Exactly what can be accomplished by having people list gear based on subjectivity?
People who frequent these forums are typically going to be the min/max types. So the response to your last statement is, "Yes." If people can base gear choices on something objective like a mathematical formula, and that math has proven to be influential within the context of raiding, then those people are going to generally have the same gear (ignoring luck on drops).
I have read this thread in its entirety. Took me a couple days to take it all in.
I have tried to test out the hit rating theories by swapping my gear around in the blasted lands.
Taking my hit rating from the 200 range all the way down to 80. Obviously raising my crit, AP, and in one case haste rating, instead.
The problem is that the lvl 54/55s there are not raid bosses (duh), you hardly miss them anyway. So stacking hit for this test is a total waste of the item value in comparison to in a boss fight.
That being said, I think the fundamental issue with our hit rating is that a portion of our attacks cannot miss to begin with. All WF procs and all SS hits. (as long as you're properly talented).
On my last Gruul 48% of my damage was white. So if I have a miss rate of 15% its only 15% of 48% of my total damage. The other 52% of my damage scales perfectly with extra crit, AP, and int (shocks). Not to mention the scaling effect that this has on my overall white damage to begin with.
So a conclusion could be made that since shaman proc or use a "special or yellow" attack more than any other mele class, they benefit the least from a +hit rating beyond 5%.
This is not new information as these issues have been conveyed across the 15 pages in this thread. I just wanted to summarize and see if there is anyone left to dispute this, possibly with data from boss encounters sustaining a max'd hit rating VS the same encounter with higher crit and higher AP.
Moving forward I am maxing crit and AP and taking whatever +hit happens to be there. Thanks for all the work, awesome thread.
Noise if you want slightly better testing I'd recommend enlisting some help (easier said than done) and going to Halaa and pulling a single guard and having someone tank it while you beat on it, and have a healer for the tank. They aren't immortal, but they do have a hell of a large hitpoint pool and are lvl 68 I think.
I can probably pull some parses that still had around 180 or higher Hit Rating on top of the 9% from talents and compare vs some more recent ones with only 100-120 Hit Rating. Anecdotally (since I'm at work and have no access to them right now) I can already tell you that my DPS went up tremendously when I started shedding +Hit and replacing with Crit. I think I posted 1100 DPS last night on Fathom Lords, and #4 in overall damage, which was a pretty big jump in DPS recently.
With all this information about hit rating, what is the sticking issue that keeps you still speccing into resto for the 3%? What are the numbers on elemental points for ele devastation/better shocks (which is a flat 140+ dps if you're able to maintain a full rotation - which ele lets you do easier) versus spending all the points for 3% spell/melee hit?
The more I follow the theory, the less inclined I am to believe that the resto hybrid is a worthwhile expenditure of points from a pure dps standpoint.
Also I think the issue he was making with the Lootzor link is a rather significant portion of the top items will result in very little hit to none hit rating overall.
Well for one, taking the hit % in Resto allows you to dump a lot more from your gear and not worry about it because you've got a good base. We can't eschew ALL the +hit, it just appears that we need less than we thought. We're still dual wielding, the miss penalty is steep and does need to be addressed in your gear and talents.
That said, there's more benefit to the resto tree than just the +hit. The extra 10 yards to totems is extremely noticeable and has saved me multiple redrops of totems on many fights and I'm beginning to believe that the 40 minute ankh is worth its weight in gold. As long as I don't care about my repair bill I can just go nuts on every boss and ankh for a threat wipe. I used to think improved reincarnation was the biggest waste of talent points but it certainly has its uses.
Well for one, taking the hit % in Resto allows you to dump a lot more from your gear and not worry about it because you've got a good base. We can't eschew ALL the +hit, it just appears that we need less than we thought. We're still dual wielding, the miss penalty is steep and does need to be addressed in your gear and talents.
Can't say it any better myself.
Also, aside from the above reasons to go the 3% hit route, theres also reasons for not going for the upper tier elemental any longer. Sham rage replaces the need for Convection and Elemental focus changes make it so inefficient its not worth taking. Even any DPS gain from Concussion is negligible beause shocks will only be around 10% of your damage base.
Resto is definitely a better use of points for enhancement.
As long as I don't care about my repair bill I can just go nuts on every boss and ankh for a threat wipe.
I'd like to take a moment to guard this statement with a careful consideration of threat mechanics. It's also relevent for myself as a lock with soulstones so I think it's worth addressing.
