[WoD] Enhancement Shaman Changes

[Hybrys 199]

The Giant Enhancement Shaman Changes Thread

 

This thread is the official Shaman section thread devoted to tracking known changes in Enhancement Shaman mechanics, spells, and talents. This is basically a direct derivative of Stoove’s Resto thread and my own Elemental thread.

 

You can find the Elemental version of this thread here:

[WoD] Elemental Shaman Changes

 

And you can find the Restoration version of this thread here:

[WoD] Restoration Shaman Changes

 

Contributions to the guide are welcome, just comment below!

 

The changes are laid out as follows;

 

1. New Level 100 Talents

2. Other Talent Changes

3. General Changes

4. Levelling Perks (91-99)

5. Enh Specific Changes

6. Other Resources

7. Frequently Asked Questions

 

New Level 100 Talents

 

These are the talents we’ve seen so far, and their current Alpha state with analysis.

 

1. Elemental Fusion

 

Elemental Fusion

 

Passive

 

Your Lava Burst and Lava Lash increase the damage of your next Shock by 50%, stacking up to 2 times.

 

Known Features

• The application of this talent will be quite passive, as one of your main rotational abilities will trigger it's effect.

• The buff will allow you to 'snapshot' Flame Shock, and will stack with Unleash Flame multiplicatively.

• The talent will to scale very strongly with stats, and offer the most consistent pacing on damage.

• Will scale directly with the new Echo of the Elements, making Echo a significantly more viable choice for Enh.

 

Theorycrafting

• Hybrys has done some simple theorycrafting re: Elemental Fusion.  You can find it here.
• If you see any other relevant information, post it below and we may include it here!

 

External Links:

• We don’t have any yet!  If you see any relevant information, post it below and we may include it here.

 

2. Storm Elemental Totem

 

Storm Elemental Totem

 

5 min cooldown

 

Summons an Air totem which calls forth a Greater Storm Elemental, which hurls gusts of wind at the caster's enemies. Each gust does damage to the enemy, and then heals allies within 15yds for 100% of the damage dealt, split evenly.

 

Known Features:

• The elemental does interact with Primal Elementalist to give you a Primal Storm Elemental with a long cooldown single target knock-down called Gale Force, and a short range AoE movement speed buff called Eye of the Storm

• There’s also a cast/buff that the elemental can do called Call Lightning.  It’s a 3 second cast, with a 100% damage/healing buff attached.  This might be used by both the normal and Primal elemental version.

• Acts as another Ancestral Guidance-type cooldown, which would also scale with cleavable targets.

 

Theorycrafting

• Hybrys has done some simple theorycrafting re: Storm Elemental Totem.  You can find it here.
• If you see any other relevant information, post it below and we may include it here!

 

External Links:

• Although most links come from a Resto point of view, they are still valuable as a resource.

• Stoove posted about it along with the other Resto talents on his blog. http://stoove.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/restoshamanwodtalents/

 

 

3. Liquid Magma

 

Liquid Magma

 

Instant - 45 sec cooldown

 

Empowers your current Fire totem with the power of lava, causing it to spew globs of lava at random enemies within 40 yards every 0.5 sec for 10 sec. Each glob of lava deals 1 (+ 50% of Spell power) Fire damage to all enemies within 4 yards.

 

Known Features

• Used on cooldown, should be competitive to Shocking Lava in single target damage contribution, and far superior on 2+ targets.

• Must have a Fire Totem down to activate; If the Fire Totem expires, so does the Liquid Magma buff.  Might not synergize well with Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem for that reason.

• It behaves the same as Searing Totem; it won’t scale with haste/mastery, but does scale well with spell power/crit.

 

Theorycrafting

• Hybrys has done some simple theorycrafting re: Liquid Magma.  You can find it here.
• If you see any other relevant information, post it below and we may include it here!

 

External links:

• We don’t have any yet!  If you see any relevant information, post it below and we may include it here.

 

Other Talent Changes

 

Echo of the Elements

 

Echo of the Elements

 

Passive

 

Your spells and abilities have a chance to trigger Echo of the Elements.

Echo of the Elements causes your next short cooldown spell or ability

Enhancement
Lava Lash, Stormstrike, Frost Shock, or Fire Nova

to not incur its cooldown.

