Ele right one of the most fun classes to play; however, it is the one most limited by our design and how we scale.
This post is going to specifically target Raid single target dmg and how we scale with gear. The conduit and scaling situations is something that really has to change in any way they prefer; however, my suggestion to bring up a viable ST spec should not influence PvP or M+ specs at all. Don’t suggest wasting your time reading if you don’t care about Ele mythic raid single target performance :).
First of all, we are great in AoE, specially with the Earthquake legendary, don’t need to touch this, nerf us a little bit if you want in exchange for single target and long term fixes.
The main problem right now is our lack of scaling, and how we are going to be left behind by every class, and will keep happening every time. There are two reasons for this:
Conduits and soulbinds: All our conduits are complete trash. Getting a 190 Call of flame, pyroclastic, essential extraction is pretty much the same dps (within error) of a 252. We have been calling this since Beta. You don’t have to be a genius to know that increasing 10% the duration of Fire ele does nothing over the baseline conduit, neither does upgrading any of our other conduits.
If our conduits were actually good dps upgrade, then maybe not getting an upgrade would be “alright”, although bad design. The issue is that our conduits are one of the lowest ranked dps upgrade conduits, and none of them gain dps upon upgrading. RNG is RNG, 30% to 35% upgrade on reset chance on a conduit is basically unnoticeable. A good Rng pull with 30% can outdps a regular 35% pull, this is why conduits should add some sort of static dmg or buff so upgrades are noticeable and influential.
The second issue we have is our scaling and CDs. We have no predominant secondary stat because we don’t have a CD to influence this. Most classes gain significant more value from gear upgrades, specially trinkets based on how well they scale with their CDs and design. Some classes have trinkets that potentially sim 400-600 higher than Ele BiS highest ilvl trinket.
Here is an example both chars that started around 7k sim dps this tier.
Comparing an arcane mage guildie stat weights 235 ilvl : 8.4 k dps - 4.22 int - 1.92 crit, 1.84 vers, 1.68 mastery 1.66 haste.
to my ele sham ST 234 ilvl: 7.3k dps - 3.67 int - 1.6 haste, 1.5 vers, 1.5 crit, 1.1 mastery.
Other classes have similar situation, Venthyr boomy similar Ilvl sim up to 8k or higher if they get a cube. Frost mage and Spriest Demonology all up to 8k+ too. Destro and Hunter is still higher than Ele.
Stat weights are not 100% accurate, and can drastically change based on spec, set bonus, among other things; however, it paints the picture of the problem. This is obviously an issue, i do not want to wait for every other class to get nerfed cus they screwed their design too strong, i would much rather have us a little closer in ST and let other classes have fun too.
Movement is also not a factor most of the time. While we favor a little bit better with movement than couple specs, some of those specs heavily favor cleave or spread cleave that we don’t. So no, icefury tickles and Spiritwalker every 2 mins for 15 seconds is not an argument for the dps difference in a raid fight. At a high lvl, regular mechanics like soaks and movement patterns don’t influence dps that much from one class to another. You need to balance around the potential of a high level player, and let the newer player learn/adapt to its class potential.
Remnant of Nerzhul is a good example for this. Heavy movement ST fight, with very small cleave. We are going to be dead last in that fight. If the myth behind Ele movement and easy rotation makes up the difference on dps, then we would be higher. The nine, the same. A lot of movement, but some stacked cleave = will be the worst at that too.
Warcraftlogs is also a trap on AoE for people who don’t objectively look at statistics. With 4 AoE fights incredibly padding Ele shaman burst AoE numbers hiding our extremely poor performance where it matters in every other aspects of the raid. Our AoE spec is really good, for stacked AoE, and that is fine.
Solutions:
Like i said, this is about our lack of scaling, we need something that is going to be a fix for incoming patches, so we don’t have to go through this all over again. The one good thing about our design is that we can touch our ST to be competitive, and influence nothing about our AoE.
Conduits:
Call of flame: increase the dmg of fire ele by small %. This is the most obvious and logical thing to do. give each level a 0.5-1% upgrade, suddenly it scales with something, and helping our not so great only CD
Pyroclastic shock: same deal, very small % increase, or maybe make it leave a Dot on target for static dmg increasing each rank so it does something different.
Essential extraction: Each tick of Fae increase the dmg of the next tick by x%
Lightning bolt conduit: Redesign, make each consecutive lightning bolt increase the dmg of lightning bolt by x% for 3-4 seconds. Exclusively to make it viable with Storm Ele Lbolt spam to increase the value of storm ele in ST whe necessary, such as bosses in M+. This one is not viable in any way already, might as well make it viable under the 1 condition.
necrotic wave conduit: it should really just have a higher % increase per level, fine otherwise.
