Before I begin, there are a couple things to keep in mind. 1) The dot updates originally on the Test Server NEVER made it to live. They were much reduced in damage in their initial implementation on live. If your only experience is with the Test Server updates, please, just bite your tongue and refrain from contributing to this thread. I am posting about Live exclusively. 2) If your only experience with the shaman class is how awesome you can box one, or how awesome your main is when you have a shaman to box, please, Puhleeeese, this thread is not for you. Not being able to out agro your unminded shaman box with your main while you are boxing is not relevant to what this thread is about. So, after number crunching and in game testing, it seems the devs have set shaman baseline dps to be about 70k dps. If you do not believe this, please, make your own spread sheets, do your own in game testing, both are easy to do. There are 7 stackable dots; do the math. Before any updates, my shaman was able to maintain 60k-65k dps easily with hardly any mana issues, but this was all I could do. Any and all "burn" tools did not amount to much when base damage was so low. Maximum burn was around 85k-100k if really lucky. After the initial live update, my average DPS was about 85k. This is below what druids were capable of BEFORE the update (I am comparing to druids simply because much of the pushback seemed to be that "a priest class should not have that much dps".) Again, this is maintainable, average DPS across all play styles. It was not a major difference, but it helped. Also, mana was a major issue again. There was now sometimes downtime, restraining from using certain spells, re-enabling the gift of mana audio trigger, etc. The main difference is that now "burn" abilities had something to modify. Solo/moloing, I was able to do about 250k-ish when burning (every 20 mins). Sometimes more, sometimes less. And again, this is much less than what druids are capable off. All of this seems ok to me, and not requiring any lessing of dps. In fact, I feel the mana cost was far too high for the dps that was gained. But then there are raids. Some were posting about high dps on raids. This is due to the abilities of OTHER CLASSES to boost dot damage, that were designed BEFORE the dot revamp. Taken from a post by Siddar: "Enchanter IoG, Bard Fierce Eye and Epic, Ranger Auspice of the Hunter. These will improve your Crit % on spells. IoG and Bard stuff will also improve your Crit Damage. Bard though will improve Crit Damage by much less then IoG. Fierce Eye and IoG don't stack with each other, Also vet reward Intensity of the Resolute gives a huge 50% bonus to Crit % but doesn't stack with Fierce Eye and IoG. " Why not adjust these abilities to have the appropriate effects on the revamped dots, because they apply to everyone that dots. Have you looked at druid raid dps? how do you think the necro revamp is going to turn out? Or do you plan to also gut those classes to only be balanced in a raid setting? Or there is the simple fix of making the shaman "Fleeting spirit (twincast on a 20 min timer) AA" not stack with those abilities. Why did you not try that first?
Yes nerf everyone else so shaman could have kept their over powered bone! Yeah no. Druids will get their nerf once people start sharing what they are capable of currently as they to are not a dps class and should not be putting up the numbers they can. Because of all that stuff you mention but also their base damage and their twincasts and chromatic haze. NO class period should have higher base damage dots than what necros will be receiving even if it sorta worked up until now because they were limited to only 1 or 2 or 3 dots so its over powered impact has remained hidden longer. Otherwise with the way dots work and how they are used in some settings a necro will be behind for quite awhile verse none dps classes who got giant base dots just because.
The changes were never supposed to make classes do more damage than they were already capable of, just make it easier for them to deliver that damage through not having to cast as many spells. That's how I understood it. But the vastly reduced efficiency is kind of ridiculous. What justifies 50% worse efficiency? No other class had as much of a reduction, so why should one class take it up the ?
Actually they state you are supposed to do more damage than you could prior. I haven't looked at the fixed fixed shaman dots but does going back a version or two put the dots back about where they were prior efficiency wise? As in if you cast the 90's version of your best dot do you get roughly the same damage as you did before any dot changes for about the same mana cost. If so than thats what you should be using just to dink and only when you don't care about mana or efficiency is when you cast the others. Reserving your highest versions instead of trying to use them as your base. This same approach is what concerns necros as we don't have the luxury of using dots as our supplemental form of damage so we can't have 16 various dots mem'd of old mem'd to use and then quickly swap to highest level versions when mana concerns go out of the window or for every gom proc. So it becomes more of juggling act of him giving us 1-3 giant dots that are not sustainable but they can be kept up in reserve and the rest being made for always use and gom procs while still being powerful in and of themselves. All while making sure that necros don't have to cast 5 dots to catch up to what a druid or enchanter can do in a single cast because of their 28,000 or 32,000 base damage outside of when our long reuse burn tools are up.
