The "They Can't buff Lava burst because of burst in PvP!" argument.

[Deleted]

Can we please drop this? It's untrue, absolutely so. It runs on the old MoP Ele and the burst said Ele had. That Ele is dead and so is most of the burst it had. So keeping this argument up is kinda, irksome since said burst is gone. I read someone claiming that "Buffing Lava Burst would turn ele from a glass cannon to a glass nuke", that is simply and absolutely untrue. We currently aren't a glass cannon, we're just glass, maybe a glass figurine if we have a nice transmog set and we have about the same utility PvP wise as a glass figurine, none.

Ele Burst in MoP was not because of Lava Burst alone but came to be due to several different mechanics working together. Lava Burst doing decent damage, Ascendence doing very nice damage (which was one of the reasons why an elemental popping ascendence was immediatly CC's) and our old mastery. Partly also echo of the elements if skilled.

Pretty much ALL of these aspects are dead and it feels a bit as if several people set out to fix the former elemental burst on their own (without adressing our squishiness, how easy we are to tunnel, our horrid CC and so on in return) and then all these solutions where thrown together instead of a single one being applied.

1. Ascendence, please move away from the idea that ascendence let's you kill people, even if popped with other CDs on 100 it barely is a damage increase in a pvp environment. That is with all the backdrafts it had all along. Lava Burst hits like a wet noodle and the ascendence simply is not scary anymore. This alone would've done a lot to "fix" the elemental "burst problem".

2. Mastery, our old mastery was one of the biggest reasons why we had such scary burst. Being able to copy abilities and make no mistake it was quite a lot stronger than multistrike, that hit very hard allowed us to occasionally hit very hard when the starts aligned and lava burst procced several times over. This was a HUGE part of our burst, both outside of ascendence with lava burst proccs and during ascendence.
Losing this mastery single handedly killed the burst we used to have. Even the old ascendence without a high probability of hitting again for 75% of the initial damage would've been weaker by far. The new mastery does not compensate for this in any kind of way.

3.Echo of the Elements, a kinda wonky talent in the past, pretty useless now. Echo of the elements thrown in with the other abilities allowed for some pretty silly situations to come to pass. This is gone now also.

These are just a few of the changes, lower lava burst damage making lava surge less usefull, old mastery scaling very well with haste and so on and on are other things that changed since MoP. We're not a glass cannon anymore, not even close and a buff even a fairly massive one to lava burst wouldn't suddenly make us one again, nor would it solve a lot of other mechanical issues that have arisen with WoD.

[Tyze]

And didn't Blizzard say (like for years) that they wont nerf because of PVP environment?

[stomination]

Blizzard says a lot of things and then ends up doing the opposite of what they said.

[Stormspellz]

make it have a dot effect and the pvp "problem" will be minor.

[Deleted]

make it have a dot effect and the pvp "problem" will be minor.

The thing is, there is no PvP problem anymore if there ever truly was. They fixed that several times over and conveniently ignored that said problem was the only thing elemental shamans had going for them. They have nothing, absolutely nothing else to make up for it. Without that procc chain that allowed them to occasionally do very high spike damage, there isn't a single point in their favour.

[Nitwit]

You forgot the crit damage penalty against players, which hits auto-crit abilities such as lava burst especially hard, and it's the primary reason why the spell feels so much weaker in PvP than it does in PvE (not that it feels particularly great in either).

[lolreally]

You forgot the crit damage penalty against players, which hits auto-crit abilities such as lava burst especially hard, and it's the primary reason why the spell feels so much weaker in PvP than it does in PvE (not that it feels particularly great in either).

IIRC Shamans are the one class that still gets 200% crit damage.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=60188

[Nitwit]

IIRC Shamans are the one class that still gets 200% crit damage.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=60188

Well, 200% isn't 250%, so even if the crit damage modifiers stacked additively (probably not) it'd still be a 20% nerf to every single lava burst you sling out.

[lolreally]

Well, 200% isn't 250%, so even if the crit damage modifiers stacked additively (probably not) it'd still be a 20% nerf to every single lava burst you sling out.

a 20% Nerf which is still 30% higher than everyone else in PvP? doesn't sound like a nerf to me.

[Nitwit]

a 20% Nerf which is still 30% higher than everyone else in PvP? doesn't sound like a nerf to me.

Well, let's compare player A to player B.

Player A crits 20% of the time on every ability. In PvP he only does 150% crit damage instead of 200%.
80*1 + 20*2 = 120 dps in PvE
80*1 + 20*1.5 = 110 dps in PvP

Player B crits 20% of the time on every ability except for super-awesome-auto-crit, which crits 100% of the time. Player B crits for 250% in PvE and 200% in PvP (it probably doesn't actually stack like this but we're going with it).

