shaman patch notes

[mjolnrik]

Shadowfury is a 3 Sec Stun on a 30 Second CD compared to Capacitor Totem which is 5 Sec Cast then 5 Sec Stun on 45 Sec CD
CPT Major Glyphs makes it a 3 Sec Cast and 3 Sec Stun on a 45 Sec CD and this Glyph is absolutely needed if one wants to reliably use CPT in PvP

Where did you see this? I just tested the glyph of capacitor quick and its still a 5 second stun. Combine this with totemic projection and you can cc people pretty easily. I always find an extra 2 seconds on a cc can make the difference between killing sum1 or not, and i wud take capacitor totem over shadowfury anyday

[Endus]

Limitations to the point of uselessness

You keep saying this as if it's true, when it's not, and you've never made any arguments to that effect.

Saying it over and over doesn't make it true.

Tell me something
Do u use the Vanilla CPT or the Glyphed CPT with Projection?

Mostly vanilla, actually. And I still stun people. Sometimes Projection, but I haven't glyphed it yet; I've always felt other glyphs took priority.

How do u even bring in something like "black people" as an analogy to a Spec in a Video Game :|

Because you're expressing irrational hate, just like racists express irrational hate. It's not a deep analogy.

And harsh criticism is trolling now

You aren't being critical, you're shitting on things and complaining. They aren't the same thing. And yes, unconstructive criticism quite often is pretty close to what we consider trolling, precisely because it's not constructive or helpful to discussions in any way, and only serves to derail threads.

[Chainreactor]

Where did you see this? I just tested the glyph of capacitor quick and its still a 5 second stun. Combine this with totemic projection and you can cc people pretty easily. I always find an extra 2 seconds on a cc can make the difference between killing sum1 or not, and i wud take capacitor totem over shadowfury anyday

Obvious typo is obvious

So what Glyphs do u run if one of them is CPT?
Also Totemic Projection over Restoration? U can basically use ur Earth's Grasp ever 15 Sec with Restoration

---------- Post added 2012-11-07 at 01:23 AM ----------

You keep saying this as if it's true, when it's not, and you've never made any arguments to that effect.

Saying it over and over doesn't make it true.

Same can be said about ur claims like "CPT is Fine"

Mostly vanilla, actually. And I still stun people. Sometimes Projection, but I haven't glyphed it yet; I've always felt other glyphs took priority.

Well lucky u
And I was expecting the Bold Part
Restoration is also very hard to pass up compared to Projection

Because you're expressing irrational hate, just like racists express irrational hate. It's not a deep analogy.

I believe there is a day and night difference between hateful criticism against a spec in a Game and irrational hate towards a Race of people
Im sorry i just dont see it and i suggest we leave it at that

You aren't being critical, you're shitting on things and complaining. They aren't the same thing. And yes, unconstructive criticism quite often is pretty close to what we consider trolling, precisely because it's not constructive or helpful to discussions in any way, and only serves to derail threads.

My intentions are never to derail a thread but ok i can tone down a bit

[Deleted]

cred for you endus, i guess that is why you are a moderator.

Chainreactor, how about you think of something else than the stun for elemental. I to agree elemental should get buffed but how excactly.
One thing is certain, there are alot of things that can be done, if blizzard in anyway say "how" to buff elemental. I will throw a racket on them

[shell]

And harsh criticism is trolling now so ok ill abide and jump on the Ele is fine and only slightly "Undertuned" bandwagon then
No more "Deconstructive" Posts from my side

For me, it's not the criticism that's close to trolling it's your delivery. Criticism, harsh or not, can be constructive. There's a difference between "capacitor is junk/elemental is shit" versus "capacitor should have its charge time reduced/elemental needs improvements to be viable." Similar to the difference in addressing your statements and telling you to "stop derailing the thread" versus telling you to "stfu." Provide all the criticism you want just find a better way to do it, that's all I'm saying. That doesn't mean you need to sugarcoat it but your comments are dripping with condescension and its frankly annoying.

