Possible changes to Ele's Lightning Bolt while moving?

[Lavalashlol]

I think it's funny that they targeted elemental, but hunters the ones that can maintain 100% of their dps on the move they basically shrugged it off meh hunters are hunters maybe not 100% in WoD but we will see I will be surprised if it goes through as well, maybe them adding some sort of debuff while moving like a movement speed reduction or cast time increase like with the glyph, but taking it out completely will hurt elemental pretty badly.

P.S nice new sig Anzen

[Socialhealer]

if it's removed for 6.0 i expect to see lightning bolt hitting HARDER than lava burst, just to make us not last on single target by like 40%, the issue with elemental and the exact reason we got cast on the move was when we moved, we had no dots (ok flame shock the weakest dot in WoW) ticking so we basically went from 50k dps (example) to 1k until we stopped moving, while every dot class was still doing say 30k dps(example) so movement fights just ment, don't bring an ele shaman they're useless.

so unless we get a shamanism lightning bolt buffed to like 135% damage, or flame shock ticks 800% harder, i can't see anyone bringing an elemental until they're hotfixed and re-balanced at level 100, i think blizzard are going to have a hard time not completely fucking us over, and they are pretty incompetent and quite clueless when it comes to elemental.

[Galaen]

Basically if they remove the lightning bolt on the move, they need to give us 1-2 hard hitting instant casts without CD, reduce CD on spiritwalker's grace or have lava burst hit harder than chaos bolts.
So basically, it can't be done.

[Tolstyj]

This change will bring us back to T11 dps lvl's -high movements fights, no spells to cast except flame shock/unleash elements. Had to reroll since I was doing 20% more dps on my moonkin with much less gear.

[Kazgrel]

Would take significant changes to keep ele viable for pvp and pve if they removed cast while running lb. think they will accept it as a necessary evil instead. I would hate to lose it, and if it were taken out, I would entertain either going enhance main spec or switching back to my warrior as main.

[Rothi92]

IMO they need to fix our rotation to add something we can do while on the move if taking away the LB movement. Sort of like Boomkins can do their mushrooms or re-cast their powerful dots, or whatever it is they do.

I don't like that they like Spiritwalker's Grace, it's been a flawed concept.
1. Why does Enh have it? (I know it has uses, but it probably shouldn't be in Enh's spellbook?)
2. With set bonuses for resto since it's come out, it's been a throughput CD
3. With Ele it's mostly only useful in Ascendance.

It just seems like a flawed concept, and IMO if Ele can't cast while moving, SWG will go back to what it was, which will be nice.

EDIT: Overlooked PvP...Yeah taking LB movement away will ruin Ele pvp, we're not exactly amazing kiters and taking away LB movement definitely won't be improving that, it will render us pretty useless 1v1 melee

[Zephre]

I remember what we were like before it became cast on the move. We were turrets, moving screwed us over heavily. I for one have no desire to go back to being a turret afraid to move from my position. If Blizzard took this away from us they'd need to buff us in a different area to compensate. I've kinda lost faith in Blizzard's ability to buff/balance/whatever elemental shamans anyway.

This expansions been a total warlock/hunter fest in terms of ranged anyway.

[Adhemar]

To be honest the OP sums up my opinion on the matter perfectly, I would be literally amazed if they actually removed the ability to cast Lightning Bolt whilst moving.

This is exactly the history of Elemental, though. Unleashed Lightning is a bandaid they applied to fix our absolutely terrible DPS in T11 (after shrugging off the fact that any guild who cared about progression was sitting Elemental for the whole tier). They tried to rip it off (as they usually do with our bandaids) in T14 by putting it back on a glyph and adding the 5% tax, while giving it to warlocks and mages for free. Of course, it turned out it was an absolutely mandatory glyph for almost every fight and really just meant a permanent 5% nerf to an already underperforming spec.

I know every class complains about how it's treated by Blizzard, but other than maybe subtlety rogues, Elemental is the most mis-treated spec in the game. So while I hope you guys are right and Blizzard isn't actually singling Elemental out for a nerf here, I just can't agree that it won't happen because my experience with the spec says otherwise.

- - - Updated - - -

I've kinda lost faith in Blizzard's ability to buff/balance/whatever elemental shamans anyway.

This expansions been a total warlock/hunter fest in terms of ranged anyway.

You forgot mages, but I hear what you're saying.

[Hekili]

IMO they need to fix our rotation to add something we can do while on the move if taking away the LB movement. Sort of like Boomkins can do their mushrooms or re-cast their powerful dots, or whatever it is they do.

I don't like that they like Spiritwalker's Grace, it's been a flawed concept.
1. Why does Enh have it? (I know it has uses, but it probably shouldn't be in Enh's spellbook?)

I use it during AOE movement phases so I can weave in Chain Lightning in place of Lightning Bolt. That's all.

[Thralk]

I remember playing Elemental during BC and LK and feeling like a glass-cannon not being able to move while casting. While I somewhat agree with the lore aspect of "casters should be standing still to cast", I think that feeling of vulnerability more applies to clothies. Having to stand still to cast that massive ball of fire that's going to obliterate enemies makes sense. For Shaman, however, it seems that since we've already been given the ability to wear mail, have always been portrayed as agile commanders of the elements, etc, that being able to cast this one baseline spell on the move makes sense. The only instant casts we're using are FS when it needs to be applied/refreshed, and ES when our stacks are right. SWG is great and all (especially coupling it with Ascendance...still makes me shiver...), but to take a step back away from what makes Elemental Shaman a different choice of caster (I like the guy in the blue post who said one of his reasons for rolling Hunter was because of mobility) than anything else. I hope to see more developments with this issue, as I completely feel like it's a complete 180 from what makes Shaman so appealing to me!

