PvP Ele, no dmg

[Blitond]

And everything you wrote is the same as what I did except you put numbers in front of it, so I'm curious how it's bad advice.

It's bad advice because you're wasting grounding. You shouldn't ever drop it on CD. Wasting grounding is like trinketing nothing.

[zenga]

Wasting grounding is like trinketing nothing.

One of the best shaman quotes every!

[blaqkmagick]

I certainly feel that elemental is poor in PvP. I actually switched my PvP MS to resto cause I was getting fed up with elemental. I didn't like elemental cause the damage is laughable, I didn't find healing all that great (everyone was talking about hybrid healing OP but I certainly didn't think so with elemental), and it's very easy to counter our big burst abilities (ascendance - interupt, stun, interupt). I know my point about countering is true for a lot of specs (see ret pally) but I still feel like it negatively impacts elemental significantly.

I'm ok with it though, I'm enjoying resto for the time being. Maybe I'll go back to elemental in a bit and give it a fresh start now that I have a clear mind. lol

[shell]

It's bad advice because you're wasting grounding. You shouldn't ever drop it on CD. Wasting grounding is like trinketing nothing.

Fair enough. Although I still thinks its a good idea to drop it initially against rets because grounding the first stun, in my opinion, is more about luck than anything. After that, you have a pretty good idea of when you may see it again.

[Velthari]

Thought i should join this great debate on ele shamans and thought i should make a account to post my thoughts on ele shaman pvp and a few notes. As i have pvped as ele this season i have noticed a few things spread your flame shock if you can, stack as much mastery as you possibly can as it creates unpredictable dmg for the healers making it a double edged sword, get ele blast in your talent tree and get Glyph of Purge it's one of our best tools out their atm. The only classes i have problems atm is with bm hunters(soon to be nerfed to the ground), warriors/dks/rets/rogues pretty much any melee as it is really hard to get melee of you unless you get pealed. But in all this ele is still a viable spec to play in arena because of 2 things if you are rolling with a lock/spriest and resto druid you will have despell protect and solar beam making kills really easy and purge, i have come across many mages priest or any class that have major de-spellable shields/buffs and this is where Glyph of Purge is coming in your roll as the ele shaman is to offensive despell as much as you can shields/buffs/hots while letting the warlock/spriest free cast and have their glory.

Things that should get addressed by the devs

Thunderstorm cd needs to get fixed asap because atm its a 17.5 second cd while it should be a 12.5 second cd 45 seconds -50% -10 sec from glyph is 12.5 seconds no brainier their.

Ghost wolf glyph needs to be baseline as their are superior glyph choices to it and not many shamans are taking it.

just for ele shocks need to stop sharing cds this will fix probably most of our dmg in pvp.

lightning bolt is completely useless other then when ur not getting tunnelled.

fulmination needs to overload.

flame shock de-spell protection needed if shock cd sharing doesn't get removed.

something like Backlash from destro locks should be implement if non of the above happen (i know endus will probably say "yeah we have a backlash effect its the ele 2 set bonus" but yeah we also have shared cd with another ability and cant use it most of the time cause we are 2 busy trying to spread our flame shock and wait for lava surge procs so we can do dmg while we are getting tunnelled till we die).


Those are pretty much my thoughts on ele shaman.

[Endus]

Things that should get addressed by the devs

Thunderstorm cd needs to get fixed asap because atm its a 17.5 second cd while it should be a 12.5 second cd 45 seconds -50% -10 sec from glyph is 12.5 seconds no brainier their.

Straight modifiers are almost always added before multipliers. 45 seconds minus 10 seconds to 35, 50% of which is 17.5, is the correct math and how it works in-game.

Ghost wolf glyph needs to be baseline as their are superior glyph choices to it and not many shamans are taking it.

First, that's not really true, it's a popular glyph.
Second; even if it WERE true, it necessarily means a currently popular glyph would be taking it's place. Why is Glyph of Ghost Wolf deserving of special treatment among glyphs?

lightning bolt is completely useless other then when ur not getting tunnelled.

It's filler damage. it's not supposed to hit hard.

flame shock de-spell protection needed if shock cd sharing doesn't get removed.

Almost nobody has dispel protection any more. Dispels are also much more precious. It evens out.

