Post by Berg: God of Raiding on Dec 14, 2014 1:02:11 GMT -5
I have this thing available as a .docx if you would prefer that format.
Forewarning: I'm going to be picking on Frost Mages because I've raided extensively as a Frost Mage this tier.
Too many enemies cannot be reliability cleaved with Chain Lightning despite being in range. It seems like, the bigger the enemy models, the less likely Chain Lightning will actually chain. Biggest offenders: Twin Ogron, Brackenspore. This appears to be a widespread hitbox and cleave issue, as I've heard other classes mention this as well.
Earthquake is incompatible with the majority of enemy encounters in Highmaul. On the Brackenspore encounter, for example, here is what will force tanks to move enemies out of an Earthquake: 1) Waves, 2) Mind Fungus, 3) Spore Shooters, 4) Exploding Mushrooms, 5) Healing Mushrooms, 6) Haste Mushrooms, 7) Creeping Moss.
Keep in mind that, in order to Earthquake effectively, the Elemental Shaman must first cleave the enemies with Chain Lightning (to gain Enhanced Chain Lightning).
Summary: If the enemies can be successfully cleaved (usually not the case despite them being directly on top of each other) and waves aren't coming, and a Mind Fungus hasn't spawned near us, and Spore Shooters haven't spawned near us, and Exploding Mushrooms haven't spawned near the tanks, and a Healing Mushroom hasn't spawned near us, and a Haste mushroom hasn't spawned far away from us, and Creeping Moss is not near us or any of the tanks, and the tanks don't accidentally move the boss a yard to the left, then casting Earthquake was a good idea.
Brackenspore is not unique in this. On the Twin Ogron encounter, the Ogrons are extraordinarily unreliable to cleave as well. The Ogron must be moved out of Earthquake for: 1) Pulverize's first tick, 2) Pulverize's second tick, 3) Pulverize's third tick, 4) Whirlwind, 5) Enfeebling Roar, 6) Quake, 7) Shield Charge.
Compare Earthquake to Prismatic Crystal. Mages must find ten stable seconds to use their Prismatic Crystal to full effect. Elemental, on the other hand, must find upwards of ten minutes of stability to effectively use Earthquake on any encounter with multiple long-standing targets—a degree of stability that simply doesn't exist in raid encounters.
Unleashed Fury (the talent) cannot be used because Unleash Flame must be used as a movement ability. Even in encounters without movement, such as Butcher, the Primal Elementalist talent pulls ahead on DPS and Damage Done (because it multiplies with the opener to a much greater degree than Unleashed Fury). Solution: Completely change this talent. No one will use a talent that forces us to use Unleash Flame, arguably our best movement ability, on cooldown.
While interesting in their design, Rushing Streams, Ancestral Guidance, Conductivity, and Storm Elemental Totem are so underpowered that their impact is—if existent—unnoticeable. Even when I use these talents to their full effect, I never notice an impact on raid healing (whereas I very much did in Siege of Orgrimmar). And I'm not subjectively biased: Using Conductivity and Storm Elemental Totem left me at the very bottom of the HPS meter across all Highmaul encounters, below melee and other hybrids whose off-healing is entirely passive. Solution: Buff the modifiers of Rushing Streams, Ancestral Guidance, Conductivity, and Storm Elemental Totem significantly. Healing Surge does not need to be buffed.
Elemental has too many small damage sources that fail to multiply to the degree of the abilities of every other DPS class and spec. This will leave Elemental DPS permanently behind unless the design is changed. “10%” hotfixes will not be enough because of the existence of mechanics like Brackenspore's Rejuvenating Mushroom, which favors bigger damage sources (try putting an Arcane Mage in one of those things!).
Elemental has so many damage sources that new players may also be confused as to how much damage they are doing. Without a damage meter addon, there's really no way to tell. The design is inelegant.
With the removal of casting Lightning Bolt on the move, Elemental—while viable—now has an unusually high skill cap that may turn off new players.
Anything highlighted in red, when used as a movement ability, is usually a DPS loss.
