7.2.5 Enhancement Class Discussion

Thanks for all the feedback. There are a lot of issues being discussed here, but a few stand out as core rotational problems we'd like to address. There's not a specific final plan yet, so be warned there may be works in progress in upcoming PTR builds.

1) Boulderfist. During 7.1.5 iteration, we agreed with a lot of feedback that Boulderfist gave the most fun version of the basic rotation (as opposed to the spammable Rockbiter, or the slower Boulderfist we tried for a time on 7.1.5 PTR). Furthermore, a lot of the talent balancing and related issues on the spec are caused by flipping between the GCD-filled Rockbiter rotation and the charge-driven Boulderfist rotation.

We are planning to make Boulderfist baseline (possibly with the name Rockbiter). The choice would likely be to take a passive talent on L15 that leaves the gameplay identical to using Boulderfist now, or use Windsong/Hot Hand but still have a generator with a 6s recharge time.

2) Tempest and Stormbringer. Tempest has been a bit of a thorn in the side of Enhancement pacing throughout this expansion. A proc that has you press a major spender twice is already at risk of having that feast-or-famine feel. The talent making you press Stormstrike three times in order to get it back on cooldown is an even bigger culprit. At every passing moment, you either don't get a proc, or you do get one and suddenly have to spend 3 GCDs and 80 Maelstrom to deal with it (not to mention that Stormstrike has a reasonable chance of proccing Stormbringer yet again, especially as mastery increases).

We're deciding how much of this we can or should unwind in a patch, but redesigning Tempest may be a somewhat surgical way to get at this problem. Namely, the problem of the button priority and resource usage being overrun by frequent (but not predictable) endless chain Stormstrikes. We tend not to like totally reworking popular talents, but Tempest has no good way to gradually tune it down. And in any case, amplifying the difference caused by getting vs. not getting Stormbringer procs is a result we want to avoid.

Usual reminder that these two changes will likely have a significant impact on DPS tuning, that we'll evaluate when we decide the details of the designs.

That was an error in today's PTR build. Landslide should be in the third slot in L15 (as the patch notes described).

The flat buff to the spec's damage to account for the talent changes is a very rough number on current PTR. As always, total DPS tuning gets its closest look at the end of the process, but we often put in some loose compensation for changes along the way to keep things in the ballpark (which facilitates testing/feedback).

The same is true for the new talents, which haven't had much of any look at tuning. New Tempest may well be a little low--that said, possibly reducing the power of that row and buffing the baseline spec instead would be worthwhile, since part of the point was reducing the importance of Stormbringer procs. New Boulderfist is mostly tuned based on pacing--it's a talent that makes the rotation quite full and a little more hectic in terms of GCDs. If its DPS value is too low, it will probably have some sort of damage bonus added.

Both new Tempest and new Boulderfist intentionally are relatively simple passive talents. This is because the overall potential rotational complexity added in the Enhancement tree is rather high (also because they are replacing effects that were quite passive in the first place--old Tempest, and Boulderfist's 100% uptime damage bonus).

The overall goal is somewhat surgically fixing a few core rotational problems that affect nearly all players of the spec, without opening up a huge number of changes or causing much disruption. Longer-term, I wouldn't be surprised to see iteration on ideas like Stormlash, but there's not a specific plan yet, and this patch isn't the right time for it. Of course we will try to adjust isolated talent/trait balancing issues as we can, especially ones that have gameplay impact (for example, I believe there was a good comment somewhere in these threads, that Wind Strikes contributes to the chain-proccing feel of Stormbringer because of its huge short-duration boost).

Windstrike should correctly proc Unleash Doom in this PTR build.

Windstrike's cooldown should correctly be reduced to 15s (i.e. 3s during Ascendance) in the next PTR build.

Stormflurry incorrectly proccing T20 should be fixed in the next PTR build.

It's ambiguous whether SS should attempt to proc Stormbringer once or twice. While we normally try to be generous with things that could go either way--one of the specific concerns driving the Enhancement changes in this patch is that Stormbringer's mechanics caused "feast-or-famine" proc outcomes. That is, because Stormstrike itself was one of the few spells that procced Stormbringer, a proc made more upcoming procs likely, and lack of a proc made upcoming procs less likely. This sort of positive feedback in a proc chance (essentially the opposite of bad luck protection) is something that should generally be avoided.

Stormstrike having twice the proc chance of any other button would have a similar concern. I understand that, viewed in isolation, adding it would be a welcome power increase--but that's neither here nor there. As always, the spec can be tuned with either proc mechanic, so the important question is what's better for pacing long-term. If it turns out more total DPS is needed (or even if, for example, more frequent procs would be an improvement), there are likely better ways to accomplish it.

If by happenstance some talent rows might be better balanced right now if we doubled Stormstrike's chance to proc Stormbringer (I assume this means L75 and/or L100), that's something to look into if needed. But similarly, it's not a good reason to make a change that has other ramifications longer-term.

We talked about it more and decided to let Stormstrike and Windstrike offhand attacks proc Stormbringer for now.

The thinking above is still true, and something we want to keep an eye on, but the changes already in place mean the numbers are quite different from the 7.0 version. In 7.0, if you had e.g. a 10% chance to proc from Stormstrike (main hand only), and 0% from Lava Lash and Boulderfist (and the procs were worth double due to Tempest), there was a huge swing in proc chance between using 3 Stormstrikes and using 3 other buttons. In 7.2.5, you may have 8% from the Lava Lash and Rockbiter, and 16% from the Stormstrike, and the a proc causes you to replace 2 other buttons with 2 Stormstrikes. The swing is much smaller now.

Because the 7.2.5 changes would already reduce the streakiness of Stormbringer procs (and because allowing offhands to proc is slightly more consistent with the tooltips), we'll let that play out on live and inform whether we need to make future changes to mitigate that streakiness further.