---

Q u o t e:
Because it makes fast weapons worse than they currently are.

---

Well, they are **%@ for WF now anyways. So - this really has no impact. You aren't using WF on fast as it is - so that is irrelevant to me. I don't care that changing it to a PPM hurts fast weapons with WF.

---

Q u o t e:
Because it does nothing else aside from make fast weapons worse.

---

That isn't true. PPMs scale better with haste. Haste is a very undervalued stat for WF/FT. Taking the ICD away and moving it to a PPM would allow haste to scale.

If we aren't taking WF off the ICD and moving it to a PPM - then what SHOULD we do? Since only nerfing FT isn't helping our situation at all. We can do exactly that right now and it is inferior.

What is your suggestion for making WF viable again then?

---

Q u o t e:


Well, they are **%@ for WF now anyways. So - this really has no impact. You aren't using WF on fast as it is - so that is irrelevant to me. I don't care that changing it to a PPM hurts fast weapons with WF.

---

It completely is relevant, yes, fast weapons are worse for windfury currently, the change you propose would end us up in a situation where a weapon a tier or tier and a half worse is a better item because it's .2 slower.

---

Q u o t e:

That isn't true. PPMs scale better with haste. Haste is a very undervalued stat for WF/FT. Taking the ICD away and moving it to a PPM would allow haste to scale.

---

It's only bad because of the ICD, the flat proc rate has nothing to do with this, there are TWO types of ppm mechanics

1) Base speed mechanics: The one you're proposing, a 2.6 speed weapon with 4 PPM would have a 17% chance to proc windfury, meaning it would scale worse than the current 20% flat rate with haste. naturally a higher PPM would make it scale better, but PPM vs flat proc is irrelevant to haste scaling in this instance.

2) Final speed mechanics: there's a couple of these, these don't scale with haste at all.

If we aren't taking WF off the ICD and moving it to a PPM - then what SHOULD we do? Since only nerfing FT isn't helping our situation at all. We can do exactly that right now and it is inferior.

What is your suggestion for making WF viable again then?[/quote]

Just take it off the ICD, making it a PPM is pointless and just super inflates the importance of weapon speed.

---

Q u o t e:
That is stupid and you know it. Thats 4ppm which is notably *worse* that what we have on live right now, even with the cooldown in place. It is the cooldown which interferes with windfury and is what gives us shaman such a high RNG between our dps values. 4ppm is what we get now on a really bad day.

Making weapon imbues unique and removing the cooldown is probably the easiest and most effective fix possible. Keeping windfury as an "on hit" proc without a cooldown allows for any speed weapon to be used as it is normalized naturally.

---

4ppm is before haste and since the PPM mechanic proposed scales with haste it would give you exactly the same number of procs as you currently get without the glyph.

Lets take a moment and demonstrate how a PPM mechanic that scales with haste works and then compare it to our current mechanic and also show why there is no way they will simply remove the cooldown and keep the current 20% unless they have decided to give us more dps.

They are going to most likely solve the issue with Flametongue by making the current cooldown (yes, Flametongue has a cooldown) work between all ranks which would mean FT/FT would lose anywhere from 20 to 50% of it's procs and this would invalidate FT/FT. I still hope they will take the opportunity to deal with Flametongue coefficient scaling but that is incidental.

As for Windfury Weapon our current proc rate is much lower then 20% due to cooldown interaction. Without the glyph and under raid level haste it hovers at around 15% without the glyph. So just simply removing the cooldown will greatly increase the amount of dps we would be seeing from Windfury Weapon. So what happens if they make it a PPM and set it to 4.

4ppm means you should, with base weapon speed, see a proc every 15 seconds when just autoattacking. 60 seconds in a minute / 4 = 15. So to determine base proc chance you would take base weapon speed and divide it by 15. Which for a 2.6 speed weapon equals 17.33%. So now for every weapon hit there would be a 17.33% chance that you would have a proc. What happens when you add in haste and instant attacks. With 75% Flurry uptime (no T7 bonus) and Windfury Totem alone a 2.6 speed weapon drops down to 1.77 which is 33 hits per minute. Add another 8 for Stormstrike and thats 41 hits per minute that can proc Windfury and at a 17.33% chance per hit that's 7.1 procs per minute.

