Enh Shaman Mana in Beta

[Redshirtdude]

OK, Confirmed by Rouncer on the beta forums (can't link, just check page 23 on the shaman topic in class forums of the beta forums)

The Sham Rage actually does reduce mana costs by 90% (up to a total of 96% with MQ included)

Also, MQ is giving 50% of AP as SP now, instead of just 30%.

[arcangel1337]

more SP is always nice and 90% makes a little more sense. I do think it would only be used as a Def CD or during trash AOE.

Gratz on beta Levva. Maybe you can give us some real clues as to whats going on

[Deleted]

Why wouldn't you be able to use fire nova off a searing totem now?

Hmm Could have sworn that the new Imp.Fire Nova listed the totems, and searing wasn't one of them. Perhaps they reverted that to all fire totems.

Still 2/2 Ancestral Swiftness is going to be a far bigger dps boost to any fight that requires movement than 2/2 Imp.Fire Nova. So it makes sense to make the switch anyway.

Only issue is in the Sim where its exceptionally difficult to model movement related issues without developing a whole Boss Model infrastructure. The Sim today models Patchwerk/Saurfang type fights ie: 100% on Boss 100% behind boss no movement at all on any fight. Realistically it should include numbers for time on boss, time not behind boss, time on adds, time just moving, distances covered etc. In order to model movement fights correctly.

However whilst its not likely we will bother putting the movement into the sim (its just a right royal pain to code) Ancestral Swiftness is just too good a boost not to take. Remember that Ghost wolf is to work indoors too so we will have a 40% speed boost on an instant cast. Just think how useful that would be in patch 3.9 on certain ICC fights.

---------- Post added 2010-07-23 at 12:40 PM ----------

more SP is always nice and 90% makes a little more sense. I do think it would only be used as a Def CD or during trash AOE.

Gratz on beta Levva. Maybe you can give us some real clues as to whats going on

Yes it looks like Bibi made a typo and its 90 PERCENT mana reduction rather than 90 mana reduction. That changes its value dramatically

I'd love to report back from the beta unfortunately Blizzard updated their Battle.net servers and the EU battle.net server no longer understands EU beta keys. Apparently Blizzard are working on a fix.

[arcangel1337]

Hmm Could have sworn that the new Imp.Fire Nova listed the totems, and searing wasn't one of them. Perhaps they reverted that to all fire totems.

Remember that Ghost wolf is to work indoors too so we will have a 40% speed boost on an instant cast. Just think how useful that would be in patch 3.9 on certain ICC fights.

I'd love to report back from the beta unfortunately Blizzard updated their Battle.net servers and the EU battle.net server no longer understands EU beta keys. Apparently Blizzard are working on a fix.

I honestly don't remember ever seeing in the tooltip which totems could and could not use FN. I may have missed it because once I heard that it couldn't be used on ST, I kind of ignored that talent. Though, without the 20% damage and the 10 sec CD, wouldn't it be very low on the priority anyways? Except on AOE, of course.

It's completely understandable about the sim. I think its better to just get a baseline best case scenario dps anyways. So you know what you can do, and what to strive for.

Syndragosa will be more of a cakewalk and I'm sure there will be alot of movement in cata raids as well. At least I hope so we can use GW to its full extent.

Hopefully, they can fix that problem soon so we can get some insight. Good luck

[Deleted]

Tryed enh now, the mana was pretty much 100% with lightning shield up an spaming spells pretty much every cd. Will put up a video in some minutes.

[Deleted]

Oh and re: 50% SP from AP this is by the look of things Blizzards way of fixing the removal of the Elemental Fury talent.

Our spells (Shocks, LB, LvB, searing totem etc) no longer do double damage on a crit ie: if you are getting 5k normal and 10k crits on your LB now, when patch 3.9 hits you will only get 5k normal and just 7.5k crits without the 50% SP change. The 50% SP change will boost your normal LBs (I'm not going to do the maths but it should be) by around 10-20% ie: you should get 5.5-6k normals and 8.25k-9k crits.

[Tylla]

Will shamanistic rage now be worth taking? If we look at something like this where would we drop the point to put into SR? From Primal Wisdom maybe? I suppose we'll need to wait and see how fast we end up swinging vs how much mana we'll be burning to see how much constant/passive mana regen we'll need, vs getting the 90% mana cost reduction for 15 seconds.

