How to fix Ele PVP.

[Deleted]

So im sure most of you know or have found out first hand just how easy it is for any melee class to tunnel an elemental shaman, reducing our outgoing damage to almost nothing and killing us extremely easily. This is due to our control options (Hex 45sec CD, Glyph of Earthbind totem and Frostshock) being almost ignored by classes like Warriors, Rogues and Feral druids (dont get me started) that have seemingly infinite ways to get out them without using a trinket (except hex). Because we cannot effectively kite melee, our damage on them consists of instant Shocks and Unleash Elements and if we're quite lucky then a lava burst for say 15-20k on an average pvp player.
Some might say; "Your a hybrid class, you can heal yourself you dont need all the control options and damage"
To this i say "As Ele the only heals we have require a cast time and the heals themselves at their best will crit us for 15k, these are easily interruptable and heal us for so little that we may as well have no heals at all. Other pure dps classes like Rogues, hunters, Warriors, Deathknights and mages all have self heals that are significantly better than an ELE shamans. I really mean this. SIGNIFICANTLY. I dont really have a problem with our pitiful healing ability but i do have a problem with dps classes amazing ability TO heal.
I can hark on and on about why i think blizzards implementation of pure dps classes self healing were a mistake and why i think come next expansion they'll remove them all like they did with all the CC negation talents..... but i wont.
Instead i will Contribute some tweaks to our talents and spells that i think will elegantly fix Elemental shamans in PvP without impacting PvE. Here goes;

1. Change Earthquake! At the moment its useless pretty much and any Ele pvp shaman worth his salt skips the talent entirely, If we dont have a chance to cast a lava burst more than a couple of times then we certainly dont have time to channel any spell whatsoever, especially if that spell only has a 10% chance of knocking the enemy down. Change it to this;
Earthquake
Instantly knocks enemies in the Targeted area down, causing 3k damage. The earthquake persists for 5 seconds and enemies have a 25% chance to get knocked down after the initial cast. 1min Cooldown
This would behave a bit like a warlocks shadowfury, and gives as a control option we can rely on to do some damage and actually stop our enemies long enough to get off a cast.

2. Make Stoneclaw totem scale with health! Instead of having stoneclaw totem place a shield on our totems by 4k or whatever it is, make that shield 5% of the shamans health. Then the glyph will place a shield on us that scales nicely, as by the time the next season comes around the current implementation of Stoneclaw totems shield will barely absorb a single hit.

3. Give Unleash Elements more Punch! The way i propose Blizzard go about this is to add a talent in the elemental tree somewhere near the bottom, maybe rolled into lave surge or lava flows that says;
If Unleash Elements is cast on a target afflicted with FlameShock then the target suffers from empowered flame that damages the enemy over 10 seconds for about the same damage as flameshock ticks ( alternatively it could increase the damage of the flameshock dot and renew it) and is consumed by lavaburst.
This would allow us to do some damage when we cant cast, which is a lot of the time! and it wouldn't effect PvE because the effect would be nearly immediately consumed by the ensuing Lava burst.

4. Make thunderstorm give us more mana, as we're currently running very low after a couple of chain lightnings. Or give us a nature damage buff or an instant heal, nothing special



Im not asking for all of these to be implemented (it would be nice!), any one of these would help us a lot or something along the same lines. As i mentioned before i dont have that much of a problem with our null healing, but we REALLY need something allow us to cast against melee. We need to have our survivability enhanced or our ability to deal damage when we cant cast adjusted because at the moment in pvp its all fun and games until a melee notices you, and then its game over, and there is actually Nothing we can do about it!

Tell me what you think and post any other suggestions you might have!

[Tyrlite]

From personal experience what kills my burst in pvp is when my frackin flameshock gets dispelled, it would go a long way to make it undispellable...

[Lebored]

Even if those went through I don't think it would have much of an impact.

