Lava Burst Blue Post

[Cynical Person]

Soo, in short you just nerfed us ele shamans so we can swich targets easly?
There was no nerf. Sorry if my explanation was unclear. Lava Burst with Flame Shock should do exactly the same damage it does on live. Lava Burst without Flame Shock will do more damage than it does on live. It is a buff to unfavorable situations.

Now all that said, Elemental's damage is still low. I didn't want that message to Distract players from the Lava Burst change. I also didn't want players to campaign for just buffing the heck out of Lava Burst, because that would have done damage to the rotation and PvP. Instead, we want to buff Elemental evenly. Imagine a Shamanism buff if you must until we decide the actual change.

Why does Blizzard always feel like buffing Lightning Bolt's damage will solve the fact that elemental shamans are red headed step children?

This reminds me of last expansion, they buffed and nerfed lightning bolt and lava burst like 10000 times and then buffed it to shit and it still wasn't good enough to compete with other specs in end game..

Right now Elemental's strong point is AoE and not single target. We have single target burst but absolutely no sustain..

My opinion on the matter is perhaps rather than falling into the same pattern of buffing and nerfing one or two spells they add another one. There are many things they can do to make elemental better.

• Currently we have a lightning bolt, a lava burst, and an elemental blast, How about a water/frost spell? or maybe a wind lash.
  Nothing too overpowered just something to buff our dps and make elemental less of a 4 button spec.
  
• Elemental Blast used to give double/triple effects when it was duplicated from mastery/EotE, howabout instead of giving the full effect from duplicated spells it gives like half the amount of stats like 1750? Some would argue it would be too RNG but it's something right?
  
• Lava burst procs a lot but how about every time a lava burst procs it reduces Ascendance by 1 second?
  
• Searing totem/Fire elemental dmg could renew Flame shock ticks = more fulmination
  
• Make it so exclusively elemental shamans can enchant their mainhand and our shield/offhand with a shaman enchant or two enchants on twohanders. Flametongue and Frostbrand for extra damage and a slow? Flametongue and rockbiter for an extra personal?
  
• Make shocks have separate cool downs...? How overpowered could it really be??

None of these would be TOO ridiculous to consider imo.
They would make us a little more competitive in PvP too.

What else? They could make it so ONLY resto's totems are spells. Give back Enhance and Elemental shamans PHYSICAL CAST TOTEMS.
Being silenced and sitting there like a mute vegetable really sucks.

[Ryuke]

[*]Lava burst procs a lot but how about every time a lava burst procs it reduces Ascendance by 1 second?

This is somewhat the current tier 15 4 set in case you didn't know. But agreed on most of your points! Blizzard changing something other then lightning bolt could be really fun if we got a new spell for a more sustained dps feel while still maintaining some burst and without making us lose are famous ele burst which attracted me to the class to begin with.

[Cynical Person]

This is somewhat the current tier 15 4 set in case you didn't know. But agreed on most of your points! Blizzard changing something other then lightning bolt could be really fun if we got a new spell for a more sustained dps feel while still maintaining some burst and without making us lose are famous ele burst which attracted me to the class to begin with.

yeah I know that is the tier piece, I'm looking for the future. I'm sure they are pretty much done tuning this tier. I think elemental will be able to keep up just because its looking to be more of an aoe wotlk tier. Elemental should be fine this tier just because of the AoE but idk.

[Kralljin]

My Predictions:

-> Lvb buffed by 5%
-> Lb buffed by 5%
-> Searing totem buffed by 100% and now scales with haste

If they don't want to make any serious mechanic changes there isn't much room for possible spells to buff and i don't think they want to buff Fulmination, Fulmination hits already for a decent amount but deals in PvE overall not enough dmg to make a difference without overbuffing it.

[Rangar]

[blizzQUOTE]

• Currently we have a lightning bolt, a lava burst, and an elemental blast, How about a water/frost spell? or maybe a wind lash.
  Nothing too overpowered just something to buff our dps and make elemental less of a 4 button spec.
  
• Elemental Blast used to give double/triple effects when it was duplicated from mastery/EotE, howabout instead of giving the full effect from duplicated spells it gives like half the amount of stats like 1750? Some would argue it would be too RNG but it's something right?
  
• Lava burst procs a lot but how about every time a lava burst procs it reduces Ascendance by 1 second?
  
• Searing totem/Fire elemental dmg could renew Flame shock ticks = more fulmination
  
• Make it so exclusively elemental shamans can enchant their mainhand and our shield/offhand with a shaman enchant or two enchants on twohanders. Flametongue and Frostbrand for extra damage and a slow? Flametongue and rockbiter for an extra personal?
  
• Make shocks have separate cool downs...? How overpowered could it really be??

1) Elemental Blast should be made baseline for Elemental Shaman and a more diverse talent slotted into the talent tree that is useful for Resto and Enh, as well as Ele.

2) This would be interesting, not sure how potentially good/bad it would be.

3) It wouldn't increase damage unless you have a fight last the perfect length of time where you'll fit in that extra ascendence but not so long that you'd get that ascendence off anyways. I'd rather not rely on RNG anymore than I already do.

4) Maintaining dots is fine, it's one GCD every so often and doesn't often conflict too much with earth shock. I will agree that the fire totems should be more dynamic than they currently are.

5) This would probably be difficult to code.

6) Shocks need to be off shared cooldown, wouldn't be terribly strong and we could always use more instant spells in pvp.

[Deleted]

I'll raise that with LvB being given the complete Chaos Bolt treatment!