Dying is a great threat wipe but pulling agro is a much bigger deal for the raid than just your repair bill. Rage is an issue for the tank when they're not getting hit and TPS is a big issue for the other DPS trying to stay under the tank's agro limit so interupting what would normally be a relativly consistant stream of threat can be dangerous.
Perhaps more important is that once you're dead the mob goes to the highest person on the threat list, not the person they were hitting before you pulled agro. So if, for example, a mage or a lock were 'safely' at 110% of tank threat and you pulled agro to die the mob will agro on them and you've effectivly killed them too. This mechanic would also dictate that the person dying along side you is likly to be one of the better DPS players given that they're highest on threat.
I'm not saying you can never use the technique, only that everyone has to be below 100% of tank threat in order for you to use it safely because most ranged classes would normally consider more than 100% tank threat 'safe' if their threat wipe is up.
So I guess this beggs the question, 'How else can you kill yourself as a shaman?'
So I guess this beggs the question, 'How else can you kill yourself as a shaman?'
It's pretty easy.
Maulgar: Eat a WW.
Gruul: Get above the HS OT and eat a HS.
Magtheridon: Eat a Cleave.
Hydross: Interfere with a transition (dangerous)
Lurker: Eat a Spout.
Morogrim: Eat a Cleave.
Karathress: No real surefire way. Early on I guess you could peel the hunter pet off of the hunter tank intentionally.
Leo: No real way, or point.
VR: Run out of melee range and eat an Orb.
Al'ar: Eat a Quill or an add death.
Solarian: who cares
Kael: haven't the foggiest, never seen him
Ok I know that the general rule is to use a slow off hand, but I dont have one, I have a fast off hand, Should I still be using WF/WF? The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that I should use an elemental enchant on the off hand so that I can guarentee(sp) that my main hand gets all of the wf's.
Second, hit rateing. What is a good place to be? I currently have just over 200, but in order to stay above 200 ive had to not use my cyclone gauntlets. Ive read that some people are down around as low as 120? What is a good medium?
I
I'm not saying you can never use the technique, only that everyone has to be below 100% of tank threat in order for you to use it safely because most ranged classes would normally consider more than 100% tank threat 'safe' if their threat wipe is up.
That's a good point, I was really only considering fights where everyone is staying below the tanks anyways such as Gruul or Void Reaver, fights where you actually care that you never exceed his threat.
Originally Posted by Nabbig
Ok I know that the general rule is to use a slow off hand, but I dont have one, I have a fast off hand,
That's not a general rule, its the rule. Get a slow off hand. Why don't you have one? Even if you can't get an Arena weapon yet you can still just go pick up a crappy green one-hand off the AH for a few gold. Dead serious here, a green off hander that is 2.6 speed with maybe 60 DPS on it will out perform a 90 DPS 1.8 or 1.5 speed dagger.
Originally Posted by Nabbig
Second, hit rateing. What is a good place to be?
I've just been emulating people who are doing a lot more DPS than me, like Sebudai, and so I've dumped down to around 120 rating and kept my 9% talented Hit. Seems to be working, not sure how much lower I could go.
I'm using a Decapitator (2.6 speed) as my MH weapon and a Runic Hammer (2.4 speed) as my OH. The Decapitator has Mongoose on it and aside from Flurry and Bloodlust, I have nothing else that affects my weapon speed. I use the WindfuryFu addon to track WF proc % and I consistently have a 15% proc rate with that weapon combo. I was under the impression that there was a hidden mechanic that increases the chance to proc WF up to 36% for eligible attacks (i.e. after the 3 sec cooldown is over) so with two slow weapons, you can end up with a WF proc rate around 19%. I'm not getting anywhere close to that. What kind of WF proc rate should I be seeing with 2.6 and 2.4 speed weapons?
Your proc percentage is directly related to your weapon speed.
The faster your weapons go the lower your proc percentage will be. This is because your attack speed increases but the WF cooldown stays the same. More hits inside of the cooldown = lower proc percentage.
This really shouldn't be of any concern. What you should be worried about is your WF "uptime". Or how often WF is actually on cooldown. Obviously you want it to be on cooldown as much as possible.
This is monitored by procs per minute. Take a minute of combat and count the WF procs.
The "20% chance to proc" could only really happen if you waited for WF to finish its cooldown before you swung every time. You would need a weapon with a speed of 4.3 to be able to maintain a 20% proc rate through flurry.
