T20 set bonuses - Thoughts?

[Kosorkosm]

There isn't a Fire Elemental "build", what are you talking about?
The only talent that effects Fire Elemental at all is the one that replaces it with a different ability.

It's a DPS cooldown, what else do you want out of it?

It's a dps cooldown with little effort or skill required from the player and theyre focusing the tier set on this... It's dull and BORING.

You're probably a BM main?

There's not much you can do to the base Ele abilities in regards of a tier set that would offer "high engagement"

They can do so much better if they tried.

The problem is most shaman mains are fine being handed turds.

[Makorus]

It's a dps cooldown with little effort or skill required from the player and theyre focusing the tier set on this... It's dull and BORING.

You're probably a BM main?


They can do so much better if they tried.

The problem is most shaman mains are fine being handed turds.

Please, enlighten me. Tell me atleast one "fun" and "engaging" Tier Bonus if it's so easy.

[Imnick]

It's a dps cooldown with little effort or skill required from the player and theyre focusing the tier set on this... It's dull and BORING.

This describes literally every DPS cooldown that shamans in both specs have except Elemental's Ascendance.
Hell it describes most DPS cooldowns in general.

[Wilwind]

Please, enlighten me. Tell me atleast one "fun" and "engaging" Tier Bonus if it's so easy.

2 set: Lava Burst now fires a jet a of fire at all targets affected by flameshock upon cast for 20% of the LvB cast's damage.
4 set: LvB and jets of fire extend flameshock duration by 3 sec.

2 set: Casting lava burst has a 15% chance to grant you a stack of Stormkeeper buff.(To a maximum of 3)
4 set: Lightning bolt decreases the cooldown of lava burst by 0.5s

2 set: Flame Shock ticks reduce the cooldown of stormkeeper by 1 sec.
4 set: When you cast Stormkeeper you are engulfed by the storm lord's power, gaining the effects of Stormkeeper for the next 8 sec.

[Makorus]

2 set: Lava Burst now fires a jet a of fire at all targets affected by flameshock upon cast for 20% of the LvB cast's damage.
4 set: LvB and jets of fire extend flameshock duration by 3 sec.

2 set: Casting lava burst has a 15% chance to grant you a stack of Stormkeeper buff.(To a maximum of 3)
4 set: Lightning bolt decreases the cooldown of lava burst by 0.5s

2 set: Flame Shock ticks reduce the cooldown of stormkeeper by 1 sec.
4 set: When you cast Stormkeeper you are engulfed by the storm lord's power, gaining the effects of Stormkeeper for the next 8 sec.

That's not engaging either. Outside of the last one, it's basically playing how you would normally play.

[Nightcast71]

Personally I don't think enh will ever get the full effect of the T20 4 pc. it almost seems pointless to have the 4 pc unless you wait and count stacks and pray for a lot of stormbringer procs. I personally hope they change the T20 set bonuses for enh. I enjoy the play style with the T19 bonuses but this new set might prove to be worthless.

They could increase the stacks of SS you get from Stormbringer by one as the 2pc. Then that would help the 4pc become more reasonable. If you are in a single target fight you would really only want to cast CL if you have 10 stacks and on the same note with the new Flametongue stacking buff for LL you will want to wait to cast LL as well. It seems like we will be casting SS and Boulderfist until the stacks get to max or close to it.

[Deleted]

The elemental bonus makes me sad.

A lot of what makes elemental interesting for me at the moment is diversity across boss encounters. These bonuses reduce the depth of game play for the spec, pigeon holing us in to a specific talent / rotation set up. It will also slant the value of legionaries in a negative way. The value of the bonuses will also fluctuate substantially between encounters. These bonuses will cut in to the depth of the spec.

