Elemental shaman and elemental focus

[Deleted]

I posted this on the wow legion beta forums but didnt get any responses, so figured i'd post it here aswell.

There is a problem at the core of elemental dps right now and that problem is elemental focus.

Ever since i started playing on the legion beta aswell as on the prepatch i have felt that elemental focus is a really unsatisying and annoying mechanic to be dealing with. I understand the concept behind it with crit and high damage dealing spells being kind of the class fantasy for elemental shaman, and with the changes to ascendance you need another reason to itemize for crit to make it feel complete. However actually trying to minmax and control your elemental focus is basically not even worth doing for a couple of reasons.
The spells that you want to consume your stacks on are obviously the highest damage dealing spells for the biggest damage increase possible. Problem is you will only know wether you actually got elemental focus or not from the spell you previously cast when the spell lands, at which point you already started casting another spell, which is usually gonna be a lightning bolt (your lowest damage dealing ability). So you are in most cases gonna be wasting one stack on elemental focus on lightning bolt when you for example could have put down double earthquake, put up 2 flameshocks or have used 2 earth shocks if you have the HFC 4p or the legendary boots for elemental in legion. The only time you are actually freely gonna be using your elemental focus is when you 100% know it is gonna proc wich is when you cast lava burst, at which point you are gonna have to wait for the lava burst to land to use the elemental focus stacks since all of the spells you are gonna want to use them on are instant cast. So you are pretty much always only gonna have one elemental focus stack to use as you want to. Second problem with it is that you are mainly gonna want to use it on earth shock, wich you generally dont want to use below ~85 maelstrom. So it creates this problem where you cant ensure that you will be able to use earth shock together with elemental focus, because if you dont have any elemental focus approaching the 85 maelstrom mark, you are just gonna have to hope that you hit a critical strike to proc it, have lava burst ready, sit and cast lightning bolt at maelstrom cap hoping for a crit, or just simply earth shock without elemental focus. I feel like the only reason that i am tracking it right now is to buff flame shock when multidotting, wich is easily managed because of flame shocks low maelstrom cost.

So it basically isnt even worth trying to use elemental focus to your advantage, and it makes it feel really horrible trying to max your dps as an elemental shaman.
Elemental focus also wont mean alot to any casual player since it wont be a significant dps increase trying to manage it.
So basicaly how i feel about elemental focus is that it is just a minor annoyance in the dps rotation, meant to activate crit for elemental shamans to fulfil the class fantasy, but does that in a manner that wont be of any significance to any elemental shaman of any caliber. While i do like the idea of the class fantasy i think it could do the same thing as it does now, but in a way that would be more fun gameplay wise, and fulfil the class fantasy to a higher degree than it is doing right now.

My idea for a reworked elemental focus would be something like this:
Elemental Focus: Each time you criticaly strike with a healing or damaging ability you gain a charge of elemental focus.
Activating elemental focus grants you a flat damage increase (based on how much elemental focus you spent) for you next (?) damaging spells.

My idea is that you wont have a super high cap on stacks so you dont have to sit around and wait for when you want to do your insane damage, but still high enough to be able to pool it for use in situations where it is gonna increase in value. It would also be very satisfying to use in aoe situations together with fist of ra'den and earthquakes.

This change would do multiple things. It would make you have to plan boss fights around elemental focus, which you dont have to do as much in a big scale anymore now that spiritwalkers grace is removed. Maelstrom pooling is more short term planning since you are spending it so often.
AoE will be stronger when you can use it together with elemental focus, since it is gonna have a higher value in an aoe situation. Single target would be worse than it is right now but the class as a whole would be more well rounded.
For casual players it will feel good to use since it is an immediate damage increase that provides some big number and for high tier raiders it will add some depth to the class.
Of course it would also get rid of the current issues with elemental focus.

Problems that i can see with a change like this is that it might make the class too complicated to play, and having basically the coolest animations ingame attracting alot of new players that might be a problem (even if i would say it is the other way around)
The biggest problem i would see with this particular change is that with the removal of the current elemental focus you would have to compensate for the damage loss of it with the new one. So you would either need a rather high uptime on the elemental focus buff to not feel like you are only doing damage in your short periods of rambo mode, wich would contradict (what i listed as an upside) the long term planning element of it. This could also be compensated by just increasing all damage numbers in general slightly.
Another problem could be that it creates new possiblities for what may be way too strong combos. For example fist of ra'den together with elemental focus could provide way too strong aoe burst making the class too good at too many things, since the singletarget burst right now is so strong (wich might not be too big of since singletarget burst will be reduced if they were to change elemental focus).
I wont go over any problems that it might bring to pvp, since that is'nt exactly my field and it is balanced separately.

It can be worth to mention that quick fixes like elemental focus being spent when a spell lands instead of when it is being released wouldnt work since you will never get 2 globals off as a lightning bolt/lava burst travels to its target. The only quick fix that i can think of is if you were able to use your maelstrom spenders while casting, wich i dont think would make for a very satisfying gameplay with having to cast earthquake at a target location.

Would like to hear ideas on how to fix the issues im presenting, and also be thankful for any tips on how you want to use elemental focus as it is right now to your advantage.

