[OFFICIAL] MoP Beta Build Changes Discussion Thread

[Protoman]

It is, and also it is affected by our lovely mastery.

Works on MW5, buffed by Mastery.....and I THINK it will also be buffed by ULE FT.

[Manu9]

Works on MW5, buffed by Mastery.....and I THINK it will also be buffed by ULE FT.

Would be one great bursty spell, Frankly as Enha, I find it it the most appealing, with Unleash Fury behind it with a little cause imagine the static shock from auto attacks with EM and Asc -> yummy.

But I'm not a big fan of the Elementals talent. It just doesn't look as fun, at least to me.

[Deleted]

Can't wait till lvl cap is raised to 90 and see some test result, spell effects of all these new talents. This whole thread is allready a joy for to read and keep me updated about the MoP shaman class.

With the promiss from blizz that the talent trees are going to be very interesting considering choice, I must say; they did a great job for the shaman untill now. All talents seem to be very cool and unique in every way and I'm definitly going to test around if things go live.

Keep up the good work all you beta players!!!

[Jahoota]

Lol, or grow a few more fingers. I tried to do that by dipping my hands in radioactive goo every day, but so far all I've managed to do is lose my hair and a few of my teeth....

Well, keep at it.

[Omanley]

Works on MW5, buffed by Mastery.....and I THINK it will also be buffed by ULE FT.

What about Stormstrike debuff? Since they changed it from all nature damage sources to explicitely named ones (lightning shield, lightning bolt, chain lightning and earth shock), I guess they might not have added Elemental Blast to it. As it does nature damage though, it would be expected to benefit from it.

[Deleted]

One thing I don't like currently is the lack of a Wrath of Air aura. I sure hope they *replaced* it with Grace of Air, rather than letting us have both. Hoping it's a mistake. =/

[Protoman]

What about Stormstrike debuff? Since they changed it from all nature damage sources to explicitely named ones (lightning shield, lightning bolt, chain lightning and earth shock), I guess they might not have added Elemental Blast to it. As it does nature damage though, it would be expected to benefit from it.

Hmm, yea I didn't notice that. SS is limited now, and MW5 is all nature spells. So I guess EB will work on MW but not SS.

One thing I don't like currently is the lack of a Wrath of Air aura. I sure hope they *replaced* it with Grace of Air, rather than letting us have both. Hoping it's a mistake. =/

Yea, I hope they add that in as well. I thought we would be able to choose between haste or mastery for our "air aura".....but seems like they just aren't going to add it in. And Enhance still needs to get 10%AP instead of SP from that buff, either UR or just personal 10%AP while giving everyone else SP buff.

[Tides]

Hmm, yea I didn't notice that. SS is limited now, and MW5 is all nature spells. So I guess EB will work on MW but not SS.

I think the reason they changed the way SS works is because of Stormlash Totem. Everyone that benefits from the totem will cause OUR totem to deal damage and that would cause all of that to gain the benefit from the stormstrike - if it was working with the current stormstrike - I think so anyways.

Yea, I hope they add that in as well. I thought we would be able to choose between haste or mastery for our "air aura".....but seems like they just aren't going to add it in. And Enhance still needs to get 10%AP instead of SP from that buff, either UR or just personal 10%AP while giving everyone else SP buff.

Well i personally hate that they've stripped so many buffs away from us.
We lose, SoE, Stoneskin, WoA, Windfury, Unleashed Rage and Mana Spring.

On the other hand at least i'll feel a bit more powerful when i enter a group.
Ofc my chances of entering a group WILL drop due to losing all those buffs.
There's no arguing it. Any raid leader worth his salt with try and optimize the raid getting in as many buffs/debuffs as possible and that will quite litterally hurt the shamans over if our damage is not compensated.
They dont want us to be Buffbots, fine. But dont just make it a halfassed attempt at turning us into a

"Real" dps class

as Ghostcrawler called us.

[Recom]

There will always be 1 slot for a shaman thanks to stormlash. We have yet to see if Blizz made melee-friendly fights in T14, I really hope they do because I'm tired of benching my fellow melees just because they are melee...

