Yo. While leveling a high mountain tauren I noticed that my lightning bolts were hitting significantly harder while spec’d as restoration, versus as elemental. I confirmed this by checking the tooltips and hitting a few mobs. Currently at level 30, Lightning Bolt deals 145 damage when Elemental, and 232 while Restoration. They have the same cast speed in each spec.
It’s similar (but even worst) for Lava Burst, which does 197 in Restoration and 109 in Elemental.
Just wanted to bring this to y’alls attention. I don’t know when this changes–obviously Restoration cannot outpace Elemental’s damage through the entire leveling experience; that would be absurd, and someone would have already noticed it. But yeah. This seems like a simple fix for blizz; the base damage of these spec’s spells are just clearly wrong.
It’s designed that way.
Resto has higher dmg coefficients
Ele has higher healing coefficients
Resto doesnt have maelstrom/mastery that ele gets at low level/increased crit dmg.
Ele doesnt have other resto tools.
Low lvl scales so freaking weird. When I started lvling a mage, all I had to do was push 1 button over and over (arcane missiles) and I would absolutely destroy the dps meters as the undisputed champ in dungeons and there was no mana problems. I could just spam for days. The higher I leveled the dps gap between me and the other dps would shrink as did the windows of me spamming AM before running out of mana.
Low lvl balance is just completely broken and I wouldn’t put any stock in it
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It’s designed that way.
Resto has higher dmg coefficients
Ele has higher healing coefficients
Resto doesnt have maelstrom/mastery that ele gets at low level/increased crit dmg.
Ele doesnt have other resto tools.
I mean, if this is the intended design, then the intention seems quite stupid to me. A dps spec should deal more dps than a healing spec at any point in leveling.
I’m guessing it’s balanced that way since Resto doesn’t have Earth Shock or anything else to build up in the dps “rotation”. Resto gets stronger base spells (Lightning Bolt, Lava Surge, etc.) but doesn’t get the hard hitting Earth Shock Ele builds up… maybe.
Of course at early levels Resto would perform better since Ele doesn’t have the tools to quickly build up Earth Shock yet. That gap will exist probably until you get Ele’s mastery.
Ele does do more dmg than resto when you take earth shock into account.
If resto didnt have higher spell coefficients for LvB and LB then the dmg for resto would be atrocious.
The reason why it feels like resto does more dmg than ele is because early on getting enough maelstrom to use ES consistently is very hard.
If you are planning to level killing 1-2 mobs at a time looting then moving on then resto or enhance may be a better option.
After lvl 48 (I believe), ele becomes an aoe machine and only gets stronger and stronger as the levels increase.
Taking talents like:
CoT
Elemental Attunement
Counterstrike Totem
Makes it down right ridiculous.
You can pull 5-6 mobs CL them down saving maelstrom.
Do this to get close to 180 maelstrom.
Pull 10-15 mobs.
Cap totem
CL into EQ spam
Drop CS totem/magma totem if talented
Rinse and repeat.
If you arent aoe grinding like a tank as ele you are doing it wrong and horribly slow.
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You have more sustained/consistent damage as a ele. So if you’re running dungeon might as well go ele but if you’re just solo questing, then extra coff from resto probably do better until about 50’s
But really, in low-levels you’re learning muscle reflexes to your spec/rotation so the damage coff shouldn’t really be that important anyway. Ele has rotation much different than resto and muscle reflex needs to be taken into account.
Elemental is balanced around having Overload (mastery) at higher levels. So at low levels when you don’t have the extra spells firing off, you just have the weaker spells by themselves.
Ele gets mastery at like lvl 15, though it is a flat % because no mastery gear.
The dmg is there early on; it is just tied into ES then later EQ which due to maelstrom generation and degradation when out of combat can make it difficult to appreciate.
ES can one shot mobs especially when in heirlooms up to a pretty high level. However, if you arent gaming your maelstrom you may not experience this because you rarely use it. But learning how to game maelstrom early on will help you excel at ele later.
Most healer specs get this treatment, it’s to aid in soloing ability.
As you level up and get more tools, elemental starts to pull ahead, and by 110-120 you’ll easily outdps any resto spec. The gap continues to grow as you add in better gear, azerite traits, corruptions, etc.