[Shaman] Beyond Karazhan: raid spec? - Page 3

• RK · 03/19/07, 1:32 AM

Originally Posted by Hamilburg

Lightning Bolt untalented is 330 mana. 297 after Convection. 282 after the totem (unless the totem applies before the discount in which case you end up with 283.5).
LB with a 2 second cast time means a base outgo of 705 MP5.

Two things:

1) It applies after the discount, so 282: but then there's the balance between Totem of Lightning and Totem of the Void.

15 mana out of 297 is a 5.05% discount on your bolt.

+55 dmg is 47.14 extra damage per bolt. The equivalence point, then, is when your average bolt is a mere 933.46, since at that point 47.14 is 5.05% of your bolt. So Totem of Lightning is definitely the way to go for longevity if you can't sustain any other way (even with potting). I don't think people have been using Totem of Lightning in their assumptions.

2) Theory that relies on spamming 2-second bolts with no lag doesn't reflect reality. Obviously not being able to do so does lower our theoretical DPS, but also raises our pre-OOM longevity (both because not consuming mana quite so fast and because more time for mana regen to work in). I mention this mostly because saying "OOM in 2 minutes" gives a bad impression of the class: everyone would go OOM faster than they do in practice under this sort of theorycraft conditions

Juice: If you need it quantified, the extra 55 mana/5 or so is more than enough for 2 extra lightning bolts a minute, but is also more flexible, since mana is mana no matter what you spend it on. You can't crit bloodlust or totem drops (more's the pity!). The crit difference is a bigger part of it, sure, but I certainly don't advocate losing tidal mastery to take unrelenting storm! If you go 41 in elemental, then I'd even agree you can't take 5/5 unrelenting storm unless you're willing to put up with 0/2 storm's reach and backing out of all the 30 yard AoE stuff. But at the same time, if you have 41 points in elemental and don't take any points at all in unrelenting storm, you have made an error if your aim is raid DPS. Mana/5 does make a difference. If your aim is more pvp or arena inclined, then obv. reverberation is an important talent- but it's misleading for doing a post about elemental shaman longevity.

Durnitol · 03/19/07, 1:35 AM

Originally Posted by Maniq

I have sacrificed a lot of hit rating for other stats, because, ultimatley, this makes me a lot more use to the raids / groups I am with than someone who is all about pure DPS. Shaman can't CC, but we can heal, we can bring a great deal more to a group that DPS alone.

Durnitol, I see from your armory profile that you are sacrificing quite a bit of armor by wearing leather, is the extra hit rating really worth it?

I'm consistently one of the highest in DMs, in fact, last night on Magtheridon I was top on pretty much all the attempts, whilst saving even more mana for interupts.

I really like the haste proc build I'm using at the moment, the procs all stack, combined with flurry and when up, bloodlust, I can get down to a combo of 1.1 and 0.5 speed weapons, which, I think makes up for the slightly lower DPS offhand, I've done some experimentation with a slower offhand, but, before the WF changes get in, I've found this to be optimal.

I like having enough mana, so that I can DPS as hard as the aggro limit will allow, but retaining enough mana, to be able to heal, at least reasonably well on a pull, be it on a heroic, or on pulls where there is a whole bunch of damage going round, for example on the new Kazzak, I can go all out pretty much, he enrages and keep up with chain healing, then pop SR/Abacus and get 6k mana back, without really skipping a beat.

Also, another example, the other day in Heroic slave pens, our healer died on the pull, I was able to heal for the rest of the pack, ok, I had to pop a super mana pot, but, things like that are why I'm willing to sacrifice some DPS, because a) it saves me gold and b) I offer a lot more utility.

Sure, I could sacrifice a whole bunch of int and regen and stack +hit, but really, I can't see that is a shamans role. I see an enhancement shaman as doing good DPS, buffing other classes so they can perform better and being able to toss heals about without sacrificing too much. I'm confident that is the way we should be taking the class.

We have so many more dimensions than just DPSing for all it's worth, so I think we should use them.

Thanks, Maniq. Perhaps I have been focusing too much on hit gear. I never really bothered to care about armor, since if I'm being hit, I'm likely doing something wrong anyway, so my armor value is less important to me than the stats that let me dps. I would think that HP > armor in general for DW anyway. Do you have an opinon on the Harness set? Despite your analysis here, I am still pissed about the item budget getting wasted on dmg/healing.

