Crit rate is taken as a percentage over ALL swings, not just the ones that hit. WWS will show crit rates as #Crit/#Hits.

I'd recommend the Bloodlust Brooch over the Abacus. Remove all your hit gems.

I say again....

REMOVE ALL YOUR HIT GEMS.

Wow first post and I get yelled at by Malan. Thanks.

One hit gem no less. I have been hoping to replace those gloves so I didn't bother regemming them (I had them an exceptionally long time from when I was hardcore resto and gemmed up all the hunter gear I got with +8 hit before I knew any better).

Working on my badges for the brooch, I am just exceptionally lazy.

Regarding the crit rate. Thanks for the clarification. I assumed that the WWS tallied in the same manner as what actually happens in the combat table. Shame on me for assuming.

We're just trying to help you. Totem twisting, although beneficial, is a huge mana burner. So I would not recommend doing it in long fights like Tidewalker. Especially if you end up having to heal yourself.

Yeah I know you are trying to help, which is why I edited in the smiley because I laughed when I saw Malan's reaction. I even knew it was coming when I paniced and rechecked my armory to see that lone +8 hit gem sitting there. I knew what was coming so it made me laugh.

I am still undecided on totem twisting TBH. I struggle from time to time on mana and I know some people use it extensively and others don't touch it. I'll have to pull down a mod and see what i can do with it on the next relatively static VR.

Although my issue with VR is threat, which is why I was using TaT. Would it just be better to die from the pounding, anhk up and go full bore? Thus negating the need for TaT and the prism?

Thanks again for the responses and the help.

To be honest, the only time I totem twist is when we are clearing trash just to make it go faster. I don't use the prism, although I have one. Just keep an eye on your threat meter and you will be fine. When you get about 80% of tank's threat stop shocking and just auto attack to let your aggro gradually drop. On fights like VR, I generally drop tranquil air until he is at 70% anyways.

Oh. Well honestly all I did was mouse over a few items and the first one I saw had a +Hit gem on it, so I just stopped there and figured you probably had more.

I'm leveling up my horde enhancement shammy, and I'm aware of the fact that slow/slow with dual WF is the best DPS.

However, how much speed is worth how much DPS? Do I upgrade to a weapon with 5-7 more DPS but that is .7 speed faster (specifically talking about the Grunt's Waraxe vs Pneumatic hammers). I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, disregarding stats, when is a faster weapon a better choice than a slower, lower DPS weapon?

My armory link in case it's useful to the question:
The Armory

If you ever have to heal yourself there's something wrong. Healthstone & healing potion is all you should ever need with any competent healers.

I've done it from blues/Karazhan gear up to my current gear; I'll endorse it fully. Initial TA's are amazing, it not only lowers your threat ceiling but your party's as well. I generally switch out TA for GoA once aggro is well established (ie 10-15ish% below tank threat), and it's simple math from this point on sustainability and overall dps increase. With mental quickness and totemic mastery TA/WF is 173.5/5 mana to keep up, GoA/WF is 218.5/5 or 20820/26220 mana on a 10 min fight. This isn't even that much mana, it's when coupling it with shocks every CD that it gets intensive and unsustainable- think about it, 7xxx mana raidbuffed, full mana bars every rage excluding your first, it's a maximum of needing 4 rages to keep up cycling when you are allowed 5 rages in a 10 min fight, you're looking at 7xxx+leftover mana from your 4th rage for shocks, something like 17 flame shocks + whatever you can do to burn down your mana before your first early/subsequent rages.

Cycling totems requires a small portion of awareness because your SR's are what let the build do what it does, so you need to make sure various abilities have gone off before you hit your rage(ie graves, iceblock, roots, whirlwind, whirl, tomb, meteor timer, port timer, flamestrike, spine, bloodboil, fa, sleep, rain of fire, burst, fear, ect), although I suppose this is true even if you are just a shock person!

Re: yellow damage crits: I am seeing a lot of variation of the crit percentage between white damage, windfury and SS. WF and SS are ALWAYS lower than white damage, and in long parses (~1M damage overall) WF and SS seem to approach the same percentage. But it's not as simple as being 6% less, as might be expected...it's more like 3-4% less?