[takolin]

I'm not sure if it has been asked before but does anyone know how Echo of the Elements work as a resto shaman?

-Does the copy benefit from our crit/mastery independently from the initial hit or are the 2 spells linked?
-Is the heal smart of does it hit the same target as the initial hit making it susceptible to more overhealing?

[Recom]

Echo of Elements does nto really "copy" the spell, it simply launches an additional spell instantly.
This means that :
- it will target the same target
- it will benefit from stats/boost independently from the first spell, for resto that means it will most likely heal for less than the 1st heal (since the target will have more hp, so the mastery won't be as effective)
- only affects direct heals, for resto that means HW, GHW, HS and Riptide direct heal (not the hot)

After testing it quite a bit in the first dungeon and in DS, I found it unreliable. It has a 6-7% proc chance which means you have no idea when it will proc and when it does proc it heals the same target so a large portion of the free spell is in fact overheal. This could be handful for tank healing though.

[fruust]

i just tried hitting a target dummy after spending some hours setting up all my keybinds and macros to cope with what felt like 100s of new spells.

after realising that macros didn't work in combat (i feel kinda stupid for not looking that up) i realised that i was mana drained after a very short while.
what am i doing wrong or are we supposed to be balanced around mana problems in mop?

i wasn't even using fire nova just trying to uphold the basic rotation.

[Tides]

- it will benefit from stats/boost independently from the first spell, for resto that means it will most likely heal for less than the 1st heal (since the target will have more hp, so the mastery won't be as effective)

I'm not 100% on this. As Enhancement with the Tier 13 Setbonus i was seeing the same numbers on the echo (After i removed Healing storm glyph)
The Enhancement setbonus for Tier 13 basicly makes your next ability used with Maelstrom Weapon do 20% more.
Yet if what Recom says is true, the Echo should not benefit from the Tier 13 2part for Enhancement since when the echo is generated the "Temporal Maelstrom" buff has already been used on the original spell?

I'm a bit unsure about this stuffs still :S

Also, the Echo seems to be super wierd at generating additional Fire nova's when aoe'ing.
Its been a few days since i aoe'd last but i remember clearly that a firenova was generated AFTER i cast firenova and it emitted from one of the targets that were not affected by Flameshock. O.o

[Protoman]

Echo of Elements does nto really "copy" the spell, it simply launches an additional spell instantly.
This means that :
- it will target the same target
- it will benefit from stats/boost independently from the first spell, for resto that means it will most likely heal for less than the 1st heal (since the target will have more hp, so the mastery won't be as effective)
- only affects direct heals, for resto that means HW, GHW, HS and Riptide direct heal (not the hot)

After testing it quite a bit in the first dungeon and in DS, I found it unreliable. It has a 6-7% proc chance which means you have no idea when it will proc and when it does proc it heals the same target so a large portion of the free spell is in fact overheal. This could be handful for tank healing though.

Anyone know if the proc chance of EoE has been changed? And roughly what it is for ele, resto, and enh?

I read somewhere that it was being turned into a ppm mechanic, or 100% chance with an icd. From my guesstimate, elem has like 2.5ppm or 24sec icd to make it similar in #of extra LB's compared to AS or EM over 2 min.

[Cakala]

- it will benefit from stats/boost independently from the first spell, for resto that means it will most likely heal for less than the 1st heal (since the target will have more hp, so the mastery won't be as effective)

Yet if what Recom says is true, the Echo should not benefit from the Tier 13 2part for Enhancement since when the echo is generated the "Temporal Maelstrom" buff has already been used on the original spell?

I am not certain how things work with latency, server side and client side and all that. However, is it possible that the instant copy takes into account all current factors? Whether it be current tank health or current personal buffs?

[Omanley]

I think the reason they changed the way SS works is because of Stormlash Totem. Everyone that benefits from the totem will cause OUR totem to deal damage and that would cause all of that to gain the benefit from the stormstrike - if it was working with the current stormstrike - I think so anyways.

Um, I think you an Protoman misunderstood my point. SS already is limited to certain spells afaik. The reason they did this were trinkets like DC:H and other nature sources, which simply were to good for us.

