Totemologist

Background - I took up dragonscale lw to create the Netherstrike Set and keep my mana efficency up via the [Drums of Restoration] instead of being slave to mana pots (or at least as much of a slave to them).

To my dismay, the set carries 3x Blue Gem Slots coupled with compelling socket bonuses. Since I do want to retain the bonuses and not limit my options for a Meta Gem, I decided to go with 3x of the +Dam/+Spell Pen Gems. I chose this as I stay right at hit cap with gear + spec yet I am often getting partial/full resists on Raid targets.

____________


Forward - I was recently a bit 'called out' for my 'poor' selection of gem. Which sparked a bigger debate for me:

How effective is Spell Penetration in PvE Raiding?

I have done some research and come up with little to offer in ways of support or refuse for the stat. Little seems to be known. I do know that my Nature Spells are not bolstered by CoE/CoS and that being able to penetrate some minor amounts of resistance can't be a bad thing.

What is the (if any) resistance of a Raid Mob/Boss under normal circumstances?

What is the (if any) resistance of a Raid Mob/Boss under special resistance circumstances? (Like SSC, The Eye)


Thanks for any insight.

 

• Nite_Moogle

Spell Penetration is totally and completely worthless in PVE and has never been proven to be useful in a single encounter.

I need to add that to the sticky, I guess.

Gurgthock: the time taken to implement the 10 hugs achievement could have been used to make a new 5-man

 

Totemologist

Thanks for the quick reply.

So by your experiences, there is no base resistances on ?? NPC's or any effect that Spell Penetration can play in reducing the amount of full/partial resists that I get (even at +hit cap)?

 

Lambach

Usually I'd agree with you moogle. However, don't we usually base that on the fact that the locks have COE/COS up? With an elemental shaman, wouldnt they still have to burst through that extra resistance the mob has?

 

• Nite_Moogle

Unless someone discovers that a boss has a resist rate at or above 20% over the course of a few weeks throwing lightning bolts at it, I sincerely doubt it. Very few mobs have any sort of resists at all, they are generally either immune or everything hits/resists at an expected rate. If this does turn out to be the case then a small amount of spell penetration might prove useful.

Gurgthock: the time taken to implement the 10 hugs achievement could have been used to make a new 5-man

 

Roywyn

Almost all the partial (and even some total I think) resists you see on raid bosses - and any mob with a level higher than you, i.e. 71+ - are due to level difference, and cannot be overcome by anything at all.

In PvE, 99% of the mobs you face have zero resistances, making spell penetration useless against them.

Noticable exceptions:
Molten Giants/Destroyers and Golemagg - fire resistance
Azuregos - frost resistance
Chromatic and Nether Dragonkin (UBRS, Netherstorm, Nazan in Hellfire Ramparts) - resistance to many schools
Arcane Protectors - ~150 arcane resistance

That should be about it, correct me if I missed something.

All other mobs you face have zero resistances (some are immune and you just have to switch spells scholls / raid spots, but that's another matter), having CoS/CoE will only increase the damage done by 10-13% and have no other impact.
No resistance there, nothing that spell penetration will change. Except for eating up item budget.

Unless you want to gear only for farming Heroic Ramparts, just forget about spell penetration.

 

Overhead

Magmadar and his hounds are the last mobs that I can think about that had any resist (fire) short of immunity. In the vast majority of cases, that spell penetration does absolutely nothing. It's a pvp stat to counter resist gear, pally auras, shammy totems, and drood buffs.

 

Totemologist

Off to Wowhead to find a more suitable gem. >.> I think I recall not really seeing anything of interest before leaving me fixated on the Spell Pen to begin with.



Edit: Seems like I can add some stam while retaining the +Crit in that position, I will do this in due time.

Thanks for the input, so far I like what I see from the threads in this forum. It is refreshing to not seek advice on the WoW Boards.

 

kraj

Has anyone actually thoroughly tested this?

