[Elemental] So What's Going On?

Q u o t e:
Are there any plans to fix discrepancy between ToW and DP? Yes i know GC made an incredibly vague post months ago saying something about it, but many people took that as meaning 3.3, and look where we are now.

Yes, we want to fix the discrepancy. We'd like to get it done before Cataclysm. I'm not going to promise we're going to be able to for the reasons I can't and don't ever promise anything. You can see how many shaman have even hung on to my saying "we'd like to fix it by Cataclysm." I think in the future I'm going to have to be even more careful about saying stuff like that. :(

I'm pretty sure you all know the issue, but for the record (and being brief to the point of being flippant):

-- Some shaman are convinced they won't be brought if ToW doesn't compete with or trump DP.
-- Some Demo locks are convinced they won't be brought if DP doesn't complete with or trump DP. I'm slightly more sympathetic with the locks here, because shaman do have other desirable buffs. I realize this is somewhat subjective though.
-- Many shaman don't want to have to drop ToW at all. They tend to be happier when a Demo lock comes too. It all depends on how secure they feel with their slot in the raid. In my experience, most players obsess way too much over getting sat. If they are getting sat, it might be a personal performance problem. If their personal performance is good, it might be that their raid leader is misinformed and puts way too much emphasis on a spellpower and crit buff when it's possible to improve their dps by much more in other (more L2P) ways. At the very high end, eeking out a 2 or 3% dps buff can be huge. But even in those guilds, I still see plenty of Elemental and Demonology. My slightly unrelated advice is you'll be happier playing the game if you find a guild less focused on constantly replacing their players.
-- We are really trying to move away from the "I get a slot because of my awesome buff." Some days I think we'd be better off with none at all and players just got brought because they were good players. (We're not going to do this, but it would certainly chill out a lot of the raid utility anxiety.)

Q u o t e:
Is there any thought on the extreme hit the Elemental takes for buffing the raid? I understand sacrifices sometimes are made for the sake of the raid but what Elemental Shamans have to lost is far more than necessary. Fire totems can make up a very large portion of our dps depending on the fight.

We want classes to have to take a hit for buffing the raid, but we don't want it to be a gigantic one. Again, on the one hand players are eager for these buffs because it "secures them a slot!" but on the other hand, they want someone else to do the buff so they don't have to.

The problem is some of our implementations (and to be fair, more of the newer versions of these buffs) come with less opportunistic cost, or the talent specs make it easier to include the buff, or it happens automatically instead of requiring player action. We realize these are rough edges that still need to be polished down.

We made some pretty massive strides in Lich King to overhaul the way buffs and debuffs work. It's in a lot better place than it was, but we still have a lot of work to do.

Q u o t e:
Does blizzard plan to do anything to fix our incredibly clunky fire totem mechanics? Currently, if there is already a spellpower buff down, Elemental Shamans dps by standing in melee range and dropping magma totem. Is this intended? Does Blizzard want Ele to become a melee range caster? What is the purpose of Searing Totem if Magma does more dps on single targets?

We like the fire totem changes. It's a new change and I'm sure it will require some iteration before it feels exactly right, but we like the mechanic overall. It's not critical that Searing Totem be an uber form of dps in the same way that Sentry Totem's very existence might offend you. We did a big update of totems for Lich King. They're not perfect yet, but when you remember what they used to be like, they're in a much better place now.

We see Elementals "turretiness" as a slightly different issue, and one we want to fix. No spec should be so terrified of moving, even one dependent on stationary points on the map where their totems are.

Also be very careful that you aren't just describing totems in general as a clunky mechanic. I see that kind of thing a lot, but totems are virtually synonymous with shaman in our minds. If you really, really hate totems, you might not be playing the class that best suits your play style.

Q u o t e:
does not mention or address our single biggest issue (to me). We can't use fire dps totems to do viable dps while buffing the raid with ToW.

I said that Ele shaman don't want to have to drop ToW because of the personal dps loss, but they also want to have ToW because it's an attractive raid buff. That is what I meant.

