Big stream of conscious post inc.
Playing Enhance (mainly Elementalist) throughout DF has really shown me one thing…we scale like crap. Mastery and Haste are cool and all going through Season 1 and Season 2 but really issue started to come up IMO in Season 3 and even more so in Season 4. Now that we’re at the point where we are DRing so heavily on Mastery and Haste that we start needing to start gearing for Crit and Vers, the impact of gearing has felt so much less substantial these last 2 seasons. Playing in Season 3 and 4 I feel like I’m raiding savage again in FF14 where my damage output on a fight is literally down crit RNG. Pushing a bit higher in keys than I normally do during season 3 I found myself needing to gear really heavily for vers to survive (because blizzard hates the idea of us having defensives) but feeling god awful losing out on other stats, especially when it came to losing out on haste. I feel like this is a tiny contributor as to why we tend to fall behind over the course of a Season and a small reason as to why we are struggling now in Season 4.
It also bugged me in season 3 that two of the cool melee trinkets scaled with secondaries we don’t have strong interactions with, Augury (Crit) and Brand (Vers) though the later was still good for us. Other trinkets like Grief Torch and Bomb Dispenser come to mind as well.
I had some initial excitement when I saw the Totemic Coordination choice node having some minor scaling with crit (then despaired when I saw the rest of the tree). I’d just like something extra with other secondaries. Maybe something simple like your melee crits have a small chance to generate a stack of MSW or Vers increases the proc chance of Stormbringer/Hot Hands by a tiny amount. Just something to make having those stats not feel so awful.
Obviously this is on the very bottom of changes given we have a whole laundry list of things that need implemented, but I’ve been thinking about this recently and wanted to get yalls thoughts.
Given the overall design goals of enhancement it would make a lot of sense for us to scale extremely well with versatility. If we’re gonna be squishy and rely on healing why not make us want the stat that caters to that design? Makes sense to me.
Scaling wise though, I don’t think enhancement’s problem is how we scale with secondaries. We are crit neutral (meaning we don’t having anything making us want more of it or less of it) and we scale the same as everybody else with versatility.
I think the problem is that we don’t scale very well with weapon damage. So much of our damage comes from spells that our weapon strikes are a tiny part of our damage. A builder/spender should favor the spender in damage, but I think the difference is too large.
If they would shift some of our damage back into builders (which are mostly weapon strikes) and out of our spenders (which are spells) that would cause us to scale better with weapon damage and scale better overall.
I suppose saying we have scaling issues is the right way to put it which is on me. It’s not that bad. However IMO I would say that other classes/specs scale better than us.
I’d be open to having an additional option to scale with vers. When I decided to push keys higher than I normally (23-25 range) I ended up stacking a lot of vers to increase success in pugs and it felt awful at times despite having a bit more survivability due to losing out in most cases either crit or haste. Versus this Season I don’t feel as bad deciding to use a vers pot or vers gems for keys because not only is it a damage increase and better tankiness, but it does provide another minor benefit in maintaining uptime on Blue Silkenling Uptime which is a damage increase. Small things like being added I think would go a long way towards the flavor of the class.
Again this a big late night shower thought cook.
Those usually lead to the best conversations. I agree with you that enhance doesn’t scale well once we hit mastery DR, but I don’t think its necessarily about secondaries. I absolutely believe that it comes down to us not scaling well with weapon damage.
Take a look at some of your logs and see what percentage of your damage is auto attack, LL, IS, and Storm strike- the rest doesn’t benefit from weapon damage.
Nevermind, I did it for you. On your mythic Kazzara kill where you parsed a 99% for your item level (awesome job btw) your weapon strikes accounted for 26.8% of your damage. This means that roughly three quarters of your damage gains nothing from a weapon upgrade except for the tiny amount of increased stats.
This is why caster weapons have so much more stats on them than melee weapons- they don’t benefit from weapon damage and the devs wanted to make sure casters get good returns from a weapon upgrade. Enhancement is in this weird limbo where we want melee weapons while basically being casters that stand in melee range.
