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Hybrys

Preparing for WoD (Elemental)

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I really like the discussion going on in the other thread, so I think I'll start one up based on Elemental.  We've heard very little about Elemental so far, but I'm already looking forward to it, expecting great changes.

 

I'm personally really underwhelmed about our Lvl 100 talents for now, with our three options being the following.

 

Rainstorm

Storm Armor - When your Lightning Shield is active, lightning will strike a random enemy that you are in combat with for 2000 every 3 seconds.

 

Completely passive damage isn't interesting gameplay, and I really hope something like this doesn't make it to live.  I'd even rather the trigger be related to Lightning Bolt or Fulmination, but damage that you cannot affect at all is quite boring to me.  Worth around 666 DPS, scaling unknown.  This could easily scale with Haste, but it's unknown if it will.

 

Storm Elemental Totem

Summons an Air totem with 6000 health at the feet of the caster, calling forth a Greater Storm Elemental to hurl gusts of wind at the caster's enemies.  Each gust of wind does damage to the enemy, and then heals allies within 15 yards for 100% of the damage dealt, split evenly.  5 min CD.

 

No-one is particularly sure on the power of this totem, or if it will interact with Primal Elementalist, because no real details past that have been released.  It's important to note that it's duration will most likely match our current Eles at 1 minute, even though it says 'Lasts until cancelled'.

 

Reach of the Elements

Spew Lava - Empowers your current Fire totem with the power of lava, causing it to spew globs of lava at a random enemy within 40 yards every 1 second for 15 seconds.  Each glob of lava deals 2000 Fire damage to all enemies within 8 yards.  45 sec CD.

 

This is an interesting one.  Does the fire totem actually matter at all?  Is my Fire Ele going to be spewing lava like some projectile vomiting monstrosity?  Maybe a Magma Totem could spew that extra damage from itself, instead of a random enemy.  Would Searing Totem continue to attack while it's spewing molten madness?

 

Fortunately, this will most likely be our talent of choice unless it's a pure single target fight.  It has better burst to line up with CDs, does the same relative damage as Storm Armor (666 DPS if used on CD), and helps us with an uncapped cleaving mechanic.  If Storm Armor scales with Haste as I'm suspecting, it will come ahead of this (since a percentile reduction affects the larger number more.), but Spew will always have a place for AoE.

 

Known changes:

 

Stormlash is no longer!  It will be removed from the game in 6.0, according to Celestalon.

 

Secondary stats change - No more will we be fighting to get rid of spirit!  We don't even have to use it any more!

 

New secondary stats - Readiness and Multistrike are both confirmed for the next expac.  The value of Multistrike is particularly interesting to us because we cast a large amount of medium sized hits, and thus it scales well for us.  Readiness would probably affect Ascend/Eles at a minimum, and possibly Shock and Lava Burst CDs, but I don't see much value in it compared to Haste or Mastery.

 

As a note on this, Amplification is confirmed to NOT be included in 6.0.

 

Speculated changes:

 

Lava Burst could scale with crit?  They're trying to make every stat attractive for every class, even if it is only in a minor way.  Since we're one of the many classes that avoids a secondary like the plague, we may see some movement on this.

 

OS Healing CDs.  They're trying to make healing more interesting and more skill based again, and they're already removing our raid DPS cooldowns (Skull Banner/Stormlash/Tricks of the Trade)... So it's not infeasible for them to start slashing big OS heals.  Even if it's a numbers adjustment, it could be a big deal.

 

Button bloat.  They're also trying to remove a lot of unnecessary buttons for each class and spec.  We could speculate day and night on what could be removed (Earth Ele, Sham Rage, Healing Stream Totem, Earthquake...), but we won't find out any time soon.

 

What do you think our place will be in WoD?  In Mythic raiding?

Edited by Hybrys
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i think our class is the best it's ever been right now, but blizz says they hate moving while casting.

 

without being able to cast LB at all times, i think most mythic fights for us will be like malk for spriest. it's always not fun to hear about how your class is the worst spell haste buff, but someone's gotta do it. once again we'll hear about how good CL is on one fight ever, and then all other aoe fights will belong to mages and locks just like single target always does.

