Shaylana

I have been saying that WoD was going to be a "if it's got Multistrike it's mine" for gearing, as every other stat besides Haste seemed to be a waste. Pretty much that was true, even though Multistrike Flame Shock ticks wouldn't have a chance of Lava Surge. It made our Mastery weaker, because our Multistrike did essentially the same thing. They changed the mastery around, and I said to Tree, "It sounds 'meh.' " And 'meh' it 'twas.

We have a new one! Again.

Elemental Overload and Molten Earth

One of the new secondary stats Multistrike, functions very similarly to Elemental Overload. We wanted to keep Mastery and Multistrike feeling distinct, but also know how iconic and important Elemental Overload is for Elemental Shaman. So, we decided to merge the two together with Multistrike driving Elemental Overload, and give the Elemental specialization a new Mastery. For the new Mastery, we wanted to strengthen the Elemental Shaman’s connection to earth energies, and added damage that continues while the Shaman is moving. The summary of all this is that if you liked Mastery before, favor Multistrike instead for the same effect. Or try out the new Mastery: Molten Earth.

o Elemental Overload is now a regular passive ability and is no longer increased by Mastery. It grants 35% increased Multistrike damage and healing, and an additional 20% to Multistrike chance. It also increases the amount of the Multistrike stat gains from all sources by 5%, serving as Elemental’s Secondary Stat attunement.

Molten Earth is a new Mastery for Elemental Shaman.
o Molten Earth causes the Shaman’s damaging spells to incite the earth around to come to their aid for 6 seconds, repeatedly dealing Fire damage to their most recently attacked target.

---

So what does this mean in terms of design? Again, Multistrike is the stat we want to stack to 100%. We're getting so much of it from sources, it seems that we'll be simming ourselves to see how much Haste versus Multistrike we should be gemming and enchanting for. (I miss reforging already.) Will this new Mastery be worth it? It depends, I haven't seen it completely... so I don't know if it's a percent chance to hit, or if the damage is dependent on your Mastery rating. I found a video with a visual, but he didn't open his character pane for me to see how the tool tip reads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkVwwqeLXBM

For PvE, it'll help single target fights. it's incremental damage. For add fights, those shard may be hitting dead bodies, given that we hard cast and turret a lot. I don't know what would happen with input and graphical lag... I'm sure there has to be a chance that even though you hit a target, they will have already been formed to hit your dead target. I assume that with Chain Lightning it would have to target your first target. If it would target all the targets you hit, well, I'd probably call for a nerf pretty quickly or you'll see PvP Chain Lightning Spammers.

For PvP, there's the simple question of "will this break CC?" And of course, "does Hex count as the most recently attacked target?" That would SUCK if you Hex someone, and then these shards hit them and break them out of it. Or you are switching targets because the mage poly'd them and your version of Icicle damaged them. This Mastery is definitely weaker in PvP as you're changing targets often to keep up Flame Shock, so you don't really have any control over where they go.

All in all, it looks like Ele is going to be a very bursty class, or they'll tune the damage so that the burst isn't that bursty and make us not have negative sustain. I still haven't seen anything that really makes me think Haste + Multistrike. It'll come down to number tuning.

It's a double edged sword, honestly, to see them playing around and changing things on us. I'm normally an optimist. I would usually think, "Oh yeah! They planned on changing it all along. It was just on the development schedule." But given how long Alpha was and we're now in Beta, I'm a lot more skeptical. I think it means, "hey, yeah, you're not working very well so we have to change things. Normally, Beta is just about Numbers tuning, as evidenced by everyone saying, 'Don't panic, it's just Alpha, they'll tune the numbers in Beta.' " But now it's Beta, and they've done a complete redesign. And I don't think they'll have a lot of time to really perfect it, or if it doesn't work? They'll just brute force numbers and call it a day. Because now there isn't time to really redesign anything new.