What I wondered myself was wether or not SS will continue to increase the crit chance of all spells accessible to enhancement dealing nature damage.
This would include Elemental Blast (since it is multischool damage, it also includes nature), Stormlash Totem procs (didn't even consider that, another Shamans' Stormlash Totem would technically not be "our" spell though) and Ascendence's Stormstrikes and auto hits (since they deal nature damage durign duration).

Would be really cool if enhance got extra benefit from SS debuff for some/all of those, especially Ascendence, since I think it is not as exciting as elemental's.

[Recom]

I'm not 100% on this. As Enhancement with the Tier 13 Setbonus i was seeing the same numbers on the echo (After i removed Healing storm glyph)
The Enhancement setbonus for Tier 13 basicly makes your next ability used with Maelstrom Weapon do 20% more.
Yet if what Recom says is true, the Echo should not benefit from the Tier 13 2part for Enhancement since when the echo is generated the "Temporal Maelstrom" buff has already been used on the original spell?

I'm a bit unsure about this stuffs still :S

Also, the Echo seems to be super wierd at generating additional Fire nova's when aoe'ing.
Its been a few days since i aoe'd last but i remember clearly that a firenova was generated AFTER i cast firenova and it emitted from one of the targets that were not affected by Flameshock. O.o

I gave it a shot again as resto. First I hurt myself by dismounting in the air and taking fall damage and I found that mastery is indeed calculated independently for each spells : I had a 55k GHW proc a 45k GHW.
Next I tested how buffs on the next spell (Unleash Life, didn't test Healing Storm) worked : I had a 30k HW proc a 21k HW so I'm pretty confident that on next spell buffs only apply to the 1st spell and not the "copy".

If anyone can test it on their own to confirm/deny my conclusion, that would be nice !

[Radux]

Well, Recom, it is actually a direct copy of the spell (if you look at the spell ID's). We've come to the same conclusion, essentially, though. Think trying to distinguish DTR procs on WoL initially -- couldn't without combing through the entire spell usage for identical spell ID's.

Mastery is pretty much the last thing that's calculated when a heal goes off. So because there's a delay in the proc, you get the same base spell you just cast, but the benefit from Mastery changes because it fires off later. And because it only copies the base spell, it has a chance to crit independently from the initial spell.

[Deleted]

Been checking out the beta for a while and have thought a bit on the various ideas shaman have posted on the us and eu beta forums:

This post is mostly from the pov of an enhancement shaman.

aoe:

I like the concept of fire nova except for one reason. Depending on our hardest hitting ability for spreading the flame shock dot. I'd suggest changing it so that fire nova itself spreads the flame shock dot. The enhancement aoe rotation would then be:
Magmatotem > flameshock > firenova > stormstrike > unleashed elements > firenova. Chain lightning whenever it's instant and there's a gap.
I'd also change magma totem to last a shorter duration, perhaps 20 sec, but do more damage.

shocks:
The linking of the shock cd is from when they did a lot of damage in vanilla. I'd unlink them so that we'd be able to use them when we need them. I'd also increase the damage of earth shock so that it'd be more useful.

Resources:

As it is now enhancement has 3 resources: Mana, maelstrom and searing flames.
I'd change feral spirits to have our tier 13 4-set bonus as baseline and that maelstrom procs more often with haste so that we'd gain more from heroism and elemental mastery. I'd also remove healing storm glyph and make it so that when we reach five stacks of maelstrom all our heals, lightning bolt and chain lightning hit for 50-100% more healing/damage. This would hopefully move instant lightning bolt above stormstrike on our priority list.

Remove the searing flames dot and make it so that each time flametongue, searing totem or fire elemental hit we get buffed with searing flames stacking to 5. Compensate searing totem with it hitting harder and that it attacks much faster with haste.
I'd loan an idea from the us forums for lava lash.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...4516173?page=7
Remove the cd on lava lash but have it rely on the searing flames buff for it's damage. Also remove it's increased damage from having flametongue on our offhand weapon.

