Shaman lvl 90 talents

[Glyphtics]

Again, I've never had any issues whatsoever with Hagara or Spine. Hagara he'll sit idle while she's shielded, or run out to attack ice crystals/lightning elemental as long as I dropped the totem in a spot where range wouldn't be an issue, and once the shield is down, he's back on Hagara every time. Spine, same thing; if you drop him before a tendon, he won't switch TO the tendon because he's already got a target. If you drop it when the tendon's up, and anything else is closer, same thing. That's not AI problems, that's how he targets, and you as a Shaman player should know that.

Searing on Spine is absolutely fine. No AI issues whatsoever, so I don't know why you even raise that. The only people I've heard who have issues are those who DoT up the Bloods with Flame Shock before the tendon spawns, and that's player error, absolutely.

And no, Searing and FET don't share the same AI. They don't even share the same ownership; ST is your Guardian. The Fire Elemental is the Fire Elemental Totem's Guardian, which is your Guardian.

No, that's being smart.

[mrinvisable2]

well if those talents are true i would be happy if u are resto an you chose perma pet it would be watter elementals that you send to ally and heal him and pet would have various abilities some instants, casts and aoe heals - chain heal but not dps pet for resto

[Maruka]

seems underwelming for resto to say the least

[Jinto]

complaining because as lvl 90 talents its seems underpowered as most clases have their lvl 90 talents witch works for all spec i dont see how perma pet would benefit resto

Maybe Pandaland will have some encounters where healer dps matters...

[KCguy]

They totally threw me a curveball on this one. I never expected elementals to ever be controllable. Mainly because so many classes already have controllable pets. What I was thinking might happen one day is we'd get more elementals to choose from such as wind and water.

[mrinvisable2]

well as endus said there havent been official announcement about 90 lvl talents all we have is to w8 til beta as they said talent trees wont be updated until beta

[jace5869]

Agreed, I am more curious about what the Buff UE actually does and what the Ele Cone does. Perma Ele is just bleh imo.

Maybe the Buffed UE multiplies current effect by 2 or 3.

Increases UE Windfury by 10 swings.

Increases UE Flametongue by 40%.

Increases UE Earthliving by 40%.

Increases UE Frostbrand by 10 Secs. ( would say traps target in Ice for 5 secs but longer snare sound more fun)

Unleash Wind should make our next X amount of attacks do Nature Damage. Unless there are going to be some changes to auto-attack damage I don't see an extra 10 swings as a big deal. Also making Unleash Flame cause the next fire attack to leave a burn on the target?

---------- Post added 2012-03-19 at 02:13 PM ----------

Oh god I just hope the patch before MoP we aren't totally fucked up like in 4.0. Not having Unleash Elements as Enhance made for some BORING game play and we also took a huge hit in DPS and never got a band aid when other classes did.

[Endus]

From an elem standpoint, this lev90 FE option looks an obvious choice. Without this talent our FE would have a up-time of one minute, and a cd of 4 minutes. With this talent we gain an extra 4 minutes FE-uptime. OP?

Not really.

Using current values, the Fire Elemental Totem would be worth about 6k DPS, meaning it's about 2800 better than Searing Totem. Except that the non-perma-pet Elemental Shaman gets 1 minute of FET every 5 minutes, which apparently works like the old one, just with a shorter duration, maintaining the higher 7k DPS for the full minute.

That 7k is +3800 DPS, so for 60 seconds, 228,000 damage. The +2800 from the permanent pet would be, over 5 minutes, 840,000 damage. A difference of 612000 damage. It's about a 2k DPS increase for that talent.

Supercharging UE could easily providing similar numbers. Using it on CD, you'd get 20 UEs off in that time frame. That means each use would have to be ~30,600 DPS over its current use. Which isn't a huge jump; in the same simulationcraft setup I'm pulling the FET numbers from, LvB hits for about 58.5k, before we even count Overload. Boosting the next Fire spell by an additional +50% would be all that supercharge would need to do to make superUE more DPS than perma-FET.

And that's not outrageously high.

[Teriz]

Anyone else find it odd that the Monk talents are further along than the Shaman talents?

[Marooned]

now my totem and pet hotkeys will clash :S

[Endus]

Anyone else find it odd that the Monk talents are further along than the Shaman talents?

No. The Monk is one of the flagship new features of MoP, and involves a whole bunch of brand new mechanics. Of course they're going to put more work into developing an entirely brand new class with new mechanics than they do into touching up any of the existing classes.

[Valedus]

Fuck my life. I don't want to play a pet class. There's too many pet classes/specs in this game as it is...is Guild Wars 2 out yet?

Then don't choose that talent...? They already said none of the talents would be HUGE dps increases over the other. And you don't even know what the other two ACTUALLY do yet... maybe the super UE is actually really, really good.

Edit: About them not being good for resto, they could easily fix that. Make it so the fire elemental/earth elemental is a sort of "healer-pet" (new idea). Allow it to help the resto shammy heal groups, like toss mini-chain heals maybe?
The unleash elements would still affect resto, as you would be using Earthliving.
And the cone could probably be a cone heal for you. They said they didn't write down all the nuances, and perhaps they aren't complete. Believe me, I'm sure Blizz will work on it =)

[Deleted]

Find it quite quaint that people are calling Shammys a pet class due to the prospect of controllable Fire Elementals...

Lets not get hysterical people, Force of Nature didn't make Balance Druids a pet class, neither did the Shadowfiend for Spriests, or GoAK for pallies, for example.

