It’s a nerf, dosent matter if a other skill was buffed. It’s unnecessary to nerf LB when it was never a issue.
If it was a issue for pvp they should have nerfed it for that game mode like they have done to other classes.
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Alright yall are just choosing to ignore what I’m saying at this point. So good luck sticking to that mindset when it makes absolutely no sense in the context of what is being talked about.
I mean, it clearly does matter. 30% to ES is significant, and is the only reason that this isn’t a clear nerf to ST.
And it’s perfectly okay to feel that way, I’m just telling you this isn’t as doom-and-gloom as people are making it out to be. I don’t have the answer as to why it wasn’t a PvP-only change, if PvP was even the reason for changing it in the first place. Also, not to be grammar police and just for future reference, you’ll get some people mixed up as to whether you’re talking about lightning bolt or lava burst by calling it LB.
LB - lightning bolt
LvB - lava burst
The change was unnecessary. In beta they said that ele would be built around LvB and ES would be secondary. They are now going back on that. Longtime eles know that ES was always the second highest part of the burst. First it was LB into CL that was the highest, then in WotLK it was LB into instant LvB. Not until legion did this change to more ES centric.
It’s completely understandable why long time eles are not happy with this change. ES doesn’t overload, haste doesn’t effect it. Only crit benefits it and then crit becomes a wasted stat with what our kit is supposed to be based around, LvB. That’s blizzards words.
Mage and Boomies have the highest Burst in game atm. They also have the most control, the most mobility, and in the case of mage is also the tankiest. Comparing mage and Boomies to ele is spot on. Ele is nowhere near the participation in PvP as the other two specs. Why is ele being “fixed”, but the other two over performing classes are not? It’s a good question to ask.
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Currently in live ES hits are pathetic, for a skill thats a spender and have it hit less than a lava burst when it cost more than half our resource means something is wrong. The 35% buff to ES is what we should have had at the start period.
Once again the lava burst nerf is not needed as lava burst was never a issue in single target damage.
We all know this topic is about the lava burst nerf so if you got confused from me missing one letter on a topic thats clearly stated thats your issue.
In alpha/beta they said their vision of ele’s niche was funneling, which died instantly with the LS proc reduction and lowered duration of FS. LvB damage reduction further puts ele in the hole in regards to that type of damage.
ES is also unaffected by mastery, alongside LvB not being affected by crit. This is part of the reason mastery likely needs to be reworked, or interactions with stats brought to LvB / ES, I agree.
Sure, if you want to talk about representation numbers, AoE, etc… But in the context of ST damage, which people are forgetting is what is being talked about here, they aren’t miles ahead of elemental. Tuning these specs with clearly different damage profiles is not a 1:1 thing.
Can’t tell if this is an attempted flame, but I clearly knew what you were talking about. Again, that was for future reference.
The earliest burst combo was always elemental mastery Chain Lightning + Earth Shock due to the timing allowing both to crit from Elemental Mastery.
Earth Shock was one of the original big hitters.
Point being I should not ever have to think about changing classes to get something done in the game. I’m 220, timed everything on 14 and cant get into a 15 key right now. And I cant blame anyone but blizzard because they have allowed other classes to be broken.
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Ahhhh, now I see what you’re actually upset about. Elemental is only getting better in keys from this change, so your mindset is even more bizarre to me now. Expecting a sudden meta shift to drop fire and boomkin in keys and throw ele into the limelight is also just extremely unrealistic. You also don’t have to switch classes to get higher keys than 14 done. Issues with pugging are not unique to elemental. Switching classes doesn’t magically make you better as a player, no matter how much people would like to think so.
If every shaman was hardstuck at 14s you might have been on to something, but clearly there are elementals clearing keys way higher than 14. Form your own dedicated group, or find where you can improve as a player and join one. Don’t blame blizzard for your own shortcomings.
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I’m kinda irritated, but it’s my first season ever shaman and I’ve had a blast learning caster and moving up to the top of the ladder in PvP.
However, I agree with what is stated above. Earthshock was hot garbage on release till now as a build spender of 60 mael and buffing it only made sense, perhaps get rid of the maelstrom all together and put it on a CD to balance it.
Chain lightning/earthquake buffs also were necessary for us to be considered in mythic 15+ and higher keys as ele burst aoe was dumpster in comparison with other classes for multi pack aoe.
Nerfing lavaburst was bad though especially in pvp as our single target was still weak compared to other classes with a massive counter of dispelling flameshock, not to mention we have some of the worst defenses in the game as a caster.
Elemental is heavily susceptible to stuns plain and simple, our mobility is hot garbage, and astral is actually kinda trash in comparison with other abilities while also having to be predicted on hard swaps. Examples: Bear form feral regen is completely busted, disperse and greater fade immunities, mage self healing on cocoon level of shields while also having alter time (that makes no sense)??? the list goes on.
If we were top damage as a caster than I would of suggested nerfing LvB as right now that is around 40-60% of my damage in pvp (including LVB overloads) and a 10% nerf is at least 4% of my overall damage and even more of my burst window. Kinda lost on how we are being targeted in 9.0.5 on our best ability when so many classes hit harder through a single GCD (Condemn, Starsurge, Pyroblast, etc). These need to be targeted before LvB should even be considered getting a nerf.
