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  1. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by Xeonde View Post
    I wish Searing totem wasn't mandatory. I'm sick of it. As Ele its worthless ...
    I'm a little confused as to how something can be mandatory and worthless at the same time.

    If it's mandatory then it must be worthwhile to use it how else could it be mandatory?
    If it has no worth than it wouldn't be mandatory because you wouldn't miss it at all.

  2. #42
    I too would like to see Searing Totem change or get buffed. I was thinking more of Searing Totem applying a debuff dot to the target that stacks up to ~5, and possibly increase the damage Flame Shock does by a certain %. I think it compensates for the lack of damage provided by Flame Shock and Searing Totem itself.

  3. #43
    Quote Originally Posted by Sammoura View Post
    I was thinking more of Searing Totem applying a debuff dot to the target that stacks up to ~5
    Wouldn't that pretty much be the old searing flames that enhance fought to get changed to a buff on the Shaman?

  4. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wataurenyew View Post
    I'm a little confused as to how something can be mandatory and worthless at the same time.

    If it's mandatory then it must be worthwhile to use it how else could it be mandatory?
    If it has no worth than it wouldn't be mandatory because you wouldn't miss it at all.
    It's not 'worthless'. It's fine as Enhancement. The issue with it with Elemental is that it's boring; it doesn't provide anything for the Shaman other than some additional damage. It has such a long duration that replacing it costs little in terms of rotational impact, and there's no cooldown, so replacing it isn't a problem either. When our Fire totems provided a raid buff, THAT made the mechanic "interesting" from a gameplay point of view, since you needed to maximize uptime for the raid's benefit without casting it more often than necessary, but since that was made an aura, Searing Totem is left without much purpose.

    It's still "mandatory" in that it has a high enough DPCT to be more worth casting than another Lightning Bolt, but just barely. And Lightning Bolt, by comparison, is "interesting" because it's what charges up Fulmination and such, which is about as interesting as you want filler to be.

    Elemental either needs a fire totem mechanic that's interesting and important to their rotational success, like Enhancement has in Searing Flames, or for Searing Totem to be removed/totally overhauled somehow, at least for the Elemental spec. But not something like Searing Flames; this is an opportunity to make the specs more different, not more similar.


  5. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by Wataurenyew View Post
    Wouldn't that pretty much be the old searing flames that enhance fought to get changed to a buff on the Shaman?
    Precisely yes. Although the debuff would work better, since it would increase the damage of flame shock ticks, and the debuff is a ticking dot, not something that increases the damage of your lava lash.

  6. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    It's not 'worthless'. ... The issue with it with Elemental is that it's boring; it doesn't provide anything for the Shaman other than some additional damage. ... It's still "mandatory" in that it has a high enough DPCT to be more worth casting than another Lightning Bolt, but just barely.
    I agree that it's boring. I don't think it was very interesting when it was a buff totem either, it didn't take anymore effort or attention to keep it up.

    My point was just that something can't be worthless and mandatory at the same time.

    ---------- Post added 2013-01-31 at 08:25 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Sammoura View Post
    Precisely yes. Although the debuff would work better, since it would increase the damage of flame shock ticks, and the debuff is a ticking dot, not something that increases the damage of your lava lash.
    I don't know, still just seems extremely similar.
    Pretty sure the old searing flames was a small DoT as well as the buff to Lava Lash.
    And you'd just be replacing Lava Lash with Flame Shock.
    Not seeing much of a difference other than the damage is spread over time instead of being all at once and the delivery being on a shorter CD, but with a 30 sec duration what is really changing besides giving a buff to FS with a ramp up time instead of a straight buff.
    It would make sustained single target dps increase, but would probably make target switching even worse.

    You'd not only need to get FS on the new target, but also wait until getting 5 stacks to be at full effectiveness again.
    And the totem would target switch on it's own (one would hope) so not really anything extra for the Shaman to do, not sure it would make the totem more interesting really.