 

Known Features

• Does not reset the cooldown, just allows the abilities next cooldown to not start.
• If you're using Elemental Fusion, most instances of this buff should be used with Lava Lash.
• If you're not using Elemental Fusion, it will be better to use whichever comes up first, to make sure you don't waste the buff.

 

Theorycrafting

• We don't know of anyone who has theorycrafted this talent yet.

 

External links:

• We don’t have any yet!  If you see any relevant information, post it below and we may include it here.

 

Ancestral Guidance

 

Ancestral Guidance

 

120 second cooldown

 

When you deal direct damage or healing for the next 10 sec, 20% of the damage or healing is copied as healing to up to 3 nearby injured party or raid members.

 

Known Features

• Reduction of healing from 40% damage and 60% healing to 20% damage and 20% healing.
• Related to the raid cooldown stacking changes; will still be the most effective talent of that row for Enh unless Healing Rain or Healing Stream Totem are dramatically changed.

 

Theorycrafting

• We don't know of anyone who has theorycrafted this talent yet.

 

External links:

• We don’t have any yet!  If you see any relevant information, post it below and we may include it here.

 

Changelog

• Initial Post - April 26, 2014
• Changed the names of the new l100 talents, based on the latest Alpha build - June 13, 2014

Edited June 13, 2014 by Hybrys

[Hybrys 199]

General Changes
 
Several huge changes were announced for Shamans in the 6.0 Alpha Patch Notes update. The most significant changes are general system changes that are being introduced with WoD.
 
Stat Squish
 
The way items scale with item level is dramatically changing in WoD, with damage and healing seeing dramatic changes in number size, but we should see similar scaling factors.  This applies universally, and creatures' power will change accordingly.
 
Healthpool Increases
 
At the same time, health pools are doubling, after the stat squish. This is intended to be able to remove PvP Player Resilience and make PvP overall less bursty, but it will have consequences for PvE as well.
 
Because of these changes, the amount of health per Stamina has approximately doubled, and the curve on this calculation has been smoothed out as well, so the exact amount varies slightly by level.  
 
Maximum mana has also been approximately doubled to keep pace with the expected health from new Stamina calculations, all consumables have had their healing and mana regeneration values approximately doubled, and all creatures have had their melee damage, spells and abilities doubled as well.
 
Less Intelligent Smart Healing
 
Smart heals will now randomly pick any injured target within range, instead of always picking the most injured target.  This won't affect Enhancement Shamans as much as Resto, the current kings of smart healing, but does significantly tone down the effectiveness of our Ancestral Guidance and, to a lesser extent, Healing Stream Totem.
 
Primary Stat and Damage Scaling Changes
 
Most spells will no longer have a base damage/healing, and your abilities will be entirely determined by your spell power, attack power, or weapon damage.  Agility and Intellect will also no longer increase your Critical Strike chance.

• The base chance to critically strike is now 5% for all classes. There are no longer different chances to critically strike with melee, ranged, and spells.
• To compensate for the Agility change, melee specalizations now recieve a passive called Critical Strikes that increases their chance to hit critically by 10%.
  
   
• Each point of Agility or Strength now grants 1 Attack Power (down from 2). All other sources of Attack Power now grant half as much as before.
• Weapon Damage values on all weapons have been reduced by 20%.
• Attack Power now increases Weapon Damage at a rate of 1 DPS per 3.5 Attack Power (up from 1 DPS per 14 Attack Power).
• Attack Power, Spell Power, or Weapon Damage now affect the entire healing or damage throughput of player spells.
   

New Secondary Stats & Balancing
 
 
Warlords of Draenor also introduces two new secondary stats available on gear.  These are:

• Multistrike - A chance to launch two additional attacks after any attack lands, for 33% of the original attacks damage.
• Versatility - 1% Versatility grants a 1% increase to your damage, healing, and absorbs, and reduces the damage you take by 0.5%. It’s a straightforward, obvious upgrade to your primary role’s performance, but also gives significant boosts to secondary role performance and survivability.  Blizz is saying that it will not be anyones highest throughput stat.
• Readiness - A reduction of specific abilities' cooldowns.  For Enhancement, this affects Feral Spirit, Shamanistic Rage, Earth Elemental Totem, Fire Elemental Totem, Spiritwalker's Grace, and Ascendance. Readiness has unfortunately been put aside for now.

