Mechanically speaking, how are shamans doing in beta?

[Blithe]

I'm honestly quite disappointed with the work Celestalon and his team has done. It feels as if they're changing things just for the sake of changing things, and more often than not, classes that were perfectly fine before are having issues now, and classes that already had issues beforehand are now much worse.

Sure, there are a few quality of life changes here and there but in the end, is it all really worth it? Let's just try and keep our hopes up I guess; I've already made the decision that I'm playing Enhancement due to what's happening to Elemental and Restoration and I sincerely hope I don't have to change class after that, either.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

At this point, I'll just wait for their wall of text at the end of the expansion talking about how their vision was bad and how they feel bad. Celestalon will spearhead damage control and echo points brought up in the beta to explain why it failed but with 90% less social skills.

[Zixan]

Theres a lot of hate being thrown around, because it is easy to throw around.

I'm a heroic raider (Mac@Sargeras), and love Current Elemental and Enhance both. I have firm believings I'm going to love both after the expansion drops, as well.

Elemental:
The first elephant in the room in Lightning Bolt. We have been able to cast it while moving or a little over an expansion now. Blizzard views this as a mistake, because it was a quick fix for one raid boss (H Ragnaros) and ever since then, we've been stuck to it like a child on a titty. Now, its good that we're losing it. Reason being, every class has something that they can trade off for movement. Meaning, they can move, but will deal less damage while doing so. Frost Mages have to be picky about timing, else they just cast an unbuffed Ice Lance, Arcane Mages, just don't move if you can. Fire Mages go from Fireball to Scorch (loss), Shadow Priests Mind Flay to SW:P (huge loss), Boomkins DoT spam (pretty decent loss). Warlocks DO have KJC, but they are refusing other talents that could be a dps gain, effectively a loss. Shamans are no different in the sense that we deal less damage while moving. It just so happens, that we can't opt into planting and gunning. If you'd notice, our single target dps is a bit low on fights nowadays. This is because we are effectively forced to be constantly paying the "Movement tax". We don't loose damage from moving, but don't gain damage from standing still, either. Yes, being able to move while casting lightning bolt is great, and it is definitely something that is fun to play, but its costing us those numbers. Trust me on this one. We still have many ways do deal damage while moving. The increase of Lightning Shield stacks aide to this. You can trade ES for LB at 5 to 7 stacks still, and still technically be a dps gain (if you have to move). So Fulmination is more Flexible. Spirit Walkers Grace will require a little more picky usage. Take it off your Ascendance Macros. How many times do you actually need to move during ascendance. Maybe wait for a spot you KNOW you'll have 15 seconds. Etc. This is going to be a separation from the good and the great. You should be excited about ways to be better!

Moving on, Echo of the Elements. Ah, everyone is up in flames about it. Personally, I like the idea. It blends well with Elemental Fusion, (will note that later) and it is basically a second Lava Surge effect. Think about it. The bulk of the damage you gain from Lava Surges, aren't the instant Lava Bursts, they're the Lava Bursts that get reset very shortly after you use them. This is pure..that... You get to cast two Lava Busts exactly one after another, like a mini Ascendance. That's actually a pretty big deal. Now, yes they have the chance to overlap and not gain benefit. Guess what, so do Lava Surges. Lava Surge is (almost) completely worthless in Ascendance. It shortens your LvB cast by 0.5 seconds before haste is taken into account. Chances are, that wouldn't change the amount of Lava Bursts you casted, by the way. Anyway, back on topic. Echo of the Elements on live is way overpowered for Elemental. Think about it. You're mad that you don't get to use it on every single fight, in every single scenario, every single time. That's actually bad. Secondly, for those beta testers who like it. Binkenstein did report to Celestalon that EotE has significantly less throughput dps than the other talents in that row, and the proc chance would need to be more than tripled to be near equal. This has yet to be balanced, so don't worry about the actual output of it, just ease your minds that it is being attentioned. Fact of the matter is, its a different playstyle that should be equal to the others. If you don't like the feel of it? fine, don't take it. You'll actually have that option now. Be glad you do!

