Shaman 'buff' announced

[Hypernetic]

clearly this is a nerf.

[Marath]

the talent buff is great, it doesnt help scaling but shit... its better than a kick in the teeth

the 4pc is still dogshit though... every other dps class gets amazing things like "increase your damage done by 15% for 10 seconds during xxx" ability

we get a slightly buffed version of our t9 2pc... woopdy fucking do

either make it refresh the duration completely or dont bother.

they could have just put back in the t9 4pc and that would have been perfect... this just seems like a half assed effort on their part

[plee]

i rr qq abt fire nova stun nerf b/c now melee shams can get 3 second CD and be best aoe'r in the game but they can chain light and fire nova pro style.

all shaman specs are op they make ele aight but still all dem specs shine and blizz gonna tone dem down so not ever spec strong.

[Lumb]

We aren't meant to be up there with Hunters/rogues/etc

Depends what you mean by etc. If you mean mages and warlocks then yeah, but in a perfect world we should be doing similar dps to everyone else apart from those 4.

Blizzard considers you a hybrid if you can spec into more than 1 role, which makes DK's and Warriors Hybrids, which means we should be on par with their dps. Are we? I don't think so, at least not warriors.

[Valanna]

This will once again become a matter of casuals/hardcore players. When they do this, all elemental shamans will get a 5% damage increase. If they'd increase shamans' scaling with gear and buffs they'd give a bigger buff to better geared players, leaving the bads to cry their eyes out on the wow forums. Blizzard knows this, it's a tactical change. It'd be great if all hardcore players of the whole world went on streak, then Blizzard might realize how boring the game is when there are only casuals (and only casuals for the casuals to inspect and drool over).

[Deleted]

Now the final 7 second's I believe we can factor in as delay/lag, that last little .5 second you may try to push off an extra lightning bolt or something.. so to me this still looks to be about a minute of uptime per flame shock.. am i incorrect?

54 seconds, yes.
This is with 1269 haste and without delaying the LvB-CD even a bit.
This will give you 2 free GCDs every 54seconds, which will come down to ~5k damage each (CL-damage minus FS-initial damage), resulting in a maximum of 200 DPS.

So in an ideal situation, this set bonus will give you 200 DPS.
If you don't have those situations (i.e. not perfectly hitting every LvB-CD), then the value will shrink.
It furthermore has NO burst-potential, compared to the bonuses of other classes. I mean... who wouldn't want to deal 12% more damage on Putricide in Phase3, with Bloodlust active.
Or think of Anub P3, or even better Icehowl. In those cases our bonus sucks.

And here's a situation where our bonus reeeeeeaaaaally sucks:
Movement.
Imagine you're more than 25 yards away from the boss. In this case you can't use Frost Shock while moving, because it's out of range.
Now... what will you do when you have to move? Nothing?
No, you'll have to cast a Flame Shock. Now if you have to do that very often, then the value of our 4pc will decrease drastically, to a point where it would yield >>>0<<< DPS, which happens when you have to move at least every 18seconds, in which case you'll renew it every 18 seconds and therefore got nothing out of your increased duration.

So yeah, that's why people don't like T10 4pc.

[Gilian]

... And the rotation gets even more boring.

Because reapplying flameshock was so exciting ;p. All rotations are boring when you have done them 100.000 times.

[Eyerai]

i rr qq abt fire nova stun nerf b/c now melee shams can get 3 second CD and be best aoe'r in the game but they can chain light and fire nova pro style.

all shaman specs are op they make ele aight but still all dem specs shine and blizz gonna tone dem down so not ever spec strong.

wut? D:

[Phaedra]

You guys remember a week back when there was an idiot I can remember the name of that said " elemental and enh shamans are the most balanced class/specs in the game. If he read this I would love to tell him -- SO THATS WHY WE FINALY GET A BUFF? FAGGOT!

You didnt play when the big elemental patch went live right? Yes, in wotlk.

Blizzard still needs to fix our scaling with stats like all other classes got, thats where the problem is.


