The thread is old and it has since been conclusively proven that Bloodlust/Heroism don't affect the global cooldown.

The search function is right at the top of every damn page in the menu bar.

Sorry man. I've been reading the site for a while now but never registered until today. It would appear that the search function does not work if you aren't registered, hence why I couldn't find it.

When talking of mages and bloodlust you guys seems to missing something...
Warriors gets tonnes of damage from bloodlust sub 20% but so do mages, in our typical spriest-ele shaman-3x mage(usualy all fire) group, we make sure to save bloodlust for 19% (unless its a 'special' phased fight like illidan or kael ofc). Coupling a destro potion, a flame cap, molten fury and bloodlust make for some pretty wicked damaged, very well beyond a 30% increase

As for the main question of this topic, I think theres still the human factor to add in, if the shaman really wants to be elemental pve spec, he's probably going to find that being put in the melee group isnt too fun...

This is not how mages work at all.

Your second point is irrelevant because SnD and DST are already assumed when counting your white damage. In fact depending on blizzard adds up the numbers, this fact could potentially reduce rogue gains from bloodlust. Unlikely, but if the effects are stacked as additive haste rating you are actually gaining less than a 30% increase to white damage. Your best case scenario is a straight 30% increase to white damage. Typical rogue stats I've seen show about 60% white damage for a combat rogue using sinister strike. You can multiply this against blade flurry and an attack power trinket for some good stacking synergy. Increased combat potency procs will increase yellow damage by a decent amount, but cannot ever be increased by more than 30%. The increase would be roughly proportional to the amount of energy gained from CP compared to total regen. Randomness of procs will result in some energy loss from not being able to use all globals/combo points effectively. "Lucky" string of procs will result in the rogue being capped at 100 energy for a short time. Resulting finishers from the extra combo points will be less efficient than the normally used finishers. Ad Rush has no stacking effect with bloodlust because it only affects energy regen. Rough estimate totals all this to be around 23-24% increase to dps for rogues.

Warriors I'm not gonna touch, assume lust over execute and yay good dps and such. I doubt the rage gain will put warriors over 30% total though, since again, only the white damage is directly increased, yellow damage is increased as a trickle down effect. Important point here is that your melee group likely only has one dps warrior. Maybe it has 2.

Mages: Assume good use of stopcasting which typically results in .2 seconds of latency for a spell, reducing initial affect gain to dps by about 2%. Base 28% gain to overall dps. Mana is not a concern (even for arcane) because most encounters will leave the mage with a heavy surplus of mana at the end. Count on exceptions. Arcane Blast spam is an extremely innefficient way to convert excess mana into damage, AB spam effect on dps for an arcane mage on the typical encounter is neglible, perhaps 3-4% of total damage. Count partial loss of AB spam mana as 1% damage lost. End up with 27% overall gain to dps from lust. Count in stacking against Arcane Power (30% over 15 sec), Molten Fury (20% in execute range), or Water Elemental (~30% for 45 seconds) and generic caster spell damage trinket. These timers are all much more effective stacking than the rogue's only option Blade Flurry. In particular, giving bloodlust and WoA to the water elemental is an obscene dps boost.

For warlocks or shadow priests: Destro warlocks get similar benefit, minus timer stacking, since they do nothing but nukes. Affliction, spriest or other counts ~40% of damage from nukes. So count maybe 11% additional damage for those classes/specs. Generally group comp will be 1 shadow priest and 3 nukers, affliction locks are extremely efficient and usually are low priority for spriest group.

Overall comparison is bloodlust is best used on mages, destro warlocks are a close second. Warriors are somewhere around here on this scale but I'm not sure where. Rogues would be third, shadow priests would get the least benefit. If you're looking at a standard 3x rogue vs 3x mage/destrolock group, bloodlust is far and away better for the caster group.

I've been searching around these forums, reading through hundreds of pages of threads, and I haven't found a concise comparison of relative benefits to class by totem type.

If the question is "what is better, windfury or GoA", or "what benefit does an enhancement shaman bring a melee group", those questions are answered many times over.

But here we have a question - what is the relative benefit of an elemental shaman for a melee group vs a casting group - and the responses are not terribly quantified, and do not contain links to threads that have already done so.

The simple and straightforward answer to the question was:

"So in the most basic sense, the answer to your question is that the buff comparison is 86str (86ap for rogues, 172ap for warriors/ret pala/druids, not counting BoK) and WF vs 3% spellhit, 3% spellcrit, 12mp2(30mp5) and 121 (with T4 bonus) spelldmg."

That's the difference, but what is the relative implication of those buffs?

The melee side is pretty well hashed out and easy to get an entry-level answer (though post-nerf windfury information is not as easily accessible). The implications of the caster side don't seem to be well-defined.

