Elemental Shaman: What are your main grievances?

[Kalisandra]

So genuine question but how much easier would this spec be to balance around damage if Lava Burst was either removed, lost its chance to auto crit or Elemental Fury wasn't a thing?

Well, if you remove it, the rotation becomes extremely simple, and thus easy to balance when not moving. However, static, Patchwerk DPS is always easy to balance at a given ilevel. It's getting the scaling reasonably similar for all specs, and getting DPS over a complex boss fight balanced that tricky. Not so tricky that Blizzard hasn't done a reasonable job in the past, though never to the satisfaction of everyone. This time round they've done an exceptionally bad job, while at the same time managing to make an unprecedented number of specs feel awful in play.

Lava Burst is not the problem. Elemental Fury isn't a problem for balance, but can be for 'feel', and can be for PvP (though with crits tuned down in PvP it's not really). Note that in Legion at the end we were running with 280% damage on crit without issue. Elemental Fury + LvB auto-crit is absolutely not a problem, because damage can be tuned entirely based on the critical damage. What is a problem with this is Blizzard's determination to make Earth Shock the 'big hit' and thus their refusal to let Lava Burst have real impact.

During our hUldir run tonight, on average in a boss fight I cast about half as many Earth Shocks as Lava Bursts, and they did about the same total damage (depending on how luck I was with ES crits vs. LvB Mastery procs). I would much prefer Lava Bursts to average closer to Earth Shock in damage per cast. ES would still swing higher due to crits, of course.

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Elemental PvP is probably worse, everyone focuses you as they know you're pretty much a free kill unless you run for it. Can barely kite any melee at all since MoP. Flameshock CD is basically a big joke. Damage while just stood casting uninterrupted is pretty shit. Shamans used to be a glass cannon, you leave them alone and they'll blow you out of existence. That's no longer the case, pretty much any other caster is scarier than a puny elemental shaman now.

I miss that. In the day you could pretty much see the other side saying "Oh, Shi....!" as they realised that they'd swapped off you too long and a few Lava Bursts and a Fulminate was coming their way.

PvP in MoP was so fast and dynamic, you could pretty much run anything in 2s or 3s and make it work past past 2.2k. Elemental shamans were scary, every once in a while you get some silly LBs and force some big CDs, good times.

The only problem with MoP PvP, to my mind, was that there was far too much CC and nearly free short-duration stuns. But when they went to trim all that, they carved off everything else as well from far too many classes.

[Charge me Doctor]

I don't like earth and lava-themed abilities. I mean, earth is fine, but lava? I mean, magma totem is fine, but Lava burst? Ewww. It's it's, like a big part of our damage (in terms of "you use it a lot"). I want a viable option to lob "man we just need a hunter for that"everywhere and skip lava burst completely.

Also i hate playing an ork but i'm too cheap to reroll race

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This is why we have this result - https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...unt&dataset=90

Destro Lock is the only turret spec that barely gets into the top 1/2. Every other turret spec, overall in Uldir, is on the bottom 1/2...with all Mage specs at the very bottom.

It kinda explains my feelings towards elemental, since i play a fire mage and see nothing wrong with both specs

[wushootaki]

So, a lot of people are saying mobility felt better, and the damage just felt stronger for certain abilities.


Blizzard has stated however, their intention for Elemental is to be a Turret - non-mobile caster in PvP.

This means there have to be a few options to keep it viable.

It either needs to do some of the highest Bust damage with low ramp up in the game, and remain a glass cannon that falls over when you sneeze at it.

OR

It needs to have some of the highest survivability in the game while its damage is changed to a more sustain that wrecks people over time, using its survivability to stay alive.

