Ralgarog

Err...yeah thats what i meant. sorry. Feral druids get no benefit from windfury totem, neither do the shaman in the group. But i have noticed that once the shaman himself has 25% crit or more: The dps increase from GoA is not that much. It's good for dodging in heroics though <.<.

I am not sure about the name of the spec, but sometimes, warriors who use 2 handers do more dps than everybody in the group combined when Windfury totem is down.

 

Lujaar

Also, you suggested the use of flametongue totem.

Flametongue has no purpose in a standard DPS group. DPS warriors don't want it, they need Windfury. Rogues don't want it, they get more DPS from their own poisons. Hunters and druids get nothing from it. You get nothing from it. The rarest of beasts in the melee world, the ret paladin, doesn't even want it, because it's not Windfury.

The only time I ever drop flametongue is if for some stupid reason I'm grouped with a tanking warrior. GoA for the tank's dodge and my crit, flametongue for the tank's threat.

 

Ralgarog

Well true. Just was saying what i do when I drop GoA totem and there is a dual wielding warrior in the group. Up to very recently, i always use to drop GoA, but after afew weeks of testing, GoA does not make that much of a difference for me.

 

drats

If you have 4 feral druids and an enh shaman in the group, then it would be okay to drop GoA. You should never see this group setup, though.

The idea behind group synergy is that you get the max dps out of your buffs for the whole group. This involves picking the group accordingly, and and ideal group would have a warrior, shaman, druid and 2 rogues. Tell your rogues not to use poisons or click them off so you can use WF. The damage increase from the rogues and warrior will more than cover any dps you or the druid (or even the entire group) would get from GoA.

Flametounge should ALMOST NEVER be used in raids. There Rogue poisons do not stack with FT. The only buff that has more of a dps increase than poisons is WF. Rogues should either wear poisons or WF.

Being a bit of a devil's advocate, I suppose if you had to throw TA down to decrease threat for your warrior then FT would be a decent totem to drop in it's place. With rogue attack speeds being what they are, you would probably get more dps out of it than searing or magma totem. I would immediately drop WF again once aggro was no concern, though.

Edit: I need to post faster. Edited to reflect Ralg's corrections.

Edit 2: Flametounge reasoning. (Thanks lujaar.)

 

Myul

What does the shaman in your group do?

If he's an restoration shaman, he should use

SoE GoA Searing and Manaspring in dps fights with no further circumstances to watch out (resistances, poisons, deseases..)

for Warrior Rogue Rogue X Setup

let X be Feral Druid or Hunter

If it's a third rogue or a second dps warrior in this group, drop windfury - even if all three rogues are dagger specced. At the current state of 9x to nearly 100 dps onehanded weapons, it's simply overwhelming poisons at nearly any attack speed.

It's no resto shaman? Where is the problem? Drop WF AND GoA, providing hughest boost possible. There's not much to do for an enhancer in the raid, hanging around capped by his aggro limit using one shock every 5-6s and 1 stormstrike every 9-10s, there a lot of space replacing GoA and WF all the time during all of the fight. If a enhancement shaman would only provide 10% ap, 13 extra strength and 11 agility with no way of aggro limitation and exact handling i would have to revalueate his spot in the raid. But providing both important air totems simply rocks. And, if really needed, he can reduce the aggro of all group member by 20% (multiply with other talents and limiters) and wf as well.

Flametongue is a waste of mana, because noone in your group should receive something from it. I would drop a warrior/hunter from the raid while not using Adamantite Weightstone/Adamantite Sharpening Stone on his weapon(s) when GoA is up.

 

Ralgarog

Yeah i understand all of that. I am just telling you what i do when ever there is a druid and hunter in the group.

Imo: I think the best possible melee group in all of existence is:
1 Enhancement shaman, 1 Fury warrior with battle shout up, 1 feral druid for LotP, 1 Hunter with TSA up, and a rogue.

 

• Fogbug

Fury warrior/Enh Shaman/Feral Druid/(rogue or fury warrior)/(rogue or fury warrior) with windfury/SoE is the very best setup you're going to get. WF is big big synergy, it's really not worth putting a hunter in for TSA

 

Ilmatar

Enh, Feral, and then: warrior w/ shout (fury), and then the rest rogues and/or Fury/Arms Warriors. TSA does give another 100ap, however, it's actually more dps to just focus on Windfury because while, yes, putting a hunter in the group will cause all of the members of the group to get higher individual DPS, the raid DPS is going to be higher with another good user of Windfury in the group. It's the same as the argument of WF vs GoA in the setup, really.

 

• Juice

That's why I use it frequently. I go with GoA for damage mitigation and added damage to the feral cat, hunter, and myself. The fury warrior and tanking warrior just suck it up. Because I'm in a tanking group (Kara group), it's not as simple as "WF all the time." With our group makeup and DPS potential, the GoA + FTT is about a push for bottomline DPS when compared with WF (though searing added to that might push it over the edge).

 

aurae

TBH I just want to hear from someone who's actually benchmarked the effect of GoA or WF in warr/rogue/druid/sham/1 more melee class group. Noone is questioning the fact that WF kicks arse for warriors & rogues; it's the post-TBC, sum total melee group DPS that is of interest. This has to be an empiric comparison, there are just too many synergistic effects going on in this heterogeneous melee group to theorycraft in anything short of a full multi-threaded melee fight simulator.

Besides, the last time I raided with a fury warrior for DPS my guild had just gotten BWL on farm.

