Suggestion - Earth Quake and all other AOE Ground Effects

Classes Shaman
1

Having played Ele in S1-4 Shadowland and Destro Lock in Seasons 1-4 Dragonflight there is one thing in common that really triggers me.

In M+ or really any dungeons, Tanks tend to move… erratically, they position mobs in certain areas when then… they have to move them due to either an affix or a Mob ability. When moving, it creates a very frequent occurrence:

A Huge DPS loss… where an Empowered Ground Effect like Earthquake which you’re been ramping for is dropped, only for 0.5 seconds late all the mobs vacate the area… So yeah we could stun them, knock them back in but the result is the same… its bad to do that and its an overall DPS loss for something outside of the classes control.

With so much going on in these AOE scenarios its not really viable to say 'oh just plan ahead and be in your tanks mind and Drop Ground Effect X ahead of the mobs.

There is 2 complaints here… The communication back from the tanks is always
Visual
‘I literally cannot see your ROF/EarthQuake etc etc etc.’
‘It looked like MOB AOE so I moved’
Ability
‘I had to move them due to XYZ Skill’
‘I had to move them due to XYZ Affix’
‘I decided to pull next pack’

In a PuG community you cannot and should never expect communication, or expect the tank to read your mind or know your abilities, you can see this in guild groups vs pugs… the player ability may be the same but due to the communication stream they play very differently.

So the solution… something that’s been coded before and run in game before… Remember the Earth Ele Lego where EQ was attached to the Earth Ele?

Well why not attach ground effects to a mob, like a bomb that players receive in raids and M+, attaches to a player and moves with the player. Why cant ground effects attach to mobs like they did with Earth Ele? A moving Earthquake/Rain of Fire that moves when a mob moves.

Its not a perfect solution but it would certainly support classes which feel hard done to in certain situations where there are movement heavy dungeons on caster classes.

Just a thought… feel free to flame away and tell me how wrong I am.

2

They’ve already made the change that EQ will be placed under your target as a choice node with the current version of EQ, so I don’t think they’ll change it more than that.

Making it into a DoT would be a good idea, but I’m sure there are enough people who care about lore and how realistic the ability is to want to shut that down.

I’d really like for them to just increase the amount of damage EQ does by 100%, but reduce the duration to half, so 3 seconds instead of 6. That way, it’ll do the same overall damage in an encounter, you spike higher so your damage looks better in the moment, and when the tank moves out of the EQ anyway, it doesn’t feel as bad because you’re not missing as many ticks of damage.

I imagine that Destro warlocks with rain of fire have the same issue. Why Blizzard decides to keep targeted effects when most other classes have some type of DoT that sticks to the mobs is silly.

3

It’s honestly a bigger issue that you think with Destro, I mean i use macros to drop at mouse pointer reducing the need to actually click twice the ground effect saving a few hundreths of a second but the issue is more the movement required from tanks and groups leads to huge DPS loss.

Stick it as a last node in a talent tree, test it and then see how people will stop talking about dmg increases on spells like ROF and EQ…

Putting a base damage output modifier on these spells is actually really lazy, they wouldnt need them most of the time if the mobs stayed in your effect.

As for lore bunnies - Lightforged Warlocks and Tauren Warlocks - I need say no more.