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

[Azarael]

This topic kinda died and I would like to be able to draw a line under AM/Shaman and focus on other issues after the next client patch.

My current thinking:

Cleansing Flare / Geddoff! (rename needed) -> 13pt, AoE, sever 1 blessing on targets struck
Da Waaagh! Is Coming -> 9pt, 10s cd, decreases chance to disrupt by 10% on all targets hit for 10s in addition to present effect
Storm of Cronos / Scuse Me! -> DPS 5 instead of lifetap 5
Dispel Magic / Mork's Touch -> rework

This leaves a empty slot at life 5, and Dissipating Energies / Gork's Barbs with no place, which would need to be handled.

[dshdf]

This topic kinda died and I would like to be able to draw a line under AM/Shaman and focus on other issues after the next client patch.

My current thinking:

Cleansing Flare / Geddoff! (rename needed) -> 13pt, AoE, sever 1 blessing on targets struck
Da Waaagh! Is Coming -> 9pt, 10s cd, decreases chance to disrupt by 10% on all targets hit for 10s in addition to present effect
Storm of Cronos / Scuse Me! -> DPS 5 instead of lifetap 5
Dispel Magic / Mork's Touch -> rework

This leaves a empty slot at life 5, and Dissipating Energies / Gork's Barbs with no place, which would need to be handled.

Can you share some thoughts about range/casttime of new 13pt?
also, what's your vision on gorks barbs future design?

about morks touch: sham could enjoy mirror of am's forked lancing tactic. That could be usefull in combitation with hurts, dont it

[Telen]

My suggestion would be to keep DWiC at 13 with the disrupt debuff. Keep Shamans heal debuff at 9pt. You could mirror these effects during Zealot and Runepriest rework, would fit the lore concept of both classes. Zealot with sever and RP with disrupt debuff. This keeps to the faction mirror concept. Demon Spittle and Rune of Might seem the abilities you want it on they are core though, you would need to up the cd of demon spittle to 10s to match rune of might.

Id either up the cast to 3s and keep it at 100ft or have it 80ft at 2s, just to encourage mechanic use. Match the damage of CF to DWiC, up it if its a 3s, as its no longer a (bad) CC tool. Then its a fiery blast with an added effect instead of spammable. 15s cd on both so you need cd decrease for 100% up time on the debuff and to equal a doks ghot.

At 5 life you just need a single target buff spell. Hand of Glory would be the TT. Its a signature spell too and missing. Very Cheap buff. Sneeky Stabbin' i suppose would be the Gobbo equivalent though Itchy Nuisance would be a comical alternative. You could follow wars mirror principles by making it the debuff of the AM version.

You could make it some sort of self healing on damage for that player and self damage on ability use for the Gobbo version. Though to make a better version of DE you could also make it a straight damage buff/debuff. DE was rubbish because it was little extra damage and broke cc. A damage buff would be similar but actually useful. 10% or 15% damage buff/debuff. Gobbos already get the buff on shield through tactic (not that its any good as it wont stay up you may want to make it so that buff and the AM Golden Aura version stick).

DE well its a rubbish spell I dont know if you want to rework it but the effect is pretty rubbish too.

[Morf]

This topic kinda died and I would like to be able to draw a line under AM/Shaman and focus on other issues after the next client patch.

My current thinking:

Cleansing Flare / Geddoff! (rename needed) -> 13pt, AoE, sever 1 blessing on targets struck
Da Waaagh! Is Coming -> 9pt, 10s cd, decreases chance to disrupt by 10% on all targets hit for 10s in addition to present effect
Storm of Cronos / Scuse Me! -> DPS 5 instead of lifetap 5
Dispel Magic / Mork's Touch -> rework

This leaves a empty slot at life 5, and Dissipating Energies / Gork's Barbs with no place, which would need to be handled.

I wouldn't like to see cleansing flare and geddoff completely removed, while it sucks that some players use this ability unwisely and give free immunities it is a very useful ability, not gona say its massively important in every situation but in keep sieges being able to knock a bunch off rdps of a wall to stop them nuking the ram or players can be invaluable while also planting a seed of doubt in their minds that if they show themselves for to long they face being knocked off.
Also has a very good use when combined with aoe snare puddle, if one of your teammates is in a bad spot and being beaten on by a bunch of mdps using the aoe punt followed by aoe snare can save them from certain death, especially on live when it was insta cast with heal stacks (dunno if its insta now after recent changes)

Imo switching storm of cronos/scuse me with cleansing flare/geddoff would be good start.

