The state of Elemental in 5.1

[kouby]

People whining about elemental damage are just terrible gamers. Elemental is fine, move along.

[zenga]

People whining about elemental damage are just terrible gamers. Elemental is fine, move along.

My reply to this would probably get me banned, so I'll refrain from doing so.

[Kralljin]

People whining about elemental damage are just terrible gamers. Elemental is fine, move along.

Do not feed the Trolls.

[HatredAU]

People whining about elemental damage are just terrible gamers. Elemental is fine, move along.

Have you logged in within the last 3 patches?

[Endus]

I'm fine with the Shock CD, but it is seriously annoying to hit 7 LS Charges without being able to use them.

It's simply not cool to have a Proc but being unable to use it because this proc came up to fast before the CD to use it could finish.

The absolute longest you could have to delay it is 10 seconds, and for the most part, that's avoidable by discharging properly and proactively. A lot of players see it hit 7 stacks and get reminded they have to discharge it, and then notice they need to refresh FS first, so do so and delay ES as a result. This is player error; they SHOULD be tracking the charges and their Flame Shock duration, and know when to refresh Flame Shock and when to expect full stacks on LS.

Yes, you can screw this up and lose DPS. That's the point, and it's good design; it's how good players perform better than bad players, and why there's a reason for bad players to work to improve their execution. Without these kinds of factors, gameplay is boring and skill isn't a factor.

That's something i simply don't like about Elemental, if you have too much Haste or Mastery, you feel throttled because you have casts that go below 1Sec or can't respond to to a capped LS because of ES being on CD.

That's true of basically every caster. Haste breakpoints have been a "thing" for years and aren't going away. Again; this is what makes itemization interesting, rather than just a "stack biggest stat as much as possible". It's kind of like complaining that Hit Rating over 15% is useless. Yes, but a good player knows that and Reforges their gear accordingly; bad players who don't understand this suffer as a result of their lack of knowledge, and that's a good thing.

And i think this scaling issue with secondary stats shows it's face in later tiers, but currently i am wondering if MoP has only 3 tiers, because i am already sitting at 23% Haste and 41% Mastery, if MoP has 4 tiers, you may reach ICC Values in terms of Secondary stats.

Scaling issues aren't restricted to secondary stats, and are usually more visible based on Intellect in any case.

We have plenty of Raidbots data, and Elemental is not falling behind with gear. It's just trending low, period. Those aren't the same problem. Adding +10% damage doesn't fix scaling issues; it just means you spike higher in lower end gear, and don't dip down quite as low as you gear up, you still start relatively high and end up losing ground as everyone gears up. Scaling issues require more complicated tweaks to address, overall low damage is a simpler issue to address.

[Kralljin]

The absolute longest you could have to delay it is 10 seconds, and for the most part, that's avoidable by discharging properly and proactively. A lot of players see it hit 7 stacks and get reminded they have to discharge it, and then notice they need to refresh FS first, so do so and delay ES as a result. This is player error; they SHOULD be tracking the charges and their Flame Shock duration, and know when to refresh Flame Shock and when to expect full stacks on LS.

"Pre discharging" works only an extent, and the T14 4Pc makes it only harder, mostly because LS Charge generation is slightly delayed.
If i'm hitting ES while my Lb still travels, it's easily possible to generate 2 (4) Charges within a short timeframe even if i used ES a second ago.

The T14 4Pc causes a huge LS Charge Inflation.
Under normal conditions this happens rarely (Without the Setbonus or any Buffs), but under Bl and high Mastery ratings it is easily possible to throw away ~3 LS Charges even without making any mistake.

Not even talking about Cleave situations, there i am sitting perma at 7 LS charges because after 2 Cl's (including Overloads) i am already sitting at 7 LS Charges.

Yes, you can screw this up and lose DPS. That's the point, and it's good design; it's how good players perform better than bad players, and why there's a reason for bad players to work to improve their execution. Without these kinds of factors, gameplay is boring and skill isn't a factor.

Not talking about making mistakes, i am talking about using every single Shock CD and still end up getting cap before CD finished.

That's true of basically every caster. Haste breakpoints have been a "thing" for years and aren't going away. Again; this is what makes itemization interesting, rather than just a "stack biggest stat as much as possible". It's kind of like complaining that Hit Rating over 15% is useless. Yes, but a good player knows that and Reforges their gear accordingly; bad players who don't understand this suffer as a result of their lack of knowledge, and that's a good thing.