 

The Removal of Reforging & No More Misses
 
Blizzard has decided that reforging takes some of the fun out of getting a new item, or the best item for a certain slot.  The removal of that level of gear customization has some big consequences, but we've been assured that each stat will be relatively close in value.
 
That also means they're removing our mechanic for getting to and manipulating our Hit cap.  Well, lucky for us, we're all grown up now, and have no chance to miss with our spells or special attacks!  This means that we have NO mandatory stat caps, and can be much more flexible in our pre-BiS gearing gearing.

 

Dual Wielding still imposes a 17% chance to miss.  A 3% chance to be parried from the front will still apply to melee DPS specializations, but not to tanks.

 
DoT Snapshotting
 
DoTs will no longer 'snapshot' your current Crit/Haste/Mastery, and will instead dynamically update based on any procs you get while a DoT is ticking.  There will also no longer be any hard Haste breakpoints that offer extra ticks.

 

Recasting DoTs/HoTs that are already on the target now extends those effects to up to 130% of the normal duration of the effect.  Because of that, you can recast Flame Shock with no time loss at 9 seconds or less.

 

Flame Shock will still snapshot with Elemental Fusion or Unleash Flame, and managing that will still be a large part of our gameplay.
 
Discussion
 
Discuss what you think about these changes in the comments below, and the best points will be added to the list here!
 
External Links:

• Stoove covered the changes we should expect to theorycrafting in his blog post "Overview: Theorycraft in WoD"
• Hamlet covered the Haste changes in their blog "DoTs and Haste in WoD"

 

Leveling Perks
 
Levelling perks are modifications which you will gain as you level between 91 and 99, in lieu of new spells. They add functionality to some of your spells. We're going to split them into three categories - Direct Damage Gain, Indirect Damage Gain, and Utility/QoL perks.
 
Direct Damage Gain

• Improved Searing Totem - Increases the damage dealt by Searing Totem by 50%.
• Improved Stormstrike - Increases the damage of Stormstrike and Stormblast by 20%.
• Improved Lava Lash - Increases the damage of Lava Lash by 20%.
• Improved Feral Spirits - Increases the damage of your Feral Spirits by 100%.

Indirect Damage Gain

• Improved Flame Shock - Your Flame Shock ticks have a 15% chance to reset the cooldown of Lava Lash.
• Improved Lava Lash - Increases the number of targets Flame Shock spreads to by 2.
• Improved Maelstrom Weapon - Maelstrom Weapon now also causes your spells to deal 20% additional damage per stack of Maelstrom Weapon.

Utility or Quality of Life Changes

• Improved Reincarnation - Increases the health that you Reincarnate with by an additional 50% to 70% total.
• Improved Unleash Elements - Your Unleash Elements ability also causes you to gain 30% increased movement speed for 4 sec.

Discussion:
 
Discuss what you think about these changes in the comments below, and the best points will be added to the list here!
 
Theorycrafting

• Hybrys has done some simple theorycrafting re: the new leveling perks.  You can find it here.
• If you see any other relevant information, post it below and we may include it here!

External Links:

• We don’t have any yet!  If you see any relevant information, post it below and we may include it here.

Changelog

• Initial Post - April 26, 2014
• Several changes, including the addition of Versatility and finalization of our TBD perk - June 13, 2014

Edited June 13, 2014 by Hybrys

[Hybrys 199]

Enh Specific Changes and Additions

 

In addition to the general changes and talent additions, there have been some significant changes to Enhancement Shamans in the latest 6.0 Alpha Patch Notes.

 

 

Spells Removed

 

Blizzard has been attempting to remove button bloat, and further simplify our lives by removing archaic and under-used spells.  Enhancement Shamans see a lot of their passives disappear, and their damage contributions getting rolled into their main abilities.

 

• Magma Totem is now available only to Enhancement Shaman.

• Rockbiter Weapon has been removed.

• Frostbrand Weapon has been removed.

• Flametongue Weapon is no longer available to Restoration Shaman, and only causes damage on weapon swings for Enhancement Shaman.

• Stormlash Totem has been removed.

• Healing Tide Totem is now available only to Restoration Shaman.

• Feral Spirit's Spirit Wolves no longer have the Spirit Bite ability.

• Water Shield is now available only to Restoration Shaman and replaces Lightning Shield.

