I know ench is the hot topic rn, but i want some opinions on elemental aswell. I like the current state tbh, should I worry?
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It kinda seems like elemental will play about the same, youâll just be getting fulmination stacks instead of getting maelstrom for earthshock.
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Iâm cautiously optimistic that theyâre going to make lavaburst hit hard again. Which would be fun.
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So far from what ive played on alpha Elemental plays very similar, like Raitoyagi said its about managing Fulmination stacks now. Cast times seem slow, but im hitting hard and the off healing is strong also.
Can you explain the fulmination stacks thing? My experience with shaman is entirely based in classic/vanilla and bfa, so I wasnt around during these other iterations of class mechanics.
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Fulmination has been in the game in some form for years now.
Right now itâs lava shock azerite trait.
Basically Earth Shock is reliant on a stacking buff (right now its flame shock ticks) to make it hit substantially harder, in SL it will be Lightning shield charges like in MoP which proc off (atm) Lightning bolt/overload hits at a 50% chance up to 8x for X modifier to Earth Shock.
Right now earth shock just gets pressed at 60 maelstrom and doesnât even hit hard unless you have the az trait lava shock which is a dps loss outside of funneling
Lightning Bolt and Lightning Bolt Overloads will have a 50% chance to grant you a stack of Fulmination, stacking up to 8.
Earth Shock (and Elemental Blast if talented) will consume all stacks of Fulmination to deal additional damage per stack. Lava Burst and Icefury Frost Shocks wonât generate any Fulmination stacks, but Lava Burst is seemingly getting a huge damage buff to compensate.
The systemâs fairly similar to Maelstrom, but youâll be able to use Earth Shock pretty much whenever you feel like as long as youâre not overcapping stacks.
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I loved elemental vanilla-cata but it has one major flaw, the developers have given up in progressing/evoling the spec. The âmaelstorm barâ introduction was really just fulmination stacks in a bar. I hate that Blizzard is basically just changing our UI from a bar to a buff with stacks AGAIN. This is not a change, you are again just changing what we are looking at while playing. Look at the aoe rotation, it has been the same for literally ten years (since cata when earthquak was introduced).
Most importantly to me elemental has lost nearly all of its mobility. You are supposed to spam shocks (that drop your dps so low your basically auto attacking) or go into ghost wolf (where you literally canât do anything) while other range classes are teleporting and dashing around? Does that class sound fun to play? Maybe in 2010.
Because it feels like Iâm playing a spec that was built in wraith of the lich king while playing shadowlands I will be rerolling. I donât expect Blizzard to fix anything, it just blows when you finally have hope for change and you find out its just another lazy poor decision.
Ele loses the methodical, reliable way of gaining resource (Maelstrom) for Earth Shock for the completely RNG way (Fulmination) of gaining resource for Earth Shock.
Lets say that Fulmination is better than maelstorm all around. Will that fix the lack deverse rotation choices from talent trees like every other dps spec has?
These maelstorm bar reverts just feel like Blizzard danging keys in our face to distract us of the fact Elemental isnât as well designed as the other damage specs.
I think if you are running a MoE, IF build , it will play the same . I think if you are running a SoP , BoE build , you may be seeing a difference .
Is Spirit Walkers grace back for Elemental ?
I watched an elemental streaming alpha. Aoe looked terrible. Takes 5 Chain Lightnings to make 1 insta cast EQ and EQ doesnât hit any harder than it did before or anything, nor does Chain Lightning. Lightning Bolt cast time nerfed, yikes, was painfully slow casting. ST he was pretty much just hitting Earth Shock every 2-3 globals with Surge of Power because he believed the Surge of Power bonuses (which you can get every other global now if you wanted because EQ has no cost) were more worthwhile than building up fulmination lol.
So yea⌠looks like it needs work and blizz put very little thought into talents like Surge of Power when doing these changes.
Yikes, from the sound of it this doesnt look promising. Might have to take my shaman full time enhancement or resto =/
If, as some posters are claiming, itâs basically the same as maelstrom but with a buff/debuff stack instead of a bar, thatâs going to accomplish nothing but making it harder to keep track of. Itâs bad enough I have to keep one eye on the corner of my screen to keep track of maelstrom 24/7, but tracking buffs/debuffs in the middle of combat is even more difficult, at least without addon training wheels.
On the flip side, if it does force us to rely entirely on RNG for fulmination stacks and our damage relies on that entirely⌠thatâs just poor design.
Also it seems to move away from the âintendedâ goal of making lava burst our primary source of damage (which, tbh, it already is due to igneous potential and lava surgeâŚ), with it being just a filler that doesnt gain or spend any resource. Sounds like this will actually take us away from lava burst machinegunning.
Yea I must say cast times indeed felt very long when I was playing. I didnât think it felt TOO BAD, but I could tell it was slower for sure.
I think itâs nice that SoP can be used smoothly now instead of waiting for a ramp up . And then we can also use FS to freeze someone in place in PvP after a ES.
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sky is falling overreaction ele at expac launch is always slightly clunky because the spec is hungry for all secondaries
As Dosao said, Surge of Power is going to feel a lot better not having to wait for maelstrom to spread flame, the forced overloads will give you more fulmination, the reduced fire ele will give you more fulmination/seismic with higher fire ele uptime etc
even unlimited power will prob feel better since haste will be important with our cast time increased and mastery being easy to stack when stats are low on low ilvl
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Just about sums up the thread.
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I feel like that is normal since you also have almost no haste. I tend not to look at numbers but pure mechanics like so and so is off the gcd.
Yâknow i run a SoP build right now on my shaman and I didnt even consider the implications of being able to cast earthshock whenever the heck I want⌠that is going to be a hugely beneficial change for my playstyle!
Maybe this wont be so bad afterall.
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