 

Lambach

Thats really sad. You guys must not have gotten very far in naxx. Making a comment like that is just ignorant, because all the top guilds are using DPS warriors again.

The bottom line is that WF is better. Its a 20% white dps increase on your MH. Its amazing. 3% crit (or less) just cannot compete with that. It has been beaten into the ground. Don't come to the table with your ridiculous Enh shaman, 3 druids and ahunter groups. Real raid leaders dont make those groups. They just don't exist. So please stop trying to bring them as proof. Your average melee dps group will be warrior druid shaman and 2 rogues. The huge dps increase of the warrior and rogues greatly outweighs the dps the whole team would receive from GOA. Its just math guys....please stop posting things about this.

 

Malan

Your empirical evidence is the Horde guilds of the world raiding with shaman for 2+ years. And its not just raiding - if you PvP with a warrior and a shaman in a group, it does not matter what the rest of the group is, you drop windfury. The group could be 3 druids, warrior, shaman, and you had better be dropping windfury. And yes, that goes for post-TBC as well. That warrior will do that much with Windfury down.

When an Alliance guy talks to me about Paladins in a raid, I listen, because they've got the experience with the class and I don't. But for some reason you've just got your mind set that GoA must be better, and you're hell bent on disproving what everyone else is telling you. I can tell you this much - nobody here is going to run hours of tests with full group setups just to satisfy your curiosity. We already know the answer.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

◊ Sarutobi

Unless I misread, which is completely possible this late on a Friday and I apologize if it's the case, but it seems as though you're implying that the 1 shaman in the group drop both WF and GoA, which is impossible due to the fact that they are both air totems (hence the debate).

EDIT: Like I thought. This week has apparently impaired my ability to think outside the box and/or remember what I just finished reading 2 minutes prior. Disregard the above.

 

Sintor

Windfury totem gives a nine second weapon buff, allowing you to "twist" totems, giving the benefit of both. The weapon buff does not disappear when the totem does.

 

Ilmatar

100% on the money.

The fact of the matter is, 20% chance of an extra hit (with no cooldown on totem) is just above-and-beyond any other totem for Warrior/Rogue DPS. Do the test yourself. I encourage this, not because I don't want to, but because figuring out a set-up for testing your abilities is a good thing to know.

For my test, it was pretty easy. I took the warrior and the rogue in my Kara group out to Blasted Lands, we hit stuff, and I watched Recap. Change totems, reset Recap, repeat. When doing tests with Windfury in Blasted Lands, you are gaining the advantage of not missing. This is why +hit has so much impact on Enh. Shaman DPS, for Windfury procs. (Did we decide +hit was not as important post 2.1 or not? I maintain that it is still very important, but I have not done tests, and I'm too poor to re-gem right now.) So if you are running with a warrior with low +hit, than the % increase in his DPS from the Blasted Lands testing is not going to carry through as well to 73/boss mob damage.

Previously we talked about using Rank 1 WF totem and Tranquil Air totem. My argument against totem switching is not only the mana drain, but the constant GCD triggering. I don't think it is reasonable to be switching out an Air totem every 8ish seconds.

 

Nite_Moogle

 

• Juice

I hit like craaaaaazy fast!

 

◊ Sarutobi

Thank you Gor. That's just what I needed to help me get through this last hour of work. ^^

 

Malan

I'm trying to convince him to make "Gor and Malan" a regular weekly feature.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Lambach

Where is that from?

 

Nite_Moogle

My hard drive.

 

maha

Are we talking just enh shaman in the group and which air totem they should drop? Then if it is then my post will be toward that. I don't know if this was said or not but

As enhancement shamans since we have totems we don't really have a "rotation" its just spam stormstrike and shocks. My friend and i talk alot about enhancement and totem placement, what he does is first plants Windfury and then GoA which gives whoever CAN get the windfury totem buff the 9 second buff and then he counts until the Windfury could be over and does the same thing. By doing this he makes everyone happy by gettting both buffs at the same time and not sacrficing dps since totems are instant casts.

Note: I would assume it is much easier to do this trick on stationary fights, since he told me he did this during Lurker.

 

khel

Hunters and ferals should be in a separate group from your warrior+3rogues+shaman group. Then let 2-3 hunters + shadowpriest have the feral druid. The druid doesn't gain anything from a windfury totem, and 5% crit is more useful for hunters than rogues or warriors (mortal shots, KC, GftT, frenzy+FI uptime, etc).

Instead of an "extra" group, I optimize my raids like this and it works well. Tank group, healing group, melee group, caster group, hunter+feral group. After 2.1 it's worth optimizing around hunters just as you would around rogues or warlocks, because hunter dps is very formidable now.

For rogues and warriors, there is no question really. Windfury is a minimal 10% boost for rogues, 20% for warriors. The AP bonus associated with windfury procs further drives these numbers up.

 

Malan

This really isn't true. Perhaps you should think about how some of your shocks could interact a bit differently.

Where the hell did this fad suddenly pop up from? I'd never heard of anyone doing this until like 2 weeks ago. Does your friend chain chug mana pots to sustain that? That's ... what? ... roughly 700 mana every 10 seconds, plus 2 global cooldowns? Even with SR mana is tight on a fight where I'm having to move totems at any sort of frequency.

Can we just let this thread roll over and die now?

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Zurgat

I could be wrong here, and the problem might have already been fixed...
But, wasn't it the case that a flametongue proc caused a tank to put his shield on his back for 0.1 sec or so? Meaning he'll be vulnderable to Crushing blows during that time.

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