:tpg:

On an unrelated note, I got one of the WoW figures today (UD Warlock), and it is freaking awesome, so worth $20.

We named the guild "Aperture Science" by the way. =p
So far it's me, aaron, nova, dev, and maybe ed and zeal.

Sorry Nova, I found out back at release that PVP servers simply aren't my thing when the first GFF guild was on Laughing Skull (man that feels like ages ago). That and I already have so many characters that I'm leveling up already. Zinc complained about having too many 70s? Well I'm the exact opposite in that I don't have enough (not even one!) :eagletear:

Eh, you're right about PvP usefulness, as Resto Shamans are the least useful of the four healers, but on the raid scene, they are healing gods, that no other class can compare to, especially with the new Lifebloom nerf.

My guild brings as many Resto Shamans as possible to nearly every encounter, typically that has been 3, but on situations that they could pull it off, there have been 4 of us. This is in ADDITION to the enhancement and elemental shaman also in the raid. So, 4-5 Shaman every week.

Lets face it, Chain Heal is a godly spell that scales unbelievably well, Earth Shield is a required buff for any tanks, the buffs totems provide to your group are among the best in the game (only competing with Paladin, which our guild prefers 2 of per raid) and everyone's favorite spell, Bloodlust, which just makes about every fight in the game so much easier for each shaman you can cram in (some fights, our melee group will recieve all 5 bloodlusts, other encounters 2-3 dps groups get them).

I'm not trying to downplay Shaman PvP issues, but just to remind people that there are other aspects of the game that Shaman happen to thrive in ATM.

Earth Shield is nice for tanks and AOE situations (slap it on that 'lock and go to town), but it's hardly necessary. Resto shamans are good raid healers, yes. However, their single-target heals are comparatively weak (Lesser Healing Wave is insanely mana inefficient, and Healing Wave has the lowest base healing out of any class), and before Water Shield they had nothing but Mana Tide/Spring for mana regen (and Mana Spring pre 2.3 required half of its duration just to return the mana cost).

Yeah, totems are good buffs, but they've got a lotta problems too. It takes 6 seconds to fully buff up a group, and you have to buff again every 2 minutes, no matter your spec. For elemental shamans, this is a big loss of DPS. For Resto, it's lost spirit regen. The only one that isn't all that chuffed about it is Enhancement, because they have several free GCDs in their spell rotation (which I believe is Flame Shock, Storm Strike, Earth Shock, Earth Shock, repeat), and their godly mana efficiency means they can afford to not only drop totems, but also twist totems by using a macro to drop Windfury for the 9-second buff, then dropping Grace of Air and dropping Windfury again when the buff expires.

But yeah, I was pretty much talking about PVP when I mentioned Resto being useless. Which is pretty big, since the days of raiders steamrolling anything that moves are long gone.

Put bluntly, if you want to be a good arena healer, you roll a druid for 2v2 and 5v5 4-DPS teams, priest for 3v3 and 2345 5v5 teams (AKA Elemental Shaman, Frost Mage, MS Warrior, Holy Paladin, Disc. Priest), and paladin for 3v3 and 5v5 (and decent 2v2). Resto shaman have all the weaknesses of a holy paladin (incredibly vulnerable to interrupts, easy to keep in melee), without the mana efficiency and utility.

Oh trust me, as a shaman for over two years now, I'm well versed in our weaknesses, and I agree with many of your points. I just think that not only is Resto is a pretty overpowered PvE spec, but the other two are doing just fine in that particular area of the game. That being said, I stopped PvPing altogether on my Shaman when my 3s team broke up halfway through season 2, and I'm now rolling a Druid on another server with PvP aspirations.

It may just be my style and personal preference, but aside from doing a little enhancement farming, I feel underpowered as ele or enh compared to Resto, and have trouble playing either spec for any extended period of time.

Does anyone else notice that Bonus Spell Damage does not work on some spells/abilities?

I mainly play a Warlock and Death Coil never inflicts more damage than its tooltip says. If it says it'll heal me for 475 health while hurting the target for 475 damage, then that's exactly what it does while ignoring my Bonus Spell Damage.

I've searched the worldofwarcraft.com site and looked at the previous patch updates. Not a single one lists a change that introduces these sort of "hinderances" to my Warlock spells. I also suspect that there are other oddities with other caster classes, especially healing ones like Paladin and Priest.