75*0.8*1 + 75*0.2*2.5 + 22.5 = 120 dps in PvE
75*0.8*1 + 75*0.2*2.0 + 22.5*2/2.5 = 108 dps in PvP

(I picked 22.5 as the damage done for the auto-crit ability in PvE to keep the two specs even there)


Not surprisingly, when more of your damage comes from crits, nerfing crit damage hits you harder.

[Deleted]

I think it was me that made that 'glass nuke' comment, and this has actually taken it completely out of context. I disagree with this statement, and don't think a buff to Lava Burst (unless excessively large) would break us. I was just stating what I think is Blizzard's PoV.

The RNG burst we have is still pretty high. Two ticks of our Mastery in quick succession, coupled with an instant Lava Burst, coupled with a 20 Stack Fulmination (which has no travel time), coupled with higher damage multistrikes. If all of that hit at once (which it potentially can do, all except the Lava Burst and Mastery multistrikes could hit in the same instant). All of that combined could lead to some insane damage, especially if they were to buff Lava Burst.

Do I think we should be balanced around this tiny RNG scenario? No, I don't. Do I understand that Blizzard* potentially want to err on the side of caution and make sure this scenario can never happen? Sure. I feel like they want to move us more to continuous medium-high damage with only small peaks of burst (Mastery procs together, Fulmination hits, Ascendance) instead of the peaks and troughs that we have been in the past.

* - FYI, I have no actual inside knowledge. I don't know for a fact that this is how Blizzard feel, I just think its a perfectly logical reason why they don't shift some of our damage our of Lightning Bolt and into Lava Burst.

[Deleted]

Undefetter, I'll assume you're talking 90 right now? Because that is about the only place where we have something like damage left at this point and that is mostly because of our over inflated mastery doing the vast mayority of it. Even max stack fulmination which takes a lot of time to build up hits like a wet noodle compared to a warlocks haunt.

Having similar burst to a lot of other classes on 90 with way overtuned mastery every millenia once the stars align and we can summon the dark lord of shamans into our world isn't really a good argument against buffing us. Especially seeing how other classes can pull off similar combos on demand, way more often and both on 90 and 100.

One thing that kinda irks me about the shaman community is that it's about the only one as self criticizing and self loathing. When warriors were one shotting people the warrior community defended this, when druids are gods in two speccs the druid community is defending it, when there's even a slight possibility of shamans doing similar burst damage to other classes albeit very rarely and because of skewed numbers at 90 then "omfg we need to be nerfed!".

[Deleted]

Deleth, I didn't say I agree with this state of mind. I personally feel like we do need some of our damage shifted out of Lightning Bolt and into Lava Burst, or at the very least into Fulmination. I was just stating the potential downsides that I think Blizzard are very wary of.

I think they are very aware of the fact we have potential for damage from pretty much every single one of our sources to come at once when RNG gods align, and that such things are incredibly unfun to play against. I can totally understand that logic (which is why I think its one of Blizzards primary motivations when deciding what to do with Shaman in terms of PvE buffs). Buffing Lightning Bolt is the all round safer option. It gets the job done number wise in PvE (at least partially - we still need more I think), but has very little effect on PvP. Pretty much the perfect buff (from a numbers perspective). From a gameplay perspective, it doesn't feel great to hit your big powerful spell and only gain something like a 20% damage boost, especially when you are used to much more than that, so it fails on that front, but that wasn't the point the recent Shamanism buff was trying to address.

I don't think looking at gameplay like this is 'self loathing' at all. Its just being logical, rather than crying to be made the gods we 'deserve' to be, its taking the standing that you realise you are not the only player in the world, and that what happens to you does actually effect everyone else. Also, its definitely not just Shaman that feel that way, its just generally people who are more comfortable with 'balance' rather than being excessively strong and wanting the world for themselves (not to say this is a bad point of view, its perfectly reasonable to want to be the best, its just not actually feasible) are less vocal, leading the the more vocal opinion of 'BUFF ME PLOX' as what seems to be the overwhelming opinion of the community. I think the MMO-Champ Shaman community (remember, this is a sub-section of a sub-section of the community, there is only like 15 active people in this forum) has a larger percentage than most that are in the same camp as me, which changes the view of the community from "BUFF ME PLOX" too "Maybe they shouldn't do that", which might come across as negative, but it really isn't.

[Deleted]

One thing that kinda irks me about the shaman community is that it's about the only one as self criticizing and self loathing. When warriors were one shotting people the warrior community defended this, when druids are gods in two speccs the druid community is defending it, when there's even a slight possibility of shamans doing similar burst damage to other classes albeit very rarely and because of skewed numbers at 90 then "omfg we need to be nerfed!".

Which is especially bad as high-profile shaman theorycrafters are amongst the worst offenders.

Doesn't help that random burst seems one of the shaman themes (old windfury, triple lvb etc).

/edit: 'offenders' as in having integrity in a game that is partly balanced around who qqs/argues the loudest, and the naivity to take all blizz PR shit talk as gold when talking about balancing during the 'hot phase' of early expansion development