Part of the problem I am having is this desire to prove to a long history of naysayers about the shaman role. Basically, if I can't output some ridiculous amount of DPS, I'm afraid I'll just be replaced by a Rogue or told to spec resto to get into raids. I have a feeling this is still the case in many many a guild. I like your outlook on the role, but it helps to have a leader like Gurgthock to back up your invite. I still get enmired in scorn and invective trying to prove how effective I am.

As for the Blackout truncheon, I am reviewing the math on it right now and may post in the WF thread about it. You can get a maximum of 20 WF ppm, and everything in between is white damage. You do get significantly more white damage from your mainhand with the truncheon, but I'm wondering how it all pans out with slower offhand.

Miaxi · 03/19/07, 10:29 AM

ignoring the option of casting cl instead of lb (to lazy tough) while clearcast or lo (anyone get working numbers for it? 5% seems to be to much, what a pitty for such a deep talent)

Clearcasting now procs when the spell hits instead of when the casting finishes and lightning bolt has a considerable travel time. If you are scratching 1k spell damage, your lightning bolt and chain lightning will do almost the same damage on single targets anyway, so it's not worth it.

I'm consistently one of the highest in DMs, in fact, last night on Magtheridon I was top on pretty much all the attempts, whilst saving even more mana for interupts.

You can interrupt all monster spellcasts with earth shock rank 1. Your worst enemy is the global cooldown, not lack of mana. :P

◊ Maniq · 03/19/07, 11:22 AM

Originally Posted by Miaxi

You can interrupt all monster spellcasts with earth shock rank 1. Your worst enemy is the global cooldown, not lack of mana. :P

Really? - thanks :P

The actual worse enemy is the 6 second cooldown, not the global cooldown.

Global cooldown is a fraction of the shock cooldown.

The point was that the mana was being saved by not using Earth Shock everytime it was up, to use it as an interupt, not over any mana potential issues.

◊ Fellwraith · 03/19/07, 12:57 PM

Originally Posted by Durnitol

Thanks, Maniq. Perhaps I have been focusing too much on hit gear. I never really bothered to care about armor, since if I'm being hit, I'm likely doing something wrong anyway, so my armor value is less important to me than the stats that let me dps. I would think that HP > armor in general for DW anyway. Do you have an opinon on the Harness set? Despite your analysis here, I am still pissed about the item budget getting wasted on dmg/healing.

Part of the problem I am having is this desire to prove to a long history of naysayers about the shaman role. Basically, if I can't output some ridiculous amount of DPS, I'm afraid I'll just be replaced by a Rogue or told to spec resto to get into raids. I have a feeling this is still the case in many many a guild. I like your outlook on the role, but it helps to have a leader like Gurgthock to back up your invite. I still get enmired in scorn and invective trying to prove how effective I am.

As for the Blackout truncheon, I am reviewing the math on it right now and may post in the WF thread about it. You can get a maximum of 20 WF ppm, and everything in between is white damage. You do get significantly more white damage from your mainhand with the truncheon, but I'm wondering how it all pans out with slower offhand.

Armor choice is one area where I see a lot of enhancement shaman making fundamental mistakes. Unless you have an outrageous dodge rating, you probably want to leave the leather to druids and rogues. Armor rating is usually cheaper to get than stamina (it's "free" on epics), but HP helps a bit against magic damage. 3-5% more mitigation is a big deal when you start getting cleaved in 5 man heroics. With mail, you could still theoretically slap on a shield in an emergency and survive long enough to kite. You really should do whatever you can to limit the amount of healing you need, your healers and tanks will thank you. I don't think I ever got on the mail/leather bandwagon when I was fury spec for this exact same reason (absent a few minor pieces like the bracers from domo's chest, etc.)

drats · 03/19/07, 1:17 PM

Originally Posted by Durnitol

Part of the problem I am having is this desire to prove to a long history of naysayers about the shaman role. Basically, if I can't output some ridiculous amount of DPS, I'm afraid I'll just be replaced by a Rogue or told to spec resto to get into raids. I have a feeling this is still the case in many many a guild. I like your outlook on the role, but it helps to have a leader like Gurgthock to back up your invite. I still get enmired in scorn and invective trying to prove how effective I am.

I'm still threat limited in most of the encounters we've had, so I stopped bothering with pumping up my AP/crit and have been working on HP and int. Enh shaman are in a pretty bad position for melee dps, since we have no aggro drop. As a result, i end up backing out of melee range and dropping a few HWs until the MT pulls a safe distance ahead of me on the threat meters.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's all but impossible for us to try and top the damage meters, and it really shouldn't be our goal. If your guild is putting you into a group with rogues and fury warriors and feral druids, the increase in dps that you provide for the group should speak for itself. The amount of damage our melee group does with bloodlust up is just silly.