Also, there's a section that explains how Bonus Spell Damage is supposed to work. And it's dependent on the spell's rank, when the spell/rank is first available to be learned, and the character's current level.
-This is the formula they use: [(spell level)+6]/(player level)
--Spell level = when the spell is available to learn, but at it's full potential level. Example: a level 22 spell can reach it's full potential at level 27. Meaning, as the character levels up to 27 from 22, the spell's tooltip should update with each level up with a new amount. This is all done on whatever rank the spell is. Same thing will occur on the next rank.
-- +6 = the "slack" the game's system provides until any penalty to Bonus Spell Damage is introduced.
--Player level is the player's current level.

Now, using the formula provided by Blizzard:
-A level 22 spell reaches it's limit at 27. So it'll cease to do more damage or healing beyond 27 until the next rank is learned.
-So, let us assume the player's current level is 34. [(27)+6]/(34) = 0.970588235 * 100 = 97.0588235%.
-This means at level 34, the player's bonus spell damage will only provide ~97% bonus.

Going back to Death Coil, the highest rank (being rank 4) is learned at 68. Even though there's only a two level difference from 70, there should be a full Bonus Spell Damage effect regardless of the game's 6 level slack.

So, either this is a flaw with the game's Bonus Spell Damage mechanics or Death Coil isn't magic damage. Yet, it can still be resisted completely by a rogue's Cloak of Shadows, indicating that it is magic damage. And there's the possibility that Death Coil is an entirely different school of magic by itself, apart from the currently known ones. But that doesn't stop it from being affected by silencing abilities along with every other shadow based spell.

What do you guys think? Am I right? Do you experience similar oddities? Am I just spouting nonsense? Or am I missing the bigger picture here?

I suppose after fifteen patch updates it would mean that Blizzard must know in depth about what's going on with Death Coil (and other spells). And that would mean they're purposely leaving the mechanics in this current working order.

:wrong::wrong::wrong:

Spell damage and healing - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Coefficients are not based on the level you learned it at, but on its casting time (or duration, if it's a DOT).

The formula for direct-damage spells is basically x + (y/(z/3.5)), where x is the base spell damage, y is your spell damage (or healing, where applicable), and z is the casting time of the spell*. A 3.5-second cast (like Starfire) gets 100% of your +damage applied to it, but a 1.5 second cast like Lesser Healing Wave only gets roughly 43% of your +damage. Also, an instant cast spell like a shaman's Earth Shock is treated as a 1.5 cast for the purpose of ensuring it scales in some fashion. In addition, there are several penalties applied to the coefficient. In Death Coil's case, it applies a debuff (terror) AND heals you. That means that not only is it getting an already paltry coefficient (43%), it's also being penalized for the debuff and healing effect it does on you. WoWWiki, the site that you should be going to to begin with, states that Death Coil's coefficient is 21.4%. That means that either you don't have enough +damage to see any scaling (and since you talked about the level 68 DC, that means your gear SUCKS i.e. power-level tailoring and get the Frozen Shadoweave set dickweed, it's the best thing you'll see until around T5-T6 levels), or you are seeing scaling, it's just small enough so that it usually falls within the damage range of Death Coil.

*-There are some exceptions to this formula, such as the 2.3 shaman's Lightning Bolt, which has a base cast time of 2.5 seconds (meaning it should get a roughly 75% coefficient), but due to balance concerns was given an 80% coefficient.

You're both wrong. You're coefficient info is correct, and so is his. In other words, the coefficient is based on cast time AND level. The level adjustment was put into place as a nerf to downranking when 2.0 came out a year ago.

Read his post again. He claimed that since the last rank of DC was at 68, that it should get the full benefit from +damage. That's just plain wrong in every way possible. For the purpose of level 70 spells (or ones near 70, like DC at max rank), he's completely wrong. Yeah, there is a penalty for using a lower rank past a certain level, but that's to nerf downranking, like you said.

Yeah, I saw where he was wrong, but I misunderstood your post to say that there was no level based penalty.

I can see the misunderstanding, but I merely said that the coefficient was based on the casting time instead of the level learned (which is right), not that there was no penalty. :eagletear:

Downranking nerf was another thing that made me stop having fun in this game. Downranking actually made getting the best +damage gear fun as a warlock.

Ahh, I see now what you two mean. That does make much more sense than I had figured it to.

Looks like I need to figure out how else Death Coil wasn't benefiting from my Bonus Spell Damage.

Although, after my previous post, I asked a Warlock buddy to Death Coil a few mobs. He claims to have pumped out numbers indicating that he did infact cause damage/healing with a little extra. Now this doesn't make any sense to me anymore as to how or why my casts don't work like this.

