Elemental Feedbacks regarding mobility issue

[Rezhka]

Hello Elemental Friends,

I'm not sure if this section really fit to post our feedback to dev team, but i'll post anyway. Like the title says, since they won’t give us back our Mobile Lightning Bolt, I have some ideas regarding this issue of our that has been addressed ages ago, but yet still hasn’t fully resolved. And it doesn't require a total overhaul for the spec it self.

1st, Searing Totem
Many have complained about how clunky this Fire Totem has become and its really outdated (maybe the whole totem system not only this, but i won’t discuss about it here). It cost us GCD without any significant result.

So, how about to making it fire much faster when we’re moving and back to normal fire rate when we’re stand still? Liquid Magma fire-rate like would be good. And also for the love of God, increase their pitiful damage by 300%. This way, Searing Totem would be worth our GCD because it’s really hurting the target now and it also aid our mobility problem.

2nd, Crit + Lava Burst
I don’t know what make dev team so eager to mess with our crit rate. I think i’ve read blue post ages ago even before WoD hit beta, about how they want to play with our crit so it would be a considering stats. And today they come with an extra Multistrike for Lava Burst based on crit rate. It’s a new thing that drive us to go all MS>Crit>Haste=Mastery as our trend today. They maybe success this way, it’s a good thing, but not really good imo. Because it doesn’t really help us in our main problem,mobility.

So, how about to have crit rate added to Lava Surge proc rate instead? The more Lava Surge procced, the more we have insta LvB. And it help with our mobility problem. It doesn’t seem to OP imo. Because it’s still RNG and Multistrike will always be the main stats to go. And it’d also help with our pvp situation in a way.

3rd, Elemental Fusion (EF)
There was a time in mid Beta, where Shocks hit like truck because of this talent. Personally, i prefer that one EF than today. Because it make EF stacks management worthy and feels more rewarding. Unlike today that it’s only worth for Flame Shock dots (with UF combined). But well...it’s just me lol.

Anyway, i’ve been thinking. This talent may help us with mobility with a rehaul. Still with the same name Elemental Fusion. How about, Lava Surge also give us Lightning Surge that make your Lightning Bolt to be instant cast? Can make it into 2 charges per proc (and limited to only 2 charge). This way, when Lava Surge proc, we have 3 insta cast spells in our pocket. It’d also help us to cut our spell casting on our turret mode. As for Enhance, Lava Lash also give you 2 stacks or even full stacks of MW. This may also help them with their single target issue in a way i assume (i could be wrong, but more insta LB = more dps don't you think? :/).

I know this kind of post has been made countless times on forum. And really make me start to wonder if blizz dev really read our posts. Because it took so much qq posts about shaman just to make them addressed our problems and keep us with band aid like usual. Here’s hoping, they would really consider our feedbacks well this time.

Cheers .

You can find my original post here
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/15700170618

What do you think guys? It would be better if we could have a discussion on the original post, so they'll notice more.

[Deleted]

1 - Searing Totem

I think it is pretty unanimous that people are not fans of Searing Totem, and they have certainly acknowledge it themselves. It wont be staying when they do update us. Bit of a beating a dead horse statement here.

2 - Lava Surge procs from Crit

Whilst I see what your saying, I don't think this will happen. It will deaden our rotation as we get to higher gear levels. Haste and Crit will both multiple eachother into Lava Surge procs, and eventually we'll end up literally only casting 1 spell. Not fun for us, not fun to play against in PvP, just generally not fun. More inventive ways to address our mobility issues need to brought in.

3 - Elemental Fusion

Whilst I agree the talent is a little dull, I don't think that is a massive issue. I think its fine to have a passive thing like EF, when you have two quite visually impressive abilities in the tier too. I think that is also makes sense that shocks are its focus, rather than Lava Burst or Lightning Bolt, because that would either put too much dependancy on a spell already being the largest part of our damage (Lava Burst), or potentially do strange things to our rotation by making our filler too strong (Lightning Bolt), as well as breaking the balance of earlier talents (Unleashed Fury mostly) by again, putting too many bonuses onto one or two spells.

The size of the benefit from EF is also difficult to increase, because you also have to then increase the power of the other two talents in the tier, which again causes balance issues as its heavy burst mechanics vs passive full uptime mechanic.

[Rezhka]

1 - Searing Totem

I think it is pretty unanimous that people are not fans of Searing Totem, and they have certainly acknowledge it themselves. It wont be staying when they do update us. Bit of a beating a dead horse statement here.

And i think its simply because ST now is barely do any damage at all. When the damage is buffed significantly, ppl will look it up more despite how shitty this drop and forget totem. I doubt they would remove ST even they acknowledge it. Since they removed Totem of Wrath that used to be exclusive Ele buff totem back then as a fire totem, then we won't have any fire totem at all but FET. And Liquid Magma will have it own issue if ST doesn't stay. ST will still be around imo. And with my idea, it's just a simple tweak that make ST reasonable to cast if not mandatory to our rotation.

