5.2 Shaman changes

[Kaeth]

So we will have a choice between "heavy burst" spec and "sustained damage" spec?

No, there will be no choice. We'll alternate periods of extreme burst with periods of mediocre damage output and hopefully achieve competitive dps over the duration of a fight. There is no announced change thus far that will result in this "sustained damage" spec of which you speak.

That might improve elemental dps overall, but that'll give it the same two glaring problems as retribution (the "wings" issue) and any other cooldown-centric spec. First, the dps of such a spec is overly dependent on fight length. Boss dies right before your next big cooldown explosion? Your dps plummets. Boss dies right after it? You do 15k more overall dps for that fight.

Secondly, such a spec spends the bulk of a burst-centric boss fight dealing horrible damage while saving those cooldowns for a brief moment of glory. Lame again.

As much as everyone bashes the number tweak to Shamanism every patch, I pray we see yet another one (in addition to some other numbers changes and QoL improvements). New or improved burst cooldowns are exciting, but not if we're wholly reliant on them even for mediocre overall dps. It just makes the periods between cooldowns all the more depressing.

I know it'll never happen, but I'd like to see shocks lose the shared cooldown (if not lose their cooldowns entirely) along with a numbers tweak on lightning bolt. And for Lava Bolt to deal greatly increased damage on a Flame Shocked target rather than an auto-crit. Let crit rating mean something for more than half our spells already.

[Nebria]

2. the spell power haste and mastery only works when we are on groups, not like the spell power or critic or haste from other classes, if u see warlocks can cast on self the spell power up, we cant, Shadow priest have haste from specialization, we dont, and i can continue, they must change that cause we are the only class that have that buffs but only works on groups and that is not fair cause before we at least have the spell power dropping a fire totem.

are you sure about this? from my understanding when you are not in group you just don't see the aura icon but it is always active
for example check haste. the value you see in the tooltip of haste is 5% lower than what you see in the stat list...
also when I get int buffed my spellpower is not changing...

[Troopsmith]

Yeah the buff UI is buggy. The passives are working fine.

[Pum]

No, there will be no choice. We'll alternate periods of extreme burst with periods of mediocre damage output and hopefully achieve competitive dps over the duration of a fight. There is no announced change thus far that will result in this "sustained damage" spec of which you speak.

That might improve elemental dps overall, but that'll give it the same two glaring problems as retribution (the "wings" issue) and any other cooldown-centric spec. First, the dps of such a spec is overly dependent on fight length. Boss dies right before your next big cooldown explosion? Your dps plummets. Boss dies right after it? You do 15k more overall dps for that fight.

Secondly, such a spec spends the bulk of a burst-centric boss fight dealing horrible damage while saving those cooldowns for a brief moment of glory. Lame again.

As much as everyone bashes the number tweak to Shamanism every patch, I pray we see yet another one (in addition to some other numbers changes and QoL improvements). New or improved burst cooldowns are exciting, but not if we're wholly reliant on them even for mediocre overall dps. It just makes the periods between cooldowns all the more depressing.

I know it'll never happen, but I'd like to see shocks lose the shared cooldown (if not lose their cooldowns entirely) along with a numbers tweak on lightning bolt. And for Lava Bolt to deal greatly increased damage on a Flame Shocked target rather than an auto-crit. Let crit rating mean something for more than half our spells already.

I'm really not getting where Elemental Shamans are a mediocre spec. On some fights out of every boss encounter in MoP, including a few heroic ones, I'm #1 DPS, and the other times I'm always #2, being behind our Affliction Warlock. That doesn't mean we have bad players using our other classes, because that isn't the truth in the slightest.. It means that some people are playing Elementals incorrectly or not playing them to their potential (which is by no means a difficult feat). This is my opinion of course, but the previous sentence does give my opinion a little value.

From a PvE standpoint, yeah our DPS is pretty reliant on CDs, but you have to learn boss encounters at an adequate level to know when to use your cooldowns, otherwise complaint is unfounded and worthless. Ascendance can be used at least twice, without fail, on any fight. Whether Heroism is used at the start or not, you can essentially have at least 3 30% haste buffs on any given encounter. Both of these things mean that fight length is irrelevant.