I’m convinced this is the problem we are feeling. That and target caps in a big pull meta, but that is a different conversation.
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Doesn’t our whole damage profile scale off our MH weapon though? I believe this the formula for our spell power:
1.01 * (agility + 6 * weapon_dps)
So offhand weapon doesn’t matter for anything that isn’t auto attack, flametongue weapon, and lava lash? Even more reason to despise having to dual wield. lol
I do not know, but swapping weapons around myself I could not see a noticeable change in the damage of my spells.
So because I was asking for clarification (since I thought the formula for SP was including both weapons, and the previous post indicated otherwise) and I indicated a preference, this was the reply?
I’m sorry you don’t want to add anything meaningful to the discussion. Thank you for replying anyway, I suppose.
Unless it’s specifically specified in an ability, pretty much your abilities scale off your main hand which is the case for us (our off-hand will still impact it due to stats). For classes that can use two weapon types (DW vs 2hand) they have separate formulas to calculate the damage.
For example here’s Obliterate for Frost DK:
A brutal attack [that deals [(99.36% of Attack power) * 1] Physical damage.][with both weapons that deals a total of [((67.1242% of Attack power) + (67.1242% of Attack power)) * 1] Physical damage.
Meanwhile, Rising Sun Kick for WW Monk looks like this:
Kick with a blast of Chi energy, dealing [(84.7% of Attack power) * [(Attack power * 0.98)][((Attack power + Offhand attack power) * 2 / 3)] – 2H, DW / Attack power] Physical damage.
This is one aspect as to why people might be against 2hand getting added in for Enhance because of these weird aspects related to damage calculations, in addition to other reasons. Our stuff is pretty clean-cut as it is now with us still having a lot of benefit being a DW spec because how we interact with our auto attacks.
This is in line with my previous understanding (such as with Stormstrike), but that furthers the issue. This information should be presented better in-game for players, without outside assistance. We have all those things tied to dual wield because that has been the design, which is why bringing two-handed weapons back would take work (and why we have not gotten it). No one should realistically believe “just enable two-handers” is the route to go.
I am happy for people who enjoy dual wield, but having to upgrade only one weapon and have that full impact is much cleaner to me.
Thank you for the clarification and a meaningful contribution!
For sure, but I’d argue at this point the choice we’re at is either to have all the devs spend their time to get it to work OR take what we have now and refine it. I would argue the latter would be the most beneficial + a transmog option.
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Is that why we’re all upset though? We’ve never had a choice and that’s why we’ve landed where we are. The “well this is what we have so lets try to refine and build on it” is an appropriate response, but year after year and expansion after expansion the bones of the spec (and arguably the class as a whole) are starting to crack because the foundation is terrible.
A prime example is the removal of baseline spells from specializations. Now our active abilities and spells from rotations come from the talent tree - instead of the talent tree augmenting and improving our baseline spells. Why is it even a “choice” to “spec” into Windfury, which is one of - if not THE - defining spells for Enhancement. Why is that not baseline, flametongue is? I am in the beta, and I will tell you that when they bugged the tree and covered up Windfury it prompted me to test the spec without it.
That had to be the worst feeling gameplay I’ve ever had. It’s polarizing. Talent trees were meant to be passives to augment gameplay with maybe a 1-2 “cool abilities” you could go for if it sounded like it would enrich your rotation. Now we HAVE to spec one way or the other.
This “we only have X amount of time” has been the recurring issue for very long time, and I believe that is the core of why people are mad. We have never gotten true feedback and a genuine, open conversation about the state of our class and where we as a community would like to see it go. We’ve always been handed something, and told “well this is what we had time for.”
That’s the problem. Not “at this point” but the problem that never went away.
