AlphaFollow

Yeah, that was my thinking as well...I love enhancement, I love the playstyle and I have way more fun with it than elemental, but at least now Blizz seems to be making a commitment to making 1 tree decent for PvP. I cannot justify continuing to pvp as enhancement when elemental has 4 talents dedicated to PvP. It is like trying to PvP as a combat rogue, with no CC...what's the point.

I still think with all the +healing, +spell/healing crit, and spirit link talents, resto shaman will become the raid healer spec of choice. Anyways, I'm not totally dissatisfied with what we're getting, although I can totally understand why PvP resto shamans would be pissed off, or why elemental raiding shamans would be pissed off too.

I was actually disappointed with the lack of hybridization of roles as a shaman--something that shaman used to be lauded for. I was expecting Blizzard to bring it back in certain ways, things like an enhancement talent that was a 4% chance on proc a buff for 4 seconds that made the next Chain Heal instant and an 8% chance to proc a buff for 4 seconds that made the next Lesser Healing Wave instant. It would be talents like that which would allow a DPSing shaman to pull off an early heal on themselves while still doing their auto-attacking for another Windfury instead of only healing when low on health (which, on this forums, is described as a fight already lost).

Edited, Jun 22nd 2008 12:19am by Raglu

Even without a crit LB is less than half the mana cost of Flame Shock, and the GCD will leave gaps in your rotations that LB spam doesn't, especially without a lot of haste gear. I'm operating purely on theory at this point, but no matter how you gear I would imagine LB spam would continue to generate higher DPS and keep your mana pool going for longer periods of time than any rotation involving Flame Shock, Lava Burst, and lightning spells, especially since Lava Burst consumes Flame Shock, effectively removing a lot of its DPS potential unless you do something like Flame Shock > LB (while the DoT ticks) > Lava Burst on the end of the DoT. But, like I said, I still can't imagine that would be higher or more mana-efficient DPS than pure LB spam.

I mean, look at Mages for an example. They have all of those different damaging spells but they still spend most of their time spamming just one of them in raids unless they're AoE-ing. This is what I expect to be the case for Elementals at 80, same as it is now, but I'd love to be proven wrong. Being an Elemental Shaman bores me to tears in PvE currently, and I'd be all for it to see that change.

Well when the site was up I noticed Lava Bolt and Lightning Bolt costing about same mana cost, Flame Shock on its own already does plenty of damage and with I think 600 spell damage does more damage then Lightning Bolt pre point of mana spent but since has less chance to crit then Lightning Bolt at the moment it lowers our current dps because of mana usage and since we rely so heavily on critical strikes to produce sufficient damage.

Now with Lava Bolt and some of the great fire buffing talents we get (one that increases flame shocks dot damage by 100%) we can see some heavy damage from our fire spells. Also the ability to make lava burst crit (every 8 seconds) means we need to rely on crit a lot less on our gear.

Now lets look at Lava Burst, it costed I want to say 680 mana for 800-850 with a 8 second cool down, Lightning Bolt costed I believe 640 for 750-800 damage, I forget damage on Flame shock but I recall it costed over 1000 mana (ya i know it is a lot).

If mana can hold up, the perfect spell rotation would be Flame Shock> Lightning Bolt> Lightning Bolt> Lava Burst. Out side of random crits and spells missing (assumeing they never happen) it would look like this:
Flame Shock hits direct damage and damage over time, Lighting Bolt hits, lightning bolt hits, Lava Burst shaman gains elemental focus because flame shock was applied on target, Flame Shock (40% cheaper) hits direct damage and damage over time, Lightning Bolt (40% cheaper), Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst shaman shaman gains elemental focus because flame shock was applied on target etc etc...

Flame shock as I said is expensive but it does lots of damage and paired with Lava Burst will really help shaman lose the need to focus on crit, focusing heavier on spell hit damage and even haste (this would alter the rotation of coarse). This is definately a big boost in elemental PvE spell damage, I will also say though, we will still probably be one of the least mana efficient casters in the game, relying heavily on pots and buffs from other classes (shadow priest, paladins, and moonkins will still help us a lot).

