Sven

Now that they've changed the Relentless Earthstorm Diamond (+12 agi, +3% crit damage) to apply to all forms of critical damage and not simply physical critical damage, would this be a viable metagem for an elemental shaman?

Take average stats for a moderately-well raiding ele shammy, and you should have around 33% chance to crit with lightning bolt. Say their lightning bolt hits for a average of 1.8k, that'd be a crit for 3.6k. Has anyone been able to figure out whether this would add 1800 * 0.03 = 54 damage to every crit (making it equivalent to ~20 spell damage) or whether this would add 3600 * 0.03 = 108 to every crit (making it equivalent to ~40 spell damage)? If it's the latter, this would be a monumental gem for ele shammies. Especially considering the only other good options are +12 spell damage/minor run speed, +14 spell damage/5% stun resist and 14 crit rating/1% spell reflect.

 

Zeblök

Hmm, might you have a link to the patchnotes were this is said ?

 

Azide

The WoW site is down right now but from the today's patch notes:

 

Maratai

For link to patch notes while WoW site is down:

http://www.worldofraids.com/#4912

 

◊ Rob

For melee, we know that it makes crits equal to 203% of regular damage, not 206% of regular damage. If this metagem actually does apply to spell crits, I would expect similar behavior -- crits become 153% of damage (203% with talents).

 

Sven

Hmm, kind of disappointing. Regardless, at a certain amount of +damage, a Relentless Earthstorm would still be more powerful than a destructive skyfire (+14 spell crit/1% spell reflect) or a swift starfire diamond (+12 spell damage/minor run speed), right? Anyone know what that cut-off point would be?

 

◊ Sarutobi

For casters I would expect it to act more like the crit boosting talents (eg. Ice Shards) which are actually only an increase to the critical strike damage bonus. If that's the case it would end up actually making crits do 201.5% dmg for spells.

 

Sven

Well, it certainly seems like someone's going to have to spend a fair amount of time with Dr. Boom, in that case.

206% = very worth it
203% = possibly worth it
201.5% = doubtfully worth it

I'd imagine, at least.

Can anyone confirm any of this?

 

Reservoirdog

As with virtually all crit vs spell dmg debate, there is no linear function, so the amount of +dmg you have, determines how much +dmg equals 1% crit. The more +dmg you have the more useful this gem will be. What i have found to work pretty well, is to simplify the math. What i do, when i dont feel like writing up a HUGE algebraic formula is look at percentages. If u know the % of dps increase, you dont need to do the rest of the algebra . mana effeciency is a diff story however, so i will not be discussing that now(clear cast ect.)

Average dmg= average lb dmg* (hit%) + [(hit %) * (crit%) * average lb dmg]

First thing first, maxing hit is vital as it makes math SOO much easier, and is the best stat. 1% hit = 1% dps increase, plain and simple. 1% crit = 1% dps increase * hit percent. so at hit cap (100%) 1%crit now equals 1% dps increase.

Like i stated earlier the % increase in dps from +dmg dps VARIES. for example if your lb hits for 1800, you would need less +dmg to equal 1% crit than if you have an average lb of 2000. However +18 dmg will not be a 1% dps increase if you average 1800 dmg on lb, as you must account for crits, which will add 36 dmg. You can use the equation above to determine the value of +dmg as well as average dmg, just substitue average lb dmg with how much +dmg u are adding.


Damage increase from +dmg= +dmg* (hit%) + [(hit %) * (crit%) * (+dmg)]

These are just very crude equations, and do not incorporate talents etc. I know there are alot of "mistakes" and that these numbers are not exact, but they do give the basic idea, and they show you the general trend of dimishing returns on +dmg as compared to hit/crit. Using this you can easily figure out how much dmg the different meta gems will give you depending on your own stats.