List of Elemental's movement abilities:
- Earth Shock (preferably at high Fulmination) and Flame Shock (preferrably at low duration) [shared cooldown, so players also need to optimize which one they cast]
- Lava Burst (only with Lava Surge) (only if Lava Surge is not about to expire)
- Unleash Flame (if the distance is not advantageous for Ghost Wolf to then be combined with Unleash Flame to clear)
- Searing Totem (preferably at low duration) (preferably with Fire Elemental not coming off of cooldown soon) (with Fire Elemental not active)
- Fire Elemental Totem (if it is eligible to be multiplied with cooldowns or by the nature of the encounter)
- Liquid Magma (preferably with Searing Totem not at low duration) (preferably with Fire Elemental not coming off of cooldown soon)
- Ancestral Swiftness + Lightning Bolt or Elemental Blast or Earthquake [+target reticule]
- Spiritwalker's Grace (can only be used outside of Ascendance if you can guarantee Ascendance will not be interrupted)
- Thunderstorm (if unglyphed) (if in melee range) (if 4~+ targets)
- Ghost Wolf
List of Frost Mage's movement abilities:
- Ice Floes 1
- Ice Floes 2
- Ice Floes 3
- Blink
- Ice Nova (no management necessary because of its short cooldown and charges)
- Frostfire Bolt (Brain Freeze proc—which is 9 seconds longer than Lava Surge and I don't know why)
- Ice Lance (Fingers of Frost—which is 9 seconds longer than Lava Surge and I don't know why)
- Ice Lance
You may or may not see a slight difference in complexity here. Solution: Give Elemental a more reliable toolset of movement abilities. It's unrealistic to expect players to calculate which of 14 abilities (count 'em!) they should cast within the 1.5 seconds it takes to get out of a void zone.
Elemental Shamans almost never use Ascendance outdoors because the model change prevents them from mounting after they've dispatched the enemy. The Ascendance buff also cannot be clicked off. If you use Ascendance outdoors, you waste more time than you gain because of your inability to mount.
Liquid Magma's flight time is too long, it breaks crowd controlled targets, it travels through walls and ceilings, it aggros things that aren't even in the same building, and it lines up with Searing Totem poorly.
The flight time is a severe issue on encounters like Ko'ragh, where AOE is needed at precise times and in precise locations. In these scenarios, Liquid Magma isn't even worth using, despite the need for AOE.
Too much of the time, I need to reapply an expiring fire totem before using Liquid Magma. This further limits a talent that is already under-performing. New players may also make the mistake of using Liquid Magma when their fire totem is about to expire, completely wasting their level 100 talent! I won't offer a solution for this talent because it has so many little issues and because I don't know what your design goals for it were.
Lava Beam is almost never used. There are too few scenarios where Ascendance lines up with enough clustered targets to Lava Beam. Solution: Without buffing Ascendance's damage on 4-5 targets, buff its damage versus 2-3 targets. (If you're not aware, Lava Beam is usually a DPS loss [over Lava Burst] versus just 2-3 targets, which seems unintended.)
Fulmination is out of control. The Shock cooldown isn't short enough to prevent it from capping in too many scenarios. Solution: Less damage sources and/or less sources of Fulmination.
Elemental damage ramp-up time is relatively too long.
For single target, Elemental must (with few exceptions) Flame Shock each target it wants to do significant damage to. This is very problematic because of the Shock cooldown. How does an Elemental Shaman attack multiple targets that are spread out, each of which needs to be killed quickly (example: Spore Shooters on Brackenspore)? Certainly, Elemental has been given tools for this, such as a max stack of Fulmination, or default Lava Burst (50% less damage)--but these tools pale in comparison to pooling 2 Brain Freezes, 2 Fingers of Frosts, and a Frozen Orb capable of proccing even more. As far as I know, and judging by logs worldwide, no DPS has more problematic ramp-up time than Elemental.
Elemental's AOE ramp-up time is also problematic: Fire Totem, and then Chain Lightning, and then Earthquake, and then Liquid Magma, and then Chain Lightning—assuming that your Chain Lightning actually hits an optimal amount of targets, and assuming the enemies stay in the Earthquake, and assuming Liquid Magma's attacks get there in time, and assuming Liquid Magma's attacks get there at all (they might attack something else instead!).
I hope you've enjoyed this terrifying look into the Elemental Shaman, and I hope we don't have to wait until 6.1 to receive some quality of life changes.
