Patch notes 22/12/2018

[Hargrim]

Apparently we didn't push DB and Gunbad is still missing wing bosses.

[SmackdownNinja]

Toughness change means grey players and low rr/poorly geared players do much more damage now.

I'm a tank. Before the patch I could easily hold off 3-4 low rr, gray or poorly geared toons, now they can chip away at me faster.

Few patches back dps doks/wp had massive nerf to healing while dpsing.

This patch tank defenses were nerfed.

I agree with everything you said, even at 1200 toughness I never got hit for 1s unless it’s another def tank.The only class that can even think about reaching an amount of toughness higher then that is BG. Having a hard cap set at 1050 would be much better imo instead of a blanket nerf over def tanks. This would stop Def BGs from soley stacking toughness without nerfing every tank. Gotta also take into consideration the nerfs to dot avoidance, healers, and buffs for 2h that makes SnB less desirable then it already was.

[mursaat1337]

i'm full conq heal spec AM.
my channeling attack was ticked 600~1k. 100~300 to deftard tanks.
zero invest in dps and deal 1k per tick? that was monstrous dps.
it's like deftard SnB tanks hit 1k per swing with channeling.

only reasons i didn't report in balance forum was i had no exp. in dps spec.
and too complex mechanic details i couldn't follow.

long cast 2k~3k burst healing was class trademark IMO.
shaman can add mobility in there
but it was borderline OP undying healer with lifetap, IMO.
glad it's fixed without writing in balance forum.

If you are getting 1k hits its very very rare and would mean the target is a lowbie who has low resist as is, resist debuffed and you either have the damage boost from sc like logrins forge or you are close to the wc and have heal stacks, my def tank in best case scenario with target being a lowbie, debuffed and with sc buff/wc buff can hit around the 800 mark but it doesnt mean my dps needs a nerf its a once in a blue moon situation.

The math provided by wargrim means you have a total stat pool of around 1700 if its .7 of total stats when healing or dps because stat total doesnt vary that much( gain int lose def stats as dps, gain def stats lose int as healer) which is a **** ton but if that formula is correct then we should be seeing hits of 1.5k + when working the mechanic and monster heals with dps stacks, this isnt the case, it was for the first ab ex sham/am as far as dps goes.

When playing as dps if i were to spam group heals with dps stacks they would be around 1100, as a healer with heal stacks bunch o waaagh if im lucky would hit for around the 600 mark, these aint the monster numbers you would expect with 1700 stat points contributed to it and as far as lifetap goes i'll take that was hitting for very very small numbers with heal stacks but healing for a ton more, for sure didnt gain the 1700 or so stats to contribute to the damage side of things.

Dont get me wrong as a healer with no dps stats invested you should be doing bad dps, sure i aint gona disagree that damage numbers for a pure healer are a bit to much but no way near the monster numbers claimed and certainly didnt warrant gutting the lifetap healing that was such a successful change.

The math provided doesnt add up at all with 1700 stats towards healing or dps the numbers should be far higher then what they were.

Check your line called ItemStatTotal from .getstats, that's the value that was used. On my dps shaman, the value I would get from that formula is slightly more than what I get from stacking Intelligence. Essentially, with that mechanic, you never have to gear for Int because it's more efficient to just stick to willpower and the mechanic did all of the conversion for you. That's the BIG problem.

Unlike z/rp who have to not only toggle between being able to heal and being able to do damage, their trees are so messed up they can't really spec to heal or do damage anyway. The mechanic we removed allowed am/sham to not only spec solely for healing, but also receive BOTH of their dps trees at 15 mastery points simply by using stacks. Mind you, it ALSO had no additional benefit or drawback for being at 5 stacks or 1 stack, because you receive all the benefits of the mechanic from a single stack, and there still are no drawbacks at all.

Their mechanic brings nothing to the playstyle aside from significant buffs for doing things you're doing anyway, and it's very far removed from any semblance of balance or meaningful choices that affect how you use it.

isnt that the whole idea of the shaman mechanic is to gear one side and have the mechanic close the gap to a marginal percent of the other spectrum or am i just insane?

[Natherul]

Toughness change means grey players and low rr/poorly geared players do much more damage now.

I'm a tank. Before the patch I could easily hold off 3-4 low rr, gray or poorly geared toons, now they can chip away at me faster.

Few patches back dps doks/wp had massive nerf to healing while dpsing.

This patch tank defenses were nerfed.

I agree with everything you said, even at 1200 toughness I never got hit for 1s unless it’s another def tank.The only class that can even think about reaching an amount of toughness higher then that is BG. Having a hard cap set at 1050 would be much better imo instead of a blanket nerf over def tanks. This would stop Def BGs from soley stacking toughness without nerfing every tank. Gotta also take into consideration the nerfs to dot avoidance, healers, and buffs for 2h that makes SnB less desirable then it already was.

Read the patch note again because the only way its a nerf is if you were over 75% mitigation from a specific attack. It does not nerf anything else. So under all other circumstances its EXACTLY as before.

[mikke]

The 5th bonus proc together with subjugator 2h proc can be a deadly combination.

