Thursday, March 8, 2012

Mists of Pandaria Elemental Preview

By now, mostly everyone's had the chance to forage through the new talent calculators and spell lists to get a first look at what to expect in MoP.

[Talents]
As everyone knows, the talent trees as we know them are pretty much going out the window and in their place each class is getting 6 tiers of talents, 1 choice per tier.  For the most part, each tier of the trees seems to be focused on a certain aspect - ie a "healing" tier.  I'm sure all the math geniuses are going to be hard at work (if they're not already), figuring out which talent in each tier will provide the most DPS possible if applicable.  It's also important to note that Blizz seems to be aiming a lot of these talents towards utility, and all the fluff talents that boost up our spells and abilities are being rolled into the spells themselves.

Nature's Guardian seems mostly in tact from the Resto tree as it is today.  Stone Bulwark looks like it's a suped up version of Stoneclaw, and our Astral Shift we saw through Wrath has made a return, with a slightly different change.  For my tastes, Nature's Guardian seems largely useless in both PvE and PvP.  Stone Bulwark, depending on how it's absorption will scale at max level will likely be my choice in PvE.  It also looks (at least right now) that Stoneclaw is gone, and this will be the supplement we can choose for the Glyph of Stoneclaw effect.  Lastly, Astral Shift is our long-sought defensive cooldown, reducing all damage taken by 50% at the cost of 30% less damage/healing dealt for 6sec.  I can see uses for both of these in current content.  I'm more frustrated at the damage/healing reduction component of Astral Shift, though, seeing as classes like Druids and Paladins (and Warriors?) get cooldowns (Barkskin, Divine Protection, Shield Wall?) that give damage reduction without the damage reduction.  For myself, I'll likely be going with Stone Bulwark for PvE and Astral Shift for PvP.  There's been plenty of times where I've been trained and the damage reduction would have saved me.  I'm curious if it'll be usable while stunned/silenced/etc and off the GCD or not.

In Tier 2, we see that the focus of these is movement/control.  Frozen Power exists as the root it is now from Enhance, Earthgrab will be a suped up Earthbind replacement and Windwalk is a raid-wide Blessing of Freedom.  In my experience, Frost Shock remains one of the spells I rarely, if ever, case (unless I need to slow a runner in PvP).  The Earthgrab is similar to Earth's Grasp we currently have access to.  The cool thing is that it isn't just the one root like we have now - let's say you've rooted a rogue, and a DK comes in to beat on you, it's next pulse will root the DK and continue to slow any other targets it's already rooted.  Lastly, Windwalk totem.  A raidwide Blessing of Freedom can have its uses - ie during Heroic Hagara on the ice phase to help with the snowflake snare.  This one is up in the air for which I'll pick.  In PvP, my issue I have is getting away from melee more than anything, and both of these will help accomplish that, albeit in different ways.  Fights that require adds to be kited (like on Gluth, in Naxx) will benefit from Earthgrab, and Windwalk would be useful in fights like Heroic Hagara.

Tier 3 brings us some interesting changes for our totems.  We have a Preparation-esque cooldown for our totems; a cooldown reduction on our totems when they're destroyed prematurely; and lastly a totem "launcher"-esque ability to summon our totems to a specific location.  For myself, the clear winner for me is Call of the Elements.  This can let me make sure I have a Fire Elemental for every attempt on a boss.  I've never yearned to place my totems in a specific location other than where I am, nor do my totems typically get replaced or destroyed before they expire naturally.  Call of the Elements will be a huge boon to me, seeing as currently I don't glyph it and it's frustrating when I can use my Fire Ele on one every 2-3 wipes on say, Heroic Ultraxion.

Tier 4 brings us a slew of toys.  We see Elemental Mastery being changed into a personal bloodlust on a 2min cooldown.  Ancestral Swiftness is a passive 5% haste with an on-use to make your next nature spell instant cast (ala Nature's Swiftness).  Thirdly, Echo of the Elements appears to be a DTR/Elemental Overload effect - causing your direct damage and healing spells to have a chance to be duplicated.  This is the tough one, and honestly, I'm waiting for the jury of the theorycrafters to work on this one.  Haste has typically been a strong stat for us (being our #1 secondary stat through all of T11 and T12 this expansion).  The choice between the first two options comes down to the choice between a personal BL/Hero versus a passive 5% haste with an instant Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning once per minute.  Echo of the Elements seems like it could prove useful - depending on the proc rate.  Will it be a PPM mechanic? Or similar to DTR where it's approx 13% proc chance?  Can it proc off of Elemental Overload procs?  A lot of questions on this last choice here.  For PvP I may stick with Echo of the Elements.  Many of my favorite moments in PvP are when I get DTR procs on top of Mastery procs and just seeing someone drops.  PvE is a different game, and if one turns out better than the other I'll obviously go with that.  However, I like the current haste bonus of Elemental Mastery and am used to that, so I may stick with that out of personal preference.