It doesn't nerf everyone else to "let shaman keep their overpowered bone". It allows everyone who needs that bone to get it. Reducing those other class abilities and keeping the higher dot base damage allows the dotter to do their base damage while solo, and get boosted when grouped. Originally, if dotting class did "X" damage, and the boost multiplied it by 3, you got 3*X damage. Now that the dotting class is 2X, the boost should be 1.5, so you still end up at 3*X. This doesn't nerf the boosting class, chanters got their updated dots too, remember? And their dps went thru the roof, remember all the whining about it? Shaman needed to be boosted. Instead we now do roughly 5k more dps while spending 3x-4x the mana for it. And that number is capped, we can stack 7 dots and that's it. Are you prepared for necros to be balanced around what dps you can do in raid when under the effects of multiplying abililties that were originally modifying spells that did 2-3k base damage? That's where shaman are at now. Druids will be soon. Chanters, I dunno, Daybreak doesn't seem to know what to do with them, letting them keep their dps and taking away the tanking. And Bards, did they even get a dot revamp? My impression is they should get an overall revamp, a little melee boost and personal spell/song damage boost with the corresponding boosting abilities reduction, so they can do more personal dps while maintaining the same (same, not more, not lessened) boosting with updated dots.
Removing or reducing the impact of adps for dotters makes them even harder to balance. Chanters 28k base dot should absolutely be reduced in base and then have what was taken spread out among their other dot lines so it takes them multiple casts to get what they currently get from one. It just hides well because its one dot and they don't have the same dot tools as you. You guys have already screwed over necros after what was witnessed when druids and shaman got revamps. Well Aristo did by trying to wing his way through dot revamps by doing everyone besides necros first since he thought it would be easier. Instead of starting with necros first despite it being the most complicated early and then gaining an understanding of what and WHY changes worked which then made everyone else super easy later. I NOW fully expect necros to completely balanced around what is only possible in a fully supported raid and even then only every 20 minutes and then taking hits on the chin in every other situation because of that power. While enchanter and possible druids retain their 28 or 30 thousand base dots which they then freely use to destroy all the other dps scenarios outside of the one above or when you have 2 minutes on a single target without burning anything. Do most shaman realize you guys can cast from your hit point pool for 6 or 7 minutes that you can easily heal away pretty easily via other means? I am not sure he got your tuning right but you can spam your highest dots for like 10 minutes this way. The intent has always been you use older dots to sustain or spam like your 90 or 95 or 100 version of a dot and only use its most current version the 105 when you have a gift of mana proc or when you don't care about mana and just want to burn something down now.
Hey, certain Shaman and Druid posters, Can you stop asking for 2 different classes' ADPS to be nerfed, resulting in a nerf for half a dozen classes, just because you got an OP DoT revamp that let you DPS like Zerkers? That'd be great. Thanks! Love, Everyone else
hahah Telechir, shaman were topping parses on raids, they were getting agro over the main tanks summoned and killed etc .. they were clearly broken and OP they are currently more power than they were before they made you guys gods, so you should still be happy. they can keep up with necros in the group game now as far as dps goes. thats nothing to complain about.
Well all talk of balance and fairness and equality aside, it was a TON of fun to just make mobs melt with dot dps. It was a nice change of play style while it lasted. It was a hoot to have folks that pay attention to raid parses be gobsmacked about the names of shaman appearing at the top of the charts for a while. Que sera, sera. I'll still be playing a shaman main. Spatters
Bingo. Nailed it. Priest class .. as good as the best solo playing class in game .. Stop complaining..
Except we don't know what necros will be doing after they get their dots consolidated. Comparing the boost of shaman to non-boosted necros is pointless. I think it's very valid to complain about a "boost" to DPS that comes with a corresponding mana cost. They were consolidating dots to make it easier to do DPS. If you have to scramble to make up the mana, where's the benefit? If DPS is the same as it was before, the mana cost should be the same. Guess I'm just tired of taking it up the a$$ on mana every time.