/end rant

[Protoman]

I am extremely disappointed with the lack of updates for Shaman as well.....there is certainly room for improvement, not sure why people are acting like we are perfect and don't need any changes....I would like to see some adjustments like other classes as many of their updates could be labeled as unnecessary too. The main one that sticks out to me is Enhance's AoE which is just clunky and poorly designed, an AoE originally designed to be used by both a melee and caster then made melee only but not as effective as other typical melee AoE's, it needs a redesign and to simplify and streamline (like FLS spread thru FN not LL). There is also the issue of Enhance mobility, and stuff like Imp GW glyph that should be baseline since basically every PVP Shaman has to use it and without it Shaman don't have any reliable form of mobility. Our T3 totem tier of talents is also pretty lame at this point, and Blizz mentioned that they might consider redesigning it so I hope they go thru with it, just make Totemic Projection baseline and remove the totem tier and make it into something else.

As for CPT totem, I agree its one of the worst and most easily countered AoE stuns in the game......almost every other aoe stun is instant and can't be negated, ours has a delay of 5 sec, only 5HP so easily killable, can also be outranged cause its not instant, plus the CD is longer then most aoe stuns. Simply because they wanted to add some "unique flavor" by making it a totem it has become much weaker then if it would have been a normal spell. It may have a higher duration and range then other aoe stuns, but that doesn't balance out the extreme negatives of the ability.......being able to use it at range with TP is somewhat useful but still not balanced IMO especially with how many talents and glyphs you need to use to make it reliable and effective.... its only good against people who don't know any better, in a small scale skirmish or against an experienced player or another shaman they will be ready to kill or outrange CPT asap.

[shell]

I am extremely disappointed with the lack of updates for Shaman as well.....there is certainly room for improvement, not sure why people are acting like we are perfect and don't need any changes....I would like to see some adjustments like other classes as many of their updates could be labeled as unnecessary too.

What people? There are now nearly 70 posts in this thread and 2 of them said they like their own spec the way it is. One was relating to enh pve and the other was relating to resto (they didn't specify whether they meant pve/pve/both). The people who think that the class in its entirety is perfect as a whole, in this thread, can be boiled down to 0. No one ever thinks their class is perfect because there's always some improvement that could be made.

That's the end of my rant as far as that goes, I'm not going down the gw glyph/capacitor road because it just serves as diversion for the real problems.

I am curious about the tier 3 talents, however. I haven't seen blizz say anything about it so I'll have to take a look at that. I'd be disappointed if they changed it, other than projection. That's the one tier where I feel like every talent is viable for me.

[Mormolyce]

Haha, well I've played a Rogue for years so to me it seems like you get heaps of notes!

Are patch notes a good thing? They're as likely to be a nerf as a buff...

[Deleted]

Just throwing some ideas here that I see lacking:
(AS ENHANCE)
a) an extra melee attack besides SS and LavaL; this is mostly for pve where i find my self doing nothing for a couple of seconds which really bugs me and hardcasting is bleh.
(I have been feeling this way since wotlk - there is this odd timespace that really bugs me)
b) searing totem to be dropped when I cast flame shock or ss or whatever - dropping this totem is a stupid thing one class/spec can have in terms of mechanic
(the GCD removal is also not a bad idea...atleast i can macro it then...)
c) for pvp I'd like shamanistic rage to break stuns and cause immunity for x seconds for stuns (i am not much of a pvper as enhance...)
d) spirit walk should grant stealth lol (but not necessary xD)

also:
ASCENDANCE AS ENHANCE IS AWESOME - do not touch it, especially stormblast which makes me feel like a god of thunder >=D

[Salech]

Didn't blizz want to homogenize (wrong spelling i know) the specs?, then we should really get the same cooldowns on stuns, how they work and such.

They've ruined the Elemental shaman since WOTLK (my opinion), because in TBC we would join and give heroism/bloodlust, long lasting buffs from totems that the raid needed, now we throw a random totem every 3 minutes, i don't like that, i prefered to be a buffer of the group while still doing fine Damage, but they've ruined most of the Ele shaman feeling because of mixing PvP and PvE together.

also the reason there is no patch notes is because restoration spec is so strong, so no matter what they do to nerf resto, it will almost always hit Elemental quite a lot.

[Deleted]

I seriously don't understand why our flameshock has a CD at ALL. If you look at the other dots of other classes:

Druid's dots don't have a cd
Almost all shadow's dots dont have a cd
Warlock's dots dont have a cd

So why does our flameshock has 6 sec cd?

