[AM/Sham] Asuryan and Gork Trees [Close Date Aug 14]

[Azarael]

Per earlier points, I would like to make it clear that I do not support this spec in warband play, and that suggestions should conform to the vision I posted before.

[Telen]

If you want to put some aoe on the AM/Sham for WB make dispel magic/morks touch the old Increased Conductivity that got removed in the old aoe nerfs. Make Radiant Gaze and Law of Conductivity/Life Leaka and Gettin Smarter an aoe. Maybe just 4 other instead of cap aoe though so it doesnt go into Magus/Engi territory.

I think its better to handle these alternatives through tactics than just giving another spamable braindead aoe.

[live4treasure]

Alright, it's good that this is made clear once again. If that's the case, then my question would be why make cleansing flare / gedoff aoe? It would be a far better ability if done as a single target nuke with whatever cooldown you would personally prefer. The blessing to extra damage conversion on it would make it a great opener to occasionally replace radiant lance, or even be used in conjuction with it, in the rotation, strip off beneficial effects and open the way to laying down some hurt. 2s cast, slightly more damage than a radiant lance, 2 blessings, 150ish non-scaling extra damage for each and you've got yourself a great ability that is most definitely worth picking up.

Making it aoe would logically require one to increase the cooldown, decrease the damage, decrease the amount of blessings, and if the intent was to make it good for smallscale pvp, then it becomes gimmicky, can potentially break cc and likely is simply worse than going through your regular rotation and hoping for dispell magic procs. It doesn't end up in a much better position than DE was in that it doesn't seem worth speccing up to. That is unless dispell magic is removed from the game, but then it would be akin to forcing someone to use an ability by removing a better option. It just seems like a half-measure that doesn't do anything or just worsens utility from a 25% proc (assuming the tactic gets completely changed) to 1 blessing from that singular target you want to burst down every 15 seconds, while doing fluff damage to everyone around them.

[Azarael]

Very well.

I will ask you all to confirm: you do not see any problems with giving current heal AM and Shaman builds easy access to Cleansing Flare and Geddoff! in the lifetap 5 slot? Or are we still working on the assumption that CF/G! are converted and there is a new 5pt at lifetap 5?

[live4treasure]

My bad, I wasn't clear there. I was assuming that cleansing flare was, as a sepparate ability, being removed and that we are getting a new 13 point ability that simply has its name for the time being and a completely new group utility based 5 pt lifetap tree ability. Which is why I wasn't really attached to "cleansing flare" being aoe, and so made the next step into thinking that you intended to take the class towards warband viability.

[Morf]

Very well.

I will ask you all to confirm: you do not see any problems with giving current heal AM and Shaman builds easy access to Cleansing Flare and Geddoff! in the lifetap 5 slot? Or are we still working on the assumption that CF/G! are converted and there is a new 5pt at lifetap 5?

If this change goes through i dont see it being an issue because as a healer your main choices are going to be energy of vaul/fury of da green followed by as an AM wild healing,magical infusion and mistress of the marsh leaving you with 1 point left (at rr70) for either silence or aoe punt, and as a shaman either do sumfin useful and sticky feetz or dropping do sumfin useful all together which would hurt alot and taking shrug it off, sticky feetz and then both the silence and aoe punt.
So imo if you choose to take both silence and aoe punt on either AM or sham you are going to lose out in the healing department which i feel is a fair trade.

As dps i imagine it would only ever so slightly help AM's as they dont currently spec high into asuryan which would change if they get a decent 13 point ability so again i dont see a problem here.

@Live4treasure i think its important not to mirror changes because AM and sham play slightly differently.
I agree with your points regarding AM's but shams in regards to st/aoe damage is in a good spot, good for a class that has the ability to also heal not good if you are comparing it to a proper dps but thats what u accept playing a healer as dps i guess.

[dshdf]

Very well.

I will ask you all to confirm: you do not see any problems with giving current heal AM and Shaman builds easy access to Cleansing Flare and Geddoff! in the lifetap 5 slot? Or are we still working on the assumption that CF/G! are converted and there is a new 5pt at lifetap 5?

im for new one spell in lifetap 5 slot. Current CF/G! is "probably i can use it once per hour" immunity providing spell, no matter with path it will be. Also , if new path of gork spell will be atleast on okay lvl i presonally would just focus on 1+2 and 2+1 builds completely ignoring "silence and bunch of controserval/barely scaling from mastery points spells" da green path unless there will be comething sweet on 5pt slot

[catholicism198]

**Wall of text, how did that happen?**

The Shaman only plays differently because it lacks the DoTs that an Archmage has and they don't scale the same way.

