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  1. #21
    Being 10/16H in a 25man guild, there are some fights that come to mind where Ele can shine but overall we aren't that good. However, we bring a lot of good utility and who else is going to take Int mail items?

  2. #22
    There's a very annoying problem with balancing Elemental this time around and its name is Stormlash Totem. Simply by being a Shaman and being in your raid, you add around 1% DPS to everyone in your raid, sometimes during crucial burn phases. Now, assuming you have 19 people doing damage (yes, that includes tanks) in your raid, giving every one of them 1% more damage is akin to one person doing 19% more damage (if everyone is equal). That one person responsible for that 19% of a person worth of damage is YOU. How can you do the same damage as every other spec with such a massive (stacking!) contribution to raid DPS?

    Don't get me wrong, Elemental's DPS is garbage right now, that's a fact. The real question is how could you possibly be balanced while Stormlash exists? (on a side note, Enhancement is strong right now, yes, but I would argue that it's OP if you consider Stormlash). There's a reason why Bloodlust is now unable to be chained in a row, and it's the same reason why Stormlash is screwing with your balance.

  3. #23
    Bloodsail Admiral zenga's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JKim View Post
    and who else is going to take Int mail items?
    resto's would be my guess

  4. #24
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Totaltotemic View Post
    There's a very annoying problem with balancing Elemental this time around and its name is Stormlash Totem. Simply by being a Shaman and being in your raid, you add around 1% DPS to everyone in your raid, sometimes during crucial burn phases. Now, assuming you have 19 people doing damage (yes, that includes tanks) in your raid, giving every one of them 1% more damage is akin to one person doing 19% more damage (if everyone is equal). That one person responsible for that 19% of a person worth of damage is YOU. How can you do the same damage as every other spec with such a massive (stacking!) contribution to raid DPS?

    Don't get me wrong, Elemental's DPS is garbage right now, that's a fact. The real question is how could you possibly be balanced while Stormlash exists? (on a side note, Enhancement is strong right now, yes, but I would argue that it's OP if you consider Stormlash). There's a reason why Bloodlust is now unable to be chained in a row, and it's the same reason why Stormlash is screwing with your balance.
    I basically championed this stance during the beta, but Ghostcrawler confirmed at one point before the launch that they don't consider raid-wide effects like Stormlash or Skull Banner as part of a single class' performance; they are considered "raid utility" and are just bonuses.

    The conclusion to be drawn from that is that you are correct. Elemental brings more DPS to the table than most specs, even if their personal DPS is a bit lower, because of Stormlash Totem. Raidbots-style comparisons are relatively new and often flawed, and this is one of the flaws. The way raid DPS was typically factored in back during TBC was in considering the total contribution to raid DPS by a class, including buffs like this. This was why buff specs like DPS Shaman got raid slots at the time, despite their personal DPS being 60-70% that of a pure (or thereabouts; I know Enhancement in particular was roughly 70% the DPS of a Warrior or Rogue melee at the time). And you often only took one of the buff specs, because the buffs didn't stack, so the second was valued solely for personal DPS which didn't make the cut.

    If you run that same math today, you add in Stormlash Totem to Shaman players (and Skull Banner to Warriors). That's the clear and simple math; an additional Shaman is an additional Stormlash Totem. There's some diminishing returns as after the first few, you're not stacking Stormlashes on the times when raid buffs are popped but during the in-between times, and there will be some who will get 2 uses and others who won't, but it's still an extra Stormlash per Shaman. If I borrow your numbers to make this simple, if Stormlash adds 1% to a player's DPS, then if an Elemental Shaman is doing 90% of the personal DPS of the other guy competing for his slot, you take the Shaman to your 25-man. Because of Stormlash Totem. You get more raid damage as a result, and will have an easier time with the Enrage mechanic.

    It's not affecting the way the class is tuned, though. We're supposedly tuned without considering that. So where our personal DPS is lagging a bit (and Raidbots suggests it is), we should be asking for buffs. The point is; in practice, we're already strong contributors to raid DPS. In a way the developers aren't intended to punish our personal DPS for. I don't LIKE this, since it basically means that a properly balanced Shaman is one of the best DPS specs you can stack. But that's where we're at.


