Mechanically speaking, how are shamans doing in beta?

[Jmarsh56]

Mostly asking about the dps specs, I know that a lot of talents are iffy at best but I can look past that if the gameplay is there. How is the feel of the specs?

[Naedrim]

For ele, I'd say overall it feels a lot worse than live. Not going to comment on numbers here, as you asked mechanically, but earthquake is the same clunky spell it has always been. Losing moving lightning bolt is obviously bad. Assuming you're using UF you can't even use unleash flame to move like we did in early cata, and the sprint attached to it is very counter-intuitive with the talent. Either you move and waste the talent, or stand still and waste the sprint. CL buffing earthquake is fun, but removes the ability to precast earthquake. CL feels extremely slow, which in my opinion makes the spell "feel" less fun, but hopefully will fix the haste scaling issues on AoE later in the expansion. New echo feels clunky/bad, wastes procs if you proc a lava surge while casting it, and generally feels very lackluster. Elemental Fusion adds no decision making, and feels extremely underwhelming.

Liquid Magma is super cool though, and I really like the fulmination changes. 20 stacks and gaining stacks from LvB feels pretty good. Also, multistrike as a stat feels really cool, and it's nice that it works on more than just LB/LvB/CL now. Using earth shock and seeing a bunch of lightning strikes is a good feeling.

[Slappyjoe]

For Elemental, I honestly don't see any positive mechanics-related changes so far besides how multistrike affects everything. Trying to force Earthquake into the AoE rotation again isn't much more than an annoyance, but I suppose CL spam wasn't terribly exciting either.

[Ham on Rye]

As Enhance, I feel like it's fine except for two things that bug me. 1) Unleash Elements feels boring, bland and like a waste of a button. They should just get rid of it for Enhance, especially now that it does no damage and can't even pull a quest mob so some other jackoff doesn't snipe it from you. 2) I feel like way too often everything is on cooldown and I have to hard cast a lightning bolt with 1-2 maelstrom stacks. What's worse is that lightning bolt still hits harder than it probably should, and our real abilities like Stormstrike and Lava Lash are doing way less damage than it. Not sure if they'll fix it in the tuning pass, but mechanically, it makes you more of a caster than a melee sometimes. Without being able to cast Lightning Bolt while moving anymore, you feel way too rooted sometimes.

[Rezhka]

As ele shaman here, i may say personally i like the new EoTE. Because with this new proc being active, now i can tell the actual proc unlike what we have on live. And pretty much added a bit flavour on the rotation. But they haven't fixed the problem until now where Lava Burst can consume both Lava Surge proc and EoTE proc, so yeah its kinda shame. Tbh it always feels like this on every earlier expansion. Slow casting due to early level gear scaling. Can't really determine the outcome on high scaled gear on late expansion.

The turret feels is still there pretty much. The off healing is no longer as helpful as we had before. But our self heal is improved much (Healing Surge only, you can trash the other healing kit). I myself feel ele spec is a bit refreshed with new mastery. And it is not straying from the classic ele gameplay. About the no moving LB cast, i need a few adjustment for that. Feels pretty lame at first, but i'm pretty much getting used to it now.

[coprax]

Both Elemental and Resto pretty much feel the same as on live, spells didn't change (except you cast earthquake into packs of mobs instead of placing your magma totem there). Greatest impact for ele for sure is not being able to cast on the move anymore.

Can't comment on Enhancement, didn't play it on live recently, but leveled one shaman with it. pretty easy to learn, no complex rotation, I think they simplified it a bit compared to live.

[Deleted]

I will miss the mop lightning bolt, but looking at their goal for wod it had to go.
Not sure I like earthquake being used. I - like many actual ele players - LOVE chain lightning spam. Classes (should) have a different feel to them, and apparently the braindead rng fireworks that is ele multitarget is well received in the community... so why change it for the sake of changing it (numbers tuning and dodging haste scaling issues aside obviously).

