New Shaman Changes (10/06)

[Hairy Godmother]

Source: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/8/10952...n-changes.html

Tidal Waves -- Riptide now also procs this effect.

Riptide -- We're going to increase the initial healing component.

Storm Reach -- now called “Elemental Reach” and includes Lava Burst.

Improved Fire Nova Totem - Increases the damage done by your Fire Nova Totem by 10/20%, and your Fire Nova totem has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets damaged by your Fire Nova Totem for 2 sec.

Thunderstorm -- We will probably boost the mana return to 8% of total mana. That seems more in line with similar effects. We talked a lot about buffing its damage, but decided that may not be a good idea. With its short range, it isn't a great rotational spell for a raiding Elemental shamans, and making you run up to hit a boss and run back is giving up a lot of cast time. Instead we're going to try to keep the damage and knockback more situational (in PvP it will get used a lot) and make the mana return the big PvE raiding focus.

Maelstrom Weapon -- We have a concern that the proc per minute frequency is too often. According to our numbers, it's balanced for a two-handed weapon and a bit generous for a dual-wielder. However, this would be a nerf to Enhancement dps overall that we'd have to make up elsewhere, and it seems to be a fun change shamans are enjoying. So we're going to let this ride for now. It's something to keep an eye on, but we aren't going to change it yet.

Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt -- And now for a few words on Elemental damage. One of the things we were trying to do to make Elemental dps more interesting was to have a Lava Burst + Flameshock variant. We also themed some new deep talents to support this play style. The problem is that lightning still seems to do more damage than fire, which in turn makes the new talents feel lame because they benefit fire and not lightning.

Now we think that Lava Burst is doing appropriate damage for its cost and if anything Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning are a little too good. (Remember they benefit from Curse of the Elements and similar spells now.) However, nerfing lightning would make it harder to level as well as making 3.0.2 kind of brutal for Elemental shamans, since Lava Burst is level 75. Hurting lightning would feel like a flat out nerf, and even though you'd partially make up for it at higher level, overall we think this would feel, um, yucky. So no big changes to lightning spells.

We talked a lot about just buffing Lava Burst and a deep fire-based talent or two. This will make Lava Burst too good on paper, but it might work out okay in the game itself. We'll just have to see. We aren't 100% sold on this course of action, so I'll update when we decide for sure.

Once again, these decisions were the consensus of our design team, so please don't give me the credit. In fact, if there are any changes you specifically don't like -- those I had nothing to do with.

A lot of people really missed the stun on Fire Nova. We changed it back largely because of feedback. I think it will probably stay as described above.

Fancy. Interesting to see that the stun totem is back. Good thing everyone that liked the totem stated how much they enjoyed it in a mature, intelligent fashion and didn't QQ all day about it... /rolls eyes

Solid changes all around, though. Good stuff!

[edit] Updated the quote to include Ghostcrawler's little snippet at the end.

[Bainz]

Thanks for this Funk.
Really interesting stuff.

Im glad the stun totem came back .

[greenstripes]

Sweet Fancy Moses.

Riptide changes really nice, especially if the other promised Tidal Waves change of it affecting two spells again goes through as well. The HoT is already healing for enough with that 100% coeff, so Riptide may be useful soon. So that's crazy.

Nice Ele changes as well. Can't say too much as the mysterious talents hinted at weren't listed, but whatever. Hoping thunderstorm will be raiding viable, because I just can't bring myself to not take whenever I make an ele build.

Also, thank god for no more MSW nerfs. Every Enhance shammy breathing a sigh of relief there.

[Miranger]

woot for da stun it makes is so leet for massive pvp when used properly it pwnz
and it makes enh so much more viable for PVP and ELE's just have it good anyways :P
it sucks that mael will be changed eventually so cant fall in love with it... so perhaps just nerfin it a bit would be better... if 10procs per minute is what the average is lower it to 8 and let it go.

[raikun]

Doin' the Happy Shaman dance

[Tal]

Agreed. The MSW, FS, Lavabolt Synergy, plus the option to use MSW to heal was what I was most looking forward too, and would have gladly sacrificed some numbers elsewhere to keep it, (should such sacrifices have been necessary to keep us on par with other classes).
Seems like they finally found a medium ground that leaves in the fun stuff, though there are still issues that haven't been dealt with.

Improved Fire Nova, yay. I'm gonna see if I can find a way to work that one into my build. Good for instances and pvp alike.

