GC answers Q&A (yay!)

[Foxhoundn]

Ghostcrawler answered some of the often question that are floating around shaman forums here and on other MMO discussion based websites.

First of all thanks GC for taking your time

I would like to go one by one and analyze his answers a bit.

When will ele not have to run into melee to do aoe?
When you're casting Earthquake?

That is actually (at least for me) pretty good news, as long as it does competitive damage with other AoEs.

1) Are resto shaman now the only healer being forced to spec into a hit talent to supplement their active mana recovery ability? Paladins now apparently get the hit that was in enlightened judgements for free?
Our goal was to not have all of the healer talent trees to be mirror images of each other. So a priest might get one thing for free and have to talent into something else. As long as the end result is pretty similar (e.g. the priest can't get everything for free and just be able to spend talent points on candy) then it should be fine.

That it actually a good question for Telluric Currents. But that will have to be tested if it is worth to go deep into the elemental tree for hit, or to take something from Enhancement tree and something from Elemental. This will also depends on gear.

Personally, I'd like to know the rationale behind the fact that the Elemental Shamans did not recieve any spells that alter their rotation on 'primary' targets. Their level 10 effect was something halfway between a mana restore, an AoE, and a pvp gimmick. Our capstone of the talent tree is an AoE. I can't think of any other dps spec that doesn't get something 'unique' that changes their rotation from the other specs.
That's just part of the shaman design though, namely that Enhancement still cares a lot about spells instead of being a 100% melee weapon class. I'd argue that Enhance and Elemental still play fairly differently (such that you do have to adjust when respeccing). I'm not sure the mage design, where there is virtually no overlap among talent trees, is a superior model. It's just a different model.

We all have to agree that Thunderstorm (apart of pvp fun) was a very bad try for an AoE spell, but still i think the question was posed wrongly. It is not true that every class got something that changed their gameplay. Yes, TS is not a spell worth 51p talent, but so is not Disperse etc.

"Thats just part of the shaman design, namely that Enhancement still cares a lot about spells instead of being a 100% melee weapon class" i have no idea why is GC talking about enhancement shamans while the question was aimed to Elemental.

Mana - I've heard mana has recently begun to be an issue for Enhancement in the last few beta builds. Will the ultimate solution just be to tweak Primal Wisdom s'more? Oh, and what about all that discussion about moving Primal Wisdom to being part of Enhancement's lvl 10 skillset? It's going to be hellish on new Enhancers not having their primary mana restoration technique until much later. Also on the table here, and I'm sorry it touches on totems again - a full set of totems or an AoE rotation kills Enhancement's mana very very quickly. It'd be nice if the mana cost got reduced on some of these abilities.
It's not the intent that Enhancement has to worry about mana a lot. Generally you should have enough mana to do what you want to do. It's a model we're still adjusting. We haven't quite established a base regen for the casters and healers that we're happy with and every time we tweak that, it affects the Ret paladins and Enhancement shaman, who aren't really supposed to be mana-constrained.

If GC says we should not worry about mana, i will not. I believe it would not be big issue if enhas would have some problems getting OOM, and blizz would do the needed actions (boosting primal wisdom etc)
I dont know if anyone already tested the the new maelstrom effect. if yes please post your findings here.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Tier 1 of Enhance is one of the bigger culprits. While tier 2 has one talent that's really attractive (nigh on required for Elemental and Enhance), tier 1 is pretty bland. People would prefer to skip over Imp Shields, and Elemental Weapons is a flat spell power buff that scales with level rather than gear.
The model we're trying to use for all the classes is that you can't just soak up no-brainer talents in the first few tiers. Often there is a dps talent, and then a survival talent and then maybe an efficiency talent. You definitely get the first one, but you often need to get one of the others to progress down. This is what we mean about not being able to cherry pick just throughput-oriented talents and skipping everything else that is utility, etc. It's an evolving process though. I'm not sure I could point to a class yet and say "There. We nailed it."

Personally i still think that elemental and enhancement tier 1 talents are a bit gimmick and hope that the 3% critical strike is still a placeholder / the number will be different. If it would be haste, than it would be awesome for all 3 specs. but 3% critical strike for 3 talents points are just silly.

Im not trying to say that every our talent should be utility, but a 2 points to increase totem range for 12yards? These are not the right steps to accomplish the " we want to get rid of boring lackluster talents"

I can remember from vanilla, that we actually HAD talent that increased the range of totems and was removed, because devs didnt want us to have to spec into the talent that increases range on totems. And here we are now. On the other hand, the totem talent in restoration tree seems to be way more "fun" and better solution.