• Static Shock has been removed.
• Stormstrike and Stormblast now deal 30% more damage when Lightning Shield is active.
• Searing Flames has been removed.
• Flametongue Weapon damage has been increased by 40%, and Lava Lash damage has been increased to 280% weapon damage (up from 140%) to compensate.

 

 

Other Changes and Glyphs

 

These are the list of other changes included in the 6.0 patch notes, filtered for those that affect Elemental only.  We're going to split them into three categories - Direct Damage, Indirect Damage, and Utility/QoL perks.

 

Direct Damage

• Earth Elementals deal 90% less Auto Attack damage.

• Primal Earth Elemental's Pulverize ability no longer deals damage.

• Ascendance for the Enhancement specialization now changes the Shaman's auto attacks and Stormstrike to deal Wind-based physical damage that bypasses armor.
• Feral Spirits’ damage has been increased by 100%.

• Searing Totem’s damage increased by 65%, to 1 + 12.87% spell power.

• Unleash Flame no longer deals direct damage, but now increases the damage of the Shaman's next Fire spell by 40% (up from 30%)..

• Lightning Bolt now scales with 72% of Spell Power (up from 54%)
• Elemental Blast now scales with 205% of Spell Power, up from 4,726 + 156.2% of Spell Power.
• Frost Shock’s damage has been reduced by 50%.
• Unleash Wind no longer deals direct damage, but now increases attack speed by 60% (up from 50%).
• Using Unleashed Fury with Windfury Weapon imbue active now increases Multistrike chance by 10%.

 

Indirect Damage

• Lightning Bolt is no longer castable while moving by default.

• Windfury Weapon no longer has a 3-second internal cooldown.

• Glyph of Spiritwalker’s Aegis has been added - When you cast Spiritwalker's Grace, you become immune to Silence and Interrupt effects for 5 sec.

• Glyph of Spiritwalker’s Focus has been added - Reduces the cooldown of Spiritwalker's Grace by 60 sec, but reduces its duration by 7 sec.

 

Utility and Quality of Life

 

• Glyph of Totemic Recall now only increases the mana returned from recalling your totems by 25% (down from 75%).

• Conductivity is no longer triggered by healing spells for non-Restoration Shaman.

• Ancestral Swiftness can no longer turn Hex into an instant-cast spell.

• Earthgrab Totem now shares Diminishing Returns with all other root effects.

• Maelstrom Weapon can no longer reduce the cast time of Hex.

• Earth Shock no longer applies Weakened Blows (-10% Damage Done Debuff)

• Lightning Shield now persists through death.

• Glyph of Lightning Shield has been removed.

• Glyph of Hex has been removed.

• Glyph of Spiritwalker’s Grace has been removed.

• Glyph of Flame Shock has been removed.

• Glyph of Ghostly Speed has been added - Ghost Wolf grants an additional 60% movement speed.  This movement speed bonus will not be granted if Ghost Wolf is activated while in combat.  This effect is disabled in battlegrounds and arenas and cannot be combined with other temporary speed bonuses.

• Glyph of Grounding has been added - Reduces the cooldown on Grounding Totem by 3 sec.

• Glyph of Reactive Shielding has been added - Your Lightning Shield can now trigger once every 1.5 sec.

• Glyph of Shamanistic Resolve has been added - Shamanistic Rage reduces damage taken by an additional 30% but the cooldown on Shamanistic Rage is increased by 60 sec.

• Glyph of Shocks has been added - Increases the range on Earth Shock, Flame Shock, Frost Shock, and Wind Shear by 5 yards.

• Glyph of Frostflame Weapon has been added - While your weapon is imbued with Flametongue Weapon, your attacks also slow the target's movement speed by 50% for 3 sec.

 

Discussion:

 

Discuss what you think about these changes in the comments below, and the best points will be added to the list here!

 

Theorycrafting:

• Ashunera at Wind Lashed covered the LB moving change.  You can check it out here.

• If you see any other relevant information, post it below and we may include it here.

 

External Links:

• We don’t have any yet!  If you see any relevant information, post it below and we may include it here.

Other Useful Resources

 

Here is a list of other resources which have covered changes in various things so far;

 

Blizzard Entertainment

• Blogged about the Alpha 6.0 Patch Notes.
• Made the Dev Watercooler on Healing and Health in WoD.

MMO Champion

• Covered the 6.0 Alpha News.

BlizzPro

• Discussed the changes for raiders in 6.0 in their Raider's Guide.