- Berg
Bonus Complaint: Ele has a really really really hard time doing the Garrison Barn beast capture mechanic because of their innate multistrike.
Forewarning: I'm going to be picking on Frost Mages because I've raided extensively as a Frost Mage this tier.
Too many enemies cannot be reliability cleaved with Chain Lightning despite being in range. It seems like, the bigger the enemy models, the less likely Chain Lightning will actually chain. Biggest offenders: Twin Ogron, Brackenspore. This appears to be a widespread hitbox and cleave issue, as I've heard other classes mention this as well.
Earthquake is incompatible with the majority of enemy encounters in Highmaul. On the Brackenspore encounter, for example, here is what will force tanks to move enemies out of an Earthquake: 1) Waves, 2) Mind Fungus, 3) Spore Shooters, 4) Exploding Mushrooms, 5) Healing Mushrooms, 6) Haste Mushrooms, 7) Creeping Moss.
Keep in mind that, in order to Earthquake effectively, the Elemental Shaman must first cleave the enemies with Chain Lightning (to gain Enhanced Chain Lightning).
Summary: If the enemies can be successfully cleaved (usually not the case despite them being directly on top of each other) and waves aren't coming, and a Mind Fungus hasn't spawned near us, and Spore Shooters haven't spawned near us, and Exploding Mushrooms haven't spawned near the tanks, and a Healing Mushroom hasn't spawned near us, and a Haste mushroom hasn't spawned far away from us, and Creeping Moss is not near us or any of the tanks, and the tanks don't accidentally move the boss a yard to the left, then casting Earthquake was a good idea.
Brackenspore is not unique in this. On the Twin Ogron encounter, the Ogrons are extraordinarily unreliable to cleave as well. The Ogron must be moved out of Earthquake for: 1) Pulverize's first tick, 2) Pulverize's second tick, 3) Pulverize's third tick, 4) Whirlwind, 5) Enfeebling Roar, 6) Quake, 7) Shield Charge.
Compare Earthquake to Prismatic Crystal. Mages must find ten stable seconds to use their Prismatic Crystal to full effect. Elemental, on the other hand, must find upwards of ten minutes of stability to effectively use Earthquake on any encounter with multiple long-standing targets—a degree of stability that simply doesn't exist in raid encounters.
Unleashed Fury (the talent) cannot be used because Unleash Flame must be used as a movement ability. Even in encounters without movement, such as Butcher, the Primal Elementalist talent pulls ahead on DPS and Damage Done (because it multiplies with the opener to a much greater degree than Unleashed Fury). Solution: Completely change this talent. No one will use a talent that forces us to use Unleash Flame, arguably our best movement ability, on cooldown.
While interesting in their design, Rushing Streams, Ancestral Guidance, Conductivity, and Storm Elemental Totem are so underpowered that their impact is—if existent—unnoticeable. Even when I use these talents to their full effect, I never notice an impact on raid healing (whereas I very much did in Siege of Orgrimmar). And I'm not subjectively biased: Using Conductivity and Storm Elemental Totem left me at the very bottom of the HPS meter across all Highmaul encounters, below melee and other hybrids whose off-healing is entirely passive. Solution: Buff the modifiers of Rushing Streams, Ancestral Guidance, Conductivity, and Storm Elemental Totem significantly. Healing Surge does not need to be buffed.
Elemental has too many small damage sources that fail to multiply to the degree of the abilities of every other DPS class and spec. This will leave Elemental DPS permanently behind unless the design is changed. “10%” hotfixes will not be enough because of the existence of mechanics like Brackenspore's Rejuvenating Mushroom, which favors bigger damage sources (try putting an Arcane Mage in one of those things!).
Elemental has so many damage sources that new players may also be confused as to how much damage they are doing. Without a damage meter addon, there's really no way to tell. The design is inelegant.
With the removal of casting Lightning Bolt on the move, Elemental—while viable—now has an unusually high skill cap that may turn off new players.
Anything highlighted in red, when used as a movement ability, is usually a DPS loss.