  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    I basically championed this stance during the beta, but Ghostcrawler confirmed at one point before the launch that they don't consider raid-wide effects like Stormlash or Skull Banner as part of a single class' performance; they are considered "raid utility" and are just bonuses.
    Oddly, this does seem true throughout the ages of using Mana Tide as Resto. It's never been intentionally handicapped or prevented from being OP by the fact that giving extra mana to other healers is actually really strong when you think about the numbers. So then we come back to the big question: is Blizzard afraid of Shamans becoming too desirable because of the more overt DPS implications of Stormlash over something like Mana Tide, or do they seriously believe that Elemental's damage is where it should be right now? Unfortunately with the huge lack of developer communication this expansion, we have no idea.

  6. #26
    High Overlord EleShamLAZERBEAMZ's Avatar
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    Every Xpack I play me ele, Every Xpack i end up playing my Warlock.

    I love my ele, but i wanna go fast daddy..

    Ps. elemental blast is fun as well cool spell imo
    Last edited by EleShamLAZERBEAMZ; 2012-12-05 at 11:40 PM.

  7. #27
    The bitching from fire mages has been so surreal since fire is still parses about 15k more dps than elemental! I can't wait 'til January when my group gets a new swing and I can swap back to H-Pally.

  8. #28
    I've enjoyed elemental so far in heroic raids as a lot of fights seemed to suit us well - movement, aoe, burst. But just looking at the recent simcraft, it's looking like once again we are scaling terribly.

    It's going to be dissapointing to see the usual buff to shamanism and lava burst in 5.2. Would like to see a change where crit increase lava bursts damage - similar to how chaos bolt works/once worked. Would like even more if they added something to change up the playstyle, but I doubt it, or even the crit change for that matter.

  9. #29
    One of our biggest problems still is the inability to (significantly) increase our dps in bosfights with multiple targets when you can't use CL.
    Just look at that: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/7...?s=1581&e=2050
    Both are ranked #1 within their respective specc but the difference is huge.

    We are kinda OK single target, quite good on Mel'Jarak heroic and Feng heroic(which are "easy" hardmodes) and prime candidates for being benched on fights like WotE hc, Garalon hc and most important of all - Sha of fear hc. Sha of Fear hc ist the "most important" fight in 5.1, at least the longest und the encounter a lot of people will spend most of their time on. It sucks that we suck on this encounter. My alt is an affli lock and already does more dmg than my ele on WotE, even with 20 itemlevel less.

    Since I am not supposed to say :"Buff Elemental", I am saying:" Nerf Affliction (-10% dmg for all dots incl. MG) and nerf Kil'jaedens Cunning (at least some dmg penalty), nerf Starsurge (-20% dmg) but buff Wrath, nerf arcane mages, give shadows a better way to move than GoMF but reduce Surge of Darkness to 10%, give each Shock its own Cd, buff LB again, etc." I don't think any of this is over the top or unreasonable.
    Last edited by Laurean; 2012-12-08 at 06:51 PM.

  10. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Laurean View Post
    We are kinda OK single target, quite good on Mel'Jarak heroic and Feng heroic(which are "easy" hardmodes) and prime candidates for being benched on fights like WotE hc, Garalon hc and most important of all - Sha of fear hc. Sha of Fear hc ist the "most important" fight in 5.1, at least the longest und the encounter a lot of people will spend most of their time on. It sucks that we suck on this encounter. My alt is an affli lock and already does more dmg than my ele on WotE, even with 20 itemlevel less.
    I was able to pull relatively similiar numbers than our Balance Druids on Sha of Fear, altough it was extremely lucky because i used Ascendance to AoE some Adds in P2 and got lucky with their positioning, ended up doing 6Million Dmg with Lava Beam (400k Dps for 15Sec).

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Laurean View Post
    One of our biggest problems still is the inability to (significantly) increase our dps in bosfights with multiple targets when you can't use CL.
    Just look at that: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/7...?s=1581&e=2050
    Both are ranked #1 within their respective specc but the difference is huge.

