Shamans: Ascendance

[Foxhoundn]

This could be seen as a rant thread, complaining about a class ability is never awesome. In any case, I was thinking of returning to my Shaman, when one decides whether or not they want to play a class, they think of the abilities/spells, how the character looks with armor etc.
When I was thinking about the class, although it will never (personally) be any where near as fun as Enh was back in wrath, its still a decent playing class, with one exception, Ascendance. Think about the way the spell works, it enhances everything and makes you a big laser turret essentially, for me how boring is that? Not to mention the weird elemental thing you turn into just feels very Cata-esque, which for me, just brings up a lot of bad vibes for the class.

TL;DR I dislike almost everything about these types of spells (increased ability output spells), the fact you are almost always relying on these CDs to ever get a kill, or to fall back on in a trouble situation to heal. Going into WoD, the elemental thing you turn into just doesn't make sense to me or feel right in any way. So maybe we can try to get the appearance changed?

What do you guys think?

Whatttttttttttttttttttttttt You have a very interesting meaning of what's fun! (no offense)

[Crisius]

Enhance is one of the best single target dps specs in the game overall, why would you want it changed? They are exceptional even over longer fights

I much prefer the UF playstyle over the PE/EM turret-mode some shamans are going. Shamans are very good indeed, but even going for a build centered around sustained DPS, the class revolves around bursting as much as you can in the pull and hoping the boss dies before your DPS drops. Same can be applied to certain other classes and speccs, and in general I feel it's something this game doesn't need.

[Raiju]

Whatttttttttttttttttttttttt You have a very interesting meaning of what's fun! (no offense)

Some people like more unforgiving and faster play, which is what wrath was (unfortunately some people complained)

I do wonder if people wanting ascendance gone and 100% sustained dps like in cata actually played seriously then? It was horrific on some fights. There was no advantage. You were terrible for certain roles because you had no CD's, you couldn't make a difficult part of the fight noticeably shorter because you had no CD's. You were just constant same dps. You gained no advantage on short fights, etc.

[Hebrewhammer305]

i think ascendance is just fine the way it is

[Lavindar]

Some people like more unforgiving and faster play, which is what wrath was (unfortunately some people complained)

I do wonder if people wanting ascendance gone and 100% sustained dps like in cata actually played seriously then? It was horrific on some fights. There was no advantage. You were terrible for certain roles because you had no CD's, you couldn't make a difficult part of the fight noticeably shorter because you had no CD's. You were just constant same dps. You gained no advantage on short fights, etc.

I still remember Spine of Deathwing, RL calling use of cooldowns to kill the last tendril, and I just there, doing the same thing I did the whole fight...

[Embermoon]

Only thing I don't like about ascendance is the fact that the synergy enhancement has with this cooldown and the massive array of proccs in the pull basically makes enhancement shaman godmode for a short fight, and only mediocre for a longer fight. I personally would prefer sustained DPS. That being said, the feeling of popping ascendance is great, and I don't mind the visuals although I feel a glyph to remove or change it would be warranted.

I remember when enhancement had zero burst. I'm much happier now, with it. Plus, my experience has been that enhancement has excellent sustained dps. What makes you say it's mediocre?

[Crisius]

I remember when enhancement had zero burst. I'm much happier now, with it. Plus, my experience has been that enhancement has excellent sustained dps. What makes you say it's mediocre?

If you scrolled up you'd see me answer that question from another poster. I'm not saying enhancement isn't good, it is. It's very good as a matter of fact, and ascendance is indeed something that made enhancement more fun than it was without any special CD's. But if the choice was between having classes being heavily reliant on burst and classes doing sustained damage, and having all classes doing sustained damage with a limited amount of cooldowns and especially cooldown-stacking, I'd go with option nr.2.

Having classes with such powerful cooldowns to stack means the balance blizzard is trying to maintain between classes' performance goes through a roller-coaster every new tier, because as fights get shorter, these certain classes start outperforming the 7 others by a mile. Try uploading a random enhancement shaman from wowprogress top 10 simDPS (pref. with primal fire elemental) into simcraft, sim him at 450 seconds, then sim him again at 250 seconds (currently roughly the average time good guilds kill Iron Juggernaut). Try doing this with again with a class that doesn't have as powerful CD's to stack, like a death knight or a warrior, and you'll quickly see a pattern. While you're at it, check the amount of damage the enhancement shaman is doing in the pull and what his average sustained DPS throughout the rest of the fight is.