Changes to resto:
I'm happy that AA is gone. On live it's just dumb, my healing surge hits for 70k and crits for almost 200k altogether - with no chance for me to influence it. This amount of rng has to place on a pvp healer imo. With the nerfs to aa/hst i think shaman will be trained to death in pvp even more than today. Hopefully blizz can come up with legit changes to fix this this time around.

I don't have beta, so these are observations from an outsider but so far shaman looks like the definition of a pve character, and kind of a fun one.

[Chubathingy]

From an Ele PvE perspective... I am going to miss doing "jobs", we have never had defensive CD's to allow us to soak numbersy things(malice is the latest example) but for the last 4(5?) tiers(ULB) we have been able to do some movement type jobs due to the low impact on our dmg. Now we are pretty much relegated back to turrets, which was OK in the way back when because our use to the raid was the SP buff, cheesy things we could do with totems and strong off healing.. But other ranged can do everything our totems can do either better or more reliably, bring the same buffs and off healing is no longer a thing(I remember my job on Heroic LK was to spam CH when we phased). I guess we still have grounding totem..(though I think imp spell reflect is more better).


I would love a fight like Brackenspore in our current form(5.4) since I would probably get to use a flamethrower(fun, different, high leverage, impactful job that I will never get to do) but when it is actually live that fight will suck... Since it has a bunch of spread out adds and we have no real multi dot to dps them effectively(we will probably do OK on the big main add keeping duel FS up) and when the cast speed add spawns on the ranged it feels terrible walking out at normal speed while mages blink out instantly, warlocks port out instantly, druids backwards jump out (losing 1global), Spriest grip themselves out(charge of faith glyph?) or max speed sprint out(losing 1global) and hunters just train away since it doesn't effect them anyway.

So yea we better bring the deeps to compensate for our short comings D:

[Triggered Fridgekin]

So yea we better bring the deeps to compensate for our short comings D:

Didn't Elementals just get a LvB nerf because they were doing too much damage in spite of every stream and parse I've seen showed them at mid/bottom of the pack and continues to be the trend?

Honestly, Warlords and class revisions still has me scratching my head for most classes with the exception of Rogues. Instead of trying to reinvent the talent tree system as they have been doing over the past several expansions, they're doing it with class mechanics and it all feels so bleh.

[Chubathingy]

To be clear that wasn't me saying "they need to buff our dmg more" it was me saying that we need to be tuned around the fact that our only real job will be bringing dmg.

Honestly through all the tests I've done our single target has felt OK(especially considering the high amounts of mastery on available gear.. Not a great stat for us atm) when compared to other ranged. Watching streams can be misleading. A lot of players are wearing cheesy gear. People are also looking at mages as doing "way to much dmg" just from glancing at totals on meters, w/o realizing that up to like 25% of their dmg picked up by the meter is the double dip with Prismatic Crystal(the mage dps's his PC, its dmg on the meter, the PC dps's the boss, it's dmg on the meter).

Our AOE/cleave has been a different story but they have been adjusting that a lot to try to fix it, so I have some measure of hope.

[Deleted]

As ele shaman here, i may say personally i like the new EoTE. Because with this new proc being active, now i can tell the actual proc unlike what we have on live. And pretty much added a bit flavour on the rotation. But they haven't fixed the problem until now where Lava Burst can consume both Lava Surge proc and EoTE proc, so yeah its kinda shame. Tbh it always feels like this on every earlier expansion. Slow casting due to early level gear scaling. Can't really determine the outcome on high scaled gear on late expansion.

The turret feels is still there pretty much. The off healing is no longer as helpful as we had before. But our self heal is improved much (Healing Surge only, you can trash the other healing kit). I myself feel ele spec is a bit refreshed with new mastery. And it is not straying from the classic ele gameplay. About the no moving LB cast, i need a few adjustment for that. Feels pretty lame at first, but i'm pretty much getting used to it now.

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.

- - - Updated - - -

Both Elemental and Resto pretty much feel the same as on live, spells didn't change (except you cast earthquake into packs of mobs instead of placing your magma totem there). Greatest impact for ele for sure is not being able to cast on the move anymore.

Can't comment on Enhancement, didn't play it on live recently, but leveled one shaman with it. pretty easy to learn, no complex rotation, I think they simplified it a bit compared to live.