Like you said our problems are survival. The self healing of Shamans is too mana taxing and therefor not effective enough. This is obviously because if they weren't they would be able to use that healing on others. So we'd either need something woven into our normal dps routine(see Warlock, Spriest, Feral, Warrior), like having Rolling Thunder increase HP as well as Mana. Have us forgo some of our damage in order to self heal (see Rogue, Ret, DK), like being able to let us use our Lightning Shield charges with Frost Shock? to activate some kind of defensive ability. Or give us a cooldown to use to avoid focus damage (see every other class), but that would require a brand new ability. Or perhaps rework Earthquake to be localized at the Shamans feet and bump up the knockdown effect but give EQ a cooldown and not allow the Shaman to move or something.

Stoneclaw is neat but is inadequate now, and will be pointless in later tiers. Scaling it off health as you suggested wouldn't allow it to scale large enough to keep up (atleast at 5% HP), but I guess we'll have to see how much HP jumps into the next tier. It didn't seem really all the significant going from blues to purples so I'm not optimistic.

Like all casters if we are able to turret our dps is more than enough to drop people. Just right now there no downside to just focusing the Shaman.


---------- Post added 2011-01-15 at 03:00 PM ----------

From personal experience what kills my burst in pvp is when my frackin flameshock gets dispelled, it would go a long way to make it undispellable...

That's not an option, Flame Shock is no more important to our dps than Immolate is to Warlocks or Diseases are to DKs. We already get a HUGE haste buff if it is dispelled.
If it were undispellable in a BG setting I could get multiple Flame Shocks rolling and just have Lava Surge go crazy.

[Tyrlite]

That's not an option, Flame Shock is no more important to our dps than Immolate is to Warlocks or Diseases are to DKs. We already get a HUGE haste buff if it is dispelled.
If it were undispellable in a BG setting I could get multiple Flame Shocks rolling and just have Lava Surge go crazy.

Actually I'm 90% positive that diseases and poisons can't be dispelled so if they can't be dispelled why is that our FS can't be dispelled? What the hell is the point of haste buff if I can't Hit the target with with my best spell??? not to mention our other problem the fact that when I'm getting trained by melee I can cast shit b/c of knockdowns, interrupts and stuns...

[DiscoGhost]

i think cut the cast time of lightning bolt and chain lightning in half and then half the damage, would add to the mastery's effect a little more and would also make los'ing a shaman a little hard(considering its way to easy currently)

[Hypernetic]

Actually I'm 90% positive that diseases and poisons can't be dispelled so if they can't be dispelled why is that our FS can't be dispelled? What the hell is the point of haste buff if I can't Hit the target with with my best spell??? not to mention our other problem the fact that when I'm getting trained by melee I can cast shit b/c of knockdowns, interrupts and stuns...

They can, just not by shamans anymore. Unless you are a dwarf.

[Kawakazi]

Your Earthquake idea is just season 5 glyph of death and decay. I cannot agree with any post that brings that idea to surface.

[Jolle69]

Even if those went through I don't think it would have much of an impact.

Like you said our problems are survival. The self healing of Shamans is too mana taxing and therefor not effective enough. This is obviously because if they weren't they would be able to use that healing on others. So we'd either need something woven into our normal dps routine(see Warlock, Spriest, Feral, Warrior), like having Rolling Thunder increase HP as well as Mana. Have us forgo some of our damage in order to self heal (see Rogue, Ret, DK), like being able to let us use our Lightning Shield charges with Frost Shock? to activate some kind of defensive ability. Or give us a cooldown to use to avoid focus damage (see every other class), but that would require a brand new ability. Or perhaps rework Earthquake to be localized at the Shamans feet and bump up the knockdown effect but give EQ a cooldown and not allow the Shaman to move or something.

Stoneclaw is neat but is inadequate now, and will be pointless in later tiers. Scaling it off health as you suggested wouldn't allow it to scale large enough to keep up (atleast at 5% HP), but I guess we'll have to see how much HP jumps into the next tier. It didn't seem really all the significant going from blues to purples so I'm not optimistic.

Like all casters if we are able to turret our dps is more than enough to drop people. Just right now there no downside to just focusing the Shaman.