I don't know anything about "hidden mechanics", so maybe someone else here can help you with that.
Ussually I run with 89HR (5.64%), and with that I am doing very well at keeping with the DPS 'clump' in our raids or near the top of it. Most fights I can finish in the top5 easily, or right under the 2 rogues we bring to our raids if Aggro is not an issue. While I perform well with my current +hit gear, I will be gemming some of my new peices to help me reach my goal of having between 100-120HR because looking at WWS logs where I miss 17% makes me cringe.
At this point in raiding, when I pick up a new item, I will only be placing +hit on items where the stats are already very similar to what I currently have and adding the +hit will upgrade that value of that item to me. I am a fan of socket bonus' if they are reasonable so I try to stick with those too.
If you are interested in some WWS parses for the guild, here is a link: http://onibatsuguild.org/wws/
I am the only enhance shaman in the raid, and group composition is ussually 2 sword rogues, 1 arms warrior, feral, and me. We have been experimenting with a BM hunter in some recent groups. Comments on performance are appreciated and will be thoughtfully considered.
I fully understand my role as a group buffer so as long as I am clumped with other DPS'ers in the raid I believe I am performing well if my rogues top the charts. So far my favorite fight was when we do Fathom-Lord because our rogues double poison and it allows me to drop AGI which is easily a 75-100DPS boost for me. Ohh well, the things I do for the benefit of the raid.
The rogues double poison up until we engage fathom lord to help with the cast time reduction, it helped while learning on the priest, we will be doing him again this evening, so I will see if our strat changes or not. For the beginning of the fight the warrior in the group was offtanking the Shaman add for him, so Threat was not an issue but avoidance of WF's and mitigation was. As soon as the "Boss" was engaged WF was dropped for the group and they knew to clear thier own weapon buffs.
Just did some searching and am going to experiment with the Totem Twisting idea mentioned on a at least two other threads, as it will be a great boost to group DPS and my own. Probably not going to be shocking as much, but if a pally can keep JoW up, should have little to no mana issues.
May want to have grounding totem down for the shaman tank. Although WF burst is an issue, you can usually ground every frost shock, removing that additional amount of un-mitigated burst on the tank.
Also, aside from the above reasons to go the 3% hit route, theres also reasons for not going for the upper tier elemental any longer. Sham rage replaces the need for Convection and Elemental focus changes make it so inefficient its not worth taking. Even any DPS gain from Concussion is negligible beause shocks will only be around 10% of your damage base.
Resto is definitely a better use of points for enhancement.
This is blatantly untrue. Conection and Reverberation are a 26% increase in shock damage, so roughly 2.6% increased total damage, while 3% increased hit is roughly a 1.5-2% total DPS increase, not to mention nearly 1% crit from Elemental Devestation. The increased range on totems is nice, but it is incredibly situational and often there is no need for it at all (and often when you are moving that extra ten yards isnt going to help either), and I would say the increased interrupts allowed by reverberation could be considered similarly useful. I think both talent lines have their advantages and to say resto is 'definitely' better is a bit far fetched.
(That said I am thinking of switching to resto soon just for improved 'vanish')
Last edited by Wolflord : 07/10/07 at 12:05 AM.
Reason: spelling
Wolflord, you're not factoring in the hit you can drop due to your extra +3% hit talent. By dropping that extra 3% hit off your gear in favor of crit/str, you'll be increasing your DPS by more than your shocks would.
With all this information about hit rating, what is the sticking issue that keeps you still speccing into resto for the 3%? What are the numbers on elemental points for ele devastation/better shocks (which is a flat 140+ dps if you're able to maintain a full rotation - which ele lets you do easier) versus spending all the points for 3% spell/melee hit?
The more I follow the theory, the less inclined I am to believe that the resto hybrid is a worthwhile expenditure of points from a pure dps standpoint.
Also I think the issue he was making with the Lootzor link is a rather significant portion of the top items will result in very little hit to none hit rating overall.
The thing I like the most about a Resto minor is actually the +3% spell hit. My guild is fairly short on Rogues, so I'm relied upon to interrupt quite often. It's not a guarrantee, especially for bosses, but it certainly helps.
Ussually I run with 89HR (5.64%), and with that I am doing very well at keeping with the DPS 'clump' in our raids or near the top of it. Most fights I can finish in the top5 easily, or right under the 2 rogues we bring to our raids if Aggro is not an issue. While I perform well with my current +hit gear, I will be gemming some of my new peices to help me reach my goal of having between 100-120HR because looking at WWS logs where I miss 17% makes me cringe.