Sentry Totem

• Has discussion on the 6.0 Patch Notes for various classes.

Winslashed

• Complete (up to date as on 5/4/2014) list of changes to Shaman.

• Coverage of the Dev Watercooler blog.

It's Dangerous to Go Alone

• Discussion of Haste mechanics in WoD.

 

Changelog

• Initial Post - April 26, 2014

 

FAQ:

 

I want my blogpost / theorycraft / newscoverage mentioned here! More than happy to add your link! Get in contact with Hybrys via PM, or with Stoove via Twitter or PM. The comments are not the place to ask for it, and comments to this effect will be deleted.

 

Why have you not covered X? Likely because I have missed it. Get in contact with Hybrys via PM, or Stoove via Twitter or PM, or comment below!

 

Why have you not included my point about Y in the summary? The Discussion sections are editorialised or approved by Stoove. It's either because he disagrees strongly, because there isn't room, or because he doesn't think it's important enough. If you disagree, contact him personally - comments below to this effect will be deleted.

 

Why is this a near direct copy from Stoove’s thread?  With his permission, I’ve copied the layout with some of the content, and I will curate this thread.  However, Stoove is the moderator of this forum and topic, and his word is law.

Edited April 29, 2014 by Hybrys

[Hybrys 199]

Hybrys' Theorycrafting:

 

Elemental Fusion:

 

Elemental Fusion

 

This talent is going to be very dependent on your application of the buff, as well as Lava Lash procs.

 

Earth Shock has been made Elemental ONLY in the latest Alpha build, see the note below for more details.

 

Baseline:

Earth Shock does 0 + 36% SP

Flame Shock does 26.8% SP and applies a DoT that ticks for 16.1% Spell Power every 3 seconds over 30 seconds..

 

So, off the bat, Earth Shock is always worth more than Flame Shock, as long as Flame Shock has more than 9 seconds remaining.  But Flame Shock's value comes ahead with the 40% Unleash Flame buff.  Infact, Flame Shock's initial damage becomes higher than Earth Shock's total damage at that point.

 

End result:

Maintain 2 stack UF Flame Shock > Maintain 2 stack Flame Shock > Maintain Flame Shock

Use Flame Shock w/ UF/2 stacks > Use Earth Shock w/ 2 stacks

 

It’s DPS contribution is very fluid, scaling directly with your Shock damage (and thus Agi/AP/Mastery), but hard to pinpoint.  It should result in a near doubling of Flame Shock damage, which scales well with haste/crit/mastery, and a doubling of Earth Shock damage, which scales well with crit/mastery.

 

It's important to note that the AoE value of this is going to be amazing.  The way Lava Lash works is that it spreads your current Flame Shock, and it's power, on to each target.  Having a 2 stack of Shocking Lava and the Unleash Flame buff, and then being able to spread it on to up to 6 other targets will be insanely powerful.

 

June 13, 2014 Note:

 

Earth Shock has been removed for Enhancement Shamans, making this talent less and less desirable, since for the full effect you'd want 2 stacks to be used in conjunction with Unleash Elements for Flame Shock, and for that double snapshotting to be maintained, thus you'll be holding 2 stacks until your next Unleash to apply another Flame Shock.

 

According to the latest Alpha Patch Notes, Frost Shock has been slotted to be the replacement for Earth Shock.  The damage for it hasn't been tuned upwards yet, and I'm going to wait for that to happen before redoing the theorycrafting.

 

 

Storm Elemental Totem:

 

Storm Elemental Totem

 

It’s sort of a hard thing to theorycraft, but I can always talk about the pros/cons.

 

It’s another cooldown, but you typically can’t stack it with other CDs, because Fire Ele totem fills that role.  On the other hand, it’s also another AG-style cooldown, and with the healing changes it might have great value.  Along with that, it’s power might be pretty good, especially if it’s meant to be competitive with the other l100 talents.

 

I could see it’s applications being fights were mechanics include two separate ‘burn’ or increased damage phases where you spent Fire Ele on the first.  Another application could be a fight requiring multiple phases of burst AoE, or with a fight requiring multiple phases of burst healing.  With that 'Eye of the Storm' movement speed aura, it may also be beneficial if there's a fight with a large number of target swaps.

 

I should hopefully have some more solid numbers on it's ability to DPS soon.

