Wands Uber on Test Server

[Alarick]

One of many posts about it is here.

I found the change to wands as auto-shot very surprising.  This was something that was asked for all beta long and I could SWEAR Blizzard said that there was no way they were going to do it.

What's held wands in check for so long is that:

1) You have to manually fire them each time.
2) They have a "global cooldown" - when you fire a wand you can't use ANY other offensive spell for a whole second.

Take that away, and the whole dynamic is changed for casters.  I noted for a long time that my wand DPS typically beat my melee DPS on my Priest, even with Inner Fire.  However, sometimes I didn't feel like standing there and clicking for each shot, so I'd do the "lazy man's" offense and turn on Attack to let her beat something down in the slow, slow way that holy Priests do.  There's no way I'd bother with that anymore.  Wand autoshot would make her uber!

I don't know about that poster's fantastical claim that wand DPS outshines Hunter DPS now (I'd have to see that to believe it), but I'd bet that wand damage needs a good nerf if they slap autoshot on it as they currently have on the test server.  Every Priest out there has got to be salivating over this - Priests use wands more than anybody when in groups, as it lets them do moderate damage from a safe distance while not sacrificing precious healing mana.

It will also make the +wand damage talents that some classes have more useful.  But HOW useful?

-Bolty
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I have to say this isn't a buff for wands DPS more than it's fixing some major issues that have plagued wands use since being adding to the game.

The DPS listed for wands pre patch is far far too high. As stated before, it doesn't take into account that cooldowns are both before and after shooting, meaning that the true DPS of a 70 DPS wands typically falls around 35-40 DPS on average.

This cooldown bug wasn't even known by the devs apparantly, or else the CMs were never told, since Fangtooth didn't understand what was going on when responding to thread about it.

Should wands be auto-shoot. It's nice, but I dont' tihnk think it's 100% necessary. I would've been happy had they fixed the cooldown issues. Not being able to cast a spell within one second of using a wands is a huge issue. Just as bad, not being able to use wands during the cooldown of spells. It all needed to be fixed ages ago, and this auto-shoot wands thing my finally fix them.

As for is it too powerful? I don't think so. The wand DPS is stagnant. As far as I can tell, little to nothing affects wand damage. It's not spell damage, so +damage items don't help. I haven' seen any real affect from +ranged attack either. I really think it'll just be helpful in soloing for wand users to be able to get the true DPS out of wands, rather than the half-DPS because of the cooldown issues.