Until we know the base numbers, it’s 15% more spell power damage. But you also are getting stats out of it. Say you get 5% more mastery through EB your follow-on spells could surpass the damage overall from using only lava burst.
I say until we get numbers elemental blast might not be necessary for single target or it might be necessary because of min Max.
So either way you agree that it can be skipped for ST damage (at least until we get more info). Good.
Again you have something to break snares you have something to break roots you have earth grab, Frost shock, ice strike, cap totem, ghost wolf, call of elements to recast, lasso and static totmen (if still around) All of these are gap closers. You can take feral lunge for these very small niches, but that’s what most of us would call a dead talent. We already have so many options and you’re still forgetting. You also have teammates. My whole point was you were short talents and that is one right there. You can increase your damage or you can have another gap closer when we already have quite a few.
There is always a scenario where you can get something to work or be needed. But you have to think about how often that scenario can come up. Like say it’s one out of 25 battlegrounds or arena. You’re like Geez, that would have worked perfect. It’s a dead talent.
With Frost Shock and Ice Strike you can snare… but enemies can snare you as well. Your snare remover is 1 min CD, their snare can be spammable. If you pop Ghost Wolf to reduce them, you cannot attack in the process.
Earthgrab + Cap Totem combo is neat, but enemies can just use their root break and escape from the totem (as breaking it would recast it with Guardian’s Cudgel upgrade).
Call of Elements allows to reset that, but it is 3 min CD. Some classes also have multiple root breaks like Warriors with Avatar and Bladestorm.
Lasso is easily kickable by anyone who is not stunned.
SFT is easily breakable, especially since it pulls enemy right to itself, so both melee and ranged enemies can just use several attacks to break it.
And you are missing the point - with Spirit Walk, you have zero quick movement abilities. Be it necessity to quickly gap close or escape a dangerous mechanic, all mentioned above abilities are not enough and Feral Lunge fills the gap.
Everything with a shaman is RNG. So what’s the point? Should we not get any storm strike improvement because it is RNG? Actually most classes have a lot of RNG. Just how the game is being developed.
Not really - Enhancement’s only RNG elements are Windfury Weapon, Hot Hand and Stormbringer / Stormflurry (and maybe Doom Winds if they keep them as now). Everything else is CD juggling, resource building / spending (MSW stacks) and ability comboing (like FS - Lava Lash - Fire Nova).
Most fights still have adds. Maybe when the raid comes out it might be different. But if you’re talking about mythic Plus or battlegrounds, it’s still going to be a top tier talent where you can get the most haste out of it, which is a massive single target damage increase.
What if I am talking about raids and arenas? There it would hit mostly 1-2, rarely 3 targets and will be much less useful. And at least you do not disagree that its value in ST situations is less, so by transition you might agree that it should belong to AoE / cleave branch.
I’m comparing PW with Doomwinds. I can have three DW buffed by three PW. That has more synergy.
Compared to a DW with one ascendance.
But in all actuality you would want to have PW with DW with ascendance.
And you can still take it. If your whole argument is based on inability to take all 3 if Ascendance and PW are swapped, you might not worry - after that all 3 will be still accessible with the same prerequisite talents as now. The only things that change are left-side + Feral Spirits upgrades / right-side + Feral Spirits upgrades builds - they become more themed and specialized and that is good, as they will have their niche and be more competitive with the mentioned build.
The tree if you think of it as a pyramid. From your first talent you unlock it starts going down the sides which are your two main attacks. They have to buff those attacks to make it interesting. That is why people see lava lash going down the right side and you’re calling it fire. But it’s a simple playstyle that you’re going to pick as you’re going down. They even have a nature damage increase on that side. Then all of a sudden people see ice strikes. Now it’s fire and ice. People are making it up in their head rather than seeing it is a playstyle. I can build a single target build going down the right side but I would have to stop early on. I would just pick up the 350% increase the lava lash and stop there.
It’s to make optimal builds and you have to think outside of the box. Just because I’m saying one side is mostly single target doesn’t mean there’s not going to be still some damage increase that you need on the right side.
Just because some players say these trees are themed doesn’t make it true.
What are you going to do when frost mage comes out? If one side has two fire spells out of 15 places it’s going to be the fire side? They are building play styles off of talent choices. That is way more clear than themes is all I am saying.
You are both right and wrong here. You are right that tree is a pyramid. You are wrong that abilities are not themed in the branches. Left branch is mostly a ST damage branch with AoE talents closer to the middle. Right branch is mostly a cleave branch that contains Lava Lash talents, Flame Shock talents and Frost Shock talents. Most of them have cleave capabilities (like LL spreading Flame Shock, Hailstorm, Ice Strike buffing Hailstorm Frost Shock etc). There are almost exclusively Fire and Ice talents, so it is a Fire / Ice branch. Stormflurry is off there both from the damage situation perspective (as it buffs mainly ST damage ability) and from the element perspective. Elemental Weapons buffing Nature damage as well is not a big disparity - it still buffs Fire and Frost damage related to the branch and you still always have baseline Lightning Bolt that is buffed by this passive.