Strangely, the crit percentages between WF and SS were as out of whack as I've ever seen them on my Gruul's raid last week, where I spent about half the time in a group with the feral druids. SS was about 2% higher than WF.

(There were also some turning issues...I don't SS when a mob's front is to me because that usually means one of the rogues has drawn aggro and if I don't scale back I'm next. Sure enough, my WF hit rate is about 5% lower than my SS hit rate, so it could be as simple as that)

Disco, can you dream up a test of the two roll-theory?

edit: @ fangar. Wow you guys post fast.

I'm a big proponent of totem twisting, but in moderation. Doing it for a whole fight is kinda rough, esp if you don't have BoW.

For VR, are you being put in the tank group? The added WF/GoA/UR buffs usually mean I don't have to worry about threat at all. Also, I try to save lust for when I'm sneaking up on threat. You're getting Salvation, right?

bigity: I've found empirically that green 2.6s (~60 dps) were much, much better than epic 1.8s (~80 dps), even in the offhand. You can predict which weapon is better by running one of the great simulators posted in the topic post, they're usually quite close.

I don't know that anybody's researched the exact relationship between weapon speed and damage, but it's going to be pretty high in favor of slow and low. Remember, you want high swing damage for WF and SS procs -- you'd need a 2.0s weapon with at least 78 dps to match your current hammers in terms of swing damage, and by then you're talking L70 epics.

I prefer to heal myself when invigorate is up rather than pot. I tend to save pots/healthstones for emergencies only. That way when such an emergency occurs, my cooldowns are up.

You reset your swing timer and use a global for 1500 healing?

Ya, I'd rather have the my potions up for those moments whne its like "Oh damn, I only have 10 hp!" so I can top myself off asap. Situations like that are more important than losing a few swings IMO. Besides, I don't like having to rely on healers all the time.

But everyone plays differently. If you feel safe relying on your healers, more power to you.

This is something I found out, and apparently only shaman can do it (warriors and rogues tried and did not have the range): on VR, if you stand at the maximun range of your stormstrike, you will not get hit with the pounding. More importantly, it will consider you to be out of melee range, so you will have to accumulate 130% to pull it. The down side is that it will occasionally lob orbs at you, so stay far away from tanks

Yeah I did (I have read this entire thread at least once and most posts twice). My raids run against the debuff cap so my simple flame shock was the first to go and I just ES exclusively. I'm actually surprised that that issue is not mentioned here.

Regarding Invigorate. I tend to heal myself when I notice the buff is up and I need it. I eat HS constantly and generally save my potion timer for haste pots.

It only works for cows, you can out range kaz'rogal's stun and a few other things with the cow hit box.

I really can't imagine not having faith in healers to do 1500 healing half a dozen times per fight, to each their own I suppose!

Well on fights where everyone is taking damage, I can't assume that I will be healed in priority to say the tanks, or other healers. On nights when our resto shamans don't show up, taking the time to heal myself can be life saving. Aside from that, healing yourself when able takes stress off healers, allowing them to focus on the critical players. We have the ability to heal ourselves, there's no reason we can't utilize it.

So when you find yourself below the health threshold of a mob ability you just continue to DPS and wait for someone to heal you? Even rogues and warriors know to stop and bandage themselves.

A 65 DPS green 2.6 is more damage than a 85 DPS 1.8 (Emerald Ripper) when matched with the same main hand weapon, so chances are pretty good that you'll be better off sticking with the hammers.

Spoken like a champion Malan.

Oh, and thanks for the Kael'thas tips a few days back. We killed him last night, congrats to me on T5 chestpiece.

one of the biggest differences i see between my use of mana while totem twisting and other guilds is that we use a prot paladin in most of our fights. Since tidewalker is the most typical fight for guilds to use a prot paladin i will use that as an example. TW WWS you will note from this parse that JoW accounts for 13 thousand mana in that fight. (although, this is a terrible parse, I was tombed 5 times in a row.)

What I would recommend doing for those of you that seem to have mana issues, is ask your healadins to throw up JoW sometimes. It is up for 20 seconds it is up if they don't refresh it. Even that short time can return a decent amount of mana even in the very long fights.