When I run the Sim with the same things I end up with Windfury averaging 6 procs per minute, so actually 4ppm would be a slight upgrade over what we current have with the cooldown in place. Which would actually work out well if their priority would be to allow Windfury to be our mainhand imbue of choice throughout the expansion.

What about if they just removed the cooldown completely and left it at 20% then that 2.6 speed weapon would go from 6ppm with the cooldown to 8ppm which seems like more of a boost to Windfury Weapon then the developers would seem to want.

The current 2% glyph takes the ppm rate of windfury weapon to 6.4 and the 5% glyph we saw in 3.0.8 took it to 7.16ppm. So it would seem the best option would be to change Windfury to a PPM mechanic and then change the glyph back to it's original form where it was a static bonus AP increase and see how that works out. Since then the glyph boost should be in line with what they were originally intending and the proc rate for Windfury would be in line with what they were looking for with the changes in 3.0.8.

Except that Windfury Weapon would then be scaling properly with haste and would continue to scale with our gear into Ulduar and beyond. Also our mechanics would suddenly be much easier to model and our itemization nowhere near as confusing. Windfury would also then keep it's proper place as the optimal choice for mainhand imbue without being overpowered and without any of the weird/exploitative scaling issues that Flametongue demonstrates.

---

Q u o t e:

It completely is relevant, yes, fast weapons are worse for windfury currently, the change you propose would end us up in a situation where a weapon a tier or tier and a half worse is a better item because it's .2 slower.

It's only bad because of the ICD, the flat proc rate has nothing to do with this, there are TWO types of ppm mechanics

1) Base speed mechanics: The one you're proposing, a 2.6 speed weapon with 4 PPM would have a 17% chance to proc windfury, meaning it would scale worse than the current 20% flat rate with haste. naturally a higher PPM would make it scale better, but PPM vs flat proc is irrelevant to haste scaling in this instance.

2) Final speed mechanics: there's a couple of these, these don't scale with haste at all.

Just take it off the ICD, making it a PPM is pointless and just super inflates the importance of weapon speed.

---

So instead you are proposing something that has over 8PPMs? That is without the glyph I think. That is just too much.

If it only comes off the ICD then the 20% has to come down. 20% is WAY too much with haste and T7X4 and insta attacks and haste pots. Check Rouncer's number for specifics (I think his number is too low too - since you can get more with haste pots and the glyph also).

---

Q u o t e:
If it only comes off the ICD then the 20% has to come down. 20% is WAY too much with haste and T7X4 and insta attacks and haste pots. Check Rouncer's number for specifics (I think his number is too low too - since you can get more with haste pots and the glyph also).

---

No it isn't. Flat proc chances scale with haste at the exact same rate as PPMs do. 200% haste will give you 200% more procs from PPM auto-attacks or flat-proc-rate auto-attacks. 20% is in no way too high; it is, in fact, the goal of the sytem.

The cooldown exists to mitigate a severe bug with WF/WF, everything else is fallout. Flat proc chances scaling better than PPM's is a myth. It's made up, false, incorrect.

Rouncer.

Right now in game, I average a windfury roughly every stormstrike cycle, which works out to around 7.5-ppm with "haste" buffs. Maybe 6.5ppm or slightly less if I have a bad night on my rotations. Yes it varies fight to fight, but I often tend towards this number. On a bad RNG run aka hidden cooldown night (or highly mobile fights) this drops down to around 5-6ppm. Maybe I'm just lucky, however quite a few wws parses I've seen appear to support this, and this has tended to be the case from me since 3.0. Emphasis: In game.

A 4ppm mechanic like you describe is only slightly better than a bad RNG run that I experience right now in raids. However it has the major drawback of affecting future gearing choices through weapon drops. Windfury (via its tooltip) is 100% impartial to weapon speed, and that is something that I would like to see continue. Its the hidden cooldown (to which we both agree) is what screws with the tooltip, and thus the effective proc rate. Your 4ppm "solution" negates this whole aspect of the ability.

Let me stress this point.

Weapon choices should be about weapon dps and stats, not based on a cooldown that is hidden in the closet. Windfury also needs to be 100% accurate on its tooltip. We are already limited quite a bit via weapon drops due to not being able to wield swords without needing weapon speed added further into the mix.

