Blog Comments

  1. Aerro's Avatar
    Buff Shamanism!
  2. Fendo's Avatar
    Great write-up Shaylana!
    Now that Blizzard's had about 8 months of actual live feedback, the verdict on Elemental is in.

    This video, written by a pretty knowledgeable raider, pretty much sums up what's wrong with Elemental, and why it can't really be fixed without a huge rework. RIP

    https://youtu.be/zrI-vL0eb8g?t=1112 --it's timestamped
  3. Aerro's Avatar
    Whenever you feel your DPS is weak, you can be sure to expect a Shamanism tweak!
  4. Shaylana's Avatar
    Dear Kull,

    I, Shaylana, do humbly request that I may reserve a raid marker for the epicenter of my earthquake. This marker will be sacred to me, and no others may use such raid marker for mechanics. Whether or not tanks keep things in it, may be left up to them. And I promise that Klik will understand where the invisible circle is, as it does not matter which side you enter from to visualize it correctly.

    Thank you very much for considering my request,
    The Shayllamaban
  5. Shaylana's Avatar
    Lastly, since I didn't know what PEBKAC was, I had to look it up:
    A user error is an error made by the human user of a complex system, usually a computer system, in interacting with it. Although the term is sometimes used by human–computer interaction practitioners, the more formal human error term is used in the context of human reliability.

    Related terms such as PEBCAK (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard), ID-10T error (idiot error), and other similar phrases are also used as slang in technical circles with potentially derogatory meaning.[1][2] This usage implies a lack of computer savvy, asserting that problems arising when using a device are the fault of the user. Critics of the term argue that the problems are caused instead by a device that doesn't take into account human limitations and is thus designed in a way that induces errors.
  6. Shaylana's Avatar
    This was from Celestion:
    First, I'd like to comment on the nerfs today. Nerfs can be troubling, I get that. But this is beta, and these nerfs are just number changes. They are not a bad thing. They're simple number reductions because your DPS was too high. DPS tuning will happen, and this is the first step in that. Especially on beta, it can be very hard to have a good sense of how you compare to other specs. And with the squish changing how numbers are perceived in general, most of you probably had no clue that you were a little overpowered, and that's fine. Let me reiterate that the goal here is for you to be on par with all of the DPS. You should be equal with everyone, from the Arcane Mage to the Destruction Warlock.
    This caused backlash because nobody saw numbers that were too high, but this was likely due to the fact that Elemental Shamans couldn't get the full Damage ability from Earthquake due to movement.

    As he continues to comment:
    And finally, skill. Here's where we get into why it has all of those so-called "QoL problems". It may be hard to see this vision, because AoE DPS tuning hasn't happened yet, but here's our vision for Earthquake: You won't be able to use it in every situation. It'll take a lot of skill and planning to use effectively. It may even require some cooperation from your tank, depending upon the situation. When all of those criteria aren't met, it's fine, you still have Chain Lightning to fall back on, and you'll still do totally solid DPS that way, and it's incredibly easy to use, in virtually any situation. But when all of those pieces *do* line up, the payoff should be extremely strong.[i] It's an additional bonus [i]on top of your expected AoE DPS.
    So basically, we should look godly if the gods allow all the forces to line up. There hasn't been a single Shaman in the raid testing environment that has indicated these forces will ever line up for us.
  7. Shaylana's Avatar
    Actually, with the last number tunings, Lightning Bolt Crits hit harder than Lava Burst.
  8. Takaoni's Avatar
    Lavaboop still sounds scary
  9. Shaylana's Avatar
    Other changes:

    Item - Shaman T17 Elemental 2P Bonus Each stack of Lightning Shield consumed by Fulmination increases your multistrike damage by 2% for 10 sec.
    Item - Shaman T17 Elemental 4P Bonus When you consume more than 12 Lightning Shield charges with Fulmination, you automatically gain Lava Surge.

    We really are all about the multistrike. The 4pc is interesting in that we can use it as a "movement" bonus and hold Fulmination for it. Seems like a skill test, but I'm wondering if the 4pc will be better than tertiary stat peices, given that the 2pc may not be as good if we can hit some sort of Multistrike cap.

    ---


    Mastery: Molten Earth (New) Mastery: Molten Earth Your damaging spells incite the earth around you to come to your aid for 6 sec, repeatedly dealing [ 160% of Spell Power ] Fire damage to your most recently attacked target. Shaman - Elemental Spec.

