[OFFICIAL] MoP Beta Build Changes Discussion Thread

[Deleted]

Just made an account to post some first imperssions from a resto shaman perspective. Purely PvE as thats what Im intrested in.

Got a beta invite in the 2nd wave and have been doing TotJS a few times. Excuse me if the points have been discussed earlier on in the thread, havent read all of it.
Edit: Came out a tad longer than intented, and doesnt raise much discussion, but maybe someone without beta acces can get something out of it.

1) Glyphs The riptide glyph is either bugged or not working quite the way the tooltip says. It says it should remove the initial heal completely, but instead it just seems to reduce the initial heal by approx 50% - And no, its not just an initial tick that happens instantly, it heals for slightly more than a normal tick and is added to the normal amount of ticks you should have. Telluric Currents is, for now at least, awesome. Glyphed bolt hits for 8k or so selfbuffed with my gear, so 6,6k mana return, thats 6,6% mana. Other than that there seems to be a fine amount of choices for the 3rd slot; chain heal, water shield, HST and I suppose Chaining for fights that support it. So overall glyphs look pretty solid for resto.

2) Talents Tier1: Stone Bulwark is awesome, so is Astral shift, for 5 mans Bulkwark is the obivious choice, however Shift will have its uses when encountering more consistent DMG. Tier2 is largely irrelevant for PvE, so I'll skip over that. Tier3: No real coice for PvE here, guess relocating totems could be somewhat usefull on a few encounters, but highly doubt it'll ever surpass Call of the Elements for Resto, 2x Healing & Mana Tides and SLTs is just too good to pass up on. Tier4: Some actual choice here, don't think Ill be taking NS for PvE though and at least I cant say anything about Echo without Recount or logs just yet but it obiviously has potential. Tier5: Propably the best tier keeping in mind blizzard's design goals - Healing Tide & Ancestral Guidance for fights with big damage phases, Conductivity for fights with constant Tank and Raid dmg. Overall tiers 1,3,5 look good but 2 and 4 could use some love.

3) Overall gameplay I was completely lost when I entered a dungeon for the first time. Where the hell are my totems?! After the initial shock I kinda like the new way. Having to watch the water totem CDs is definately a nice change, eg. not dropping HST if you're about to drop Mana Tide soon. Chain heal not consuming riptide baseline is also a welcome change, especially with the riptide glyph. The amount of CDs is huge for me, that was basically the one reason I liked paladin healing - you could modify your throughput with cooldowns, and now we have a truckload of em, and even more coming with lvl 90 talents and ascendance. Oh and can't forget that with Stormlash Totem we'll have some actual, unique, raid utility. So overall Im happy with the resto changes, hope they don't mess the numbers up too badly.

[Deleted]

This thread has clearly gotten out of hand, in the last 10 pages it has been far more giant walls of text about the bloody imbues, which as of this moment are not changing in MoP...the thread is actually supposed to be about what is new in the Beta and how that might affect gameplay, not shouting our wishlists or debating the merits of imbues for PvP, If you must insist on shouting all about how you want to remove choice and flexibility from the class so as to make you happier in PvP situations please make another damn thread.

[Endus]

Do not back-seat moderate. If you feel something needs moderator attention, use the "report post" button; every post reported is manually reviewed by the moderator team.

That said, the imbue argument IS getting out of hand, and it's stopping now.

[Protoman]

1) Glyphs The riptide glyph is either bugged or not working quite the way the tooltip says. It says it should remove the initial heal completely, but instead it just seems to reduce the initial heal by approx 50% - And no, its not just an initial tick that happens instantly, it heals for slightly more than a normal tick and is added to the normal amount of ticks you should have. Telluric Currents is, for now at least, awesome. Glyphed bolt hits for 8k or so selfbuffed with my gear, so 6,6k mana return, thats 6,6% mana. Other than that there seems to be a fine amount of choices for the 3rd slot; chain heal, water shield, HST and I suppose Chaining for fights that support it. So overall glyphs look pretty solid for resto.