[Redshirtdude]

Drop a point from imp shields. Sham Rage will still be very useful to mitigate damage like dots or AoE in boss fights. You can also use it to get the 90% mana reduction and use MSW to cast an instant Greater Healing Wave (with our beefed new spell power) to save someone from dying.

Red

Edit: typo

[aether99]

what i dont get is how entertaining is it for us to be required to talent into a passive mana saver (primal wisdom)....boring.

of course im slowly getting bored with enh alltogether, too much of our damage comes from passive things (static shock, flurry, that searing totem change with lavalash consumption). id like it if our dps didnt revolve around a bunch of passive procs. but whatever

[2box]

On a personal note I did today get a Beta key as a reward for being author of ShockAndAwe so I will be able to do some testing myself.

This makes me happy to hear, I remember reading a post of yours that you had no intention of playing Cata which made me one of these:

[Segasik]

I srsl cant believe that ANYONE is considering NOT TO take Ancestral Swiftness and Shamanistic Rage (even in PvE talents) those are 2 THE BEST changes for Enh Shaman so far.

[Barky]

congratulations into getting into the Beta Levva, now, let's make enhancement a better place ^^

also because SR is reducing the mana cost by 90%, then it's definitely a decent talent for sure. Though i dunno, just getting mana back on melee hits seems strange, but im sure it works nicely, guess we'll have to wait till 85 in more end game testing!

[arcangel1337]

I srsl cant believe that ANYONE is considering NOT TO take Ancestral Swiftness and Shamanistic Rage (even in PvE talents) those are 2 THE BEST changes for Enh Shaman so far.

Ancestral swiftness, yes, we've wanted a passive movement increase for a while and the insta GW while indoors will be nice too
Sham rage, not so much. it has it's uses for Defense, and the 90% mana reduction can be used in extreme scenarios, like having the use healing rain and chain heal spam. Healing rain is 46% of base mana, remember. and we only have base mana now QQ

[serif]

I am disappointed in the SR change. As it is currently in wrath i just go about my business with my usual spells and abilities and then once my mana gets to like 10% (unless I'm waiting to use my 4pc t10 bonus in concurrence with heroism or a particular phase) I'll use SR to refill my mana. pretty simple. its more of a reactive use rather than proactive - which means i don't have to put much thought into deciding when to use it. i like that.

but now with the new effect it seems as though i'll have to premeditate when I want to use it and pop it right before I know I will be running thru a bunch of high mana-cost abilities. meh

I can see myself popping it and then not using it to its full potential, say the boss drops fire around me and i have to strafe to move around it which would keep me from casting LBs or something - contrary to how it is now where I can pop it and as long as I'm still in melee range my auto-swings will still refill my mana with out me having to rely on longer cast abilities to make full use of the talent...

I hope they change it back. Of all of the things that need looked at on the enhancement tree, im sad that they changed this and not some of the others that I don't really like. I'm starting to feel like enhancement is the pvp tree... and i don't pvp.

[Arnasian]

Why wouldn't you be able to use fire nova off a searing totem now?

The new tooltip on Fire Nova states that it can only be used with Flametongue, Magma, and Fire Elemental totems.

[Omanley]

hard to say what blizzards intend is with that change, but it´s most likely part of their intent to allow us continued damage across the board.

for once, im happy that the dmg reduction wasn´t removed as well, as that would have been another blow to shaman pvp ( same like the almost removal of frozenpower and insta wolf ).

im also happy that shamanistic rage doesn´t get stuffed with yet another effect. a t10 shaman on patch 4.0 would have 30% dmg recution, 12% dmg done increase, mana regenerated and mana costs recued effect all in one cooldown. a nightmare if at this moment you are cc´ed, snared, kited, mob dies etc...

aside from that, i am unable to see how reduced mana costs will benefit us more than mana regeneration during the duration.

that is on single target dps. i suspect shamanistic rage may be used for aoe, where primal wisdom wont return enough mana for us to maintain aoe long enough. so my guess is:
-we hit sr, nuke as much high mana cost aoe out as possible, and do moderate mana consuming until it´s ready again, otherwise we´d go oom.

i really would have wished for imp stormstrike to be transferred to imp shocks, as we´d be finally able to regenerate mana outside of melee, like rets, the other mana using melee spec does.