Edit: too exited about cataclysm already.. D:

[Marath]

OK I have to ask. What is the average buffed spellpower that an elemental shaman has at entry t10 gear? Is it comparable to that of demonology? I cannot for the love of God figure why they are not moving that buff out of totem of wrath and into some other talent but in identical format to demonic pact.

Without ToW

So... FT, Flask, Food my SP is around 3400... I think a lot of locks get their SP to ~4000 when buffed so we would still be a little behind by comparison, but not by much. Though... when trinket procs go off my SP is in excess of 5k... so i dunno... it would probbaly balance out.

[Bainz]

Fairly sure Demo locks at current gear level DP overpowers ToW by about 140 SP or something like that.

[Sonofsunder]

I think it's sad they're buffing shamanism AGAIN, instead of actually doing something fun, like giving another usefull spell or some more decent totem buffs...

how about a lightning shock spell, that charges up with every LB or CL hit and gives an extra shock after some time or a chance to shoot nearby enemies a with a lightning

otherwise the buff is really really nice

[Deleted]

OK I have to ask. What is the average buffed spellpower that an elemental shaman has at entry t10 gear? Is it comparable to that of demonology? I cannot for the love of God figure why they are not moving that buff out of totem of wrath and into some other talent but in identical format to demonic pact.

Gotta answer that soon, but before:

Without ToW

So... FT, Flask, Food my SP is around 3400... I think a lot of locks get their SP to ~4000 when buffed so we would still be a little behind by comparison, but not by much. Though... when trinket procs go off my SP is in excess of 5k... so i dunno... it would probbaly balance out.

Won't balance out. If you have 5k SP every 50sec for 10sec or whatever, but otherwise 600 SP less then a Demo-lock, than his buff is superior to yours.
Just imagine what would happen if the lock had the same trinkets you have.

Fairly sure Demo locks at current gear level DP overpowers ToW by about 140 SP or something like that.

Didn't answer Nymrohd's question... just a statement that has been said dozens of times.


So, to answer the question of DP vs. ToW we'll just have to look at what those two speccs get from their talents and gear:
Gear-wise... no real difference in terms of SP.
Shamans: - 274 SP from Flametongue Weapon. Nothing else.
Warlocks: - 156 SP from Fel Armor
- 39% of their Spirit as Spellpower
- 12% of the Demon's Stamina and Intellect

So without those skaling buffs of the WL, there's a 118 SP-advantage of the Shaman.
Now if the Warlock has at least 303 Spirit, then he'll have more SP then the Shaman, even without an active Demon.

Since I don't know right now how much Stamina/Int the Felguard has (raidbuffed), I can't really say how much SP a Lock will have... will update this post when I know more.

[Xunae]

Yeah, but what's the math come out to? how many second's extra does this come out to on a flame shock.. can anyone figure it out? im trying but i keep getting confused...

18 is the base duration without t9 2pc.

18-1 (gotta wait for the global cooldown of using flameshock)
17+6 (23) (+6)
23-8+6 (21) (+6)
21-8+6 (19) (+6)
19-8+6 (17) (+6)
17-8+6 (15) (+6)
15-8+6 (13) (+6)
13-8+6 (11) (+6)
11-8+6 (9) (+6)
9-8+6 (7) (+6)

Now the final 7 second's I believe we can factor in as delay/lag, that last little .5 second you may try to push off an extra lightning bolt or something.. so to me this still looks to be about a minute of uptime per flame shock.. am i incorrect?

correct me if im wrong, but wouldn't it be -9 seconds minimum because unless you use elemental mastery your lava burst still has a 1 second cast and the flame shock time cant be added until a successful cast not just the cooldown coming up.

[Oneleg]

A little boost to Shamanism isn't bad, but I'm guessing the majority of the shaman community wanted a huge buff. But you must remember, we are a hybrid class. We aren't meant to be up there with Hunters/rogues/etc.

I agree with you too, Lizzy; shamansim is getting quite boring, but I think it was the only thing they could think of that was big enough to matter in PvE and small enough to be unnoticed in PvP.

SHUT UP about the hybrid class bullshit people keep spouting. Explain feral cats, ret pallies, warrior DPS. They are all multi function class's and all out DPS ele with ease.