2) Talents Tier1: Stone Bulwark is awesome, so is Astral shift, for 5 mans Bulkwark is the obivious choice, however Shift will have its uses when encountering more consistent DMG. Tier2 is largely irrelevant for PvE, so I'll skip over that. Tier3: No real coice for PvE here, guess relocating totems could be somewhat usefull on a few encounters, but highly doubt it'll ever surpass Call of the Elements for Resto, 2x Healing & Mana Tides and SLTs is just too good to pass up on. Tier4: Some actual choice here, don't think Ill be taking NS for PvE though and at least I cant say anything about Echo without Recount or logs just yet but it obiviously has potential. Tier5: Propably the best tier keeping in mind blizzard's design goals - Healing Tide & Ancestral Guidance for fights with big damage phases, Conductivity for fights with constant Tank and Raid dmg. Overall tiers 1,3,5 look good but 2 and 4 could use some love.

3) Overall gameplay I was completely lost when I entered a dungeon for the first time. Where the hell are my totems?! After the initial shock I kinda like the new way. Having to watch the water totem CDs is definately a nice change, eg. not dropping HST if you're about to drop Mana Tide soon. Chain heal not consuming riptide baseline is also a welcome change, especially with the riptide glyph. The amount of CDs is huge for me, that was basically the one reason I liked paladin healing - you could modify your throughput with cooldowns, and now we have a truckload of em, and even more coming with lvl 90 talents and ascendance. Oh and can't forget that with Stormlash Totem we'll have some actual, unique, raid utility. So overall Im happy with the resto changes, hope they don't mess the numbers up too badly.

1. The riptide bug you mentioned is interesting, I haven't seen anyone else bring that up. Maybe that was the original design and they updated tooltip but not the actual spell, or they updated the spell and not the tooltip.

So TC is actually good huh? I hear Shaman is having mana problems in general. Do you feel like you rely on it, or is it just a nice bonus. I'm sure mana will be tweaked, but I still feel that Mana tide should have double return for Resto, or even a new self mana regen cd. Seems like my prediction that TC will take up a perma glyph slot is coming true.....we should be self sufficient without the glyph but I doubt they will balance it that way.

2. I think Resto for the most part can benefit off of most of the talents, cept for T6 I guess. You are right about T3 for resto atleast, double cd's is just too good to pass up. I think T2 is fine though, like you said its mainly for PVP but Frozen power is awesome and will def be a nice addition for any spec. For T4...NS or AS as it's called now is actually a decent cd for Resto, don't forget it's only a 1min cd and passive haste. T4 is pretty nice for ele and resto, sucks for Enh tho. I would assume Resto would pass on echo talent cause rng is not as good as on demand cd. From what I read the proc rate seems to be around 10%.

3. More cds is def a nice addition. What do you think about the heals, how much they heal, mana cost, mana regen ect. I have read that chain heal is still weak and expensive, and that healing surge heals almost as much as GHW and also costs less mana so you basically don't gotta use GHW. And that Healing rain is hella expensive.

[Deleted]

Maybe that was the original design and they updated tooltip but not the actual spell

Your guess is as good as mine, but seems like a rather no brainer, if its intended, instead of a choice - the hot portion is really stong and even with 50% reduction to the initial heal its still a very strong spell HPM wise.

Do you feel like you rely on it, or is it just a nice bonus.

Actually realized how good it was just recently, also read somewhere that its crap now and kinda just went with it. There's currently 2 fights in the instance where you actually have to heal, so its not exactly solid evidence, but mana is definately an issue as soon as you have to use something other than HST,riptide and HW. redid all my spirit --> smth else reforges and still going oom very fast without TC. Mana Tide with what spirit I have returns somewhere along the lines of 20% mana, so I'd say its not _that_ bad.

AS as it's called now is actually a decent cd for Resto, don't forget it's only a 1min cd and passive haste.

Hah, actually totally missed the passive haste part, that does make it a decent talent then.

What do you think about the heals, how much they heal, mana cost, mana regen ect

Saying anything about numbers is really hard without any tools to measure healing done properly. But the HS vs. GHW thing seems to be true, HS heals for 20-22k and GHW for 25-27k roughly, with 6,3k and 7,2k mana costs. When talking about chain heal you have to remember it doesnt consume riptide, so its basically always 25% more healing, which somewhat off-sets the higher mana cost.

Spirit is going to be a very good stat, adding 1mp5/spirit, heck it could even be better than int untill you reach enough regen.

