Blizzard
Next PTR will have a small set of Elemental changes meant to focus on a couple specific problems.
Mastery capping
•
精通:元素过载 does 85% of base damage (from 75%) and proc rate reduced 17%
• Totem Mastery-Storm Totem bonus 5% (from 10%)
•
元素冲击 gives 2000 stats at level 110 (from 2400)
• All damage abilities increased 3%
Some of the power of mastery is shifted from proc rate into damage. The nerfs to
图腾掌握 and
元素冲击 don't require talent rebalancing, since they are minor and those are talents are already generally favored. The slight total DPS loss from those changes is counteracted in the baseline spec. With both talents, the mastery cap (with all these changes) would increase from 10400 rating to 15067.
闪电链 dominating
地震术闪电链 is so strong that
地震术 is often not attractive to cast. There are also secondary issues such as the importance of
引雷针 procs and resource overflow in AoE.
•
闪电链 damage reduced 12% and generates 4
漩涡值 (from 6)
•
地震术 damage increased 29%
•
大地震击 damage increased 13%
Damage is shifted from
闪电链 into
地震术, and
地震术 is further increased to account for generating less
漩涡值 (which helps the overflow issues, including on
静电过载 procs). The Earth Shock buff helps stave off the potential for Earthquake to get too close to it again, and a buff to
大地震击 was pretty reasonable generally.
Again, the goal is to address these issues in a relatively contained way. 7.3 is generally light on class changes, but we wanted to try to get at these known problems. As always, open to feedback on any complications that these look like they might introduce.
One additional concern we're seeing here is that based on preliminary testing this change is not accomplishing its intended goal without an extremely large number of targets.
闪电链 spam is still projecting to be higher than using your
漩涡能量 at all up until you reach around 7 targets.
地震术 is still not strong enough.
So far as we can tell, with the current changes (which have
地震术 at 100% SP per tick) a more standard
范围效果 rotation won't be worth it over
闪电链 spam unless it's brought to at least ~117% per tick or so (where it'll be about equal at 5 targets.)
The only case it appears to be worth it in is where it's the only way to proc
塞弗斯的秘密, in which case using it only to proc
塞弗斯的秘密 but not at any other time is dps neutral.
The extra factor that wasn't accounted for here is the impact that the change to the damage per Mastery hit would have on
静电过载 procs. This also significantly increases the range of impact that
静电过载 has, which only makes how inconsistent it is even more painful.
The question I have at this point is why is this even left as a potential question?
地震术 is our only AoE Maelstrom Power spender. It should be so massively, unquestionably stronger than spamming
闪电链 that even the notion of
闪电链 spam should be laughed out of the room.