Also, Enhance has 9 "required" points in Elemental - would be 10 if it weren't for Ancestral Swiftness - on top of their own tree being filled up, which highly limits their utility options (well, to be more specific, limits them to 0). Even if an additional point or two were freed up, they may feel obligated to spend those to grab the third point in Acuity (which I don't like as 3 points to start with - it creates a 'floater' point in Elemental specs rather than getting us stuck around tier 4 needing to pick a full utility talent, which I think is a good thing. But I digress), or Improved Shields, even though all three are fairly marginal DPS gains.
Yup. This is a challenge. As I mentioned above, Enhancement likes spell damage so it's hard to put anything in Elemental that Elemental wants that Enhancement also doesn't want.

As long as it might be a challenge, i believe if elemental and enhancement tree would get revamped a bit, we would have the need to go that deeply to elemental tree.

Lightning and Water shield do not seem that useful for Elemental in many ways.
Agreed. This is something we're discussing. A new shield doesn't have to be the answer though.

Hmmm Fire Shield ? > No seriously, its a good thing that we are talking about the usefulness of shields for Elemental spec. BUT not another RNG PLEASE! (sorry for the caps, i heard i get more attention while using it)

- Nature's Blessing doesn't feel like a bonus when healing earth shielded targets, it feels like a penalty when healing targets without it. If the intent is to make shamans better tank healers, perhaps make it work in some other way. Perhaps change it to Earthliving or Riptide instead of Earth Shield?
This is the kind of feedback we struggle with a lot on most classes. As soon as something grants a bonus, it feels like a penalty when it's not up because players are very efficiency-focused. If it was say Riptide, wouldn't it feel like a penalty whenever Riptide wasn't available? Or a penalty because every heal cost that extra GCD for Riptide in order to behave at maximum efficiency?

I gotta agree with GC here. It was a completely silly question. It is a talent that increases something that you often do. If it would be changed to Earthliving, people would start complain its talent dependant on RNG imbue. If it would be changed for Riptide. Well, its kinda the same. Riptide has CD, and lasts way shorter than ES.

Honestly GC when our dps is competitive with the other hybrid specs you barely ever see us whine. We just really want to be as good as others. It's when it isn't that we come out in masses to whine about everything. Since our totems are our thing they are what is an easy target for our QQ. I guarantee you that if we do competitive DPS and never fall behind the endless Shaman crying will be puddles instead of rivers.
I agree with that. I think a lot of the complaints about "we're the only class" or "are buffs aren't awesome enough" only come to bear when dps is low. As I said recently, we think Enhancement dps was competitive when there wasn't a lot of movement involved and when you weren't competing with guys using orange weapons. We can fix the movement problem. We don't think we need to fix the legendary "problem" because those Shadowmournes will all be banked at level 85.

Yep the lad speaks truth. We want to be treated like other hybrids. Look at warrior (no not with shadowmourne), they are doing crazy damage. If the kitty is well played they are also doing crazy damage. And they still have more survivability than we do. But yes, make us DPS comparable and youll make a lot of people happy.

Also GC you stated that we were fine on static fights (DS, fester). As long as this is actually true, we were GCD locked all the time. We have too much little damage contributors.

I honestly don't see how healing rains AND chain heal are needed. Both are AoE heals fill the same role (heal people grouped together).
They are different spells with different niches. Chain Heal excels when you have a small number of players injured and Healing Rain is more for those big bursts when everyone takes damage. There are enough occasions when you need to heal say more than just the tank that we think healers can stand to have several different strategies to deal with it.

Again a bit weird question, they are not the same spells, they are situational. Chain heal is only 4 targets glyphed, and i believe that rain HR will not have target limit. Thats good for fights where there is lets say damagin aura o infest-like damaging spell.

(4) Any chance that the stoneclaw glyph can become baseline or something? I'm mostly fine with the totem utility vs. buff thing, but it seems fairly weird to have this non-scaling bubble as a secondary effect of a totem. If it can't be baseline, is it being compensated for? Hance isn't exactly a survivability powerhouse.
We are changing a lot of glyphs. It's too early to know which ones we are keeping. If this one dies then we might consider putting in the functionality elsewhere.

