Seems the appropriate time to bring this up. Stormstrike applies a debuff to the afflicted that causes the two next Nature spells to do 20% more damage. Is there any reason why this is not just a timed debuff?
It would be far better for this spell to apply an eight second debuff for 20% damage for nature spells. If it were applied for eight seconds, that would allow phase 1 Elemental Shaman to go through a 3LB/CL rotation while receiving the benefit of a debuff. Currently, every other caster receives substantial benefit from Curse of Elements. Warlocks in particular receive 10% damage from that AND then an additional 15%(!!!) from the priestâs Shadow Weaving talent. And people are surprised that people concerned about doing big damage want to play the Warlock.
But, if 20% damage with 80% uptime is too much, it could be changed to 10% or something like that. This would seriously help with the idea that Elemental Shaman donât âscale wellâ in the later phases. Ultimately, this change would make it to where thereâd be more diversity on raid compositions. Currently, people want a group of four Warlocks.
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Just my gut - burst damage seemed to be very common amongst a bunch of classes through the early expansions, and not really addressed until late WotLK or later.
Yeah, I think youâre right. Like I said, if composition is actually important, then narrowing the damage gap will make other casters more desirable.
I wouldnât suggest nerfing Locks/Priests, but buffing Shaman/Druids with a nature debuff would do a lot for compositions.
I mean, 4 Warlocks and an Elemental Shaman is a group? Really? Get rid of that kind of nonsense. Make the damage of a Boomkin good enough to where people wonât consider dropping the boomkin for a 3rd Warlock.
Unfortunately CoE affecting nature didnât happen until Wrath. Classes werenât balanced in TBC and that goes hand-in-hand with the class fantasy and every class feeling unique. Otherwise you end up with the homogeneous mess that is Retail. My âmainâ is going to be a Draenai Ele Shaman so Iâm going to be in this boat. I donât care if Iâm not top of our raid, itâs not my role as a support DPS (boomies are the same here). If DPS is important to you then maybe re-roll one of the big pumper classes or just stick to comparisons with other ele shamans.
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I played Ele in Classic which should tell you that Iâm also not chasing top damage. The disparity in damage exists based on poor design and that is enabled by the idea that we should just simply accept the bad design. Thatâs absurd. There is an opportunity to fix a clear oversight. Why wouldnât we try to make the game more inclusive by appealing to people. Dealing relevant damage is not taking something away from the game.
Class fantasy alone Shamanâs are your utility/hybrid support class so typically arenât top DPS. If you look into some of the changes in talents and ele mechanics they made in TBC it actually gave shamans a net DPS increase from Classic. With Classic TBC they are trying to recreate the experience of the original TBC (hopefully with some of the more minor issues ironed out).
If youâve got spare time I recommend watching Melderonâs TBC Advanced Shaman Guide. A lot of the changes Blizz made going into TBC were very good for Shamans. So in conjunction to Shamans being in very high demand by raids we will be in a very good place going into TBC.
Iâve seen it and am aware of the changes. My gripe is with the fact that the charges from SS will be consumed by things like instant poison and insect swarm⌠really stupid things. Thatâs not a thought-out creative decision that fits in with the âsupport DPSâ role; itâs poorly designed and should be changed to be remotely similar to every other debuff. It would be REALLY GOOD if it were simply based on time⌠5 seconds out of 10 or whatever⌠even if it were 50% uptime and 10% increased Nature damage. But, itâs basically useless.
im pretty sure the charged debuff has a timer on it also. could be wrong but i think thatâs how it works.
Stormstrike isnât for the debuff or other people, itâs for the enhancement shaman to have a button to press for extra damage and the debuff is basically just gravy on top for earth shock. Enhance gives plenty of raid benefits, they donât need to buff stormstrike to be another one.
Elemental isnât as big of a pumper as a lock but they bring more utility and thatâs just how it is. They still arenât awful in DPS either. The original team did a pretty darn good job balancing things so almost every spec has at least 1 spot in a raid.