[serif]

im also happy that shamanistic rage doesn´t get stuffed with yet another effect. a t10 shaman on patch 4.0 would have 30% dmg recution, 12% dmg done increase, mana regenerated and mana costs recued effect all in one cooldown. a nightmare if at this moment you are cc´ed, snared, kited, mob dies etc...

So you're against abilities that offer many affects? why? I think 1 button that scores you all of those perks is pretty sweet... maybe that's just me

-we hit sr, nuke as much high mana cost aoe out as possible, and do moderate mana consuming until it´s ready again, otherwise we´d go oom.

This is why I don't like it... it essentially ties our hands when it comes to pulling out the heavy hitters while we wait on a cool down - yay for having to stare at cooldowns even more than we already do; rather than blowing whatever we want with little regard for timing it with a specific cd and having a nice ability to rescue our diminishing mana tanks when we get low.

now we'll have 2 priority lists... 1 for when SR is off cd where we have to make sure to use all of our large mana consuming spells so that we make the most of it, and then a 2nd for the auto pilot crappy sequence when SR is on cd and we have no mana.


side note gripe: now I won't get to lead the 'mana gained' meter on recount... it was like the only one I could consistently come out on top on lol.

[Tides]

So you're against abilities that offer many affects? why? I think 1 button that scores you all of those perks is pretty sweet... maybe that's just me

Posters point is, the instant you have T10 2part Shamanistic rage is no longer mana regen or damage reduction. It's just something you use on cooldown for the sake of damage. As it is in beta it will be something you can acually use reactive to save ur butt from stuffs that would've killed you. If it had a damage component, it would probably be on cooldown when you needed it to get outa fires.

[Racer]

I honestly think Primal Wisdom should be made baseline, it would make leveling less of pain and he could get some actually interesting to take it's place instead of something almost everybody's gonna take, since we don't have any kind of intellect in our new gear.

And if Shamanistic Rage really lowers the cost by 90% we always have that mana back button, so we don't have to count on Primal Wisdom for everything.

[XemnasXD]

hard to say what blizzards intend is with that change, but it´s most likely part of their intent to allow us continued damage across the board.

for once, im happy that the dmg reduction wasn´t removed as well, as that would have been another blow to shaman pvp ( same like the almost removal of frozenpower and insta wolf ).

im also happy that shamanistic rage doesn´t get stuffed with yet another effect. a t10 shaman on patch 4.0 would have 30% dmg recution, 12% dmg done increase, mana regenerated and mana costs recued effect all in one cooldown. a nightmare if at this moment you are cc´ed, snared, kited, mob dies etc...

aside from that, i am unable to see how reduced mana costs will benefit us more than mana regeneration during the duration.

that is on single target dps. i suspect shamanistic rage may be used for aoe, where primal wisdom wont return enough mana for us to maintain aoe long enough. so my guess is:
-we hit sr, nuke as much high mana cost aoe out as possible, and do moderate mana consuming until it´s ready again, otherwise we´d go oom.

i really would have wished for imp stormstrike to be transferred to imp shocks, as we´d be finally able to regenerate mana outside of melee, like rets, the other mana using melee spec does.

You're looking at it all wrong. SR is now a defensive CD. The scenario is you pop SR when shit hits the fan like you would any other defensive CD and now you are free to use anything at reduced mana cost but the best use of that in PvP and PvE is probably to heal yourself or someone else or everybody without the fear of wasting large amounts of mana. You are also free to DPS but that would be a waste of the reduced mana cost because none of our DPS skills mana cost are that high.

Primal Wisdom should, in theory, be all we need in order to keep from going oom. Like i said before in an environment where saving the healer mana is very important being able to take less damage but then cast very mana costly skills (46% base mana AoE non-channeled Healing Rain says hello) can greatly help out the raid. I can think of a couple of fights where that tactic can save lives even if everyone is doing their job

HM Marrowgar bonestorms
HM Sindragosa
HM Putricide
HM BQL
TLK (HM/normal)

Even when the free AoE healing isn't a factor being able to use your defensive CD solely for defensive purposes is a huge gain for us especially with our notorious reputation for having poor survival skills i can't believe Enh Shamans are actually questioning this skills worth and considering not picking it up.