    We are kinda OK single target, quite good on Mel'Jarak heroic and Feng heroic(which are "easy" hardmodes) and prime candidates for being benched on fights like WotE hc, Garalon hc and most important of all - Sha of fear hc. Sha of Fear hc ist the "most important" fight in 5.1, at least the longest und the encounter a lot of people will spend most of their time on. It sucks that we suck on this encounter. My alt is an affli lock and already does more dmg than my ele on WotE, even with 20 itemlevel less.

    Since I am not supposed to say :"Buff Elemental", I am saying:" Nerf Affliction (-10% dmg for all dots incl. MG) and nerf Kil'jaedens Cunning (at least some dmg penalty), nerf Starsurge (-20% dmg) but buff Wrath, nerf arcane mages, give shadows a better way to move than GoMF but reduce Surge of Darkness to 10%, give each Shock its own Cd, buff LB again, etc." I don't think any of this is over the top or unreasonable.
    I'm quite certain every multi DoT class in the game would be happy to get nerfed so they look comparatively better against Elemental Shamans. That's a brilliant way to balance this game. I agree with you 100%.

  12. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by otaXephon View Post
    I'm quite certain every multi DoT class in the game would be happy to get nerfed so they look comparatively better against Elemental Shamans. That's a brilliant way to balance this game. I agree with you 100%.
    I don't really get your point???

  13. #33
    I love ele and it's simplicity. Ascendance for ele is just boss and while they don't tend to be top dps our utility will always grant us a raid spot

  14. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by Laurean
    I don't really get your point???
    I'm agreeing with you and your brilliant take on class balance, that's my point.

    In fact, I'm so in love with your idea that I'd like the devs to take it one step further and simply remove all other ranged DPS from the game, minus Elemental Shaman. This will solve all of our DPS problems in addition to making Elemental Shamans the best multidot class in the game!

  15. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by pkm View Post
    our utility will always grant us a raid spot
    So what utility do we have that alone makes raids take us?

  16. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by Laurean View Post
    I don't really get your point???
    sarcasm...

  17. #37
    I'm happy, generally, with our strengths and weaknesses; we seem to be in a good place design-wise. I would agree, however, that our coefficients could do with a little bit of upping to keep us competitive as we scale. We seem to be falling behind slowly but surely.

    I also maintain that the totem-tier of our talents is underwhelming and there are far more exciting things that could be done there.

  18. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by thebdc View Post
    So what utility do we have that alone makes raids take us?
    As per above... Stormlash. Oh and Ancestral Guidance is pretty amazing in terms of hybrid off-heal raid cooldowns.

  19. #39
    What would you guys suggest doing to make us scale better? Just buff our output, or change some underlying class mechanics?
    Hatred the Fearless.

  20. #40
    The Patient
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    There's a few major possibilities for improving scaling / our general lot in WoW:

    1) Increasing the spellpower coefficients of some of our spells. This is the most straightforward option, although it can affect resto/enh in 'not optimal' ways. Buffing Lava Burst and Lightning Shield (and therefore Fulmination) would probably be have the most elem-specific changes.

    2) Increasing the spell damage bonus of Elemental Focus (a.k.a. Clearcasting) and/or Flametongue Weapon.

    3) Increasing our mastery scaling (currently at 300 mastery rating = 1% mastery; an example increase would be to make 300 mastery rating worth 1.1% mastery). This would have some affect on our stat weights, as well as talent choices (since Primal Elementalist doesn't benefit from mastery, Elemental Blast could become (even more) the default option for optimal DPS).

    4) Adjust Spiritual Insight so that the shocks all have independent 5-second cooldowns. (This impacts scaling primarily due to the interaction with Fulmination, which accumulates charges faster with higher amounts of haste and/or mastery.)

    5) Adapt Shamanistic Rage for elem, i.e.: Reduce damage by 10% and increase spell damage by 10% for 10 sec, 60 sec cd. (Instead of spell damage increase, a straight buff to secondary stats would also work and be in line with the ethos of the spell.) (And yes, Virginia, there is a defensive CD for elem.)

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