My choice of wording when I wrote "mediocre" might not be exact, in fact enhancement isn't really as low as a lot of other classes even solely on sustained DPS, but I do think you're underestimating the damage contribution from CD stacking in the pull of a fight.

This being said, I don't wish to derail this thread any further.

[kosajk]

If you scrolled up you'd see me answer that question from another poster. I'm not saying enhancement isn't good, it is. It's very good as a matter of fact, and ascendance is indeed something that made enhancement more fun than it was without any special CD's. But if the choice was between having classes being heavily reliant on burst and classes doing sustained damage, and having all classes doing sustained damage with a limited amount of cooldowns and especially cooldown-stacking, I'd go with option nr.2.

Having classes with such powerful cooldowns to stack means the balance blizzard is trying to maintain between classes' performance goes through a roller-coaster every new tier, because as fights get shorter, these certain classes start outperforming the 7 others by a mile. Try uploading a random enhancement shaman from wowprogress top 10 simDPS (pref. with primal fire elemental) into simcraft, sim him at 450 seconds, then sim him again at 250 seconds (currently roughly the average time good guilds kill Iron Juggernaut). Try doing this with again with a class that doesn't have as powerful CD's to stack, like a death knight or a warrior, and you'll quickly see a pattern. While you're at it, check the amount of damage the enhancement shaman is doing in the pull and what his average sustained DPS throughout the rest of the fight is.

My choice of wording when I wrote "mediocre" might not be exact, in fact enhancement isn't really as low as a lot of other classes even solely on sustained DPS, but I do think you're underestimating the damage contribution from CD stacking in the pull of a fight.

This being said, I don't wish to derail this thread any further.

if some guild is killing boss in 250 sec i dont think thaye care how many shamans or other clases they have in raid cose prabobly they have that boss on farm for long long time ;P things you are talking about matters really on progres and i never heard about guild that would stack shamans(ora any other class in that metter) for their burst so i dont really se the problem you are talking about

[Spectie]

Actually a lot of guilds had to stack mages on heroic spine of deathwing specifically for their burst.
If given the option to have my dps being super consistent and never really affected by uptime, downtime, or killtime
or
having my dps flexible and allowing it to excel on shorter fights due to high burst on the pull, make extremely difficult "burn phases" shorter by holding cooldowns for those, or scaling extremely well due to dps enhancing gear growth synergizing with big cooldowns, then I will always take the latter.
I raided in cata when we were the epitome of consistency, having the burst is substantially more helpful in a raiding environment and a much more engaging and dynamic playstyle IMO.

[kosajk]

by "never" i mean never in mop yea there was been times when some clases was been stacked and others have ben taken in number of 1 to give WF but we are talking about cureent expansion with burst and sustain dps issues ;P

[Embermoon]

If you scrolled up you'd see me answer that question from another poster. I'm not saying enhancement isn't good, it is. It's very good as a matter of fact, and ascendance is indeed something that made enhancement more fun than it was without any special CD's. But if the choice was between having classes being heavily reliant on burst and classes doing sustained damage, and having all classes doing sustained damage with a limited amount of cooldowns and especially cooldown-stacking, I'd go with option nr.2.

Having classes with such powerful cooldowns to stack means the balance blizzard is trying to maintain between classes' performance goes through a roller-coaster every new tier, because as fights get shorter, these certain classes start outperforming the 7 others by a mile. Try uploading a random enhancement shaman from wowprogress top 10 simDPS (pref. with primal fire elemental) into simcraft, sim him at 450 seconds, then sim him again at 250 seconds (currently roughly the average time good guilds kill Iron Juggernaut). Try doing this with again with a class that doesn't have as powerful CD's to stack, like a death knight or a warrior, and you'll quickly see a pattern. While you're at it, check the amount of damage the enhancement shaman is doing in the pull and what his average sustained DPS throughout the rest of the fight is.

My choice of wording when I wrote "mediocre" might not be exact, in fact enhancement isn't really as low as a lot of other classes even solely on sustained DPS, but I do think you're underestimating the damage contribution from CD stacking in the pull of a fight.