 

if they decide to let us keep LB on the move i would imagine we'd stay at our nice middle of the pack slot, and be worth taking to mythic.

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sham rage is not button bloat, i need that to live

Would you trade it for a passive 10% damage decrease?  I would.  Besides, our first talent tier already has some powerful and short CD personal cooldowns.

 

i think our class is the best it's ever been right now, but blizz says they hate moving while casting.

 

without being able to cast LB at all times, i think most mythic fights for us will be like malk for spriest. it's always not fun to hear about how your class is the worst spell haste buff, but someone's gotta do it. once again we'll hear about how good CL is on one fight ever, and then all other aoe fights will belong to mages and locks just like single target always does.

 

if they decide to let us keep LB on the move i would imagine we'd stay at our nice middle of the pack slot, and be worth taking to mythic.

It's true, and I don't think they'll remove LB on the run at all.  Infact, I think it was mentioned that it's now integral to Ele/Enh play.  I'm not worried.

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Would you trade it for a passive 10% damage decrease?  I would.  Besides, our first talent tier already has some powerful and short CD personal cooldowns.

 

no way, i run it glyphed for tons of fights, and if you pop astral shift and ele rage you're pretty near unkillable. it's too much fun to have a real cd to hit to have it taken away. button bloat is one thing, but having noncombat pets fill my F keys is not necessary. i like hitting F1-4 for things like ele rage, astral shift, grounding, and hex.

 

shamans didnt get that many more buttons once they made totems cds and we didnt many to start with. priests and paladins are just a couple classes that have a lot of buttons. enh has a lot of shit too, but that's because they're based on having all the skills ele does and melee specials. icebrand and rockbiter come to mind as extra, but im sure some enh like those. its kind of on the borderline of bloat and utility.

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no way, i run it glyphed for tons of fights, and if you pop astral shift and ele rage you're pretty near unkillable. it's too much fun to have a real cd to hit to have it taken away. button bloat is one thing, but having noncombat pets fill my F keys is not necessary. i like hitting F1-4 for things like ele rage, astral shift, grounding, and hex.

 

shamans didnt get that many more buttons once they made totems cds and we didnt many to start with. priests and paladins are just a couple classes that have a lot of buttons. enh has a lot of shit too, but that's because they're based on having all the skills ele does and melee specials. icebrand and rockbiter come to mind as extra, but im sure some enh like those. its kind of on the borderline of bloat and utility.

I do run it glyphed for a lot of fights too, and I agree that it would be a loss.  I'm more playing devil's advocate to what they may be looking at.

 

Things I could easily see gone are Earthquake, Searing Totem, Waterwalking, Frost Shock, and if they're feeling nutty, Unleash Elements.

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lol theyll never get rid of searing totem, that's their joke on us.

Totally this ^^^

 

But really, I love these threads, speculation is half the fun. I will most likely be enhance next tier as I haven't done it in a while but we'll see, better to know and love all 3 spec trees.

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They aren't axing random stuff, they're axing things you feel like you should keybind.  AKA "not waterwalking".  Or Primal Strike (still amusing we even have that).  Earthquake is a much better target to remove, but I do occasionally (pre)cast it (btw, discovered the other day that if you get MC'd it changes sides... sorry guys!).  Magma Totem, on the other hand, is something currently only cast by resto shamans to cheese the LMG proc.  Would not notice it going away.

 

Frost Shock and Unleash Elements are a bit odd because of talents.  They could just change those talents for the spec (mages apparently are getting a whole pile of talents that are spec-unique) but they're actually used in PvP.  Well, FS is, UE... I haven't cast UE for a very long time.  It's a key part of enhancement and a cool tool in resto, but ele.. yeah, we don't need it.  Our rotation might be more interesting if it was buffed to be worth casting, but as is it's pretty sad.  I guess you could use it on Thok?  Eh.

 

Rockbiter doesn't eat keybind space unless you're completely insane, and they've got the whole flyout thing for saving action bar space, so I doubt we'll lose it.  Besides, it's one of those neat nostalgia things, and they want to taunt us about how we used to be able to offtank.  Oh well.