OR

It needs some type of interupt/casting protection/Blizzard needs to change their design intent away from turret playstyle


Some quick a dirty fixes to addess mobility issues could be to add Gust of Wind back into the class talent tree for Elemental. Ghost wolf does not cut it as caster mobility, see below:

Mages have a blink, Priests have a sprint, Druids can talent into a leap, Warlocks have a teleport and a portal, Hunters have disengage
- None of these options Silence the caster in exchange for their mobility

But Shaman also have a knockback and snare/root:
- Mages get their blink with Slow as arcane, or with Several Roots as Frost
- Druids can talent for leap and knockback, and have entangling roots
- Hunters can trap and disengage, and talent into a knockback shot/stun

Again, Ghost Wolf does not cut it as a caster movement ability, as unlike the other examples, it effectively silences you from being able to deal your damage.

Some Spitball Ideas for Mobility Fixes: Overhaul the functionality of Ghost Wolf entirely to be a sprint-type cooldown
Bring back Gust of Air via Talents
Add a new talent Feral Attunement
- Feral Elementalist
X min Cooldown
Your bond with the elements reaches perfect harmony allowing you to cast spells in your ghost wolf form for Y seconds. Shapeshifts
you into ghost wolf form when activated.

[Diatribe]

Current BFA changes to the spec generally aren't fun. Legion was fun. This isnt.

[Gomelus]

So, a lot of people are saying mobility felt better, and the damage just felt stronger for certain abilities.


Blizzard has stated however, their intention for Elemental is to be a Turret - non-mobile caster in PvP.

This means there have to be a few options to keep it viable.

It either needs to do some of the highest Bust damage with low ramp up in the game, and remain a glass cannon that falls over when you sneeze at it.

OR

It needs to have some of the highest survivability in the game while its damage is changed to a more sustain that wrecks people over time, using its survivability to stay alive.

OR

It needs some type of interupt/casting protection/Blizzard needs to change their design intent away from turret playstyle


Some quick a dirty fixes to addess mobility issues could be to add Gust of Wind back into the class talent tree for Elemental. Ghost wolf does not cut it as caster mobility, see below:

Mages have a blink, Priests have a sprint, Druids can talent into a leap, Warlocks have a teleport and a portal, Hunters have disengage
- None of these options Silence the caster in exchange for their mobility

But Shaman also have a knockback and snare/root:
- Mages get their blink with Slow as arcane, or with Several Roots as Frost
- Druids can talent for leap and knockback, and have entangling roots
- Hunters can trap and disengage, and talent into a knockback shot/stun

Again, Ghost Wolf does not cut it as a caster movement ability, as unlike the other examples, it effectively silences you from being able to deal your damage.

Some Spitball Ideas for Mobility Fixes: Overhaul the functionality of Ghost Wolf entirely to be a sprint-type cooldown
Bring back Gust of Air via Talents
Add a new talent Feral Attunement
- Feral Elementalist
X min Cooldown
Your bond with the elements reaches perfect harmony allowing you to cast spells in your ghost wolf form for Y seconds. Shapeshifts
you into ghost wolf form when activated.

Wouldn't mind if they added a few castable spells while in ghost wolf. Resto can cast Unleash Life in Ghost Wolf, for example. They could make the Shocks castable. You wouldn't be able to generate maelstrom, but you can DO something. That or letting you drop totems.

[Antilurker77]

Poor damage even on low-movement fights where a turret caster should shine.

Lack of unique, useful raid utility. All of Elemental's raid utility is either too niche or weaker than what other classes bring.

Reliance on Primal Elementalist for having a half-decent survivabilty CD (Harden Skin + Astral Shift).

Having 2.0s cast times across the board, and being a low APM spec in general.

Slow MS generation and poor spec pacing in general.

Short CD spells like Lava Burst, Elemental Blast, and Icefury doing barely more if not less damage than Lightning Bolt.

Totemic Mastery. Maintenance buffs suck.

[Rennegadelawlz]

Poor damage even on low-movement fights where a turret caster should shine.

Lack of unique, useful raid utility. All of Elemental's raid utility is either too niche or weaker than what other classes bring.

Reliance on Primal Elementalist for having a half-decent survivabilty CD (Harden Skin + Astral Shift).

Having 2.0s cast times across the board, and being a low APM spec in general.

Slow MS generation and poor spec pacing in general.