Get 'n Smarter (1940 dmg/15 seconds/ 10 sec CD/129.333 DPS)* helps a little bit and would essentially deal the same damage as Radiant Gaze (1164 dmg/9 seconds/5 sec CD/129.333 DPS)*, but Get 'n Smarter scales with Path of Da Green and not with Path of Gork, so its damage potential suffers in the end and does not perform as well as Radiant Gaze when specced for DPS.

If the goal is to make the Archmage/Shaman single target/DoT focused, then you'd have to first bring the Shaman up to the Archmage's level, which means having Get 'n Smarter scale with Path of Gork and not Path of Da Green....and then adjusting Gork's Barbs.

Another alternative for Gork's Barbs would be to make it into a heal debuff/dot that deals increased damage the longer it remains, ultimately dealing the same amount of damage as Scatter the Winds- "Gork takes interest in your target, reducing incoming healing by 50%, and dealing X Elemental damage over X seconds. The barbs dig deeper each second they remain, steadily increasing the damage they deal.** Longer duration and longer CD. It's similar, but different...


Making those adjustments would help bring the DPS Shaman closer to what you have in mind.

*Both values are at max points in their respective mastery
**Similar to a Choppa's Bleed Em Out

As far as swapping Scuse Me! and Geddoff!- I don't see an issue with that since life-tap heals no longer rely on how much damage you do, so the debuff isn't necessary; that said, Scuse Me!'s CD is too high to be used effectively, and for that I would suggest reducing its damage and its CD so that you could reapply the (essential?) debuff in case it's cleansed.

Moving Scuse Me! to Gork and replacing Geddoff! with a spammable Intelligence-based Life-Tap ability that does not heal the caster would also help with your Damage/Healing Hybrid.* I don't really know what animations you guys have at your disposal, so it's hard to recommend something.

Path of Da Green already has one damage based HoT, and a new spammable intel-based ability would help round out the mastery.

*This ability will also benefit from Gimme Dat! and would consume Mork's Waaagh! It would also not heal the caster, as to prevent those 1v1 cheesy fights and benefit groups only.
The Shaman only plays differently because it lacks the DoTs that an Archmage has and they don't scale the same way:

Get 'n Smarter (1940 dmg/15 seconds/ 10 sec CD/129.333 DPS)* helps a little bit and would essentially deal the same damage as Radiant Gaze (1164 dmg/9 seconds/5 sec CD/129.333 DPS)*, but Get 'n Smarter scales with Path of Da Green and not with Path of Gork, so its damage potential suffers in the end and does not perform as well as Radiant Gaze when specced for DPS.

If the goal is to make the Archmage/Shaman single target/DoT focused, then you would have to first bring the Shaman up to the Archmage's level, which means having Get 'n Smarter scale with Path of Gork and not Path of Da Green....and then adjusting Gork's Barbs.

Another alternative for Gork's Barbs would be to make it into a heal debuff/dot that deals increased damage the longer it remains, ultimately dealing the same amount of damage as Scatter the Winds- "Gork takes interest in your target, reducing incoming healing by 50%, and dealing X Elemental damage over X seconds. The barbs dig deeper each second they remain, steadily increasing the damage they deal."** Longer duration and longer CD. It's similar, but different...


Making those adjustments would help bring the DPS Shaman closer to what you have in mind.

*Both values are at max points in their respective mastery
**Similar to a Choppa's Bleed Em Out

As far as swapping Scuse Me! and Geddoff!- I do not see an issue with that since life-tap heals no longer rely on how much damage you do, so the debuff isn't necessary; that said, Scuse Me!'s CD is too high to be used effectively, and for that I would suggest reducing its damage and its CD so that you could reapply the (essential?) debuff in case it is cleansed.

Furthermore, after moving Scuse Me! to Gork you could replace Geddoff! with a spammable Intelligence-based Life-Tap ability, that does not heal the caster, would also help with your Damage/Healing Hybrid vision.* I don't really know what animations you guys have at your disposal, so it's hard to recommend something.

Path of Da Green already has one damage based HoT, and a new spammable intel-based ability would help round out the mastery. It would also make use of those sets that have both +willpower and +intelligence. Set mixing would also be encouraged, opening up more options for gameplay.

*This ability will also benefit from Gimme Dat! and would consume Mork's Waaagh! It would also not heal the caster, as to prevent those 1v1 cheesy fights and benefit groups only.

Da Waaagh is Coming! is fine as is though and works with removing blessings from groups- if you want to have something that removes blessing, you could always increase the chance for blessings to be removed from 25% to 50%.

I would also hate to lose Geddoff!, but that is a very situational ability that is rarely used as it is supposed to be.