I dont believe shaman dps is all that bad and in need of a new ability at 13 points, archmage do, dissipating energies sucks.

To sum it up storm of cronos/scuse me switched for cleansing flare/geddoff, new 13 point ability for AM that actually has a use, i guess something similar to DWIC but unique enough to not just be a complete copy (sure some lore fans/tabletop players can think of something fitting) aoe channel maybe like rain of fire ?, reducing gorks barbs cd ? 30 sec cd barely makes it worth taking, maybe 15 secs as normal 10 sec cd heal debuff seems a tad excessive given gorks barbs has a secondary effect even tho its kinda meh.
As for dispel magic and morks touch first thought would have it remove a blessing and an enchantment but i imagine having what is basically destroy confidence which can be used from distance with an aoe ability would be really rough so idk.

[Azarael]

Fair enough. We can cross-mirror as well.

[live4treasure]

This topic kinda died and I would like to be able to draw a line under AM/Shaman and focus on other issues after the next client patch.

My current thinking:

Cleansing Flare / Geddoff! (rename needed) -> 13pt, AoE, sever 1 blessing on targets struck
Da Waaagh! Is Coming -> 9pt, 10s cd, decreases chance to disrupt by 10% on all targets hit for 10s in addition to present effect
Storm of Cronos / Scuse Me! -> DPS 5 instead of lifetap 5
Dispel Magic / Mork's Touch -> rework

This leaves a empty slot at life 5, and Dissipating Energies / Gork's Barbs with no place, which would need to be handled.

It's very difficult to judge without knowing the specifics of Cleansing Flare and Geddoff. We don't yet know what kind of damage it'll do, what kind of cooldown it'll have etc. so it's difficult to assess what sort of effect it will have. We can all reasonably agree that SoC / SMe moved to DPS tree is a rock solid change, though.

If you're entertaining the thought of the above channel effect, then for AM, it could be made to consume one blessing from each target struck upon initial application and that would increase the damage of the ability for the duration of the channel, for example. That being said, such an ability would be almost completely useless for SCs, as all the enemy has to do is walk out of it, although while in a bombing scenario that wouldn't be the case. If you do decide to go with it, then the ability feels like it should be Fiery Convocation and should likely recieve the animation of the Asuryan tree M4, while the M4 itself could be something else. Having two channels won't be much help anyway, as you can't use them together. Perhaps it can be like Dissipating Energies, but because it's morale damage, throwing it on your tank to hit the melee line won't be such an issue, since they can't really trivialize it. Alternatively, you can use the Tempest spell from lore. Basically a storm of winds and lightning that deals damage to everyone in a pbaoe over time and makes it harder for them to hit anything. That way you could fire and forget it and continue onto your channel damage.

In terms of dispell magic, well... it could, in addition to its usual effect, buff Radiant Lance / Brain Busta and Searing Touch / Bunch of Waagh to deal a bit more damage and trigger dispell magics / gorks touch effect 100% of the time when cast, for example. Perhaps it could also apply a 10% disrupt chance reduction debuff to the enemy, to deal with shaman's strikethrough issues. This would then necessitate a rework for AM's 11pt tactic, though, because it already rarely sees much use outside of heavily undergeared AMs. It could be too radical a change, though.

P.S. Completely not on board the 15s cd thing that Telen suggested here. That's not going to make them warband viable, it will just give them a gimmicky cleanse that deals damage that isn't even close to comparable to other aoe dps. It doesn't do DPS, so that means you have to equip full healer gear and cast it with tranquility to get any effect at all out of it. The damage won't even matter, because it's not repeatable pressure, you might as well make it do no damage but cleanse a blessing for all the difference it will make for how welcome a DPS AM with this ability will be to a warband. Even dissipating energies is a more viable ability because you can cast it on someone and have it proc dispell magic repeatedly over its duration.

These changes shouldn't just be done willy nilly. The intent is supposed to be to make DPS AM and Sham at least viable in largescale and smallscale pvp content. If you give them more gimmicky abilities, you will leave it in the same gimmicky place, where it's just short of being worthy of a spot in serious content, but simply not do enough damage to justify it.

[catholicism198]

reducing gorks barbs cd ? 30 sec cd barely makes it worth taking, maybe 15 secs as normal 10 sec cd heal debuff seems a tad excessive given gorks barbs has a secondary effect even tho its kinda meh.

