Mechanically speaking, how are shamans doing in beta?

[Nitwit]

but im STILL holding out for a proper lightning bolt nerf as enhancement

What would a "proper lightning bolt nerf" be, and why does it need to be nerfed?

[Deleted]

I'm really disturbed by their apologetic tone lately. It's as if they know the WoD mechanics are utter horse shit but they don't have time to change it now.

Plus look at terms like "it's not causing problems now, so it's not top priority", when talking about the talent system - as in it is not brokenly OP and doesn't cause the client to crash, it will have to wait until next expansion's mechanics tuning phase.
That's stuff that you hear in an emergency ward... and not stuff that you wanna hear from your favorite game developer when they are talking about the upcoming expansion... :/

[Muffinator]

What would a "proper lightning bolt nerf" be, and why does it need to be nerfed?

Right now lightning bolt is worth hard casting at 2 MW stacks.

That means that lightning bolt does WAY too much damage in comparison to shocks and other spells/abilities.

This is especially a problem when you factor in the new leveling perk that increases spell damage and healing by 20% per stack of MW.

[Arson]

Right now lightning bolt is worth hard casting at 2 MW stacks.

That means that lightning bolt does WAY too much damage in comparison to shocks and other spells/abilities.

This is especially a problem when you factor in the new leveling perk that increases spell damage and healing by 20% per stack of MW.

Yeah I really dislike it. It's annoying when you are leveling as well. If you have to heal yourself using MW stacks, say goodbye to damage

[Avlaka]

I like enhancement changes, because less burst more sustain damage. We can do something in encounters instead of tunneling boss. I like new EotE. It's a bit hard to use but I like it.

[Muffinator]

New EotE is more useful for enhancement now and I like that.

What I dislike is hopefully going to be fixed in the damage pass of tuning happening soon/now. Lightning bolt is like 30% or more of our damage right now, that's immensely top heavy. Here's hoping.

[Hekili]

New EotE is more useful for enhancement now and I like that.

It's really not that useful at the moment. It basically conflicts with the new Flurry reducing our ability cooldowns. It would be better if our new Flurry were attached to a talent in that tier, and Echo of the Elements were an alternative. Or if Echo literally caused you to perform an attack twice, instead of making you cast it twice. In order for it to be balanced in that tier, Purge worked out that EotE would need to also buff LL/SS by about 30%.

What I dislike is hopefully going to be fixed in the damage pass of tuning happening soon/now. Lightning bolt is like 30% or more of our damage right now, that's immensely top heavy. Here's hoping.

Yeah, supposedly LB and EB are coming down (EB is already bad). It will be interesting to see what numbers look like in the next beta push. Looking at mechanics, I do think we need an interesting mechanic to demonstrate a skillcap, but I still don't think standing still to hardcast Lightning Bolts in an already fast rotation is a good design.

[Raiju]

What would a "proper lightning bolt nerf" be, and why does it need to be nerfed?

Sub 15% of our damage, because we aren't elemental and are supposed to care about our melee abilities more. It was acceptable in MoP since a large reason behind LB's top rotational prio was due to not wasting stacks, rather than because it hits nearly twice as hard as anything else as well. Playing WoD feels like waiting for maelstroms as the only damage source, with even EotE feeling poor in comparison because it's not directly giving LB's, just minor melee hits that shouldn't be minor.

Not to mention celestalon stated in a tweet posted on front page today that apparently us casting LB's is supposed to be a niche thing, not every 5 seconds.

[Deleted]

Right now lightning bolt is worth hard casting at 2 MW stacks.

That means that lightning bolt does WAY too much damage in comparison to shocks and other spells/abilities.

This is especially a problem when you factor in the new leveling perk that increases spell damage and healing by 20% per stack of MW.

It was supposedly worth hard casting before, also - if you had nothing to press. I doubt it's worth hardcasting at 2 stacks if you still have buttons to hit, as each stack gives +20% damage to LB. Maybe at 4 stacks to avoid wasting charges.

New EotE is more useful for enhancement now and I like that.

What I dislike is hopefully going to be fixed in the damage pass of tuning happening soon/now. Lightning bolt is like 30% or more of our damage right now, that's immensely top heavy. Here's hoping.

As others have stated EotE is by far the worst talent in that tier.

Lightning bolt never did 30%+ unless you were doing something wrong. Even before they gave it the SP nerf and you went UF (+30% damage on LB for significant uptime) it was generally only doing 27-29%. With the the spellpower scaling nerf, and now the -20% maelstrom proc rate, the damage will go down a few percentages, and that's not including even less % damage if you're not using UF.

Sub 15% of our damage, because we aren't elemental and are supposed to care about our melee abilities more.

Enhancement's niche is that it's more of a battlemagey spec (with actual spells) rather than a purebred melee. Almost half of our damage has traditionally come from spells, I personally don't find it a problem really.

The only problem it causes is that you lose a lot of DPS if you selfheal with healing surge rather than use LB. This is offset by the fact that healing surge is actually really strong for selfhealing in WoD, especially with multistrike and such things. They wanted to reduce offhealing for hybrids, but healing surge is even stronger than it is in MoP. It's definitely worth sacrificing an LB to heal back 25-50% of your hp in a raid, if you're dangerously low. It's probably intentional in that, if you have to actually use strong offhealing, you definitely have to sacrifice something for it.

We do plenty of damage without LB anyway, it's just similar to MoP in that there's lots of damage sources, but none seem significant, which gives the illusion that LB is doing more than it really is. Obviously, it's still a very important component.

Maelstrom LBs definitely needed a buff from MoP, although I'm unsure about LB being the main focus for damage anyway. Maelstrom was the obvious target as it's one of the only resources we have to deal with, otherwise they'd needed to have actually given Enhancement something new, which obviously they couldn't really be bothered with.