[shell]

I agree that warriors are pretty annoying, but I think some of the issues that people are having are related to their use of Thunderstorm. I don't see the point of using it, they all have double charge and the cd lines up with it anyways. So all that's going to happen is charge>thunderstorm>charge, everytime. The key for me has been earthgrab and capacitor. Thus far, I've been doing ok at draining away at their health but my biggest problem after shockwave and disrupting shout is second wind. The only way I can finish them off is Ascendance so I wait for a window of opportunity where I know they've used shockwave and disrupting shout, then get a stun or instant hex off and then use ascendance. You don't need that many lava bursts at that point to finish them off, its just getting to the point where you can successfully use it is tricky. It doesn't always work because I don't always execute it the way that I want, but I'm better at it now than I was.

[Velthari]

But endus im sorry i will have to disagree with you on the thunderstorm thing as then that means the glyph is purposely being nerfed and whats your thought on my other 2 proposals the backlash effect and shock shared cd getting removed

---------- Post added 2012-10-24 at 12:39 PM ----------

RE:shell im doing the same thing ur doing also but what i do in my 3s is Flame Shock>Elemental Blast>Lava Bust>2nd Flame shock>Unleash Elements(if Lava Surge procs)>LavaBurst >Ancestral Swiftnes>Ascendance>Lava Burst> once Ascendance is over instant Elemental Blast>Fulmination. At this point the target is dead or the healer just blew all his cds to keep them alive.

Also a note to take when you get a lava surge proc it will still allow you to lava burst even if you get interrupted casting the previous lava burst.

[Endus]

But endus im sorry i will have to disagree with you on the thunderstorm thing as then that means the glyph is purposely being nerfed

No, it means there's a standardized order in which bonuses are applied, and you're incorrect about what that order is.

The alternative would be the possibility of reducing a duration low enough that the straight reduction reduces the CD to, or below, zero. This prevents that ever happening.

Shared shock CDs are a skill barrier, but a necessary one; I think Frost Shock needs a damage buff for Elemental to make it worth bothering with, but otherwise it should remain. The backlash effect really isn't necessary; we already have a lot of benefits in that kind of way.

[Socialhealer]

[/COLOR]RE:shell im doing the same thing ur doing also but what i do in my 3s is Flame Shock>Elemental Blast>Lava Bust>2nd Flame shock>Unleash Elements(if Lava Surge procs)>LavaBurst >Ancestral Swiftnes>Ascendance>Lava Burst> once Ascendance is over instant Elemental Blast>Fulmination. At this point the target is dead or the healer just blew all his cds to keep them alive.

Also a note to take when you get a lava surge proc it will still allow you to lava burst even if you get interrupted casting the previous lava burst.

they didnt los or, stun/silence/fear/interupt you? i play ele, and i advise everyone to tunnel other ele shaman because then he's just a sack of spuds waiting to fall over who's going to not even get off 75% of his casts and blow every cd to survive and they are quite small. i mean can you think of an easier person to zerg in 3s than an ele shaman?

[Velthari]

yes i do get los stun/silence/fear but fear can be broken with tremor silence or stun trinketed and interrupting kind of doesn't work cause if you get a lava surge proc you can still continue to burst, and like i said i always get tunnelled till i die.

[shell]

I think he misread what you wrote and interpreted it as "this is how i kill warriors" when what we're actually writing is "i'm doing x, y, and z and i can't kill them"

Also, there are other ways to make frost shock usable without removing the shared cd. Its just the way players tend to look at issues and think there's only one way to resolve it when there's more than one way.

On an unrelated note, did anyone notice the changes to Turn Evil and Banish- 'now usable against Aberrations'? What are Aberrations? Not literally, because I know what the word means, thank you, but what does it mean in World of Warcraft? Could ascendants be qualified aberrations?

[Deleted]

I haven't been playing in a high rating so far, mostly BGs, but some 2s and 3s as well.
I agree with most of what you have been saying so far, that ele can be locked down quite easily and shock management is horrible. I got raped by dk's so hard a few times, it wasn't funny. Nothing works on them, thunderstorm, earthgrab, frost shock, nothing. They counter us like hell.
But what I DON'T agree with, is that we lack dmg. With fire ele (primal for me) and a well timed ascendence, you can bring down just anyone in a matter of seconds. At least there has been no one who survived my ascendence burst for more than 4-5 globals, UNLESS he bubbles/iceblocks/AMS or I get countered/cced. And I "only" have around 6,5k pvp power, hardcore pvpers have >10k atm.
So we have the potential for very good dmg IMO, it's just hard to get it through against smart teams as they will lock you down as soon as you pop ascendence.

[Woebegone]

Am I the only one who feels like shamans' true achilles' heel is their utter reliance on free casting for damage?

And I'm not talking about how paper is weak compared to scissors, or how it's a weakness we compensate for elsewhere, but about a weakness that most classes can exploit so easily our strengths don't really matter.