  7. #47
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wataurenyew View Post
    I agree that it's boring. I don't think it was very interesting when it was a buff totem either, it didn't take anymore effort or attention to keep it up.
    I should emphasize that I mean "interesting" in the sense of gameplay; whether it creates interesting choices. That doesn't mean it has to be complicated or really strong.


  8. #48
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    I should emphasize that I mean "interesting" in the sense of gameplay; whether it creates interesting choices. That doesn't mean it has to be complicated or really strong.
    I'm still not sure what choice was really involved though. Granted I'm hardly a top ele Shaman or even very good at it, but what were we choosing not to do in order to drop ST when it was a buff totem?
    I'm going to assume it has something to do with squeezing out every minor bit of dps.
    If that's the case that would explain why you'd find it interesting and I didn't.

    That small gain would hardly be something I'd worry about in comparison to my inability to keep my rotation near perfect for the whole fight.

  9. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by Wataurenyew View Post
    I'm still not sure what choice was really involved though. Granted I'm hardly a top ele Shaman or even very good at it, but what were we choosing not to do in order to drop ST when it was a buff totem?
    I'm going to assume it has something to do with squeezing out every minor bit of dps.
    If that's the case that would explain why you'd find it interesting and I didn't.

    That small gain would hardly be something I'd worry about in comparison to my inability to keep my rotation near perfect for the whole fight.
    Just wanted to point out that buffing an entire raid goes a lot further than a "minor bit of dps". I'm not saying that made it interesting, really, but it did make it that much more important to have up. For instance, 10% Spell Power across 10-25 people over the course of a boss encounter is quite a hefty number.

  10. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by PaintOnASign View Post
    Just wanted to point out that buffing an entire raid goes a lot further than a "minor bit of dps". I'm not saying that made it interesting, really, but it did make it that much more important to have up. For instance, 10% Spell Power across 10-25 people over the course of a boss encounter is quite a hefty number.
    You misunderstood what I was saying.
    The "minor bit of dps" was in reference to what ever it was that you delayed doing to drop the totem, not in regards to what dropping the totem brought.

    I was assuming keeping a 100% up time on the totem because the buff was such a big gain.
    However, I'm not seeing the big choice in when when to drop the totem unless it was to time it just right to squeeze out just a little bit more dps.

    And if that's the case, then it makes sense to me that some could find that more interesting and I'd find it no different, because I'm not good enough at the rotation to care about small increases when there are major increases with getting the rotation tighter that would serve me better.

  11. #51
    I don't know, still just seems extremely similar.
    Pretty sure the old searing flames was a small DoT as well as the buff to Lava Lash.
    And you'd just be replacing Lava Lash with Flame Shock.
    Not seeing much of a difference other than the damage is spread over time instead of being all at once and the delivery being on a shorter CD, but with a 30 sec duration what is really changing besides giving a buff to FS with a ramp up time instead of a straight buff.
    It would make sustained single target dps increase, but would probably make target switching even worse.

    You'd not only need to get FS on the new target, but also wait until getting 5 stacks to be at full effectiveness again.
    And the totem would target switch on it's own (one would hope) so not really anything extra for the Shaman to do, not sure it would make the totem more interesting really.
    Yes, the whole idea is more of a ramp up time, because from what I recall, Blizz doesn't want any PvE buffs to be affecting PvP. It will be a lot more difficult maintaining the 5 stacks in pvp, as the totem can just be one-shot.

    & Searing Totem doesn't last 30 seconds, it's up for the whole minute. It would make wanting to have Searing Totem up the whole time, since it would give a significant dps increase.

    I also think you understood me wrong, Flame Shock isn't going to consume the debuff like Lava Lash would, it would just be a straight damage increase.

  12. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by Sammoura View Post
    Yes, the whole idea is more of a ramp up time, because from what I recall, Blizz doesn't want any PvE buffs to be affecting PvP. It will be a lot more difficult maintaining the 5 stacks in pvp, as the totem can just be one-shot.

    & Searing Totem doesn't last 30 seconds, it's up for the whole minute. It would make wanting to have Searing Totem up the whole time, since it would give a significant dps increase.