Another great buff for us will be the benefits in damage we will gain from curse of elements and improved scorch, meaning we will scale a little bit better since half of the spells we do will gain benefit from these 2 spells.

To be quite frank should all these changes and additions make it to WotLK I am quite excited since we truly will have been buffed for both PvE and PvP as elemental, but it also seems like a PvP and a PvE spec for elemental shaman will be quite a bit different, it will not be a single point difference like in the past.

I am certain they are doing this on purpose specifically in order to give Shamans a spell rotation, the mana values are too close together to be anything else. Standard thinking is to make instants horribly inefficient but hard-hitting (Fire Blast/Shadowburn) or have some special condition (Ice Lance). Since Lava Burst seems to have neither, Id say this is a deliberate attempt to force a spell rotation and it will eventually succeed.

Whatever the mana values are now, it will be tweaked by release to either increase overall DPM or DPS, most likely the latter, without much cost. Apart from a bit of on-the-move DPS, I dont see what other use it could have. Same deal as Steady Shot for Hunters, a Hunter who doesnt use SS does terrible DPS.

Taurrus I appreciate what you're saying but there are still plenty of solid DPS talents in Elemental, and there is every chance you could take one along to a raid for Totem of Wrath / Wrath of Air / Bloodlust. Enhance may put out better DPS, it certainly looks that way, but I don't know. In any case, not everyone wants to play an Enhance Shaman, for the clear reasons we have already discussed that they suck at PvP half the time.

I know if given the choice, Id love to have a spec I can use to Arena AND raid in the same week, because in the end you never bring a DPS Shaman to raid for their personal damage alone. You bring them for the totems and group damage buffing, so dropping a few pure DPS points in order to make a reasonable hybrid DPS/PvP spec seems like a good deal. I dont think anyone will be bringing you to an Arthas raid with that build, but some easier content would be a distinct possibility.

Here's the truth; if I was offered the chance to make a character that could PvP and PvE without respeccing (also Frost DKs and Demo locks in WotLK) I would take it with both hands.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on elemental - I will be specing elemental in WotLK at 80 to PvP. I just think from the new talent set, elemental is more geared for PvP come expansion release. I was only suggesting that enhancement will be putting out better overall DPS than an elemental shaman using a spell rotation.

If you check the new talents, the only PvP buff that enhancement got was improved shamanistic rage, so once every 2 minutes you can break a snare or stunlock. While I think enhancement shamans will be cranking out insane amounts of DPS, they will still suffer (for the most part) from the same PvP issues they have now. Perhaps even more so now that classes are gaining even more health, cc and anti-cc tricks. Enhance may be a spec that you could use to PvE and (sort of) pvp with without having to respec as it's just 2 points for improved SR.

Elemental got 3 talents aimed at improving PvP performance, astral shift, storm earth and fire (chance to root), and thunder (knockback cc). I also think elemental raid builds will be pretty different to PvP builds, as no pvper is going to bother with talents like totem of wrath, unrelenting storm and possibly Lava flow.

just wandering based on current talent charts do you guys think this will be how shamans will spec in the expansion for elemental:

PvP
http://wotlkwiki.info/talent/shaman.html?b=6c53300152321035132531351z005d5031s

PvE
http://wotlkwiki.info/talent/shaman.html?b=603531c152011535100501351z005d5301105p

for PvE you can put your last point into either Storm reach, Thunder or Nature's swiftness but that deep in ele i see no point in not grabbing it that may just be me, what you guys think?