Yep that is what we need. O'SHIIIT button, i believe that we are almost only class / spec with no "at least" oh shit button. Shamanistic rage-like ability that reduces the incoming damage for atleast 90% percent. That would help us also in PvP.

Well i came here for open discussion, so anything comes to your mind, please post here.

** WARNING: Trolls wont be fed : WARNING **

[Whotek]

Thank the Naaru! Someone posted a non QQ/totem/buff thread!!!
Nice analysis friend

The only thing I would like to see as Elemental is a instant spell with a CD on it, something to use while moving or add to our rotation, maybe we could use our lighting or water shields to attack :P. Lava Surge will give us something to be aware if we want to increase our damage.

As for HR... I had seen many situation where HR would be more efficient than CH, I'm really looking forward for that spell!

I wish I was on the BETA, so I could really see what is going on :/ Only time and more testing will tell us if "Cata will fix it"

[Deleted]

I hope they don't fix the Searing Totem thing so they can come up with some other mechanic because lets be honest the current mechanic sucks.

I read somewhere that someone suggested that the Flameshock dot would apply combo points, that sounds alot better.

[Airlick]

We should get Magma Shield, giving us some SP or crit, and chance to disarm target while being hit. Speaking from ele perspective ofc.

[Jigawatts]

Awwww so nice and refreshing to see a post and forum that isn't QQ, but instead analyzing the responses and realizing that yay GC actually took sometime to focus on Shamans. I also like your incite and how you analyze the questions. I swear sometimes you cannot do right by some shammies they complain if you don't have a text wall concerning just them, and when you do the answers you provide are all looked at as not caring or just sweeping it under the rug. Anyways I will now get off my high horse lol.

I agree shamans still need an ohh shit button it just seems wierd that we dont have that. DPS at the end of WoTLK was on the lower end. I am excited that he mentioned EQ as a possible AoE for not having to run into the mobs to do it. This gives me hope that it will actually be competative with other AoE's. That being said Blizz and GC has said many times that AoE is going to be less of a role in Cata and more CC pulls are going to be what they aim for. All in all nice to see some Q & A for us shammies.

[Kralljin]

Hopefully they also change Lava surge, currently it's a BIG RNG Skill.

With luck it's a Big Dps Gain, with no luck it's almost 0 Dps Gain.

But i think Elemental will get a Talent that Lightning Shield get some Mana Regen and every time you'll use Unleash Elements while Lightning Shield is active, the Enemy will get hit by an Lightning shield orb.
(Something like that, because GC said :"A new shield doesn't have to be the answer though. ")

[Daggy1111]

HOnestly the only thing i really see elly shammys needing is some sort of mobil instant cast(or the ability to cast something on the move once and awhile). AOE is fine with quake(basicly rain of fire tbh) and it is a much better talent then storm was( I like pushing people off clifs though).

THe sheild thing im kinda torn on though. I do actually think they need to add a new sheild, not just to make elly feel more unique but also to help normalize dps with the other hybrids. This would also make it so we have to change sheild every once and awhile (some sort of magma sheild for extra damage then swap to water to get mana back) which might be fun.

Also I hate the totem range thing, right until you use it. It is pretty bland I admit, but when you need the extra range to keep your totems on target, it helps.

[Volitans]

Good post OP!

If earthquake is going to do real AOE damage, it is gong to be amazing to spam in choke points in battlegrounds. ... i wonder if it can dismount players...

Ele shield fix is overdue, and i am happy that it is getting attention.

Totally agree that we need an "Oh Shit" button. Maybe turn us into a stone golem or something...

[Shmo]

HOnestly the only thing i really see elly shammys needing is some sort of mobil instant cast(or the ability to cast something on the move once and awhile).

Hopefully this solves the problem,

Spiritwalker's Grace
85 Calls upon spiritual guidance, permitting movement while casting non-instant Shaman spells. This spell may be cast while casting other spells. Lasts 10 sec.
12% of base mana, Instant cast, 2 min cooldown

I'm excited to play ele in the expansion. Enhancement hopefully ends up at the end of beta with some nice adjustments and tweaks. I think GC did a good job responding to those questions.

I think the war that has been raging within wow development over making classes "equal opportunity experiences" causes a lot of heated debate over things like "well every class has an OSHIT button but us." This war has been the reason for an immense volume of change since vanilla.

I'm cool with the amount of tricks that are available to our class as it is currently, i'm not torn over these differences, in the same manner that i wasn't torn over the lack of a CC or significant AOE. pre WOTL.