Except that you cant cast while moving, they added 3 spells into your rotation, the game play became slower (needless nerfs to Shamanism), say good bye to the Sith Lord feeling while casting CL, most of the talents are still useless (T45) and they added even more useless ones to the mix (T100) or changed working ones into useless shit (EotE).

- - - Updated - - -

Didn't Elementals just get a LvB nerf because they were doing too much damage in spite of every stream and parse I've seen showed them at mid/bottom of the pack and continues to be the trend?

Honestly, Warlords and class revisions still has me scratching my head for most classes with the exception of Rogues. Instead of trying to reinvent the talent tree system as they have been doing over the past several expansions, they're doing it with class mechanics and it all feels so bleh.

This exactly. And add to this that we still dont have a sprint, port, blink, disengage style ability like every other ranged class in this game and also we dont get any immunities or hard defensive CDs to compansate for everything lost in this beta.

[Manilae]

Ele on Beta is just fucked up atm. Did nearly all raid tests and never was somewhere good in dps. Then get to read that they had to nerf elementals on beta because they where overpowered was too much for me. Eote is completly fucked up. Damage is horrible low in general compared to other classes and so on. On live it makes somehow fun to play Ele but not on Beta ...

[Sleeze]

I'm enjoying Ele in MoP, so i'm saddened by what i'm reading currently.. need beta!

[coprax]

Except that you cant cast while moving, they added 3 spells into your rotation, the game play became slower (needless nerfs to Shamanism),

you mean the cast time change (compensated by more dmg)?
i think it's a good change, because on live the spell is often capped by your global cooldown now.

of course it feels slow right now, but thats what it feels at the start of every expansion, when your ratings are totally low.

but every class has this.

[Static]

Didn't Elementals just get a LvB nerf because they were doing too much damage?

"Oh no, they're getting close to Mage, Warlock and DK DPS numbers. Quick, get them down before these bastards actually become competitive! WE CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN!"

[Deleted]

you mean the cast time change (compensated by more dmg)?
i think it's a good change, because on live the spell is often capped by your global cooldown now.

of course it feels slow right now, but thats what it feels at the start of every expansion, when your ratings are totally low.

but every class has this.

This was with the LMG, which you'll never ever see again. And you also wont stack Haste instead of Mastery (ST) or Multistrike (AE). Also, its currently not clear wether this CL change is the second one they intended to make, or an update to the patch notes after the first one. We'll see it when the next build launches.

If its yet another cast time increase and damage buff, then you'll never even come close to GCD capping CL. And CL casting and AE in general will feel like placing your blocks on Tetris level 1.

[Chubathingy]

More QQ ing from people who probably aren't even on the Beta...



PS:
Pet peeve of mine is people posting about numbers w/o leaving a name(armory)/log/something so we can see if they are worth listening to.
People saying "I tested -things- and couldn't keep up with any other classes ever" doesn't mean anything coming from -Anonymous with no proof to back it up.

[Deleted]

More QQ ing from people who probably aren't even on the Beta...



PS:
Pet peeve of mine is people posting about numbers w/o leaving a name(armory)/log/something so we can see if they are worth listening to.
People saying "I tested -things- and couldn't keep up with any other classes ever" doesn't mean anything coming from -Anonymous with no proof to back it up.

"Don't worry guys, its just beta. Celestalon and his co-workers will fix it..."

On a side note: they just confirmed that they wont redesign talents at this point anymore. They are now fully in the tuning phase. Which also leaves me speechless when looking what they did (/or didnt do) to the Shaman class

[Emophia]

As Enhance, I feel like it's fine except for two things that bug me. 1) Unleash Elements feels boring, bland and like a waste of a button.

Oh fuck I just realized, we can't interrupt flag caps or bomb arming/disarming with UE at range (it has a 40 yard range) anymore. Shocks are only 25 yard range, and we lost the 5 yard glove bonus. UE was literally my go to spell for interrupting stuff like that from range as ENHC, it's probably won so many games. So fucking lame

[Chubathingy]

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