I’ve felt from the moment they revealed the talent trees that they were a waste of time. Sure, a talent system revamp was more than welcome, the old one had its problems as well. A big part of that problem is that a lot of the time Blizzard never bothered to adjust underperforming/noncompetitive talent options and the new trees aren’t any different. This is what little I didn’t love about the SL and Legion legendary systems; they didn’t balance the underperforming options.
Most of the tree is just buying back parts of what was the baseline kit for the spec and the rest is some old spells/effects that are massively nerfed (Doom Winds) or propped-up by over bloated effects (DRE/Thorims).
Ideally, I’d love to see a solid base kit with a toybox approach to talents to buff the parts of the kit that appeals to you that would allow for more playstyles over time. Obviously there would always be a meta build but as you add to each class’s/spec’s toybox it becomes less set in stone what is the best in any particular situation. Obviously, this type of thing is very unlikely to happen as they just did a talent revamp and we may not ever see another one.
I want more player choice when it comes to customizing gameplay. This is probably the biggest reason I want 2h to come back, I want choice of weapon type to matter. I want using an axe to be different than using a mace rather than them being entirely cosmetic stat sticks. I’m not optimistic about the actual odds of anything even remotely close to this ever being considered by anyone within 100 miles of a Blizzard office, but I believe it would be a step in the right direction in making each individual peace of gear in the game a little more special.
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Explain to me how implementing 2-hand enhancement is easier than just focusing on issues related to hero talents and spec/class trees. There are a massive amount of implications related to either adding in 2hand alongside DW or just completely swapping Enhance to being a 2-hander class. Implications that affect the damage output of abilities, proc rates, resource generation, and our whole damage profile not to mention loot acquisition issues for M+ and the Great Vault. If they can address all those issues adequately then fine but do you have confidence they are they are going to do that in 3 months? They’re not. What will happen is what happened to Frost DK in alpha and beta for SL where they spent 2 months pretty much just nerfing 2 hand Night Fae Obliteration and failed to address other longstanding issues to the spec because of the time spent. They then spent pretty much all of SL and part of DF getting 2-hand Obliteration and DW BoS to hold some level of parody and defined niches for each build and are just now addressing issues related to BoS which people have been asking to be looked at alongside other issues the spec had.
I’m not saying just leave everything as is and tune numbers, but suggesting MASSIVE changes like that is not the route to go.
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Cease fire. Please re-read what I said.
I did not say it would be easier or that it is feasible at this point. It’s not, I have no delusion of that. I was say that we’ve had to say that same phrase - “well this is what we have to work with” - every single expansion, and that is what is the core cause of everyone’s frustration. We are constantly forced into making do with what we’re given, and even then our feedback does not really aid with cleaning up the class or the long-term picture. I apologize if you took it to mean something else.
I for one am tired of feeling like the forgotten class that is always on borrowed time. That’s all. Please, again, re-read the context of my message.
Peace be with you, friend. I am not the enemy.
I did read your post and also your post about 2 hand enhancement as a slow-fire build contrasted with a fast lightning build in the Shaman Feedback Thread in the beta forum. Want to know one reason we’re ignored (besides Blizzard just hating us)? Most feedback given to the devs is largely not meaningful because is not fully thought out/well conceptualized and more or less accounts to shower thoughts rather than an informed opinion on the performance of a spec. It’s just noise. I open that feedback forum every now and then and just close it after reading 3 posts in a row of people going “can we get an update?”. I imagine the devs do the same.
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Hell we need crit scaling on ele… how can crit give warlocks bonus damage to their 100% crit chaos bolt, which doesn’t even require immolaye to crit, but our crit only gives us bonus inside of ascendance. The highest io M+ players are running MINIMAL crit right now.
Okay. I hope the feedback you present is heard.
Part of feedback is spit-balling ideas, any post that makes a claim of “I would like to see this in the game” is valid feedback.
This is a video game, the most important types of feedback are: what is fun, what isn’t fun, and what could be fun. I’d argue that complaints about tuning are bad feedback because they already have all the data that they need to see what is over or under performing. They aren’t going to look at the forums to find that kind of information.
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