Short CD spells like Lava Burst, Elemental Blast, and Icefury doing barely more if not less damage than Lightning Bolt.

Totemic Mastery. Maintenance buffs suck.

I agree with most of this but I didn’t want to edit the quote text, so first off, 100% on the turret ideology that if we aren’t supposed to move and blizzard wants us static then our sustained single target non moving fights should be our staple for damage and currently it’s not.

2nd our raid utility is poor, my excuse is hero and tremor totem, and other classes have hero..

3rd 2 second cast timer across the board, been saying this was an issue since launch, originally CL and LvB both had 1.5 sec cast times but in Mists they changed them to 2 second cast times because of the available haste in the game for shamans at the time. Now that ancestral swiftness is gone and haste is so hard to come by the specs rotation has no fluidity. Brining CL and LvB cast times would be great.

4th and probably the most valuable piece of our argument here is that throughout our time as elemental shamans our spells and abilities have had a priority system, but our short CD spells are HORRENDOUS on damage. Lava Burst actually does less damage than a LB Crit, lava burst since wrath had been our design ability, then we got fulminate aka new earth shock, which does good damage and has always done good damage, then we received ele blast which if it crit felt almost like chaos bolt. Last but not least ice fury a spell that could compete with ele blast in damage but buffed our frost shock for rotational flavor.

The reason that one is the biggest issue for me is because those spells used to have value in all of their play styles, now they don’t and I’m sure most of you agree. Lava burst should hit like a truck and ele blast should hit considerably harder than lightning bolt, blizzard basically flat lined are damage 5 spells across the board nearly do the same amount of damage as each other and none of them are significant to a priority system, and earth shock literally does so much more damage than anything we have right now yet it has an extremely slow ramp up and compared to our damage else where it doesn’t hit hard enough to compensate for the rest of our spells.


TLDR: we need our cast times for specific spells changed to help our flow and damage needs to be tuned up high on our short cd spells.


Food for thought: if blizzard really doesn’t like lava burst they should consider removing it, not compensating for it.

[shammypie]

1. DPS in raids. 2. DPS in dungeons. 3. being a free kill in PvP.

[Keltas]

I agree with most of this but I didn’t want to edit the quote text, so first off, 100% on the turret ideology that if we aren’t supposed to move and blizzard wants us static then our sustained single target non moving fights should be our staple for damage and currently it’s not.

2nd our raid utility is poor, my excuse is hero and tremor totem, and other classes have hero..

3rd 2 second cast timer across the board, been saying this was an issue since launch, originally CL and LvB both had 1.5 sec cast times but in Mists they changed them to 2 second cast times because of the available haste in the game for shamans at the time. Now that ancestral swiftness is gone and haste is so hard to come by the specs rotation has no fluidity. Brining CL and LvB cast times would be great.

4th and probably the most valuable piece of our argument here is that throughout our time as elemental shamans our spells and abilities have had a priority system, but our short CD spells are HORRENDOUS on damage. Lava Burst actually does less damage than a LB Crit, lava burst since wrath had been our design ability, then we got fulminate aka new earth shock, which does good damage and has always done good damage, then we received ele blast which if it crit felt almost like chaos bolt. Last but not least ice fury a spell that could compete with ele blast in damage but buffed our frost shock for rotational flavor.

The reason that one is the biggest issue for me is because those spells used to have value in all of their play styles, now they don’t and I’m sure most of you agree. Lava burst should hit like a truck and ele blast should hit considerably harder than lightning bolt, blizzard basically flat lined are damage 5 spells across the board nearly do the same amount of damage as each other and none of them are significant to a priority system, and earth shock literally does so much more damage than anything we have right now yet it has an extremely slow ramp up and compared to our damage else where it doesn’t hit hard enough to compensate for the rest of our spells.


TLDR: we need our cast times for specific spells changed to help our flow and damage needs to be tuned up high on our short cd spells.


Food for thought: if blizzard really doesn’t like lava burst they should consider removing it, not compensating for it.