[Eliot123]

Telluric Currents is, for now at least, awesome. Glyphed bolt hits for 8k or so selfbuffed with my gear, so 6,6k mana return, thats 6,6% mana.

Not sure if I should be happy or sad.

Then again, things change.

[Protoman]

Your guess is as good as mine, but seems like a rather no brainer, if its intended, instead of a choice - the hot portion is really stong and even with 50% reduction to the initial heal its still a very strong spell HPM wise.

Actually realized how good it was just recently, also read somewhere that its crap now and kinda just went with it. There's currently 2 fights in the instance where you actually have to heal, so its not exactly solid evidence, but mana is definately an issue as soon as you have to use something other than HST,riptide and HW. redid all my spirit --> smth else reforges and still going oom very fast without TC. Mana Tide with what spirit I have returns somewhere along the lines of 20% mana, so I'd say its not _that_ bad.

Saying anything about numbers is really hard without any tools to measure healing done properly. But the HS vs. GHW thing seems to be true, HS heals for 20-22k and GHW for 25-27k roughly, with 6,3k and 7,2k mana costs. When talking about chain heal you have to remember it doesnt consume riptide, so its basically always 25% more healing, which somewhat off-sets the higher mana cost.

Spirit is going to be a very good stat, adding 1mp5/spirit, heck it could even be better than int untill you reach enough regen.

Hmm....if it still has the instant heal on riptide I wonder if it procs effects that only work on direct heals, or resurgence and stuff. Maybe they are keeping it in so it will still have that effect. Prob just a bug though lol.

Mana Tide giving 20% is pretty decent, better then what I was expecting. Still think it should give double return tho.....it's our only cd afterall. I really hope they balance resto's mana without considering TC because I would hate to rely on that for proper regen. On one side they tell us TC is supposed to be optional, but then we end up needing it just to get thru dungeons/raids.

Yea, thats what people have been saying bout HS. But it did just recently get buffed, so GHW will prob get a buff soon as well. As for Chain heal, thats true it always gets the buff......but I hope they take another look at both chain heal and healing rain to give them some more manageable mana costs and potency. Have you tried the talent "Conductivity" yet? Does it seem like a good talent for aoe healing?

Spirit will def be a good stat. I'm almost positive it's going to be all healers focus on in the beginning because healers are always mana starved at the start of an xpac, it forces the group/raid to play smarter and simulate a higher difficulty cause if they mess up, healer goes oom and raid dies. Plus our SP will be low so less potent heals, and lower crit so less regen. We will need to heal alot more to make up for weaker heals, and regen will help fuel that.

[PsyBomb]

Hang on, the TC glyph makes it mana-positive from the get-go? That's dangerous, actually. I'd like to see some numbers from a level-90 in pre-raid gear before I make any judgements, but if it is true we have a MASSIVE advantage over just about anyone else on the healing side of things, since we alone won't have to worry too much about mana.

[Deleted]

Hang on, the TC glyph makes it mana-positive from the get-go?

And more mana positive than on live to boot. But as you said, might be a scaling "issue".

And as to glyphed riptide proccing direct heal stuff, at least the DS stack trinket procs from the initial heal and it was quite picky on live. Could test resurgence later.

Have you tried the talent "Conductivity" yet? Does it seem like a good talent for aoe healing?

Tried it briefly, and I'd say its awesome when the tank is taking heavy dmg and raid some moderate AoE, it basically works like an inverted beacon of light - when you heal the tank you also get some raid healing instead of when you heal the raid the tank gets healed. Didn't really get into any good example situations in TotJS, but I could name a few encounters where I would've killed to have something like conductivity.

[Endus]

I haven't had time do much in the way of testing, but I just ran some tests on the FET. While I don't have hours of logs to back it up, most of this stuff is fairly easy to test since the FET's abilities have a relatively narrow range of RNG.

The FET glyph IS changing it from a 5 minute CD/1 minute duration to 3 minute CD/ 1:24 uptime. That's a change from 20% uptime to almost 50%. This is a significant boost, and I suspect it's an error; Major glyphs don't provide straight advantages, and this is a significant advantage for Enhancement/Elemental. But I can confirm it's definitely working this way for now.