On the matter of damage/healing on our gear, there's no way for a shaman to keep up a decent amount of dps w/o using shocks. Flameshock and SS+ES represent a substantial amount of damage, and can be used from outside of melee range to keep dps going when you're high on threat. The t5 2p bonus says all that needs to be said about healing. What other stats would you put those points towards?

Originally Posted by fellwraith

You really should do whatever you can to limit the amount of healing you need, your healers and tanks will thank you.

If all melee DPS understood this the world of warcraft would be a better place.

Daler · 03/19/07, 2:58 PM

Originally Posted by drats

On the matter of damage/healing on our gear, there's no way for a shaman to keep up a decent amount of dps w/o using shocks.

I disagree. ES generally only constitutes about 10% of my overall DPS (very rough estimate), and since I'm threat limited as is, I'm tending to hold off on the shocks, let the rogues use my SS debuffs and keep ES as an interrupt only or when we need to go balls out on the DPS. I'm still maxed out on the TPS I can safely output with white dmg/SS/WF, and the extra mana allows me to heal a little more frequently and pop SR a little less frequently.

Originally Posted by Durnitol

Part of the problem I am having is this desire to prove to a long history of naysayers about the shaman role. Basically, if I can't output some ridiculous amount of DPS, I'm afraid I'll just be replaced by a Rogue or told to spec resto to get into raids. I have a feeling this is still the case in many many a guild. I like your outlook on the role, but it helps to have a leader like Gurgthock to back up your invite. I still get enmired in scorn and invective trying to prove how effective I am.

That's absurd. If your RL can't appreciate the value of a high DPS player, even if he's not at the very top of the DM, with totem buffs that greatly increase a melee groups total dmg output (and thereby total raid DPS), along with the ability to throw out a 1.5 sec heal that hits as hard as your average healadin's FoL, then find a new RL.

Athame · 03/19/07, 2:59 PM

Originally Posted by drats

I'm still threat limited in most of the encounters we've had, so I stopped bothering with pumping up my AP/crit and have been working on HP and int. Enh shaman are in a pretty bad position for melee dps, since we have no aggro drop. As a result, i end up backing out of melee range and dropping a few HWs until the MT pulls a safe distance ahead of me on the threat meters.

I haven't felt at all threat limited as an Enh shaman since the patch and I'm usually vying for the top few places on the meters in 25 mans, do you have paladins?- I find it almost impossible to pull agro from a good tank with salvation up.

Miaxi · 03/19/07, 3:21 PM

On the matter of damage/healing on our gear, there's no way for a shaman to keep up a decent amount of dps w/o using shocks.

That is not true. Lylz easily keeps up with other DPS classes while leaving stormstrike charges for me - shocks have lousy DPS anyway, I only get 200-250 as elemental spec. If you have threat problems, ask for blessing of salvation.

After the unleashed rage fix there are only a few fights where shamans are really limited by threat but in those all DPS classes need to hold back. (For example on Nightbane when tank is saving rage for stance-dancing or on Hydross right after the phase swap.) That being said, I would love to have something like invisibility (but working properly) or soul shatter (with less resistance rates!). It is very annoying having to stand around and do nothing for half of the "red riding hood" event.

maxpowers · 03/19/07, 5:33 PM

Originally Posted by Miaxi

It is very annoying having to stand around and do nothing for half of the "red riding hood" event.

As has been said time and again, this is where you should be healing, not doing nothing.

◊ Fellwraith · 03/19/07, 6:47 PM

Originally Posted by Athame

I haven't felt at all threat limited as an Enh shaman since the patch and I'm usually vying for the top few places on the meters in 25 mans, do you have paladins?- I find it almost impossible to pull agro from a good tank with salvation up.

25 man's aren't the only thing that you're ever running though. There's plenty of times in 10 mans where you can't get the groups set up ideally for the tank to have maximum mitigation and maximum threat generation. I usually put myself in a group with a holy paladin, shadow priest, and warlock for the Prince. If there's more than 2 melee dps in the raid, I'm not going to gimp their dps for my threat generation. The only person I've ever seen be in danger of pulling aggro in that situation is our shaman (in fact he did once on a string of dodge/parry/miss). So yes, you're threat-limited relative to just about any other dps class.

