New Dev Interview: Elemental

[zimboombafoo]

One Elemental change being considered is making Flame Shock tick crits cause Lava Surge instead of just a chance on a tick.

Wouldn't this be like a giant nerf??

[dremnit]

an incredible nerf

[Teriz]

An incredibly stupid and giant nerf.

[Socialhealer]

well it's current 20% per tick right?

currently in raids i am 22% crit, this is a buff for me currently, i would gain a 10% increase on my current procs. in 5.4 good geared ele's should be 25% crit at least.

but think about UVLS trinket(100% crit)...it procs...cast flame shock, now for the next 30 seconds EVERY tick of flame shock is a lava surge......wow!

[Deleted]

Would be a buff unless you have really bad gear. Would also be completely broken with lei shen trinket if it snapshots on flame shock, probably even making the lfr version BiS throughout t16.

[Purenight]

One Elemental change being considered is making Flame Shock tick crits cause Lava Surge instead of just a chance on a tick.

Wouldn't this be like a giant nerf??

Do you have a link to where this is posted?

[zimboombafoo]

Do you have a link to where this is posted?

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/

dev interview top of page

[Kralljin]

I got Ilvl539 and i'm pretty close to 20% Crit, since 20% is still the Lava Surge proc chance it would be a minor nerf to me but a buff to crit and probably a buff with T16.

But considering that even with T16 Gear you will slightly above 20% Crit i doubt that this change currently makes sense, as it would be minor buff ONLY in BiS Gear and a nerf to anyone else.

Lava Surge needs a base chance + a modifier that scales with critical strike if they want to make such a change, or FS needs some change that it has like 2x of your original crit chance.

[zimboombafoo]

why would they even change the way lava surge works though? do they feel it procs too often or something?

[Deleted]

I got Ilvl539 and i'm pretty close to 20% Crit, since 20% is still the Lava Surge proc chance it would be a minor nerf to me but a buff to crit and probably a buff with T16.

Almost 20%, is that fully raidbuffed? You need to take into account 5% crit, 1k int from flask, 300 int from food, and 5% int from kings as well. Kinda doubt it is with your high ilvl. And in combat it'll go up a tad more even with certain trinket procs and weapon enchant.

[Lavindar]

I don't play elemental, but isn't the best now to reforge out of crit? Maybe this change will make crit more valuable and be above the 20% threshold

[Socialhealer]

Almost 20%, is that fully raidbuffed? You need to take into account 5% crit, 1k int from flask, 300 int from food, and 5% int from kings as well. Kinda doubt it is with your high ilvl. And in combat it'll go up a tad more even with certain trinket procs and weapon enchant.

i feel like you are the only other person who understands how elemental works in this thread, everyone else is like OMG huge nerf this is bad why do it.

and only me and you realise you will be above 20% crit in raids, with procs trinkets flask food elemental blast, and even higher gear, 5% crit from mage/feral/hunter.

[Deleted]

i feel like you are the only other person who understands how elemental works in this thread, everyone else is like OMG huge nerf this is bad why do it.

It really seems so yes.
It's very hard to imagine anyone with somewhat relevant current gear (500+ ilvl) to not have 20% crit raidbuffed atm. You'd need to have virtually no crit rating on any piece whatsoever, and probably also gem secondaries. Even then I'd imagine it's still a wash or very close to it. Only people it would suck for is freshly dinged elementals I assume, but then again heroic dungeons is about spamming chain lightning anyway.

[twinkleblur]

wasnt there a post a while back about ele being arounf 55% mastery or higher and 50% haste so we were actually going for crit this time around? but yes i agree it would be a nerf. its like blizzard just doesnt get that ele shams just dont find crit attractive at all.

[Lavindar]

wasnt there a post a while back about ele being arounf 55% mastery or higher and 50% haste so we were actually going for crit this time around? but yes i agree it would be a nerf. its like blizzard just doesnt get that ele shams just dont find crit attractive at all.

They don't see it attractive because of the low impact they have, Enhance saw the same issue with haste in cata, and in MoP they made it that haste is as good as others stats with changes like this.

[zimboombafoo]

okay so it COULD be a buff in pve....but how about pvp??

[Socialhealer]

okay so it WILL be a buff in pve....but how about pvp??

^fixed, for pvp it looks like a nerf yeh i can't imagine you will hit 20% crit unless you're forging a decent amount towards it, also i can't imagine a huge nerf as long as you have a mage buff, so for rbg no loss, but arena it'd hit ele quite hard.

[Aleksej89]

Jesus my elem has like 15% crit without any raid buffs, even just with raid buffs that change would be awesome - plus the crit scaling gets improved.

[Boogums]

why would they even change the way lava surge works though? do they feel it procs too often or something?

OP doesn't post any fucking context with his question. The concern is they want to make crit more attractive for elemental. So if they put this change in, people could start valuing crit more.

[Endus]

Not only are people likely to be higher than 20% crit, the other factor people forget is itemization value. This obviously will increase the value of Crit, for us. If this means it becomes on-par or better than Haste or Mastery, then our itemization priorities change, and we potentially push Crit rather than Reforging it away at every opportunity.

Particularly as more LvBs from Lava Surge is a highly valuable thing, since we get auto-crits with those. Especially after the last change, which increased the cast time, making an instant-cast proc a stronger cast than a hard-cast.

For PvP, I'd imagine this is a great change. People already complain about the long cast times we have, and some Elemental players prefer to avoid hard-casting anything. For those players, after this change, stacking Crit becomes a potentially feasible alternative; much higher Crit chances mean many more instant-cast Lava Surges, unless the enemy is dispelling those constantly.

Hard to see this as a nerf, overall.