If the cooldown removal (assuming unique imbues to prevent dual wf) was deemed too high by the devs as you claim it would be (I beg to differ), then all they need to do is make it proc only off white attacks and perhaps normalize stormstrike.... problem solved. Wow, that was hard. /sarcasm

Personally I feel that the windfury glyph is boring and should be something else. The glyph (2% or the previous 5%) is negligible with the cooldown in place. You could probably compare it to the equally boring Seal of Command glyph (the +20% proc chance version), so what did they do.... change it so that when it does proc you see bigger numbers (which is typically more fun to see).

From what I've seen, there is also enough indication that the cooldown was originally put into place to curb shaman damage because of the hybrid damage tax. Now that the damage tax is effectively removed (aka, 5% is negligible), the cooldown should be removed and the damage balanced out via our damage spell usage (namely out of lightning bolt, and compensate it via deep elemental). I do like the MSW weapon playstyle, however it is likely a bit excessive on the spell casting side. The cooldown removal would merely make the proc rate more constant between fights, which will thus allow the devs to be able to fine tune our dps far more easily is whatever direction they desire.

Yes a possibly solution would be turning wf into a PPM mechanic, however I strongly believe that it is the wrong solution.

If my memory serves me correctly, WF first started with a bug where it would proc off of itself, and then later on they fixed that bug. Later on, a new patch came out where it allowed us to dual wield WF, this made WF/WF creating several back to back procs causing massive burst, instead of just lowering the proc rate when both were up they added a 3 sec CD to WF. The problem was that this CD didn’t apply to the other ranks of WF, which ignored the reason why the CD was put there in the first place, so it was then made to all ranks of WF. When they generalized all ranks of WF with this internal 3 sec CD it resulted in a big dps nerf but kept you from having back to back WF procs, so to keep the burst down but keep the dps normal they increased the proc rate when dual wielding WF.

With this increased proc rate when dual wielding it caused another bug that when both weapons hit the target at the same time when the CD was up, using Stormstrike for instance, would allow both of them to proc at the same time. Add-ons like Shaman Friend would display how many procs activated, like single / double / triple / quadruple / quintuple / sextuple, it would display if there was a WF miss and count the white hit that activated the WFs and when the other weapon proced WF at the same time counting up to 6 WF hits. I’m not sure if they have fixed that bugg yet in Wotlk, with both WFs procing at the same time, but the whole reason the CD and increased proc rate for dual wielding WF was to prevent back to back burst but keep the dps the same.

---

Q u o t e:

Yes a possibly solution would be turning wf into a PPM mechanic, however I strongly believe that it is the wrong solution.

---

I can see your point, see if you can see mine.

One of the aspects of the class that I enjoy is the fact that there is an advantage to using slow weapons. One of the reasons I first proposed the PPM mechanic (this was back during the Beta) was because removing the cooldown offers no advantage to using slower weapons.

You seem to feel that it shouldn't matter, that the ilevel alone of the weapon should determine how good it is and I strongly disagree with that. It's not only about big numbers, it's also about the concept that weapon speed does matter, that some drops will be better then others just due to that weapon speed and if they simply pull the cooldown that will no longer be the case.

Sure a weapon might be slightly better itemized then another but the difference between something like a 2.6 and a 2.5 will be gone and I would mourn it's passing.

The cooldown does need to go and that is more important then my personal feelings. It will just be a shame if all someone looked at was simply the dps number of a weapon to determine if it was an upgrade with no real thought about how it would interact with windfury.

I know they could let it proc for the 20% and they could easily lower dps from other aspects to compensate. Just getting the coefficient of Flametongue to scale with weapon speed will end up being a loss of some dps and they could easily take some from the Stormstrike debuff and from it's glyph without devaluing them too much. They could even take Elemental Weapons Windfury aspect down a notch if necessary to compensate for the increased proc incidence. There are a lot of things they can do all that remains to see now is what they want to do, it is their game after all.

I do know that if slow weapons lose their value to us it is something that I will miss but I guess that really isn't that important anyway.

---

Q u o t e:
You seem to feel that it shouldn't matter, that the ilevel alone of the weapon should determine how good it is and I strongly disagree with that. It's not only about big numbers, it's also about the concept that weapon speed does matter, that some drops will be better then others just due to that weapon speed and if they simply pull the cooldown that will no longer be the case.

---

Storm Strike favors slow weapons. I just don't think 2.6 speed 100 DPS greens should be better than 140 DPS 1.5 speed epics.