[Volitar]

They better figure out how to buff Elemental before they remove it..Does anyone remember t11? Probably the worst tier Elemental has ever seen.

[Kalcheus]

Ignore the balancing aspects of this. Balancing (or attempts to do so) always occurs. This isn't a DPS discussion, it's a rotation discussion.

I rank it highly likely that Ele Shamans will lose the ability to cast Lightning Bolt on the move. To compensate, my guess is that Lava Burst will refresh Flame Shock and/or the Shocks will no longer share a CD.

[Infinity]

I think it's funny that they targeted elemental, but hunters the ones that can maintain 100% of their dps on the move they basically shrugged it off meh hunters are hunters maybe not 100% in WoD but we will see I will be surprised if it goes through as well, maybe them adding some sort of debuff while moving like a movement speed reduction or cast time increase like with the glyph, but taking it out completely will hurt elemental pretty badly.

P.S nice new sig Anzen

Since when hunters are casters? Are we playing the same game? You probably watched some lore/fantasy movies, right? Have you ever seen a mage casting fucking fireballs on the move? No you have'nt , cos they have to stop to cast a spell. That's why it's called casting. And i am sure you have seen people shooting bullets or arrows on the move i.e Legolas. So stay away from hunters. They good as is now. You wanna shoot and run. Roll one.

[Kalcheus]

I think it's funny that they targeted elemental, but hunters the ones that can maintain 100% of their dps on the move they basically shrugged it off meh hunters are hunters maybe not 100% in WoD but we will see I will be surprised if it goes through as well, maybe them adding some sort of debuff while moving like a movement speed reduction or cast time increase like with the glyph, but taking it out completely will hurt elemental pretty badly.

Marksman Hunters can not do 100% of their dps on the move without nerfing their dps.
Beast Mastery is essentially in the same boat as melee when it comes to target switching and similar because the pet does a huge chunk of the damage.
Survival is pretty much the only 100% movement dps, but they have other weaknesses (burst, aoe on some fights, etc).

As Lore said, they view and balance Hunters as ranged melee. They're not in this discussion.

[Grimbold21]

Wasn't there a blue post or a tweet some days ago saying to expect a lot more casting in WoD? I think it was said in a pvp context. Maybe this goes along with that.

[Nebria]

Since when hunters are casters? Are we playing the same game? You probably watched some lore/fantasy movies, right? Have you ever seen a mage casting fucking fireballs on the move? No you have'nt , cos they have to stop to cast a spell. That's why it's called casting. And i am sure you have seen people shooting bullets or arrows on the move i.e Legolas. So stay away from hunters. They good as is now. You wanna shoot and run. Roll one.

since when was lore a reason for balancing decisions? it doesn't matter if you shoot bullets or throw fireballs. have you played guild wars 2? you can cast while moving... and by the way we are talking about filler spells. even a good mage should be able do cast some minor spell while moving. it is not that everybody want to be able to do full rotation while movement.
this discussion about instants an cast while moving should also apply to hunters. you are a ranged dps and you profit from the same stuff range casters profit from. so why should you not also get the disadvantages? you know when hunter is the only class that can deal great damage while movement guilds will start stacking hunters. even in pvp hunters will be op. it already is hard to stop you from running away. I guess you are playing a hunter and you dislike if your movement would be nerfed. now you know what it feels to be an elemental that has to fear to loose its dot-like spamming of lb while moving...

not sure about pvp. in its current broken state it would kill elemental.

in the end we have to see the whole picture of wod changes. from the past and the way blizzard balanced elemental so far I guess i will be a hard time. still missing some lead designer who plays elemental shaman^^ eat your own dog food man.

[Kio]

Can't wait to chase people round pillars on 1% hp!



Luckily as a melee nearly all the mechanics just don't effect you. *TRUE STORY* I have a friend who is melee, he played his range alt in siege one week, I couldn't believe the things he didn't know. He didn't know what Set To Blow was on Spoils, wanna know why? Because it doesn't ever go on melee. He didn't know what to do with Sawblades or Locked On during Siegecrafter. He didn't know what the Amber looked like on Paragons nor the Kuchongs (or how to handle memorize), he didn't know how to spawn Desecrate Weapons on Garrosh, hell he didn't even know of the existence of the engineers till we told him. When we asked him to kill adds on Norushen & Nazgrim he said as a melee he usually doesn't bother.

Just would rather put both sides across that slating one type of DPS.



Ranged have to actually deal with the bosses mechanics; melee seem to have got the good end of the bargain and get to tunnel every single boss this tier.

There's a reason for that: Blizzard has to make the fights easier for melee so that raids have a reason to bring them. Anytime they add a melee unfriendly mechanic, it makes ranged that much more attractive.

[Gurushock]

I hope they change something. While I love to be able to run around and jump like a crazy person and not lose DPS, it feels like a really big crutch.

[kenn9530]

casting while moving should be the normal thing for all classes, its a completely outdated mechanic to just stand there and cast, its not as if there is much thinking about the need to move anyway, its usually move here and avoid fire, have all classes being able to cast while moving can open up an avenue of new encounter mechanics instead of some fights just standing in one spot the whole fight.

[Rothi92]

casting while moving should be the normal thing for all classes, its a completely outdated mechanic to just stand there and cast, its not as if there is much thinking about the need to move anyway, its usually move here and avoid fire, have all classes being able to cast while moving can open up an avenue of new encounter mechanics instead of some fights just standing in one spot the whole fight.

I want to agree, but the way it is for most casters is they have some spells they can use while on the move for a second or two in between standing still casting (ie: hard hitting instant cast/refresh powerful dot), yet ele lacks that greatly. I think the solution would be giving ele a little bit of that and taking LB movement away.