[yazz]

Ele is just my offspec but i was trying to calculate the % my dps would go up by since 3 of our main abilities are getting a 5% damage increase. It clearly won't be 15% increase in dps because not LB CL and LvB are used equally. Anyone have the chance to give me a rough estimate?

[Sanctos]

SHUT UP about the hybrid class bullshit people keep spouting. Explain feral cats, ret pallies, warrior DPS. They are all multi function class's and all out DPS ele with ease.

The hybrid tax is certainly pretty damning to a solid game design.

There are simply too many variables to consider to remain consistent with that rule. The only real thing they could do to conform to this rule would be to tweak all the numbers so that Simcrafts churn out equal numbers for all classes, and then give all hybrids a 5% reduction debuff or penalty on a core talent (aka TG).

Of course, that means very little in the actual world of raiding, with things like player skill, character gear, group comp, and specific fight mechanics all getting in the way of the perfect simcraft results.

However, they could at least then claim that they are staying in line with their design philosophy, and players could not use simcraft as a weapon. They would still, of course, use combat logs to show evidence in their favor. But that is at least actual, in game experience.

Yay, they buffed shamanism. The rotation is still boring, and those doing good dps will do slightly better, those who do bad dps will still do bad dps, because their bad dps is not tied to their class but their skill and gear.

[Rosechyld]

SHUT UP about the hybrid class bullshit people keep spouting. Explain feral cats, ret pallies, warrior DPS. They are all multi function class's and all out DPS ele with ease.

All I have to say about the above quote is - dps warriors and kitties have some of the toughest, tightest rotations to keep. Its very, very very easy to mess up and be bottem of the barrel dps. Esp for cats.

There's no "technical" excuse for pallies, easy rotation's as easy as ele rotation. Maybe axes to the face just hurt more then giant balls of lava and lightning?

Really, I think I'd just settle for my ele shaman to be on par with shadow priests. Really. Give us a talent that causes LvB to extend Flame Shock infinitely. So long as you keep LvB up on cooldown (with a 5 second window to compensate for lag) it should auto refresh the durration.

Or change the 4p to "stacking" quality, where our LvBs give FS a 5 stack, where upon the 5th stack it explodes for total damage( like akin to swiftmend's "consume total healing of x hot on target"), and you have to reapply. So if your buffed FS would total 5k damage over time, it would explode, on the 5th stack, consuming the debuff. Could read "4 Piece Bonus: Your LvB now stacks your FS 5 times. On 5th stack it explodes, causing the full duration of damage.

Now that, either of them or both, would be both interesting, and a dps increase. *nod*

[whowherewhat?]

All I have to say about the above quote is - dps warriors and kitties have some of the toughest, tightest rotations to keep. Its very, very very easy to mess up and be bottem of the barrel dps. Esp for cats.

There's no "technical" excuse for pallies, easy rotation's as easy as ele rotation. Maybe axes to the face just hurt more then giant balls of lava and lightning?

Really, I think I'd just settle for my ele shaman to be on par with shadow priests. Really. Give us a talent that causes LvB to extend Flame Shock infinitely. So long as you keep LvB up on cooldown (with a 5 second window to compensate for lag) it should auto refresh the durration.

Or change the 4p to "stacking" quality, where our LvBs give FS a 5 stack, where upon the 5th stack it explodes for total damage( like akin to swiftmend's "consume total healing of x hot on target"), and you have to reapply. So if your buffed FS would total 5k damage over time, it would explode, on the 5th stack, consuming the debuff. Could read "4 Piece Bonus: Your LvB now stacks your FS 5 times. On 5th stack it explodes, causing the full duration of damage.

Now that, either of them or both, would be both interesting, and a dps increase. *nod*

I like this idea of stacking, it seems like many classes don't have too many debuffs (damage ones, not like sunder) that "stack" on the boss. This could help take away from elemental's reliance on burst damage somewhat and possibly increase our dps in movement-heavy fights

[Dinyyen]

i haven't played as ele, only enh, but aren't you supposed to use earth shock while flame shock debuff is on the target?


also WTB enh buff :'(