---

Q u o t e:


Storm Strike favors slow weapons. I just don't think 2.6 speed 100 DPS greens should be better than 140 DPS 1.5 speed epics.

---

I'm conceding a lot of points today (Ghostcrawler posted again in the other thread and one aspect was directed at me and he was right) which makes it a bit easier to concede this one.

Just ran it in the SIm and you are right, Stormstrike definitely still matters enough to make a difference. The dps difference between a 2.6 and a 1.5 with both being 171dps is 80dps which is easily worth at least one full ilevel's worth of itemization.

I still prefer the notion of Slow/Slow and I would prefer for Windfuries mechanics to support that notion but I can see your point and I'm happy to concede it.

Can we at least agree that Flametongue's spellpower coefficient should scale in some way with weapon speed?

(e) and that's another lock,

Thank you to everyone who contributed so much time and energy to this discussion.

---

Q u o t e:
Here is a mini Enhancement enchant update. I know you guys have been itching for this for awhile. It just took the designers some time to sit down and discuss the issue, and then I had to catch up with the discussion after being out.

1) The extra AP for the Windfury Weapon Glyph is not intentional and I believe has been hotfixed.

2) Our goal is WF / FT on main hand / offhand.

3) Our goal is Enhancement generally favors slow weapons for main hand / offhand.

4) To satisfy 2 & 3, we are normalizing flametongue's damage to weapon speed. If you use a fast weapon now for FT, your damage will come down. If you use a slow weapon, your damage will come up. Please keep that in mind as you continue to gear up preparing for patch 3.1.

5) Our intention with these changes is not to nerf Enhancement damage overall. However, we are concerned that Enhancement PvE damage is quite high (compared to where other classes are in the 3.1 space) so it's possible that we will end up lowering your damage slightly. But the changes outlined above are not intended to do that.

6) Overall, we are really happy with the basic attack rotation of Enhancement. Shamans are pushing the buttons we want them to push and generally doing what we expect. PvP utility is still something we are looking at however.

---

thanks. Also is there any chance about making WF scale better with haste? Without seeing just how FT has been normalized its hard to say, but there is still the possibility that with enough haste FT on a slow weapon will still be better than WF.

EDIT: Woot my first first!

Sorry to hijack but.. do any shamans here in an ilvl213/226 guild really think enhancement dps ISNT high?

I'd be amazed.

---

Q u o t e:
Here is a mini Enhancement enchant update. I know you guys have been itching for this for awhile. It just took the designers some time to sit down and discuss the issue, and then I had to catch up with the discussion after being out.

1) The extra AP for the Windfury Weapon Glyph is not intentional and I believe has been hotfixed.

2) Our goal is WF / FT on main hand / offhand.

3) Our goal is Enhancement generally favors slow weapons for main hand / offhand.

4) To satisfy 2 & 3, we are normalizing flametongue's damage to weapon speed. If you use a fast weapon now for FT, your damage will come down. If you use a slow weapon, your damage will come up. Please keep that in mind as you continue to gear up preparing for patch 3.1.

5) Our intention with these changes is not to nerf Enhancement damage overall. However, we are concerned that Enhancement PvE damage is quite high (compared to where other classes are in the 3.1 space) so it's possible that we will end up lowering your damage slightly. But the changes outlined above are not intended to do that.

6) Overall, we are really happy with the basic attack rotation of Enhancement. Shamans are pushing the buttons we want them to push and generally doing what we expect. PvP utility is still something we are looking at however.

---

Thank you.

---

Q u o t e:
Sorry to hijack but.. do any shamans here in an ilvl213/226 guild really think enhancement dps ISNT high?

I'd be amazed.

---

Personally this change wan't just about dps but losing a main part of the spec just because it was poorly scaling.

I know we have high dps for a hybrid, which is both nice and a concern as we seem to have to watch our backs a bit when they talk of readjusting classes.

Also I'd much rather lose a bit of dps potential knowing that I don't have to completely regem and gear once I pass a certain amount of content.

More detail than we deserve. Thank you.

---

Q u o t e:
so basically FT is getting nerfed just to force shaman into using slow/slow

---

By reversing the scaling so that slow weapons do more FT damage and simultaneously returning you to a higher level of Storm Strike and Lava Lash damage, this isn't a nerf at all.