I know it's simply conjecture based, but when I added 40 spell pen to my PVE elemental gear I noticed less partials(this was starting back on gruul).

Now this is based solely off personal experience, and obviously can be clouded--but is there actual evidence of all current raid mobs having no innate resistance?

 

• Nite_Moogle

WWS or it didn't happen.

Gurgthock: the time taken to implement the 10 hugs achievement could have been used to make a new 5-man

 

Phro

So, if penetration is really worthless does that make:
Formula: Enchant Cloak - Subtlety
the best enchant for a ele shammy?

 

Totemologist

Hehe


I have actually theorycrafted the +26 Healing/ -2% Threat Meta Gem >.>


God Bless my fellow aggro (dunno if I can swear here) Shaman.

 

Lambach

The Big robots in Kara in the library have about 150 arcane resist.

To the OP, even after all this conjecture, I don't think there is any way that spell pen can be better then other gems you could have in those sockets, even if mobs do resist. I'd suggest 9 spell dmg for all your sockets.

 

◊ Sarutobi

Unfortunately the only stat other than spell penetration that can be found on blue/blue hybrid gems that would be of interest to a DPS caster would be mp5, which currently is never on a gem that also has spell damage (only healing). I did find a couple gems that may work for you though (all green gems, all from heroics).

Lambent Chrysoprase Spell Hit + mp5
Rune Covered Chrysoprase Spell Crit + mp5
Dazzling Chrysoprase Int + mp5 (I know it's not ideal, but it does help w/ sustained DPS (slightly))

The problem there, though, would be he would lose all of the socket bonuses. (All of the sockets on the set are either blue or yellow.)

 

Totemologist

Aye. That and most of the Meta Gems that interest me have some Blue Gem requirement.

 

Lambach

Its probably not worth the set bonuses....but....if it is....

Theres the spell dmg/stam meta isnt there?

These set bonuses woudl have to be pretty awesome if every gem slot is blue and yellow and you have to gimp that much to get around it. Although yellow is nice for crit/dmg.

Edit: Its called glowing nightseye. If that having those in all the blue slots plus the set bonus doesnt equal the amount of dmg that comes from just straight 9 spell dmg gems though, that means its probably not worth it.

 

Totemologist

While +Dam is very valuable, raiding requires a high budget of crit (mana efficency). I actually put Crit/Dam gems in every slot that is yellow or red. Once you start to get real diminishing returns on crit (unknown level to me, but I am not at it yet) then budgeting more into +Dam is viable. For raiding I am at 759 + dam and 34.69% crit to LB (no buffs, no ToW) Once ToW is down and I am raid buffed and have consumables I am at about ~40% crit. I think I am reaching a crit level where I will see alot more DPS from +dam than I will from 'just more crit'.

Once I start getting some t4-t5 I will be more inclined to socket Damage over Crit, but for now Clearcasting keeps me in the game.

 

Ghando

Spell damage scales faster on Elemental Shamans than it does on any other class in the game, with the possible exception of Affliction Warlocks (not super familiar with theorycrafting on DOTs, so I'll stay away from it). Crit scales nicely too, but only assuming you're going to be limited by mana concerns. Personally, I always have a Shadow Priest while raiding 25-mans, and in Karazhan/whatever where I don't have one I use Totem of the Pulsing Earth and mana pots/Drums of Restoration to keep nuking. In general, "I don't want to spend mana pots" isn't a compelling reason to adhere to any practice.

Anyway, crit is nice. But adopt some Mage theorycrafting, which states hit > damage > crit even for Fire Mages (210% crit damage as opposed to our 200%). Now consider that Lightning Mastery allows Lightning Bolt to scale ridiculously well with +damage, and consider that any Elemental Shaman with half-decent gear is able to get hit capped. In that case, it doesn't make sense to be socketing your gear with 8 crit rating gems. Yes, crit is nice and it's important to have ~20% unbuffed spell crit on your character sheet. But crit doesn't become this end-all-be-all of itemization until your damage is limited by mana. Which, assuming ideal group set-ups, it shouldn't be.