Perhaps I'm mistaken about this. I have done a lot of searching, and maybe I'm just missing an obvious search term, but I'm not seeing the caster benefits quantified in terms of dps impacts or even discussed much, aside from the seemingly obvious "elemental should be in caster group, enhancement in melee group". And even that is questionable if you just have 1 shaman and he's elemental, according to this thread.

My apologies if I've been missing something blatantly obvious. I don't want to clutter these forums and wouldn't post at all if I had found this sort of information using the search function. This thread was the best discussion on the subject I found.

3% crit is slightly less than 3% DPS for crit-capable casters (much less for shadow priests/affliction warlocks of course, check appropriate spreadhseets for accurate values).
3% hit depends on the casters' gear. If they're capped before that, it's useless. If they can get other stats instead to take advantage of it, then they're benefiting based on the stats they got from their gear instead of hit. Generally the itemization cost of 3% hit is ~37-38 rating which is the same itemization cost of ~42 spell damage.
Last time I looked at my mage's spreadsheet I saw 20-25 spell damage needed for 1% DPS increase. Check appropriate spreadsheets for more accurate numbers.

Windufry gains are more complicated, obviously, and will require high quality spreadsheets (and don't forget boss armor levels).

Also remember that if a rogue does 1500 DPS and a mage does 1200 DPS, buffing the rogue by 5% is better than buffing the mage by 5%... If the rogue sucks though and does 1000 DPS you're better off buffing the mage.

Overall there's no definitive answer as there's a lot to take into account and a lot of what you need to take into account is specific to your raid composition and even their actual gear.

3% hit, 3% crit.... AND +101 dmg.
=> +12.3% increase for a 21/40 lock based on the excel spreadsheet.

I find it hard to belive that +101 or(121) spelldmg could give a static % increase in warlock damage. This must be a whole lot diffrent between diffrent gearlevels. Like if you have 700 spelldmg of course 101 is gonna be a pretty big %, but when the lock has like 1700, it would be a whole lot less. Without giving some additional numbers, that 12.3% is useless for comparing numbers.

In my opinion the druid is better served being in the Hunter group. A ret paladin provides some buffs to his own group, benefits a huge amount from windfury, and buffs the entire raid more than any other single class. My melee group would be rogue, rogue, warrior, ret paladin, enhance shaman.

If the original poster only has 1 raiding shaman, than all I can say is recruit more. Enhance (WF) is the biggest group buff there is, Elemental is a close second, and Resto shaman are incredible for general raid healing with chain heal.

Stamina and spell damage seem to cost less than ratings/int/spi/str/agi. You get 9 spell damage on a gem but only 8 stats/ratings, and you can also get 12 stam instead.

Anyway obviuosly you don't get static %dps increases, it depends on your gear. Even if you look at the actual DPS (say 50 dps, or 100 dps etc) increase it'll still depend on the gear. But SoE/windfury benefits also depend on the melee group's gear.

Bottom line is you could take an average geared warlock+2 mages+shadow priest and compare their benefit to average 3 rogues + dps warrior and get a pretty good idea which way is giving more dps (and if you really want to get it better calculate the benefit of a feral/hunter instead of the shaman in the melee group and another mage/lock in the caster group when the shaman isn't there). But then once your group composition isn't that perefect or when the gear level isn't as equal as you assumed you have to just re-do the math or settle with possibly playing a little bit suboptimally.

I was considering an average warlock (~25% crit, ~1300dmg, ~13%hit(+3% from the totem)).
FYI:
1300dmg => 1400dmg gives 5.8% increase to dps
1400dmg => 1500dmg gives 5.4% increase to dps
1500dmg => 1600dmg gives 5.2% increase to dps
etc...
Of course, the totem does not provide a flat increase, but my example was just giving an idea of the benefit of an elemental chamy to an average 21/40 warlock.

For an average 21/40 warlock, the 3cr/3hit gives about +5.5-6.5% dps, the +101 dmg totem gives about +5-6% dps

A destruction warlock doesn't come with hit talents, its a pretty safe bet to assume he can drop below the cap to take advantage of the shaman/isn't hit capped (at certain gear levels.).

Not if he's capped using gems or just doesn't have something better to replace the hit items with. Many of the items with hit on them are overall good and/or have hit through gems, in both cases it's hard to gain damage by lowering hit.
Granted if you use something like T4 chest with damage/hit gems you can swap it easily for FSW, but if you have T6 or FSW was DEd?... Overall it varies a lot between different warlocks.

All it takes is 2 different cloaks, perhaps a wand swap and a glove swap. There's nothing particularly difficult about swapping out some hit.

I didn't say it's difficult, it's just something that in reality will not always be an option, especially if you don't regularly run with an elemental shaman and/or need to bid DKP for those spare items. Again I'm not saying to ignore the hit at all, actaully the average good lock *should* have those, but it's another thing that will change between different raids towards the "windfury - casters vs melee" descision.