[Ele] 3.2.2 did NOT increase flm shock damage

#0 - Sept. 11, 2009, 5:16 a.m.

Q u o t e:
â€¢Flame Shock now deals 834 Fire damage over 18 sec at max rank. (Up from 556 fire damage over 12 sec) Lower ranks increased accordingly.

This is unfortunately misleading, the only "up from" is the number of seconds (12 to 18). 556 damage over 12 sec = 46.33333 per sec, and 834 over 18 sec = 46.33333 damage per sec.

I mean blizzard, how many posts does there need to be to show you elemental needs a serious buff. Once somebody passes progression wise the need for the 2pc T8 set, then its a calculation as to whether the flameshock glyph or the lava glyph provides more dps.

The best dps increase here occurs with the people who have the 2pc T8 set as they can forego the flameshock glyph for the lava glyph. However, once you have the T9 4 pc set bonus, it appears the benefit of this new buff is reduced.

Why can't you see that elemental needs much more of a buff than this? Are you waiting for the expansion to come up with the new mechanic that elemental doesn't need ToW anymore? If so, i think that's pretty unfair. Please, please come up with a better solution now.

This current solution is a baby step in the right direction, many before me in other threads have given numerous examples of evidence of our gimped dps and numerous examples as how to fix it. This latest buff is appreciated but hopefully the PTR's will provide you evidence that it is surely not enough.

Ghostcrawler

#38 - Sept. 11, 2009, 5:36 p.m.

We took the old duration increase from the Flame Shock glyph and added it to the spell. If the glyph was a dps increase, which most shaman considered it to be, then the Flame Shock change should be too. You have free GCDs to cast LB or whatever else you want.

I'm not sure exactly where the OP is going with the dps math. Dot spells already do damage over time, so adding ticks alone won't increase the damage over time, unless you consider the extra time you have to cast other spells. If you had 100 more ticks, the damage per tick and therefore per time is the same. Yet few of us would argue that wasn't a buff. In other words, the damage per spell went up, so it will increase your character's damage per fight.

The coefficient is the coefficient we want it to have. We don't consider that a bug.

Ghostcrawler

#96 - Sept. 12, 2009, 1:32 a.m.

Most of the posts I've read on the last few pages seem to get the purpose of the change (to make it so the spec could function without the glyph), but there are still a few confused shaman. Reread the thread and you'll see some good explanations in there.

This was not intended to be a massive Elemental dps increase. It was intended to solve a problem that may not have been important to you personally, but was important to a lot of shaman.

One thing I will add is to fret less about scaling. In BC if you didn't scale well, you were going to be in trouble for many tiers of content. These days we adjust classes so frequently that it's much less of an issue. Worst case is you will start to slip slightly behind other classes as everyone gets gear, but then the very next tier will be a reset (and honestly we really only have one tier left).

Put another way, if you and your friend start an instance at 5000 dps and then as you get gear she goes to 7000 dps while you go to 6000 dps, then that's a scaling problem. But under out current design philosophy in WoW we will adjust you if you fall that far behind. Yes in an ideal world all the talents and glyphs would be set up in such a way that we'd never need to adjust them and all classes would scale linearly (or even exponentially) with the same slope. The reality is that we tweak things and some scaling mismatches are inevitable (if for no other reason than melee scale differently than casters).

If you want to argue Elemental dps is too low, be my guest. But don't accuse of us setting out to "fix" Elemental dps and then failing with these changes. :)