Elemental 8.1 PTR Changes

[Socialhealer]

more lightning bolt damage = even less mobile than ever.

all the time you're not standing still casting lightning bolts = fuck all dps.

i bet blizzard will make it so we're like 10th on single target patchwerk fights instead of 15th.

and we're below the tanks on movement fights instead of above the tanks.

what great design!

[Antilurker77]

they added a talent that buffs mobility, and they can always buff icefury as well

[Kralljin]

that is not how stormkeeper works

it's 100% overload chance, not a free additional overload

Yeah my bad, point still stands however.
Call the Thunder is basically there to get more out of Surge of Power and i don't see Surge of Power being decent w/o Stormkeeper interaction, ignoring other talent synergies.

more lightning bolt damage = even less mobile than ever.

Hardly significant due the fact that you rely on standing still in the first place to generate Maelstrom.
The only thing that generates Maelstrom while you're moving are Lava Surge proc'd Lvb's and Totem Mastery.

If you can't cast ES while moving, you can't cast it, hence no damage anyway, the only side effect here is that it buffs Mastery.

[Malikath]

more lightning bolt damage = even less mobile than ever.

all the time you're not standing still casting lightning bolts = fuck all dps.

i bet blizzard will make it so we're like 10th on single target patchwerk fights instead of 15th.

and we're below the tanks on movement fights instead of above the tanks.

what great design!

pretty much, elemental peaked in MoP.

[Ardourdan]

I've been saying this for about 7 years now; most Elemental Shamans wouldn't mind dealing lower damage if our abilities had off-healing passive/synergy. Wwhy isn't this given more exploration by Blizzard?

[Draele]

It's time to up our mobile maelstrom generation as the class feels like trash on mobile fights.

- Frost Shock needs to generate 3 maelstrom baseline.
- Icefury needs to hit harder (somewhere between a LB hit and LvB crit such that it's worth using over a basic LB in a stationary fight) and provide a 15s buff that doubles FS maelstrom generation to 6.

This might seem OP right now in the context of ES being so strong + LB being so weak, but with the damage being shifted around it could be pretty reasonable and also adds a nice timing element in that you want to pre-case Icefury before the need for mobility occurs.

[Ele man]

Clearly, turret dps spec is fine if dps is powerful. This change makes 2 targets cleave dps worse from us.
But because of the badness now, this change is good if ele have a return. Dev need to place ST dps of ele in top.

[Nyel]

15% earth shock nerf
40% lightning bolt buff

bleh

I don't know if Blizzard is serious here. When I look at the logs a 15% nerf to ES and a 40% buff to LB makes zero difference when it comes to DPS. The ES nerf makes -4% DPS, the LB buff makes +4% DPS in average. So in the end we gain nothing but less damage during movement.

The LB buff only seems reasonable when you talent for it with Stormkeeper, Surge etc. which is a horrible design decision because we're forced into one specific talent build.

[Kralljin]

Clearly, turret dps spec is fine if dps is powerful. This change makes 2 targets cleave dps worse from us.
But because of the badness now, this change is good if ele have a return. Dev need to place ST dps of ele in top.

Buffs to Cl (and possibly FrS) are bound to happen down the line.

Cl has 30% sp scaling.
Lb has 70% sp scaling.

So LB currently deals straight up more damage on two targets, has a higher Overload chance and generates the same amount of Maelstrom.

Another side effect of this change is that Mastery is now a lot more useful than before.

buff to LB makes zero difference when it comes to DPS. So in the end we gain nothing but less damage during movement.

First off, that was their intention, shift damage from ES into LB, so that's working as intended.

Second, your movement dps not suffer significantly (if at all) from this change, you are not generating a lot of Maelstrom while moving, henceforth you are not casting ES really.
For this change to be an actual nerf for your movement dps, you need a serious maelstrom generation factor that mostly works while moving, Elemental does not have that.

In other words, if you stand still, you generate Maelstrom to cast ES and benefit from the LB buff, if you're moving, you're obviously not casting Lightning Bolt and therefore not generating a lot of Maelstrom for ES.

[zire]

so, we are now completly gimped in pvp??