I will now show an approximate % of dps gained by the original poster, using the stats that he gave. If the meta gem gives 80 spell dmg (according to original poster 40dmg @3% so 80dmg @6% increase, given that average lb hits for 1800) you must multiply this by your crit %, as you would only get the spell dmg on crits. So at 50% crit you would have 40 +dmg from this gem if it is 206% dmg(which i highly doubt). plugging this into the equation i have gives you:
40 *100% + (100% *50% *40) = 60 dps increase

%damage increase= 60(dmg increase)/1800(average dmg b4 increase) = 3.33% damage increase

However at 30% crit the damage increase is more like this:
40*100% + (100% *30% * 40) = 52 dps increase
% damage increase= 52/1800 = 2.88%

If the meta gem only gives 203% or 201.5%, all you have to do is divide the % dps increase by 2 or 4 respectively.

Hopefully this helps somebody, and i would appreciate any constructive input. As i stated earlier i know there are alot of things missing, but this is a basic starting point.

 

• Chicken

You might find this thread interesting.

Long story short, Relentless works for spells, and has weird mystic voodoo going with how it increases damage done. It basically ends up providing 4.5% extra crit damage base on spells, which is further multiplied by any crit damage multipliers you have. I.E. For an Elemental Shaman it turns into 9% extra crit damage.

As I understand it, it basically attempts to provide 3% extra damage on your base crit damage, before getting further multiplied. The base crit damage for spells is 150%, 3% of that is 4.5%, and twice that from the talent is 9%.

I'd expect it to be providing 6% extra crit damage for melee as well though, I'm unsure if someone has tested that.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Sven

After mucking around and doing some calculations, I came up with a nice summary of how the RED works:

100% + {(150%*1.03) - 100%} * (100% + TDI) = Crit Damage
Where

100% is the normal damage

{(150%*1.03) - 100%} is the crit damage with the relentless earthstorm diamond (would normally be 150% - 100% or simply 50%). This would be {(200% * 1.03) - 100%) for melee damage.

(100% + TDI) is the total damage increased from talents, with TDI as the percent increase from talents (100% for ele shammies using Elemental Fury, Locks using Ruin, Moonkin using Vengeance; 50% for arcane mages using spell power; 30% for rogues using lethality; etc)

For simplicity's sake, here's a list of crit damage increase from the Relentless Earthstorm Diamond:

(Note that Ignite is not a crit modifier – it just multiplies the total damage done by 1.4. Ignite is also included in the final crit damage %)


Moonkin: 209% - 200% = 9%
Feral Druid: 216.6% - 210% = 6.6%

Marksmanship Hunter: 237.8% - 230% = 7.8%

Arcane Mage: 181.75% - 175% = 6.75%
Arcane/Frost Mage: 236.25% -225% = 11.25%
Fire Mage: 216.3% - 210% = 6.3%
Arcane/Fire mage: 254.45% - 245% = 9.45%

Lethality Rogue: 237.8% - 230% = 7.8%

Elemental Shaman: 209% - 200% = 9%

Ruin Warlock: 209% - 200% = 9%

Arms Warrior: 220% - 227.2% = 7.2%


So, I'm sure the gem becomes completely overpowered once you get some really good gear as an ele shammy. If you were shooting 2k lighting bolts at 45% crit rate (I'd assume this is tip-top gear, full tier 6 and whatnot), your average LB (including crits) would be 2900. Add in the RED and you add about 180 damage per crit, raising your average LB (still including crits) to 2981. Assuming I calculated it correctly, this would be equivalent to adding ~70 spell damage.

 

Melthar

Just a quick note, the Feral talent = 220% damage (increases damage of crits by 10%, not crit bonus damage by 10%, talent description reads different to lethality.)

All very nice information however.

 

Kegsta

Im going to give this a whirl tonight on my ele sham, I'm currently 37% crit +1117 damage with totems so losing 12+ damage should be well worth it.

@ Sven
Very nice calculations, so basicly the same thing that causes casters with crit talents to take a double hit from resilance lets us gain a double hit from this.

Remember arms warriors Impale and Rouges Lethality only work on yellow attacks.

On wowhead the druid talent reads 'Increases critical strike damage bonus with melle attacks by 10%'

 

Melthar

Wowhead is out of date. The talent has always performed at 220% or 230% (used to read 15% increase) but the tooltip was updated a couple of patches back. Current in game tooltip reads: "increases your damage from melee critical strikes by 10%"