[Lalutte]

I believe the idea of elemental focus is to maximize the damage you do with your normal spells when you line elemental focus with other damage increase buffs. The idea of having elemental focus is to increase the RNG damage your putting out to some extent.
Elemental shaman's game-play feels a bit clumsy; I really do like the idea of having no cd on flame, frost, and earth shocks, yet the fact that flame shock consumes mana and the reliability on frost shock damage using Icefury makes earth shock barely used.
The dps rotation is strange by itself, but I think having elemental focus won't be that harmful to be blunt. As far as I'm concerned, the only problem ele shaman has is the maelstorm consumption via flame shock specifically, the the fact that frost shock can hit more than lava burst which doesnt fit elemental shaman game-play. It would be much more fun to have fat lava burst crits compared with frost shock crits.

[Deleted]

Really good idea, this would give way more depth to elemental and make it more fun to play because now you can plan ahead and think of when you should be activating it instead of randomly getting it.

[Gaucho-]

Sorry to say this, but Elemental has certainly different problems than a spell we wished back ever since it was removed with WoD along with all our burst potential.

I really appreciate people who think about Elemental out of the box and give detailed feedback - but this is the wrong approach. In Legion you'll have enought to worry about with Stormkeeper & Icefury stacks usage on top of using Maelstrom to not waste it. Personally, there are very few specs left which are more "complicated" than Elemental.

[Deleted]

Sorry to say this, but Elemental has certainly different problems than a spell we wished back ever since it was removed with WoD along with all our burst potential.

I really appreciate people who think about Elemental out of the box and give detailed feedback - but this is the wrong approach. In Legion you'll have enought to worry about with Stormkeeper & Icefury stacks usage on top of using Maelstrom to not waste it. Personally, there are very few specs left which are more "complicated" than Elemental.

Ye im thinking you are right that there stormkeeper etc will fill the function that i want to fill with my verison of a reworked elemental focus. However the issues im experiencing with its current state still persists. It might not feel as bad when you have more to think about when raiding at 110 with more abilities though, will have to wait and see.

[Deleted]

If you just let whatever next spell in your rotation consume the proc and don't even look at the proc, I wonder how much actual DPS loss it would be compared to if you try to maximize it and use it only on the "correct spell". Probably almost nothing?

[Deleted]

If you just let whatever next spell in your rotation consume the proc and don't even look at the proc, I wonder how much actual DPS loss it would be compared to if you try to maximize it and use it only on the "correct spell". Probably almost nothing?

Propably almost nothing indeed, but we're talking about top end raiding here. If I can get a 2-3 percent dps increase I'd gladly take it.

[freddy090909]

If you just let whatever next spell in your rotation consume the proc and don't even look at the proc, I wonder how much actual DPS loss it would be compared to if you try to maximize it and use it only on the "correct spell". Probably almost nothing?

In the past, it's been found to be a DPS loss to try to do anything fancy with Elemental Focus. You want to consume both charges as quickly as possible, on whatever the next spells are in your priorty (naturally, they'll be consumed by stronger spells if available, because you are still following the exact same priority system). Remember that the casts that consume elemental focus can also proc it and refresh your stats.

[Mcbenchpress]

This is just old Fury Warrior Rampage, except it doesn't proc from auto attacks. No thanks.

[chairmanmao]

Elemental Focus (even buffed with our T19 4pc) has no effect on our rotation.

[Deleted]

If you just let whatever next spell in your rotation consume the proc and don't even look at the proc, I wonder how much actual DPS loss it would be compared to if you try to maximize it and use it only on the "correct spell". Probably almost nothing?

There are alot of small things that you want to be doing to increase your dps, wich in itself wont look like a large dps increase. However maximizing all the small things will make a notable difference on the dps meter. Most things are based in timing or awareness and is satisfying to pull off consistently, while elemental focus is more rng and not at all satisfying to use. Hence my problem with it.

[ButteryWaffles]

Sorry to say this, but Elemental has certainly different problems than a spell we wished back ever since it was removed with WoD along with all our burst potential.

I really appreciate people who think about Elemental out of the box and give detailed feedback - but this is the wrong approach. In Legion you'll have enought to worry about with Stormkeeper & Icefury stacks usage on top of using Maelstrom to not waste it. Personally, there are very few specs left which are more "complicated" than Elemental.

I am a novice player so I would like some clarification on this. What makes Elemental complicated?

I want to stress that I am in no way questioning your bases of thinking or making a sarcastic statement by saying Elemental are not complicated so why would you think otherwise. I am simply curious and do not know what makes Elemental complicated. Thank you in advance for any helpful response.

[Gaucho-]

I am a novice player so I would like some clarification on this. What makes Elemental complicated?

I want to stress that I am in no way questioning your bases of thinking or making a sarcastic statement by saying Elemental are not complicated so why would you think otherwise. I am simply curious and do not know what makes Elemental complicated. Thank you in advance for any helpful response.

Honest answer: I don't know, from a novice player point of view.

The problematic of using Icefury stacks (when talented) along with Stormkeeper stacks while not wasting resources or LvB procs is a design error. Feedback apparently didn't help.

Even if you use all GCDs perfectly, at ~2 minutes into the fight you'll run into this problem.

[ButteryWaffles]

Honest answer: I don't know, from a novice player point of view.

The problematic of using Icefury stacks (when talented) along with Stormkeeper stacks while not wasting resources or LvB procs is a design error. Feedback apparently didn't help.

Even if you use all GCDs perfectly, at ~2 minutes into the fight you'll run into this problem.

Ahhh I see. Thank you for the response, I really appreciate it