That being said, I'm quite excited to see how earthquake plays out!

Good constructive thread!

[Taalyn]

We already have a mobile instant cast spell - Frost Shock (and Flame Shock if it's going to fall off in 5 seconds).

I'm still not sold on the Earthquake response. First off, it has been said that Cataclysm raids will reqire CCing some trash. This either means trash packs will be like Vezax trash, 6-7 mobs that require at least 2 to be CC'd or it means trash packs will be like Blood Prince trash. 4-5 mobs with 1-2 mobs able to completely wreck your tanks so they should/need to be CC'd. In neither case has "Everyone use AoE!" be the smartest move. Secondly, Earthquake is a 15 second cast with a 20 sec cooldown. We will push one button and 15 seconds later push 2-3 assuming the trash isn't dead or there isn't enough trash left up to warrant AoE.

Resto needing to talent for hit rating to make Telluring Currents work seems like a very bad idea. With Ancestral Switftness being such a strong talent and very accesible to Resto shamans, I think resto shaman will grab Ancestral Swiftness and reforge bad stats into hit rating.

[Neichus]

Resto needing to talent for hit rating to make Telluring Currents work seems like a very bad idea. With Ancestral Switftness being such a strong talent and very accesible to Resto shamans, I think resto shaman will grab Ancestral Swiftness and reforge bad stats into hit rating.

If the Reforging preview is accurate, you can only reforge to stats that are already present. So basically you're wearing caster hit gear in the first place, which since no offensive casters want spirit you're gearing for hit...without the spirit that you would have had if you took the talent.

I think they're gunning for it to be a choice. The nuke build looks like it'll have superior mana regeneration + a bit of bonus DPS while the more traditional build has more straight stat benefits (more spellpower, stronger Earth/Water Shield, faster movement). So far I think that aspect of Resto is actually done really superbly, I just wish there were a few more spare talents in the tree itself as it feels very "heavy" in terms of must-take talents.

[Deleted]

To fix the hit problem all they have to do is switch Acuity with Elemental precision. Then we can still get imp GW.
If they do that change + give us a CD i will be very happy with my resto shammy in cata.

[Taalyn]

If the Reforging preview is accurate, you can only reforge to stats that are already present. So basically you're wearing caster hit gear in the first place, which since no offensive casters want spirit you're gearing for hit...without the spirit that you would have had if you took the talent.

Your understanding of Reforging is incorrect.

This link will explain it, or you can find the article that was posted on MMO-Champ: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAL6iP4tj8w

What I was saying might happen is a shaman may take a piece of gear with crit rating and mastery rating and reforging 40% of the crit rating into hit rating. I'm going to sit down and do the numbers later tonight to see if this kind of thing is even possible in order to hit cap, but if it is, I think doing so will be more beneficial than spec'ing into Elemental Precision. I have a feeling doing so wouldn't sit well with Blizzard.

[Omanley]

I think it´s awesome that GC answered some of our bigger concerns, doesn´t happen to often.

The things i liked most are the brought forth concern of no options in enh speccing. We pretty much go from a 51p talent tree with cooky cutter pve build and pvp tree with a bunch of different options to a 31p tree with pve cooky cutter build and pvp build with skipped core dps talents.

We still rely by far to much on our talent tree, because our baseline spells do not support our respective tree´s enough. Because of that, a radically shrunken talent tree will have major problems running smoove.

I dont think that other shaman concerns such as inferior buffs and penalities when it comes to many things become completely uninteresting as long as we do competitive dps also.

Im not ungrateful for his responses, but i´d hoped for more answered concerns, and a more ready to compromise attitude. He´s still defending some stupid concepts, and some of his answers are to "vaque".


What does he mean with his response cocerning earthquake for example? Assumning it will deal nature damage (or decent sp scaling), it will still have it´s cooldown, meaning ele will go into melee range to use their other stuff in that time.

"Thats just part of the shaman design, namely that Enhancement still cares a lot about spells instead of being a 100% melee weapon class" i have no idea why is GC talking about enhancement shamans while the question was aimed to Elemental.

I think this comment is... not really smart. "Thats just part of the shaman design" has the habit to drum up as much enthusiasm in longtime shaman players as a puddle of mud for a milionaire´s wife with her guchi bag,prada shoes and fur coat.

It´s time for a radical change of shaman design. Pala´s got it. Twice. When´s our turn?