Except it won't do that at all. Primal Elementalist does gain less damage through the set bonus than it is currently behind ele blast on single target (you can refer to my prior post for rough numbers). Primal Elementalist + Ascendance is currently behind more than 5% on a decently geared toon than e.g. ele blast + icefury.
The only fight scenario where it would receive a significant buff would be a fight were you can have 2-3 flameshocks running all the time. In a pure ae situation totem mastery+lightning rod may still be way better depending on the situation. If anything, you gain talent choices, as primal elementalist is rarely picked right now and elemental blast should be picked on 9/10 fights (the only Mythic fights were different talents in that row even show up on top logs are botanist and tichondrius with ele blast taking every current #1 log).

Will Primal be picked up more? Yes.
Will Primal be the top choice on some encounters? Yes.
Will it be the only viable choice on every encounter? No it won't.

And the only legendary which will get affected greatly by this is the ring.

[Psidum]

@Themi: Who said anything about Primal Elementalist?

BTW your napkin math is way off. With elemental fury crit damage was 250%, this is going up 20%+ with new legendary stuff. Fire elemental uptime will be up waaaay more than 1/4 of the time. Those simcraft results are not taking in to account multi dotting opportunities. Also we don't need a council fight to see the benefits in. A fight like Aluriel mythic could see high uptime.

[Rezhka]

I can't believe they'll choke me back with PE talent. I love EoTE, I love having 2 charges of LvB. Please don't force me to talent PE shit again... I wish they create a Frost Shock synergy bonus set instead of just another synergy with pet. Hell, just make Storm Elemental a separate cd like it was on WoD if they really want to make shaman a pet player next patch.

[Kralljin]

I can't believe they'll choke me back with PE talent. I love EoTE, I love having 2 charges of LvB. Please don't force me to talent PE shit again... I wish they create a Frost Shock synergy bonus set instead of just another synergy with pet. Hell, just make Storm Elemental a separate cd like it was on WoD if they really want to make shaman a pet player next patch.

You lose EB not EotE if you take PE.

But i'm really curious whether SE becomes actually useful with this Set bonus, getting a periodic 2sec reduction is a much bigger deal for SE than for FE.

[Deleted]

i think ele and resto ones could be quite powerfull dont forget you can combine t19 with t20 running t19 2 piece with t20 4 piece could be for some specs a huge boost

Bet they nerf the t19 sets to prevent that, who knows...

[Rezhka]

You lose EB not EotE if you take PE.

But i'm really curious whether SE becomes actually useful with this Set bonus, getting a periodic 2sec reduction is a much bigger deal for SE than for FE.

Oh right it's EB not EoTE. Regarding SE, it's a 1 sec reduction to SE from what I've read on wowhead.

[Paula Deen]

lmao crit /10char

[Deleted]

@Themi: Who said anything about Primal Elementalist?

BTW your napkin math is way off. With elemental fury crit damage was 250%, this is going up 20%+ with new legendary stuff. Fire elemental uptime will be up waaaay more than 1/4 of the time. Those simcraft results are not taking in to account multi dotting opportunities. Also we don't need a council fight to see the benefits in. A fight like Aluriel mythic could see high uptime.

Yes i forgot the new trait, but even assuming a 100% critrate only brings the 2 pc up to 2.8% instead of 2.35%. It however does nothing for ele uptime at all since it is only crit damage not crit rate, the math was thus off by 0.45%.
I also explicitly stated that the calculation is single target and consistent multidotting/fs spreading can skew the math towards primal+asc.

Now, since i don't know which talent you are talking about then let's split it up.
You already established not talking about primal.
That leaves us with the lvl 15 row, the lvl 90 row and the lvl 100 row.

Let's start with the lvl 90.
Liquid magma is the same as before, you'll want to take this on an ae fight. The current aluriel mythic toplog has ~10% magma dmg with 1.7% ele damage. You would need to have about 3 times the ele uptime (without primal) to get even close...that would mean constant fs uptime on at the very least 4-5 targets (not possible).
Stormele is garbage on just about every fight and will be a little less garbage, but probably still garbage with the new set boni.
Echo is the talent you take on every non ae fight and will still be so. It benefits slightly from the set by allowing you some more lava bursts throughout the fight.
Conclusion: You would take the same talents as before.

