My experience with shaman on the PTR.

[Shodokan]

In relentless gear, not gemmed, and some random off pieces (not pvp, some green)

I'm critting for the following

Normal attacks
Lightning bolt: 14k
Lava burst: 17k
Chain lightning: 11k
Earth shock (the shock itself): 7k
Flumination: 22k
Earthquake tick: 4k


Overload attacks
Lightning bolt: 10,000
Lava burst: 13k
Chain lightning: 8k


I've had some decent experiences with the lava burst coming back after 1-2 lightning bolt

Just figured i would report.

[neux]

nothing been done to numbers whatsoever, tomorrow they can be double or even half of it.
You should know that better then anyone =)

[Shodokan]

nothing been done to numbers whatsoever, tomorrow they can be double or even half of it.
You should know that better then anyone =)

They've been pretty consistent on beta at 80 as well, very similar. I know that some classes have been tuned better than others (shaman have had a lot of time spent on them) and some classes such as ret need their PVE dps looked at. But shaman have barely changed throughout the cata beta which is over a month and a half old now. They were basically the same even in alpha. I just checked to see if the numbers were close to the same on the PTR. And they are... not like they are THAT far away from what they are on live right now anyway, maybe for the gear set i have... but as we know the stat changes well...changed the game.

[Boylston]

Fulmination looks like something that you can charge up for a bit in a BG and then unleash to absolutely dominate someone.

As much as I am currently loving boomkins and am excited about some of the Cata druid possibilities... I keep looking at the shaman changes and feeling like they're going to once again be one of the best MBing teams!

[Fat Tire]

Fulmination is amazing. plain and simple. Just fricken fantastic.

I got a 38k,40 and boom 42k earth shock. I have seen screenshots of 48k+

Now even if its towned down I believe it will stay pretty high like this since it takes a little bit to build up.



I dont like earthquake that much since they dropped the knockdown by half. To me its not worth a 31 point talent atm. Along with 30% GW instead of 40% but owell

I like Sprirt walkers grace so much, its so cool being able to move and cast.

[Mosg2]

I stopped leveling my Druids and went back to my Shaman after seeing some of the beta videos and reading some beta personal accounts. I think Shaman are going to be, without question, the best boxing setup in Cata.

The only "random" thing added to their DPS is that Lava Burst can randomly reset. Compared to many of the other classes' catches that were added to randomize their DPS rotations a bit this is cake to deal with.

[tanknspanker]

Fulmination is amazing. plain and simple. Just fricken fantastic.

I got a 38k,40 and boom 42k earth shock. I have seen screenshots of 48k+

Now even if its towned down I believe it will stay pretty high like this since it takes a little bit to build up.



I dont like earthquake that much since they dropped the knockdown by half. To me its not worth a 31 point talent atm. Along with 30% GW instead of 40% but owell

I like Sprirt walkers grace so much, its so cool being able to move and cast.


well, howmuch hp you would need in pvp to survive a bit ?
greetingz
<3

[Kruschpakx4]

the damage is srsly high enough to oneshot someone with four shamans, I wont spec lava surge for multiboxing and for arenas also no points in feedback
hopefully shaman doesnt change now, I cant get really better atm :D

[Shodokan]

the damage is srsly high enough to oneshot someone with four shamans, I wont spec lava surge for multiboxing and for arenas also no points in feedback
hopefully shaman doesnt change now, I cant get really better atm :D

You wont use lava surge? You already use a g15 and stuff to macro... just use isboxer or something to press your lava burst before your other skill every time to maximize dps.

[Alemi]

You wont use lava surge? You already use a g15 and stuff to macro... just use isboxer or something to press your lava burst before your other skill every time to maximize dps.

For arena and PVP, I wouldn't want lava bursts to not hit all at once.

Feedback, however, I'm still on the fence about. With the 100% 1 second reduction across the whole team, and with the EM glyph, it might actually prove useful.

[Kruschpakx4]

pve: feedback+lava surge
pvp-bg:feedback only
pvp arena:------

[Shodokan]

If you don't want the extra damage from lava burst... i don't get it. BUT that's ok. I understand people wanting to have them all hit at once so meh.

[Toned]

Coordinated burst hitting at the same time is > the little bit of extra sustained dps getting 1 or 2 shamans to get off an extra lavaburst, because now your lava burst cooldowns are out of sync and you're fucked. Most teams dispell flame shock quick anyways.

[Boylston]

Goofed around a little bit on the PTR, mostly with a solo shaman.

