Round about the truth....

I think we are all forgetting, this is probably to mold us towards WotLK, now unfortunately, a 30/0/41 build in WotLK is probably going to be way over powered as a shaman....

So I belive they are trying to restructure the elemental tree, to try and balance this out....

This has been noted by a poster on the European Forums...

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Eyonix basically confirmed the nerf, but only implicitly.

It's smart since my rants at least didn't pay attention to threat-caps or mana-efficiency (nor did anyone else's).
But other folks, with a lot of raiding experience as elemental, have basically waved the limits on both threat and mana - you can see their posts not only on the EU forums, but also on the US forums as well on the reputed EJ forums.

Reference: Link 1
"Some of the math looks good, some is far off. It really depends on the post. If my lightning bolt currently does 1076 damage for 1076 threat giving me 3.26 damage per mana, my new lightning bolt should do 1017 damage for 915.3 threat giving me 3.39 damage per mana.

If I'm threat limited, I can now do 11% more damage before generating too much threat.
If I'm mana limited, I can now do 4% more damage before running out of mana...." -Eyonix

This is a concrete example since he illustrates bolt values which include Lightning Overloads factored in (since the threat on the new bolt is lower then the damage dealt by the bolt).

Now we just take these figures and divide them; out rolls the nerf percentile.
This would be 1017 for the new bolt divide by the 1076 of the old bolt equaling a 0.9452 ratio.

Or rather a 5.48% nerf on Lightning Bolt spam according to his example whenever you are not threat and mana limited.

Most high end raiders dismiss threat and mana limitations because of their guild's properly understands raid layouts.
I'm not sure about PvP since I hardly play Arena - but I have this hunch, suspicion, that Elemental Shaman Gladiators don't just spam bolts and chain lightning in Arenas but rather reserve that for called short bursts (which now have been nerfed by around a little more then 5%).


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Let's dissect the US Community Manager Eyonix' post even more.
This to...
...find the base damage of the new Lightning Bolt.
...get the implicit damage nerf of Lightning Bolt without Lightning Overloads factored in.
...see how much the new Lightning Overload will buff the damage of our Lightning spells.

Skip to the TLDR caption if you cannot be bothered with wordy math.


Wordy mathematics and reasoning

Reference: Link 2
"Internal testing thus far has proved that the coefficient loss from your lightning bolt with five points in the new lightning overload results in an overall dps increase. And yeah, a larger portion of your dps being threatless should help...." -Eyonix, 26th September

The above quote is older and is misinformation. Eyonix has rectified that by generously providing the quote below -thank you again- even though he avoids mentioning the damage nerf explicitly and instead misdirected attention to the dps boosts you would get if you are constrained by mana or threat in your current game.

Reference: Link 1
"Some of the math looks good, some is far off. It really depends on the post. If my lightning bolt currently does 1076 damage for 1076 threat giving me 3.26 damage per mana, my new lightning bolt should do 1017 damage for 915.3 threat giving me 3.39 damage per mana.

If I'm threat limited, I can now do 11% more damage before generating too much threat.
If I'm mana limited, I can now do 4% more damage before running out of mana...." -Eyonix, 28th September

We can deduce the following from the quote directly above:
- Elemental Precision is not factored into these quoted values, since the current lightning bolt inflicts as much threat as the damage dealt by it.
- Lightning Overload is factored into the "new lightning bolt" damage in his quote; since it does 1017 damage for 915.3 threat and the new Lightning Overload is the only damage that is threatless.
- It's only logical to assume the current Lightning Overload is factored into the "current lightning bolt" figures, otherwise the comparison would be flawed.
- All the figures mentioned in the above quote are "over time" figures since that is the only way you can factor in Lightning Overload because it is chance based.

So knowing all that, we can begin to reverse engineer a few things.

Herodias mentions in post #79 that Lightning Overload needs to be modeled according to geometric distribution/sequences.
It boils down to the current 5% chance at Lightning Overload being, in fact, a 1/(1-0.05) = 1/1.95 = 5.26% increase in damage.
So the "current lightning bolt" that does 1076 damage actually hits for 1076/1.0526 = 1022.2 damage.
And the "new lightning bolt" that does 1017 damage has the new lightning overload modeled into it that is threatless; so the real bolt actually hits for the amount of threat which is 915.3 damage.

The average damage for which a Lightning Bolt hits in the current game with zero spelldamage is (563+643)/2 = 603 damage.
So, knowing the current coefficient is 3/3.5 = 85.7% and that the benefit of spelldamage on Eyonix' current lightningbolt is 1022.2-603 = 419...
We divide 419 by 0.857 and get a whopping 489 spelldamage used in the example.