    I also think you understood me wrong, Flame Shock isn't going to consume the debuff like Lava Lash would, it would just be a straight damage increase.
    In regards to the 30 seconds I was referring to the duration of the FS DoT.
    That was more a reference to the fact that FS having a shorter CD than LL really didn't mean much since you wouldn't be casting it on CD anyway.
    Yeah, I got that it was a buff that stayed up and not consumed.

    What I'm saying is that such buffs usually have some sort of duration on them that gets refreshed.
    Because of that I still don't think it would cause you to have to keep ST up the whole time, since the dps from the totem wouldn't have changed.
    You'd just be putting it down for the buff, so I guess the question would be how low of a duration would the buff need to be in order to get you to keep ST down more consistently than now.

    But are we really failing to keep ST down now? I mean we may let it expire to finish another cast, but would that time we would normally wait to drop it be long enough for the buff to fall off which would make us drop ST before casting that extra spell?

  13. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by Wataurenyew View Post
    In regards to the 30 seconds I was referring to the duration of the FS DoT.
    That was more a reference to the fact that FS having a shorter CD than LL really didn't mean much since you wouldn't be casting it on CD anyway.
    Yeah, I got that it was a buff that stayed up and not consumed.

    What I'm saying is that such buffs usually have some sort of duration on them that gets refreshed.
    Because of that I still don't think it would cause you to have to keep ST up the whole time, since the dps from the totem wouldn't have changed.
    You'd just be putting it down for the buff, so I guess the question would be how low of a duration would the buff need to be in order to get you to keep ST down more consistently than now.

    But are we really failing to keep ST down now? I mean we may let it expire to finish another cast, but would that time we would normally wait to drop it be long enough for the buff to fall off which would make us drop ST before casting that extra spell?
    Fair point. I guess just buffing the damage from searing totem would be better and more convenient.

  14. #54
    Stone Bulkwark Totem, I feel like this needs to be an Air totem, as a healer I use Earth totems fairly often Tremor/Primal Elementalist/Earthgrab. Its a talent that works against another talent.

    I also do not like how I can't raid heal with HTT and cannot regenerate mana at the same time with MTT. I find that redundant.

  15. #55
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Aviators View Post
    I also do not like how I can't raid heal with HTT and cannot regenerate mana at the same time with MTT. I find that redundant.
    For the same reason Resto druids and Holy priests can't do anything else whilst hymning or tranqing. Just be thankful that you can at least move and cast other spells with HTT down.

  16. #56
    Deleted
    I wouldn't expect anymore buffs particularly in relation to single target DPS in 5.2 according to GC.

    In PvE? They are fine. In PvP? Elemental is a little fragile, which we're addressing in 5.2
    From his twitter.

  17. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by Kejinx View Post
    I wouldn't expect anymore buffs particularly in relation to single target DPS in 5.2 according to GC.

    From his twitter.
    "Pretty happy with PvE overall. Arcane will be fine without Scorch spam. Aff may be too high. UH, Sub, Ele, Arms may be low."
    Tweet from 21.December.

    WTB Explanation.

  18. #58
    Deleted
    Sometimes I wish the people on twitter had a clue. Most of them are there just to vent rage and don't provide any structured or robust feedback.

  19. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by Kejinx View Post
    Sometimes I wish the people on twitter had a clue. Most of them are there just to vent rage and don't provide any structured or robust feedback.
    Twitter doesn't leave much room for structure, but it mostly should be used like "ask a question and move along" and not "ask a question and insult the dev's at the same time".

  20. #60
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    "Pretty happy with PvE overall. Arcane will be fine without Scorch spam. Aff may be too high. UH, Sub, Ele, Arms may be low."
    Tweet from 21.December.

    WTB Explanation.
    The explanation is simple. They haven't started tuning numbers yet. If you've been following patch notes, the changes being made are mostly mechanical.

    They almost always try and get the mechanical stuff locked down to make sure everything's working properly, and THEN try and tune numbers, since if they do it the other way around, chances are the mechanical adjustments require further numbers tweaks.


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