[Gray_Matter]

The issue is that, as far as I or anyone else can tell, the game engine currently only has the ability to send commands to an NPC flagged as a "Pet", which has a pet bar and all that. Guardians have to follow an AI script, and are usually used for situations where there's another pet floating around to interfere with it being a pet. As such, it's just not possible to have a macro command to order a Guardian to do anything, since if you could, it would be a Pet.

That worked for a long time, but the cracks are starting to show, and I agree that MoP looks like a good time to overhaul the system, since apparently they already are for Warlocks and Hunters.

They're not trying to do bad design. The issue is more that it's a relatively small group, and they're trying to develop systems that are both reliable and consistent, and easy to develop and implement, and the latter is often the bit that kills a good idea. Overhauling the entire pet code is a great idea, but takes a lot of development and implementation time, so unless you were going to do it to also benefit the actual pet classes who rely on it far more than Shaman do, it's probably not the most efficient use of resources, even if it is the most thorough fix.

And inefficient use of resources means other things have to be shelved. There's a LOT they want to do that they simply have not had time to design and implement, like player model updates.

I am a software architect and have developed code for as long as I can remember. I obviously don't know blizzards code but I do know that there are always many ways to skin a cat. All they needed to do was change the elemental's target through a macro (or ability). This could have been tied a hidden or visible "debuff" on the target or any number of things. It could simply be a command to the AI setting it's new target. No need for the full pet logic (follow/move/etc). What you said above is obviously the problem, "The issue is more that it's a relatively small group". I do feel though that too often they try to get creative instead of just getting the job done.

[Dave131]

No. The Monk is one of the flagship new features of MoP, and involves a whole bunch of brand new mechanics. Of course they're going to put more work into developing an entirely brand new class with new mechanics than they do into touching up any of the existing classes.

That may be true but come on man, everyone else had their talents WEEKS ago. I know that patience is a virtue but this is getting kinda ridiculous

[Teriz]

No. The Monk is one of the flagship new features of MoP, and involves a whole bunch of brand new mechanics. Of course they're going to put more work into developing an entirely brand new class with new mechanics than they do into touching up any of the existing classes.

Fair enough. However, shouldn't we find it odd that we're STILL in the dark about our level 90 talents?

---------- Post added 2012-03-19 at 08:30 PM ----------

That may be true but come on man, everyone else had their talents WEEKS ago. I know that patience is a virtue but this is getting kinda ridiculous

Exactamondo.

[Endus]

I am a software architect and have developed code for as long as I can remember. I obviously don't know blizzards code but I do know that there are always many ways to skin a cat. All they needed to do was change the elemental's target through a macro (or ability). This could have been tied a hidden or visible "debuff" on the target or any number of things. It could simply be a command to the AI setting it's new target. No need for the full pet logic (follow/move/etc). What you said above is obviously the problem, "The issue is more that it's a relatively small group". I do feel though that too often they try to get creative instead of just getting the job done.

They still need to tie that in to pet frankencode that's been tweaked and modified multiple times over the past 7 years that is itself tied into other parts of the game, without affecting anything else.

They've done similar easy fixes that did things like create Reckoning Bombs. WoW is a complex enough beasts that even relatively simple changes can have far-reaching effects.

That may be true but come on man, everyone else had their talents WEEKS ago. I know that patience is a virtue but this is getting kinda ridiculous

Hunters and Priests don't have their level 86+ abilities yet, and we do. The talent calculator was never intended to be a complete thing, it was a "here's a glance at a work in progress behind the scenes". It's like seeing a book that the author's in the middle of editing. Saying "Whoah, chapter 34 is REALLY rough compared to chapter 29" doesn't really mean anything, since the author may have finished editing 29 and not started on 34 yet.

The deadline for getting everyone to the same degree of completion is the launch of the beta. Not before.

Fair enough. However, shouldn't we find it odd that we're STILL in the dark about our level 90 talents?

Not really. The first iteration weren't great. Apparently they HAVE gotten our level 90 talents roughed out, they just haven't released any information on them. That's not anything they promised they'd do, though, so getting angry that they haven't is a bit silly.

[Teriz]

Not really. The first iteration weren't great. Apparently they HAVE gotten our level 90 talents roughed out, they just haven't released any information on them. That's not anything they promised they'd do, though, so getting angry that they haven't is a bit silly.

I'm not getting angry, I'm just wondering WTH is going on that they can't come up with three end talents for the Shaman tree. Heck you said it yourself; These talents are so rough we don't even have a detailed description of them. They come from a journalist who saw a glimpse of them at the press tour, and it was so brief that s/he couldn't even get the descriptions from their tooltip.

[Riverness]

Guys, I really don't understand the argument here.

Just remember:
1) These talents should be similar (if not same) in terms of damage output.
2) All three should be situational picks (one is superior to other on fight X, while the other is better on fight Y)
3) These are NOT final and are subject to change.

[Cai]

Unleash Wind should make our next X amount of attacks do Nature Damage. Unless there are going to be some changes to auto-attack damage I don't see an extra 10 swings as a big deal. Also making Unleash Flame cause the next fire attack to leave a burn on the target?

---------- Post added 2012-03-19 at 02:13 PM ----------

Oh god I just hope the patch before MoP we aren't totally fucked up like in 4.0. Not having Unleash Elements as Enhance made for some BORING game play and we also took a huge hit in DPS and never got a band aid when other classes did.

Your Unleash Wind sounds good, this way auto attacks scale from mastery.

For Unleash Flame maybe make FS a stackable(sp?) dot (only 3 times?) if used by UE. Since on MoP Calc FS is 24 secs and UE is 15 secs I think it would work out good.

as for being screwed for 5.0, I don't see it happening since Ascendance is more of a DPS CD and not a spell to use with standard priority.