List of Elemental's movement abilities:
- Earth Shock (preferably at high Fulmination) and Flame Shock (preferrably at low duration) [shared cooldown, so players also need to optimize which one they cast]
- Lava Burst (only with Lava Surge) (only if Lava Surge is not about to expire)
- Unleash Flame (if the distance is not advantageous for Ghost Wolf to then be combined with Unleash Flame to clear)
- Searing Totem (preferably at low duration) (preferably with Fire Elemental not coming off of cooldown soon) (with Fire Elemental not active)
- Fire Elemental Totem (if it is eligible to be multiplied with cooldowns or by the nature of the encounter)
- Liquid Magma (preferably with Searing Totem not at low duration) (preferably with Fire Elemental not coming off of cooldown soon)
- Ancestral Swiftness + Lightning Bolt or Elemental Blast or Earthquake [+target reticule]
- Spiritwalker's Grace (can only be used outside of Ascendance if you can guarantee Ascendance will not be interrupted)
- Thunderstorm (if unglyphed) (if in melee range) (if 4~+ targets)
- Ghost Wolf
List of Frost Mage's movement abilities:
- Ice Floes 1
- Ice Floes 2
- Ice Floes 3
- Blink
- Ice Nova (no management necessary because of its short cooldown and charges)
- Frostfire Bolt (Brain Freeze proc—which is 9 seconds longer than Lava Surge and I don't know why)
- Ice Lance (Fingers of Frost—which is 9 seconds longer than Lava Surge and I don't know why)
- Ice Lance
You may or may not see a slight difference in complexity here. Solution: Give Elemental a more reliable toolset of movement abilities. It's unrealistic to expect players to calculate which of 14 abilities (count 'em!) they should cast within the 1.5 seconds it takes to get out of a void zone.
Elemental Shamans almost never use Ascendance outdoors because the model change prevents them from mounting after they've dispatched the enemy. The Ascendance buff also cannot be clicked off. If you use Ascendance outdoors, you waste more time than you gain because of your inability to mount.
Liquid Magma's flight time is too long, it breaks crowd controlled targets, it travels through walls and ceilings, it aggros things that aren't even in the same building, and it lines up with Searing Totem poorly.
The flight time is a severe issue on encounters like Ko'ragh, where AOE is needed at precise times and in precise locations. In these scenarios, Liquid Magma isn't even worth using, despite the need for AOE.
Too much of the time, I need to reapply an expiring fire totem before using Liquid Magma. This further limits a talent that is already under-performing. New players may also make the mistake of using Liquid Magma when their fire totem is about to expire, completely wasting their level 100 talent! I won't offer a solution for this talent because it has so many little issues and because I don't know what your design goals for it were.
Lava Beam is almost never used. There are too few scenarios where Ascendance lines up with enough clustered targets to Lava Beam. Solution: Without buffing Ascendance's damage on 4-5 targets, buff its damage versus 2-3 targets. (If you're not aware, Lava Beam is usually a DPS loss [over Lava Burst] versus just 2-3 targets, which seems unintended.)
Fulmination is out of control. The Shock cooldown isn't short enough to prevent it from capping in too many scenarios. Solution: Less damage sources and/or less sources of Fulmination.
Elemental damage ramp-up time is relatively too long.
For single target, Elemental must (with few exceptions) Flame Shock each target it wants to do significant damage to. This is very problematic because of the Shock cooldown. How does an Elemental Shaman attack multiple targets that are spread out, each of which needs to be killed quickly (example: Spore Shooters on Brackenspore)? Certainly, Elemental has been given tools for this, such as a max stack of Fulmination, or default Lava Burst (50% less damage)--but these tools pale in comparison to pooling 2 Brain Freezes, 2 Fingers of Frosts, and a Frozen Orb capable of proccing even more. As far as I know, and judging by logs worldwide, no DPS has more problematic ramp-up time than Elemental.
Elemental's AOE ramp-up time is also problematic: Fire Totem, and then Chain Lightning, and then Earthquake, and then Liquid Magma, and then Chain Lightning—assuming that your Chain Lightning actually hits an optimal amount of targets, and assuming the enemies stay in the Earthquake, and assuming Liquid Magma's attacks get there in time, and assuming Liquid Magma's attacks get there at all (they might attack something else instead!).
I hope you've enjoyed this terrifying look into the Elemental Shaman, and I hope we don't have to wait until 6.1 to receive some quality of life changes.
- Berg
Bonus Complaint: Ele has a really really really hard time doing the Garrison Barn beast capture mechanic because of their innate multistrike.