Next, Elemental Fusion. I'm only bringing this up next because I mentioned it a second ago. The main reason I wanted to bring this up at all was because someone sited it as being a no brainer, and no extra challenge. This is simple 100% false. I created a Weak Aura is beta solely to track this, as it did make a difference. If you want to talk metagame, it takes the DPET (Damage per Execute Time) of Flame Shock from being less than Lava Burst to more than Lava Burst. Meaning its the second most important spell at that point, meaning having 2 stacks of EF when you cast it is the second most important thing in your rotation. But wait! There's more. EF can also be used to buff Earth Shock's damage. (By the way, ATM ES with full Fulm is the most powerful spell we have at the moment.) However, it only buffs Earth Shock, and NOT the Fulmination. So while using EFx2 on ES isn't necessarily a loss, it will be if you can't get 2 stacks of EF by the time you have to cast Flame Shock again. What this ends up doing for the rotation, is you have to space your shocks to be almost in an alternating form. Think about how Boomkins have to keep up those 2 dots as they cycle through Lunar and Solar phases. They do Moonfire, 10 to 15seconds later, they do Sunfire. This is the same type of play. It requires more finesse in shock management, and I absolutely love it.

One topic not being discussed is the built in "Pandemic" effect, and the near tripled size of Lightning Shield. This solves a problem many shaman have been having trouble with for a while now. Shared Cooldown of shocks. Now, let me get something clear, this doesn't solve that problem but it does do one thing. Once Flame Shock has 9 seconds remaining, you can refresh it for no loss in damage. Meaning, If you're nearing a full Lightning Shield, you can refresh the Flame Shock early enough so that you wont have <5 seconds on Flame Shock, and a full Fulmination. Inversely, Fulmination damage hasn't changed per stack yet, meaning once you cross about 5 to 6 stacks, its still technically a DPS increase to use Earth Shock. Stop; I know what you're going to say, its more damage to use it at 19 or 20 stacks. You're not wrong. But when it means that you wouldn't have Flame Shock up during a Lava Burst, or would be wasting charges at full 20 stacks, it could be a problem. There is still ways to micromanage the shocks so that the spec still feels interesting, but its also a little more forgiving to let them go a little bit. This is very good.

AoE. They days of ruling hand over fist with one button are over. Chain Lightening is still a very powerful and responsive AoE. You still have the good old Senator Palpatine swag. It is still the absolute KING is 5 target burst AoE. Burst being that they will be alive for less than 10 seconds. However, the Earth Quake is a buff, that doesn't affect Chain Lightening. Just because EQ is being shoehorned into our rotation, doesn't mean Chain Lightening is being nerfed, because it isn't being nerfed by any significant amount. The only thing that is being changed is that we now have good, reliable, constant, heavy AoE damage for everything past that 5 targets. As of right now, on live, if 10 targets show up, we just Chain Lightening. In WoD, no one is telling you that you can't do that. In fact, doing that will give you the same dps that it would on live. But, if you choose to use EQ, you will go up in the charts. Yes, EQ is a little odd for us to thing about using right now. I don't disagree with that. That being said, it it feels soooooooo good to be able to compete even more in an area we have previously never been able to. (+5 targets). That's more good news! This is a buff, but you don't have to take it if you don't want.

TL-DR I digress on Elemental. Fact of the matter is, a lot of the changes to elemental are increasing the skill cap, while leaving the "easy to play button masher" in there. As a serious, Heroic, damn-near-professional raider, I think this is an awesome set changes. And I am absolutely more than thrilled to see Elemental Flourish this next expansion. Don't be caught playing your "new main" when we are even more awesome than before.

[shamantime]

I agree with you wholeheartedly on cast-on-the-move.

Echo of the Elements on the other hand, I completely disagree. It's just like you said, a "mini ascendance." If that's the case why do we need it? We already have 2 ways to reset the cooldown of Lava Burst, with Lava Surge and Ascendance. Echo is redundant and locks Elemental down more so than it should be. Echo is also completely horrid whilst Ascendance is active, it grants the same effect. Lava Surge during Ascendance is not as bad as you claim it to be. Lava Surge > Echo in that you do not have to hardcast your next Lava Burst and instead it is instant. Echo is inferior to Lava Surge, and I'm not getting what you are saying about about "It shortens your LvB cast by 0.5 seconds before haste is taken into account" It's not a matter of "if you don't like it, don't take it", if people don't like the talent then it shouldn't be there in the first place. I want my talents to be as close to being equal in output as possible (obviously being completely equal is hard or impossible) while also being able to enjoy them regardless of what choice I take. I know for a fact plenty of Shaman do not like the talent selection going into WoD, especially seeing as they are lackluster at best. Liquid Magma for one was looking to be a great talent damage-wise but the fact that it's attached to a fire totem really made me dislike it.