---------- Post added 2011-01-15 at 03:00 PM ----------



That's not an option, Flame Shock is no more important to our dps than Immolate is to Warlocks or Diseases are to DKs. We already get a HUGE haste buff if it is dispelled.
If it were undispellable in a BG setting I could get multiple Flame Shocks rolling and just have Lava Surge go crazy.

You whine about survivability with dks still in the game? Only way to survive a ele shammie/frost mage/demo lock/affli lock is to burn ALL cds without waiting a second without one or instagib inc, if we use ds to heal for a whopping 7% of our health we lose 1/3 of our dmg over 10 seconds

[Merkicus]

The problems with Elemental PVP are 1) survival/escape 2) inability to deal damage under pressure from a single player.

The only real way to solve this is by providing better escape options, or more damage done through instants.

Even if Spiritwalkers grace ignored interruption effects it wouldn't be enough (but would buff the crap out of Resto!).

Frankly I've given up on Elemental being good for PVP - we have 2 specs which are either good or okay at PVP and that's probably all we'll get.

[barrsftw]

The problems with Elemental PVP are 1) survival/escape 2) inability to deal damage under pressure from a single player.

The only real way to solve this is by providing better escape options, or more damage done through instants.

Even if Spiritwalkers grace ignored interruption effects it wouldn't be enough (but would buff the crap out of Resto!).

Frankly I've given up on Elemental being good for PVP - we have 2 specs which are either good or okay at PVP and that's probably all we'll get.

Ele's are fine in pvp... all of this QQ posts are people QQing because they dont win 1v1s which you should be used to. Ele always has and still will shine in 5s.. if you dont believe me go look up the best 5s teams

[Lebored]

Actually I'm 90% positive that diseases and poisons can't be dispelled so if they can't be dispelled why is that our FS can't be dispelled? What the hell is the point of haste buff if I can't Hit the target with with my best spell??? not to mention our other problem the fact that when I'm getting trained by melee I can cast shit b/c of knockdowns, interrupts and stuns...

You are incorrect they can be dispelled, and the haste buff is for lightning bolt. Yes it doesn't hit as hard but it still makes Lightning Bolt spam a viable dps alternative.
You are correct about not being able to do anything while trained by melee but that isn't changed by making FS undispellable, so it is a seperate issue.

---------- Post added 2011-01-15 at 04:45 PM ----------

You whine about survivability with dks still in the game? Only way to survive a ele shammie/frost mage/demo lock/affli lock is to burn ALL cds without waiting a second without one or instagib inc, if we use ds to heal for a whopping 7% of our health we lose 1/3 of our dmg over 10 seconds

You are clearly uninformed about this game.
This isn't WotLK anymore that kind of burst isnt possible, not by a single person. Even if every single one of my spells hit for 20k (which they don't) with HP levels what they are that would still give you tons of time to react to avoid an instagib.


And that isn't how Death Strike works, it heals you for a MINIMUM of 7% modified only upwards. It is also not your only way to self heal. And can be used in addition to defensive cooldowns.

---------- Post added 2011-01-15 at 04:47 PM ----------

Ele's are fine in pvp... all of this QQ posts are people QQing because they dont win 1v1s which you should be used to. Ele always has and still will shine in 5s.. if you dont believe me go look up the best 5s teams

Fine might be a bit much, more like on the bottom end of acceptable.
Also there is more PvP than just 5s.

[Merkicus]

Ele's are fine in pvp... all of this QQ posts are people QQing because they dont win 1v1s which you should be used to. Ele always has and still will shine in 5s.. if you dont believe me go look up the best 5s teams

You're an idiot and you obviously don't play a Shaman.

Nobody plays 5s seriously anymore, and after the bloodlust nerf I really doubt you'll see any elemental shaman.

You don't seem to understand that even with healing, the class is completely shut down by any melee class (and warlocks) and it can't do any damage whatsoever due to all of the interrupts, stuns, and knockdowns floating around.