The secondary effect is pretty bad, but saying that it's CD should NOT be 10 seconds simply because of it is not a valid argument. (It could be said that it's a healing debuff meant to be used on a healer, but it'll just get disrupted and the damage is...)
Take a look at Scatter the Winds: 9 second DoT and 50% Heal Debuff with a 10 Second CD.
Gork's Barbs was brought up a good, good while ago on the balance forum discussion, but nothing came of it. Guessing no one really knows what to do with it- it's a pretty worthless ability as it is now.


Before you close off the Shaman/Archmage, have you ever considered extending the range of Big Waaagh!/Mirror? I'm guessing they reduced the range when they reduced the cd, but 65ft is ridiculously short for a single target ability.
SW/SQ do have 65ft abilities, but they're in the kiting mastery and continue building while moving, and Magus/Eng have a tactic that extends the range of their 65ft abilities to approx. 81ft.

[live4treasure]

I've decided to elaborate a little more on why I think a long cooldown for cleansing flare won't make it an ability worth taking.

Let me start off by saying that if it was a single target ability as originally proposed, any sort of cooldown, even 30s, as excessive as it would be, would still make this ability worth taking in a world where dispell magic lost its functionality for a different effect. The reason is because the AM/Sham would still have several other single target damage abilities he could use in order to deal damage, so that means there won't be a massive hole in single target dps when it is on cooldown, making this ability used as an enhancer for decisive burst damage.

The reason I say this, is because it sets a specific and important context for the current aoe version of cleansing flare. This will literally be our only aoe damage ability outside of SoC/SMe, which is already on a 30 second cooldown, and it's as high up as 13 points in the tree. If the intent is to make DPS AM/Sham welcome to warbands, which is what I assume the intent to be otherwise making this ability aoe serves no purpose, then it has to be spammable in some way, even if only through a combination with other classes like SM/BOrk (which would make it spammable with only a 50% uptime, and I think that's plenty tax enough for being hybrid), because anything less than that and the DPS AM/Sham's utility of cleansing blessings alone doesn't outweigh the massive several seconds long lapse in aoe damage pressure they will be experiencing. It will necessitate, as stated before, that the DPS in question has to wear full healer gear and act as that role in order to justify casting cleansing flare, and that will trivialize the damage, because it means the only reason you cast this ability will be for the cleanse, which sounds good, but it's nothing spectacular when you consider other aoe specs are capable of far far far outdamaging a single or even several aoe hots.

In short, this is the only solid aoe ability we will have, and 13 pt. is the only feasible place an ability like that would be. It has to be powerful and gotten right, otherwise it will very rarely see play in warbands and not even by builds you would call DPS, and certainly not in scenarios, because it's likely either going to be not potent enough to cast it for a single target focus (or if it is, it will still be quite gimmicky because of the following reason ->), or it will risk breaking CC.

Honestly, if blessing strip sounds too overpowered for an ability you would be able to spam with a 50% uptime, then lets think of some other auxiliary effect for it, because without some form of spammable aoe, even if conditions have to be met for it to work, it won't do any favors to the dps spec.

[catholicism198]

I don't understand what the goal is anymore... if the goal is to create a
"Hybrid DPS, with single target/DoT focus, using damage stacks to throw out heals as the team needs them, or building up heal stacks when given the opportunity in order to burst with them later." Then why grant them another AE ability?

Having Gork's Barbs mirror Scatter the Winds would be the easiest thing to do to help with your initial vision- or doing something like, "Gork takes interest in your target, reducing incoming healing by 50%, and dealing X damage anytime they use an ability." That would essentially translate to a DoT and keeps with the theme of the ability, while keeping the two classes "unique" to a degree..it would still require a reduced CD since 30 seconds for a DoT is...

l4t: If you're looking to make the class mastery more desirable for Large Scale WB play, then the class needs more utility than raw damage because it will never compare to a true DPS class. Take a look at the new Squig Herder for example, he does mediocre damage but brings a useful debuff (and has a charge that is meant to disrupt enemy lines)- so he is welcomed in WB settings because of it. (Tastes Like Stuntie is the only ability that doesn't fit in since it's more of a 1v1 ability.)

Adding a 10% disrupt reduction to TWIC should add some value to the Shaman, but with the planned disrupt reverts it might not be as useful as it would've been when Disrupts were a big issue.

[Telen]

Problem is as a sever a cd lower than 10s and with WW it becomes pretty much spamable. You may aswell never cast a hot if a AM is around. The same issue Shammy used to have if a knight was around.