Many Shaman including myself don't like EQ for our AoE repertoire. The posts I've seen on the forums explain that EQ is too clunky for our AoE rotation. It's cast time, target circle, cooldown and the fact that adds can and sometimes inevitably be moved out of the aoe. Many other ranged specs that have the cast time/target circle type AoE, can for the most part be placed again,to readjust it, for more damage on the mobs without incurring a CD. The forcing of EQ into our AoE playstyle is akin to forcing Searing Totem back into our rotation, regardless that a huge amount of people dislike the abilities.

If anything these changes are pushing more and more people,who play Elemental, to go and play alternate specs.

Celestalon should consider increasing the duration of Lava Surge from 6 seconds to 12 seconds, and allows Lava Surge to stack twice. Flame Shock has procced LS multiple times in a row several times, and it can be hard to keep up with them if you don't want to waste the procs. With this change, in PvE it can lessen the dps loss of overlapping Surge procs and in PvP it can help tame our rng burst by allowing us to hold onto procs for future use. [ Lava Surge (Passive)Your next Lava Burst is instant, this effect lasts 12 seconds. Limit two charges. ]

In addition, a look at Searing Totem would be great, I personally would like it to be removed, it's an immobile form of damage and can be killed instantly. If being removed is not a choice, I've seen some people recommend the Healing Stream treatment on Searing Totem, 15 sec duration and 30 sec CD.

[Deleted]

Enhancement feels like a shell of its former self to me. A lot of changes they've made just seem to be.. pointless really. It's lost a lot of its synergy and direction when compared to MoP, although rotationally the spec is almost exactly the same.

Earth shock being replaced by frost shock is an example of a really unnecessary change. Frost shock doesn't synergise or meld with any sort of ability, while earth shock fit with the other lightningy/nature spells, in addition to benefiting from the stormstrike debuff. UE no longer deals damage, but on paper that's completely fine. However, in practice it does feel somewhat.. unsatisfying. I guess this might be due to the fact I'm just used to it doing damage I suppose. The removal of static shock has made Lightning Shield a pointless buff really, save for maybe a tiny amount of reflective damage throughout the encounter. It shows poor design when such an iconic ability is effectively left dead in the water. This also comes to the next point, that the stormstrike debuff now only affects what is effectively one ability: your maelstrom discharge. Not really the end of the world, there are other debuffs out there which affect only one ability I believe. It does feel like an unnecessary change however. Although we had a niche for having crazy single target burst, that's obviously gone in WoD. Our burst on pull is still fairly impressive due to having so many CDs, but nowhere near where it is on live. Our CDs alone kinda feel "meh", and they only feel like they're making a meaningful impact when you use multiple ones together.

None of these changes are major by themselves, but they all just seem to be pointless (save maybe the crazy burst) and have a negative impact on the feel of the spec overall. Basically, the spec feels like it's gone from something cohesive to something disjointed and "patchwork" feeling, and with no focus.

Our AoE is much improved though, to be fair. More spread, more range on spread (12-20y), buffed magma totem, LM, FN hitting like a truck (almost definitely will be nerfed, though). With baseline 15% per FS tick LL reset, AoE feels much more flexible and powerful.

[Zixan]

Echo of the Elements on the other hand, I completely disagree. It's just like you said, a "mini ascendance." If that's the case why do we need it? We already have 2 ways to reset the cooldown of Lava Burst, with Lava Surge and Ascendance. Echo is redundant and locks Elemental down more so than it should be. Echo is also completely horrid whilst Ascendance is active, it grants the same effect. Lava Surge during Ascendance is not as bad as you claim it to be. Lava Surge > Echo in that you do not have to hardcast your next Lava Burst and instead it is instant. Echo is inferior to Lava Surge, and I'm not getting what you are saying about about "It shortens your LvB cast by 0.5 seconds before haste is taken into account" It's not a matter of "if you don't like it, don't take it", if people don't like the talent then it shouldn't be there in the first place. I want my talents to be as close to being equal in output as possible (obviously being completely equal is hard or impossible) while also being able to enjoy them regardless of what choice I take. I know for a fact plenty of Shaman do not like the talent selection going into WoD, especially seeing as they are lackluster at best. Liquid Magma for one was looking to be a great talent damage-wise but the fact that it's attached to a fire totem really made me dislike it.