[SamoTray]

I'll raise that with LvB being given the complete Chaos Bolt treatment!

if they were to make that change im sure they would have to drastically lower the initial dmg of Lava burst especially they way our crit works. Also we spend alot more GCD's casting Lvb then locks do casting Chaos bolt hence why chaos bolt hits for what it does. Dnt get me wrong i would love that change but i could see it severly breaking PVP, and just imagine the dmg during Ascendance not to mention EotE procs and overloads.

[Deleted]

Nowhere did I say that LvB was going to hit for Chaos Bolt numbers. If I did, do quote me on it.

[SamoTray]

Nowhere did I say that LvB was going to hit for Chaos Bolt numbers. If I did, do quote me on it.

"The complete Chaos bolt treatment" saying that means you're also inculding the dmg not just the crit portion well thats how i read it my apologies for mis understanding

[PaintOnASign]

• Searing totem/Fire elemental dmg could renew Flame shock ticks = more fulmination

While I agree that Searing Totem needs something to make it more interesting than simply "it does X damage, so I keep it down full-time", this change would go against your initial suggestion of making "elemental less of a 4 button spec", as this would reduce the number of buttons we need to push even more. I don't personally have a suggestion to make ST more interesting, but I'm silently hoping Blizzard has considered just how boring ST is for Elemental. I'd say a similar buff to Enhancement only it buffs our Elemental Blast instead of Lava Lash, however, that would probably end up giving Elemental some insane PvP burst capabilities. Like I said, I haven't really thought any suggestions through. That's Blizzard's job.

[mrinvisable2]

gc said in ending in beta they might buf st to scale with haste if dps would be low

[PaintOnASign]

gc said in ending in beta they might buf st to scale with haste if dps would be low

I feel like ST is gonna need a lot more than that to make up for Elemental's low DPS. It's not like ST is a huge portion of damage, it does like 3~5K DPS, and I think I'm being pretty generous.

[Deleted]

I don't think they want to buff Fulmination, Fulmination hits already for a decent amount but deals in PvE overall not enough dmg to make a difference without overbuffing it.

Except if they want us to oneshot people in PvP, of course...

1) Elemental Blast should be made baseline for Elemental Shaman and a more diverse talent slotted into the talent tree that is useful for Resto and Enh, as well as Ele.

2) This would be interesting, not sure how potentially good/bad it would be.

3) It wouldn't increase damage unless you have a fight last the perfect length of time where you'll fit in that extra ascendence but not so long that you'd get that ascendence off anyways. I'd rather not rely on RNG anymore than I already do.

4) Maintaining dots is fine, it's one GCD every so often and doesn't often conflict too much with earth shock. I will agree that the fire totems should be more dynamic than they currently are.

5) This would probably be difficult to code.

6) Shocks need to be off shared cooldown, wouldn't be terribly strong and we could always use more instant spells in pvp.

1)Yes, Elemental's the only spec that can use it properly anyway...

2/It will make both EOTE and mastery stronger, don't know what the effect on total DPS would be

3)That, and the new 4pc does this already (and better) anyway, so it'd be useless for T15 PvE.

4)Agreed

5)Not really. It would just require a lot of coding, as they need to write and entire system that allows for 2 enchants to be on 1 item. It's just way easier to change something else.

6)Probably, but it'll also toake part of the skill out off the class + it would affect resto as well, and they don't need a buff. It'd have to be Ele only.

[Kazgrel]

The crit rating = crit damage deal for lava burst a la chaos bolt could be a cool change, although it could get silly if we got an absurd amount of crit. Granted, I'm at like ~13% crit currently with 493 ilvl.

[Deleted]

Elemental shamans still do 10x instant lava burst that deals 70k each on a 67% resto druid.

[zenga]

If they don't want to make any serious mechanic changes there isn't much room for possible spells to buff

It depends what you mean with big mechanical changes. The Lava burst change is a mechanical change. They make similar changes all the time during ptr for other specs. Therefore I think ele will get an execute effect, either lava burst hitting harder when a target is sub x% or earth shock.

[Kralljin]

It depends what you mean with big mechanical changes. The Lava burst change is a mechanical change. They make similar changes all the time during ptr for other specs. Therefore I think ele will get an execute effect, either lava burst hitting harder when a target is sub x% or earth shock.

With serious i meant there won't be much that could change the priority of spells or whatever.

But please no more executes Effects, the majority of specs already has an execute effect.

Blizzard should remove those "niche" spells with the next expansion and rework the affected specs, leave those niche spells to a few specs / classes instead handing it out to everyone.

[Slappyjoe]

But please no more executes Effects, the majority of specs already has an execute effect.

That seems like a good enough reason to give it to Shaman as well. I've always wondered why all specs didn't have some sort of damage boost during execute. It's pretty frustrating to see everyone else in the raid shoot past me when the boss gets to 20%.

[Teriz]

Can't they just bake in the Unleashed Lightning glyph and remove the casting penalty?

[Socialhealer]

Can't they just bake in the Unleashed Lightning glyph and remove the casting penalty?

that'd be a start ye...warlocks got like what extra shards/ambers baseline, some movement thing baseline.....but shamans hmmmmm thats the scumbag class we hate....lets do the minimal amount of work requires to not make them completely crap, seriously thats how it feels...our fixes are always selfish by blizz like they don't really want to give us something, but they do it cause they have to..like a little child being a bad loser.

that glyph is just 100% req, playing ele without it is pointless..have to move swg on cd? no glyph....the tank is now doing triple ur dps.