At this point in raiding, when I pick up a new item, I will only be placing +hit on items where the stats are already very similar to what I currently have and adding the +hit will upgrade that value of that item to me. I am a fan of socket bonus' if they are reasonable so I try to stick with those too.
I would recommend never using hit gems, and just trying to find some more gear with +HR on it
also to calculate the bonus of a socket just simply use the math of it say a strength gem has the weight of 8.8 and your hit gem only 4 ish, Then simply add your bonus and see if its worth getting. If it is merely the look of having the gems match up for the socket bonus then thats pretty disappointing. Im using a dragonmaw with a green level 63 offhand for 2.6 speed =(.
Hey guys, i'm a fairely new raiding enhancement shaman been on the job for about a month or so now, did the rounds on my own server talking to enhancement shamans as well as WoW forums for shamans and they led my here in the end.
I believe i've gathered a pretty decent enhancement set to date but I am just wondering about the actual hit cap for shamans, I briefly read through a few of the posts concerning it on this thread and it seems like a few of you guys dropped to as low as 80 reaching up to 180/200.
My stats atm completely unbuffed are;
1448 AP
239 HR
26.40% Crit chance
I've been piling the 8 strength gems into my sockets as much as I can while keeping my Meta gem working. I was informed on my server that the hit cap is 24% from my chief source but reading this topic it's suggested it is 22% so I was just wondering if I could get a clarification on this, sorry I can't make complete sense of the opening post.
As for what amount of hit to use, I'm still at 190ish + 9% from talents, others use way less, I'm comfortable with my present amount, and although I am tempted to drop more, I can't convince myself to do so...yet.
As for what amount of hit to use, I'm still at 190ish + 9% from talents, others use way less, I'm comfortable with my present amount, and although I am tempted to drop more, I can't convince myself to do so...yet.
Both Relwin and I have had misses with over 26% hit on boss mobs: Hit Caps (no, we weren't counting dodge/parries as misses)
And I've been trying to drop some hit for AP/crit to see how my DPS is affected, but have few conclusions so far as I keep getting upgrades and poor bosses to test damage on (really need to get in on an Attumen kill I think).
Id strongly advise against killing yourself on any encounter just to get a threat wipe. Suiciding by means of taking agro from the MT is the worst way to do this, as it brings many unforseen risks (turning the boss towards the raid, making it vulnerable for cleave-like attacks; transferring agro to ranged dps; nerfing the rage-building capacities of the mantank). But just dying on itself should never be the preferable solution.
First of all youre not rly increasing youre dps at all by dying. Being dead youre doing zero dps for starters, and in many encounters you cant 'just ankh' once dead, you have to wait for the right time so that you wont be insta killed again by some random boss-ability. So you have to wait for the right moment and contribute absolutely nothing dps-wise till that moment. Once ressed up youll have no buffs, have very little mana (and it would be very inefficient to calculate this into a SR-rotation), and low health. So you want to place the burden on paladins, druids, priests, mages, warriors to get you fully buffed again? Those buffs add considerably to your dps, its very doubtfull theyll be replaced fast when you suicided yourself.
But not only are you nerfing your own dps, more important even is that youre nerfing the dps of your melee group. With your suicide they lose their strength and windfury - the SINGLE reason youre in the raid in the first place: BEING DPS-SUPPORT. So what if youre hitting the agro-cap once a while, its irrelevant, the main goal of an enhancement shaman is to SUPPORT the MAIN-dps - not to be nr 1 in dmg themselves.
Finaly, the reason no shaman should ever waste an ankh just to clear his agro-table, is that ankhs serve primarily as a way to resurrect the raid should, by some mistake, the raid wipe and needs resurrection-recovery. Ankhs are a saveguard, a backup should something unforseen go wrong. Ankhs should be saved for emergencies, and there will allways be emergencies in encounters that matter. Using ankhs as agro-wipe can afterall only be needed in encounters where there are issues with getting high enough dps. Those encounters are generaly the hard ones, the ones youre still training on, the ones where youll want to save your ankh as EMERGENCY-BACKUP - becouse in those encounters there WILL be emergencies.
So imo there are way too many disadvantages to make a suicide-agro wipe attractive in any encounter. Id be interested if anyone can show me an encounter where this method would lead to significant increase in (overall) dps so that it would outweigh its many disadvantages
07/08/07, 10:00 PM
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