This being said, I don't wish to derail this thread any further.

I read it (and re-read it to double-check, before posting), but you weren't exactly answering the question I was asking. This post gives me more insight into what you're getting at, though, which sounds like you're defining "sustained dps" as everything minus major CDs like bloodlust, fire ele, ascendance, EM, etc. If that's the case, then I would agree. That specific component is indeed mediocre, compared to other specs. However, it's somewhat unfair to judge that component, since the spec design (burst) necessitates that the sustained component be lowered, to compensate. (Note that my definition of "sustained dps" would be closer to an aggregate of damage over all current-content boss fights, with all abilities)

I can also understand that your opinion/preference is for less, or even no burst. I disagree with that, as I believe burst mechanics make fights more interesting. Sitting there going through a rotation, doing the same dps every fight gets boring. To each his own, though.

[Recom]

And once again the discussion has shifted to a burst Vs. no burst non-sense.

Nobody is saying Blizz need to remove enha/ele burst entirely, some of us are saying they need to tone it down. That's it. We don't need to do 4x our sustained DPS in a 15sec window, a 15/20% buff would be more than enough, especially taking into account that some of the lost burst would be baked into our sustained DPS.
The result would be more consistent specs that don't revolve entirely around those 15 secs every 3 min.

[Raiju]

And once again the discussion has shifted to a burst Vs. no burst non-sense.

Nobody is saying Blizz need to remove enha/ele burst entirely, some of us are saying they need to tone it down. That's it. We don't need to do 4x our sustained DPS in a 15sec window, a 15/20% buff would be more than enough, especially taking into account that some of the lost burst would be baked into our sustained DPS.
The result would be more consistent specs that don't revolve entirely around those 15 secs every 3 min.

Don't take PE then. I find I sustain 250k-300k~ while bursting 600k~ with UF. That is fairly in line with a majority of other specs because that also includes trinkets proccing at start of the fight, base fire ele, etc.

[Crisius]

*Well written post*

You are indeed correct regarding what I meant about sustained DPS, I apologise for being vague. Having an arsenal of cooldowns is great fun, I love it on my enhancement shaman aswell. But when my alt-shammy in slightly above average gear is bursting 1,2 million DPS in the pull and ends up in the mid-range of 3-400k DPS on Iron Juggernaut due to a semi-quick kill, I'd say I have a valid reason to say the synergy of having that many major CD's along with trinkets, pre-potting and lust has brought the whole ordeal a bit out of balance in comparison to some other classes.

The playstyle, the class design - they're both awesome. I love enhancement, and I love ascendance (although some new skin-glyphs would be cool). But if the previously mentioned synergy, through some minor changes in mechanics, got toned down, and the downtime DPS between turreting got toned up, I'd love it equally, if not more.

[Voidism]

Would be nice to instead have a cd that double (or whatever number is balanced) our damage for up to 15 seconds, and then you get a debuff making you deal half damage for up to 15 seconds also being unable to enter that "form" again. The cooldown would be equal to the time spent in the form.

That way we'd have burst when we wanted, but still being cd-less if one prefer that. :P

[Drikkink]

I know the gripe here is mainly enh (despite the fact that enh has literally never been in a better place), but I sure remember a time when ele shaman wasn't a 3 minute burst class.

They were a nothing. They didn't matter. Their damage was atrocious on single target. Their cleave niche could be filled by some melee fairly easily. They were basically totem bots.

Now... well ele still sucks in the grand scheme of things, but the niche is much more defined. Incredible 3 minute CD single target and/or cleave burst with some low spike damage in between as well as a lot of healing (HTT, AG) and damage (stormlash, spell haste) utility.

[Darksoldierr]

Enhance relies way too much on Asc cd to kill anything in PvP. Get CCd and you lose your window. Get 15 sec of freedom and you rape almost anything. Such a terrible design

Also on a side note, we need a PvP and PvE thread, half the posts talk about pve while the other pvp

[Mueller Greyhound]

I like ascendance. You hit so hard by just throwing LvB, it is one of my favorite burst.

[Nexii]

I think Ascendence is fine for Resto Shaman. It used to be that we had next to zero powerful CDs, and that was really painful for hardmode raiding. Perhaps for Elem it needs to be toned down a little, and DPS upped a bit when out of Ascendence.