Q u o t e:
Of course, it's a theoretical dps increase. Perhaps it's inflated on these forums, but in my raiding environment and in my experience here there is a pretty strong urge to find ways to min/max every part of the game, especially raid comps and dps.

I totally agree that you should be finding ways to improve your game and that doing so is a fun part of the game. My advice was more to keep it in perspective. When I see guilds who struggle on some of the earlier bosses in a tier and believe the way to progress is to start stacking the raid, my heart sinks.

Stacking the raid is a real phenomenon, but it is too often used as the solution to everything when there are far better solutions.

I also believe players live in fear of it to a larger extent than it actually happens. (Though we've all been in the "Must have 50K health to tank Naxx" pugs.)

Q u o t e:
The problem with your "buff" philosophy is that it punishes raids for bringing two classes with the same buff. Since you tend to balance dps around buffs, if we bring 2 elemental shaman, we aren't getting twice the crit or twice the spellpower, but you balanced the class dps as if both shaman were brining thier uniqe crit/spellpower buffs.

That's pretty much the behavior we're trying to avoid. Most specs are designed to bring more than one buff and you don't need all 25 players to bring a buff in order to have things covered. If you two good Elemental shaman, you shouldn't feel like that mean you can't have someone else with a really awesome buff. The system is tolerant of some redundancy.

We're really trying to fight against the mindset that every raid needs 1 Ret paladin, 1 Balance druid, 1 Fury warrior, 1 Elemental shaman, etc.

Q u o t e:
You said you'd like to fix the ToW/DP discrepecy before Catacylsm.. well um, 3.3 Isn't live yet, now's your chance...

I mean, when do you plan on doing it? The lolnerfeverythingby30% patch 4.0? It will be too late then...

I'll just stick with "soon" from now on. There's a reason we keep going back to that.

Q u o t e:
Shamans who are very insecure of their raid spots would want the totem to beat DP.

Shamans who tend to be more secure of their spot, don't want to drop TOW because they take a dps loss for doing so. Hybrid dps paying another buff hit is unfun.

Warlocks with the more recent buffs to arcane now have the option to go the third spec and basically becoming the raids buff bot with 5% crit, and 10% sp. Once again insecure warlocks now don't want this discrepency fixed.

Warlocks who feel secure of keeping the spot don't mind if it gets fixed but at the same time sorta lose that third option.

Any way you fix the problem you are bound to make someone unhappy unless you have the option to also do sweeping changes across the specs. =/ If I was working on it, I'm not sure that be something I would be confortable to mess with so close to 4.0.

That is pretty much a spot-on analysis.

Q u o t e:
Honestly, for all the sh*t that goes flying when you post, we as players do love the communication. Even if your post is bad news or exceedingly brief, it is appreciated. I cannot emphasize how much good you can do with a simple post of "We are aware of issue xyz. There are/are not plans to make changes. We do not have a date set in mind" or "We are aware you're concerned about x or your performance compared to class y, but we don't feel that it is a serious problem or fully represented by the data that we have." Luckily for us, you frequently post much more than that.

I hope so. I contrast your response with a post not far above you that just said my post made him cry. :(

The class designers used to just make you wait for the patch notes to see if anything has been changed. We're trying to share a little more information these days. I don't expect you to greet disappointing news by popping champagne corks, but you're probably not going to encourage more designers to post by crying when you don't get a "buff incoming" message either.

Q u o t e:
Spot on. GC just delivered a stomach punch to elemental shaman.

I'm going to pick on you a little bit here, so apologies in advance.

Is this really the contribution you want to make to Elemental shaman theorycrafting? Do you think other players or Blizzard learning anything from your post? Do you feel better venting a little bit? If I am going to spend my time reading through somewhat volatile threads like this, it would be nice to have more substance and less noise. I am fairly confident many other readers agree.

