So it would work as it does now at 4 targets, but the less targets affected, the stronger the buff is and it would dynamically update.
This would add quality of life when one of your targets dies, you aren’t massively punished for the mistake of someone else. And also balance it outside of raid.
Clutchmates is not being used anyways, and the passive doesn’t address the issue of one of your targets dying, or in situations where you are playing with one person or dungeon boss mechanics that move people away like necrotic wake’s Nalthor the Rimebinder.
Hmm I like the idea of it getting stronger with fewere targets, but I don’t know if I like it working dynamically in terms of ramping up if people die for two reasons:
First, although I can’t think of multiple ways I’m sure players would find a way to abuse this mechanic. Maybe I stand in fire and die at boss 10% because I’m a devastation evoker and dragonrage is down so I might as well let the warrior and paladin do big execute damage.
Second reason being there’s not really anything “unfair” about might losing value if someone dies. People die and your group loses damage. I haven’t played Shaman in a minute, but what you’re suggesting would be the equivalent of making windfurry totem stronger on alive melee group members simply because one of them died. I don’t really think that’d be fair. People die, you lose damage. Team game.
This is another one where i kind of feel like “working as intended”. Personally I’m OK with not every spec being optimal in all situations. That’s where the challenge is IMO. There’s certain dungeons I want to avoid like the plague as a presvoker, but If i want to be competitive and get my rating up I gotta figure out a way to do it. I find that building my own groups and bringing the classes that are gonna be most synergetic with my kit (usually melee heavy groups lol) is the #1 thing I can do to make my key runs successful.
People can cheese this with ret paladins. I remember a log with multiple shamans(with revive totem) and a ret with perma uptime wings because the raiders died and ress to keep it up. It’s not really problematic degen stuff and very rarely will anyone do this.
The difference is, if a dps dies, a ret paladin isn’t suddenly doing less damage. Yes, you lose group damage, but the person that didn’t die isn’t punished with a damage reduction.
This is not equivalent to aug because 1: Windfury is a raid buff and the shaman is NOT tuned around the insane power level that raid buff brings.
2: This is aug’s personal damage being affected here and all it will do is make it the same as other dps like I stated above. Another spec isn’t given a damage reduction debuff because someone stood in fire.
Again this isn’t the same thing. You as pres are not doing less healing because of a comp diff or because a dps stood in fire.
If our PI priest dies then whoever they’re supposed to PI does not get the benefit of PI.
Also, I did say I haven’t played shaman i a while. Back in my day windfury totem was not a raid-wide buff, but a group buff that you would put the melee and a shaman in groups to share. Forgive my ignorance.
But if a dps dies I am doing less healing because I just lost 1/4 of the available people to heal.
Keeping the discussion about Aug specifically though I will say that Rimebinder is a very extreme case and again one that I feel like we just have to deal with Aug not being an ideal spec . Honestly Augmentation absolutely destroys in Necrotic wake outside of rimebinder, but I dont think that fight’s fun for anyone involved. Tank probably has it the easiest, but it’s just a wonky fight all around.
It doesn’t stop there though. Then you got banner boss from ToP. You could not cast it while the other 2 are down there… but you still need to hit the banner.
Then if they bring back de other side where you get split up again? So it’s not just one extreme case. The mechanics can show up again and again.
Right, but the point is, you are not healing less on the people alive.