I mean if I want to quickly gauge a caster's ability in PVP, I look at what kind of instant cast / kiting damage they can do when being trained. If the number is indistinguishable from zero, you just know you'll have a "free kill" bullseye painted on your forehead.

Maybe I'm going completely overboard into "totally OP" territory here, but I'd start addressing the issue with something like a "thundershock" that combines the effects of earth shock & flame shock and gives you a couple of instant cast lightning bolts, so that you can do SOMETHING without getting instantly interrupted and locked out.


EDIT: Also no point trying to fix this on the talent level. The issues should be addressed at the elemental build level - with the fifteen or so passive and active specialization abilities you get when you choose elemental. This completely removes any and all "but we can't buff resto" arguments.

[CHRONICGODX]

i've only been pulling 8-10 mil on my ele in rbgs. only played a few days, at 1930 CR right now, but just got my T1 wep, thats 10% more PVP power damage right there. most top dps are doing in the neighborhood of 16 mil, i'm guessing T1 is gonna push me to about 12 mil. i think the pvp damage is ok. lightbolt sucks more than ever but you should only rarely have to ever use it. ele is better than its ever been honestly.


and whoever said thunderstorm should be on 12.5s CD should never been held responsible for class balance, ever.

[Blitond]

Fair enough. Although I still thinks its a good idea to drop it initially against rets because grounding the first stun, in my opinion, is more about luck than anything. After that, you have a pretty good idea of when you may see it again.

Problem is that any competent Ret will either eat grounding (with exorcism or melee hit) and not FoJ while grounding is down. It's not hard to know when a shaman drops grounding. There is a buff when you drop it. There are totem filters to look at healthplates of key totems (i.e. filter out non decoy totems). There are even addons that call out when grounding is dropped.

In the case you are describing you are relying on the paladin playing bad. This might or might not be the case, but I generally assume players are competent and would do the right counter (not always the case I know, but I think it's better assuming someone will do the rational thing instead of assuming they will do the irrational thing). Yes, thunderstorm lines up nicely with FoJ. If you ground his FoJ then thunderstorm, you can put pressure on him while he's closing (as opposed to sitting in a stun while he close again).

Almost nobody has dispel protection any more. Dispels are also much more precious. It evens out.

Shadow Priests and Aff Locks still have dispel protection. Boomkins don't, but never needed it since their dots are instant casts and no cooldown.

[Narfwak]

I've done basically no PvP in MoP, so I can't comment on the problems people are having there; that said I think it would awfully difficult to make any changes without making elemental completely broken for PvE and challenge modes in particular. It's already extremely strong for both challenge modes and raiding (ten man in particular, where AG gets to shine more than in twenty five). Given that there's been basically no shaman changes for months if you go back to the beta changelogs the feeling I have is that they're trying to figure out a way to nerf it without gutting it.

[Blitond]

ele is better than its ever been honestly.

Season 8 disagrees with you. Season 10/11 rbg's disagree with you as well.

and whoever said thunderstorm should be on 12.5s CD should never been held responsible for class balance, ever.

Agree, main problem is with damage while being trained and lack of sufficient defensive CD's.

[CHRONICGODX]

Season 8 disagrees with you. Season 10/11 rbg's disagree with you as well.



Agree, main problem is with damage while being trained and lack of sufficient defensive CD's.

Sorry, cata was such shit that I forgot wrath existed. i was talking specifically about arena performance, should have clarified, but I guess cata rbgs were ok for ele, but 9/10 groups would take any dot class over an ele. i was able to do as much aids damage as some dot class with CL spam, but getting rolled over if swapped to is like the deciding factor. if friends weren't getting me into groups, no pug would ever respond to my whispers. but my cunning spriest with much less exp got invites within minutes of starting a spam. i doubt i'd be getting into rbgs now even on my ele if my friends weren't vouching for me. regardless they all still tell me to play a different class at the end of the night.

[Blitond]

Sorry, cata was such shit that I forgot wrath existed. i was talking specifically about arena performance, should have clarified, but I guess cata rbgs were ok for ele, but 9/10 groups would take any dot class over an ele. i was able to do as much aids damage as some dot class with CL spam, but getting rolled over if swapped to is like the deciding factor. if friends weren't getting me into groups, no pug would ever respond to my whispers. but my cunning spriest with much less exp got invites within minutes of starting a spam. i doubt i'd be getting into rbgs now even on my ele if my friends weren't vouching for me. regardless they all still tell me to play a different class at the end of the night.

Well yeah if you're going for rating/title, then you go Resto. Nothing has changed in this regard in years.