On with the lvl 100
Ascendance is a strong contender for fights without too much movement and no ae. Also heavily depending on fight length if better or worse than icefury. This get's buffed by a whooping ~0.6% more than icefury. 0.6% ....You will probably loose more damage if you can play icefury better or have to sneeze twice during a fight. Both talents will still be really really close together completely depending on fight and player on which to pick.
Lightning rod will alway win out in ae/cleave situations.

That leaves us with the lvl 15 talents
Path of flames does gain, but only if you can reliably spread flameshock and the targets live longer than a few seconds. However the totemic mastery in conjunction with lightning rod currently wins by such a significant margin on ae that you will want to spec that anyways. On single target totemic mastery gains slightly from the flameshock tick damage ( about 0.28% from 2pc) and instead of being slightly lower on single target, it will be on par with path of flames. Earthen rage will loose the most out of all talents, as totemic mastery or path will probably be better even single target.

Which talent pigeonholes you? Ascendance? 0.6% better than now. Path of flames? will still be the same as now with the exception of prolonged duration flameshock spread. Primal elementalist? Refer to my previous post and your statement of not talking about primal. This may however gain a lot on council and ae fights.

The only situation i can think of are prolonged flame shock spread which you mostly have in mythic+ and on fights where most of it is cheese anyway or you would have taken path of flame anyway (e.g. 99/100 top logs on botanist are with path of flame). On mythic+ only the lvl 15 row is affected aside from primal. This may even give you more of a choice besides the obvious totem mastery/ ele blast/rod build for ae.

The only talent which will be the worst pick in all situations, which is not the case right now anyway is earthen rage. And I'm just assuming but i don't think you are complaining about switching a passive with another passive.
Otherwise Primal Elementalist will probably be more dps than ele blast on council/ae, but that means you activeley have more choices than right now, as you sledomly spec primal right now even on those fights.

[Psidum]

@Themi: I think we are talking past each other. Here is my napkin / conjecture. I will apply to single target fight to match yours. Using https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=12

Conjecure
- Flame Elemental CD is reduced to 3.22 mins with existing talents. 4pc should comfortably take off an additional 1.2 mins (more in the first with hero, less in the second) bringing fire elemental uptime to around 50%.

fire elemental: 3.61% * 1.5% = 1.8% damage increase.

re calculating original flameshock tic damage based on new crit multiplier so we can compare.

No Teir
base:       245 * 36264                   8884680
crit:       8884680 * 0.224 * 1.7       + 3383286
                                        = 12,267,966
                                     
Teir (assuming 50% uptime)
base:       122.5 * 36264                 4442340
crit:       4442340 * 0.224 * 1.7       + 1691643
                                        = 6133983
                                        
base:       122.5 * 36264                 4442340
bonus:      4442340 * 1 * 1.7 * 1.75    + 13215961
                                        = 17658301

combined:   6133983 + 17658301          = 23792284

93% increase in dot damage, around 90% increase to flameshock overall. Around 6.2% overall dps increase on what is a worst case scenario encounter for the set. Logs in question are Ascendance build, icefury / lightning rod builds would see marginally smaller increase. In reality this would be a little lower as we have not refactored all spells around elemental fury changes which leads me to my point.

Elemental Fury changes favour lava burst giving it a flat 20% damage increase. Lava burst and flame shock are both directly and indirectly (fire elemental cooldown) buffed. The bonus skews massively to fights with any multidotting opportunities, more targets to flame shock and those flame shocks become more powerful. The bonus has the potential to be crazy crazy good.

Ascendance set up which was already dominant in single target fights benifits more from this than ice fury. Ascendance already dominates multidotting fights. Lightning rod will see some fights shift to ascendance however heavy cleave fights with low mobility requirements will still strongly favor lightning rod.