[kosajk]

Are you mad or something? WHat he said is true, It Needs A charging Time cuz it would otherwise be just another STUN. What is the purpose of totems again? Ah, thats right you understand now? THe opponent can react towards the totem. It is a different mechanic, stop comparing it to other stuns. Look at the shaman class and tell me what u see...Stop do homogenizing......ok?

so everyone can have reliable stuns, aoe, CCs and defensive cds execept shamans cose it would be homogneization... mhm that made my day

[Maximus4004]

I use Capacitor totem very often using it + Totemic Projection you can effectively "Weave" a 5 second stun anywhere you want if you know what you're doing.

[kosajk]

ofc you can problem is that you have to use 1gcd to drop totem then wait 2sec (glyphed what would be waste of glyphs slot btw) or 4 sec sec till it will be close to triger stun and use another gcd to repsition totem, all that with maintainig some defensive-offensive cds and skills rolling, it may be that im just bad but seriously im mising something so much or find me one other class that have to put so much effort in disabling enemies

[Endus]

so everyone can have reliable stuns, aoe, CCs and defensive cds execept shamans cose it would be homogneization... mhm that made my day

We do have some of what you're referring to, and many other classes are missing one or more of that list as well. You have an overly narrow vision of what a spec should be. It's not something reflected in reality.

[kosajk]

We do have some of what you're referring to, and many other classes are missing one or more of that list as well. You have an overly narrow vision of what a spec should be. It's not something reflected in reality.

yes we have some of it but in form that make them inferior to other similiar abilities, im open for discusion name one class that is worse from enh in 2 of departments i mentioned pvp wise cose pve is rather fine atm and it not require much more than proper rotation and positioning

[Endus]

yes we have some of it but in form that make them inferior to other similiar abilities, im open for discusion name one class that is worse from enh in 2 of departments i mentioned pvp wise cose pve is rather fine atm and it not require much more than proper rotation and positioning

You're moving the goalposts. You started off talking about the class in general, now you're wanting to focus solely on Enh PvP. Changing the argument midway when confronted says that you don't actually have any confidence in your own original claims.


However, I haven't heard anything negative about Enhancement in any meaningful way, with regards to PvP. The AJ forums are pretty upbeat about the spec in general. Shaman aren't lacking. The idea that our abilities need to be as good or better than anyone else's is just absolute, unadulterated bullshit. You aren't asking for balance, you're asking to be as good as the best classes at literally everything, and have our unique advantages on top of those. You're placing your minimum expectations at "grossly overpowered" and QQing because we're not there.

Well, we're not. Because that would be stupid and wrong. Elemental could use a little love, Enh is fine, and Resto is possibly a little too strong right now.

[Mithgroth]

On topic:
I'm starting to worry about seriously being missed because of all the shitstorm going on about Warrior & BM burst and mage CC. Most of the PvP'ers complaining about it and it's understandable that Blizzard is taking high priority on this issue, however I see -almost- no mention of any shaman discussion going on.

Even if we are fine in every aspect on what/how we are doing -although some claim we are, I don't see how everything can be fine-, I don't see how come there are no attempts to improve things, or make them cooler.

Not even a single cosmetic minor glyph, or an icon change. As a shaman I feel so desperate and sad that there are no positive changes (doesn't have to be a direct buff, or not an obvious PvE encounter fix, that's aimed to fix the fight, not the shaman).

On CPT:
CPT is not junk: We had no CC before. Then they gave us hex and bind elemental (so rarely used). Today's WoW requires even more control, but we should be thankful that we have at least one addition to our arsenal. 5 second AoE stun is welcomed by anyone, and shamans got it, it's great.

CPT is not fine: CPT is very good indeed, but it is obviously not fine as it is now. 45 second cd makes up for 5 seconds stun duration, it is pretty balanced as it is in terms of effect / cooldown. However, it really requires improvements and QoL changes to be useful enough:

- Totemic Projection becomes mandatory to use it. In PvP, nobody's going to stand in range of it, you have to be the one stunning them. And making a talent mandatory is flawed design. The most perfect talent example is Warlock's pet tier. Assumed that they produce the same dps, it just alters the playstyle and depends on your choice. Only CPT alone itself makes TP such a mandatory choice because it is not going to work %90 of the time without it.

- A X class ability should be usable by an averagely skilled x class player. If top tier shamans can use it very well, and most others can't, it does not mean the ability is fine and everyone else needs to L2P. It's more of a stress source than fun in my experience, and I really wonder what do you love about it as its current state, since -as I said- it effects your talent choices on its own, and furthermore pushes you to pick a glyph just to be more reliable -explained below-.

