to balance this or fix the true issues that plague it (i.e. low sp coefficients for lb or 250% critical damage being used as a crutch)?

I also find it weird that among hybrid classes ele shaman have been at the low end of the pole as far as dps is concerned. They bring much utility to raids but almost all of that utility has been replaced with other classes carrying the buffs our totems used to.

I haven't seen enough this xpac to know where resto shaman sit as far as healing numbers but I see many guilds using them more often than in cata.

Enhancement I'm not too sure about either during this xpac but it seems to be lower than it has been previously.

On the pvp end of things it also seems that ele has been getting buffs in an attempt to fix it but I don't pvp as ele and likely never will. While resto still seems very strong and enhance looks to be the best option for dps in pvp.

Anyone care to elaborate on any of this?

[Boomcats]

I'm doing fine on my resto shammy, don't play enhance, but ele certainly needs some QoL buffs and straight DPS buffs.

Utility is fine, but what I am amazed at is I literally have not seen a blue post on the shaman forums for weeks. This afternoon when I get some time I'm going to post in the Blizzard forums, DK/War/Paladin/rogue/mage/lock have updates once or twice a day, there isnt a shaman update on the entire front page of MMO champion. What the hell?

[Deleted]

The problem I see with elemental, is because it is mostly a simple straightforward spec, there aren't many numbers for them to mess around. For example to buff PVE dmg, nearly every change would greatly affect PVP burst, except for lightning bolt. It also doesn't help that a lot of fights this tier play to Ele's weaknesses with only a couple of fights that play to our strengths, and even then it's mostly gimmicks in the fight. Elemental needs a pretty big overhaul in my opinion to make it be competitive in both pve and pvp.

Enh is actually great so far, I would love a wolves buff just so I can incite fear like I did in wrath but that's merely something that isn't needed would just be fun.

[Deleted]

For example to buff PVE dmg, nearly every change would greatly affect PVP burst, except for lightning bolt.

Zing.

That's what every Elemental Shaman has been talking about for the past 4 months. Buff LB through lazy Shamanism tweaks for the time being, done.

[Drobnic]

What would you guys think about a revamp to ele sp coefficients? we cast lb more often than anything else but it isn't a very reliable source sustain because our dps comes from LvB and lava surge procs. nerf our crit dmg % down to 200 like other classes, add damage to lb either through base or coefficients or both and do the same to our other spells. Since LvB is an auto crit there has to be a way to find a happy medium without totally overhauling everything. Even just making it spec specific where certain spells do x% more base damage or receive x% more from spell power cf's. This would also help with the scaling issue we suffer from in every xpac when the later teirs come and they buff shamanism to make up for it.

In essence what this would do is take away the big numbers we see but add more sustainable numbers to us. Im not sure that would be "fun" but I do like being competitive in raids and having something to do sustained dmg with in pvp couldnt hurt either.

[Moshne]

The Elemental Burst thing in PVP is kind of a red herring at this point. We are being punished for our previous history of insane burst, but we aren't even at the top now (aside from survivability concerns.) Yes, Ascendance is always going to be a powerful CD, but outside of that time period (in which we can be CCed), our burst isn't really that high by comparison.

All that said, I'd just like the devs to answer whether they pay any attention to scaling issues. The #1 problem that has afflicted Ele since we became a "recognized" valid PVE spec is receiving less benefit from Int on our spells than other casters. Until that stops being the case, we will always be behind. We've been getting tiny Shamanism tweaks each expansion, but it isn't keeping up with the inflation that other casters receive. When the devs discuss this though, they say that the players don't understand scaling. Very frustrating.

Also, reverting the 5% nerf to LB on Unleashed Lightning would help as well. I don't understand why they added that in while giving unrestricted movement to hunters, and a similar glyph to Warlocks that only affected them while moving (and now is removed entirely.) They either want non-melee to be able to cast while moving or they don't, these inconsistent restrictions are just awkward.

[Deleted]

That is nothing but a "band-aid" fix though, since they did this every patch in cata, and chances are they will do this in mists as well. When 5.0.4 hit I was kind of shocked at how much less dmg my LB did, and how much more LvB seemed to be doing in comparison to before the patch. Because of this, it also buffed Ascendance (when we actually got it), making it extremely essential to our dps, which isn't a bad thing really, but personally I preferred the old EM from cata/wrath.

It also wouldn't help us with multi target, as elemental flame shock just feels useless in terms of the damage it does. The only reason to use flame shock is to buff and proc our LvB. The speed at which we gain lightning shield charges makes us feel like we are wasting dps by flame shocking up a target and wasting that GCD when we could have used earth shock instead, but at the same point, having them share cds feels unique to elemental and actually kind of fun when you have to use flame shock on another target. In my opinion buffing flame shock dmg would be the most beneficial in both terms of pve and pvp (I don't really pvp much, so I could be totally wrong here), from my understanding in pvp, ignoring survivability problems, if elemental can't keep pressure up on a target we are pretty useless, having a stronger flame shock dot would help keep the pressure up when cc'ed or LoS or whatever happens in pvp, although this would require us to most likely need a dispel protection again.