So, I gave it a whirl and did two casts on a Ironspine Petrifier outside Shattrah. Now I see the bonus damage effect being applied. I wish I had a screenshot of when I noticed mobs taking only the normal indicated damage.

I'm not sure anymore as to what happened from then to now regarding me and Death Coil. But I do apologize for making a ruckus about this. I wish I had more free time to study the problem, but it's final's week. Case closed.

Has anyone tried one of those pre-made characters on the PTRs yet? I asked for a Lv70 Rogue all tricked out. Comes with all epics and a Netherdrake for a flying mount. Quite cool, now to do some 'testing'.

I'm on the PVP Test Realm as QuasiNova.

My server is Medivh (US)

44 NE Druid, Frostybunny
52 Human Paladin, Dirkh
70 Human Warlock, Duckletta

I have what feels like half a million others, but I almost always play one of those three. My favorites are my druid and warlock because both can be quite the powerful force in instance runs but can hold their own while cranking out enough dps to make solo grinding very easy.

I just recently re-activated my account when one of my friend send me a scroll of resurrection. I'm currently playing a Mage Blood elf on the server Blackwing Lair. I'm just lv 23 but I'm pretty happy with the new exp gain^^

on another note, anyone have seen the new movie Tales of the Past 3? it's a full length movie (90min) and it's completely amazing! It is so well made that I would even recommend it to people that don't play the game.

here's a link to the download : Tales of the Past III - FileFront.com

It seems like every other week I'm tired of WoW, and then I end up going back for the hell of it a few days later.

Right now, I'm just sick of PvPing since that's the only way to get gear. And there's no reason to do anything in PvE unless you're just bored, it seems. Everything I see, even in heroics, is hardly an upgrade.

Not to mention, I keep feeling that the incentive to get this gear is kind of stupid. Because it's just going to be replaced by greens in a few months or so when they bring out the next expansion. I'm not one that likes my hard work to be for nothing. But that's just me, I guess.

I know what you mean Zinc, I've been having periods where I've been fed up with WoW and then coming back as well a few days to a week later for a long time now. It finally came to an end last month when I decided to cancel the 3 month recurring subscription plan and move on. The game just wasn't fun anymore, and I felt I had seen and experienced all that I had wanted to for the time being. For other MMOs I've pretty much gotten hooked on LOTRO and EQ2. Both have far superior communities, and they make WoW look like a paid version of battle.net.

I've got around +800 spell damage on my warlock with all my buffs up (fel armor & superior wizard oil) and my death coil usually heals me for around 850-ish.

It's gotta take into account damage somehow, because by default I think it's 450-something. But at a diminished rate compared to other spells.

I quit WoW becuase having a druid, rogue and warlock at 70 and in full PVP gear, it really gets boring. PVE is just plain ole boring, it reminds me of Molten Bore.

My druid is resto PVP spec and healing is fun and all but gets boring. I got sick of feral cause no one really needs feral for PVP it seems.

My rogue is sub/assassination rogue. With shadowstep. Dagger spec, I used to love swords but I got gimped for PVP so I moved to that and really I can 1-3 shot people easily.

My lock, well you do the math. Lock pwns most of the time even in my gear I still find it hard to kill hunters and deathwish/zerk warriors. Other then that I still really like my 20/0/41(I think that is right amount of points) spec is really great especially agianst mages/shadow priests. Plus it's always nice to have a backlash/nightfall proc and be able to insta cast two shadow bolts over and over.

Anyway I am done with WoW and am into Eve online.

Eh, quit or not... everyone returns to have a peek around after new patches are implemented. So... 2.4 patch has been around for roughly 3-4 days... any thoughts?

All I'm gonna say is that this is the new Whirlwind in 2.4:

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3...hyrocksez5.jpg

Ahhh good ol' Captain Murphy!

2.4 is alright. I tried Magister's Terrace out.. and it's definitely a challenge. now before people start jumping in and saying it's a joke, I'm sure it's a joke to those well geared out the ass. I enjoy it though, the loot could probably be better, but you can't expect any different from the people who refuse to make good 5 man loot anymore.

I wish there were more instances like that. I'd rather have a string of challenging 5 mans than a boring 25 man anyday of the week.

Thanks to my friend Chris getting hooked on WoW, he shot me a Scroll of Resurrection and I've got me a 10-day trial. We (including his girlfriend) are all on Smolderthorn, both of us as Orcs (him a Warrior, me a Hunter) and his girlfriend a Blood Elf Hunter. The interesting part of this experience will be the fact that it's a PvP server.