If your tank is not getting smacked around, odds are also good that he's only putting out around 6-700 threat per second. I've seen shaman and shadowpriests put out quite a bit more than that when they decide to open up. It gets especially bad if the shaman is only dropping GoA. I ran a pug once with an enhancement shaman who would call out for healing in party chat (all caps), only dropped GoA/SoE, shocked whenever the CD was up, and was constantly posting damage meters in party chart. Some of the posts earlier in this thread make me wonder if you're "that guy". By now, most people should know you can do some serious dps if needed. I think the really good shaman I've grouped with understand that they're a support class with a lot of upside. They dps most of the time, but pitch in wherever else they're needed.

Back on topic, what's the usual dps output you've seen from your elemental shaman? We ran a heroic underbog last night and my meter put our shaman around 700 dps on the black stalker zerg. I know there's sustainability issues with the build, but I was surprised at just how high it was given the fact that he was dropping totems in the beginning.

Juno · 03/19/07, 7:17 PM

Originally Posted by Fellwraith

Back on topic, what's the usual dps output you've seen from your elemental shaman? We ran a heroic underbog last night and my meter put our shaman around 700 dps on the black stalker zerg. I know there's sustainability issues with the build, but I was surprised at just how high it was given the fact that he was dropping totems in the beginning.

Ours seem to do incredible damage. We have a very well geared rogue and mage that usually reign supreme in the damagemeters throughout karazhan and Gruul's lair, but when the shaman has the ability to uninterrupted spam lightningbolts forever, he probably clocks in at about 700-800dps, doesn't run out of mana due to 36% clearcasts or so and just generally get first or second on the damagemeters. While providing shadowpriest, mages, and some healers with 100dmg totem, 3%crit/hit, etcetera. I love them.

mek · 03/20/07, 12:00 AM

Originally Posted by Fellwraith

With mail, you could still theoretically slap on a shield in an emergency and survive long enough to kite. You really should do whatever you can to limit the amount of healing you need, your healers and tanks will thank you. I don't think I ever got on the mail/leather bandwagon when I was fury spec for this exact same reason (absent a few minor pieces like the bracers from domo's chest, etc.)

I'm going to strongly disagree with this. There are only a few mobs even in heroics where there is completely unavoidable physical damage (anything with Sweeping Strikes, essentially), and in general those sorts of pulls are the sorts of pulls where you shouldn't be meleeing at all, period. The vast majority of unavoidable aoe damage is magical and thus stamina > armor. The only case where an enhancement shaman needs to melee a mob with some nasty SS/cleave combo is if you're the third healer in a 5man group and the dps cannot be extracted from any other group members. Otherwise I'll just slap on healbot gear and let someone else dps.

The fact of the matter is there is leather with dps stats that just blows anything mail out of the water. Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless, as an example.

Wearing leather in any/all of existing raid encounters will not matter in the slightest.

Cynic · 03/20/07, 12:12 AM

I always thought it would be cool if they could flag AE damage as physical damage, which would give some classes a nice advantage from time to time, but thats probably hoping for too much.

Pane · 03/20/07, 3:17 AM

Originally Posted by Miaxi

It is very annoying having to stand around and do nothing for half of the "red riding hood" event.

granted I've only done RRH once, but I was hitting him in the back of the head for all of the fight, except when I was tagged to run. Why should you do nothing?

mek · 03/20/07, 4:15 AM

Originally Posted by Maniq

Wait, what?

I agree with most of your post but, in all honesty, the two parts of it I have quoted are part of what is wrong with how non-resto shamans are slotted into the raiding environment.

Originally Posted by mek

An enhancement shaman is a rogue with totems because as our DPS increases from gear, our HPS and HPM stay completely static, and thus at some breakpoint (very early on) it becomes inefficient for the raid to have them to heal at all, and it should only be done when dps is impossible (flying phases, etc) or if it is a life or death scenario. For the former, a gear swap is viable, but for the latter it is not as you cannot afford any GCDs when dropping an emergency heal..

Please read what I said in light of the above. It's simple: the time you spend healing is time you spend not dpsing, and since you're not wearing healing gear, unless those heals are clutch or during parts of the fight where dps is not possible, they are done at a net loss to the raid. When you help heal, you help not dps - and the longer the boss lives, the more heals are needed over time.

Sure, an enhancement shaman should watch heal bars and try to save people's lives. I'm not arguing they shouldn't. I'm simply arguing that enhancement shamans healing is an inefficient action, and should only be done if other circumstances (The boss is flying, the boss is submerged, your healer is out of range of the main tank...) mitigate the inefficiency.