Just because some players say these trees are not themed does not make it true.
And I highly doubt that Frost Mage talent tree would have Fire talents. How many Fire talents does it currently contain?
This does both. But when you use it with DW, it is a single target increase. It uses the charge and you don’t have a chance for that charge not to be used where you can reuse it again constantly cleaving with lightning bolt. So it’s a 45 second cleave and a 45 second single target increase with DW. So it does both. More haste, more procs for ST.
This is a wrong approach. For single-target situations, you need to compare benefits for ST damage between both abilities:
- Ascendance makes your ST damage mostly ranged and decently buffs it via Stormstrike spam every 2 GCDs, especially since it generates and spends MSW on a single-target ability by itself with the last upgrade.
- PW provides 6% Haste for 12 seconds and 1 empowered Lightning Bolt.
First ability provides much bigger ST damage increase. Yes, it has 3 min CD compared to 45s CD PW, but in a burst damage need case it would win by a lot. PW would be more beneficial in AoE situations where you could hit more enemies with empowered Lightning Bolt and get more Haste. So, as left branch is mostly ST damage, Ascendance belongs to it and would also fit the elemental theme of it. Right branch is mostly cleave damage, so PW belongs to it and would also arguably fit the elemental theme of it.
Yes it does. More haste more procs lol. I don’t know how to describe this to you. Haste is going to be our number one stat. The more haste you have, the more proc you have, the more damage you have.
PW used with DW is a DPS increase because you will have more proc. Using it with ascendance disc just allows you to be at range and use it which you will always want to avoid. Because now you’re taking away any lava lash abilities.
Haste gives more WF procs, but Ascendance does as well - you use more skills and these skills proc WF, plus you do not need to waste GCDs on MSW stacks, as they are spent passively → you use more elemental attack skills and proc more WF.
I start to feel that you did not play Ascendance enough. It is used not only for ranged damage, but also for initial burst damage and almost spammable Stormstrike. You need to get into melee range to hit the enemy with initial blast. If you stay at melee range and weave in other elemental hits between Stormstrikes, you can have up to 15s of ability only usage and each of them could proc WF, where without Ascendance you would quickly run out of them because of 7.5+s CD and be left with autoattacks to proc it.
Yes and no. If you were hitting someone for 50k with hot hands. It’s not doing a percent of that damage. It is doing the same percent even without hot hands. It is a percent of your attack power. It’s the same thing with storm strike.
I mean you keep avoiding the fact that the haste increase is a single target increase from PW. You’re focusing on the cleave from the lightning bolt every 45 seconds. Now you’re calling it AOE damage.
Then I could say ascendants is a AOE damage because when you transform you do AOE damage. It’s it’s like a bonus. Even right now on retail you are told to pick PW because if you don’t it is a single target decrease and this is going for mythic Plus. All of that haste is a increase to your single target damage.
You are missing the point. When Hot Hand procs, it makes Lava Lash almost spammable. So, if you use Crash Lightning, you can almost spam LL or rotate it with SS to provide decent amount of cleave damage from CL buff, that was the idea.
I am not just calling PW LB a cleave attack. I am calling it a cleave ability that is mostly useful in AoE situation because it is so - its Lightning Bolt upgrade is a cleave attack and its Haste bonus is based on number of targets hit by this LB. Yes, it can have some value for ST situations, but this value compared to properly executed Ascendance is negligible.
Ascendance AoE attack is a bonus. If it had also provided a stat bonus based on number of targets hit, then I could consider it a cleave ability. As it does not, it is still a mainly ST damage ability with a bonus.
Honestly they don’t need to be swapped. I already built a few different type of single target builds and I have zero issues getting all of ascendance.
The idea you have in your head can be drastically different than what the developers came up with. Unless you were in that meeting, you do not know how they were designing the trees.
If you have to make a sub par build to complain I can’t get these talents, that’s on the player. You chose other talents that weren’t needed and the return is you’re going to do less damage. You could have your gap closer or you can do more damage.
They do need to be swapped to make left-side branch + FS upgrades and right-side branch + FS upgrades builds more specialized and competitive, leading to more build variety. The mentioned build was just an example of build that could be more complete with them being swapped, but is not now.
And you can get gap closer and decent damage attached. As Enhancement is a melee spec, downtime from the enemy is lost damage. Min-maxing is good, but you do need to take practical implications into account.
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