Personally, I use a Spell Penetration enchant on my cloak and put dmg/stam gems in my blue sockets. You can milk more damage out of +9 damage gems, but I see one of the class's strengths as being the toughest DPS casters out there. Being an absolutely min/maxed tailoring-style glass cannon doesn't appeal to me, particularly since damage gets thrown around so liberally in TBC raids. To my thinking, my personal DPS isn't as important as the buffs I'm giving to my group on top of that DPS. I cannot buff my group while dead.

 

duostrike

I haven't seen any conclusive testing one way or the other. All my experience is "anecdotal" with my mage and shaman and not really worth mentioning.

As far as the limited testing that people have done with spell pen + mages the "agreed upon" conclusion was that COE/COS removes the resists, not that mobs don't have resists. As far as damage gains on a mob with resistance I believe it's pretty cheap item budget wise.

That being said I like -20 resist on a cloak over the other available enchants. I wouldn't socket my gear for penetration though.

 

• Maledict

There's a scary amount of misinformation in this thread, particulary stuff like :

Please use the search function. The *only* thing that came out of boss parsing was that there are no resists on any boss in TBC and original WoW, apart from a vcouple of oddities in Mc / BWl, and that the partial resists you get due to your level difference cannot be modified by any stat.

Spell penetration is a pure Pvp statistic, and should be completely ignored by anyone who doesn't PvP.

 

galzohar

Depends, sometimes the socket bonus is good enough for the damage loss to be small to non-existant for a decent stamina gain when you use a glowing nightseye, but in general for dps hit>damage>crit and if you're hit capped forget about more hit ;p and stam is never an issue, but dropping for example effective 1-2 spell damage for 6 stam or 4 spell damage for 10 stam isn't totally bad. Argueable though and useless on many fights, but if it's an item you're never planning to take off (even in fights where you do need stam) then it's worth considering based on the actual item and its socket bonus and other gem slots.

As for meta requirements, just forget it, you're not going to have more blue than yellow unless you gimp your gems in 1 way or another, and besides, 1/2 cast time bolt is still 1.5s GCD.

 

Totemologist

Hehe, definalty not going for more blue then yellow. I was looking more at the ones that (recently were reduced from 5?) to require 2 of each gem. Seeing as I need 2 minimum for the most interesting Metas, having the third the set has filled for the bonus is not terrible. None of my other gear even has a blue gem slot (yet).


BTW - I am loving the Netherstrike (went LW off of an Ezereth recommendation), it is not too often you add ~4% spell crit in the matter of a weekend farming. Hopefully I will pick up the Vet's Mail Sabatons this weekend and take my focus off of raw crit and back into Spell Damage (Goal Pre SSC for me is 25% paper doll crit and > 820 dam) easily doable with a few Tier 4 and the right chants.

 

duostrike

You know what's scary? Statements like "no resists on any boss in TBC" from people who have not done every single boss in TBC and people that speak in absolutes like "IT'S NEVER EVER EVER useful except for pvp". Unless you are on the dev team and know how much resists go on each mob in the game you you can't speak in absolutes.

I'd like to see parses both ways. However, I'm not going to tell warlocks hey don't put up COE for me because I want to do some testing. I'd wager that Nightbane has some fire resistance from the times that I've done him without COE up. However, i'm not going to come into a thread with no evidence and say HEY HE HAS FIRE RESIST with no conclusive evidence. Likewise I would expect those who come in and say "there are no bosses with resists in TBC" to have some evidence to support that claim.

Shaman testing might be a bit easier since there is no -nature resist curse (i guess besides thunderfury) and you can control your individual penetration gear better. However, that would just be for nature resists and wouldn't prove anything about the other schools of damage.

 

Miaxi

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24056
Use glowing nighteyes.

 

Benji