The FET AI is SIGNIFICANTLY improved. On test dummies (where it often had issues before), I was able to drop it out of combat, and within a second or two of engaging a dummy, it would aggro my target. It did not require Flame Shock, nor did it track my Flame Shock target; I was able to get it to aggro from passive just by smacking the dummy with my weapon, no debuff applied at all, just a white hit. I Flame Shocked another dummy, and it switched targets within another second or so, and when I went back to my original target, again a second or so later, it changed targets as well. It seems to be targeting your target, rather than any other system, much like the Assist AI for pets works on Live. It won't be possible to sic it on a specific target and leave it there, most likely, but it shouldn't keep attacking the wrong target either uncontrollably. The second or so delay is likely just because the AI doesn't run a target check script constantly, but only every second or two, to minimize packet spam.


The FET does NOT remain at the Intellect you were at when summoned. It adjusts dynamically based on your current Intellect (perhaps a slight 1s lag behind, but close enough). There's very little RNG to his attacks, so it's very easy to see him DPSing at ~6040 damage per melee hit, plus or minus 20 damage or so, and then if I blast LBs to boost my Will of Unbinding to 10 stacks and pop a potion, his melees will climb to ~7670 per melee hit, again plus or minus about 20 or so, and then fall back down as buffs expire. I was able to duplicate this across multiple summons reliably.

[Protoman]

I haven't had time do much in the way of testing, but I just ran some tests on the FET. While I don't have hours of logs to back it up, most of this stuff is fairly easy to test since the FET's abilities have a relatively narrow range of RNG.

The FET glyph IS changing it from a 5 minute CD/1 minute duration to 3 minute CD/ 1:24 uptime. That's a change from 20% uptime to almost 50%. This is a significant boost, and I suspect it's an error; Major glyphs don't provide straight advantages, and this is a significant advantage for Enhancement/Elemental. But I can confirm it's definitely working this way for now.


The FET AI is SIGNIFICANTLY improved. On test dummies (where it often had issues before), I was able to drop it out of combat, and within a second or two of engaging a dummy, it would aggro my target. It did not require Flame Shock, nor did it track my Flame Shock target; I was able to get it to aggro from passive just by smacking the dummy with my weapon, no debuff applied at all, just a white hit. I Flame Shocked another dummy, and it switched targets within another second or so, and when I went back to my original target, again a second or so later, it changed targets as well. It seems to be targeting your target, rather than any other system, much like the Assist AI for pets works on Live. It won't be possible to sic it on a specific target and leave it there, most likely, but it shouldn't keep attacking the wrong target either uncontrollably. The second or so delay is likely just because the AI doesn't run a target check script constantly, but only every second or two, to minimize packet spam.


The FET does NOT remain at the Intellect you were at when summoned. It adjusts dynamically based on your current Intellect (perhaps a slight 1s lag behind, but close enough). There's very little RNG to his attacks, so it's very easy to see him DPSing at ~6040 damage per melee hit, plus or minus 20 damage or so, and then if I blast LBs to boost my Will of Unbinding to 10 stacks and pop a potion, his melees will climb to ~7670 per melee hit, again plus or minus about 20 or so, and then fall back down as buffs expire. I was able to duplicate this across multiple summons reliably.

Interesting, yea I figured the extra duration was a bug....prob forgot a negative in there somewhere lol.

So I guess Fire Ele and Feral Spirits switched brains then huh? Fire ele got smarter, and wolves got dumber. Good to hear it assists your target, and switches when you switch.....at melee range or long range with flame shock. And dynamically scales, that should be a huge benefit.

Now if only they can figure out how to do that for guardians like Feral spirits......assist target and dynamically scale. I feel like more classes have guardian pets these days so this has to be on their "to do list" during the beta.

[mrinvisable2]

Sad seeing that mele hits are 6000- 7000 only :d i like seeing 12-14k hits and 30 k crits

[Endus]

Sad seeing that mele hits are 6000- 7000 only :d i like seeing 12-14k hits and 30 k crits

That's JUST the melee hits, not including the special attacks which are less common and thus less easy to see changes due to Intellect procs. And he attacks fairly often.