Yeah, but the mainnuke of other Casters doesn't sit at 1.5 Sec Baseline, you could say Balance Druid with Wrath, but Wrath is only used under certain conditions.

Also, during Burnphases with Ascendance this hurts your Dps, Lvb gets easily below 1sec with any Haste Buff (Bl / Trinket Proc) active, Ascendance Dps at this point will only be increased by Mastery and Int.

Balance Druid for example take the profit out of any Buff during their CD phase.

Scaling issues aren't restricted to secondary stats, and are usually more visible based on Intellect in any case.

We have plenty of Raidbots data, and Elemental is not falling behind with gear. It's just trending low, period. Those aren't the same problem. Adding +10% damage doesn't fix scaling issues; it just means you spike higher in lower end gear, and don't dip down quite as low as you gear up, you still start relatively high and end up losing ground as everyone gears up. Scaling issues require more complicated tweaks to address, overall low damage is a simpler issue to address.

10% more damage wouldn't fix any scaling issues with 2nd Stats anyway.

Secondary Stats influence your playstyle more directly than Int, therefore you probably need to change some mechanics and not just buff numbers.

[justlols]

You're correct. Elemental damage pve wise is great atm. I'm usually top 2-5 in 25 mans.

However...

PVP wise, the fact that we have to rely on a 3 min CD that can be sheeped and CC'd until it's over is retarded. Outside of Ascendance, our LB hits like a noodle on resil'd out people. Sometimes it hits for 18k... makes my peen soft.

[Regorill]

You're correct. Elemental damage pve wise is great atm. I'm usually top 2-5 in 25 mans.

However...

PVP wise, the fact that we have to rely on a 3 min CD that can be sheeped and CC'd until it's over is retarded. Outside of Ascendance, our LB hits like a noodle on resil'd out people. Sometimes it hits for 18k... makes my peen soft.

Logs?
/10chars

[thegempolice]

Dear whiners, I play with terrible raiders and I'm in the top 3 on every boss! Elemental must be fine, stop complaining!

[Endus]

"Pre discharging" works only an extent, and the T14 4Pc makes it only harder, mostly because LS Charge generation is slightly delayed.
If i'm hitting ES while my Lb still travels, it's easily possible to generate 2 (4) Charges within a short timeframe even if i used ES a second ago.

Yes, but you need to generate 6 before you need to discharge it. For the most part, it's an issue that's not problematic. It's only lost DPS if you're not refreshing Flame Shock proactively around ES's charge time. Otherwise, it's just coming up sooner, and that's a good thing.

Not even talking about Cleave situations, there i am sitting perma at 7 LS charges because after 2 Cl's (including Overloads) i am already sitting at 7 LS Charges.

And that's normal for cleave situations. I'm also not seeing the issue. It's not wasted DPS; you're discharging those as you can, unless you have something better to cast, in which case a lower shock CD wouldn't help anyway.

Yeah, but the mainnuke of other Casters doesn't sit at 1.5 Sec Baseline, you could say Balance Druid with Wrath, but Wrath is only used under certain conditions.

Also, during Burnphases with Ascendance this hurts your Dps, Lvb gets easily below 1sec with any Haste Buff (Bl / Trinket Proc) active, Ascendance Dps at this point will only be increased by Mastery and Int.

The value of Haste already takes all this into account, you know.

If it were the issue you're claiming, Haste would have a lower value and we wouldn't want it. The value it has outside Hero/BL mitigates any capping you experience during it.

10% more damage wouldn't fix any scaling issues with 2nd Stats anyway.

Secondary Stats influence your playstyle more directly than Int, therefore you probably need to change some mechanics and not just buff numbers.

We don't have any scaling issue with secondary stats, was the point. I was merely explaining why that is. It's only a scaling issue if our DPS is suffering as a result of it. As we're not losing relative DPS with gear, it's not an issue to do with stat values at all.

[Pitkanen]

First off. What matters is damage. Right now, if you count stormlash as the shaman's damage... ele is decent. Personal survival is relatively terrible but off-healing is amazing.

Second. Our scaling with secondary stats is generally worse than that of other classes. If you correct Ele's crit coefficient by the %of damage that doesn't autocrit, we have a lower crit coefficient than any other class in the game (even if you take into account the clearcasting boost). Take into account all the different things that cause haste to not be... 10% haste = 10% more ticks of dots and 10% more of every spell.

In 5.2, when the new raids have better gear than valor-upgraded heroic-t14, scaling will have an impact on whether it is important for bliz to buff Elemental to prevent Ele from dropping out of the bottom for personal damage. Scaling doesn't necessarily matter, what matters is if blizzard will turn nobs to account for it.