 

We honestly don't have that much clutter.  There's a bajillion totems, but most of them are PvP-oriented and will be disarmed appropriately however that ends up going.  Our entire rotation is, what, 4 spells, a totem, and the ubiquitous Elemental Blast?  Compare that to how many different buttons a hunter presses in a minute.  Yeesh.  If anything, we're probably the model for the right number of buttons, and what CDs should look like; utility, defenses, or distinct, non-interacting dps benefits.

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Oh yeah, Celestalon mentioned in a tweet that Storm Armor got axed because it was boring.  https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/438145120626434049  Instead we get Shocking Lava, which is a buff to shock damage you get from casting lava spells.  It stacks.  Depending on how high it stacks, I look forward to properly prepared Earth Shocks making the destro locks jealous.  (Get to 7 charges -> Ascendance -> WHEEEEEE)

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(666 DPS if used on CD)

 

Rockin'! :D

 

 

Secondary stats change - No more will we be fighting to get rid of spirit!  We don't even have to use it any more!

 

And even better, you won't be fighting so much with us healers for the off-pieces (rings, etc). Our will have Spirit (and I expect to need it!)

 

Speculated changes:

 

Lava Burst could scale with crit?  They're trying to make every stat attractive for every class, even if it is only in a minor way.  Since we're one of the many classes that avoids a secondary like the plague, we may see some movement on this.

 

OS Healing CDs.  They're trying to make healing more interesting and more skill based again, and they're already removing our raid DPS cooldowns (Skull Banner/Stormlash/Tricks of the Trade)... So it's not infeasible for them to start slashing big OS heals.  Even if it's a numbers adjustment, it could be a big deal.

 

Button bloat.  They're also trying to remove a lot of unnecessary buttons for each class and spec.  We could speculate day and night on what could be removed (Earth Ele, Sham Rage, Healing Stream Totem, Earthquake...), but we won't find out any time soon.

 

I would love all of these so much!

- "Choosing" between Haste and Mastery only is rather dull, I think. While it's an interesting choice between the two, actually having a third to consider would be awesome. It would make me much more invested in knowing about my Offspec :D

 

- I have been sincerely hoping for a removal of OS healing cooldowns. One of my wishes for WoD is the complete removal of Healing Tide Totem (AG can stay, it's fun). I wonder how you guys feel about this?

 

- I think it's nice to have Stormlash removed, actually. I know it's a DPS boost but it's a predictable and pretty boring bit of gameplay.

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Rockbiter doesn't eat keybind space unless you're completely insane, and they've got the whole flyout thing for saving action bar space, so I doubt we'll lose it.  Besides, it's one of those neat nostalgia things, and they want to taunt us about how we used to be able to offtank.  Oh well.

 

OR if you like teasing your tanks on trash. VERY important gameplay aspect, that ;)

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Oh yeah, Celestalon mentioned in a tweet that Storm Armor got axed because it was boring.  https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/438145120626434049  Instead we get Shocking Lava, which is a buff to shock damage you get from casting lava spells.  It stacks.  Depending on how high it stacks, I look forward to properly prepared Earth Shocks making the destro locks jealous.  (Get to 7 charges -> Ascendance -> WHEEEEEE)

Fantastic!  That even adds gameplay complexity.  Will Flame Shock 'snapshot' this for the duration of it's DoT, or only affect it's upfront damage, leading to spending the buff on that being avoided?  Will Earth Shock be worth casting at the top stack of this buff, even if we're at 5-6 charges of Fulm?  Will Earth Shock be worth holding on to even if we're at 7 stacks of Fulm until the buff maxes, or is one stack of the buff enough to push it over?

 

Rockin'! biggrin.png

 

 

And even better, you won't be fighting so much with us healers for the off-pieces (rings, etc). Our will have Spirit (and I expect to need it!)

 

 

I would love all of these so much!

- "Choosing" between Haste and Mastery only is rather dull, I think. While it's an interesting choice between the two, actually having a third to consider would be awesome. It would make me much more invested in knowing about my Offspec biggrin.png

 

- I have been sincerely hoping for a removal of OS healing cooldowns. One of my wishes for WoD is the complete removal of Healing Tide Totem (AG can stay, it's fun). I wonder how you guys feel about this?

 

- I think it's nice to have Stormlash removed, actually. I know it's a DPS boost but it's a predictable and pretty boring bit of gameplay.

