Seeing as it is most likely going to stay as it is, can anyone who is beta testing enhance give a rundown on how its doing currently, or share a link to some results? Specificaly, what hero talents/builds are pulling ahead in which content?
Since the main talent has not changed, the gameplay is still mainly based on frost& Fire/Storm. And now the new talent Tempest still has some bugs.
BTW, the value(damage) of tempest, in my opinion, is not enough and need to be buffed.
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It’s honestly really up in the air. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to get a read on things because there are issues with the Hero Talents so what we’re seeing now isn’t incredibly accurate. Totemic doesn’t have Reactivity implemented which heavily affects Searing Totem’s damage so it’s hard to say how Elementalist plays with Totemic. Meanwhile, there are a bunch of issues with Stormbringer that end up affecting both Storm and Elementalist builds. Things such as Awakening Storms not triggering from Stormstrike, issues related to how Lightning Bolt converts to Tempest, and odd behavior between Primordial Wave buffed Lightning Bolts and Tempest make it difficult to determine if/how these two spells are supposed to interact. We also have some general bugs such as Flurry affecting our damage and getting consumed by Windfury Totem.
Another thing that makes it hard to determine what builds/talents we’ll play or how well it’s doing with each Hero Talent is related to our Tier set being super overpowered. The double duration on Feral Spirits from the 4-set bonus favors Stormbringer because it also affects the Nature Wolf that spawns from Tempest, making it pretty easy to have like 8+ Feral/Elemental Spirits. So pretty much Storm Builds running Alpha Wolf do an absurd amount of AoE damage. Meanwhile, the standard single-target Elementalist build does really powerful single-target damage because of the multiplicative scaling each Elemental Spirit has on Elemental Blast. If they nerf the 4 set bonus then a lot of this goes away since pretty much nothing about the Elementalist Build interacts well with Stormbringer.
Basically how it’s doing on the beta now is likely not how it’s going to be on live. It did well in raid testing (upper end of the middle of the pack) playing Elementalist with Stormbringer Hero Talents but again that all goes out the window if they nerf the tier set or do something like cap how many Feral/Elemental Spirits are out.
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Tometic builds are doing decent damage in M+. It is hard to say what will stay and what will go, but for now Totemic will run off a build that is not currently in use, and that may be what saves it.
As of now, you can use a talent tree that sets you to fire nova, after that, you take all of that talents that increases physical damage. In the Hero section, you use the talent that gives you 200% tremors. With this setup, your main totem to do a lot of physical damage, and your spendors will multiply that damage and add to your physical damage. So there will be a crap ton of physical damage.
The other build is to do a fire build that gives you all of the fire talents, then use this to get a lot of procs of the seering totem. You will use frost shock to cause the totem to do AOE damage, and with the reduce CD of lava lash, you should be able to get decent uptime on the totem. More RNG, but it works.
Of these two build, I think the physical build out will be the better build. That is what I have seen on Beta. This also just doing dungs. I have not tried a raid yet, but on bosses I have just used lava burst or single lightning instead chain lightning. So if it stays as it is, I will be going with Totemic.
Enhancement needs survivability in all forms of content.
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That’s a pretty impossible question to answer at this point, OP, as our hero talents are not fully implemented yet. Also, we’ve had no word from Blizzard on how certain things are supposed to interact. This is exactly why we complained about our stuff being added so late- we have very little time for testing and fixing.
It also goes without saying that a proper balance pass hasn’t happened yet.
From a PvP standpoint, expect to be C tier still because none of our glaring weaknesses haven’t been addressed.
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Your entire rotation will be based around the shadow-based damage Primordial Wave for the third expansion in a row.
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Primordial Wave was changed to Elemental damage like two seasons ago, and its direct damage was always the single least important aspect of the spell to begin with.
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Probably no way to tell until more tuning for all classes is done.
Currently it seems elementalist build is underperforming compared to storm and the weird storm/physical/flamestrike totemic build.