I see you are passionate about Echo, but a lot of the points you're stating are either not as major as you seem to be thinking, or simply missing a small element to it.

1: Why do we need another reset for LvB?
Until every single Lava Burst has absolutely 0 seconds of cooldown, (think perma ascendance) it will be benificial to have them reset earlier. Just because we have Lava Surge and Ascendance, doesn't mean that Echo conflicts with them, or isn't a dps gain. There is one, and only one instance where Echo can be wasted outside of Ascendance. I'll cover that in a second.

2: Speaking of Ascendance and Echo, you're absolutely right that Echo is utterly useless inside of Ascendance. Howerever, with that logic, Elemental mastery is utterly useless outside of its 20 second duration. Similarly, Fire Elemental Totem is utterly useless outside of its 1m duration. But, lets get back on topic. Echo doesn't do shit inside ascendance. Remember though, 15 seconds every 3 minutes is 8.3% of your rotation. So mearly 8.3% of the time, Echo is "useless" Thats negligable, seeing as its the other 91.7% of the time that really matters, right? You're not wrong that it sucks in Ascendance, its everything else that counts. The "Mini Ascendance" reference was to try to make the link that 15 echo procs = 1 free Ascendance.

3: The effect where 8.3% of the time Echo is useless applies to Lava Surge. Lava Surge's major component of dps is resetting the CD of Lava Burst. While you're in Ascendance, that wont happen. The only other thing a Surge proc will do is make a 2 second LvB cast a 1.5 second instant cast, or shaving off .5 second. However, this would have to mean that you would get an extra Lava Burst in in Ascendance for it to matter, which will be rare and negligible.

4: Your statement that Lava Surge > Echo is actually slightly off kilter. Because the bulk of the dps gain of Lava Surge is the fact that Lava Burst is reset early, it depends on when that Lava Burst is reset. If you get a surge proc 0.5 seconds before Lava Burst would come off cooldown, it is a very small increase in dps. At that point, the only thing the surge proc is benefiting you is taking the cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds. Which again, is negligible. Echo however, is equivilant to getting a lava surge proc instantly after shooting a lava burst, or as your casting it, or the MAXIMUM increase in damage, that surge could possible provide. That is a BIG increase in damage.

Remember that hardcasting a lava burst takes 2 seconds, and instant casting a lava burst takes 1.5 seconds. (GCD) DPS wise, thats a very small difference, especially when you start rolling haste into things, as the more haste you get, the smaller the difference is. Echo in not inferior to Lava Surge, and if fact blends really well with it. If you shoot lava burst, gain an echo proc, you would have to wait 8 seconds to cash that in. If Surge procs 2 seconds later, you cast a surge, then your second (echo'd) lava burst. That echo Lava burst happened 3 seconds later, rather than 9. The surge proc can reset the CD, so that you can use echo earlier. Its actually pretty neat in practice.

The thing is that Surge, MIGHT be a dps increase when it procs, echo WILL be a dps increase when it procs. Its also great to quickly fill up your EF to drop a flame shock earlier.

People don't like Earthquake because no one uses it. Its a change to your rotation no doubt, but you're actively denying a buff to AOE that we don't have. (+5 targets). "Clunky" is a very vague and volatile word. It describes almost nothing as to what actually happens, and it spreads like the plague as soon as someone says it. As a raider, who has used this ability for AoE in the right (and wrong) times, it a change from the "33333333333333333" rotation, yes. It goes from "334 33333333333" as far as key presses go. Your issue with placement is one-sided. Other classes that channel and can move it (think blizzard) do have the ability to move it, you're right. But one benefit of casting and forget (for 9.5 seconds) is that you can cast other things in that time, like chain lightening) So you go from casting a very high damage AoE to a higher damage AoE, back to a high damage AoE. Spells like blizzard and Astral Storm have to switch between AoE and not. They cannot be done simultaneously.