The haste thing will be solved next patch pretty well (although unfortunately in a bandaid shitty way) by letting us basically guarantee ourselves 3 natural harmony traits (plus its being buffed). We'll get 750~ in all 3 major secondary stats from that. Yeah though it shouldn't be the solution, but at least it's something now.


The problem with lava burst is our mastery. Right now, mastery only affects LvB and LB, but also has to somehow compete with crit and haste in value. The only way to do that (especially with mastery procs only being 85% damage and half maelstrom) is to overtune it, and shit on the spells base damage so much, that they hit like limp noodles normally.

Our filler spells are essentially losing 50%+ of their damage to mastery. You can see this by looking at other specs in the games mastery. They usually affect around 70% of their damage sources and it's ALWAYS spenders or an entirely separate proc (unlike ours for some reason). But our mastery only affects ~25% of our damage, and doesn't even scale said damage 1:1, so it's over tuned way too hard.

If mastery affected everything, or was replaced entirely, our filler spells could hit 50%+ harder, because they wouldn't be tied down by mastery so much.

Edit: Just to add, every spec with a mastery that doesn't affect 70~% of their damage has horrible mastery scaling too, just like us. They only get away with it because instead of all of masteries value being stripped from 1-2 spells, it's being stripped across the whole kit.

[Kralljin]

But our mastery only affects ~25% of our damage, and doesn't even scale said damage 1:1, so it's over tuned way too hard.

Our Mastery affects the sum of LB and Lvb Damage (ignoring the additional Maelstrom reg).
The only difference is that since WoD (?) the Overloads are listed as seperate spells, previously Overloads were not listed seperately in logs.

This is pretty much the same thing for any spec, Mastery only affects a portion of your damage, the difference to any other stat is simply that due that, Mastery is a lot more dependant on tuning of individual skills than something like Haste.

and shit on the spells base damage so much, that they hit like limp noodles normally.

"Low" Base damage is not the problem, it only is in small short timed burst phases, then stuff like Elemental Fury and Overload Mastery cause real damage swings, overall this evens out.
It's one of those examples why comparing SP% coefficients directly makes no sense, as some specs have underlying mechanics that boost those spells further.

In theory you can tune that LB does the same damage as a Frostbolt on average despite Elemental Fury and Overload, you just have swings if you have small sample sizes.

Besides, Mastery scaling is not a big issue (At least as far as ST is concerned), Mastery is not too far behind other secondary stats depending on your stats.


You might as well turn Mastery around, get a safe proc on every LB / Lvb and then have the Damage / Maelstrom generation scale with Mastery, outside of high Mastery situations it would be identical, just cause less damage swings in small sample sizes.

If Lb does shit damage, then it's not because of Mastery but because LB does shit damage.

[Keltas]

Our Mastery affects the sum of LB and Lvb Damage (ignoring the additional Maelstrom reg).
The only difference is that since WoD (?) the Overloads are listed as separate spells, previously Overloads were not listed separately in logs.

This is pretty much the same thing for any spec, Mastery only affects a portion of your damage, the difference to any other stat is simply that due that, Mastery is a lot more dependent on tuning of individual skills than something like Haste.

Which is pretty much what I said. Mastery affects only a small portion of our damage. Many other specs (not all, some have the same problem, see; frost mage, arms) have a mastery that scales substantially more of their damage, and the spells that scale with it aren't all dampened down because their mastery "toll" is spread across more of their kit. It's not hard to see when you see damage breakdowns. Most specs will have mastery affected spells at a lot lower base values, but once mastery is added they fit in the rotation better. It's pretty similar for us.
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Edit: I feel like I'm not explaining my point well, im pretty tired, but here's a better example:
Most specs:
Filler 1 - 50 damage
Filler 2 - 50 damage
Proc ---- 120 damage
Spender 100 damage
Cooldown 300 damage

Mastery - +50 to fillers and spender, everything still fits together and does enough damage to feel fine.

