Elemental Shaman Changes and Windwalker Monk Analysis Class Posts

Posted 2017/07/22 at 10:44 AM by perculia

July 25th Class Tuning ChangesReddit AMAElemental Shaman

Blizzard

Next PTR will have a small set of Elemental changes meant to focus on a couple specific problems.

Mastery capping
• Mastery: Elemental Overload does 85% of base damage (from 75%) and proc rate reduced 17%
• Totem Mastery-Storm Totem bonus 5% (from 10%)
• Elemental Blast gives 2000 stats at level 110 (from 2400)
• All damage abilities increased 3%

Some of the power of mastery is shifted from proc rate into damage. The nerfs to Totem Mastery and Elemental Blast don't require talent rebalancing, since they are minor and those are talents are already generally favored. The slight total DPS loss from those changes is counteracted in the baseline spec. With both talents, the mastery cap (with all these changes) would increase from 10400 rating to 15067.

Chain Lightning dominating Earthquake
Chain Lightning is so strong that Earthquake is often not attractive to cast. There are also secondary issues such as the importance of Lightning Rod procs and resource overflow in AoE.

• Chain Lightning damage reduced 12% and generates 4 Maelstrom (from 6)
• Earthquake damage increased 29%
• Earth Shock damage increased 13%

Damage is shifted from Chain Lightning into Earthquake, and Earthquake is further increased to account for generating less Maelstrom (which helps the overflow issues, including on Static Overload procs). The Earth Shock buff helps stave off the potential for Earthquake to get too close to it again, and a buff to Earth Shock was pretty reasonable generally.

Again, the goal is to address these issues in a relatively contained way. 7.3 is generally light on class changes, but we wanted to try to get at these known problems. As always, open to feedback on any complications that these look like they might introduce.
One additional concern we're seeing here is that based on preliminary testing this change is not accomplishing its intended goal without an extremely large number of targets. Chain Lightning spam is still projecting to be higher than using your Maelstrom Power at all up until you reach around 7 targets. Earthquake is still not strong enough.

So far as we can tell, with the current changes (which have Earthquake at 100% SP per tick) a more standard AoE rotation won't be worth it over Chain Lightning spam unless it's brought to at least ~117% per tick or so (where it'll be about equal at 5 targets.)

The only case it appears to be worth it in is where it's the only way to proc Sephuz's Secret, in which case using it only to proc Sephuz's Secret but not at any other time is dps neutral.

The extra factor that wasn't accounted for here is the impact that the change to the damage per Mastery hit would have on Static Overload procs. This also significantly increases the range of impact that Static Overload has, which only makes how inconsistent it is even more painful.

The question I have at this point is why is this even left as a potential question? Earthquake is our only AoE Maelstrom Power spender. It should be so massively, unquestionably stronger than spamming Chain Lightning that even the notion of Chain Lightning spam should be laughed out of the room.

Primal ElementalistEarthquakeMaelstromEarthquakeEarthquakeEarthquakeChain LightningEarthquakeEarthquakeStatic OverloadPullingEarthquakeEarthquakeWindwalker Monks

Blizzard

I don't know if there's a better thread where this is being discussed, but this thread seems closely related to the work done in the post.

Restating something I'd already said to the author--stat scaling is a massively complicated problem, and basically any rigorous knowledge fed in about it is a helpful addition. The main impediment to discussion on such a large dataset being offered as feedback is having to go through the whole methodology--enough to be sure we're all on the same page as to exactly what it's showing. I expect something as ambitious as "make a chart of all stats for all DPS specs at once" is likely to wind up as a project of perpetual refinement rather than something you can just "do" one day.

Which is all to say: basically all I can do is start with scattered questions/comments as I go through, rather than any kind of grand conclusion.

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The best chart to spent most time on is probably the "% DPS gained per 475 stats" one.
--Versatility clocks in at 1.00% (+/- 0.01) on nearly all specs. Does that mean that the profiles being used have 0 Versatility?
--More broadly, what "current" stats are being used to generate the weights? As explained above, that affects how stats look relative to each other when viewed as a % of total DPS. If the profiles aren't constructed in a uniform way, some might have more lopsided stat distributions than others.
--Given how few things remain that are left out of Versatility, it might be cleanest to bring them all in at this point. No promise yet.
--For specs that are significantly above 1.00%, are they double-dipping Versatility or is that a simulation artifact?

