Patch 2.3 and you: Elemental Shaman edition
by Eliah Hecht 
Sep 26th 2007 at 10:30PM
Earlier today, the up-close-and-personal Enhancement shammies got some boosts, and Elemental improvements were promised for patch 2.3 as well. And here they are! Eyonix delivers:- Being a level 70 elemental shaman myself, I'm particularly excited as currently I feel the class is in good shape, but in need of a few minor tweaks. I'd say the one I'm most pleased with (especially after seeing the results of change on an internal build) concerns lightning overload. When 2.3 launches it will have a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to occur, though the additional spell will cause half damage, still ending up being a noticeable increase to overall dps
- Also, the additional spell will cause no threat whatsoever.
- [Regarding] the mana spring totem. Previously it restored 12 mana every two seconds at maximum rank, for your entire party. As of patch 2.3 it will restore your groups mana by 20 every 2 seconds.
This equates to 50mana/5 for each member of your party without the talent points in restorative totems. - The second change impacts water shield. This spell will no longer cost any mana to cast (which also means the five-[second] rule will not be affected) and the mana granted per globe has been substantially increased. Additionally, the spells duration has been shortened to one minute and at the end of its duration it now grants mana for any remaining globes.
- Elemental Focus will now reduce the mana cost of the next two damage spells by 40%. Now before theorycrafting begins, this is actually a buff except in cases where your chance to land a critical strike with spells was extremely high.
- Frostshock will no longer be subject to diminishing returns which I'm sure players will find useful, especially in pvp.
- Lastly, we are making a change that will cause a reduction in dps, however, the elemental shamans overall dps will still be improving with the change that we're making to lightning overload. We're reducing the casting time of Lightning Bolt to 2.5 seconds (from 3 seconds), and chain lightning to 2.0 (from 2.5 seconds), causing benefit from spell damage to be reduced appropriately. The mana cost for these two spells are being lowered as well.
The lightning mastery talent's cast time will now be reduced by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 seconds. So, casting time for the spells ends up being the same as before. (All of the above from this Eyonix post) - We're increasing the additional mana granted by water shield for both the Tidefury Raiment and the Totem of the Thunderhead. (Eyonix)
In other Shaman news, Eyonix has said basically "no cc 4 u", at least until Wrath:
- If we give shaman a cc abillity it won't be until Wrath of the Lich King.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Brass Sep 26th 2007 10:42PM
dont believe the hype, yes, most of those things are buffs, however, the reduction of lightning bolt and chain lightning cast times is a serious nerf to DPS that IS NOT compensated for by the lightning overload buff, i dont have the math handy ATM, im sure someone else can get into that.
do not believe the hype that this is all good, they are giving with the right hand and taking away with the right.
tylerfulltilt Sep 26th 2007 10:48PM
In regards to the changes with water shield, yes this is nice.
In regards to the changes to lightning bolt?
Do not want. We should have kept our mouths shut about our problems with building too much threat. Their solution was not to give us some sort of threat reduction talent or aggro dump, but rather to nerf our damage. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the itemization was there for shaman to reach higher amounts of +dmg, but it kind of sucks. We're gonna have to get around +950 to do the dmg we were doing at +850, and it's much more difficult to go from 850 to 950 than it is from 500-700.
Baluki Sep 26th 2007 10:52PM
I've got the math handy at the moment.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pWrxu1WkBtmUdbmig9sP-Mg
Slight DECREASE to our DPS. Hopefully they'll see this (if it really was their intent to increase our DPS like Eyonix said) and make necessary changes.
On the plus side, we're going to have MUCH better mana efficiency.
Johnny Sep 27th 2007 12:18AM
Most of it are welcome buffs except the shorter LB cast times. As someone pointed out that lowers the coefficient leading to less dps. Especially as you get better + spell damage gear
BenMS Sep 27th 2007 4:12AM
Eliah, when you say five-minute rule, I assume of course that you mean five-second rule. Apart from that, yes, this is looking like a slight nerf for Shaman DPS.
Chidar Sep 27th 2007 6:54AM
Does the reduction in LB casting time to 2 seconds mean that with talents it will now be a 1 second cast? That would be insane! On a plus side, it would be great for us be able to cast our main damage spell in PvP finally instead of just using shocks :)
Buford Sep 27th 2007 7:26AM
They're reducing the talent as well. For an Elemental shaman LB will still be 2.0 sec. and CL will still be 1.5 sec.
The reduction of cast time is mainly a buff for the Resto shaman with +healing now giving 33% +dmg/healing.
I'm going to wait for the PTR to reserve judgment, however you can't ignore some of the math on the shaman forums.
My only hope is that the buff to Lightning Overload will compensate the slight damage nerf with a buff to burst damage.
tool03 Sep 27th 2007 9:33AM
I can't believe that I am going to have to give up some of my survivability to try and make up for a nerf to my dps that will STILL be lower then it currently is. (assuming the math is correct)
So, lower DPS and even worse survivability. My survivability is already quite a joke with so little cc and or anti-cc.
Massive nurf for ele pvp shammy, I'm not even sure if going ench will be much better.