We're not going to ban players for making useless posts. But, when a thread turns completely to junk is when I move on. The control over that is pretty much in your court.

Q u o t e:
The only thing you have come and posted for Elemental shaman is justification to nerfing the T9, and trying to explain to us on how great our T10 is, so far the last time I heard good news for this spec was at the start of the beta of Wrath, since then it's been nothing but band aid fixes (which I'm surprised your dev team hasn't picked up on the pattern yet.), nerfs to anything dealing with Lava Burst, and a poor itemization, which if memory serves me right was stated at the Q&A that was going to change, boy I'm happy to see the itemization so far is just fantastic, I can't wait for all my MP5 gear.

I'll check back in with this thread after you all have settled down, assuming you haven't hit the thread cap by venting.

Q u o t e:
Would you agree with the following?

I'm phrasing my answers from a "in an ideal setting" POV not from a "How are players behaving today?" POV.

Q u o t e:
Elemental Shamans should not be taken over Warlocks because of ToW.

Agree.

Q u o t e:
Warlocks should not be taken over Elemental Shamans because of DP.

Agree.

Q u o t e:
Almost all end game raiding guilds should have one of the two in the raid group.

Disagree, unless you just mean that the buff is very attractive so groups may want it.

Q u o t e:
If the above is true, then I don't see why ToW and DP should not be the same buff. Bring the player and not the class. Let an elemental shaman come if he outplays the warlock (destro, demo or affliction), and let the shaman come if he outplays the lock.

They should be much closer together than they are now. The problem, once again, is that many shaman are happy not to have to drop ToW anyway, and Elemental shaman without ToW are probably a lot more attractive than Demo locks without DP, and possibly even if the two were identical. It's going to take a lot of changes to get things more where we want them and if only get in part of the changes, we'll probably be in a worse state than today. As I've said, it's definitely a priority to get it fixed, but we have a very long list of stuff we want to get fixed.

Q u o t e:
Does no one else see a problem and contradiction with this statement:

"We want classes to have to take a hit for buffing the raid, but we don't want it to be a gigantic one."

There isn't a problem nor contradiction with that statement. It only becomes a problem if you mentally tack on "and this is what's happening for Elemental currently so everything's cool."

Most of the time, I am speaking from the point of view of what we intend, not reality. Most players have a reasonable grasp of the reality, so the thing I can really add is from a design point of view what the intent is. The intent is that buffing a raid takes some small amount of effort and self-sacrifice. Does every buff or debuff satisfy that intent today? Absolutely not.

Q u o t e:
Q u o t e:


That's pretty much the behavior we're trying to avoid. Most specs are designed to bring more than one buff and you don't need all 25 players to bring a buff in order to have things covered. If you two good Elemental shaman, you shouldn't feel like that mean you can't have someone else with a really awesome buff. The system is tolerant of some redundancy.

We're really trying to fight against the mindset that every raid needs 1 Ret paladin, 1 Balance druid, 1 Fury warrior, 1 Elemental shaman, etc.


Can you clarify this statement? "If you two good Elemental shaman, you shouldn't feel like that mean you can't have someone else with a really awesome buff. The system is tolerant of some redundancy." What was that ment to say?

Ugh. Sorry. Typing too fast. If you *have* two good Elemental shaman, you should feel like you can bring them both. You shouldn't feel like that second shaman means that the raid loses 10% dps or whatever because then another class with an awesome buff is excluded.

Your coordination should be what beats encounters, not the matrix of raid buffs you manage to stack on your raid. Those buffs can be huge, certainly, but coordination still plays a larger role. If this means we have to keep nerfing buffs across the board to reinforce that behavior, that may be what we have to do. :)

The game should be played in the boss room, not in Dalaran when you're deciding which class to invite to the raid or even worse, who to recruit to your guild so eventually you'll have that all-powerful raid buff.

Q u o t e:
@GC>
You seem to be misinterpreting the problem. All your posts thus far would have me believe that you read it as Shamans thinking that ToW is our "purpose" in the raid, and DP being an alternative is infinging on our rights as the exclusive provider of the spell power buff.