-------***** The most important issue for QoL change *****-------
- While you are trying to aim it, your mouse turns into TP's AoE pointer, which is a circle about 2-yard radius. When you try to aim it 30-yards away, it becomes too hard to predict 8-yard effect area on a moving target, while in the mean time you have to count for the arming time and hit it exactly on the right milisecond to land it. I don't see how this is "skill-cap" instead of just annoying. In the heat of combat, count to x, place it in the very right spot at the very right time, and try to predict 8-yards AoE, it's just asking too much for an AoE stun which is already balanced by its own long cooldown . It's not reliable enough, hitting with CPT shouldn't be a bonus, it should be one of our tools that we use for control.
-------***** The most important issue for QoL change *****-------

- Glyph feels plain wrong. Glyphs should alter and tweak a spell further instead of making them more reliable to use. The ability itself should be decent enough to be useful. Similar to talents, glyphs should be playstyle choices. CPT glyph feels like a bug-fix now. Because CPT isn't a reliable stun and too difficult to execute properly on its own (see the reasons above), glyph becomes mandatory if you intend to use it in your arsenal. This is just plain wrong because it contradicts with Blizzard's revamped talent and glyph logic. Also, "making a spell more reliable to use" isn't the same as "altering your playstyle by adding CPT".

There are tons of ways to make the ability more appealing, everybody probably have some ideas.
Even the existance of these ideas points out that it should be discussed by people and some improvements are required for the spell.

[Murderdoll]

And harsh criticism is trolling now so ok ill abide and jump on the Ele is fine and only slightly "Undertuned" bandwagon then
No more "Deconstructive" Posts from my side

While I do agree with your sentiment that any negativity is shouted down and viewed as trolling, I do agree that you are going about your arguments the wrong way.

I am finding Capacitor Totem to be useful (moreso in a PVE scenarios such as Elegon), yet overly complicated for what it is trying to accomplish.

I havent done much PVP this expansion I have been to focused on getting my tank and shammy in a good spot, but from my PVE uses of it, I would hate to have to rely on it for a stun. Totems can be destroyed. It has a charge time (5 seconds is a long time to wait for a stun in PVP so the glyph is mandatory). Players can just move away from its field during its charge time making the stun also rely on TP. It just has far to many negatives about it to be a reliable tool.

Is it an issue that needs to be urgently resolved, no, I think the Diablo III "Arent you thankful" message should apply here. We had no stuns for a very long time. Our slows were clunky and shit. Now we have Earthgrab and CPT. I can live with CPT being a pain in the arse sometimes.

[Mithgroth]

Since I'm doing Enh PvP as well, I feel like I can say a few words about it:

Enh has certain issues, overally thanks to Shamanistic Rage, it's doing better.

- Mobility: It's terrible. The biggest issue with Enh is mobility. Compared to any other period in WoW history, all classes have many ways to snare and root melee. Enh is a melee spec, thus needs to be at melee range as much as possible. Enh doesn't have a gap-closer, to make up for it we have sprints. Spirit Walk is a situational sprint due to it's long cooldown to be a gap-closer, so we are forced to pick Unleashed Fury. Picking any other T6 talents will result in a much lower uptime, they are not even competitive enough.

Also in order to have any uptime on the target and to execute the gap-closing strategy you need to limit your target's movement. T2 does that with Frozen Power which becomes mandatory as well. Earthbind is a less popular choice for shaman, but still it's an alternative. However, you have to pick one of them to reach your target, and the third choice is also our weakness, root-snare removal.

If we pick root-snare removal, we lose our gap closing mechanism. If we choose our traditional gap closing mechanism, we have no way to get out of roots ever. Either way our mobility has a huge flaw and can easily be stopped/crippled.

I can understand not being a Charge/Death Grip/SS class and having no instant gap closers. But it is too harsh to take away Earthen Power and Spirit Walk's root/snare removal, and being forced to choose between Frozen Power and Windwalk.

Take away Hand of Freedom, Rets will be on the same boat. If you haven't even tried Enh PvP once, you wouldn't know what I'm talking about.
Since Frostbrand is the official Enh PvP offhand enchant, Unleashing it should clear roots and snares as a resolve. Such a minor tweak can make much difference to Enh in total.

- As for PvE: We are doing alright but AoE mechanism doesn't feel right in terms of effort / gain. It's really disheartening to see EVERY single spec does almost the same damage with way too less effort (one button in general).