We'll be fighting you even more, except on accessories.  If I'm not mistaken, mail is mail is mail, so an Enh could want that perfect Int/Spirit/Crit piece, because it becomes Agi/Haste/Crit for them.  That is, unless Spirit was successfully pushed to just accessories and trinkets.

 

I'm really hopeful about some of these changes.  I can't wait to see what they do to make Crit more valuable.  Beyond Lava Burst scaling, maybe Lightning Bolt crits could see double the Fulmination/Lightning Shield procs?  Maybe non-fire damage crits could see a Clearcasting-type damage boost?  Maybe Searing Totem crits could trigger additional Lava Surges, in an additional value double whammy?  There could be a lot of interesting gameplay implications of those.

 

I really like the amount of utility that I can bring to a raid, and already feel that my HTT is weak enough to barely feel necessary.  I'd rather see AG eliminated all together, with Resto Ascendance getting a slight buff to compensate, and something else take it's place.

 

I'm really glad about Stormlash, because it was a GCD I didn't want in my opener.  One of the major reasons my group made an early push on a H-Garrosh phase was because of a tight Stormlash rotation, though, and I'll miss those intricacies and organization mattering so much.

Edited by Hybrys

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i think they did say that spirit will be bling only. but the main stat means hunters will want our gear too :P

 

if they eliminate ele heal cds, why would we do less dps than a pure dps? in blizz's whole scheme of who's worth bringing to a raid, if support dps had no heal cds, what support would they offer?

 

hunter + haste buff pet would always beat a halfsie class at that point. then mythic would just be get one hunter, several druids and paladins and then fill the last fifteen spots with mages. 

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i think they did say that spirit will be bling only. but the main stat means hunters will want our gear too tongue.png

 

if they eliminate ele heal cds, why would we do less dps than a pure dps? in blizz's whole scheme of who's worth bringing to a raid, if support dps had no heal cds, what support would they offer?

 

hunter + haste buff pet would always beat a halfsie class at that point. then mythic would just be get one hunter, several druids and paladins and then fill the last fifteen spots with mages. 

They were toying with Spirit being on Ring/Neck/Trinket only, but I'm doubting they'll pull it off.  The oddity of that scaling would either punish people for not having a spirit set in each spot, or reward people too heavily for getting sockets and putting Spirit in it.  It's a hard way to go.

 

If they eliminate our healing CDs, I think they could make us more valuable in other ways.  On H-Garrosh I was doing knockbacks w/ Thunderstorm.  We've also got Grounding/Tremor/HST.  We're also a timed burst class, where, if needed, I can burst to 1mil DPS for 15 seconds.

 

More intelligent play is what I'm after.  There's a reason 25m guilds don't just run 10 Warlocks even though they're higher DPS than a mage/hunter.  What you do and what you bring should matter.

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dps between pures is negligible but when youre a spriest on h malk or an ele in cata, people give you a lot of shit for having a drastically below average potential regardless of what actually happens once you get to that spot in a raid. if we currently have a pretty powerful heal cd, why is that less intelligent gameplay than spending time redoing a new way that we can contribute beyond minor utility like hst or the extremely rarely used grounding / tremor?

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hunter + haste buff pet would always beat a halfsie class at that point. then mythic would just be get one hunter, several druids and paladins and then fill the last fifteen spots with mages. 

You mean Heroic Spine?  (Some of the mages were rogues.)

 

Re: OS healing CDs, they aren't blanket removing raidwide defensives, but they do want there to be fewer of them numerically.  (Might be buffs to compensate, but we'll more likely see encounter design changes.  Helps that mythic won't have to deal with 10s being unable to roll CDs constantly.)  AG is a prime candidate, as is HTT.  Healing Rain is more interesting because you have to think about where to place it (and actually cast it).  Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if HTT disappeared from shaman altogether; it's completely thoughtless, even AG requires you to actually be doing something to make it effective.  If they do want to tone it down, they might just nerf the damage conversion portion of AG so you have to make a choice to get the absurd burst heals.