While it is unlikely that you would make these changes, it is fun to brainstorm and hopefully it helps you in developing the class into something that better fits your vision.

It has gotten a little off topic, but I believe you are now looking for suggestions for the class as a whole.

I don't know enough about Archmages to come up with a solution to its 13 point ability.

[live4treasure]

This is a very long post and it's almost midnight here, but I'd like you to remember that Shaman has a far superior array of tactics in the dps tree to AM, and that won't change in the future. In fact with the reversal of disrupt changes, it will far reduce the advantage in disrupt strikethrough that DPS AM has over shaman and will make the 11 pt. tactic basically useless and also trivialize the 10% racial one, not to mention the 3 pt. one. Meanwhile, dps shaman has access to: Morale drain, 250 points worth of toughness debuff that barely even requires additional gcds in their rotation to apply (either dominator proc, just instant casting the debuff or relying on another class to debuff for you which is easy enough), morale pump with a group-wide melee damage burst buff, racial speed boost which has been a meme for a long time, racial auto-detaunt that works in a way that specifically allows it to stack with regular detaunt.

It's very difficult, in the wake of all these excellent tactics and options, to say that dps shaman is worse off than dps AM. It was simply unfairly treated by the disrupt changes, but not much more so than sorcs were. On the contrary, it has far more synergy with their group and giving gork's barbs a dot equal or even situationally equal damage to Scatter the Wind will simply means that Shaman will be a superior version of the AM. So, when you take into account the bigger picture, unless you're willing to lose access to several of these tactics (as they are good enough that if you lose one, you can just slot in another) it doesn't seem like making gork's barbs a dot would be a fair change.

Shaman may not have as much raw dps (which is arguable because 150 toughness is a large amount), but it has the capability of increasing its team's damage output by quite a decent margin, or his own survivability by quite a decent margin or etc. etc. You'll have additional utility with the theoretical 5pt. ability, which I do hope will not be cleansing flare.

[catholicism198]

This is a very long post and it's almost midnight here, but I'd like you to remember that Shaman has a far superior array of tactics in the dps tree to AM

I have no idea how it got that long, there were just many things to discuss.

That said, I fail to see how that is true.
The tactics you mentioned aren't even related to the DPS mastery, but rather racial traits that merely improve their survivability.

"it will far reduce the advantage in disrupt strikethrough that DPS AM has over shaman and will make the 11 pt"
So you admit that the Archmage greatly benefits from it. In the end it'll reduce it, but it will still exist, and if they move Storm of Kronos over, then all of an Archmages damaging abilities will benefit from the 15% strike-through bonus.

Toughness Debuff: Both classes have access to an AE toughness debuff, the single target Shaman one, is naturally better since it is a single target spell and requires a tactic. - Invalid

Dominator Set: The Archmage has access to the same set/proc - Invalid

Morale Pump + AE damage: That requires two tactics. Two. An Archmage has access to a morale pump of their own. -Invalid

Racial Speed + Detaunt Tactic: Neither one helps increase the damage potential of the Shaman. They are merely survival tools. An Archmage might not have such tactics, but they have an M1 bubble that absorbs a substantial amount of damage. -Invalid/Irrelevant

Your arguments, for the most part, are completely invalid as they in no way help the Shaman's DPS the way that an Archmage's tactics do. It just feels like you're trying to keep the Shaman's DPS below that of an Archmage for no reason other than personal bias. *

Gork's Barbs would ultimately deal the same amount of damage but the longer duration and CD decrease its damage potential drastically because it would not have close to 100% up time like the Archmages version and will give healers more time to remove the ailment.

The changes I have suggested (Gork's Barbs/Get 'n Smarter) would, "theoretically," bring the damage potential of the Shaman up to that of the Archmage. Although the Archmage will still, arguably, be better than the Shaman because the Shaman's abilities last longer giving healers more time to cleanse, deal less damage per tick, and have longer CDs.
Furthermore, the secondary effect of Radiant Lance is significantly better as it reduces the target's overall damage AND their chance to crit, while the Shaman just reduces intel, affects two classes (at most!), and increases their own.

I am not sold on Gork's Barbs- that is just a possible alternative to the other proposed suggestion of making it deal x Elemental Damage on ability use-** and yes, that version is also inferior to that of the Archmage. However, I do strongly believe that Get 'n Smarter should be moved over to Path of Gork. It's a damaging ability without a life-tap component.***

*My personal bias is limited as I do not main a Shaman, I'm just looking to elevate it to the same level of an Archmage in accordance to Azarael's intended play style
**It used to affect Melee abilities before the rework
***Grateful the DEVs brought it back, but back then they couldn't move abilities to a different mastery