Also a note on how you'd like Lava Burst damage increase - I don't think that this will be needed, as if this EM does go live (which will make it the best talent out of the 3), we'll have so much haste coming from everywhere we won't have to gear for it, and mastery should push ahead from haste. What does that mean? Lots more LB overloads.

I agree with you on Shamanism though, a buff to LB is warmly welcomed.

[Endus]

I'm really not getting where Elemental Shamans are a mediocre spec. On some fights out of every boss encounter in MoP, including a few heroic ones, I'm #1 DPS, and the other times I'm always #2, being behind our Affliction Warlock. That doesn't mean we have bad players using our other classes, because that isn't the truth in the slightest.. It means that some people are playing Elementals incorrectly or not playing them to their potential (which is by no means a difficult feat). This is my opinion of course, but the previous sentence does give my opinion a little value.

Opinions aren't worth nearly as much as actual data.

http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_D...14/60/default/

That's the collective median of every parse in the last few months uploaded to WoL, for every spec. Elemental is at the bottom. It's not so low your guild would be forced to bench you to succeed, but it's definitely not average to good, either.

Is it possible for an Elemental player to shine? Sure. I've been shining in my own raids, usually #1 or #2 on our charts. That was because our other DPS were slacking and/or undergeared, and that I'm at least somewhat decent and know what I'm doing.

Does that mean Elemental is okay? No, it means you're playing at something like the 75th-90th percentile for your spec, and your other raiders are probably playing in the 30th percentile or so. If we had actual names and servers, we could get that info directly, through the epeenbot on raidbots (which is more useful than the name makes it sound).

Elemental absolutely does need a buff. It's disturbing to me to see Ghostcrawler say he's comfortable with Elemental's performance in tweets, when we're lagging THAT far behind the pack. It's not even about the place in the ranks, either; the range of DPS is too broad currently. If we ignore the two current outliers (combat rogues and survival hunters, which are only outliers in 25 (H) which makes me suspect shenanigans), we're about 84% away from the top. The DPS specs should ideally be within 10% of each other, to be ~+/- 5% from the median, and ideally even closer.

It's not "bench your Elemental, they're horrible" bad, which would be if we were 30% behind everyone (and we've been there), but it's not good either.

[mrinvisable2]

they cold add an execute to ele that fulimination will hit always like with 7 charges regardles how many ypu have

[oblivionx]

through the epeenbot on raidbots (which is more useful than the name makes it sound)..

Heh I never bothered looking at that due to not liking the name of it, that really is more useful than the name makes it sound.

[FraQture]

I know it'll never happen, but I'd like to see shocks lose the shared cooldown (if not lose their cooldowns entirely) along with a numbers tweak on lightning bolt. And for Lava Bolt to deal greatly increased damage on a Flame Shocked target rather than an auto-crit. Let crit rating mean something for more than half our spells already.

This is what I would like to see. Shocks not having shared cd. Massive dmg on Flame Shock targets with Lava Burst. And maybe som changes to Lighting Bolt. I don't like it when my Lighting Bolts crit more then my Lava Bursts..... :P

[Tomikadzi]

I'm very disappointed with elemental this tier.
Even back in days, in t11 content, when we were struggling on movement fights without UL glyph we didn't struggle THAT much. Now, if I take rank 1 as ele on some encounter there're always at least 2 ppl above me in recount with lesser ranks or even without them.
Usual spot - like 10th in recount with average performance around 90% according to epeenbot.
And tbh I don't like those DPS changes for ele at all cause they bring nothing. Blizz needs to make some mechanics change not just buffing numbers, otherwise we'll be sitting on average/below average all the time.

[Deleted]

Searing Totem: Adds a debuff that increases the Shamans fire damage against that target by 5%. Stacks up to 5 times. 30 Second Duration.

This is so easy fixes i just made up, wouldnt be OP lava bursts in PvP. 30 Second Duration just so it wouldnt be a DPS loss to use a Fire Elemental. Fire Ele glyph would be better with this change.