[Kenai]

I was quite happy (and very surprised!) to see a wall-o-Shaman text on answers, too. Also, very good analysis. I pretty much agree with pearroc about what should be fixed for Resto, and it's not a very difficult fix either. They need to synergize the new Resto talents to work with the hit talents in Elemental or bake some hit rating into the talents when you take them, because right now I see them as something to completely avoid and would rather they be seen as a viable choice.

As for Ele, I'd personally like to see Earthquake changed so that it isn't a channeled spell, more similar to Flamestrike, so it becomes less cumbersome than now. I'm afraid it isn't going to scale very well even if they fix the damage (and its damage sucks right now). Elemental does now have a fair amount of things it can do while moving, at least compared to before where I was only really able to cast one FS and nothing else if Em was on cd. Unleash Weapon's range is a bit annoying but besides that it's a good thing to use moving, and SG and EM is of course an option now too. I'm sure my Ele spec will still suffer on movement fights more than I like, and Lava Surge kinda reminds me of the old E&M Balance Druid issue, but it's definitely a lot better than before.

[TheTieThatBinds]

"When will ele not have to run into melee to do aoe?"

When you're casting Earthquake?

Did GC really just say that, indirectly, the talent Improved Fire Nova was useless(as elemental), or was I reading that wrong?

I really hope that isn't the last change to our tree, seeing as they said that the Shaman is 90-95% done. I hope that, with that comment from GC, that the Improved Fire Nova becomes baseline, and something else takes it's place. If not, does that mean that they are going to become hypocrites of their own statements? Attempting to remove the "fluff" talents from the trees, but leaving a talent, requiring 2 talent points to max, in the tree that, in the above statement, states that the talent is useless, indirectly?

Im not being derogatory, or knocking GC or blizzard or anything, but conflicting statements conflict, correct?

[Neichus]

To fix the hit problem all they have to do is switch Acuity with Elemental precision. Then we can still get imp GW.
If they do that change + give us a CD i will be very happy with my resto shammy in cata.

I think they want it to be a choice though. My other healer is a Priest and thus far it looks like they're setting up the same situation, where you can choose to be a damage-healer or you can be a pure-healer. If they put Elemental Precision in T1 then the build you describe will be the cookie-cutter build for all Resto Shamans.

Your understanding of Reforging is incorrect.

Oops, looked like I remembered it backward, you're right.

[Foxhoundn]

To fix the hit problem all they have to do is switch Acuity with Elemental precision. Then we can still get imp GW.
If they do that change + give us a CD i will be very happy with my resto shammy in cata.

That would fix one problem. But having a 3% crit / 3 talent point in tier 2 would felt reaaaaaly lackluster. Acuity is just desperate "put there something" talent.

[rabbimojo]

Did GC really just say that, indirectly, the talent Improved Fire Nova was useless(as elemental), or was I reading that wrong?

I really hope that isn't the last change to our tree, seeing as they said that the Shaman is 90-95% done. I hope that, with that comment from GC, that the Improved Fire Nova becomes baseline, and something else takes it's place. If not, does that mean that they are going to become hypocrites of their own statements? Attempting to remove the "fluff" talents from the trees, but leaving a talent, requiring 2 talent points to max, in the tree that, in the above statement, states that the talent is useless, indirectly?

Im not being derogatory, or knocking GC or blizzard or anything, but conflicting statements conflict, correct?

Can you quote this "90-95%" comment? I've seen them talk about about the first passes, but the only thing I remember hearing since then about how "done" shaman are was them saying that they felt shaman were in the top 4 for polish/done-ness. I've also seen them specifically say "No we're not really anywhere near done on any spec" fairly recently, so... I'm skeptical.

In any case, I think what the comment you quoted suggests is that they're going to be cutting back on fire nova. Elsewhere in the thread he said it specifically:

"We'd like to downplay Fire Nova in lieu of Earthquake (in addition to Chain Lightning of course). We also agree that Fire Nova should be used for true AE situations and not against single targets."

The second sentence of that quote is likely referring to enhancement shaman, where it's used as part of the ST rotation on live (as I understand, I'm not hancing lately).
For elem, I think fire nova will still be around, but I would be surprised if it continues to have so many talent points devoted to it.

[DistortionSleep]

I think they should combine Acuity and Elemental Precision into one three point talent. Spending 3 points for 3% crit and hit, isnt really gamebreaking.