78 replies to this topic

[Udderly]

So everyone is spending a lot of time trying to come up with ideas to fix hunters and I can say as someone who has played ele quite a bit in MoP (heroic raiding and PvP), we could use a bit of the same treatment. It's a VERY fine line that we walk between being viable but somewhat OP (now) and being absolute dogshit because we are one of only 2 classes that really needs to cast a lot (lol procs, I know).

So let's start the discussion about what makes sense. Some ground rules:

1. Let's stop the 'nerf the procs', 'nerf the damage', etc. ideas because they affect PvE. Yes Blizzard can give something less dmg in PvP than PvE, but we all know they are reluctant to do that so it shouldn't be a place to fall back on.

2. We want to affect ONE SPEC. This is something that drives a lot of crazy (especially as someone who plays ele and moonkin), where one spec gets nerfed and it hits the other two specs by default.

3. Defensively, shaman's are FINALLY in a pretty good spot. The main problem seems to be the instagibs. How can we fix this in a not insanely-overcomplicated way?

My first thought would be to look at how echoes interacts with mastery. Blizz has said that mastery is their 'knob' to tune dps when it is too low or too high. If they were to change it so that echo procs cannot proc an additional mastery LB, that would be a start by limiting it to 3 at the same time, rather than four. You could then tune mastery a little higher to compensate (and honestly ele isn't great in PvE at the moment, so upping their damage by giving them more mastery on the other two talents wouldn't be terrible).

Now that still enables 230k instants, so it doesn't entirely solve it, but it's a start. What else do people have out there? I'm at work so I can't write more, but intend to include more info later on of some other ideas I have. Thanks for your input in advance!

[averuki]

Corruption got buffed and at the same time nerfed in pvp. They shouldve nerfed lava burst damage against pvp players the moment it got buffed

[Dizzeeyo]

So everyone is spending a lot of time trying to come up with ideas to fix hunters and I can say as someone who has played ele quite a bit in MoP (heroic raiding and PvP), we could use a bit of the same treatment. It's a VERY fine line that we walk between being viable but somewhat OP (now) and being absolute dogshit because we are one of only 2 classes that really needs to cast a lot (lol procs, I know).

So let's start the discussion about what makes sense. Some ground rules:

1. Let's stop the 'nerf the procs', 'nerf the damage', etc. ideas because they affect PvE. Yes Blizzard can give something less dmg in PvP than PvE, but we all know they are reluctant to do that so it shouldn't be a place to fall back on.

2. We want to affect ONE SPEC. This is something that drives a lot of crazy (especially as someone who plays ele and moonkin), where one spec gets nerfed and it hits the other two specs by default.

3. Defensively, shaman's are FINALLY in a pretty good spot. The main problem seems to be the instagibs. How can we fix this in a not insanely-overcomplicated way?

My first thought would be to look at how echoes interacts with mastery. Blizz has said that mastery is their 'knob' to tune dps when it is too low or too high. If they were to change it so that echo procs cannot proc an additional mastery LB, that would be a start by limiting it to 3 at the same time, rather than four. You could then tune mastery a little higher to compensate (and honestly ele isn't great in PvE at the moment, so upping their damage by giving them more mastery on the other two talents wouldn't be terrible).

Now that still enables 230k instants, so it doesn't entirely solve it, but it's a start. What else do people have out there? I'm at work so I can't write more, but intend to include more info later on of some other ideas I have. Thanks for your input in advance!

stop trying so hard

mastery procs do 10% less damage vs players

echo of the elements procs do 30% less damage vs players

fixed

Edited by Dizzeeyo, 12 June 2013 - 08:11 PM.

[Dagin]

No one will care about ele until hunters are "changed" simply because hunter is a class even though it is a spec they are complaining about vs ele a spec that isn't played by nearly as many people that play a hunter. Which makes sense since hunter is a class and ele is a spec, but the mind set from the masses is tonot care about hybrid specs needing balancing and just classes if you look through the site from cata till present.

[Korzul]

Any flame shock past the 1st shouldn't increase surge procs. Echo should be redesigned to something a lot less bursty.

Ele blast -> Lava burst -> Fulmi would still hurt like hell and cause people to complain if they got lucky crits/mastery procs but ele would take a lot more skill than it does now.