It was a blast to huge amount off DPS even just for a month - as I got better my parses were well yeah we were so OP it was crazy - though at the end of the day I still could never come close to beating a zerker though .................................................................. zerkers ........................................................................................................................................................................................................
Our top shaman is STILL #1 on parse on long fights, post changes. As I knew would happen, no developer actually runs numbers, or knows how to calculate possible spell damage numbers, or properly tests spell damage combined with ADPS stuff, to get where they're targeting for DPS. I really doubt their intent is for shaman to still sustain 250k + DPS on 4+ min fights. They shouldn't have been changed, for group DPS, had no issues with that. A good dotting class SHOULD be able to root rot effectively, and not take 2 min per trash mob to kill... However, a priest should NOT be able to out DPS pure DPS classes on raid targets. IMO, the easy fix is to make ALL DoTs have the same type effect as swifts do. Make them do decreased damage vs raid targets. That way Dotting classes can keep their decent DPS vs. group targets that die fast, and not be so OP'd vs raid targets. If they base necro dot damage even semi remotely on their current shaman's template/base damage per DoT, then they'll be able to drop 1 mil DPS vs raid targets.
I can't wait for the necro dot revamp. All these years of boxing the laughing stock dps class in groups will finally pay off! My long con is finally coming to fruitation! My War, Sham, Necro 3 box will wtfroflstomp everything
The nerf was well deserved. Shamans being #1 in parses were wrong. However i do fear what necro will be.. They do need to change those so they do become better than shamans. But i do fear future when level increase and present raid focus go to 110 so they can use new level dots without having to get new focus.
I can't speak for everyone, but most of the necros I know, myself included, wish these changes never were started in the first place. The debuff problem, the ostensible main issue these changes were supposed to fix, will be just as bad, if not worse, as it was before. Sure, necros will be casting fewer DoTs (though far more than most people seem to think, we have 13 lines of current expansion DoTs that I can think of right off the top of my head, compared to the 18-20 we cast on raids now. I might also be forgetting a couple), but now EVERYONE else is casting DoTs too. So, that's a wash, debuff problem is still there, we're still bouncing DoTs with more than 3 necros. Then, when it comes to balancing the numbers, it's likely that the resulting DPS will be either too low (because they way undershoot the base damage, or the efficiency of our DoTs are completely borked and our horrible mana recovery tools will not be able to deal) or too high. If it's too high, the stable of necro haters will crawl out from under their rocks and start raising hell. Parses will be posted, calls for nerfs will become the topic of long cancerous threads that keep getting bumped to the top, and then its only a matter of time before the hammer drops. When it does, it will be way too heavy-handed, as it usually is. It was the last time we were overtuned, when instead of just nerfing manaburn (i.e., the problem), it was felt that GoDR also needed to be gutted. That change was actually so bad that the devs undertook an almost unheard of partial reversal of those nerfs 5 months later by retooling GoDR to allow it to proc twice. But there's no guarantee that an unneeded nerf will get reversed (Hi, mage rains!), so maybe we just take it between the eyes this time. So basically, because of the way this whole thing has been handled up to this point, I'm completely dreading this. If I'm wrong and it's handled correctly and the class gets streamlined in a way that everyone is content with, I'll happily eat my words. But, I'm calling it right now, this is going to be a shitshow.
It could cause alot of problems, but it will solve one big thing about necros. They won't need to be bean counter accountants anymore with spreadsheets. Its a bit ridiculous to require a class to have multiple spreadsheets on what spells to memorize. And thats not to be peak performance, thats just not to suck.
That is not going to change at all. The only difference is instead of having only 20 or 24 dots to manage. We will now be down to 15 normal dots, 3 swift dots, 3-4 nuke lines and a few other things that might come into play. Necros will still require 3-5 spell sets to rotate through to maximize their performance in just about any setting. Meanwhile having to cast 2 or 3 or 4 dots to catch up to what a single cast from a druid or enchanter can currently do when no burn tools are up or utilized because he tuned their base damage poorly because he doesn't understand what he is really doing. This revamp had next to nothing to do with streamlining or solving necro problems. Any hope that this might have been beneficial to the class have long since gone out the window with how recent things have/are being handled. This revamp should have started with necros so he got things right. Now it will end with necros and likely leave them sol for longer than most are going to be willing to stick around unless the broken errs in our favor for a short time.