2 - Lava Surge procs from Crit
Whilst I see what your saying, I don't think this will happen. It will deaden our rotation as we get to higher gear levels. Haste and Crit will both multiple eachother into Lava Surge procs, and eventually we'll end up literally only casting 1 spell. Not fun for us, not fun to play against in PvP, just generally not fun. More inventive ways to address our mobility issues need to brought in.

With reforge has been long gone now, and secondary stats now have more varieties on gear (with versatility and multistrikes added today), i doubt we can stack secondary stats as high as we want to, even on the high end content later. We certainly will look for Multistrikes + Crit combo gear as our BiS in as much slot as they may provide in raid. Obviously we won't favor haste anymore today. Hence the haste we have later, won't be as much as Crit. Maybe some little haste here and there, but i don't think it would pass the soft cap anymore (if there's any). And the Crit itself won't be stacked that high, because however MS is still our main secondary stats that we aimed for. So i think it would be around 20% crit rate on top with high end gear, 25% with party buff. Haste and Crit may multiple each other on Lava Surge procs, but it's unlikely to be that significant imo. Unless MS from FS also triggering the proc, which is not. It may make our rotation little dull when crazy procs happens. But it's still RNG, it won't affect our rotation as much imo. And it help our mobility a lot for sure.

At this rate, Our PvP is officially dead anyway. However, we are generally depending a lot on Lava Surge proc while we kite when we fight against melee today. And we're hardly casting Lightning Bolt when we're being train by 'em. So more Lava Surge will be a lot more significant help to our mobile problem than our mastery. It won't be that OP since we're still susceptible to stun, cc, silence, snare and so on. Gear wise as well, we're no longer in our free will to reforge out our less favored stats. So again, crit won't be stack as much.

3 - Elemental Fusion

Whilst I agree the talent is a little dull, I don't think that is a massive issue. I think its fine to have a passive thing like EF, when you have two quite visually impressive abilities in the tier too. I think that is also makes sense that shocks are its focus, rather than Lava Burst or Lightning Bolt, because that would either put too much dependancy on a spell already being the largest part of our damage (Lava Burst), or potentially do strange things to our rotation by making our filler too strong (Lightning Bolt), as well as breaking the balance of earlier talents (Unleashed Fury mostly) by again, putting too many bonuses onto one or two spells.

The size of the benefit from EF is also difficult to increase, because you also have to then increase the power of the other two talents in the tier, which again causes balance issues as its heavy burst mechanics vs passive full uptime mechanic.

I'm not saying that EF has an issue today. I just think it may be overhauled to another thing that may work more interesting, specifically help our cause on mobile fight. With the same concept of fusion the element, i think it's make sense that Lava Surge can also proc Lightning Surge that simply has the same effect but for Lightning Bolt. So speaking of too much dependancy on our largest part spell, aren't we still doing the same rotation today even with EF? I mean, even with Shocks as the focus on current EF, it doesn't change our rotation or dependancy of certain spells that you speak of. Point is, despite of whatever the talent we take, Shocks will always be our main arsenal in rotation. And we'll always depend on it as much as we are depend on LvB and LB. Because how else you unleash Fulmination and do more damage for LvB without Shocks?

About the tier talent balancing, it wouldn't change anything. If my version of EF implemented, it's even add more option at any condition that we may find. My EF for mobile fight, Storm Ele will always be for heavy burst fight, and Liquid Magma for AoE heavy. Don't you think a good talent should be like that? The reason they simplify the talent like today is for the flexibility, yes?

The whole point of these ideas are simply to help us out with our mobility, without any big overhaul for Ele spec that they've talked about. And i'd rather have these changes than those old school band aid that they always put us with.

Nice discussion Underfetter .

[Deleted]

With reforge has been long gone now, and secondary stats now have more varieties on gear (with versatility and multistrikes added today), i doubt we can stack secondary stats as high as we want to, even on the high end content later. We certainly will look for Multistrikes + Crit combo gear as our BiS in as much slot as they may provide in raid. Obviously we won't favor haste anymore today. Hence the haste we have later, won't be as much as Crit. Maybe some little haste here and there, but i don't think it would pass the soft cap anymore (if there's any). And the Crit itself won't be stacked that high, because however MS is still our main secondary stats that we aimed for. So i think it would be around 20% crit rate on top with high end gear, 25% with party buff. Haste and Crit may multiple each other on Lava Surge procs, but it's unlikely to be that significant imo. Unless MS from FS also triggering the proc, which is not. It may make our rotation little dull when crazy procs happens. But it's still RNG, it won't affect our rotation as much imo. And it help our mobility a lot for sure.