I actually love how different the builds are even though I hated how our class became so specialized in BC (enh had no problem healing pre bc only really lacked mana tide for raiding). Seems like specializing is still there but it seems to be in a good way, specialy considering the main difference in past was mostly totem of wrath and Nature's swiftness for many shaman. It also seems to me that a pvp spec shaman will still work rather fine in instances (but will still have a mana problem) but for hard core raiding you need the mana talents.

my only real problem at the moment is how gimpy ancestral shift seems (2 crits in a row is a pretty crappy trigger)

I also love the imp fire nova totem stuns will be great for pvp and will also help out our mages in pve when they are asked to aoe, I for one love dropping my fire totems to aid them and this only makes it way better (but the loss of threat on our other aoe totem stinks).

I read something very interesting, I am not sure if this is a rumor but i read that melee and spells crit hit and haste are being changed to affect both meaning 1% crit affects both our spells and attacks same with hit and haste.

This makes me wander if talents like elemental devastation will be changed to increase our crit by 9% with spells also... if not this still makes elemental devastation a very strong talent for an enhancement shaman. I am going to imagine some shamans trying out specs like this one:

http://wotlkwiki.info/talent/shaman.html?b=6c530301r23d5231050213353115231251z0

side note, I think this change will gain additional benefit from our stat modifiers. An example would be I highly doubt intellect will modify our melee crit but should continue to modify our spell crit etc etc. This is fine though I think shaman will be looking for gear with straight crit on our gear.

anyhow gonna cross my figures and hope elemental devastation will increase crit and not just melee crit, either way nice bonus for enhancement shaman.

Keep in mind that Blizzard has only stated that crit rating from items is going to affect both spells and melee. Talents within trees, specifically those of hybrids like Shaman, still explicitly state whether they increase the crit chance for one or the other. Resto Shaman won't be looking at a 25-30% melee crit chance from all their heal crit talents, Thundering Strikes won't affect Shocks over in Enhancement, Call of Thunder and Elemental Devastation aren't going to turn Elemental Shaman into two-handing crit machines, etc.

That having been said, I still completely agree with you that it is going to be a huge buff to Shaman. On gear alone it's going to be very easy for Enhancement or Elemental Shaman to achieve 20-25% crit for both spells and melee. Our damage is going to be sick.

Edited, Jun 29th 2008 10:22am by Gaudion

well for straight pve your probably right although i can still see imp fire nova totem being good for aoe situations since it lowers the time it takes for the totem to go boom, and the actual stun would help but yes it is not needed and doesn't increase dps because of cool down, but i may opt for it either way since I enjoy the talent as it is now and it is only getting better (atleast for nova magma got the shaft).

Don't need more then 3% hit I have been told in pvp so this would probably be a better version of what you suggested for pvp:
http://wotlkwiki.info/talent/shaman.html?b=9c53300152321035112530051z005d5131005p

I like totem of wrath for when shaman would do instances but your right for straight up pvp it is not necessary, on the other hand, lava flow I am torn between its usefulness for pvp, in one hand it has a nice chance for burst potential (flame shock, elemental mastery, chain lightning, lava burst, earth shock). but will the extra little bit of damage from flame shock and lava burst warrant this i am not sure, and depending on how much more spell damage flame tongue will provide also varies if it is like 10 meh for pvp.

my suggested spec seems a bit more friendly for just ding 80 wanna go do instances and pvp but that would probably get replaced, will see.

really excited either way and these changes may even send me back to enhancement since elemental devastation looks interesting.

I think the biggest deciding factor on all those fire totem talents will be whether or not LB spam ends up getting replaced with a rotation involving Flame Shock and Lava Burst. If it does, Call of Flame might be worth taking for a PvE build, not because of the increased damage to fire totems, but because of the 6% increase to Lava Burst. Imp. FNT won't be used in PvE either way, Elemental Shaman are generally expected to keep Totem of Wrath down 99.99% of the time. Plus FNT is still really expensive, and the multi-mob pulls that might actually justify its cost are generally managed with CC, which will of course be broken by the totem. Only places it might actually be useful are on pulls similiar to the AoE on the stairs in Karazhan, and those are few and far between.

Lava Flow is going to be a must for PvE, no question about that.