50% is what lightning bolt casts baseline. X250% = 125% total w 0 msw stacks.
With 5 stacks it goes up to 250%.
Further stacks add nothing additional.
Tooltip for lightning bolt starts at 50% baseline.
If you call baseline 100% then everything doubles. So SK = 250% or 500% with 5/10 MSW stacks.
Maybe we are lost in semantics.
But the point is that 5 vs 10 stacks shouldn’t matter. And that stormkeeper is a 250% multiple of whatever your lightning bolt damage is after applying MSW.
Likely semantics at this point. As I mentioned, the tests were done relative to raw values of a hard cast LB. I think the numbers work out then under your notation as well.
My point was if there IS a significant advantage to spending the time to pool 10 MSW for stronger a LB that is a reasonable tradeoff. Just as long as it can be balanced. I was seeing 7k LB crits with Earthen Spike up under those situations and that’s a fairly large hit for the time it takes to set up (about 30% hp at that level which may not scale the same to 60).
Is it intended / balanced in the grand scheme of things? Will the crit damage get watered down in arena / pvp? I don’t know. If they do dial the damage back in PvP or the damage relative to health totals at 60 is still low at 500%, I would agree the better option is just tuning around 5 MSW.
7k is because 100% crit. 2.8kx1.2 for ES = 3.5k x2 for crit = 7k.
SK lightning bolts do same damage at 5 and 10 MSW stacks.
Right I wasn’t taking about the number of MSW at the time of cast rather the time it takes to build from 0 to 10 then use SK LB LB vs the relative ease of 0-5 then SK. If you are trying to use SK as a finisher, it’s a bit of an anti pattern to restrict yourself to maintaining 5 MSW in preparation for it as you whittle them down, nevermind being forced to cast healing surge interrupting this setup as well.
Yup. It’s a pain to have to have 10 stacks to use SK.
That’s why they really should change it so either SK is instant cast (and ideally off the GCD) baseline for enhance and/or the two SK empowered lightning spells cast as if fully MSW empowered regardless of actual stack count.
At most, SK should require you to have 5 MSW total to fully utilize it, if any.
Honestly, if we are comparing to how strong it is for ele (with automatic overloads), it would seem fair to just make it both - instant cast AND cast as if fully MSW empowered w/o requiring any MSW stacks to use.
But I’d settle for just getting one or the other.
Rather it disappear from Enh entirely, and Stormblast appear in its place. Feels fundamentally wrong to get Elemental’s artifact ability as a talent…even if it does work out nice (disregarding 10 stack issue).
Stormblast - X% base mana
Instant Cast, 1.5 minute cooldown, 30 yard range
Iterates on old stormblast replacing Earth Shock with Crash Lightning and instant cast so that you could instead stack to 10 MSW then Stormblast into 2 LBs, or 2 CLs into a Crash.
That would make it pure single target. I like the cleave flexibility on SK. Fits in better on the row.
Eh, I disagree. Th damage lost from two instant CLs is made up for by CL and Crash getting a crit bonus. Making it single target maintains the burst from using a double LB stormkeeper. If it’s instant and doesn’t consume MWS, stack to 5/10, Stormblast into a CL/CrL.
Sure. I guess it wouldn’t be pure single target the same way earthen spike is not pure single target. I guess it depends on your definition of single target.
Then just have it work like the azerite laser that hits everything in the way…would still be better than Stormkeeper.
i like all of these suggestions a lot except for the earth shield idea which i think is a little odd that talent row imo is fine. i would like to add that grounding totem should be a baseline ability.
also enhance needs lightning lasso (or rework storm bolt give it to enhance and give warriors throwdown 
)
You don’t think shield exclusivity and MSW generation added to lightning shield in shadowlands unnecessarily weakens earth shield by comparison?
Earth shield has the same strength on beta as on live except now it’s exclusive with lightning shield and lightning shield is baseline and generates MSW stacks.
I’ve found on beta that using earth shield noticeably slows down my MSW generation vs using lightning shield in environments where I’m taking melee hits.
I don’t see why earth shield shouldn’t get the same MSW generation functionality as we get baseline from lighting shield rather than having to sacrifice it for the same healing we have on live from earth shield.
i like the idea of earth shield sharing the same maelstrom generation effect as lightning (moar enhance buffs) i just believe there are many different factors blizzard can play around with so that players won’t have to think about losing potential maelstrom gainz to have more survivability.
i might be wrong but i’m almost completely positive earth shield for all specs is the exact same ability. i doubt blizzard would make a slightly different variation of the spell for a mainly pvp-related issue but who knows.
edit: hope that makes sense i’m tired af but blizzard should just honestly remove the maelstrom component from lightning shield, buff that ability in some other way and increase baseline maelstrom generation slightly to compensate.
Fair point.
It’s different for ele/enhance in that it is 100% more powerful for them than for resto due to an aura buff (which is causing the resto earth shield legendary to be OP for ele/enh right now) and that ele/enh have to talent into it whereas it’s baseline for resto, but you’re right that mechanically it functions the same.
So to keep it simple/elegant, Blizzard might be inclined to just keep it functionally the same for all specs.
I like your idea of just removing MSW generation from lightning shield and buffing baseline MSW generation instead. I agree that seems better than replicating it across the shields.
You might be on to something there; a completely separate shaman passive where simply having any shield up generates your primary resource (MSW/Maelstrom/Mana) at a slow rate (kind of like totem mastery though likely in combat only).
After that, lightning = damage, earth = healing. Water shield just doubles down with mana regeneration on hit, but it’s exclusive to resto and they can have all baseline anyways.
What if they built some distinct flavor of survivability into each shield tied to MSW spenders? Something like:
Using MSW on Healing Surge could add an additional 3% heal per 2 seconds over 10 seconds at 5 MSW spent to continue the pattern.
Functional and thematic.
Earth Shield has a slight advantage to applying to both melee and spells / dampening since it is talented, but both should implement the passive resource generation to keep them flexible in all content.
If they wanted to double down on the identity / theme of lighting for damage/resource and earth for defense, I could see lighting shield only granting 2% dodge per MSW and 10% chance per MSW spent to refund a stack of MSW in addition to the shared constant resource recovery of roughly 1 MSW / 10 seconds. This works out pretty close to the current rate for Lightning Shield while constantly getting hit (slightly better than current rates with more haste/luck) and a little lower for Earth Shield.
This could likely be tuned to work with Elemental’s overcharge as well such as a 25% chance to trigger on lightning overloads.