And nice to see Ele-ys getting some love too.

Personally I feel that MSW should be balanced, but useful when grinding mobs. If I pull two mobs, using Stoneclaw to hold one while I kill the other, MSW should at least charge up at least once. Going three mobs or more without being able to use it once would blow. Otherwise, is should proc enough to keep it a significant portion of our dps rotation, (more than the current amount fs/es account for). I like the hybrid melee/magic dps synergy that it appears Enh shaman will have in wotlk, I hated feeling like a combat rogue with totems in TBC.

[Sprite]

"
Maelstrom Weapon -- We have a concern that the proc per minute frequency is too often. According to our numbers, it's balanced for a two-handed weapon and a bit generous for a dual-wielder. However, this would be a nerf to Enhancement dps overall that we'd have to make up elsewhere, and it seems to be a fun change shamans are enjoying. So we're going to let this ride for now. It's something to keep an eye on, but we aren't going to change it yet."

Something about that statement does not feel right....

[Gomexus]

Translation:

"Hey guys...well we kinda never got around to doing a half ass decent shama polish, and since we have basically just tuned and re-tuned the same 4 or 5 spells for the last 3 weeks we are just going to kinda leave everything alone till we can nerf you all at a later date. Ya see...Blizzcon is this weekend and well...we really don't feel like doing anything productive this week. So anyway have fun with your OP MSW and enjoy that LB/CL dmg while you got it...Mr.Nerfbat will be seeing you all very soon...I think he has an opening in his schedule for November 13th...that good for you?"


Shaman got skipped...we get stuck with half ass half thought out talents that will inevitably be OP but nerfed into oblivion before their OPness could ever affect anything like say...oh 2 seasons of Arena *cough* Druids *cough*.

Yea, I'm a naysayer....any long time shaman disagree with my sentiment?

[sxoox]

New Translation:

You Shall Live.......for now

[anyaka21]

More like, "Blizzcon is coming up this week so we want to put the shaman class back to where it was before we nerfed the shit out of them so we don't have an obscene amount of QQ at the developer forums."

On a side note, anyone really understand wtf GC was saying about lightning bolt? It pretty much sounded like he said it sucked but tough shit it's going to stay where it is.

[Flesseck]

Very satisfied. As a Resto Shaman, I'm glad they're looking over Riptide again and Tidal Waves seems like it might be viable in PvP. Overall, good feedback and great communication from GC's part.

[Eeila]

Good changes, especially like the Riptide buff

Although after reading the start of the thread I already thought this is the first thread without crybabies thinking shamans lived thug life in WoW.

[Rhozul]

More like, "Blizzcon is coming up this week so we want to put the shaman class back to where it was before we nerfed the shit out of them so we don't have an obscene amount of QQ at the developer forums."

On a side note, anyone really understand wtf GC was saying about lightning bolt? It pretty much sounded like he said it sucked but tough shit it's going to stay where it is.

To the contray, GC said that Lighting Bolt and Chain Lighting might be too good because their Coefficents are higher then most other spells. This is because Spells life Fireball, Frostbolt, and Shadowbolt have buffs like Curse of Elements to increase their power where Nature Damage has a lot less increases currently. In Wrath of the Lich King, there are several abilities that will directly increase Nature Damage, and the Devs considered Nerfing Lightning Bolt and Chain Lighting; which would have been made up with Lava Lash. However, since it would be a downright nerf until level 75 they decided to keep it the way it currently is. GC pretty much admitted that they were going to keep Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning OP in comparison to Mage and Warlock Spells. QQ Aborted.

[Elementium]

This feels nice.. But.. I'm scared.. *fetal position* No no no.. this can't be happening.. this makes the Kalgan/Hitler video not funny anymore!

[anyaka21]

To the contray, GC said that Lighting Bolt and Chain Lighting might be too good because their Coefficents are higher then most other spells. This is because Spells life Fireball, Frostbolt, and Shadowbolt have buffs like Curse of Elements to increase their power where Nature Damage has a lot less increases currently. In Wrath of the Lich King, there are several abilities that will directly increase Nature Damage, and the Devs considered Nerfing Lightning Bolt and Chain Lighting; which would have been made up with Lava Lash. However, since it would be a downright nerf until level 75 they decided to keep it the way it currently is. GC pretty much admitted that they were going to keep Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning OP in comparison to Mage and Warlock Spells. QQ Aborted.