 

Liquid Magma:

 

Liquid Magma

 

By the looks of it, this talent will be relegated to AoE w/ a large number of targets, or an AoE pack that you can't get to.

 

But what's the value on single target, just for comparison's sake.  When used, it does one attack every .5 seconds for 10 seconds, at a power of 1 + 37.5% spell power, and it has a 45 second CD, making it have a 35 second CD.

 

From that, we can estimate approximately 16.66~% (repeating, of course) spell power DPS on a single target, if used exactly on cooldown, and not counting crits.  In it's current state, it probably wouldn't be able to compete with Shocking Lava, even early on, and scales poorly as the expansion progresses.  This is also per target, so it really quickly scales up with AoE situations, but Shocking Lava will still most likely be better unless there are over 6 targets available.

 

 

Leveling Perks

 

Most of the changes constitute a direct and clear damage gain, and don’t change the majority of our gameplay.

 

Searing Totem w/ Searing Flames is currently a fairly boring and mostly passive mechanic, simply increasing the damage of your Lava Lash and making Searing Totem necessary.  With the perk, along with the general change of a 65% damage increase and the removal of Searing Flames, it becomes an independant and important DPS gain.

 

Splitting Frost Shock from the Shock cooldowns is also a very important change for us for PvP, giving us the freedom to soft CC without such a large sacrifice to burst DPS.  This perk was recently reverted on April 24th, but we'll see if it comes back in the coming weeks.

 

Glossary of terms:

 

LB = Lightning Bolt

LvB = Lava Burst

CL = Chain Lightning

EQ = Earthquake

SP = Spell Power (typically used as Spell Power Damage)

SPD = Spell Power Damage (see above)

DPET = Damage per execute time

Edited June 15, 2014 by Hybrys

[Hybrys 199]

Pinn'd

STOOVE FIRST'D ME.

[Stoove 347]

STOOVE FIRST'D ME.

 

That better? :P

[Hybrys 199]

That better?

Yes!  Thanks.

[Hybrys 199]

We've been hearing some talk from Celest's twitter about the Frost Shock de-linking perk being reverted.  It looks like, they'll be changing it to Improved Unleash Elements, still with mobility in mind.

 

"Unleash Elements also increases movement speed by 30% for 4sec."

 

So, a free Ghost Wolf with the ability to melee, but linked to one of our rotational abilities.  With good usage, I could see this being useful as a short gap closer and a powerful PvP perk, but Spirit Walk already fills that role well with an extremely short CD for a 60% speed bonus.

 

I won't be updating the guide until the next Alpha build, so we'll see how this pans out in the meantime.

Edited May 2, 2014 by Hybrys

[Hybrys 199]

The latest Alpha build saw very few changes for Shamans, besides a damage tuning pass.

 

Remember that these numbers don't necessarily constitute a nerf, and are part of a wider tuning pass.  Most of the other classes saw similar reductions.

• Lightning Bolt now does 71.28% of Spell Power damage, down from 72%.
• Chain Lightning now does 28.65% of Spell Power damage, down from 38%
• Earth Shock now does 33.6% of Spell Power damage, down from 44.8%.
• Flame Shock now does 25.05% of Spell Power damage, down from 33%.  The damage over time component is reduced 150.3% of Spell Power damage, down from 200%.  
• Lightning Shield now does 21.15% of Spell Power damage, down from 28%
• Searing Totem now does 9.65% of Spell Power damage, down from 12.9%.
• Frost Shock now does 28.5% of Spell Power, up from 19%.
• Stormstrike/Windstrike now does 120% weapon damage, down from 180%.
• Fire Nova now does 44.92% of Spell Power damage, down from 60%.
• Lava Lash now does 185% of the offhand weapon's damage, down from 280%
• Magma Totem now does 3.98% of Spell Power damage, down from 5.3%.
   
• Elemental Blast now does 153.75% of Spell Power damage, down from 205%.
• Spew Lava now does 37.5% of Spell Power damage, down from 50%.
• Unleashed Fury - Windfury Weapon: For 8 sec, your multistrike chance is increased by 5%, up from 4%.

[Voskopoula 1]

About shocking lava, lava lash and flame shock and the maelstrom perk.

Improved Maelstrom Weapon - Maelstrom Weapon now also causes your spells to deal 20% additional damage per stack of Maelstrom Weapon

I wouldn't be surprised if we keep maelstrom x5 on,then spread the 2x buffed (with shocking lava) flameshock on AoE situations and never do chain lightnings!

