Looking to have a shaman alt to my monk and have really been enjoying Ele/Resto Shaman and Holy Paladin. How are the shaman peoples feeling about the changes? Enough to give shaman the tools they need to succeed and not just -suffer through- a key? With the changes to defensives and the added utility they seem to be in an exceedingly good spot regardless of spec, while also feeling great to play.
I’m excited. There more ways to play the class and not be locked in. I’ve actually been testing a haste/crit build which felt really enjoyable in PTR. I really only pvp and haven’t had a chance to try out my build for that. I’m still thinking it will be what I hope it will be.
In the pvp dummy Inwas hitting pretty hard.
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I’ve been avoiding as many spoilers about the Hero talents directly, since I didn’t grab the beta. So I’ve only been looking at pre-patch changes.
Positive changes, there’s a bunch of different options and still hard choices even within the sub sub specialization, aka an embrace of playstyle focus. Greater pathing, things that were just clearly not options are integrated in various ways. No two point talents for Elemental/Resto
I’m looking forward going back to primarily lightning while sprinkling everything else in.
Scariest part seems to be the complete upheaval of Elemental Overload Mastery. It’s not just a better crit, but it also isn’t just an overshadowing multiplier shackling balance. It’s obviously a numbers tuning that wrangles it to be more normal. I just hope its not neutered.
When it comes mastery, I play ele with crit/mastery and zero haste. Before patch I had 80% mastery and after I have 90% overload chance and all damage increased by 26.9%.
It feels better seeing bigger damage numbers and as for dps… well mathematically
Let’s assume 100 dmg spell and 100 casts.
Previously 80 of them would overload for 100% extra damage.
So 80x200 + 100x20 = 16000 + 2000 = 18000
Now 90 would do an extra 35%, however every spell is doing 26.9% more dmg
So 90x126.9x1.35 + 10x126.9 = 15418 + 1269 = 16687
So it is a bit weaker in terms of dps and it does devalue the talents that cause overloads, however there are other things that weren’t there before that even it out. For example, when fire elemental is out we do an extra 10% fire damage or 10% lightning dmg if summoning lightning elemental. Also, our weapon imbue used to do 5% more fire dmg and now we can get it to 7%. On top of that, our crit talent would make crits do 250% dmg and now we can get it to 275%.
So overall, it evens out but feels better to play.
I tried out area effect last night, and casting Earthquake without a targeting circle feels so much better even if Maelstrom generation is slower.
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I’m loving my slightly more lightning focused build with LvB and Ice fury thrown in. The free ele blast from ice fury is nice.
My stats are 31% crit (45% for LB with talents) haste 30% and mastery 30%.
I play pvp with lava surge talent and this build feels so much smoother and the rotation makes sense now.
LB will reduce Pwave CD too once its big is fixed. So I can get an additional 20% haste almost every 20-25 secs and it’s a tool that enhances dmg through LvB.
The symmetry we can achieve with various builds is very fun!
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