Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Ghost Cralwer has been busy

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)


Tier 1 Enhancement
Right. The problem with tier 1 Enhancement is you have Focused Strikes, which clearly is for Enhance and nobody else. Then you're left with Elemental Weapons, a good talent for all 3 specs, and Improved Shields, a good talent for Enhance and Resto. That leaves Elemental with only 3 points they want to spend in tier 1 and a strong desire to get to tier 2. But, as I said above, if Elemental did care about shields, then presumably they could care about Improved Shields. (Source)

Making Shaman fun
Fun is obviously very important to us, but it's also a really difficult thing to talk about. I read these forums constantly, and it's pretty typical to see the class who had exciting changes a few weeks ago now bored of those and eager for new changes. The grass is greener mindset is huge around here, perhaps understandably since it's hard to stay in touch with the changes going on for all classes at once. When you drill down sometimes on what players are looking for to make their class fun for them, you often get a list of ideas that would be terribly overpowered or just not work in our game, or both. That doesn't mean it's not a goal. It just means that delivering what is fun for one player means something very different than what is fun for another player. (Source)

Fire Nova
We'd like to downplay Fire Nova in lieu of Earthquake (in addition to Chain Lightning of course). We also agree that Fire Nova should be used for true AE situations and not against single targets. (Source)

Elemental Rotation
We didn't set out with the goal of change for the sake of change though. Most of the new rotational abilities we've added were to fix problems with the class. Prot warriors for example are going to be hitting the same buttons they hit in LK because we think that works. Elemental is getting Unleashed Weapon (and Earthquake), and beyond that we think you have the right number of buttons to hit, so we're hesitant to cram a new button in there. Nor are we excited about giving you "Super Duper Lightning Bolt" that lets you take Lightning Bolt off your bar just for the sake of having a new button. I'd characterize the Elemental playstyle as closer to a mage, who isn't managing a ton of different nukes, but does have to react to what is happening in terms of procs, short cooldowns and movement. Lava Surge, Elemental Mastery and Unleashed Weapon are examples of those respectively.

We'll definitely take the feedback under advisement though. (Source)

Feral Spirit Scaling
Feral Spirit should scale like all pets. (It doesn't yet). Losing Parry was a consequence of losing Spirit Weapons, but we'll give it back somewhere. (Source)

Thunderstorm
I agree that Enhancement's choice at level 10 is transformative. I disagree that Resto similarly plays very differently at level 10. I also think you're downplaying Thunderstorm. Now you can Lightning Bolt and when a target gets closer to you, Thunderstorm them back and then Lightning Bolt them again. (Source)

Unleash Weapon
Elemental's range talent needs to affect Unleash Weapon too. (Source)
The trouble Enhancement Tier one is that I cant afford to take all of the talents.
I can spend 33 points in enhancement and get all the current dps talents, That leaves 8. There are 10 dps talents in the first 2 tiers of elemental. So I have to skip 2 and it looks like that's reverb. Now that build also skips ancestral swiftness and totemic reach. Fights are so movement intensive, I find it hard to believe that AS isn't going to be a pretty big dps boost as well not to mention the simple utility and survivability it brings. So where do we get the 2 points for that? Imp shields is my guess. That still leaves us skipping Totemic reach.  Look I appreciate that totems are no longer 2 minutes and 20 yards. Really I do. I can drop 4 at once. That's awesomesauce! But with everyone else's auras being like a 100 yd radius would it kill you to give us a 40 yard baseline radius?

Not being on Beta I had no idea that Feral Spirits were not scaling.  I wonder at what level they will scale? I hope its at the Ferocity pet level.

Getting some free parry is nice I suppose. Since I don't PvP it shouldn't matter much.

1 comment:

Gronthe said...

On one hand GC says that they want to fix the Shaman's ability to do damage while moving, yet if you max out on the Enhance DPS talents (33) and throw 8 into Elemental, you can't take those talents which would improve your performance in fights where you had to move and hope that you remain in range of your totems.

So I guess GC's plan is for Enhance to spend 37 in their primary tree, and 4 in Elemental in order to gain the advantages required in a movement heavy environment. It's not that we're bored with the changes or discontent either, some common sense should play in and NOT give the Enhancement Shaman such a massive talent tree, it's...well...I can't believe I'm saying this...unfair.