35% lavashock nerf + 15% es nerf, but more dmg in slow, hard cast lbolt (nature school, like heals, gw), which is hardly cast at all in pvp? really...

they should just let es like it is, buff lbolt (reduce cast time from lbolt maybe also, for fatser maelstrom) and lavaburst a bit, keep the lavashock nerf. this really gets frustrating

[Ragnarocket]

so, we are now completly gimped in pvp??

35% lavashock nerf + 15% es nerf, but more dmg lbolt, which is hardly cast at all in pvp? really...

Well, it doesn’t look optimistic at least....

[zire]

Well, it doesn’t look optimistic at least....

yeah new talents sound interesting, but well, the other changes just makes it worse. harldy a dmg buff at all but more "immobile".
flameshock cd, echo baseline etc completly ignored.

[Ele man]

Buffs to Cl (and possibly FrS) are bound to happen down the line.

Cl has 30% sp scaling.
Lb has 70% sp scaling.

So LB currently deals straight up more damage on two targets, has a higher Overload chance and generates the same amount of Maelstrom.

Another side effect of this change is that Mastery is now a lot more useful than before.

Your opinion does not think about the end result.
With a simple count, your calculation is correct. However, overall power of spec is being adjusted as intended by dev.
If there were no changes, ele would have received more total dps buff and then it would be obviously stronger than that.

Think of old ele. In the past, damage to cl and lb was similar. If the total power is similar,
Do you think 2target dps will be more powerful than now?

[Kralljin]

Your opinion does not think about the end result.

Whatever the end result is supposed to be, consistently using LB on two targets has never been the case.
Because it's grossly misleading and pretty much a basic intention behind these two spells.

LB=Single target
CL=Two and beyond

Think of old ele. In the past, damage to cl and lb was similar. If the total power is similar,
Do you think 2target dps will be more powerful than now?

To put things into perspective:
If they decide to push Cl to 60% SP, then they buff it by 100%.

*If* that were to come true, then Cl would actually come rather close to Lvb on two targets.

Even if they want to keep the relative power of Lb and Cl the same, they woud also have to buff Cl by 40% obviously.

[Deleted]

Kinda disappointing to see the upcoming changes. As an ele shaman I perform rather good on Zul but really poorly on Mother. If they could fix mobility somewhere in the range of a mage (Blink while casting) it would get better.

[Ele man]

Whatever the end result is supposed to be, consistently using LB on two targets has never been the case.
Because it's grossly misleading and pretty much a basic intention behind these two spells.

LB=Single target
CL=Two and beyond



To put things into perspective:
If they decide to push Cl to 60% SP, then they buff it by 100%.

*If* that were to come true, then Cl would actually come rather close to Lvb on two targets.

Even if they want to keep the relative power of Lb and Cl the same, they woud also have to buff Cl by 40% obviously.

Your opinion may be correct, but right now it is not reality.
How do you confirm that the dev will be fixed?
Give opinions to dev to make the opinion real. But I do not know if dev will listen to it.

[Kralljin]

Kinda disappointing to see the upcoming changes. As an ele shaman I perform rather good on Zul but really poorly on Mother. If they could fix mobility somewhere in the range of a mage (Blink while casting) it would get better.

Mother is hardly a good fight for dps in general, as everything has low hp and you basically just survive until the last room.
Mother is one of those fights were i really don't care about my overall performance simply because how the encounter is designed.

Your opinion may be correct, but right now it is not reality.
How do you confirm that the dev will be fixed?
Give opinions to dev to make the opinion real. But I do not know if dev will listen to it.

You can say a lot of shit about Elemental design, but using LB on two targets and Cl barely surpassing LB on three would be a horrendous error even by Elemental design standards.

[Deleted]

hi guys, where do you have the information from with 15% ES nerf and 40% lb buff? Is it already one the live servers?

[Xruptor]

lol

Yes, Elemental is doing great.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/19

*puts on some glasses* I just can't seem to see any shaman listed on these rankings.... anywhere.... lol

[Forblings]

Seems like a reroll is in order, honestly fed up of waiting for something good to come to ele.