    I bet it's works in the way that your Mastery % = the chance of these things proc'ing. So it may scale as spell power goes up, but I have a feeling it's still probably better to stack Haste and Multistrike.
  10. Shaylana's Avatar
    Will Elemental retain its niche of 3-5 target cleave with the change to mastery?
    Absolutely. It works on chains. (Celestalon)

    That's kinda ridiculous. I'd like to go into some normal Battlegrounds and see how it works. It could make us actually viable in DoT cleave teams.
  11. Shaylana's Avatar
    Ha! MMO Champ:

    Aborts firing if the target is dead or has a breaks-on-damage aura. Can crit, can multistrike. SP Coefficient is [MasteryPoints]*5%.
  12. Klik's Avatar
    She did an excellent job comically expressing my feelings about the new perk system (and the new stat attunments). These things get balanced in, so what's the point? It's 100% unnecessary complexity that someone in Blizzard seems to think has psychological benefits. To that person, I say "mommy, don't take away my toys just to give them back tomorrow"
  13. Shaylana's Avatar
    Oh I never responded to this... yeah, I have a 250GB SSD, and a 2TB 7200 RPM SATA... I was just thinking about more storage and speed for some of the editing projects.

    But I do appreciate the info!
  14. Citruss's Avatar
    Good days are the best days! I'm glad I got to be part of some of it.
  15. Kulldam's Avatar
    Hybrid drives, at least this particular example, are really just a cash grab to take advantage of the marketed speed that SSDs bring without offering the proper performance an actual SSD would provide. As you're probably aware, the basic technology behind a hybrid/SSHD is that it's primarily a regular HDD with a tiny addition of SSD memory tacked on. The drive then "auto-detects" which files you use frequently and transfers them to the SSD portion of the drive to deliver faster speeds.

    Good in theory, but in practice what you really get is a substandard SSD experience with a tacked on, normal HDD. For example, this particular linked drive has an SSD component with a mere 8GB of storage:

    Quote Originally Posted by Amazon
    The Seagate Desktop SSHD combines a high capacity hard drive and 8GB of solid-state MLC flash to add SSD like performance to any desktop.
    8GB is a pittance these days. I'm sure I have temp files and the like that are unnecessary clogging it up, but my Windows folder for my Windows 7 Professional installation clocks in at 24GB alone. While the SSHD/hybrid drive would be intelligent enough not to need to load all of a Windows install onto the SSD portion of the drive, and therefore the 8GB may be enough to boost your OS/boot speeds to near-SSD levels for the most part, the overall storage capacity for the SSD is much too minuscule to make much of a difference in this case. The small capacity issues are only exacerbated when you get into the notion of frequent games you may want to be faster and the like. Can you really trust the automated system to figure out a way to optimally distribute 25GB Windows installations and 25+GB WoW installations, let alone any other frequent software, into a tiny 8GB space? I'd be highly skeptical.

    As Doug said, if at all possible I'd highly recommend going the standard route and getting two separate drives; at least until the SSHD options become more popular and/or the market demands a more reasonable distribution between HD and SSD space on said drives. I picked up a Samsung 830 128GB SSD when I built my machine and it's been wonderful. I believe the Samsung 840 is the current set in that series but an appropriate sized SSD and a standard HDD to match will serve you well imo.
  16. Dougall's Avatar
    what you linked was a hybrid drive, correct? I'm not sure if I, personally, trust that just yet. The whole purpose of ssd is to separate storage from OS/boot. Since it's much faster on a stand alone drive. Also, fairly new technology...I usually like to see how things go for a few months before considering investing in something like this product. Outside of that, it is pretty cost efficient. Buying a 128 gb ssd and 2 tb hdd would still run around 160-200 bucks. But on the other hand I just don't know if I trust what it is for that price.
  17. Shaylana's Avatar
    Totemspot put up a guide for 5.4: http://www.totemspot.com/vb/showthread.php?t=7082

    So they're recommending business as usual (go for haste) with the possibility to take some mastery off pieces for certain fights with heavy AoE.

    The one thing I noticed is using Unleash Fury on a single target movement fight - I might have to practice that on a dummy for a while. I do try to do an Unleash Elements when I have both a Lava Burst Proc and Elemental Blast up. (If you cast Elemental Blast then do the instant Lava Burst, they hit at the same time and both get the benefit of Unleased Elements.) But I've never used that Level 90 Talent... but if it's better, well... I'd better try it out.

    And well, the little formula if you have the meta is interesting.
    Mastery Target = ( H + M - 4204) / 2
    Haste Target = Mastery Target + 4204

    So my current Haste is 15607 and Mastery 11391. Using this formula, it would optimize to 15595 Haste and 11397 Mastery - which doesn't seem a big enough change to fight for.

    Now I just need to wait for the new version of simcraft to be released, and then the endless tweaking shall begin!
    Updated 09-12-2013 at 01:44 AM by Shaylana
  18. Bauser's Avatar
    Very awesome Shay!
  19. Kulldam's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shaylana
    Pandas have always been my favorite animal.


    /highfive
  20. Shaylana's Avatar
    Aw thanks Tree! And if I were Ira Glass, I'd be a whole lot richer. I do enjoy the show!
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