That certainly isn't our intent. I hope a lot of shaman players don't think it is. On the other hand, there is an awful lot of consternation about having to drop ToW. Shaman don't want to drop it, but they also don't want to lose the thing that (they think) earns them a raid spot.

The Elemental purpose isn't Totem of Wrath. The Elemental purpose is to do dps.

Q u o t e:
The actual problem is that, as a raid leader, I don't want to have to feel like I *HAVE* to have a Demonology Warlock in my raid. As a warlock, I don't want to feel like I (or one of my fellow warlocks) *HAVE* to spec Demonology, even if none of us want to for the fight. As a Shaman, I want to feel like all of the buffs I can provide have some use, and I'm not taking a significant hit to my DPS to provide them disproportionate to the alternatives to the same buff.

I agree, to a point. If a lock shows up, the raid leader may feel like asking the lock if she can go Demo, depending on how many casters are in the raid. We don't want every progression-oriented guild to feel like they need a Demo lock.

Q u o t e:
Right now, however, DP is a unique buff. It's vastly superior to the alternatives both in terms of the strength of the buff itself, and in terms of personal DPS impact (it doesn't hurt the Demo lock's DPS at all to provide it, whereas ToW prevents the use of fire DPS totems for the shaman, and limits AoE ability).

I respect your posts a great deal, Strawberry, but I feel like it's a little disingenuous to call DP a unique buff. (Bloodlust is a unique buff, but I won't go there. :) ) DP is a better buff than ToW at certain gear levels. Under the same logic, you could argue Ebon Plaguebringer is a unique buff because the DK gets it "for free" while the warlock has to stop casting Curse of Agony. That may mean that EP is too much better than CoE (then again, EP takes a talent point cost, but whatever), but I don't think it's fair to call it unique.

The fact that some buffs are harder to apply, or require more of a dps hit, or require sub-optimal talent specs, or whatever are all problems we need to fix, as I've said. We're in 1.0 of the great buff consolidation and we need to advance to version 2.0.

Q u o t e:
So, as a result, all of those things I listed as "not wanting" are true. If I don't have a demo lock in my raid, I feel the raid is weaker than it should be. If I'm playing my warlock and there's no demo lock in the raid - even if there is an elemental shaman who's supposed to be the alternative - I feel like I have to respec demo. If I'm an elemental shaman, I put a talent point in ToW only to hope that I never have to use it, and feel like I'm hurting the raid by not being a Warlock instead if I do use it.

I don't disagree with any of that really. Perhaps we need to even provide the buff to yet another spec so it is more easily added to a raid.

Q u o t e:
The problem isn't related to shamans being forced to sit out because of this. The idea that shamans would be forced to sit is a worst-case conclusion that some people have drawn from the problem (which is a problem regardless - even if nobody's sitting out, somebody is likely playing a spec they don't want to play).

I agree, of course. I think the "getting sat" is getting to be a cliche of the likes of "slap in the face." I think it's overblown and stops people from talking about the real issues. I try and say in posts that I think it's overblown, but I guess folks see blue text and the conversation ends up being about what I'm suggesting folks not pay attention to, and well, you know the rest.

The issue of playing a spec you don't want to play is tricky as long as we have the buff model we do. I suspect it's more likely for a lock to be asked to respec because that doesn't force them to change roles (caster) whereas an Elemental has to turn into a melee spec or a healer. Our solution is to try and make sure there are enough ways to get these buffs so that players feel like they have flexibility.

Q u o t e:
Hope that makes sense.

Always.

Q u o t e:
Raid Leader: "Why should I bring two elemental shamans when I can only have one Totem of Wrath?"

No, see, that's actually why we want the buff to have a small opportunity cost. The answer is because the second shaman can do something other than ToW and increase his dps because of it. The second shaman isn't wasting a chunk of their power (except for the spent talent point) on a buff that you already have.