Itâs fine the way it is.
I used to love sniping SS charges on the nature vuln boglords in SSC with envenom. 8k crits were amazing.
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The problem with making something like a shaman or boomkin do as much dps as something like a warlock is that you then have no purpose to a warlock. A warlock is a dps only class, hybrids can respec to serve multiple roles.
As such, hybrid classes were deliberately made to be jack of all trades master of none. Factor in pvp and itâs further reason to keep hybrid dps below other classes.
If they did any kind of balancing, they should make mage and rogue dps on par with locks and hunter.
Warriors, priests, shaman, druids and pallies should all be below those four on the meters. They can all serve multiple roles.
Because Blizzard wanted it to be flavorful the way that Hemo is.
What is absurd is demanding âcommon-senseâ reworks to abilities, skills, talents, etc, to suit your personal desires for balance. We get the rules and game systems that we get, and our future-knowledge of changes and tweaks and balancing adjustments canât really factor into that.
I would love to be able to make use of procs in my forms.
I would love to be able to wield polearms.
I would love to have any weapon I equip have an automatically converted FAP value instead of chasing few and far between items that are only meant for me.
I would love a lot of things, but I also know that with these things Iâd have to consider giving up no-DR on my Avoidance stats, or how ArP scaled so ridiculously well, and a host of other benefits.
We shouldnât get any changes to our classes/specs unless something is absolutely broken. Stormstrike charges is not one of those things.
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DPS gain from taking a boomkin,3 locks and an ele sham is optimal. Crit synergy for ele and any ruin build is insane.
Shaman specs tend to be tuned to be lower dps because they bring totems and a lust.
Which is why I think all the people calling for sated an expansion early are crazy. The class is tuned around bloodlust without sated being strong, it makes up for lower personal dps.
I get that idea, but what is currently planned to happen is that we will be stacking hunters and warlocks simply based on how theyâre imbalanced and will do substantially more damage than other classesâlike Fury warriors in classic.
Warlocks would receive a raid spot regardless of whether they were well-balanced or not due to their curses much like a Shaman has a spot due to totems and BL; but, perhaps, we would want to bring a reasonable amount. Shadow Priest comes to mind. Warlocks were 2nd-tier damage in Classic and still received raid spots due to their invaluable debuffs for other casters⌠the same would be true in TBC were they 2nd-tier damage; theyâd still receive their raid spots.
It really seems like some people are saying, âif Stormstrike provided a decent debuff for Shaman/Druids thereâd be less incentive to play the other classesâ. If thatâs really the case, that means that the only reason to play that Warlock is because they do the most damage and not because they are cool or interesting. So, theyâre worth playing because they receive the benefit of Shadow Weaving and Curse of the Elements (25% more shadow damage)?
Buffing Stormstrike would simply give Shaman/Druids a bit more damage while taking nothing away from other classes.
Itâs gonna get eaten in under a second everytime but the 3+ wind serpents.
One of those mechanics I just try not to think about cause it makes me sad when I play Enh. O neat I can buff myself or better yet I can give a nice boost to my Ele friend!..nope just kidding three air snakes shoot non stop poopoo blast stole the damage :(.
stop thinking of mage as a âpure dpsâ, more like a RP/vending class
Mages are nowhere near as bad as you make them out to be, please stop posting garbage.
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Good mages that can manage their mana, once they get 2 piece T5, dominate until end of BT/start of Sunwell (when locks catch up again). Please stop parroting random posts youâve read without actually knowing how the class dynamics change in TBC. It might be even better for mages this time around if raid DPS is higher and 2.4.3 patch buffs lead to shorter fights and more mana regen.
A friend of mine pointed out that they changed it in WOTLK to where only the Shaman that applied the debuff could consume the charges. That tells me that they were like, âOh, perhaps instant poison and wind serpent werenât the best use of a 20% damage bonus for two instances of damage.â
This applies to a lot of things found in Wrath, Cata, and onward, but that doesnât mean we should get the change.
