Well I think overall these are very positive. The buff to Natures guardian is big, we’ll have 5% extra stamina, and we’ll take slightly less dmg from dks/casters. At least they’re very clearly seeing our survivability concerns.
On top of that, Ele now has its issues fixed with Flame Shock in PvP. Voltaic Blaze gets reduced by an additional 1.5s in pvp via Flames of the Cauldron which brings it to a 6s CD, no longer lines up with healer dispel, they’re 2 seconds apart rather than 0.5s apart. Also just means more lvb cleave. Ele damage is still kinda meh overall, needs a buff still. I think Earth Shock is probably a good thing to buff a bit and maybe a slight lightning bolt buff.
I’m not sure how the enhance tuning works out. I fully agree with moving damage out of ascendance, but idk if 5% makes up for the 15% nerf to windstrike and thorims I cant tell. I think it probably does considering our top damage is usually tempest/stormstrike/lightning bolt/chain lightning assuming you dont 1 shot someone with ascendance but im not sure.
The NG change in particular could help with traditional issues like stunlock and the issue I was raising about ramp time to first heal if damage pace is slow enough to make it a meaningful recovery. Also helps in PvE with big hits.
Still waiting on earth shield to be added to CD manager so it can be tracked.
I like the addition of Reactive Warding to the general tree. But we need to be able to easily track stacks of earth shield in order to make good use of it. It’s criminal to add a talent like that and then not put the buff in CD manager.
Yeah the Ng change is solid, getting more stamina is solid, and taking slightly less damage from casters/dks/dhs is good. NG buff is the best one there for sure.
2% more magic DR is something at least. Would have been nice to just make it an even 10%.
But physical damage is historically a weakspot for enhance, unfortunately. A lot of the damage from warriors, rogues, hunters is physical and those classes can be some of the worst matchups for enhance. And they all come with mortal strike abilities. Enhance’s kit has always lent itself to more of an anti-caster role.
I don’t have as much of a positive response to the elemental changes as you folks. We are a DPS class and they’re throwing healing and stamina at us while seriously nerfing our actual DPS.
I don’t want more survivability - I want more pewpew.
I’m a bit nervous about the pewpew part for enhance too. 5% more damage doesn’t seem like that much when they are chunking a good part of a burst damage which is potentially already only once per 2 min and subject to disarms as well as other CC.
Kind of weird to combine doomwinds with ascendance too given that you lose some of the power of doomwinds at range while range is one of the benefits of ascendance.
Ele didn’t get nerfed at all though, not in this tuning update at least. It got buffed in PvE and PvP. It got buffed via being able to hit VB more which also means more LvB cleave, and it solved a major issue of flame shock lining up with healer dispel in pvp. And yes, throwing survivability buffs at us is very good considering we are very squishy at the moment. I’m not sure why you’re implying them addressing that is a problem.
I wouldn’t be nervous about it tbh, I dont think 5% is enough to make up for the hit to Ascend/Thorims because Ascend is our only win con right now, but I do think they will address that if its clearly an issue. 8-10% would have been a better number I think.
Also you provided a good reason why shifting damage out of ascend is healthy for enh. Ascend is susceptible to CC/disarms and can be shut down relatively easy, so if we are able to do more outside of ascend that will give us more win conditions assuming the buffs make up for the loss of ascend dmg
What do you call a 15% reduction in chain lightning damage? Last time it was an across the board 5% dps reduction and a further 10% damage drop for Lightning Bolt.
I’d say these are substantial nerfs. And why? We’re not topping the charts.
They buffed Earthquake by 15% to compensate for CL nerf, they buffed Tempests initial hit by 40% and only nerfed the aoe by 20%, and Tempest Overloads are now going to do more damage because they fixed a bug making them do less damage (i have no idea what the numbers are on the overload fix though)
It’ll do less aoe dmg but that didnt really matter in pvp specifically arena/shuffle. It will do slightly more ST damage than it did before which is the purpose of tempest in pvp
Don’t get me wrong - I like the idea of shifting sustain damage higher. Supatease was also just suggesting that for enhance in his last video.
I just think 5% seems pretty modest. Particularly if it comes at significant hit to our burst kill ability. Like the 15% nerf to thorims is effectively a 30% nerf (35% = 70% of 50%).
You’re looking at pvp, I’m looking at pve. That’s the issue.
I can’t even begin to count the number of times a pack of mobs has moved out of an earthquake, but I can count the number of times a pack of mobs evaded a chain lighting hit - it’s zero. A 15% buff to EQ doesn’t come close to the 15% hit on CL.
Yeah I’m not sure we really need to see it. It may be more of a buff than a nerf since Asc is already so strong and the 5% buffs everything including Tempest which already hits hard for enhance. We’ll see though, I do think it may be too small of a buff but only by a bit. I would say 8% would have been maybe better but I cant really say for sure without being able to try it.
And yeah shifting dmg out of Ascend is a big positive for pvp as a whole and for enh specifically. With how easy it is to counter/stop ascend, doing more outside of that is a big benefit to us. And I still think Ascend will be strong since its already so good. We’ll see though, worst case we’d prob get thrown another 2-3% damage buff if the tuning turns out to be a nerf
I am looking at both. The tempest buff is PvE, the EQ buff is PvE, the CL nerf is PvE and the fix for Tempest Overloads is PvE. EQ does more than CL if you are playing properly in a lot of situations, it outweighs the nerf to CL and in the very worst case scenario it is neutral.
The changes to ele are a buff to stormbringer both aoe (depending on tempest overload fix) and definitely single target. Not sure about Farseer, its likely either a buff or neutral. You can ask any good ele player you’d like.
Doesn’t really do much for farseer though does it.
Ah the old “it’s a skill issue”… yea… no. Looks good on paper and when everything goes flawlessly is not the way to tune a class. Fights are messy, and reducing guaranteed AoE by replacing it by avoidable damage is a nerf.
I mean I’m not gonna argue what is objectively a nerf/buff here, if the plan is to just keep saying its a nerf regardless of what is said than you can believe whatever you’d like. Ideally dont spread misinfo though, it is objectively a buff, mostly to Stormbringer ST, potentially stormbringer aoe based on whatever the overload fix does. Not being able to place earthquake properly does not mean it is a nerf.
It looks like a nerf to farseer in smaller packs/pulls and a buff in bigger pulls but this one is much harder to tell because of ancestors so we’ll see.
If you’ve got a tank trying to clear the place fast by pulling packs and running with them, I promise you that chain lightning is infinitely more useful than the earthquake that gets maybe one tick before everything is 20 yards further down the path.
If they want to give me an earth elemental that has earthquake as an aura like we had in Torghast that can travel with the pack of mobs you want to AoE, then I’ll be happy.
We actually have a really strong toolkit for melee I find.
Root totem and Capacitor Totem are key. Every 30 sec cd with talents.
Then if you can get Hex down to a 15-second cooldown, you can basically keep one melee locked down for most of the game.
Counterstrike Totem is huge as well — even if they don’t fully commit into it, it completely disrupts their tempo, especially when a paladin pops Wings or rogue pops in , etc..
From there, you can follow up with Lasso to escape melee pressure ,
Then Wind of gust to safely get to the pillar.
then Burrow ….
I swap my Honor talents almost every round, adapting to the enemy classes and the flow of the match.