While ultimately, I don't think Enhancement has been designed very well, or is very satisfying to play in the new expansion, I think it's fairly okay with what we've actually got at the moment. I don't think nerfing LB and giving more power to melee abilities is a particularly good idea as it won't really change much, it's not like we even think about the melee abilities anymore aside maybe holding LL a little for AoE (which is even more diminished with the new 15% per tick reset.) If they did healing surge would almost definitely be nerfed along with it, as sacrificing less for a lot of healing in the new weaker offhealing environment in WoD would be rather overpowered.

Basically, if there is to be changes they need to just give Enhancement something new, really.

[Nitwit]

It basically conflicts with the new Flurry reducing our ability cooldowns.

Echo and Flurry don't conflict with one another. Echo gives 1.5*haste RPPM, and flurry gives abilities *haste scaling. so you have [(echo*haste)+(abilities*haste)]/(abilities*haste) = haste*(echo+abilities)/(abilities*haste) = (echo+abilities)/(abilities) (in other words, echo's benefit doesn't diminish with haste (flurry)).

Echo sucks because it's undertuned, and the mechanics of the effect (more abilities without a compensatory -gcd) constrain how much they can tune it up without adding an additional effect to the talent (like -gcd or +% SS/LL damage).

[Raiju]

Maelstrom LBs definitely needed a buff from MoP, although I'm unsure about LB being the main focus for damage anyway. Maelstrom was the obvious target as it's one of the only resources we have to deal with, otherwise they'd needed to have actually given Enhancement something new, which obviously they couldn't really be bothered with.

They were already one of our top damage sources AND our top priority...? I don't see any logical reason that it 'needed' a buff. We felt more plenty battle-magey.

While ultimately, I don't think Enhancement has been designed very well, or is very satisfying to play in the new expansion, I think it's fairly okay with what we've actually got at the moment. I don't think nerfing LB and giving more power to melee abilities is a particularly good idea as it won't really change much, it's not like we even think about the melee abilities anymore aside maybe holding LL a little for AoE (which is even more diminished with the new 15% per tick reset.) If they did healing surge would almost definitely be nerfed along with it, as sacrificing less for a lot of healing in the new weaker offhealing environment in WoD would be rather overpowered.

Basically, if there is to be changes they need to just give Enhancement something new, really.

Putting more back to our melee abilities or other intermediary damage sources means as you mentioned won't lose such significant damage to utilize our self healing that a lot of classes get passively. On top of that, it actually makes EotE much more interesting if the abilities are worth a damn.

[Hekili]

Echo and Flurry don't conflict with one another. Echo gives 1.5*haste RPPM, and flurry gives abilities *haste scaling. so you have [(echo*haste)+(abilities*haste)]/(abilities*haste) = haste*(echo+abilities)/(abilities*haste) = (echo+abilities)/(abilities) (in other words, echo's benefit doesn't diminish with haste (flurry)).

The proc rates scale, but risk of overlap increases. Additionally, you can reach the point where consuming the procs is problematic, because you have a more important button to push (LB).

You are correct that the reduced value of each proc (as haste increases, the CD reset of Echo is diminished) is countered by the gain in Echo procs. However, there is a functional limitation on effectively consuming the Echo procs.

[Nitwit]

The proc rates scale, but risk of overlap increases.

Only when you're spending significant periods of time over 50% haste (GCD floored). Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that if flurry didn't exist, echo would still be terrible.

[Punjabimc]

I guess you will have to throw Magma Totems at them >.>

Was reading this thread and had to log in just to say how much this response made me L O L - I can just see it now in BGs...

[Goradan]

Enhancement's niche is that it's more of a battlemagey spec (with actual spells) rather than a purebred melee. Almost half of our damage has traditionally come from spells, I personally don't find it a problem really.

The only problem it causes is that you lose a lot of DPS if you selfheal with healing surge rather than use LB. This is offset by the fact that healing surge is actually really strong for selfhealing in WoD, especially with multistrike and such things. They wanted to reduce offhealing for hybrids, but healing surge is even stronger than it is in MoP. It's definitely worth sacrificing an LB to heal back 25-50% of your hp in a raid, if you're dangerously low. It's probably intentional in that, if you have to actually use strong offhealing, you definitely have to sacrifice something for it.

I agree with that if we want to heal we should sacrifice some dps to do some healing. That'a what Being a Hybrid is all about less specialty and more versatility. If one want to have a valid complaint about not healing and damaging at the same time then bitching about a neff AG being done in the way people are complaint would sound more justified.

[Stormspellz]

Right now lightning bolt is worth hard casting at 2 MW stacks.

That means that lightning bolt does WAY too much damage in comparison to shocks and other spells/abilities.

This is especially a problem when you factor in the new leveling perk that increases spell damage and healing by 20% per stack of MW.

easy fix in my mind is make the buff be all or nothing at 5 stacks.

[Raiju]

easy fix in my mind is make the buff be all or nothing at 5 stacks.

Would be extremely clunky unless we could hold more than 5 stacks.

[Emophia]

LB/Searing just need to be nerfed and SS buffed, SS hits like a wet noodle on ptr, which in turn makes ascendance feel shitty as fuck.

Ascendance in general needs to be redone or removed, it went from awesome synergy between /w our mastery to arpen on our weakest attack + Autos, boredom on a 3min CD.

Not to mention going from one of the coolest animations in the game to meh.

[Volitar]

Ptr makes me so sad. ATM Shaman is not a pvp class.

[Jelz]

Ptr makes me so sad. ATM Shaman is not a pvp class.

Enhance is horrible for BG and worse for ashran =(

Dunno about elem, must be a bit better I believe, since it's a ranged spec.