People don’t understand that it’s a lust ability that is actually better than lust, plus hits the target with an element blast and then allows you to hit multiple targets at once for big damage. Plus the tier set synergy means you get this about every 30 seconds. I would like it if they chained it to elemental blast instead of lightning bolt tho for enhance. That would be a good way of increasing overall damage with the setup.
I don’t mind PWave for enhance, but I can’t stand it for ele. It’s one of the main reasons the current ele playstyle is so degenerate.
It’s up in the air. However, Enhancement’s tier set is grossly overtuned. It increases about 30% DPS and our tier set is #1 by 1000 miles. There’s no way it goes live.
People know how it works and what it does. Many people find it to be quite tedious to use in aoe because of the ramp up time and margin for error that is sometimes out of your control.
It’s actually a really good thing for Enhance that Pwave’s trigger is LB instead of EB because as it is now EB has a lot of rules to how you want to use it whereas LB isn’t which would impact how/when you want to use Pwave and associated effects:
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If it was linked to EB then you would only be able to use Pwave after Wolves because of EB’s multiplicative scaling with each Elemental Spirt which means instances where Pwave and Fearl Spirts become offset hampers our damage considerably versus currently (and to a degree before the season 3/4 tier bonus) you can pretty much send both Feral Spirits and Pwave whenever you please.
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You’d also have to manage your EB stacks more to ensure you have a stack ready to be able to consume Pwave’s effect when you need to which adds a lot of more cognitive load to already busy spec.
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You’d lose the ability to put Pwave on CD without triggering the cleave + haste buff effects by dumping the 10 stacks of MSW with EB. We commonly do this now if we know adds may be spawning soon. Your only options would to either hold PWave, use it and overcap on MSW waiting to EB, or dump the MSW with Chainlighting which is not gonna feel good in single target. LB is also a way easier tuning knob than EB.
TLDR: One of Pwave’s best qualities is found in it’s flexibility and wide variety of ways to play with it, large part of that comes from it being linked to LB instead of EB; lack of flexibility/variety of use might I add were huge flaws about Chain Harvest and Fae Transfusion. The ironic part is that the worst aspect of Pwave is that the setup to use it effectively in AoE is super ridged/inflexible due to FlameShock spread mechanics (z-axis issues, # of targets Lava Lash spreads Flameshock, steps you have to take to get 6 Flameshocks out on 6+ target pulls). Or in other words:
If they made changes to give you multiple ways to spread Flameshock and get it out on 6 targets it would be a crazy power buff to Pwave + Talents and ease up a lot complaints. I cooked up some ways they could do that in the Beta Thread if you’re interested: Feedback: Shamans - #307 by Yeastyholes-moon-guard
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I could sum up what you just said in a simpler way. Primordial Wave is either a burst damage cooldown with Elemental Blast after casting your second set of Wolves which takes proc’s to reduce the time to overlap wolves, or it’s a sustained damage rotation spell that is used on cooldown.
In PvP burst cooldowns need to be more “on demand” and not restricted to a time window that has no refresh mechanic to extend the window when you can expect to stay on a target.
I’m assuming the bold you’re referring to Feral Spirits. What was talking about was purely talking about PvE decision making based on where your CDs, your stack of EB, and the flow of a pull/boss fight. Pwave > Wolves > EB on pull does have good damage burst but its mostly just done on pull to get the cooldown rolling on CD. You’ll cast EB after Pwave only if you’re going to cap on 2 stacks or there is a reason to intentionally delay casting the empowered LB for say adds that might be spawning. Otherwise you’re just gonna send LB because the haste buff is a higher priority in the grand scheme of things.
Well Elementalist is a sustained DPS spec…IDK how it function in PvP at all.
Reactivity was working during last week’s M+ test. It was quite powerful.
I just saw that (i’ve taken a break from beta for a sec) and saw that its working…except on target dummies XD
Well not anymore right my primo wave lightning bolts hit so hard on the overall in keys. It’s still pretty substantial.