Its all conjecture at the moment but that is how I see it playing out.

edit: didn't take in to consideration t19 so bonus as a % would be slightly higher.

[Deleted]

Why do you say you do not like the set boni if all you are saying is that something else entirely (an artefact trait in this case) will push you towards picking a specific talent then?

The elemental bonus makes me sad.
[...] These bonuses reduce the depth of game play for the spec, pigeon holing us in to a specific talent / rotation set up. [...]

While i can see your point and the trait does in fact favor ascendance, it has nothing to do with the set boni at all. The difference between an ascendance build without setboni in 7.2 and an ascendance build with set boni in 7.2 will still be around 0.6% higher than what the other talents get in a single target situation.
And that the setboni in conjunction with multiple flameshocks can be quite good to extremely good has been repeated by the both of us.

Maybe this misunderstanding was not your intention and you probably meant the "whole 7.2 package" instead of the specific setboni when you made your first comment, but you have to see how that is not what another person would read from that.

[Psidum]

Yes you are right I should have been more clear. My concerns are about both set bonus and new legendary traits. I believe the set benefit will be higher than 0.6% for most encounters as there is usually something to throw additional flame shocks at.

I have been thinking about how this would be used with recent / current content and the set is somewhat clunky mainly due to the fact the fire elemental bonus feeds in to itself. If a boss has adds periodically during a fight then not having the ele up at the right time will have a cascading effect.

High mythic dungeons will be interesting. Permanent bonus during trash but having to recast during boss encounter an overall dps loss if not back up for trash.

[Deleted]

So since your main concern is the artefact trait i decided to do some more napkin math on that.

The trait pushes elemental fury from 250% dmg on a crit to 270% dmg on a crit.

An ascendance build will generally have about 40-45% dmg from lavaburst and an icefury build will have 25-30% from lavaburst.
Let's go with 45 and 30 and a char with 30% crit.
The Ascendance build will then do (0.55*0.3*(270/250)+0.55*0.7)+0.45*(270/250)= 0.1782+0.385+0.486=1.049 times its current dmg. It further gets around 7.3% from the set boni, so 1.049*1.073=1.126
It also loses somewhat more than icefury from losing the current 4pc but let's ignore that for now as i have no idea on exact numbers.

Icefury does (0.7*0.3*(270/250)+0.7*0.7)+0.3*(270/250))=0.2268+0.49+0.324=1.04 times its current dmg. It further gets around 6.7% from the set boni, so 1.04*1.067=1.11

That means ascendance will be 1.126/1.11=1.0144 or 1.44% better than icefury than right now.
Now while that means that the theoretical best single target spec will be an ascendance build, icefury is marginally behind, especially on high movement fights or fights where you need more periodical urst windows than 3 minutes. So if you really do not like ascendance icefury performs reasonably well still.

[Tharkash]

Ele one is worthless. Well it's nice when you have your ele out but the other 3 minutes the set does nothing.

Nothing? The 4pc still works while the ele isn't up.. even with like 25% crit, ticks still reduce the CD.

[Deleted]

I've read the Stormkeeper cd reduction from flameshock and sounds really good, basically if u do it well enough u could stop using icefury for heavy movement fights as you could have Stormkeeper active a lot. If Blizzard wants to follow this path one thing they could do (for heavy aoe buff) is make our Fire Elemental not resetting upong cast (correct me if im wrong) so that with Path of Flame and Primal Elementalist talents we could do a ton of aoe from the nova. If they touch numbers correctly this could basically mean that if u want heavy aoe shaman u could spec what i have mentioned and if you want more single target you could go with Ascendance with elemental blast for 100% mastery or Icefury for heavy movement. Basically we still have the 3 builds but only making useless the Lightning Rod talent (which was underused anyway). I think its a good idea, let me know