[MoP] Shaman scaling

[Deleted]

Hey guys,

I played enhancement shaman during WotLK, all the other years I played my rogue.
The reason i switched back to rogue in Cata was, that Shaman always had some serious scaling problems. at the end of any expansion Rogues, Warrior etc. out-dps-ed shamans by quite a bit due to scaling issues.

I really like the shaman playstyle, maybe i'll be switching back again.
However, what do you think about scaling in MoP? any improvements or just the same?

thx i advance and greetz!

[IGotStanima]

Shaman, especially elemental seem to have some serious scaling problems in mop beta. In blues and a couple epics they can pull acceptable dps, but their position is dropping lower and lower as the raid gets geared.

In Wotlk and Cata it was partly to do with flametongue weapon not scaling with gear, and us needing mass amounts of stats to do decent damage later in the expansion. MoP has done the opposite of that, giving Elemental extremely minuscule scaling capability compared to other classes.

[Mackeyser]

I saw that coming at the beginning when Beta launched and finally left Ele.

Going Brewmaster. I knew it wasn't going to get fixed and sure enough, we're only a few weeks from launch and it's not going to get fixed. Ele will ONCE AGAIN be in a position to have structural scaling issues for the entire expac. And since structural issues are not fixable between expacs... Ele's gonna be borked..again.

I decided to just be zen about it (apropos considering the Oriental themes present in MoP...mostly Chinese, but some Vietnamese as well as other Oriental cultures are also present and Buddhist influences are, of course, rampant). I'll bend like the reed. I will go where Blizz goes and play the playable class.

I knew that they'd work the entire Expac on making every spec of Monk playable, so that was an easy choice.

And with all the work they've done on Warlocks reworking them, Locks are a solid second choice.

But I'm done with Shaman which is a shame because I REALLY liked my shaman and have enjoyed raiding on him since BC.

That said, I'm just tired of scoring a top 200 WoL parse for my class and being 4th on dps in my 10 man raid...

[akris15]

I don't know about this so called weak scaling. From all the sims and numbers I have seen is enhance at least has very nice scaling (this was based on a few builds ago) and we start off meh but start to get better and better. Right now it seems like we will wear atleast 2 pieces of pvp gear (until heroic gear) and we base our gear under what has the highest amounts of stats/ilvl unlike cata since all three stats are roughly the same (although its still perfered Mastery>Haste>Crit).

[Endus]

I don't know about this so called weak scaling.

Some people are seeing longer and longer fights, and Shaman damage dipping a bit lower as a result, and forgetting that we have very strong burst. That means we'll perform better on 1 minute parses and less well on 2 minute parses, but evening out over 5 minute parses. It has nothing do with with gear scaling, and the sims don't show scaling issues; things may need some tweaking for spell scaling values, but it doesn't have anything to do with gear scaling.

Poor gear scaling is apparent if you're on top of DPS in low gear, but fall way behind in better gear.

[IGotStanima]

I don't know about this so called weak scaling. From all the sims and numbers I have seen is enhance at least has very nice scaling (this was based on a few builds ago) and we start off meh but start to get better and better. Right now it seems like we will wear atleast 2 pieces of pvp gear (until heroic gear) and we base our gear under what has the highest amounts of stats/ilvl unlike cata since all three stats are roughly the same (although its still perfered Mastery>Haste>Crit).

Voracity Akris ?

[Lorthiros]

Sad that you quite the class you love because 'you're only 4th on dps'... If you contribute and validate your raid spot, and you get things done, and enjoy the class, why worry? Numbers are subject to change, class mechanics less so, get over it.

[Endus]

You were saying...

I was saying that what IGotStanima was saying had more to do with the changing durations of log attempts, assuming they ARE looking at logs. There's been no evidence at all of gear scaling issues that I've seen, and the simulationcraft models (which are beta, but still fairly complete for Shaman) don't show the kind of lag that would be explained by gear scaling.

For instance, Enhancement had a gear scaling issue at one point in early Cata, and started off in blues in the top 5 DPS specs, but by the time everyone was in full BiS, it was about 30% behind the lead spot, and about 15% behind anyone else. That simply isn't the case for the beta, according to any evidence I've seen. Enhancement's been tuned a little low, but that's why it's had some recent buffs in the last few builds. Ability tuning and gear scaling aren't the same issue, though; if you're 10% behind everyone in blues, and 10% behind in epics, you're tuned low rather than having a gear scaling issue.

[akris15]

Voracity Akris ?

