#1 - Jan. 15, 2016, 4:48 p.m.
1. Lava Burst seems to be our filler. I think this is fine as the class fantasy is pointing more towards a master of lightning than anything. I see Lava Burst having a few purposes - to keep the Elemental Focus buff rolling, to hit during a Lava Surge proc, and to hit when there's nothing else to hit. Once Elemental Empowerment comes into play, there will be some sort of gameplay where you're swapping between LB and LvB and you'll need to cast it more. Not sure how fun that'll be and if there will be wasted Artifact weapon procs.
2. Not sure why Purge costs Maelstrom. We probably won't be doing much purging in PVE but it's still a question. Rather than sacrificing a GCD, now its a GCD and 20 Maelstrom.
3. AOE without the extra 3 target talent in the Artifact tree is very weird at the moment. Maelstrom generation with pure Chain Lightning is very slow and it takes ages to drop EQ totem. Another variation is Flame Shocking all the adds and then weaving in Lava Surge procs with Chain Lightning. This makes it better, but again, it takes a while to actually be able to drop a EQ totem. On live, EQ goes down almost instantly and it makes it seem like you're doing meaningful AOE rather than having to tab target and take forever to ramp up. Elemental AOE is not the burstiest AOE as it is, and it adds a lot more time to get where you're doing meaningful AOE damage.
4. On top of this, there are a multitude of talents that require Flame Shock on the target for extra AOE damage. This most likely plays into the fact that early on, like I said above, you're flame shocking a lot of adds in an AOE pack to generate Maelstrom fast enough to lay down EQ totem. I don't speak for everyone but I heavily dislike the dependency of Flame Shock to be on the target in a single target environment in order to do max single target damage. I'm not sure why there is also a Flame Shock requirement on multiple adds to do max AOE damage. The amount of set up and time it will take to reach full AOE potential is really staggering because not only do we have to flame shock every add, EQ needs to tick for the full duration to do max damage. Not sure how raid encounters will be but in previous experience, AOE packs die in under 10 seconds in any given encounter.
5. Maelstrom totem overwrites the lightning totem from Totemic Fury. Not sure if intended.
6. You removed Searing Totem, but gave it right back to us as Maelstrom Totem. It's a talent which is cool, but most likely in the first tier this will probably be the most taken talent purely from a Maelstrom generation standpoint. Not sure though, we'll need to wait on the numbers. In any case, Maelstrom Totem is just Searing Totem with another name.
7. Totemic Fury is a very nice cooldown, it's nice to be able to have a good cooldown that scales as your character grows in power.
8. Ascendance is not a very good cooldown in its current state. For single target, turning Earth Shock into a Shock that also applies Flame Shock is not very appealing. Especially since most likely we'll already have Flame Shock on the target as we need to use Lava Burst to generate enough Maelstrom to use the Shock at its hardest hitting potential. I don't feel very powerful when I'm using it because basically I'm just saving a GCD and refreshing my Flame Shock when I hit Earth Shock. 30 seconds seems short for not much of a power increase, numbers need to play into this but most likely this will be an AOE talent.
9. There are a lot of buffs for Lightning Bolt and active abilities to watch for that buff Lightning Bolt. I like this a lot as it adds meaningful choices and also takes planning to execute properly. Stormkeeper + artifact buff + Lightning Rod + Totemic Fury makes for some very nice burst during a burn phase as well as make for some nice target swap damage as well. These were some of our worst weaknesses in WoD and I'm glad that it's getting fixed all the while taking planning and skill to make the most of it.
10. Gust of Wind is a good idea in theory but it being in the same tier as a raid movement speed boost will most likely make it worthless. I don't really see where you'd take Gust of Wind over the raid talent if you are in a raiding guild. Taking out Spiritwalker's Grace was fine if we were able to take this talent most of the time but being in a raiding guild, the raid comes first and I will most likely always have to take Wind Rush Totem.