Us:
Filler 1 - 50 damage
Filler 2 - 50 damage
Spender 400 damage
cooldown 500 damage

Mastery - Only filler1/2 +45 damage.

So our spenders feel way worse compared to the rest of our buttons, because mastery brings it more inline. (although yes, as you say, even with mastery they do shit damage).

Sorry if what I mean isn't getting across well, but I believe our whole mastery is our biggest problem right now.
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Our major cooldown having zero relation to mastery is a great example of it being a problem. Nobody else has that problem.

Just go put an overload worth of damage into the base spell and compare that to an earth shock and you'd probably think that's about fine.

If they did that then all they'd need to do is give us a basic mastery that just scales everything up a bit, or something like "50% chance to duplicate any spell you or your elemental casts for x% damage (scaling up with mastery). You could add "duplicating a spell generates 3 maelstrom" to keep the scaling down and maelstrom random as well if wanted.

You'd have to re-tune our damage overall obviously, but once the spells are closer in value and a lot of the RNG is gone, we would be in a lot better place. Still be a boring base rotation, but it'd help a lot with our problems.


Mastery just can't be tied to 2 filler abilities. It's hurting our entire kit. Half our talents next patch are fucked up by mastery and our fillers are dragged down by it.

[Kralljin]

Which is pretty much what I said. Mastery affects only a small portion of our damage. Many other specs (not all, some have the same problem, see; frost mage, arms) have a mastery that scales substantially more of their damage.

Yeah, because their Mastery is pretty strong tuned.

Both Arms and Frost Mage Mastery are rather different from your regular Mastery, they don't buff a certain ability (type).
Point in fact, they are very similiar to Elemental's Mastery in WoD, Earthen Rage, except those actually pack a punch, whereas Earthen Rage sucked.

They could nerf any button from Frost Mage (ignoring the Frozen orb bonus for simplicities sake) / Arms, the damage gain from Mastery would not change.

Our major cooldown having zero relation to mastery is a great example of it being a problem. Nobody else has that problem.

Baseline CD's that don't really scale with a specs Mastery:
Enhance: Feral Spirit; You have to pick Elemental Spirits for them to scale directly. (Enhancement Version of Ascendance doesn't even scale with Mastery)
SP: Shadowfiend
Affli: Summon Darkglare (Damage from it is not based off DoT Damage)
Unholy: Dark Transformation / Apocalypse

So this issue is not as uncommon.

At the end of the day, i view more of an issue how Mastery scales and the value of the CD itself, that needs to be taken account during tuning.
Personally i wouldn't mind seeing FE also being able to Overload.

However, personal opinion of mine on the topic of CD's:
Cooldowns that basically read: Deal X% more damage for Y seconds." are far too strong and far too common in this game, they simply work too well alongside other effects such as Bloodlust, whereas less flexible cooldowns such as FE look like shit in comparison, especially as FE deals pitiful damage without PE.

If they did that then all they'd need to do is give us a basic mastery that just scales everything up a bit, or something like "50% chance to duplicate any spell you or your elemental casts for x% damage (scaling up with mastery). You could add "duplicating a spell generates 3 maelstrom" to keep the scaling down and maelstrom random as well if wanted.

This is basically the current Mastery without RNG, as described above, the net result is basically the same.
You just switch from a random based proc to a consistent one, that is all.

Mastery just can't be tied to 2 filler abilities.

If Blizzard would actually start to integrate talents into the Maelstrom system, then this might be different, as Mastery increases your Maelstrom generation.
The problem is that Blizzard are lazy fucks when it comes to that, simply slapping "Can cause an Elemental Overload" on some abilities isn't enough.

It's hurting our entire kit. Half our talents next patch are fucked up by mastery and our fillers are dragged down by it.

Mastery doesn't fuck up our Talent, LB buff does.
Talents like EB,EotE, Ascendance and Icefury are indirectly getting nerfed by the LB buff, Icefury might recover because it gets buffed but i'd be surprised if it turns out to be the #1 choice for (non heavy movement) ST Encounters.

In fact, Mastery gets buffed, because LB gets buffed.

However, as hinted above, skills and abilities need not always scale with everything, you just need to compensate that somehow.
Lava Burst doesn't scale with Crit, yet Crit is among the best Stats for Elemental, even #1 for AoE.
Because Elemental Fury exists, while our Lava Burst damage is unaffected by Crit, the rest of our abilities scale quite well with Crit, the net result is roughly the same, as Crit isn't bad for Ele.

And i still do not see Mastery as the issue, because would be a scaling issue, Elemental does not suffer from scaling issues as in the past, its overall low damage is, that has nothing to do with the Mastery as Mastery is still not a worthless stat, it's not be the best but within norms.

[Keltas]

I absolutely agree that the LB buff is more of a problem than mastery, but I think mastery is the next problem with our talents. If they reverted the LB buff and just gave us +10% overall or whatever, we'd still have the problems mastery creates in our talent tree.

My argument isn't about mastery scaling well or poorly, because obviously they've tuned it well enough. My problem is examples like Icefury, as you mentioned, being unaffected by it and not being able to compete with LB without it. If Frost shock could overload it would be a much easier talent to justify taking.

From what I can see you pretty much agree mastery could work with our kit better, which is what I'm getting at.
Just make our pet, frost shock, and any talented abilities also proc overloads (and leave earth shock out because of it's high base damage and something should be left out) and it would smooth our talents and overall damage patterns out much better.

You'd tune down how well it scales when adding things too obviously, but that's because right now it scales really fast since such a small portion is affected.

[Puupi]

From what I can see you pretty much agree mastery could work with our kit better, which is what I'm getting at.
Just make our pet, frost shock, and any talented abilities also proc overloads (and leave earth shock out because of it's high base damage and something should be left out) and it would smooth our talents and overall damage patterns out much better.

You'd tune down how well it scales when adding things too obviously, but that's because right now it scales really fast since such a small portion is affected.

It would be just easier to put the current mastery as a spec passive with like 30% proc chance and change eg. Elemental Fury (scaling crit damage) as the new mastery.

[Keltas]

It would be just easier to put the current mastery as a spec passive with like 30% proc chance and change eg. Elemental Fury (scaling crit damage) as the new mastery.

It would be and I'd like that a lot, but then we have the problem of our stats exponentially scaling. Not that that is much of a problem because others have that too..

[Kalisandra]

It would be and I'd like that a lot, but then we have the problem of our stats exponentially scaling. Not that that is much of a problem because others have that too..

They already do, because overload procs can crit, so crit and mastery multiply each other.

[Puupi]

They already do, because overload procs can crit, so crit and mastery multiply each other.

No, overload procs aren't double dipping from crit.

[Tikishock]

- Echo of elements should be baseline.

- Reduce cast times of Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. If you are to be a turret spec then let us turret. Reduce LB and CL to a baseline of 1.5 or 1.75 second casts. Even with the buff to the damage of those abilities it's not like we are going to blow the doors off anybody dps-wise. The baseline 2 second casts on these abilities makes us the slowest turret in the history of turrets.

I won't even mention flameshock cooldown or gust of wind because it isn't happening and not worth putting it down again.

[Kralljin]

It would be just easier to put the current mastery as a spec passive with like 30% proc chance and change eg. Elemental Fury (scaling crit damage) as the new mastery.

That means our Mastery is basically Critical strike damage.

Which is the ultimate nightmare stat to balance, because it directly depends on another stat (crit) to work.
If you have Crit and Critical (strike) Damage as two seperate stats, both of them will be worthless or both of them will surpass any other stat because of their synergy.

If you want to have an example in WoW for this: Ignite, balancing this for Fire Mages was one massive nightmare.

Either Fire Mages have been shit when they didn't have enough crit or went totally bonkers once they hit a certain level.

[Deleted]

Everything the above have mentioned, but also i don't like having to cast earthquake at an area rather than casting it at a current target and it dropping on the area around them. I find it clunky and awkward. Does anyone else think this or am i alone?

I think you can macro that.