Shaman Changes in 5.1. FINALLY!!!

[valkry]

This is one problem. Ele and Enh shaman are (somewhat) competitive in PVE. Ascendance is a massive burst window putting you up to 100k dps during it and overall they perform pretty well (but aren't #1). The kinda buffs shaman need to see in PVP as hard casters to put them up to par with other classes would require nearly Doubling the damage of all of their spells. How would they implement that? "LvB damage increased by 33%", "Ele blast damage increased by 44%", and then..... "Ascendance now reduces damage of LvB by 25% against PVP targets" to keep it in line. If you could get the kind of crits (4x lvb = dead) with lavaburst in MoP, ascendance would need a change because if you aren't CC'd you could wipe an entire team in less than 15 seconds.

That and if you buff chain lightning, it buffs lava beam, and with stormlash during ascendance you could wipe god knows how many people with ele mastery or echo of the elements. I can imagine going to docks in IOC with ascendance+stormlash, bloodlust and em or echo and annihilating 20 people.

I could imagine that too, but then I'd get charged/shockwaved followed by smokebombed/solar beam and raped

[remanz]

so sustain is low, but burst is great for shamans? or not great. If Pally BOP the elemental shaman, can it kill someone with ascendance.

Sustain is low is true with pretty much all classes except maybe shadow priest. The warrior 200k crit heroic strike is with 5 stack of Taste For Blood + poping skull banner + reckenlessness. Its not something they can just use right off the bat. When I sit at the dummy, I get maybe 5 stack of Taste For blood in every 5-10mins with continuous attacking. In PVP if you CC/root the warrior, the stacks will fall off. 5 stack is OP right now. I crit the dummy for 600k (probably 200- 250k on player) with all CDs + 5 stack. So they are looking to nerf to stacking it no more than 3.

Only chaos bolt can crit 200k plus without any built up I think. But that's a 3 second cast. It wouldn't be right to let shaman throw instant lava burst to crit for 200k.

[heyaz]

I could imagine that too, but then I'd get charged/shockwaved followed by smokebombed/solar beam and raped

lol, yep.

Ascendance needs CC protection and I think the most appropriate would be stuns and/or disorients. As much as I'd love to be super OP, I don't think ascendance needs immunity to all CC - that would be too much. Silence can be dealt with through a trinket as it's usually a one-off, or at the very least make SWG have 5-6 sec silence immunity BASELINE instead of a 4 piece resto set bonus. It makes sense to me because it wouldn't be built into ascendance making it god mode, you would have to use a Second cooldown to get that protection.

[heyaz]

so sustain is low, but burst is great for shamans? or not great. If Pally BOP the elemental shaman, can it kill someone with ascendance.

Sustain is low is true with pretty much all classes except maybe shadow priest. The warrior 200k crit heroic strike is with 5 stack of Taste For Blood + poping skull banner + reckenlessness. Its not something they can just use right off the bat. When I sit at the dummy, I get maybe 5 stack of Taste For blood in every 5-10mins with continuous attacking. In PVP if you CC/root the warrior, the stacks will fall off. 5 stack is OP right now. I crit the dummy for 600k (probably 200- 250k on player) with all CDs + 5 stack. So they are looking to nerf to stacking it no more than 3.

Only chaos bolt can crit 200k plus without any built up I think. But that's a 3 second cast. It wouldn't be right to let shaman throw instant lava burst to crit for 200k.

Burst is low for shaman in pvp all around. Ascendance burst is due to launching 500 30k lava burst really fast, not because lava burst hits any harder than a wet noodle.

Yes, the massive warrior crits are using cooldowns, but if shaman blow all cooldowns, no numbers like that are even remotely imaginable especially against classes with magic protection. With a massive amount of PVP power and trinket and jade spirit (or whatever it's called), you can Maybe get a 140k fulimination, but this even close to an on-demand ability. It's pure luck with your 8% crit as a ele shaman and waiting for a full stack.

It would be right however I think to let shaman throw a lava burst for 50-75k whether instant or not. Shadow priests pop you will 70-100k instants all day long. The problem with a hard hitting lava burst is ascendance would be too powerful.... but that being said, is it really more powerful than warrior burst cooldowns, shadow priest wings, mages with cooldowns, or anything else? They still 3 shot you anyway... with a 75k lava burst as a single shaman you still have to connect about 6 of them and the only way to do that is every 3 minutes through ascendance.