 

I'm not worried about us losing raid spots to hunters for two reasons: first, chain lightning is ridiculous, and second, any raid leader who picks people based on class/theoretical dps and not their actual in-practice dps is a moron and you shouldn't raid for them.  If they're picking between people with comparable dps, that's much more reasonable, but between chain lightning and our pile of niche utility abilities (Windwalk Totem for H. Malkorok, press-button-receive-off-heals, etc.), we've got something going for us often enough that I doubt we'll ever get ditched for hunters.  Especially with mythic (the only place where that sort of discussion even occurs amongst sane people) being 20 man, you don't need to worry about buff coverage (which is where hunters really shine).  It's not like we're in the same spot Windwalker Monks are in if you compare them to Rogues.

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When they said they were reducing raid wide def CDs I thought they just meant devo aura and warrior stuff.

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The thing is, Devo Aura is really cool (especially because it's mitigation rather than healing) so it brings some interesting gameplay options (though it's a little bit powerful for non-healers atm). HTT has none of that interest - you pop it roughly when the poo hits the windmill and forget about it. Personally, I think that coodlown stacking is a boring way to defeat a boss.

 

 

 

any raid leader who picks people based on class/theoretical dps and not their actual in-practice dps is a moron and you shouldn't raid for them.

 

THIS. So much this  =]

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devo aura being mitigation is what makes it so easy to use. just pop it when a dbm timer is about to go off and youre done, it's raid wide easy button. at least with HTT you have to have raid frames up as a dps and look at them to notice that something has gone wrong. 

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devo aura being mitigation is what makes it so easy to use. just pop it when a dbm timer is about to go off and youre done, it's raid wide easy button. at least with HTT you have to have raid frames up as a dps and look at them to notice that something has gone wrong. 

Not really, though.  I've always used HTT for covering predictable incoming damage.  Swelling Pride, Whirl, Malkorok explosions, etc.

 

I'd like there to be more skill play instead of cover and complete.  Devos are a big portion of that, and seeing them reduced to 10% would make me happy.  Rally Cry disappearing.  Power Word: Barrier disappearing.  I'd be happy with all of the above, and in some way, HTT plays into that.  The fact that stacking in weapons on Garrosh is a viable strat bothers me.

Edited by Hybrys

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 The fact that stacking in weapons on Garrosh is a viable strat bothers me.

 

100% this. I was genuinely horrified when I first encountered that strategy  o.0

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but is that viable for a first kill? especially in the race for first kill? or is that just a fun thing to do when 25 ppl have so much fully upgraded gear that teh whole place is a joke anyway. 8ilvl per slot across a whole raid is a pretty powerful boost. its the kind of boost that says well, at least you like the game, even if youre not pro you can still win. once youve farmed an entire raid on heroic you might as well be allowed to have some fun. its cool to be an overpowered monster after fighting them for so long.

 

you would take power word barrier away from poor disc priests? they already have the least fun skillset in the game, they kinda need some sort of cd that resembles participation. at least they have to aim it. that golden bubble was a pretty tight squeeze in the ol heart phase on garrosh back when it was progression and we needed it. not like the anypaladin can be a hero button.

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but is that viable for a first kill? especially in the race for first kill? or is that just a fun thing to do when 25 ppl have so much fully upgraded gear that teh whole place is a joke anyway. 8ilvl per slot across a whole raid is a pretty powerful boost. its the kind of boost that says well, at least you like the game, even if youre not pro you can still win. once youve farmed an entire raid on heroic you might as well be allowed to have some fun. its cool to be an overpowered monster after fighting them for so long.

 

you would take power word barrier away from poor disc priests? they already have the least fun skillset in the game, they kinda need some sort of cd that resembles participation. at least they have to aim it. that golden bubble was a pretty tight squeeze in the ol heart phase on garrosh back when it was progression and we needed it. not like the anypaladin can be a hero button.

It is and was viable for first kills, AND for the race to the first kill, because it minmaxes DPS and that was the best way to do it.

 

I would take away PW:B in a second.  The Disc Priest toolkit needs a real rework anyway, because absorbs are way too valuable.  I'd love to see them move from preventing damage to increasing the amount of healing that can be done to a target.  Like a backwards Necrotic Strike of bonus healing pool available to all healers to expend.  Besides, they already have two throughput CDs.  (People always forget Inner Focus.)

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