If you have issues where not all of your EQ is getting utilized, maybe you should use EQ there, or talk with you tank to coordinate a specific spot to tank. this is called strategy! Use it!

And I don't know why you say its like them forcing Searing Totem back into our rotation, it has never not been in our rotation.

Celestalon should consider increasing the duration of Lava Surge from 6 seconds to 12 seconds, and allows Lava Surge to stack twice. Flame Shock has procced LS multiple times in a row several times, and it can be hard to keep up with them if you don't want to waste the procs. With this change, in PvE it can lessen the dps loss of overlapping Surge procs and in PvP it can help tame our rng burst by allowing us to hold onto procs for future use. [ Lava Surge (Passive)Your next Lava Burst is instant, this effect lasts 12 seconds. Limit two charges. ]

Funny you should mention that, because thats essentially what Echo of the Elements is. The only, I repeat, ONLY, difference between having Echo and Lava Surge stacking together, is that the second Lava Burst has to be hard casted. Which, like I've said many times, as it relates to DPS, only reduces base cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds, which is minimal.

All of that being said, I'm not trying to slam you or anything. Blizzard is confident and content with these talents, and they're likely not going anywhere, as they shouldn't. I'm just trying to convince you not to jump ship because you're worried about the downsides. Downsides are there, but there are also upsides. Lots of them!

[shamantime]

SNIP!

I'm really gracious that you were able to take the time and explain it! In no way were you slamming me!
I just do not like having 3 different ways to reset one spell, not to mention that Lava Surge offers more mobility as opposed to hardcasting with Echo. If Echo lets say offered increased damage or a quicker cast as opposed to just resetting the cooldown, then maybe I could get behind but, I don't see that happening.

I use Earthquake all the time in arenas, for pressure when teams decide to pillar hump. In PvE, not so much.
I'm definitely not denying a buff to our AoE on 5+, I'm just advocating for something different that isn't Earthquake nor will be similar to EQ's style of AoE. (Casttime/CD/Target) The problem with the word clunky is that people spew it on the forums pretending like they know what they are talking about. I use clunky in a way to say that something doesn't fit in smoothly, which perfectly describes how I feel about EQ's current incarnation in our AoE. In relation to other casters AoE, Frozen Orb can be cast while Blizzard is being channeled and Boomkins are able to cast Starfall, maintain strong dots on enemies and channel an AoE on top of that, while Ele does not have the luxury of strong multidotting or layered AoE. I understand Celestalon would like to give Ele another layer of AoE on top of CL but, I don't feel EQ is it. There are going to be times where the placement of someone's aoe is going to be less of a worry than moving mobs to make sure the raid survives.

Well technically Searing Totem was in our rotation but, it wasn't a big increase enough increase to warrant having it down all the time.

[Rezhka]

You got to be the only one on the entire planet who likes this broken talent. Its completely useless for Elemental, and you'll avoid it as you did avoid the other talents in the tier in MoP.

It looks like i'm not the only on the entire planet who likes the broken talent . Read up Zixan posts above, where i agree with most of his thought. But yea, talking about broken, its a shame that it still technically broken. Like i've mentioned before. Lava Burst could consumed both procs of Lava Surge and EoTE.

I see you are passionate about Echo, but a lot of the points you're stating are either not as major as you seem to be thinking, or simply missing a small element to it.
snip

Seeing that both of us are positively accept new EoTE, i kinda wonder if you also had this "broken" things on it? It's LvB that could consume both Lava Surge and EoTE. It mostly happen when Surge proc while EoTE is up. I kinda wonder if it intended so we couldn't spam much more LvB. But i think i've read somewhere on the blue post that confirming, it'd always the Lava Surge used first before EoTE. I've sent the ticket regarding this issue so many times on each patch on Beta. Yet seems they haven't fixed this until now.

[Chubathingy]

Both Surge and EotE turn a LB(worst case) into a LvB.

Surge is castable while on the move and thus helps with positioning issues, it has a cast time of 1.5seconds(no haste) so in ideal conditions it also gives you 1/4 of a LB when it procs. It is nearly impossible to waste a proc if you are playing correctly.