[Nikita]

Haha, did a few tests on lvl 60 dummy, with all procs I had 27 k spellpower, and my Elemental blast hits for 80-100 k non critt, and Lava burst hits for 90 k critt. Gotta love the "burst". Thou if all 4 shamans toss out Elemental blast + ES you can kill a prepurged target. The really BIG issue for ele shamans is the AOE CC in 5v5, every time i pop ascendence I get locked down the whole duration.

Did 2s yesterday with a resto druid, met holy warrior and holy paladin. Got the warr in a hex, then went to town on the paladin. Warrior got dispelled, and locked me down for 15 sec straight. Even thou I had good distance to him. Intervene, heroic leap, charge x 2, gag, and that aoe stun shit = GG. Had to wait 3 min for new CDs, then I killed the paladin.

I really dont like the way this game is going. Do 3s and meet lock, spriest, resto shaman. You'll be feared most of the fight, even if you CC lock, there will be tons of fears from the priest. Go meet KFC, you will be forced to pop defensives regardless of skills from the warrior and hunter.

As a ele shaman, you need to play like a god to reach 2200. And your teammates need to be damn good aswell when it comes to peels.

Once patch 5.1 arrives, I'll do a serious push for ratings, hoping that some of the nerfs will help out. + all the extra conquest gear I have then.

[zenga]

If you are curious about the unmitigated numbers ele shamans can pull during cooldowns, feel free to check this VoD of my 1st hc gara'jal kill, about 3 weeks ago. It's for the most part a tank and spank fight, and it's prepot/skull banner/blood lust/... right at the start. I don't use unleash lightning glyph and run with elemental blast/echo. The vid is uploaded from my stream, hence why it's not really fraps quality.

[Lyonheart]

If you are curious about the unmitigated numbers ele shamans can pull during cooldowns, feel free to check this VoD of my 1st hc gara'jal kill, about 3 weeks ago. It's for the most part a tank and spank fight, and it's prepot/skull banner/blood lust/... right at the start. I don't use unleash lightning glyph and run with elemental blast/echo. The vid is uploaded from my stream, hence why it's not really fraps quality.

HACKS!!> PRIVATE SERVER!! NO WAY!!!! Ele sham #1? huh uhh!.... JK!! Well that's inspiring! thx for that!


What was that cooldown mod you were using?

[zenga]

HACKS!!> PRIVATE SERVER!! NO WAY!!!! Ele sham #1? huh uhh!.... JK!! Well that's inspiring! thx for that!


What was that cooldown mod you were using?

That's weakauras (an improved version of powerauras), where you basically create your own trackers with.

Well don't look at the #1 position as that fight has a 'parallel realm' mechanic and the combat log isn't very accurate there, we are all within a very small margin of each other usually (unless a fight offers a mechanic where certain classes profit more than others such as cleave, multidot ...). I linked the vid to show the big numbers during ascendance (300k+ lvb crits) with cd's up. I've better gear now and I've seen a single lava burst hitting for over 600k damage (echo +overload during skull banner, with close to 48k spell power). Think I wrote it in another thread recently, but when you are judging the lava burst damage (same with elemental blast), you really have to factor in the overload damage as well i.e if your lvb hits for 100k, with 40% mastery that hits for 75% of the initial damage, then your average lvb hit is 130k instead of 100k cause [100+[(40*75)/100].

Currently PVE is very well balanced, ele tends to be a little bit lower in overall ranks but it's still within a very small % range that player skill and rng can make up for it (raidbots.com). The problem tmho with ele in the overall picture is that it's a spec that is fairly easy to play but so hard to master: if you play just the normal way then you'll do ok damage, but it takes a lot of micromanagement to do top damage and it's easy to screw up as well. I still don't really know if ele scales well or not, one day I think yes but the other day I think no, I still expect a small lightning bolt dmg buff though for the next patch.

And the same is kinda true for pvp: I've seen a few ele shamans doing absolutely crazy stuff in 3v3 this round. But for the average player it's simply not possible (I like to think of it like the hunters back in the day: there were so many bad hunters, but in the hands of a top player it was a crazy spec). I'm not sure if what a top player can do with a spec should be the measurement to define if a spec is viable in 3s or not though.

[heyaz]

Haha, did a few tests on lvl 60 dummy, with all procs I had 27 k spellpower, and my Elemental blast hits for 80-100 k non critt, and Lava burst hits for 90 k critt. Gotta love the "burst".

Make yourself a level 1 target dummy. Go duel them and see what your spells hit for.
This is equivalent to a 90 without pvp resilience.

[Kruschpakx4]

Earthquake sound effect is now quieter.

YAAAAAAAAY