E: And even after this we would need buffs.. That would be 15sec~ ramp up time? Too long for alot of fights. Remove the 5% penalty from LB glyph, make CL hit 4 targets by default, Ascendance really should last longer its too short.

[Devious009]

Searing Totem: Adds a debuff that increases the Shamans fire damage against that target by 5%. Stacks up to 5 times. 30 Second Duration.

This is so easy fixes i just made up, wouldnt be OP lava bursts in PvP. 30 Second Duration just so it wouldnt be a DPS loss to use a Fire Elemental. Fire Ele glyph would be better with this change.

I'd much rather have my hardest hitting spell not be tied to a totem to do its maximum damage, Lava burst COULD probably use a small boost just to make it a bit harder than Lighting Bolt, even now when there's alot of complaints that LB hits like a "wet noodle" it can crit as high as a Lava Burst, blizzard needs to be very careful when tweaking the numbers.

So anyone has any ideas of other ways to discharge 7 stacks of lighting shield other than through Earth Shock ?

[orderschvank]

inc some of our talents dmg, inc flame shock dmg, increase totem dmg, and remove shock CDs, or atleast remove the CD from flameshock

[Deleted]

To increase our sustained without breaking our burst, the most simple change would be to increase LB damage. It's the ability we cast most in a battle and it's not used during Ascendance.

I'd also much rather have Flame Shock and Earth Shock not sharing a cooldown. Especially with our 4p bonus. It wouldn't that big of a DPS increase, but it would allow us to cast a certain amount of extra fulminated earth shocks. Again, nothing out of control here.

Simple changes that would do us good when rating us against other DPS. Neither of the 2 break PvP or any other aspect of the game (multidot fights, cleave fights, aoe fights, movement fights, burst potential, etc.).

[Pitkanen]

Single target buff... LB is the clear bonus there, especially consider it scales with all secondary stats, and secondary stat scaling for Elemental is relatively terrible. Hence the insane Challenge Mode damage and the low end raid damage.

True AoE is fine.

Multidot and short lived adds is far worse than any other caster dps. Everyone elses dots do 50-100% more damage, and do it over less time. So when the add dies in 15-20 seconds they do nearly full damage while elemental get partial damage from a FS that already does pitiful damage for a dot.

[demoncleaner]

I don't like the idea of removing shock cooldowns. It removes complexity from a spec that has little to begin with. I could get behind it if they gave us another resource or changed the way we spend lightning shield charges. But that would require quite a large revamp and u don't see it happening.

[takolin]

Searing Totem: Adds a debuff that increases the Shamans fire damage against that target by 5%. Stacks up to 5 times. 30 Second Duration.

This is so easy fixes i just made up, wouldnt be OP lava bursts in PvP. 30 Second Duration just so it wouldnt be a DPS loss to use a Fire Elemental. Fire Ele glyph would be better with this change.

E: And even after this we would need buffs.. That would be 15sec~ ramp up time? Too long for alot of fights. Remove the 5% penalty from LB glyph, make CL hit 4 targets by default, Ascendance really should last longer its too short.

Enhancement had that in Cataclysm and not a single person liked that mechanic until they changed it in MoP. And now you want to give it to elemental?

[Blitond]

I don't like the idea of removing shock cooldowns. It removes complexity from a spec that has little to begin with. I could get behind it if they gave us another resource or changed the way we spend lightning shield charges. But that would require quite a large revamp and u don't see it happening.

If you're looking for complexity then wow probably isn't the game for you, since no class has a very complex rotation these days. The shared lockout design is fine for PvE, but for PvP its not. Between melee being almost immune to snares and dispels, rotating 3 shocks is an annoying tax on the spec.

[Kralljin]

since no class has a very complex rotation these days.

No Class ever had a "complex" rotation.

Now, who be the 1st one to quote me with "Wotlk Feral"?

[demoncleaner]

Complex in a relative sense. As in relative to other specs in the game. Every spec needs barriers to help distinguish between good and bad players.

Also 3.0ish affliction was pretty crazy.

[Kraenen]

Moving away from proc chance mechanics is never a bad thing, but I fear that we're going to be so bogged down by cooldowns that it will feel like playing the piano.

you don't like playing the piano? :\