EotE takes the full cast time and you must be still(or SWG) so you can waste effectiveness while moving(more time to overwrite). Some of its procs are a complete waste, which isn't fun since you can't control the waste with good gameplay. If they followed Binks advice and made it proc 3 times as much you would see even more wasted procs.

In short... If it stays similar to how it is now I think it will end up being a PvP only talent where the "free" burst is more important than the actual DPS gain so they wouldn't have to tune it up to an absurdly high proc chance to make up for the waste.


If I was going to play around with that talent I would probably scrap the interaction with LvB all together(since as was already said we have an ability that does the same job already).

Off the top of my head... I would think that a skill like "your next Fulm does not consume your LS charges and adds 6 seconds worth of FS ticks to your target" would be fun. I think it would have to be an ability on a CD not a proc since a proc of that nature would have to have a long duration and thus would also have overwrite potential. Probably impossible to balance to a fun standpoint though, in order to add enough dmg it might have to just be passively always there and that wouldn't add any real gameplay.

Could also be interesting to have something that interacted with our mastery... Like every time your mastery hits your target it has a chance to give you an extra tick of FS or a LS charge, could be fun to have ever changing shock priority's >.>


I am pretty terrible at coming up with spell ideas .

I think it is partially because I don't really like change, I adjust to change fine but I have always picked classes/specs because I liked playing them as is and when they mess with them enough I just throw my hands up and play something different.
I used to love tanking on my warrior(was my main in vanilla and main alt for BC/Wrath) but when they made threat not a thing tanking became boring for me.
I used to love playing all 3 specs of my pally(was my main from Kara to Ulduar and main ult after), then they added combo points and I couldn't care less about the gameplay now.

I don't want Ele to change so much that I get another similar story... I already dislike ascendance as a CD..grumble grumble..

So far on Beta I am not terribly disappointed though, but I think I would be if I "had" to use say... EotE and SET for very many fights since I personally just don't enjoy them as they are.

[Anzen]

Playing and raiding on both live and beta I can say a couple of things.

Numbers wise (could change at any moment but this is currently):

Comparatively, our single target is better on beta than it is on live (if we don't include the outlier specs doing 2x/3x everyone elses damage).

Our AoE is a lot worse on beta than it is on live, prepare to be middle of the pack on 5 target cleave if nothing is changed.

Game-play wise (this also could change at any moment):

Elemental has a fluid rotation and can almost entirely maintain 100% dps whilst moving (if properly planned and obviously this isn't AoE) on live in my opinion.

On beta I feel like Elemental isn't too bad off, we usually have 2 GCD's of movement (UE + FS/ES) and we have 7 seconds of SWG every one minute, though you do feel the pain if SWG is on cooldown and you need to move for extended periods, eg: every single boss in both raids.

HOWEVER I feel like the fights heavily penalize us, not only do a lot of the fights have nearly continuous movement throughout (despite them promising us there wouldn't be as much movement in WoD!), we also lack the escape blink/portal/displacer beast sort of mechanic that other classes have meaning it's a lot harder for us to move out of large AE effects and to minimize the time we spend moving.

If you haven't had a chance to go on the beta, look at a video of Hans'gar and Franzok - the movement required is an absolute joke, and it's not just this boss, a lot of the bosses require almost constant movement (Operator Thogar, Blackhand, Twin Ogron, etc).

If the bosses weren't made to be so movement intensive, I'd say we were fine.

[Vexfu]

Mobility is a big problem with shaman, t45 needs to turn into a mobility teir. That's why I'm most likely going to go enhance even though I'd probably rather be ele. Cause of your description of raid movement our complete lack of movement or blink/dbeast/portal/disengage/something everyone else has =( at least that won't be such an issue in melee and spirit walk help but still =( mobility is by biggest concern come warlords for shaman in pvp and pve

[Deleted]

It looks like i'm not the only on the entire planet who likes the broken talent . Read up Zixan posts above, where i agree with most of his thought. But yea, talking about broken, its a shame that it still technically broken. Like i've mentioned before. Lava Burst could consumed both procs of Lava Surge and EoTE.

No, dude.. you're wrong. Its confirmed by Celestalon that its the intended design for EotE. It is not broken in their eyes. Which should be alarming for every fan. I guess you can like it, if you arent into competitve stuff of this game.