The coefficient for the new lightning bolt is 2.5/3.5 = 71.4% so with the spelldamage calculated in the previous paragraph this is a benefit of 489 * 0.714 = 349...
Now, subtract this amount from the true damage of Eyonix' new bolt and we get the average value for which the new bolt hits with zero spelldamage; 915.3 - 349 = 566 damage.

Also the mana cost of the new lightning bolt, as calculated in another thread, is the 1017 damage Eyonix mentioned divided by it's 3.39 damage per mana = 1017/3.39 = 300 mana.

We can see that for the new bolt hitting at 1017 for 915 threat you have a bolt that hits for 915 and gets 1017-915 = 102 in lightning overload damage.
This implies that Lightning Overload, the new version, gives a 101.7/915.3 = 11.11% (repeating) damage boost to lightning spells.
This is lower then every calculated "new Lightning Overload" damage boost in this thread so far!
Does this imply a hard cap on the number of times that Lightning Overload can proc itself?
Or does it imply that an overload proccing from an overload is actually half of the previous overload; like a 50-25-12½-6¼- sequence?

I'm thinking, based on Eyonix' example plus the reasoning above, that the new Lightning Bolt base will be around 528-604 damage for 300 mana at a 2½ second cast time.


TLDR; conclusions and thread recap

Anyway, the above is not that interesting unless you want the mathematical reasoning behind the following conclusions.

What is interesting is that, if you ignore Lightning Overload that is factored into Eyonix' example, you're looking at the new Lightning Bolt itself being at 915.3 damage compared to the current one at 1022.2.
That means the new lightning bolt will be at 89.5% of the damage of the current one with the supposed 489 spelldamage from Eyonix' example.
This is a 10.5% reduction in power which some posters deduced earlier in this thread; and the reduction percentage is similar for Chain Lightning, obviously.

Actually, when taking the base values of each bolt and 800 spelldamage in account, which seems to be roughly the top end Season 2 Gladiators level, you're looking at the new bolt being at 88.3% of the current one; a rough 12% drop in damage.
As mentioned in earlier posts in this very thread; the Lightning Overload changes, implicitly presented by Eyonix as a 11.1% boost, do not compensate for this loss.
In fact; it is impossible to change (I mean; buff) Lightning Overload so that it will compensate for the damage loss - since the damage loss becomes a bigger percentage the more spellpower one has.

Let me preempt some folks trying to mention that -10.5 + 11.1 ends up in the positive.
Right now we have 100 increased by 5.26% = 105.
With the new patch it will go down to, and here come those percentages you wanted to add up, 100-10.5 being 89.5 which is increased by the new overload by 11.1% = 99.
Now you subtract from what we will get, 99, what we have now, 105, and you'll see that this equals -6; we lost in damage output.

The changes...
...devalue the Lightning Mastery talent to the point that the talent no longer belongs in such a deep spot in the Elemental talent tree.
...sell a "damage increase" only for rare situations in which you use Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning exclusively and where the Shaman does not have time to drink up or does not have teammembers buffing the Shaman with additional mana regeneration and threat reduction.
...create a dependance (and not an option) on very deep talent investment in the Elemental tree.
...set the stage for a coefficient increasing talent at a "40+ or 45+ points required" WotLK expansion related talent tree update.


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I think he was on the right track till we got to the end, because the new lighting bolt spell, hasn't had its damage reduced, its had its mana reduced but not its overall damage....so the places a error could have occured is.

1. The 11.1% increase from Lighting Overload indicated is wrong....if the base dmg of Lighting Bolt isn't nerfed then the 11.1% he is talking about is more like 8%....

Or...

2. Lighting Overload doesn't proc near enough to the 20% it is indicated to in the talents....

So basically we get a nerf now, of roughly 5% still, to get an increase in WotLK, but we need to rely on Overload for it to work....meaning we can't excpect to do good damage as a Resto / Elemental hybrid....

Great news for WotLK, bad news till the nerf is fixed, but at least we are being looked into, imrpoved hopefully and listened to....

This is really hard to try and predict, would b easier if they just added the 10% coeffecent talent into the overload tree, so we had to put points into it and just even'd everything out...

I have to say tho that Eyonix is really trying, and this he did mention the mathmatics for this could change before PTR....and also the as I posted previosly, if there is any reduction it will be revamped in 2.4, and to exspect more changes in 2.4...