0 - 20% weapon damage
1 - 50% weapon damage
2 - 90% weapon damage
3 - 140% weapon damage
4 - 200% weapon damage
5 - 270% weapon damage

[Deleted]

Been checking out the beta for a while and have thought a bit on the various ideas shaman have posted on the us and eu beta forums:

This post is mostly from the pov of an enhancement shaman.

aoe:

I like the concept of fire nova except for one reason. Depending on our hardest hitting ability for spreading the flame shock dot. I'd suggest changing it so that fire nova itself spreads the flame shock dot. The enhancement aoe rotation would then be:
Magmatotem > flameshock > firenova > stormstrike > unleashed elements > firenova. Chain lightning whenever it's instant and there's a gap.
I'd also change magma totem to last a shorter duration, perhaps 20 sec, but do more damage.

shocks:
The linking of the shock cd is from when they did a lot of damage in vanilla. I'd unlink them so that we'd be able to use them when we need them. I'd also increase the damage of earth shock so that it'd be more useful.

Resources:

As it is now enhancement has 3 resources: Mana, maelstrom and searing flames.
I'd change feral spirits to have our tier 13 4-set bonus as baseline and that maelstrom procs more often with haste so that we'd gain more from heroism and elemental mastery. I'd also remove healing storm glyph and make it so that when we reach five stacks of maelstrom all our heals, lightning bolt and chain lightning hit for 50-100% more healing/damage. This would hopefully move instant lightning bolt above stormstrike on our priority list.

Remove the searing flames dot and make it so that each time flametongue, searing totem or fire elemental hit we get buffed with searing flames stacking to 5. Compensate searing totem with it hitting harder and that it attacks much faster with haste.
I'd loan an idea from the us forums for lava lash.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...4516173?page=7
Remove the cd on lava lash but have it rely on the searing flames buff for it's damage. Also remove it's increased damage from having flametongue on our offhand weapon.

0 - 20% weapon damage
1 - 50% weapon damage
2 - 90% weapon damage
3 - 140% weapon damage
4 - 200% weapon damage
5 - 270% weapon damage

AoE - Whats the problem with Lava Lash spreading Flame Shock exactly? Theres a glyph to make it not do so - and its minor - so theres no down side to it really. Flame Shock > LL > UE > FN, instead you have to FS > FN .... wait .... > UE > FN to actually do AoE

Shocks - This has been discussed heavily already in this thread and others. The point of shocks sharing their cooldowns is because thats part of the game play of the class, to make you have to choose. Remove that and you over simplify the class.

Resources - Maelstroms already proc more with haste because you hit faster, as for just putting the Healing Storm Glyph in as standard I could see that happening because at any point where you need to use heals (PvP mostly) its going to essentially be a required Glyph. As for your Searing Flames idea, apart from it stacking much, much faster because of it proccing off both your totem and your auto attacks what difference is there? Your putting the DoT damage into the totem so theres no loss there, so all your asking for is a flat buff. That makes no sense. The whole point of the mechanic is you can LL on cooldown for higher DPS or you can LL at 5 stacks for higher burst, with it proccing off autos too it would always be at 5 stacks.

As for the second suggestion of changing how LL scales with Searing Flames that is also counter intuitive. With it having no cooldown you'd want to get as many stacks as quickly as possible so having Flametounge on your off hand - maybe even your main hand - would become required even more than it is now to get to LL more often. It would be mathed out as to how many stacks its a DPS gain to use it on (wether that be 5 stacks or lower) and then it would just be pressed every time it got to that stage, and it might even be mathed out that Flametounge on your main hand for more procs is a DPS increase too. Then in PvP it WOULD be required to have double Flametounge so you get to LL loads for constant burst.

If you forget about Flametounge giving stacks and just changed to the model of Searing Flames your talking about it would make LL near useless in PvP because it would only ever be even usable if you have enough stacks to make it worth it. Atleast on live LL is still good with lower stacks. If it was just plain useless without stacks people would totem stomp you and your burst would just disappear even more than it does on live. Then in PvE there is essentially no change at all because all you have done is move the DoT into direct damage on the totem and apart from that nothing has changed.