I have to say, I am impressed with the burst capability of the new talent tree and some of the new skills. Fulmination looks great, and will probably be a great tool for us, even if it is toned down some. While I haven't tested healing rain, it appears to be an excellent defensive tool. Also didn't test the new Elemental ability (can't recall name), but I can imagine how an additional +Fire buff will play out with Lava Burst.

In short, it looks like the defensive abilities of the class got stronger, all aspects of our offense got better as well. As much as I wanted to switch over to 4-5xBoomkins for Cata launch, it just doesn't seem like it's going to be the better team.

I have to agree with mosg2 completely here. The only real randomness added to the class is going to be easy for us boxers to deal with (or not deal with). Fulmination charges build up quickly enough that you'll probably have 7-9 on most characters when you want to use it, and the Lava Burst mechanic will be either terribly easy to include into rotations for more DPS, or something you'll be fine ignoring.

I also like that the Resto talents I'd most likely pick up will augment the team's healing ability. I think that we'll be able to drop tremors/groundings, a set of Healing Rains, and be able to chain heal through a crapload of damage, even with the non-Resto penalties. We'll continue to have tools that punish meleers who want to infiltrate the group, and the ranged damage (including burst potential) is only getting better.

I think I will run with a 4xShaman team as I have in the past, focusing on BGs. Maybe will pick a druid to add in the 5th slot so that I can have a tank or boomkin to add to the team. I've always preferred quadboxing BGs since it allows just a little more flexibility with teammates when you're on a small map, anyhow.

I'd love to be proven wrong about the druids, but I just don't think boomkins are going to be the way to go for Cataclysm. Not unless some of their damage abilities get a significant step up...

[Mosg2]

I think 4x Boomkin are going to be insane. Now their Root abilities are AE--They affect everyone within 8 yards. That plus SOLAR BEAM is going to be insane. Absolutely insane.

[Boylston]

I think 4x Boomkin are going to be insane. Now their Root abilities are AE--They affect everyone within 8 yards. That plus SOLAR BEAM is going to be insane. Absolutely insane.


I stopped leveling my Druids and went back to my Shaman after seeing some of the beta videos and reading some beta personal accounts. I think Shaman are going to be, without question, the best boxing setup in Cata.

The only "random" thing added to their DPS is that Lava Burst can randomly reset. Compared to many of the other classes' catches that were added to randomize their DPS rotations a bit this is cake to deal with.

Mosg2-- You sound like me. I have hourly debates on whether I am going to play my 5xBoomkins or 4xShamans...
Or maybe 1xBoomkin+4xShamans. Root them and then nuke them!

Which comp do you think you'll play at release?

[Kalros]

So any luck with any new macros now that they killed the ",,,,,,," party of /click? Or are we stuck going back to /castsequence?

[F9thRet]

I've been trying to figure that out myself, What with Flameshock, unleash weapon Lava Burst and then the Fulmination Earth shock.

I believe the poster Ebony here was working on something though.

Stephen

[Mosg2]

@Boylston:
Definitely going to level the Shaman first. I love me my Druids but Shaman are just plain going to be better offensively and defensively IMO. Being able to root someone in your beam of silence while damaging them is going to be insane, as is chain knocking people down in it too. There's going to be a lot of tricks I think that're just going to be crazy--They still do great damage and come with a lot of utility as you said.

That having been said...

The Shaman beat them defensively. Totems plus being able to heal while maintaining their survivability is just plain better than... Typhoon? Druids don't get a lot of defensive tools like the Shaman do. The Shaman will plain take less damage, *especially* from casters. Also, they're better equipped to heal the damage they do take--Mid-combat they can pop out some Chain Heals.

The Shaman also beat them offensively. All of the tools that Druids get to do damage are great, don't get me wrong. Typhoon is absolutely amazing on a 20s cooldown. Chained together and with facing macros it totally roflstomps melee on you. It's 10x better than Thunderstorm. Their sustained damage is just fine but their burst is NOWHERE near what a Shaman can do. Fulmination? Lava Burst? Boom. You're dead. You never got the chance to heal.

So what do the Druids have over the Shaman in my opinion? A few things: They're much more mobile with travel form and being able to shift to get rid of snares and roots. That's a big deal in BG's. They also have stealth, which to me is a huge asset. It means you can *much* better defend nodes and attack them. Cyclone is 10x better than Hex is. Solar Beam is, to me, the best boxing spell in the game. It will absolutely dominate people. You will kill *tons* of people without them ever even getting the chance to cast back. Same deal with the ranged knockdown.

But you know what? The best part about the Druids is that they feel new and fresh. People have been doing Shaman since boxing became more mainstream. I love being unique--But after *much* thought on this it comes down to pure efficiency for me--Whenever I consider just running the Druids as my caster team for Cata I ask myself a few questions and then I come back down to earth:

Which one is better offensively?
Which one is better defensively?
Are they both capable of completing PvE content?

