The state of the Elemental rend and Balance between builds

[ArmBoy]

I hope this post reaches management, because this is completely against your season 9 ideology.

I've been playing Ascension for a few years now and I really liked the idea of making RNG Builds in Season 9. I was hyped with the announcement to see the no Legendary limitations and just a pure Luck and time spend to create a COMPLETELY new build that no one has ever reproduced.

I recently decided to try out one of my favorite builds on season 8 - elemental rend

After making an approximate 450 scroll roll, I got a build where I have 2 piece of elemental rend buff and blades of blood talent, which at first glance was ideal for that build. Tool clearly states that there are no blocks and no other talents preventing these two from working together. Once you will get a buff or ability that allows you to use rend on multiple targets, it should also apply a Elemental rend debuffs on them. These is puuure LOGIC and the idea of these build on this season, because you don’t get an ELEMENTAL REND as an ability, the only way to proc it is to apply ORDINARY rend.

(For those who don't know what these talents are, the blades of blood talent allows you to use whirlwind after colossus smash and place the REND ability on a nearby enemy.
And the Elemental shredder talent, which in my opinion is one of the most beautiful and interesting talents in the game, allows your REND ability to also install a magic rend debuff - elemental damage over time effect on the target, so if you have 2 or 3 elemental rend legendaries, then 1 single application of rend on a target is applying 4 debuffs - 1 physical, 1 fire, 1 frost and 1 nature on a target.)

But the Ascension team has a different opinion.

There is a limitation in the game, using a rend modifying talents or abilities that cast an AOE rend or spread the REND on AOE targets, randomly places only one rend on each target and most of the time its just an ordinary WARRIOR rend, not the Elemental rends. And it turns out that this problem has existed for a long time.
There are over 9 posts from ascension bugtracker that I manage to find regarding this specific problem from Aug 30, 2023 till Feb 24, 2024. And they all got the same and disappointing answere from the STAFF member “Working as Intended“ “only 1 rend must be applied…” “hell scream doesn’t apply elemental rend”
(Here are the number of the bugtracker posts)
https://ascension.gg/bugtracker/view/56151
https://ascension.gg/bugtracker/view/55785
https://ascension.gg/bugtracker/view/52918
https://ascension.gg/bugtracker/view/53653
https://ascension.gg/bugtracker/view/53653
https://ascension.gg/bugtracker/view/53541
https://ascension.gg/bugtracker/view/24050
https://ascension.gg/bugtracker/view/30353
https://ascension.gg/bugtracker/view/19522

Do you think it is right to limit the possibilities? Don't you say yourself that "There are no limitations of your builds" “unleash you true powers”
This is not a game-changing build, neither it was it in season 8. The damage outcome will still be low but it will allow this this talent to be used on other specs and make people have fun playing it.
You are breaking an already complex and difficult build and making it unusable.

Let's sit back and think about this for a moment by calculating the Rotation process that ascension suggests for this build.

To play Elemental rend you need
Fireball - level 1 ability
Frostbolt - level 1 ability
Lightning bolt - level 1 ability
Rend - level 1 ability
Considering that you need to use rand in melee range, we also need maelstrom weapon so that we don't have to cast and activate 3 talents by spending loong casting timers in MELEE range.
Besides that
Elemental rend (fire) legendary talent (No location found to obtain and low chances not to get by opening cards but also to roll on a builds)
Elemental rend (frost) legendary talent (No location found to obtain and low chances not to get by opening cards but also to roll on a builds)
Elemental rend (Nature) legendary talent (No location found to obtain and low chances not to get by opening cards but also to roll on a builds)
Also, the Mental quickness talent that you will get for the hybrid build to improve the Elemental rend damage which is scaling by 15% of your spell power except for the ordinary rend ( this is at least what is shown on ascension website ( spell id on ascension db: spell=978694)

So you occupy all 5-6 of your 6 talent slots to get all of the cards guaranteed and some damage improvement. NO ANY other build mixing.
Using the 4 initial ability slots to guarantee that you will get this lvl 1 abilities, huh , couse you never know if you will get that FIREBALL after 450 scroll rerolls couse it’s a RNG ( which I highly doubt, there is some sort of algorithm that is not allowing you to get the spells that are closer to your spec and will improve it – think about how many times you have met Fel infused weapon in a mele AOE spec with a random scroll reroll ? I got only 2 in 3 months of playing)

and also 1-2 ability slots for leveling to guarantee the process.

There is a global cooldown in the game - approximately 1 second (the number is generalized)
Let's calculate how long the build rotation will take
LET'S GIVE as an example an ideal scenario where you stack 5 maelstrom weapons from every SINGLE hit (which is of course impossible, but let's imagine that)
We take into account that on average people use Orgrimmar's AOE training DUMMIES to do the AOE test, which are at least 6 of them in a group

Casting fireball 1 sec gcd + frostbold 1sec gcd + lightning bolt 1 sec gcd + rend 1 sec gcd per target = 9 sec

9 seconds rotation (ON THE VEEEERY BEST CONDITIONS) and look what you have come to, the rand on the first dummy is already almost over, 2-3 seconds and you have to use it again to keep the damage.

Do you guys even understand that there are BUILDS that only PRESSING 1-2 spells and oneshotting some AOE packs in even low level M+ keys ? how the heck I am supposed to collect all these stacks. And make damage ?

Counting my 64 ilvl random Epic gear 703 spell power, 700 attack power (I know these are very irrelevant numbers) – flametongue weapon, two handed weapon, twisted mind, legacy of the arcanist and a big number of good talents, by using this 9 second rotation I am doing 1500-2500 DPS for those few seconds - total damage - 42k and 9 second rotation.

And now we compare the game's most popular and entry-level spec One with the Light
Almost the same stats 65ilvl on my other charater, 650 spell power, 800 attack power,
You come to the same dummies and press 2 spells
Divine storm:
And 4 times crusader strike – and WUALAAA
U get the 8-10k DPS (and I am only counting the small amount shown on my Details damage meter becouse there are so many procs that the actual DPS was 14-15k) total damage done by OWTL and Divine storm+ crusader strike, seal of command = 110k damage done in 5 seconds with 2 abilities.

And whhhaaaat do people really need to get the build ?
You put 1 ability lvl 1 Crusader strike at the beginning of the game
You put Cards Divine storm and Seal of command
You put 2-3 talents which are even a small part of the spec - One with the light which is free and very quick to pick up within a minute or two, mental quicknes,

Other than that you are getting tons of GOOD legendaries that works with this build during the leveling process

And after that, do you think it's worth limiting the Elemental rend and AOE rend spreading talents?
WHY don’t you just make the AOE Elemental RENDS ? or AOE Hydra’s Venom from the rend modificatory talents ?
Just make it like Titan’s Grip and write in tooltip that if you making AOE proc of these talents it makes low damage. These way at least the talent will be AT LEAST a little playable.
And whos GENIUS IDEA was to make ELEMENTAL rend as a 3 SEPARATE legendaries? There is a separate bowl in the hell for you mister “make life harder”

And at the end, for the final facepalm of the current state of the AOE DPS please check the numbers below

Same character with the Elemental rend, same gear,
Fel Infused Weapon Buff ON
Using
2x Lava leshe
2x Whirlwind
(doing nothing while they are on a cooldown)
4-5k DPS, 62K damage done overall

….

All the DPS test links in pictures https://imgur.com/a/VgBgk6r

[Voyoncalis]

@ArmBoy Im REALLY sorry all that work for nothing.
Elemental rend is NOT ment to be PVE nor AOE..
I think its clear...