He corrected himself in a subsequent post where he meant that it was doing good damage per mana unit, which basically means jack shit.

I could design a spell that only costs 1 mana and does 9 damage, that that doesn't mean it'll be good dps...

But on the beta forums, it seems every elemental shaman is completely confused by his statements as all know how bad their dps is. If we are fine, then every other dps class needs a 50% nerf apparently, if that is what he meant...

[Hairy Godmother]

Here's the updated post:

If you could however clear something up that a lot of people seem to be confused about- when you say that nerfing LB would make elemental shaman yucky once patch hit so there are going to be no major changes to lightning bolt and chain lightning, does that mean that the coefficient changes that are currently on test realm and beta are not going to make it to live, and that we will still see our normal damage once the patch happens?

If I understand your question correctly, the coefficients on beta are the "real" coefficients. My comment was that we won't nerf those back down to make Lava Burst more attractive.

When I said Lightning Bolt may be too good, I meant that for its mana cost and compared to other spells, it gives you a lot of damage. When you're designing spells, you can't just keep buffing everything all the time or you end up with rampant inflation. If things are too low, you buff them and if they are too high you nerf them. (It's awesome that those two verbs do so much work in game design discussions.)

So when comparing Lava Burst to Lightning Bolt, our initial answer was not to buff Lava Burst. Lightning Bolt was already a little high when you consider all the talents that affect it and more buffs that now exist that didn't in BC (CoE for one). Buffing Lava Burst would just give shamans two spells that provide too much damage per unit mana. But in this case, that is still the route we want to take for the reasons I tried to explain above. Nerfing LB to match Lava Burst would have been fair on paper, but sucky in the game. Balancing everything with a formula and budget can get you a long way but you also need to know when to put them aside. The risk is that Elemental *might* be too good. But we'll take that chance for now.

We think we have Elemental's dps to a pretty good point now. There are some classes that are doing too much dps in your beta build, which may be one of the reason you feel low. But in our tests, Elemental is above the tanks and healers and on par with everyone who isn't broken.

Followup FYI

[lcbagna]

As Elem Shammy, i'm very scared about this patch/expansion.
I'm not a pvper so idc about Fire Nova Totem changes... instead I still cant see any pve improvement for us.
Thunderstorm is absolutly useless in raid (also with 8% mana return), they nerfed our LB, beta players reported that their dps is extremely low, Lava Burst is learnable only at 75 and we havent any scaling talent.
I dont wanna stay at the bottom of the dps chart!!

I'm becoming nervous.....

[anyaka21]

Essentially the follow up post told us nothing. HOLY SHIT we're doing more dps than the HEALERS!!!! ZOMG, nerf us...

Seriously did GC really say that? What was he smoking when wrote those 2 posts. He's usually pretty articulate, but damnm, he completely lost it there.

[lcbagna]

I'm worry thinking that maybe their tests are broken...

[Deleted]

Agreed. The MSW, FS, Lavabolt Synergy, plus the option to use MSW to heal was what I was most looking forward too, and would have gladly sacrificed some numbers elsewhere to keep it, (should such sacrifices have been necessary to keep us on par with other classes).
Seems like they finally found a medium ground that leaves in the fun stuff, though there are still issues that haven't been dealt with.

Nope. You missed the point where they removed Lava Burst (not lavabolt) from being affected by MW 5 stacks. So there is now no way to get instant LvB. Thus the nice synergy you referred to is GONE. You used to get 5 MWs from crits, insta cast LvB with FS up, and get a guaranteed spell crit which procced (or refreshed) Elemental Devastation, which upped your melee crit leading to more MW stacks. A lovely feedback loop that would have been an interesting challenge to adjust your rotations to keep the loop going.

Now we have NOTHING in this blue post that says the this will be restored, so sadly it doesn't "leave in the fun stuff".

What we still have is SS charges that we have nothing to proc them all with. Flame Shock thats no longer needed in a rotation, and a Static shock talent that when you need to use a water shield is wasted talents. A few broken things still and patch 3.0 goes live next week (Tues US servers, Wed EU servers).

Such a shame they let the marketing people set the launch date to bugger up Warhammer, rather than as they have done in the past let the technical people release it when its ready. We are going to have a good few patches to balance stuff even after patch 3.0 hits for sure.