Tier 5 ties into our healing abilities.  We get the choice between Healing Tide - a raidwide ability similar to Tranquility; Ancestral Guidance gives us an activated ability that will make our heals/damage do healing equal to 40% to a nearby injured ally; and Fortifying Waters, offering us a 10% magic reduction for those standing in our Healing Rain.  I have yet to cast Healing Rain in a raid or a serious PvP setting, so Fortifying Waters is out the window from the start.  Healing Tide and Ancestral Guidance in my opinion have the potential to be powerful raid cooldowns.  I'm curious if Ancestral Guidance will be a smart heal and heal the party member in most need within its range (ala Atonement).  I wouldn't see the need for it otherwise if it wasn't, so assuming it's smart helps its cause.  Healing Tide could be useful for fights like Ultraxion/Heroic Ultraxion where there's a lot of AOE healing and people need heals NOW.  This can also be useful for Spine, Madness, Zan'ozz.  I think Ancestral Guidance might find more use in PvP where I need it to simultaneously heal me as I'm trying to burn someone down.

Our sixth tier of talents is, at current, "Coming Soon!" and I'm curious, anxious and excited to see the last set of talents we get to choose from.


[Spells and Other Changes]
Blizz recently announced that in MoP all spells will deal 200% crit damage baseline.  This was a breath of relief when looking through our spell list that we only gained a 50% crit damage boost.  This is interesting to me seeing as currently we gain somewhere along the lines of 137% crit damage on our Lava Bursts (talents and chaotic meta accounted for), so we'll be seeing even larger LvB crits.  Also, we'll see higher crits in general, and I'm curious if this will shuffle our secondary stat priorities a little. 

We seem to have lost a lot of our buff totems - such as Wrath of Air, Windfury, resistance totems, Stoneskin, Strength of Earth.  It looks like we'll be losing a lot of our stat sticks (Hooray!) and gaining utility totems via talents and some class-wide (Tremor and Earthbind still currently exist).  Our Totemic Wrath is turning into a passive ability no longer tied to our fire totems, and we'll be gaining a new raid buff that grants 5 Mastery to all raid/party members.

Our Fire and Earth Elementals have had their duration and cooldowns slashed by 50% - bringing them to 1min durations with 5min CD's, meaning we should have one for every boss attempt, plus with the Call of the Elements talent, lets us drop potentially 2 on every fight.  Reincarnation currently has no cooldown listed on the spell list, and I'm wondering if I should be rejoicing or not.  I genuinely wish the cooldown would get reduced as is, even if it was 10 minutes to have a similar cooldown to battle rezzes.  I personally feel like Reincarnate is weaker than a brez - you rez with low health and mana, where you died, not to the area the warlock/druid/DK could have rezzed you.  All brez's have a 10min CD while Reincarnate remains stuck at 30min. 

Finally, our new class spell for MoP is Ascendance.  This 3min CD will turn us into a Flame Ascendant (think Elemental Council in Bastion of Twilight) for 15sec, removing the CD on LvB and turning Chain Lightning into Lava Beam.  Lava Beam is still undetermined as to its details as of yet, but most are speculating, and I agree, that it will be similar in nature to Chain Lightning ala cleaving to nearby enemies.  I'm hoping for one of these 2:

Lava Beam:  Hurls a stream of lava at the enemy, dealing X damage and jumping to additional nearby enemies.  Each jump reduces damage done by 30%, affecting 3 total targets.  Lava Beam will always critically strike if Flame Shock is present on the target, and applies Flame Shock to every target affected by Lava Beam. 1.5sec cast

Lava Beam:  Hurls a stream of lava at the enemy, dealing X damage and jumping to additional nearby enemies.  Each jump reduces damage done by 30%, affecting 3 total targets.  Lava Beam will always critically strike all targets hit if Flame Shock is present on the primary target.

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