Once you answer those questions and realize that basically, you like Druids because they're new and fun and unexplored even though they're not as good as the Shaman... It gets easy for me to decide :)

AAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL of that having been said...

Yes, it's still a hard decision for me to make. I love insta-cast flight form. I love the stealth. I love all the dots they get. I love that they can do ANY role in the game. All of that, however, doesn't make up for where they do have shortcomings.

Now, the real problem for me decision wise is if I'm going to finish leveling my 4x DK team to 80 or bank on the DK+Rets being the best melee team in Cata :) That's a hard one!

[Kalros]

I know this is more of a PvP thread, but I'd rather not start a new one.

Copied a shaman to the PTR today, put in new talents, trained, etc. Made a simple macro:

/cast elemental mastery
/castsequence reset=combat/target flame shock, lava burst, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt

I originally tried with 3 LB, but it would get hung up on the Lava Burst. Pulled around 3700 DPS on a Heroic dummy, about the same throughout a Heroic instance just using my macro. Then I tried doing my spells manually and pulled around 4500 DPS. So I'm looking at a considerable loss of DPS so far, but i'll start getting a bit more complex soon. Also need to find a way to work in Earth Shock.

[Shodokan]

I know this is more of a PvP thread, but I'd rather not start a new one.

Copied a shaman to the PTR today, put in new talents, trained, etc. Made a simple macro:

/cast elemental mastery
/castsequence reset=combat/target flame shock, lava burst, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt

I originally tried with 3 LB, but it would get hung up on the Lava Burst. Pulled around 3700 DPS on a Heroic dummy, about the same throughout a Heroic instance just using my macro. Then I tried doing my spells manually and pulled around 4500 DPS. So I'm looking at a considerable loss of DPS so far, but i'll start getting a bit more complex soon. Also need to find a way to work in Earth Shock.

Earthshock as a secondary button is fine.

[Boylston]

I think playing with some of the PTR stuff has me convinced that I'll need to stick with Shamans. I have 4 of them, from the Healer+Quad Shammy arena domination days, so I will likely drag along a druid on my level-up quest to 80. (Or a DK, or Pally, or Warlock... they're all on the fifth account!)

I think I may be done with multiboxing instances all by myself. There doesn't seem to be any major gear reason to do so anymore, and I can always pick up a tank with my 4xShaman pack and run stuff. (I have several great friends who are tanks and always liked doing instances with someone else tanking.)

mosg2-- You've nailed it for me with the druids. I think I will get them to 85 eventually, but I think I'm going to focus on the shaman first. Doesn't hurt that my guild is pretty overloaded with druids-- I'm less likely to cause raid-night problems by being a shaman main...

I'm sure this will all change in 24-48 hours. =P

[Toned]

Duel a Boonkin as an Ele shaman on PTR or Cata Beta... IMO that will solve most of your questions lol. Unless boonkins are horribly horribly under balanced with coefficents and numbers they are really squishy atm and seem to do mediocre dmg.

[Boylston]

Duel a Boonkin as an Ele shaman on PTR or Cata Beta... IMO that will solve most of your questions lol. Unless boonkins are horribly horribly under balanced with coefficents and numbers they are really squishy atm and seem to do mediocre dmg.

Yeah, I've played both as a pre-made 80... Even with some Elemental tuning downward, it's a big difference.

Fulmination will stay in as a concept, I think. Even with some damage tuning, it's likely to stay reasonably potent, given that there are counters to it in PvP and the devs have somewhat said "If you let a caster build up a big attack, you deserve to get hit really hard."

Last expansion, I stubbornly made the mistake of leveling my multi-hunter team first-- I knew that it didn't seem like it was going to be as good as the shammies, but didn't listen to my gut and leveled them to 80. They were almost never played after hitting 80 and reality set in hard.

This go-around, I'm going to go with what appears to be the better team. If people playing multi-druids are dominating later on, I can always make them my second team and finish the 80-85 journey a few months after release.