[oblivionx]

It's nice to see some people come around and admit that ele's damage is too low.

The thing I noticed from patch 5.0 onward is the precipitous drop in lightning bolt damage, it's just way too low and that's the bulk of the problem.

[Kralljin]

And that's normal for cleave situations. I'm also not seeing the issue. It's not wasted DPS; you're discharging those as you can, unless you have something better to cast, in which case a lower shock CD wouldn't help anyway.

It would be not Dmg Loss if a Full Fulmination deals less damage than a single Cl, which is not case, generating an LS charge which you cannot use for some reason is a dps loss compared to a scenario where you could use it.

The value of Haste already takes all this into account, you know.

If it were the issue you're claiming, Haste would have a lower value and we wouldn't want it. The value it has outside Hero/BL mitigates any capping you experience during it.

In Blue Gear, Haste was totally King in terms of Stats for me, now in relatively decent Gear (502) Mastery and Crit are catching up with Haste, Mastery even surpassed Haste until i acquired the T14 4Pc, which is weird if you consider that Haste and Mastery scale linear.

[Deleted]

You're correct. Elemental damage pve wise is great atm. I'm usually top 2-5 in 25 mans.

However...

PVP wise, the fact that we have to rely on a 3 min CD that can be sheeped and CC'd until it's over is retarded. Outside of Ascendance, our LB hits like a noodle on resil'd out people. Sometimes it hits for 18k... makes my peen soft.

...aaand melee attacks only hit for 2,3k, luckily we have other abilities. Don't complain about the damage, it is REALLY high. Try this: get an instant LvB proc -> Unleash Elements -> Elemental Blast -> instant LvB -> earth shock with full stacks. The 30% dmg buff is applied to both Elemental Blast and LvB, it can hit soo fucking hard, you have no idea. Elemental blast crits 100k to 110k, LvB maybe 55k and then fulmination around 80k (still crit). If you take the echo talent, you can global people. There is a lot of RNG to it, like mastery procs.

The only reason people whine about the spec is because it's only scrubs who play it, the pros play resto, or mage/lock maybe even spriest, so no one high rated is to be seen, and cus it needs a real surv ability. I think GhostCrawler hinted that we might need a surv CD, so after that we are golden. No way he dares to nerf us after that. Also now that Frost Mages and Warlocks are nerfed quite hard, it's obviously a buff to all other casters. Spriest has proven to be really strong, question is if we can compete for a spot against those 3 casters in a 3s setup.

If you learn to play arena you will realize that controlling the DPS in order to not get peeled and thereby (if it's even a word) do damage, is just as important as doing damage and preventing the healer from healing. Once you get there you will know that getting CCed while bursting is a problem for every class and that the mistake is on you and your team. And then finally you will stop posting stupid comments on mmo-champion (and hopefully all the other players doing so) saying stuff like "my Lighting Bolt hits like a wet noodle"

[zenga]

...aaand melee attacks only hit for 2,3k, luckily we have other abilities. Don't complain about the damage, it is REALLY high. Try this: get an instant LvB proc -> Unleash Elements -> Elemental Blast -> instant LvB -> earth shock with full stacks. The 30% dmg buff is applied to both Elemental Blast and LvB, it can hit soo fucking hard, you have no idea. Elemental blast crits 100k to 110k, LvB maybe 55k and then fulmination around 80k (still crit). If you take the echo talent, you can global people. There is a lot of RNG to it, like mastery procs.

That is the same as saying that poverty is no real issue in society because they might win the lottery one day.

.The only reason people whine about the spec is because it's only scrubs who play it, the pros play resto, or mage/lock maybe even spriest, so no one high rated is to be seen

I hope you realize that there are actually tournament calibre players who play ele as main spec, and eventually had to concede because it's 'unplayable' right now, quoting their words. And below that there are plenty of 2.2-2.4k players who prefer elemental above anything else. The reason why they play resto in the first place is the current state of elemental.

.Also now that Frost Mages and Warlocks are nerfed quite hard, it's obviously a buff to all other casters. Spriest has proven to be really strong, question is if we can compete for a spot against those 3 casters in a 3s setup.

It's true that nerfing the OP classes (abilities) is a direct buff to ele, but that doesn't solve the issues the spec has. A feral or a rogue who opens on you out of stealth and it's game over.

[Deleted]

Right, there needs to be certain choices being made during a spec's standard rotation, it creates ways for good players making the correct choices to shine over players who aren't. The shared shock cooldown isn't really that big an issue for Elemental.