Fix the spell power scaling or find a way to make our kit scale better somehow. There have been thousand of suggestions in forums, specially BETA forums about how to fix this, and some of our design problems. I don’t care what you do as long as it is fixed.
Our gameplay is pretty good and fun. Small design chances can make us the most enjoyable class to play while also more viable/competitive each tier, but our design keeps limiting us.
My best idea on how to curently balance our ST to be competitive in raid without making us broken, or touching our AoE would be to buff Ascendance. this make sense in every possible way with our current design. SK being best ST while being mile ahead in AoE makes our other 2 last tier talents completely useless. Lava beam has never been addressed as an important part of Ascendance, so it is basically just a ST 3 min CD that does less dmg than the AoE talent competition. makes 0 sense.
With Stormkeeper our current ST is very low, but respectable (not useless), 1 Min small burst help make us consistent on burst adds such as spike balls on Painsmith, and the Aoe capabilities are insane. Ascendance should be buffed to make us a ST spec when using it. Losing SK already kills most of our burst AoE, maelstrom generation, and you would never pair Echoes legendary without SK.
Any time you pick Ascendance > SK, our Aoe goes from insane, to decent, but very slow. This is a tradeoff i would be willing to make based on boss design. on a fight like Painsmith, for example, it would be a choice: We need Ball + AoE Add burst then play SK. We need Boss dmg with 3 min CDs due to intermission then play Ascendance.
Make Ascendance really really good, idk how. double the crit % value, give us a % dmg increase overall while using it or % increase with each LvB that hits (gain some value from mastery maybe), i don’t care how. Make me pick Ascendance and make my potential ST Sim go 300-500 higher in exchange to losing pretty much all our AoE burst, giving us nothing cleave wise, basically turning us into single target turret dps.
Stormkeeper is THAT good in AoE that i think it being significantly behind in ST like we are right now is perfectly fair and balanced, as long as Ascendance is significantly higher in ST to compete in ST when we need it.
That would be my change. People will still prefer SK in most boss profiles and outside raid content, but its a compromise. I do not want to be insane on all categories, i just want to not be dead last on the most important one. ST is always better than AoE, Burst is always better than sustain dps if both sim the same, these are just facts of raiding and we lack both. A boss ALWAYS has to die, every fight has single target in one way or another, not every fight has AoE. Being OP in stacked AoE and not viable ST makes you basically not great for 90% of the raid encounters/situations.
I think its fair. I would definitely pick ascendance for a substantial ST buff that would help us be competitive on pure ST fights while losing most our AoE, and then have SK whenever i want to AoE.
If you just buff us overall to be ST competitive, and SK still is best ST spec then is basically asking you to make us broken and OP on every aspect of the game, all the time, which is not fair for other classes, specifically M+. I do not think it would be much of an issue in Raiding since cleave and spread cleave is still a weakness.
This would potentially not be influential on M+ or PvP. Ascendance is not attractive choice in PvP, it is definitely not attractive in M+ even on Tyranical compared to Stormkeeper due to trash.
So if ST right now we are 1-1.2k behind. Conduit and stat scaling issue should add up 500-600 dps just by making conduits a little relevant and our stats similar to other specs. Now add Ascendance as the ST alternative for extra 300-500dps, and we catch up ONLY on ST with ascendance. Of course conduits and stats would influence other parts of the game, so a small nerf to EQ and CL to tune them down to current dmg would be expected. This would be a slight buff to SK ST for whoever doesn’t like ascendance, Alternative to play a definitely stronger ST spec without the AoE option with Ascendance, AoE remains untouched while making conduits useful.
TL:DR
We NEED a conduit slight redesign, so upgrades are ACTUALLY upgrades. We also need slight redesign of how we scale so we are not always falling behind every new tier when gear comes due to other classes scaling better due to their CDs, and having much more useful trinkets. We should make Ascendance viable and, in my opinion, make it the go to Single Target Alternative. Losing most of our SK AoE to have the option of a potentially 6-8% stronger ST CD build.
Conduit and stats would definitely benefit all content, which should be followed by slight EQ nerf, maybe Chain lightning cus of SK possibly to balance out with better scaling/conduits since our AoE is already good and should not get buffed and remain the same.
Ascendance buff to be our go to turret ST spec to be competitive with other ST specs specially during raid. It would most likely not shake the PvP meta, or the M+ profile even on tyranical because SK is still strong.