If it didn't effect our rotation very much, what would be the point in doing it? Surely the entire point is to get significantly more Lava Surges so it can become a reliable way to support movement DPS no? As such, it would have to be something like 1% chance to Lava Surge per 1% Crit. Anything less and it wouldn't do anything anyway, so there would still be no point in it. At that rate, we could very easily end up at the end of the expansion casting 90% Lava Bursts, with the unlucky times being filled with max stack Earth Shocks. Haste would become utterly pointless because we would hardly be casting anything.

About the tier talent balancing, it wouldn't change anything. If my version of EF implemented, it's even add more option at any condition that we may find. My EF for mobile fight, Storm Ele will always be for heavy burst fight, and Liquid Magma for AoE heavy. Don't you think a good talent should be like that? The reason they simplify the talent like today is for the flexibility, yes?

It does change balance though, because you can't take each talent completely in isolation. A talent that focuses on buffing Lightning Bolt/Lava Burst will then increase the potency of Unleashed Fury and (to a lesser extent) Elemental Blast, but do nothing for Primal Elementalist. More instant casts would decrease the potency of Elemental Mastery and Ancestral Swiftness, and the procs from Lava Burst would increase the potency of Echo of the Elements.

I'm not saying they couldn't all be adjusted number wise to compensate for a change in talents, but it would require widespread rebalancing of talent tiers in order to do so. That is why Primal Elementalist does not buff Storm Elemental Totem, to prevent talents being too heavily reliant on each other.

[Rezhka]

If it didn't effect our rotation very much, what would be the point in doing it? Surely the entire point is to get significantly more Lava Surges so it can become a reliable way to support movement DPS no?

Yes.

As such, it would have to be something like 1% chance to Lava Surge per 1% Crit. Anything less and it wouldn't do anything anyway, so there would still be no point in it. At that rate, we could very easily end up at the end of the expansion casting 90% Lava Bursts, with the unlucky times being filled with max stack Earth Shocks. Haste would become utterly pointless because we would hardly be casting anything.

You made a valid point there tho. But what i had in mind is actually just a subtle addition that help our cause in movement. So i didn't think about that high amount of proc will ever happen. Seeing how reforge is gone and with today gear itemization. I mean they won't easily just make MS + Crit for every BiS on end content for us, that resulting us casting 90% LvB in this case. So i still doubt that we will have such a huge stats stacking (Crit in this case) even by the end of expansion. Maybe we will have it on Multistrikes, but its unlikely for Crit.

The point is afterall to support movement, It's a subtle aid, but would help our cause. It wasn't made to replacing MS as our main stats with crit.So crit actually pretty much sit on the same state like we currently have.

It does change balance though, because you can't take each talent completely in isolation. A talent that focuses on buffing Lightning Bolt/Lava Burst will then increase the potency of Unleashed Fury and (to a lesser extent) Elemental Blast, but do nothing for Primal Elementalist. More instant casts would decrease the potency of Elemental Mastery and Ancestral Swiftness, and the procs from Lava Burst would increase the potency of Echo of the Elements.

I'm not saying they couldn't all be adjusted number wise to compensate for a change in talents, but it would require widespread rebalancing of talent tiers in order to do so. That is why Primal Elementalist does not buff Storm Elemental Totem, to prevent talents being too heavily reliant on each other.

The day they announce this crit things as our new stats, haste has already been utterly pointless since then. More insta cast won't entirely make EM obsolete or least favored for heavy burst build. Because Lava Surge is still RNG afterall, its not like it'll be up all the time. EM will always remain quickening our spell cast time, enhancing FET and SET hit rate, enhancing our FS ticks, and decrease our GCD no? While i agree it would decrease a bit of the potency, but it won't be that significant imo. Tho idk if there's any Ele that pick Ancestral Swiftness this day (with insta hex being excluded, it's not even serve the pvp purpose). The main point here is to help us out with mobility.

It is true that my idea of EF would make Unleashed Fury favored even more. But i won't say it heavily reliant each other. E.g, does EM + Primal Elementalist combo is the best pick for heavy burst build? Absolutely. But does it become mandatory if you specced to EM then you must spec to PE as well? It doesn't. So even it seems best to get both talents as good as they're feel like mandatory, still they are not heavily reliant each other. People will still have their own preferences (if its not based by any class guide out there).

I agree that some of changes might affect the other tier as well. And widespread rebalancing would be required. From the very start, talent balancing is not as balance as we all see. Some even failing the whole tier (just like how they give us the totem tier). Even they admitted there will always be most favored (if not viable) talent out there among the tier for each spec. Its just inevitable. And there will always be a cookie cutter pattern that will be generally followed by people, whether its been balanced enough or not. However, it's just like you said number wise could always be adjusted to balance things.