If you want to armory attack please note my BIS Mage and Prot Paladin. I gave up my shaman in T12 because we needed a tank so my shaman has been "abused" since that point but I would like to make it my main again.

Either way I personally don't see how enhance will have scaling issues. In cata we basically only scaled from Mastery, avoiding Crit and Haste due to its extremely low values. Having 200% critical spell damage, mastery+haste "Double downing" during Ascendance, our damage actually means something now (375% weapon damage stormstrike O.o) will allow haste and crit to scale at higher levels than in Cata. The fact that we are shown to in the upper-middle on most sims in heroic gear while having such amazing utility as an unchanneled tranq/Ancestral Guidance with our amazing burst, ranged interupts/purge, arcane mage like burst doing exposure phases on the boss, ability to do some damage off the boss as melee plus Stormlash means while we might not top the damage meters 100% of the time our total package if you chose to play enhance you won't be "Cataclysmed" and keeping that bench nice and warm.

[Deleted]

Actually Scaling problems still exist. We scale worse than nearly all dd speccs and a lot worse than certain speccs.

E.g comparing elemental and fire mage on simming (sadly slightly outdated versions):

INT: Ele 3.69, Mage 4.92 (DPS per 1 point of INT).
CRIT: Ele 1.45, Mage 3.44
MAstery: Ele 1.46, Mage 2.62
Haste: Ele 1.39, Mage 2.22
So the scaling problem still exists. Those numbers simply mean that you should give every piece of gear of shared loot first to the mage since he benefits a lot more from new gear. So it might be that elemental compete on low gear levels, but simply will get outscaled when gear gets better.

Enhancement is about the same level, comparing it to say a combat rouge (always enhancer/rogue per 1 point of that stat):
WEAPON DPS: 2.68/7.08
AGI: 3.84/4.02
Crit: 1.41/1.68
Haste: 1.72/2.19
Mastery: 1.79/1.74

So in the end, you see that rogues will easily outscale enhancers once again. Without the unnerfed mastery, enhancement at least would've had one strong secondary stat, but now all secondary stats are close to each other, but on a low level ( so basically all our secondary stats are now weak). Where we heavily get outscaled is once a rogue gets a better weapon. We basically totally suck at weapon dps scaling, while our other stats are also on a lower level.

---------- Post added 2012-08-22 at 03:11 PM ----------

If you want to armory attack please note my BIS Mage and Prot Paladin. I gave up my shaman in T12 because we needed a tank so my shaman has been "abused" since that point but I would like to make it my main again.

Either way I personally don't see how enhance will have scaling issues. In cata we basically only scaled from Mastery, avoiding Crit and Haste due to its extremely low values. Having 200% critical spell damage, mastery+haste "Double downing" during Ascendance, our damage actually means something now (375% weapon damage stormstrike O.o) will allow haste and crit to scale at higher levels than in Cata. The fact that we are shown to in the upper-middle on most sims in heroic gear while having such amazing utility as an unchanneled tranq/Ancestral Guidance with our amazing burst, ranged interupts/purge, arcane mage like burst doing exposure phases on the boss, ability to do some damage off the boss as melee plus Stormlash means while we might not top the damage meters 100% of the time our total package if you chose to play enhance you won't be "Cataclysmed" and keeping that bench nice and warm.

Actually don't forget that they nerfed our mastery. So i'm not sure that our secondary stats scaling is that much stronger. Haste is compared to other melee speccs still pretty weak, but now mastery is also pretty weak. It was a lot stronger on live since it's 25% stronger per point of mastery.

[Kralljin]

E.g comparing elemental and fire mage on simming (sadly slightly outdated versions):

INT: Ele 3.69, Mage 4.92 (DPS per 1 point of INT).
CRIT: Ele 1.45, Mage 3.44
MAstery: Ele 1.46, Mage 2.62
Haste: Ele 1.39, Mage 2.22

Am i reading this correctly or is according to these numbers Haste our worst Stat?

[Radux]

The biggest problem I have with that comparison (speaking as Elemental):
- Elemental stat weights will change depending on what talents you choose.
- Which Mage spec are you actually comparing to? All 3 specs will have different stat weights.

I'm not trying to claim the numbers are incorrect. But you're missing a lot of important points to make a thorough comparison.

[Deleted]

Am i reading this correctly or is according to these numbers Haste our worst Stat?

Possible. They are pretty close to each other so it might be very dependant on our talents we pick. E.g. the elemental lvl 90 talent heavily favors haste and devalues mastery. When you compare them to each other, they are nearly perfect.