[Kruschpakx4]

faced a 85 boomkin today in tol barad

insect swarn 3k ticks 6k crits, starfal 3k ticks :D

flame shock- EM = 22k lava burst with full green gear + 11,8k lava burst overload (!), followed by goblin rocket chainlight 2xlightning blot earth shock druid dead

I had about 40% life when he died, he used starfall, treants and all that shit


misstimed unleash elements because I've binded lava burst with em (very bad idead btw:P), so lava burst does about 27-28k damage with em, green trinket +900 spellpower and unleash elements (with 2/2 elemental weapons)

[Shodokan]

faced a 85 boomkin today in tol barad

insect swarn 3k ticks 6k crits, starfal 3k ticks :D

flame shock- EM = 22k lava burst with full green gear + 11,8k lava burst overload (!), followed by goblin rocket chainlight 2xlightning blot earth shock druid dead

I had about 40% life when he died, he used starfall, treants and all that shit


misstimed unleash elements because I've binded lava burst with em (very bad idead btw:P), so lava burst does about 27-28k damage with em, green trinket +900 spellpower and unleash elements (with 2/2 elemental weapons)

Are you going to re-forge for mastery? The extra damage from overload seems like A LOT to pass up.

[Boylston]

Fresh 85s have about 85-100k hit points? Is that about right?

[Shodokan]

Fresh 85s have about 85-100k hit points? Is that about right?

85k in greens, 100k in blues

[Kruschpakx4]

my full green shaman has 67k hp, the druid had about 62k

with blues you'll have about 85-100k hp and may with epics 110k+

[outdrsyguy1]

I'm definitely liking the shaman for cata. The spiritwalkers grace (move while casting for 10 sec) is great and the burst is pretty awesome right now, i've definitely done 24k crits followed by 11k overloads. The overloads really seem to happen a lot and that unleash elements making your next fire spell 20% bigger, that and EM are downright nasty. I'm totally going to use the fire elemental with glyph. Having 5 fire elementals out in virtually every fight is going to be crazy.

Warlocks Burning Embers talent is stupid. Locks do pretty good dps (destro) but after I played with a target dummy and 48% of my damage was burning embers (i had 10k dps) which is an ability you have no control over, it's just a proc off your imp that does like 5k dps all on it's own. You could totally run 4 locks and have a 4 man hit squad of imps chasing people down while the locks do virtually nothing. ***apparently i just learned the spell is bugged op***

BM hunter pets are still pretty nasty too, even after the nerf. I was getting 11 to 12k dps on target dummy (all this is unenchanted, ungemmed, un professioned)

ret pallies are a total letdown. The holy power system sucks. It's terrible dps, very little burst but maybe once every 2 mins after some rampup. And it's very reactionary, i'm a sad panda because i really loved dk/pally team. If dk's could heal each other even a little i'd totally go to a 5 dk melee team and annhialate people.

lol, i just tested locks by sending my imp on a target dummy and leaving the lock afk. Imp does 1500 dps, burning embers dot from the imp does 5k dps, that's 6500 dps for doing nothing but hit attack on the pet. I can BARELY break 5k dps activly mashing keys like mad on the ret pally. let alone the 10k+ the lock can do.

[Altsoba]

This is a weird question, but I'd really like to test numbers with my toons on the Beta but... I cannot find lvl 80 training dummies in Orgrimmar....

I've asked often and people just don't reply.

Is there such thing? And where in orgri please?

Thanks a lot,
A.

[Boylston]

Altsoba-- Near hunter trainer/stable area.

[Boylston]

I'm in a little bit of a dilemma regarding trade skills. My shamans are currently Enchanting across the board, with one as an inscriptionist and the others engineering.

Engineering is obviously key for arena, but do you guys think it's ideal for BGs?

I'm reluctant to lose Enchanting on the shamans, simply because it's so handy to DE old gear or quest gear and generate mats.

What are your thoughts for best BG performance? Enchanting/Engineering... Enchanting/JC...?

[Mosg2]

I'm going for Alchemy. Being able to use potions and stuff in rated BG's means Alchemy has a lot of room to grow... Plus the mount they get is amazing :)

[Altsoba]

Altsoba-- Near hunter trainer/stable area.

Thank you so much mate :) That was quite an Epic quest for me ^^

[Altsoba]

I'm in a little bit of a dilemma regarding trade skills. My shamans are currently Enchanting across the board, with one as an inscriptionist and the others engineering.

Engineering is obviously key for arena, but do you guys think it's ideal for BGs?

I'm reluctant to lose Enchanting on the shamans, simply because it's so handy to DE old gear or quest gear and generate mats.

What are your thoughts for best BG performance? Enchanting/Engineering... Enchanting/JC...?

It's always hard, imo to drop one maxed out profession. I only did it once, where my shaman each dropped one for engineering (just because of Arena). I'd love Blizzard to give us "more reasons" to get engineering to be honest (in less burst needed situations like pve and bgs).

The only thing I'm doing is getting all my active lvl80 toons that don't have yet a profession to get alchemy but only for the new 1 day cd transmute. I'm a lazy farmer and multiboxing needs gold to startup :)