Could also make mastery procs never crit (obv lvb procs would crit) but increase their damage to say 80-85%% up from 75%. Would help with ele blast double crits yoloing people.

[Dizzeeyo]

Any flame shock past the 1st shouldn't increase surge procs. Echo should be redesigned to something a lot less bursty.

Ele blast -> Lava burst -> Fulmi would still hurt like hell and cause people to complain if they got lucky crits/mastery procs but ele would take a lot more skill than it does now.

Could also make mastery procs never crit (obv lvb procs would crit) but increase their damage to say 80-85%% up from 75%. Would help with ele blast double crits yoloing people.

or elemental shamans could keep suggesting changes that have pve implications, safe in the knowledge that ele shaman dps is not exactly #1 right now so they have very little chance of actually being implemented

[ottishen]

The first thing that jumps into my mind is to change the RNG factor of LB procs.
For instance, if LB has a 20% proc rate, is it possible to change it to "every 5th time flame shock deals dmg"? (20% is taken from the air as an example since I do not know the exact proc %, but it illustrates the point)

Not sure how this would work with having Flame Shock on multiple targets. Ideally, the proc would still be every 5th Flame shock tick, regardless of target, but I do not know how that works code-wise if it is at all possible. If it is however, the procs would not be randomly occurring with 3 random back-to-back procs instagibbing someone, while still retaining the same damage over a longer time span (from a PvE PoV)

[MisterSchaf]

well, guess they are going to make it similar to balance driuds....on flame shock dot crits there is a chance of the lava surge proc.
if this happens eles are going to have much more crit and much less mastery (for much less extra procs). flameshock no cd i guess then.

[Dizzeeyo]

or elemental shamans could keep suggesting changes that have pve implications, safe in the knowledge that ele shaman dps is not exactly #1 right now so they have very little chance of actually being implemented

The first thing that jumps into my mind is to change the RNG factor of LB procs.
For instance, if LB has a 20% proc rate, is it possible to change it to "every 5th time flame shock deals dmg"? (20% is taken from the air as an example since I do not know the exact proc %, but it illustrates the point)

Not sure how this would work with having Flame Shock on multiple targets. Ideally, the proc would still be every 5th Flame shock tick, regardless of target, but I do not know how that works code-wise if it is at all possible. If it is however, the procs would not be randomly occurring with 3 random back-to-back procs instagibbing someone, while still retaining the same damage over a longer time span (from a PvE PoV)

exdee

[dionim]

or elemental shamans could keep suggesting changes that have pve implications, safe in the knowledge that ele shaman dps is not exactly #1 right now so they have very little chance of actually being implemented

fbomb does now 70% damage when used on players

[Randomguy]

Don't ask for Elemental nerfs otherwise Blizzard will reduce Fire/Earthelemental special attacks (AoE thingy?) and give them 10% on Lavaburst and Lightning Bolt...

[wraithaur]

All the requests to nurf the procs must definately be coming from people who don't enter the arena every week as Ele and get focused like you are the only person on earth from the moment you start to the moment you log off. The solution is make it so we can kite or escape better or give us some abilities that are channeled...just anything that can start doing damage instantly. Getting locked out or constantly trying to duke casts is almost all your time.
I have given up trying to cast most of the time and spend my time purging, dropping totems and wind shearing. So when you get a proc or 4 you thank the gods and unleash that shit like a boss on peoples faces. If you want to actually kill someone by casting you need to co-ordinate cross CC so you can't be silenced, kicked, stunned while you pop every CD you have. On top of our LvB boost they slowed our cast time so our burst windows are significantly slower and easier to interupt again.

Try living how the other half live before calling for nurfs.

[HugeFaggot]

they should simply put an internal cooldown on the proc so that it cannot exceed a certain amount of procs in X seconds, it would solve the problem of shamans randomly globaling people with 10 lava bursts in 2 seconds, yet still allowing shamans to do some damage with mind numbing and 2 melee riding them like a pony.