I don’t think this change will break the class to be unplayable in a PvP setting, but I imagine alot of elementals are going to hang up the primordial cleave playstyle of haste and LvB and go back to the degenerate pray for a crit 1/10 times through echoshock earthshock elemental equilibrium. This will be full RNG and almost impossible to balance as some games you will have ES crits for 20k back to back on an earthshock with a MOE proc up and some games they do 16k total as neither crit.
There are going to be numerous videos coming up in 9.0.5 of Earthshock one tapping someone from full and its going to completely skew the perception of elemental because it will be even more RNG than the random divine tolls happening on live. MOE buff from a lvb proc, then Skyfury, on use trinket bloodfury echo earthshock EEL one shots.
7 Likes
I can’t speak to how it will actually play out, but EcS into LvB will still net you a higher return on average than EcS into ES, unless you have an absurd (like 80-90%+) amount of crit.
Hope you know MOE with EEL is 35% boost to Earthshock with a 30% damage modifier on top due to the new patch changes. It’s going to absolutely devastate someone if it crits 20-25k easily with on use and orc racial especially with skyfury up.
I’m also emphasizing it likely will hit this hard through defenses such as 33% versa. one out of every 10 times (Pure RNG)
I play all three classes. Ele is much worse. Telling me to get good is a non answer. You can take that garbage someplace else.
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You’re right. I was stating that on average, LvB is a better spell to use there. Unless of course, you want to pray for crits as you said.
Are you saying that elemental isn’t meta? I agree. But you can’t blame Blizzard for not doing things above 14 when other elemental shamans are clearly capable of doing so.
You casted LB first before doing all of that because LB had a travel time. So you would LB>EM+CL>ES. All that would hit at the same time, but ES was still under what CL hit for.
Not really. If you run the Fire Ele lego you have a significant amount of uptime on Flame shock as well as if you are necro. Yeah I know it sucks to think of it in these terms, but in reality, every spec has to think of it in these terms. ENH wouldnt be good without being Venthyr and running Doomwinds lego. Blizz is balancing around these systems, and have since Legion.
This was implied by me saying it doesnt overload. Maybe mastery can be reworked, but thats still no reason to move damage to ES. Because of a possible mastery rework that would only happen in the beta of a new xpac, lets move damage to ES now? Doesnt make sense.
I am talking about single target. What do you think Kyrian Boomie is, or Mage during Combust in a go, globaling someone 100-0. This is a regular occurance in PvP. Comparing them is spot on. In fact before the nerf goes live, you could make the argument that ELE single target burst is still worse than both mage and boomie. Boomie can also do it with two covenants.
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Yes, really. If the funneling aspect of elemental was still there, with high uptime FS and constant LvB procs - we’d be blowing everyone out of the water on fights like Council right now. We don’t have the same funneling punch as we did in BFA. The value of Skybreakers also drops with the LvB change, although people are speculating on SE-oriented builds with it.
This was less of me giving a reasoning for the change, and moreso just saying that I agree the interactions with those spells and our secondary stats are lackluster.
In this quote alone you go from talking about ST to burst damage. They are, in fact, two different things. This just goes back to me saying if we want to compare them in other ways than ST damage, sure. Is fire mage and boomkin burst damage higher than elementals because of CB/Convoke respectively? Absolutely. ST damage overall, they aren’t really anything that special in comparison to elemental, spriest, etc. Then you throw in factors like fight length, uptime, etc., etc…
It’s worth noting that you are talking about PvP, whereas I am talking about PvE. So while it may not completely carry over, the fact that no one is really miles ahead of ele is ST remains. PvP being built around stun/burst windows, I can see how it’s easy to assume that they aren’t great in that department.
I dont PvE so I wont speak on that aspect. BFA was the worst iteration of ELE shaman ever. All the damage was in shocks and none was in LvB or LB or CL (outside of stormkeeper of course). Thats not why people leveled and played ele, no one wants their top damage to be shocks.
Fair enough.
They are not two different things. Burst and sustained are sublayers of ST and sublayers of AoE. So when are talking about Single Target damage you are in fact talking about burst and sustained. In ideal class design you would have classes that are strong in sustained but weak in burst. Currently, both Boomie and Mage have weak sustained in comparison to say a WW (all 3 S-tier) but have the strongest burst in game. This is all under Single Target.
Everyone I have read in this thread is saying “why didnt they just make this a PvP change?” In reality, the change doesnt make sense for PvP either. Fire Mage and Boomie far out perform it there. Again I dont PvE, but there needed to be some PvP perspective on this. All in all, the change doesnt make sense.
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I think we’re both saying the same thing in different ways in regards to this. If the question of whether or not Fire and Balance are ahead in ST by miles in a PvE sense, it’s pretty much default that we are talking about damage over the course of an encounter, rather than just burst windows. The burst windows these specs have are strong - you can see that reflected in Sludgefist logs - but their overall sustain in ST especially while dealing with mechanics is not anything special in comparison to elemental.
But again, we’re talking about two different aspects of the game, so it’s easy to see this differently than I do.
2 Likes
go crit build. you should be able to get at least 17% crit atm instead of haste. and play ele/boomkin.
Boomkin Ele looks insanely boring right now personally. It def is one of the top comps for ele though no cap.
im just saying it wont be 1/10 itll be closer to 1/5. and yeah ES is goign to hit like a truck but Stormkeeper is still going to rock people too. so you have 4 lightning bolts + an es and all have ~20% chance to crit.
5 x 1/5 = ???
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