So as you can see, buffing lightning bolt would be the easiest way, but if they actually sat down and worked out what else to fix, they could slightly change the way elemental plays in certain situations, without making it overpowered. Granted this is all opinion and probably other things in play that make it probably not as viable as I am thinking.

[Moshne]

What would you guys think about a revamp to ele sp coefficients? we cast lb more often than anything else but it isn't a very reliable source sustain because our dps comes from LvB and lava surge procs. nerf our crit dmg % down to 200 like other classes, add damage to lb either through base or coefficients or both and do the same to our other spells. Since LvB is an auto crit there has to be a way to find a happy medium without totally overhauling everything. Even just making it spec specific where certain spells do x% more base damage or receive x% more from spell power cf's.

In essence what this would do is take away the big numbers we see but add more sustainable numbers to us. Im not sure that would be "fun" but I do like being competitive in raids and having something to do sustained dmg with in pvp couldnt hurt either.

We don't really need an overhaul. We are pretty much in last place, but the gap isn't so huge that tweaks won't fix it. Our playstyle is fine, we just need minor coefficient changes to our non-bursty spells (LB and Flame Shock) and a way of making our secondary stats give us better scaling. As it sits now our Haste soft caps at 50%, which we hit frequently due to Heroism and Elemental Mastery, as well as random Haste procs on trinkets, and Crit doesn't benefit our main spell (Lava Burst.) Also, Mastery doesn't affect our Elemental, so essentially every secondary stat has some portion of our rotation it isn't helping. Fix really any two of these problems and we'd be back to the competitive.

[Deleted]

Also, reverting the 5% nerf to LB on Unleashed Lightning would help as well. I don't understand why they added that in while giving unrestricted movement to hunters, and a similar glyph to Warlocks that only affected them while moving (and now is removed entirely.) They either want non-melee to be able to cast while moving or they don't, these inconsistent restrictions are just awkward.

Personally I would prefer a stronger penalty on the Lightning bolt, so that we actually have to choose whether to use the glyph or not, making for more engaging gameplay in terms of movement. But this would require even more balancing.

[Deleted]

Zing.

That's what every Elemental Shaman has been talking about for the past 4 months. Buff LB through lazy Shamanism tweaks for the time being, done.

You could even buff up Flame Shock and Searing Totem and there wouldn't be any PvP burst problems, it just improves single target sustained DPS which seems to be the issue at the moment.

[Moshne]

Personally I would prefer a stronger penalty on the Lightning bolt, so that we actually have to choose whether to use the glyph or not, making for more engaging gameplay in terms of movement. But this would require even more balancing.

I'd be fine with that too, but part of our DPS is based around the assumption we can move while casting. We used to be the ultimate turret class and were heavily penalized on anything with movement. The game paradigm has shifted to casters having something to do while moving, I'm not sure our pleas are going to change that. Making that glyph less valuable would mean we'd need a substantial gain on other spells to compensate. But the fact that even in heavy movement we still aren't super competitive goes to show the state of the class. In Firelands and DS it was our niche, but it has fallen away now.

[Drobnic]

I am amazed at is I literally have not seen a blue post on the shaman forums for weeks. This afternoon when I get some time I'm going to post in the Blizzard forums, DK/War/Paladin/rogue/mage/lock have updates once or twice a day, there isnt a shaman update on the entire front page of MMO champion. What the hell?

Totally agree here, feeling like we are being ignored over other classes even though we have constantly suffered the same issues with lack of scaling and lack of sustain. the only time I felt that I could keep good sustain with ele was the end of BC when movement in fights was almost exclusively a transition in phase thing where you just picked a new spot.

[Deleted]

Making that glyph less valuable would mean we'd need a substantial gain on other spells to compensate.

Yeah this is what I meant by it would require even more balancing, but I think if Blizzard ever put a lot of focus onto elemental as a spec this would be the way to go, it would make the rotation more fun and bring back a bit more of that "turret" feeling.

[Kralljin]

The Elemental Burst thing in PVP is kind of a red herring at this point. We are being punished for our previous history of insane burst, but we aren't even at the top now (aside from survivability concerns.) Yes, Ascendance is always going to be a powerful CD, but outside of that time period (in which we can be CCed), our burst isn't really that high by comparison.

EB+Lvb+Ful still rocks the house, personally i think the Burst outside of Ascendance isn't a huge issue, it's rather that Ascendance is naturally a bad CD for PvP because it requires you to chain cast something.