[kannetixx]

All the requests to nurf the procs must definately be coming from people who don't enter the arena every week as Ele and get focused like you are the only person on earth from the moment you start to the moment you log off. The solution is make it so we can kite or escape better or give us some abilities that are channeled...just anything that can start doing damage instantly. Getting locked out or constantly trying to duke casts is almost all your time.
I have given up trying to cast most of the time and spend my time purging, dropping totems and wind shearing. So when you get a proc or 4 you thank the gods and unleash that shit like a boss on peoples faces. If you want to actually kill someone by casting you need to co-ordinate cross CC so you can't be silenced, kicked, stunned while you pop every CD you have. On top of our LvB boost they slowed our cast time so our burst windows are significantly slower and easier to interupt again.

Try living how the other half live before calling for nurfs.

i remember when shamans were sort of a utility class ... you're basically there to make sure that mage does as much damage as possible

and try living against an ele? have you seen the damage? good golly miss molly.

[Lemmi1]

Echo needs to be redesigned, that's the core of the one shot complains and single best option in pve in that tier. With proper changes to hunter, that would allow other casters to be more playable too changing the meta enough. We should see how things go after that, i don't want them to be overnerfed now that they are finally top tier or near that. Part of the reason eles are so popular is their decent, as a caster, option againts hunter and bad state of resto, plus several sps fotm rerollers panicking. Of course they are in a strong and good position but there are quite a few things that can be done against them that people don't seem to know, they don't know how to play against eles as they were rarely seen before this season, at least in us.

The thing is, without those procs, eles can barely cast, if at all, and a single lava is easily healable because you know there is nothing more coming after that, giving more than enough time to recover the lost life.

For those who talk about changing to a crit proc, it would come at the cost of much higher lava burst damage to compensate the lower proc chance, GC said that, which would be a pretty bad idea, plus more boring playstyle in my opinion.

[Toiletbreath]

That's the core problem. If you take away the lava surge procs, an ele shaman simply won't be able to do anything in 3v3 besides just sit there and soak up damage from the melee train leg-humping him.

I think that Echo of the Elements is what should be looked at first, since that's where the most ridiculous RNG burst damage (2 lava bursts and 2 mastery procs in a global) comes from. It's basically a built-in version of the legendary staff from Cataclysm, and Blizzard could easily rework it into something else appropriate for the talent tier.

This could succeed in reducing the pvp burst potential while also preserving pve dps.

[NiNLeX]

Imo the best way to keep eles viable in both pve and pvp is to nerf proc rates vs players, possibly reduce lava surge proc chance to 10% (it's 20% atm afaik). Nerfing echo isn't so simple, because it also affects heals and personally I use echo only vs caster cleaves. I don't see echo being really a problem, except when you get double elemental blast crit with it.

[Udderly]

stop trying so hard

mastery procs and procs from the talent do 20% less damage vs players

fixed

First of all their overall damage in PvP doesn't need nerfing, so just taking away dmg isn't entirely good (besides the fact that Blizzard dislikes these kinds of solutions except as a last resort). But I also want to point out that when you are getting hit by a 300k LB in a single global, does it really matter to you that it's reduced by 20%? You're still getting hit for 240k in a single global of an instant cast spell. IMO that's still not OK.

That's the core problem. If you take away the lava surge procs, an ele shaman simply won't be able to do anything in 3v3 besides just sit there and soak up damage from the melee train leg-humping him.

I think that Echo of the Elements is what should be looked at first, since that's where the most ridiculous RNG burst damage (2 lava bursts and 2 mastery procs in a global) comes from. It's basically a built-in version of the legendary staff from Cataclysm, and Blizzard could easily rework it into something else appropriate for the talent tier.

This could succeed in reducing the pvp burst potential while also preserving pve dps.

Echo is definitely the problem. It requires zero setup, and you can kill something on accident. I literally saw this warrior fall over the other night that I wasn't really trying to kill - I just shot a proc at him because the priest had lined me and the proc was about to fall off, and he went from 50% to dead just like that. LB with one mastery and echo proc totaling half his health, not really a good thing since it happened without cds used and without any setup.

[fant0m8]

or elemental shamans could keep suggesting changes that have pve implications, safe in the knowledge that ele shaman dps is not exactly #1 right now so they have very little chance of actually being implemented

Don't worry, Hunter DPS isn't exactly #1 right now either.

In our case though, it's the non-Hunters that keep suggesting changes that have PVE implications, and thus very little chance of actually happening. /facepalm