The enhancement PROBLEM, is that as we gear up, our dps gets better and better, but our healing stays almost completely static. As a result, we are further and further discouraged from healing, resulting in less-hybrid gameplay. At least Blizz is tossing us some interesting bones like the T5 enhance 2pc bonus, which looks like it'll be a lot of fun.

Mearis · 03/20/07, 6:21 AM

Nobody is arguing that enh shamans should be taken as full time healers, or that they should heal a significant portion of the time.

What people said is that often it can be a lot more efficient for a shaman to stop DPS a second, pop a chain heal to top off some melees after a rather nasty AoE (think Kazzak enrage, earthquake on Doomwalker, etc) then go back in the fray.

Healing is not only about longevity, there are moments where you need the extra healing throughput, and having more people throw out heals helps a lot more than killing the mob a few seconds faster.

• Starbucks · 03/20/07, 6:33 AM

A Shamans main advantage over a druid is the ability to not have to shift to heal, we can stop DPS at any time and start healing and not have to reshift in the case of feral/moonkin so we can easilly Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Chain Heal, Lightning Bolt (Clearcast), Chain Lightning, Chain Heal.

Our only limit is mana really, and with the elemental changes and a high crit rate that should not be a serious problem. A Shaman that does not pop out a heal when someone is going to need it or the current healers are having trouble or it is a healing intensive fight, is not that good a Shaman.

Edit: As for "not having healing gear" when you need to heal you can easilly swap out your weapons for healing weapons (there are 3 +healing "one hand" weapons IIRC) have them both oiled and put +healing on then, within seconds you can go from 0 +Healing to around 700-800 +Healing just by weapons and oils.

An interesting fact, before the changes to the weapons to make all of the caster weapons main hand, the math led me to belive (even without seeing TBC items, I was using 60 gear as estimations) that 0/31/30 would be the best Shaman healing build, and I actually stand by this (Hence on a thread on a different forum I post on I have not really filled in the restoration info as I want to get a lot of input before I do). Generally DW + Purification would be a very strong talent set if you DW healing weapons.

Aezoc · 03/20/07, 11:32 AM

The problem with even a weapon swap is that most of the situations where an enhancement shaman's healing is a meaningful contribution are the "oh shit" moments, and spending 1.5s on a GCD before you can start the heal is self-defeating in those situations. There are times where a couple of clutch heals, even with 0 +heals, have saved my group from wiping. But in the vast majority of cases, I have to agree with Mek, that our static healing numbers and scaling DPS are very quickly going to make us wanna-be rogues rather than true hybrids.

I'm only in Karazhan right now, and I already feel like my heals are a non-factor in a lot of cases. I think a great solution to this would be a deep enhancement talent that gives us some percentage of AP as +healing, or even make it an additional effect on shamanistic rage. I'm not going to hold my breath though.

Coriolis · 03/20/07, 11:43 AM

Well no, the best offhand right now with +healing enchant on it is about 260 healing. A shield (if you factor in mana/5 and all) is more then 60 healing but let's call it 60. 200 extra plus healing will make up for loosing 30% intelect -> healing+damage (which is about 130 +healing with my gear) but it's not even close to making up loosing manatide, ES and better chain heals. And without UR/ES/DW talents you loose a big part of what makes DW enh so good.

As for speccing, I used to be enh but I respecced resto. Not really because the spec sucks, but because I ultimately find healing more satisfying, enh sucks in pvp, the itemization is made for hunters or is terrible (don't need mp/5, tons of int, or +dmg/heal), and you really need an excellent tank +BoS to not have threat issues (not a problem in raids, but a problem in heroics in general).

I'm collecting elemental gear and I'll probably try that spec at some point but the way I see it that is a spec that scales extremely with gear moreso then almost anything else, because of the clearcast and the natural scaling of LB being 2 secs down from 3. With excellent gear I think it could be an excellent spec, with mediocre gear you might as well heal. I'm interested in hearing numbers for damage/dps done by elemental shamans over long fights however (i.e. not trash in kara).

Nerull · 03/20/07, 11:48 AM

What I dont understand is that some players post that they feel the urge to prove themselves as top 3 , if not top 1 damage done.

Shamans are a hybrid class, this means jack of all trades but master of none. If a enhancement spec shaman would always outdamage an evenly geared , wellplayed rogue then what is the use of bringing rogues to the raid ? Disarm traps ? If shamans always outdamages an equally geared mage, then what is the mage use , water ?

Druids where to powerfull in this aspect , they where far better than the intended class at a specific point ( tanking ) and blizzard ner