Theorycrafters should work out if a chain lightning will give more dmg on X targets than 5x maelstrom kept indefinitely and spreading and AoEing with fire nova only. I am pretty sure that the chain lightning glyph will play a role here at some point, unless

[Hybrys 199]

About shocking lava, lava lash and flame shock and the maelstrom perk.

I wouldn't be surprised if we keep maelstrom x5 on,then spread the 2x buffed (with shocking lava) flameshock on AoE situations and never do chain lightnings!

Theorycrafters should work out if a chain lightning will give more dmg on X targets than 5x maelstrom kept indefinitely and spreading and AoEing with fire nova only. I am pretty sure that the chain lightning glyph will play a role here at some point, unless

I'm not 100%, but I'm FAIRLY sure that the Perk only affects spells affected by Maelstrom Weapon in the first place, not instants.

 

If it were as you described, it would be too powerful and may lead to indefinitely holding stacks, even on two targets, or if you had a target swap in the next 10 seconds.

[Hybrys 199]

As usual, the last build brought us a fair number of changes, some huge and some rather minor.

 

Major Changes

• Weapon Imbues have been removed.  Enhancement gains their effects via a new passive called Enhanced Weapons, exactly mimicking current Windfury/Flametongue imbues.  
• All previous damage bonuses (such as Lava Lash's contribution from Flametongue Weapon) are now built into the spell itself.  
• Spell damage attacks that previously benefited from Flametongue Weapon's increase have also been buffed to compensate for the change.  (IE: Fire Nova, Flame Shock, etc.)
• Unleash Elements has been split into three spells, one for each specialization.  The Enhancement version reads: "Unleashes elemental forces of Flame and Wind, increasing the damage done by the Shaman's next Fire spell by 40%, and increasing the Shaman's attack speed by 60% for the next 6 swings or until 12 sec have elapsed."
• Unleashed Fury has been split into three spells, one for each specialization.  The Enhancement version reads: "Empowers your Unleash Elements, increasing the enemy target's damage taken from your Lightning Bolt by 30% for 10 sec, and increasing your multistrike chance by 5% for 8 sec"
• Earth Shock has been removed, and made Elemental only.
• Chain Lightning has been removed, and made Elemental only.
• Chain Heal has been removed, and made Restoration only.
• Elemental Blast can now increase your Multistrike as well as Agility, Haste, Crit, and Mastery.
• Haste Attunement has been added, increasing the Haste you gain from all sources by 5%.  This means that any gear/gems/enchants/flasks/potions will now increase your Haste by 105% of their original value.
• Grace of Air now also provides 5% haste, meaning that any specialization of shaman can provide the haste buff.

Minor Changes:

• Flurry no longer has a duration attached to its buff.
• Maelstrom Weapon no longer has a duration attached to its buff, and it's wording has been changed to affect all Nature spells except for Ancestral Spirit and Hex.
• Spiritwalker's Grace has been removed, and made Elemental/Restoration only.
• Stormstrike had it's Lightning Shield interaction removed, and was increased from 120% of weapon damage to 160% of weapon damage to compensate.
• Shocking Lava is now called Elemental Fusion
• Spew Lava is now called Liquid Magma

[Hybrys 199]

Oops, I put the Elemental Shaman changes in the wrong thread!

 

The latest Alpha Notes are out, and they completed their second pruning pass, and a couple of Enhancement tweaks!

 

• Bind Elemental has been removed.
• Totemic Recall has been removed, and totem proximity aggro range has been removed.  A totem cannot enter combat with something you're not in combat with.
• Earth Shock has been removed, and made Elemental Shaman only.  The patch notes specifically note that Frost Shock should take it's place as the spell to use when not refreshing Flame Shock.
• Flurry has been redesigned.  Haste effects now reduce the global cooldown and cooldowns of Stormstrike, Lava Lash, Shock spells, Unleash Elements, and Fire Nova.  Lava Lash and Fire Nova had their cooldowns tweaked upwards slightly to compensate (to 10.5 and 4.5 respectively), and Stormstrike had it's cooldown tweaked downwards to 7.5 seconds.  It is unknown if this affect is in addition to or replacing the current Flurry effect.
• Primal Wisdom has been removed, and base mana regeneration has been increased.