Elitist Jerks Elemental Glyphs & Totems

Rate this Entry

# Elemental Glyphs & Totems

Posted 04/16/09 at 8:58 PM by Binkenstein
The most common questions arising from my blog post a few days ago about Elemental & 3.1 have been about Glyphs, and Totems. There's still some confusion about how some of these work, so I'm going to try to clear these up.

To begin, I need to make one point clear. Anything affecting Lava Burst has a reduced dps effectiveness in comparison to something affecting Lightning Bolt, Flame Shock, or stats in general. Assuming that you have Glyph of Flame Shock (more on that later), a typical rotation will have ~9 LB, 2 LvB and 1 FS casts, and last around 20 seconds. What this means is that anything that only affects Lava Burst will have it's single spell effectiveness multiplied by 2 (spell count) and then divided by 20 (rotation duration).

$\text {X} * \frac{\text {count}}{\text {rotation duration}}= \text {DPS Increase}$

This results in 10% for Lava Burst, compared with 45% for Lightning Bolt. This means that if we were to increase the damage of both spells by 100, we would see increases of 10 dps if we only buffed Lava Burst, and 45 dps for Lightning Bolt. So even though Lava increases LvB by around 900 per spell, and each Lightning Bolt cast gets ~300, these turn out to be ~90 dps for Lava and ~135 for LB.

Ranking: LB > Lava

Ok, so we've established that Lightning Bolt is better than Lava, the next thing is to look at Flame Shock. A typical rotation without the Flame Shock Glyph will be 1 FS, X LB, 1 LvB, and repeating around that. In this you will most likely get 2 ticks of the DoT (the third may tick though as well, but it will be 1 second after your LvB cooldown comes up so it's fairly unlikely). If you have the glyph, you're removing a FS cast from what would have been viewed as every second rotation, freeing up a GCD that can be spent on LB instead. So if we have ~3.5k dps from LB spam, we're getting ~5000 extra damage for the rotation, plus another 3 FS ticks (say 700 per tick) and we have an extra 7300 damage over that 20 second rotation (365 dps). This approximation is a bit higher than what I've calculated in SEIC, but you see the general point now.

Ranking: FS > LB > Lava

Now for the two stat glyphs. Flametongue gives 2% crit, which is 91.8 crit rating. Without T8 bonuses, you'll have a rough dps figure of 0.6 per rating, but with it goes up to 1. Even then, FT is worth 55-92 dps, which means it's sitting around Lava.
Totem of Wrath gives a flat 84 spellpower, and since that scales so well, we get 1.2-1.4 dps per point (100-117 dps). Obviously better than Lava & FT, not quite as good as LB though.

Ranking: FS > LB > ToW > Lava/FT

And that covers the five main glyphs.

Next: Totems
The question is whether the new T8 totem, [Thunderfall Totem], is better than the T7 totem, [Totem of Hex]. For Thunderfall, we get 215*1.11*2.208*1.16 = 611 damage per cast, or 61 dps (multiplying damage by 0.1 as we discussed earlier). Hex gets 165*0.714*1.09*(1+0.4*1.09)*1.1*1.16 = 234 damage or 105 dps (The co-efficient is 0.714 because Totems are not currently affected by Shamanism, the 1.09 figure is Concussion + Glyph of LB, 1+0.4*1.09 is the crit damage bonus assuming 40% crit, and the 1.1 figure is to account for Overload).

Obviously, 105 trumps 61, so Hex is the better totem to use. I would still pick one up though, as there's always a chance it will get changed later on.

The TL;DR Version
Glyphs: FS > LB > ToW > Lava/FT
Totems: Hex > Thunderfall

 Quote: A typical rotation without the Flame Shock Glyph will be 1 FS, X LB, 1 LvB, and repeating around that. In this you will most likely get 2 ticks of the DoT (the third may tick though as well, but it will be 1 second after your LvB cooldown comes up so it's fairly unlikely). If you have the glyph, you're removing a FS cast from what would have been viewed as every second rotation, freeing up a GCD that can be spent on LB instead. So if we have ~3.5k dps from LB spam, we're getting ~5000 extra damage for the rotation, plus another 3 FS ticks (say 700 per tick) and we have an extra 7300 damage over that 20 second rotation (365 dps). This approximation is a bit higher than what I've calculated in SEIC, but you see the general point now. I think you have made some errors in this section. First, the time between FS casts would be 8 secs plus a LvB cast ~9.2 secs, so 3 ticks would be guaranteed. Second, You have added the extra damage for the partial LB that you could cast by omitting the FS but haven’t removed the initial damage from the FS dropped. By my calcs, the LB does about 4.5k DPS and the initial FS damage is 2k DPS. So the overall gain is 2.5k DPS or about 3k damage. Third, As the FS is reapplied, there will still be 6 ticks in 20 secs so no damage is lost there. Overall then, the increase in damage is 3k over 20 secs or about 150 DPS. Still our best Glyph but not by such a wide margin. Posted 04/17/09 at 2:43 AM by Agash
 Good point, forgot to compare two cycles without to one cycle with Posted 04/17/09 at 3:53 AM by Binkenstein
 Wouldn't Glyph of Lava be better than Glyph of ToW, if you have a really high amount of Spell Power already? As much as I have no means to tell to which number does this threshold corresponds to. A point where 10% more damage on Lava Burst gives you more than 84 constant spell power, which apply to all spells. Hmm... Maybe you can't reasonably push SP that high. Any comment? Posted 04/17/09 at 5:07 AM by Akumasama
 Yes, the "break even" point is 4000 spellpower, roughly. Go look at SEIC for more accurate information Posted 04/17/09 at 5:30 AM by Binkenstein
 I think the other factor that argues in favor of ToW is in actual boss encounters... the odds are we will occasionally miss keeping FS up and might accidentially send a non-criting LvB off to the boss (This is especially true in Uld where all of the bosses require a fair amount of movement versus the stationary nature of many of the Naxx bosses...) Whereas, the odds of you not dropping a ToW are pretty much non-existant... Posted 04/20/09 at 5:43 PM by rlm
 Adding how does glyphchic.com compares to your assessment of glyphs would be interesting. Posted 04/20/09 at 5:56 PM by frmorrison
 hi, whats about the glyphe "Shock"? How much DPS grands a GCD-free rotation? Posted 04/21/09 at 4:34 AM by Treachery
 Posted 04/21/09 at 5:58 AM by Binkenstein
 Quick question for you Bink, i see under your "Next:Totems" section you ranked Thunderfall Totem at 61Dps and Hex at 105. Wouldn't using Glyph of Lava knock that DPS up to about par with the Hex totem because of the 10% added spellpower bonus? Posted 04/30/09 at 3:08 PM by Borninexile
 That might be true, except Thunderfall is just base damage, not spellpower. Posted 04/30/09 at 3:32 PM by Binkenstein