I didn't log it to try and get DPS values, since it was just dummy tests and I was more interested in scaling changes, but it doesn't seem like a DPS reduction in MoP.

[Gàara]

have any one figured if the talent "echo of elements" increases our change for a mastery proc, or isnt it worth taking for elementals?

[Devious009]

have any one figured if the talent "echo of elements" increases our change for a mastery proc, or isnt it worth taking for elementals?

Echo of the Elements works just like DTR's proc, duplicating the spell for the same damage (according to the tooltip there wasnt any % specified to how much the duplicated spell would do so its safe to assume that it will hit for the same amount the original spell did). As to wither it increases the chance, well it does and it doesnt.

It doesnt increase the Mastery Rating you have but it DOES give a chance to get an overload proc since according to what was said at Blizzcon the talent will work just like DTR which overloads do proc from DTR's procs so in a sense it could increase your chances of getting a mastery proc but not through increasing your mastery rating but through chance.

I hope that made sense :P

[Protoman]

I wonder if EoE can proc from the overload proc or not. Or if overload can proc from the EoE proc. Or if they can both only proc from the original spell, but have a chance to both proc from the same spell......lol

[Endus]

Echo of the Elements works just like DTR's proc, duplicating the spell for the same damage (according to the tooltip there wasnt any % specified to how much the duplicated spell would do so its safe to assume that it will hit for the same amount the original spell did). As to wither it increases the chance, well it does and it doesnt.

It doesnt increase the Mastery Rating you have but it DOES give a chance to get an overload proc since according to what was said at Blizzcon the talent will work just like DTR which overloads do proc from DTR's procs so in a sense it could increase your chances of getting a mastery proc but not through increasing your mastery rating but through chance.

I hope that made sense :P

Wrong way around. DTR (and, I assume, EotE) procs cannot and will not proc an Overload; only the original cast can do so.

They CAN proc off Overloads, though. It doesn't increase the chance of getting an Overload, but it does increase the damage contribution of Overloads, so it will scale properly with Mastery.

I haven't confirmed this via testing since it's likely to take thousands of casts to get reliable info, but early data and DTR data suggests this is the case, and it's showing a 6% proc chance. The folks over at totemspot.com have a spreadsheet to gather data for this, and while it's not quite at 2000 casts last I checked, the clear trend was to 6% for Elemental (it may have a different proc rate for different specs).

I wonder if EoE can proc from the overload proc or not. Or if overload can proc from the EoE proc. Or if they can both only proc from the original spell, but have a chance to both proc from the same spell......lol

DTR works like this, and EotE appears to work the same way;

• Initial Lightning Bolt
  
  • Overload
    
    • DTR
  • DTR

You get a proc chance off the main cast, and the Overload. You CAN get two procs per cast, but the chance is tiny.

[Protoman]

DTR works like this, and EotE appears to work the same way;

• Initial Lightning Bolt
  
  • Overload
    
    • DTR
  • DTR

You get a proc chance off the main cast, and the Overload. You CAN get two procs per cast, but the chance is tiny.

Ahh, that clears it up. Cool.

So for Ele it's about a 6% proc rate huh? I am really curious to see if it procs at a different rate for different specs. I know if its 6% for all specs, that it will be weaker for Enhance, since we don't cast many spells and if it does proc it will likely be from shocks which do less damage then a casted spell like lb/lvb.

Personally, I think instead of %proc, it should either be ppm like 6ppm so almost every 10 sec, or a high%chance with an icd, so like 50% chance but 10s icd, so basically also 6ppm.....least thats how I think it would play out. Could be 6ppm for Enhance, and 4 for Ele and would most likely even out to the same amount of damage considering Ele's higher SP and crit damage.

EoE is basically the only good talent on that tier for Enhance, so really hoping it's going to be significant for Enh.

[Gàara]

So is it safe to assume we will be going with this talent?

[Protoman]

So is it safe to assume we will be going with this talent?

If you are Enhance, then yea EoE is probably the best choice. For Resto prob not, you want a more reliable cd.....and Anc. Swift seems like a good one with 5% passive haste as well as instant spell every 1 min. For Ele, either AS or EM would prob be good, I would probably go with Elem mastery, but if you get AS then the 5% haste will cancel out the 5% haste reduction for getting unleash lightning glyph.