"I didn't include Weapon DPS in the averages as there was no easy way to do so and be fair to all specs. If you come up with a way that works, let me know."
--I believe the correct way is to make a weighted sum of Primary and WDPS based on whatever ratio they exist at currently on typical gear (similar to the advice I gave for Stamina).
--The variation in primary stats is a bit curious--looking at casters, where there's no WDPS complication. If, on a caster, all DPS other than trinkets is proportional to Int, the value of Int on all of them should be nearly identical (again after correcting for special cases such as the portion of Demonology damage that scales with Stam). Maybe what I'm saying is: the variation in Int's value seems like a sort of "control"--one way of getting insight into the magnitude of systematic error in the model.
--Trinkets also throw a minor wrench in the works if they're not treated uniformly in the comparison. It seems like you'd have to either avoid RPPM-damage-proc trinkets on everybody (those don't scale with primary), or add another factor representing trinket ilvl and fold it into primary just as with Stam and WDPS.

Comment by Stormeeywow on the crap ele changes. cant see anyone being happy there.Comment by 951929If you really want EQ to be more attractive to cast, change it to cast at your target instead of a stupid ground reticleComment by ArrayaShaman nerfs, classic.Comment by iceman994Lol they nerf more than buffing xddd They think we cant read.Comment by MaximerSigh the nerfs here we go again. And Also the tooltip for lighting rod is the staff from Dragon Soul.Comment by ErikSetzerPart of the reason CL gets cast so much more than EQ is you have to cast CL a lot just to be able to use EQ, and for some people it's not worth taking the time to drop that other spell. Plus there's a legendary that has a chance to buff EQ based on how much Maelstrom you used to cast ES, so I'll often CL, use ES at full Maelstrom, check for the proc, and drop EQ if it procced, but otherwise keep rotating CL and ES. The proc happens often enough that it's worth it, but it does mean I'm cast EQ less often, even if it might end up being more damage from it overall.

So maybe the answer isn't nerfing CL so much, maybe it's changing how CL and EQ interact. But that would probably mean reconsidering the whole Maelstrom setup, so probably not going to happen.Comment by ONCHEhapYeah cause Elemental was a truly overperforming spec and did not have enough RNG as it is....

Wait a minute......Comment by JhakuziThey're so clueless atm. <.<Comment by SarthoriusI miss WoD Earth Quake, you had to cast a few CL (more than now) to build Maelstrom, then you could drop 1-2 EQ on top of each other and go eat a sandwich, while you see other classes trying to top you haha. People seemed to get mad at that and Blizz, instead of balancing it, they nerf it to boot. Yeah now we have an uber artifact CD but it has 1 min, other classes can bring theirs close, or even surpass it.Comment by SquirePipBlizzard just needs to remove all AoE damage spells from all DPS specs. So many problems would be instantly fixed.Comment by faldronYes let's continue to nerf Elemental while all other range specs can do what we do, only better. Also RNG is super reliable so let's base all our spells on that.

Seriously, Blizz? You are trying too hard to make me quit this game. Stop %^&*ting on Elemental! You thought you could give us a baller class mount and we'd be satisfied forever? We don't all play mages, you know!Comment by LucinaColfordI miss WoD Earth Quake, you had to cast a few CL (more than now) to build Maelstrom, then you could drop 1-2 EQ on top of each other and go eat a sandwich, while you see other classes trying to top you haha. People seemed to get mad at that and Blizz, instead of balancing it, they nerf it to boot. Yeah now we have an uber artifact CD but it has 1 min, other classes can bring theirs close, or even surpass it.Comment by MelchiahAlexI miss WoD Earth Quake, you had to cast a few CL (more than now) to build Maelstrom, then you could drop 1-2 EQ on top of each other and go eat a sandwich, while you see other classes trying to top you haha. People seemed to get mad at that and Blizz, instead of balancing it, they nerf it to boot. Yeah now we have an uber artifact CD but it has 1 min, other classes can bring theirs close, or even surpass it.From the Legion class preview series: ShamanComment by kodora1316Blizzard just needs to remove all AoE damage spells from all DPS specs. So many problems would be instantly fixed.Comment by path12No Beast mastery spec buffs, cya next patch--Comment by 10857If you really want EQ to be more attractive to cast, change it to cast at your target instead of a stupid ground reticleComment by jimbobausGlad to see elemental getting some changes. Might mean enhancement might be considered a viable choice for raiding now.Comment by FunkyoHow abt changing the !@#$ty golden rly... no one use it for st dps! i think elemental is the only spec that can't get any benefit from last golden trait lol (oh w8 and fire mages guess what both sux on single target) sick of this eq crap man!Comment by AxonisI'm wondering where are Enha changes for AoE ? Buffing Crash Lightning by a little margin and giving AoE T20 is not a solution to a bad design. Rather make it circle all around instead of cone, which makes it extremely bad. But let's rather change Ele which AoE is great.Comment by JakuroNo one cares that we use Earthquake Now instead of chain lightning, this was a small issue for ele.

The PROBLEM is, our single target dps is worst in the game right now - and that isn't / hasn't been addressed at all here. Those are the changes we want to see, not moving our already capable AOE from one spell to another.