Eliah Hecht Sep 27th 2007 10:52AM
BenMS: That's Eyonix's typo, but yes, I'm sure he means 5-second. Fixing.
Blonder Sep 27th 2007 12:40PM
2 Baluki`s post
If Blizz will buff LO just little more - the DPS will suffer only minimum changes.
Blonder Sep 27th 2007 12:41PM
here`s the math:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p7HJepGdKhGOoi0Zi1UFeVg
Doch Sep 27th 2007 1:33PM
Looking at this from a Resto Shammy, the water shield improvement looks sweet for mp5. Be able to cast ES on tank and WS on me and get free mana every minute, with mana spring increase and mana tide I should never run out of mana, even spam healing!
With the lower cast time on LB, it actually might boost my dps so that I might kill a regular mob in under 5 minutes!!!!
Jason Sep 27th 2007 1:50PM
The huge buff to LO should compensate for the loss, which Eyonix has pointed out. I mean, you're halving the damage and quadrupling the chance to proc LO. Mathmatically, you're doubling your damage from LO. Basically, here's what happens:
-Sustained damage is decreased slightly.
-Burst damage is increased greatly, by more than the decrease to sustained damage.
-Overall, DPS goes up, threat goes down.
Velani Sep 27th 2007 9:40PM
I predict a hidden 3 second lightning overload cooldown, in the standard Blizzard ninja-nerf style.
Brass Sep 28th 2007 7:58PM
To me this looks like a MAJOR nerf to PVE Elem shammies, a break even for PVP Elem shammies, and a HUGE boost to PVE/PVP Resto shammies.
Unfortunately, the game does not allow Elemental Shammies to actually gear up in the 70 man raids. Sure, Tier sets are fine (even tho the t4 and t5 set bonuses are very questionable), however, an Elemental PVE shammy will end up wearing cloth most of his/her life.
To me the math seems simple:
I currently have +1000 spell damage -> hit LB for 1700.
With the LB nerf:
0.5s/3.5s * 1000 spell damage = 143 spell damage per LB lost (means I know hit for 1557).
Lightning Overload buff:
New: 20% x 0.5 = 10%
Old: 5%
Difference: 10-5 = 5%
Now combining the two:
1557*1.05 = 1635
SUMMARY:
NOW: 1700 damage
FUTURE: 1635 damage
hmmmm...i guess it is a typical Elem shammy buff....cuz it's pointed downwards.....
i hope we get nerfed one day...then i might wake up and actually win a mail piece of caster gear in a raid dungeon.
we r going to see a lot of hybrid classes form because of this.....20/0/41
jaded1 Sep 29th 2007 5:07PM
15 - your math is flawed. You're taking the 'difference' between the Lightning Overloads and using that in what the new value of your LBs would be. Instead of 5% it should be 10% (not the difference).
So with a base damage of 1557, and a roughly 10% damage increase with LO, that leaves your LBs somewhere around 1712 damage.
Old: 1700
New: 1712
Seems good to me. Same damage, less threat.. I like it.
Someone else correct me please, if it is indeed my math that's flawed here :o lol
Brass Sep 30th 2007 1:25PM
16 - Actually my math was correct.
The 1557 is the new damage caused by LBs only (it does not take into account LO).
The 5% is the increase in damage gained from LO (10%-5%). If you apply the 5% increase in damage to the new LB damage (1557), you get:
1557*1.05 = 1635
You can look at this anyway you wish, but it ends up being a dps nerf.
It's probably great for pvpers tho, since you would rather the extra burst damage over a higher sustained damage.
foxkreig Oct 1st 2007 6:51PM
i agree it's very frustrating playing elemental for 70 raids. it basically makes you respec in order to win usable gear and not be squishy.
but for pve, it's not a bad trade. the only aggro dump we have right now is self res. and that's a painfull way to dump aggro =). so having lightning overload proc more and net us no aggro, that's like free damage from a tank's perspective.
I will hold on judgement untill i get a feel for it come the next patch. if the dps bothers me that much i'll go group up with a boomkin for 5% crit =)
Trapmt Oct 9th 2007 11:55AM
I see no reason to nerf any of our damage. I run +1210 spell damage and 37.28 crit when raid buffed.
Take a Mage with +900 spell dam and 33% crit and they can easily out dps me as things are now.
I would perfer to have damage I can count on, rather than some questionable proc from LO.
I think a bigger help over nerfing our DPS:
1. Give us a talent with 70% chance not be intrupted while casting LB or CL.
2. Include Nature damage into Curse of Elements!
3. Our "buffs" are tied to a 30 yrd max totem and should be far greater than any casted 30 min buff that moves with you!
4. Increase totem health, fast weapon wielders can litterly kill our totems faster than we can drop them with GCD.
Shaman's really really really do not need any more Nerfs, or you might as well take all but the Restro tree out of the game.
Taskism Oct 10th 2007 7:49PM
So they messed up Enhance with the no windfury proc on totems, and now theyre messing with damage output on Elemental. I've been resto for so long, and finally got geared up to switch out and not all other options are getting kicked in the ribs. The water shield is nice for resto, but the rest is not so great. Shamans are a bad class to pick.