In PvP there is simply no place for chaining Hardcasts currently, if you don't play with a Hpally you don't even have to enter Arena and hope to get off a decent Ascendance, even if you can outplay to avoid CC's / Interrupts, they still got Def CD's left which counter Ascendance since the Burst is easily predictable and not even happens in a short timeframe.

[Deleted]

I've not seen this mentioned in a long time, but wouldn't it be an idea to do something about Earthquake? Either change it to make it worth using regularly or else create an entirely new spell. Why cast EQ when you can spam CL? Sure it can be pre-emptive dps before combat but during combat I'm sure most, if not everyone, just spams CL. CL is more efficient and reliable. Its always felt like a complete waste of a talent to me. I think the only time I ever used it in MoP was during Stormstout Brewery CM...waiting for adds as we los-ed them. Thoughts of others?

[Deleted]

I've not seen this mentioned in a long time, but wouldn't it be an idea to do something about Earthquake? Either change it to make it worth using regularly or else create an entirely new spell. Why cast EQ when you can spam CL? Sure it can be pre-emptive dps before combat but during combat I'm sure most, if not everyone, just spams CL. CL is more efficient and reliable. Its always felt like a complete waste of a talent to me. I think the only time I ever used it in MoP was during Stormstout Brewery CM...waiting for adds as we los-ed them. Thoughts of others?

Our AE dps is fine, our single target dps and multi-target dps is the issue, there is no point in fixing EQ when the devs should be focusing on fixing the current flaws with the class (not to mention they already buffed CL on ptr and didn't touch EQ so I doubt they care about it anymore).

[Moshne]

I'm not sure I'd say there is no point. Earthquake is really an abomination and it is supposed to be a signature spell of ours. If you look at the "choose Elemental" page when you spec, it names four abilities as Elemental "Signatures": Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst (which everyone has), Fulmination, a passive, and Earthquake which we seldom uses. It isn't very exciting.

It might not really be worth our effort in complaining about it when we have bigger issues, but it certainly contributes to the lack of enthusiasm for the spec.

[Deleted]

Earthquake, while a sad metaphor for the evolution of Elemental as a whole, is no longer relevant. Not only has it been rendered utterly useless by the CL changes (as if it wasn't before), it's also situated in an area where the majority of Shaman are fairly content.

What is the Elemental position now?
-Single Target: Bottom
-Spread out, multi-target (your classic multidot fight): Bottom
-Cleave: Almost bottom
-AoE: Middle of the pack

The CL change is going to improve our Cleave (slightly) and our AoE whenever we can hit 5 targets fairly substantially. We still need that single target buff.
The problem, the way I see it, is: we don't excel at anything to off-set our bad performance on other encounters. On the contrary, we're not even above average on any type of fight this tier.

I'll stick my only 1 suggestion: Buff Lightning Bolt damage through Shamanism. It's a band-aid, it's temporary, it doesn't solve bad scaling we have, but it's one fix I see that does not interfere with Burst/PvP.
I've been reading a lot of Shaman related threads on the official boards, and while people have an unending stream of interesting suggestions and new skills/talents, we'll just have to suck it up that we're not going to get a revamp in this expansion. We should commit to the band-aid fix and pray they do something for the next expac.
I'd like a meaningful change to Searing Totem too, but I won't ask too much (yet).

[Endus]

I'm not sure I'd say there is no point. Earthquake is really an abomination and it is supposed to be a signature spell of ours.

It was okay when it was introduced; the channeled AoE was reasonably competitive, DPS-wise, and we didn't have spam-CL at the time, either. Removing the CD on Chain Lightning meant we had that for cleaves, and it was strong enough to be good enough for AoE, too, meaning the longish cast time for Earthquake was a big tradeoff, and the damage wasn't that much higher in return. The knockdown is both too random to be reliable in PvP, and there are too many immune mobs for it to be a major factor in PvE (plus, since it's random, it's not something healers can rely on).

If I had to fix it, I'd add an "impact" at the start. A big burst for about the same damage as the DoT effect, with a 100% guaranteed knockdown. If you need to, add a 2s delay to the smash to give people a chance to flee in PvP. That increases the damage, the knockdown is a somewhat unique effect, and the 100% chance makes it reliable. That'd make it worth the tradeoff.

[Deleted]

Quoting Dr. House

I'm pretty sure EQ is on the signature list solely because it was our end talent, which nobody took anyway. I agree it needs a change to stay a part of our toolkit, because its niche doesn't really turn up often in raiding scenarios, and even then it isn't really worth casting. I'll admit that "there is no point in fixing EQ" was generally bad wording, but myself, and as well as many other shaman would probably rather have our other more prominent problems fixed before Blizzard tries to play around with the only part of our class that succeeds better than others just to push a spell in, simply because "we should use it more". Either way, I can think of a lot more spells or abilities that are more iconic to elemental than EQ in my opinion that could do with some extra flavoring to flesh out the class, whilst addressing our inherent problems.