[shamantime]

As someone said above, I was hoping for Echo to give some gameplay with Fulmination, like it not consuming LS Charges or it dealing damage as if you had x charges. I think that would be much more interesting than another LvB reset.

- - - Updated - - -

No, dude.. you're wrong. Its confirmed by Celestalon that its the intended design for EotE. It is not broken in their eyes. Which should be alarming for every fan. I guess you can like it, if you arent into competitve stuff of this game.

I believe they also said that, even if that was the intended design that it would be really hard to have both procs not be consumed by LvB.

[Vexfu]

So technically you could have back to back Lvb instant procs and Eote would be consumed as if you didn't even have the talent in the first place!???

[shamantime]

Mhmmm I believe so, don't take my exact word for it.

[Zixan]

The last time I tested it, which was a few builds ago, Echo wasn't being wasted nearly as much as y'all are stating it to be.

True, there are occasion that Echo is wasted, but for the most part, they aren't.

The way it works is this:
You cast a spell
you gain echo
you start casting lava burst
you finish casting lava burst and loose echo
you start casting lava burst
you finish casting lava burst and lava burst goes on cooldown
you cast lightning bolt
...

Say this were to happen:
you gain echo
you gain surge
you instant cast lava burst, you loose echo
you start casting lava burst
you finish casting lava burst and lava burst goes on cooldown
you cast lighting bolt
...

In both of those scenarios, the echo is used. Lets consider another scendaro

you gain echo
you start casting lava burst
you gain lava surge
you finish casting lava burst and loose echo
you instant cast lava burst and lava burst goes on cooldown
you cast lightning bolt.

The third scenario is the only scenario in which the proc can be wasted. This has a pretty low chance of happened, but it can happen. First of all, you would have to already have a Echo buff, then would have to start casting Lava Burst then get a surge proc.

The BAD nature of surge procs, is that is may or may not actually refresh the cooldown on Lava Burst. Meaning, it may or may not actually privide any real dps. This is nothing new. Look at one last scenare

LvB has .5 second remaining before coming off cooldown
you start casting lightning bolt
lava burst comes off cooldown
you gain lava surge
you finish casting lightning bolt
you instant cast lava burst, and lava burst goes on cooldown.
you cast lightning bolt
...

In the 4th scenario, the Lava Surge is doing the exact same thing as it would if you had echo. It's cooldown reset isn't being used.

One last scenario I want to share with you is one I have seen happen in beta a few times
gain echo
star casting lava burst
finish casting lava burst, loose echo, but gain echo again from this same cast
start casting lava burst
finish casting lava burst, loose echo, but gain it again
start casting lava burst
finish casting lava burst, loose echo
start casting lava burst
finish casting lava burst, lava burst goes on cool down.
...

Echo can proc after it has be used, but before you cast lava burst again. This is more mini pockets of ascendance, and is very veyr great for dps.

Bascially, Echo does provide more throughput dps than Lava Surge does. It is not utter trash for elemenal, and it is not a comple godsend either. Its a respectable talent that can perform well, if it were tuned right.

finally, upping the proc chance by 3 times would have more wasted procs, but also more utilized procs.

[Vexfu]

Basically Eote will be least effective in elemental the vs enhance and resto. Being resto or enhance you will get more out of the talent. Unless something changes the other two talents will most likely be more favorable for ele. Hmm. Blizzard you confuse me with your design of shams, but damnit I still love the class Buuut uuuugggghhh

[mokruul]

they are fun.

[PPN]

I cant say much about ele, because i dont have beta. I just hope it doesnt end in "ehm m8, i mean...since your dps sucks cant you just heal instead?"

[Raiju]

I mean, mechanically it was looking great but im STILL holding out for a proper lightning bolt nerf as enhancement. I will miss ascendance burst but I can understand the reasoning and it's fine. The intent behind the haste attunement looks great, but it feels like the spec just got dropped halfway through and isn't actually ready for live, and isn't getting number tuning either much compared to other specs.

Short version: Fuck lightning bolt, fuck 'windstrike', and screw celestalons terrible deflective arguments ignoring lei shen as a prime example of lightning based melee abilities..