In this build, the shaman used elemental blast and of course it's slightly outdated (a week old).

[Deleted]

why is it so hard to balance shaman scaling? its not that e.g. Ele had some completely weird mechanics or thx.

[Endus]

Actually Scaling problems still exist. We scale worse than nearly all dd speccs and a lot worse than certain speccs.

E.g comparing elemental and fire mage on simming (sadly slightly outdated versions):

No, you don't get to pick one single comparison with the most overpowered spec and claim that Elemental has a "scaling problem" because it isn't tied for the top spot with that spec.

Especially when not every model is as up to date as the others in the current simulationcraft. It could be the Mage builds are borked, or the Shaman builds don't include the most recent changes. In fact, a cursory check shows that the most recent beta build, 504-4, which you had to have been using at best, was uploaded 6 days ago, meaning it cannot include the buffs from the most recent 3 beta builds, or the nerfs to other classes that happened in those same builds.

As you'd have known, if you made any effort to check.

[Deleted]

The biggest problem I have with that comparison (speaking as Elemental):
- Elemental stat weights will change depending on what talents you choose.
- Which Mage spec are you actually comparing to? All 3 specs will have different stat weights.

I'm not trying to claim the numbers are incorrect. But you're missing a lot of important points to make a thorough comparison.

They are all pretty close. I'm not going to post every single one since there will soon be a release that will be based on the releae build.

But stat weights don't change again and again. They might get a little closer, but it's no surprise that crit easily buffs a firemage completely crazy like 200% extra damage and not 80-90% like for elemental. At least many speccs don't have that overpowered scaling, but still act on a higher level.

E.g. frost mages sim at 4.65, 2.25, 2.17, 2.06, but got slightly nerfed so they are a lot closer because they don't have an insane secondary stats scaling.

[Endus]

But stat weights don't change again and again.

Yes. They do. Constantly and regularly, particularly when undergoing the kinds of changes you see in the beta. Where did you ever get the idea that they don't?

[Deleted]

No, you don't get to pick one single comparison with the most overpowered spec and claim that Elemental has a "scaling problem" because it isn't tied for the top spot with that spec.

Especially when not every model is as up to date as the others in the current simulationcraft. It could be the Mage builds are borked, or the Shaman builds don't include the most recent changes.

It's completely the same for most speccs. And it's lke that already on live.

Even shadows sim 15% better than elemental though they are overall simming lower. We have a scaling problem, basically because we are missing proccs that let us scale better.

E.g. a frost dk gets more rune reggen because of haste, so he gets to use more styles. That's the normal scaling even enhancer doesn't get (since too much damage simply doesn't affect haste).

the extra scaling comes from this obliterate giving him more rp. He can spend this RP to use a frost strike (extra damage every now and then). Frost strike has a chance to regenerate a rune so that he can once again later in the fight use another obliterate and get more rune power and get to use one more frost strike.

Those effects get of course weaker with every 'jump', but they exist and those effects let them scale better.

Shamans basically miss something to get some extra scaling beyond normal dps increases. We donÄ't have important proccs on crits.

E.g. crit for fire mages: on live, they get the usual 100% cirt damage as shamans do, but they also get a dot on crit for extra 40% of damage dealt,making a crit basically deal 280% damage. On top of that, a crit proccs Pyroblast!, so it's even more extra damage on a crit. And on top of all this, they even get mana back when they crit - pretty nice for a class that has manaproblems. And their main cd relies heavily on crits.

So that's extreme scaling for one point of a secondary stat. Crit is on live easily 3 times better than for a fire mage than for an elemental shaman.

[Endus]

It's completely the same for most speccs. And it's lke that already on live.

Even shadows sim 15% better than elemental though they are overall simming lower. We have a scaling problem, basically because we are missing proccs that let us scale better.

Again, that sim you're using is multiple beta builds out of date. It's not accurate. Stop trying to use outdated and faulty information to "prove" that Shaman are lacking, when it's already been addressed in the beta, days ago.

Shamans basically miss something to get some extra scaling beyond normal dps increases. We donÄ't have important proccs on crits.

Flurry
Elemental Focus

It's like you didn't even bother looking at the Shaman toolkit before posting.

[IGotStanima]

[/COLOR]

If you want to armory attack please note my BIS Mage and Prot Paladin. I gave up my shaman in T12 because we needed a tank so my shaman has been "abused" since that point but I would like to make it my main again.

no need for the hostility, was just happy to see another
Anvilmar friend here (: