"Beta is for numbers pass"
I removed some gear (down to 72ilvl) and got rid of all procs and stuff to get meaningful numbers in place. For us to discuss over these numbers relatively.
330 total agility
%26 total mastery = %26 elemental damage increase
Got to 205 lightning bolt damage to compare numbers. Here they are:
Storm Strike: 350+175= 525 (740 damage before armor as tooltip says, but i will ofc go with raiding dummy damage)
Lightning bolt: 205
Lava lash : 314 (tooltip says 157 but flametongue will always be applied)
Crash L. : 112
Frost Shock : 263
Flame shock : 114 (746 over 18s) ticks for 103
Ice strike : 377
Sundering : 811
Windury : 34+34=68 double wf damage (49 tooltip before armor)
Flametongue : 15 (tooltip says 12 but always hits 15 no other damage differentiates by %25. Tooltip is bugged i guess)
MSW bug (?) still persist: 5 stacks LB deals 410 (x2) damage 10 stacks deals 615 damage (x3) I hope this gets fixed soon. Also ui is still buggy and show msw and stormbringer wrong. Also i think we can have the maelstrom bar back with new 10 max stacks. I bet there will be a weak aura for it anyway.
With these, here is what i think:
1) Stormstrike will obviously be our biggest hitter. Since it will also see the most frequent use (maybe after shocks), other abilities will be overshadowed way too much.
Don't forget that, there is a legendary to increase it's damage by %100, a talent by %15 and another talent for cd reduction. Having all the power on 1 ability -which resets on chance- takes away all the control we might hope to have. If that loss of control would translate to "imba burst" fine, but it doesn't.
- It needs to have 2 stacks. There is stormbringer and stormfury. These make it horrible to use. It really needs to be 2 stacks to use.
- It's on 7.5s cooldown (6.1 with 72ilvl). Lavalash is on 12 sec cool down (9.8@72ilvl) while dealing nearly half the damage. Isn't it a bit counter intuitive? Cooldown of it should be increased to let lava lash's cooldown to be reduced. Which would make stormbringer procs more powerful while also buffing the ascendance (if total damage is to stay same on damage meter over time)
- Specially after %100 stormstrike legendary, everything else will be total meh... We just can't have this much power on an ability we basicly spam.
- Mind you, stormstrike also doesn't recieve bonus from mastery. So it will be scaled worse than LB with gear.
2) MSW: Increasing damage by %100 is horrible design imo. Base damage of LB and heals shouldn't have been nerfed. Hard casts are pathetic now. This change should be reverted. If 4 stack casts are feared, make it instant on 5 stacks instead of incremental on each stack.
- MSW is supposed to feel like a high point. Moment of "maelstrom". 5 stacks empowered lightning bolt hits less than -base- stormstrike damage. This needs to be increased seriously. We need a burst damage that we can hold back. And i would hope for some msw dmg legendary effects instead of stormstrike.
- I really believe high damage msw will save enhancement for this expension.
For this, proc chance of msw can be reduced or damage/proc of stormstrike can be reduced.
3) Frost Shock: Base damage is too low imo. Even with hailstorm (%175 damage increase) it's kind of low. But real problem is base damage. Shocks are easy sources of damage. No build up no melee range low cd. It used to be a dangerous source. Emphasis on it should be increased imo. We should want to use them every 6 seconds. I would love priority of it to be right under stormstrike. I would suggest it to be a lot higher but hailstorm gives the exact feeling it needs. Just need to be a little higher... For base part at least.
4) Lava lash: If stormstrike's cooldown is to be increased or stormbringer's ppm reduced, lava lash's cooldown can be reduced too. To reduce the gaps a little in rotation. Damage of it is already pretty low to be unimpactful with this change. It could also be lowered even further to make room for shocks or LB damage.
5) Ice strike: Name is placeholder i guess. Damage of it is very anticlimatic for a 15 seconds talent. Resets cooldown of a 6 seconds? (which is reduced to 4 seconds with 72ilvl already) I don't know, didnt like it. I hope hot hands of stormfury beats it.
6) Sundering: I don't know why it was nerfed in alpha. It's on 40 seconds cooldown. Only hits as much as stormstrike? (740vs810) Really? While at it, can they already make it a 5sec stun please? Enhancement really needs this to be in m+
7) Stormkeeper: While this ability is cool, it works weirdly. Since base lb damage is way too low, i want to use it on 10 stacks to increase lb damage by a lot. But than you loose 5 stacks of msw just to buff 1 lb "well" and half buff next only with stormkeeper. Maybe it shouldn't recieve reduced cast time like hex since it's not a damaging spell? It horrible to waste %100 lb damage on a non-damaging 1.2s cast. I would love to hardcast it to have 2 imba lbs. It would be amazing if it would make them also guaranteed crit.
Outro: Since addons doesn't work, i can't fully test it. But still gives us some good info to compare. Will go more into detail after damage meter is in place.
TLDR: Nerf stormstrike, buff lightning bolt pls. While nerfing stormstrike, increase cooldown of it. If rotation feels empty, reduce cd of lavalash.
I know this post may be hard to follow... But for the ones interested, what do you guys think? As it is on PTR, we have no control over our damage and burst is very luckluster if it exists. Without some of these suggestions, rotation usually feels empty while also gets clutted with overlapses. I'm not asking for "tailored rotation" just 2 stacks of stormstrike pls. Keeping SS while casting other abilities will reduce clutter and will help a lot during empty parts of rotation while also making the spec less "twitchy" on procs. 3 stacks of stormstrike would make it even better!