About the only change I'd like to see for shocks would be to have Frost Shock not such a DPS loss compared to a charged Earth Shock or the damage from Flame Shock. What this results in, in PvP, is that Elemental avoids using Frost Shock, since it locks out both of our other necessary shocks, making us choose between burst for the next 6 seconds, or control. That's a longer lockout than most classes face between control or damage. I feel it could be addressed by boosting Frost Shock's damage significantly, while still leaving it clearly inferior to Earth or Flame Shocks for pure Damage. Something like having Fulmination also work with Frost Shock, but only discharging a maximum of 3 charges. That would give Elemental a reason to use Frost Shock in PvP, but you'd still be contending with the shared shock cooldown; you can still choose control, but it's at a loss of DPS, just not as damaging either way as it currently is, where Elemental Shaman tend to ignore Frost Shock entirely as they can't afford the loss of damage.

I really like the idea of shocks being an obvious "dmg VS dmg VS utility" thing. Now role damage into Frost Shock would just lower the difference between the damage VS utility question, and make your decision and little easier, but also less punishing for picking the wrong one. I personally think that's the wrong direction and not the right way to go about it, I'm quite happy with how the difference is now. Either you slow(root with talents), do instant damage (earth shock), or increase your damage and burst opportunities in the long run, but no instant damage (flame shock..).

If using a shock would trigger the other shock's CD, but would not trigger the shock's own CD, that would give us alot more room to choose, since we could flame shock x3 and then leave it untill it's about to fall off again. Right now I pretty much spent all my shocks on keeping flame shock on all targets (3v3 arena) and then neglect them when bursting, and build it op again. I think it's a really good system since it's pretty rewarding if you manage to keep them rolling and it requires some of your brain CPU to check if they are still up on all targets or if they have been dispelled. Pretty cool way to build up potential pressure as a player, just too cumbersome and non-effective. It's possible that instead of triggering no CD on the shock used, then a 2 sec one. Also even only apply this to flame shock only could make sense. Good thing about this solution is that it wont affect the skill cap with 'shock management'

Next thing would be to bring back the dispell protection we had in Cataclysm.

Last thing would be to increase the mana cost of the shocks, and in some way reduce the CD, probably even removing the CD completely. So now it wont be a question about waiting for the CD, but to manage your mana. Off-healing VS shocks VS thunderstorming on CD in order to be able to heal/shock more, thus thunderstorming in less-effective situations since you dont wait for a good situation to thunderstorm in.

Answer might even be a combination of all these

[Endus]

I really like the idea of shocks being an obvious "dmg VS dmg VS utility" thing. Now role damage into Frost Shock would just lower the difference between the damage VS utility question, and make your decision and little easier, but also less punishing for picking the wrong one. I personally think that's the wrong direction and not the right way to go about it, I'm quite happy with how the difference is now. Either you slow(root with talents), do instant damage (earth shock), or increase your damage and burst opportunities in the long run, but no instant damage (flame shock..).

For Resto and Enhancement, that's true.

For Elemental, so much of their damage is tied up in Flame Shock (lava burst crits) and Earth Shock (Fulmination) that we look at the utility of Frost Shock and say "yeah, that's basically never going to be worth it". That's the issue. It's not a huge problem in PvE, but it is for PvP.

[Deleted]

EDIT: Post got duped for some reason, see #99

EDIT2: Post didn't get duped, so I lost this one Maybe Endus can see edit history? (if you can you can have your fulmination Frost Shock)

[Deleted]

It's nice to see some people come around and admit that ele's damage is too low.

The thing I noticed from patch 5.0 onward is the precipitous drop in lightning bolt damage, it's just way too low and that's the bulk of the problem.

And it's trolling to say you believe elemental damage is fine right?

Maybe it's related to our respective guilds, I've competed for the top 3 in my guild the whole expansion with the main competition mainly being a vastly superior geared warrior and a warlock. I just fail to see the problem.

[Nisala]

And it's trolling to say you believe elemental damage is fine right?

Maybe it's related to our respective guilds, I've competed for the top 3 in my guild the whole expansion with the main competition mainly being a vastly superior geared warrior and a warlock. I just fail to see the problem.

That's because the players you are playing with are not maximising their specs properly. If they were reaching their potential, you would be much lower. You can't draw on your immediate context to make sweeping statements about a spec. People here are drawing upon collected data across a range of parses to pull together an 'overall picture' of elemental's performance. In terms of potential DPS and in terms of average dps, we are under-performing. Simple.