If it only was something like 5 sec RD proc....

[Hargrim]

The missing Gunbad bosses are back.

[naugrim]

Party keg will be remove at the end of event? because I can see any decay on it...

[Nabaro]

Shroud of Magnus now totally reduce dmg from undefendable ability's. For example "Bolt of Change". This is bug or now we can defend against undefendable??? This is not in the patchouts and skill description.

[Sulorie]

Shroud of Magnus now totally reduce dmg from undefendable ability's. For example "Bolt of Change". This is bug or now we can defend against undefendable??? This is not in the patchouts and skill description.

Should be an oversight, when making all spell dmg 0 during buff duration.

[Illiyara]

Wargrimn, I agree that the AM mechanic had several issues and could benefit from a rework, but as someone who regularly switched between heal and dps spec and loved using the mechanic to the max, I think you have a few misunderstandings about how the mechanic worked.

Heres what it DID - 40% cast time reduction, 40% ap reduction and 25% augmentation on instants AND movecast on certain abilities, converted all your willpower/intelligence from items to the other depending on ability type cast AND made said abilities behave as if the AM/SH had full 15 point investment in respective trees, oh and additional strikethrough on various abilities. On top of that, the conversion was not grabbing an average, it was grabbing ALL of your base stats, adding them together, and reducing it by 70%, then using that TOTAL value for the modifier. Not at average of your stats * .7, but the total of your stats * .7, which is ridiculous.

You seem to think that the mechanic gave you an absurd stat modifier much higher than you could get actually building for it. First of all, affected your bonus stats, not base stats. In my glass healer build, I have a bonus 62 int, 38 toughness, 67 init, 726 wp, and 136 wounds. The sum of my bonus stats is 1029, and 70% of that is 720. So that scary modified TOTAL of ALL my bonus stats actually comes out a bit less than my base wp was, not at all ridiculous imo. It's a weighted average, aimed at reproducing your main stat (in a rather clunky way imo). TLDR; my mechanic would never make my heals or dps spells stronger than when I was actually geared for it. And of course, that doesn't include stats like strikethrough and crit/healcrit, or tactics, which only widen the gap between offspec and true spec performance.

Secondly, the mechanic used that value for your stat contribution, but didn't actually give you bonus int or wp for that cast. That's a big difference for a healer using the mechanic for dps spells, because it means you'll still lack the strikethrough gained from int, so you'll get disrupted a lot (which is why lifetaps got a strikethrough bonus instead of bonus damage).

Lastly, I'm quite sure the mechanic didn't do anything to mastery lines. While playing with dps masteries, I would often end up healing (with heal gear and tactics) when there were none in the sc, and my empowered heals would still hit for substantially less than when I was a specced healer, ignoring crits.

However, if as said, you were a full heal spec, will some in the "lifetap tree" and zero in damage tree you could hot 5 people pretty fast and then drop 5 massive attacks on people with a huge intelligence boost AND as if you had a full 15 points invested in the DPS tree, if you cant see how this was exploitative and overpowered there may be no convincing you.

It would hardly be 5 massive attacks. Besides my corrections on how the mechanic actually worked above, an AM as a mainly dot class doesn't have massive attacks, but dots you stack for a slow "burst" with your channel. The dps AM burst is mainly Scatter the Winds, Radiant Gaze, Law of Conductivity, then channel Searing Touch. Healers lack the strongest dot in that "burst", Scatter the Winds. They will lack the Searing Touch tactic, so our best direct attack will tick twice as slowly. All those attacks will have a high chance of being disrupted because they lack int (remember, it was not a stat conversion) and any additional strikethrough from gear and tactic. They'll lack crit compared to a real dps. They'll also lack 25% damage from not having Divine Fury (somewhat debatable, since the mechanic boosts damage on those spells by 25%, but dps AMs can also build mechanic for the same effect). All that likely adds up to less than 60% dps in your burst compared to a dps AM, whose killpower outside of 1v1 scenarios is already substantially worse than dedicated dps classes. It was pretty op for 1v1 though.

As a healer trying to use the mechanic to its fullest, I would rarely dps because it still wasn't often worth it; better to use my stacks on lifetaps. Maybe you could argue that heal AMs were still capable of too much damage, but it's hardly the scary healer/nuker you seem to think.



I do think the mechanic was horribly convoluted and unintuitive, but it did solve many issues AMs had and create the most engaging playstyle yet for both dps and heal AM. I hope it is fixed with an accurate and not inflated understanding of how it actually did work. If the benefit from using the mechanic is too weak, it'll become mostly useless, and I personally think the AM as a hybrid should have an optimal situational use for all of its skills. That will be hard to do without any sort of stat conversion.

I'm also curious as to your thinking on what the direction for AM should be. Should dps AMs be able to offheal well? Should their kill power rival dps archetypes? Should heal AMs be able to do any substantial damage?

Do you want to go back to the old divide between lifetap and Isha heals, where only dps AMs can use ever use lifetaps effectively and only heal AMs can ever use Isha heals effectively?