DamnDirtyApe

Since the ratio on gems is 12 dmg to 10 haste, if the spreadsheet tells you that 1 haste is worth more than 1.2 damage you should gem quick lionseye, and less than 1.2 damage runed crimson spinel. If your gear is such that the next 1 haste is equivalent to 1.2 damage, this is a good ratio and you should keep it as close to that as possible by gemming Reckless Pyrestone.

In practice due to how often your stats can change, you should probably begin gemming reckless pyrestone when the ratio is in the range of 1.1 to 1.3.

 

Arelenda

Lots and lots of testing. I recall two paladins using grey swords on a ZG boss with a healer, producing hours of data on melee swings. Analysing those gave us a good idea of the difference that upping your weapon skill gave. This was back when weapon skill was using the old mechanic that made very little sense.

 

Rozzenwyn

Oh nice. Thanks for the heads up I'll have to look for that.

 

Ammanas

Alright, now that we've seen most of the SW loot table I guess we can start the debate about the absolute "optimal" gearset. This is assuming a 202 hit cap (no ele shaman or aura) and ignoring the Mu'ru trinket because there are still some questions to be answered about it. Here is what I came up with:

Head: [Hood of the Malefic] Socketed with CSD and [Forceful Seaspray Emerald]
Neck: [Amulet of Unfettered Magics]
Shoulder: [Amice of the Convoker] R:[Runed Crimson Spinel] Y:[Forceful Seaspray Emerald]
Back: [Nethervoid Cloak]
Chest: [Sunfire Robe] R:[Runed Crimson Spinel] x3
Wrist: [Bracers of the Malefic] Y:[Veiled Pyrestone]
MH: [Sunflare]
OH: [Chronicle of Dark Secrets]
Wand: [Wand of the Demonsoul] Y: [Reckless Pyrestone]
Hands: [Sunfire Handwraps] R:[Runed Crimson Spinel] x2
Waist: [Belt of the Malefic] Y:[Reckless Pyrestone]
Legs: [Leggings of Calamity] R:[Runed Crimson Spinel]x2 Y:[Veiled Pyrestone]
Feet: [Boots of the Malefic] Y:[Reckless Pyrestone]
Ring: [Loop of Forged Power]
Ring: [Mana Attuned Band]
Trinket: [The Skull of Gul'dan]
Trinket: [Hex Shrunken Head]

Suprisingly to me, from what I've found playing around with the spreadsheet the best option for the non-SW T6 piece is actually the helmet (I had thought it would be better to use the Illidan helm and T6 gloves). Really the main challenge is balancing everything around the hit cap.. originally I was using [Heart of the Pit] with more hit gems but the rage OH with more non-hit gems actually came up as the better route for me.

Obviously, the Mu'ru trinket will most likely take the HSH trinket spot. I'm also intrigued by the Mu'ru ring, but I was doing most of this spreadsheet testing for myself and I personally will have to use the ZA/Crafted ring because I got them enchanted and then dropped Enchanting for LW. I also didn't consider the engineering helm or the JC neck.

One surprising thing I noticed in doing all of this is that it seems the gap between personal DPS from Fire and Shadow stays about the same from full optimal Bt/Hyjal gear to full optimal SW gear.. I had assumed that one would scale better with gear than the other.

I'm sure I'm missing some things, and people will be able to improve upon this. I just wanted to share my preliminary findings.

 

Ludwig

I also found that keeping the T6 helm as your only non-SW T6 piece is the way to go. This is mainly because the token cloth dps helm turn in is kind of underwhelming with its lack of +hit. Unless Kil'jaeden drops a different helm keeping T6 is still better. The other SW upgrades you listed for non-SW T6 (shoulder, leggings, gloves, and chest) all yield significant dps increase over their T6 counterpart compared to the relatively minor one the Illidan helm has over T6 helm.

 

Dragones

Wouldnt 6 dmg 7 stam gem still be better then 5 haste 7 stam?

 

LockApologist

I thought so too, but looking at the TNS values, I see shadow scaling .01 dps more on +dmg, ~.10 for haste/crit. So, not very much difference.

EDIT: I plugged in the gear you listed, and, at the gear level, shadow outscales fire by .10 in dmg, and ~.30 for crit, .20 for Haste.

Additionally, Pendant of Sunfire + a few hit gems turned out better than Twins neck. Goggles are not worth losing a different SW pc to T6 from the helm.

 

Gumibear

Putting a 6 damage 7 stamina gem in a red socket, assuming you'd normally want a 12 damage gem, is a loss of 6 damage. Putting a 5 haste 7 stamina gem in a yellow socket, assuming you'd normally use a 6 damage 5 haste gem, is a loss of 6 damage. The opportunity cost is the same with either gem, but shadowsong amethysts are higher demand than seaspray emeralds for most guilds.

 

Flamingcloud

Well it seems pretty clear to me that it will be the 3 new T6 + T6 shoulders (they have good hit).. There will definitely be a no spirit helm on kil'jaeden with stats similar to the elemental shaman helm. Also I found m'uru ring to be superior, and to just gem hit instead of using mana attuned/captured storms.

 

Rozzenwyn

Quart GCD bar. Where is it? I enabled it and didn't change any of the default settings and I didn't see it anywhere. Can someone give me an idea of where on the screen it should show up? There was an option that said "bottom, top, free" that you could pick. The default was "bottom" so I left it at that. But didn't see it anywhere .

 

Thanahtos

It should be below your Player casting bar. Also, might you have forgotten to set a spell as the GCD check? (Such as Sense Demon or Life Tap)

 

Rozzenwyn

Yeah I wasn't sure if that needed to be filled in or not and if so what to fill it with. How do you decide what spell to put there? I am wanting to use this bar because I sometimes after casting an instant like a curse or instant corruption try to cast the next spell again too soon which then means that it slows me down and I end up casting it later than I should have. So would putting Corruption there work? Also there were slots for 2 spells, do I need to fill in both? Thanks I've only been using Quartz for latency tracking up until this point so any help in configuring this to do what I need would be appreciated.

 

vyedma

You need to fill in a spell there because that's where the addon "watches" the GCD. I would recommend using Sense Demons or Track Fish, or a similar spell that can't be locked out and has no cooldown.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

 

Akj

He's obviously comparing glowing shadowsong amethysts to forceful seaspray emeralds for a blue socket. The answer again depends on the spreadsheet. If 1 haste >= 1.2 dmg for your stats then forceful seaspray emerald >= glowing shadowsong amethyst.

 

Melbuframa

I came up with basically the same gear set. I chose the [Ring of Captured Storms] over mana attuned, and used the [Grand Magister's Staff of Torrents] w/ 3x[Reckless Pyrestone] because we don’t know if sunflair really exists at this point.

The staff allows you to not socket any hit gems and go pure [Reckless Pyrestone] for Yellow slots and :[Runed Crimson Spinel] for reds with 2x :[Forceful Seaspray Emerald] to get the meta bonus

The only downside to this is that aside from our T6 items the rest of the gear is exactly what every mage also wants.

 

rutheford

My guild is about to down Illidan, and I was chatting with a mage in my guild about Zhar'doom. He was telling me that it would be better for a mage than a warlock, because haste would be better for a mage than a warlock. His reasoning was that since fireball has a 3.5 sec cast time and shadowbolt has a 2.5 sec cast time, there would be more time taken off the fireball cast than the shadowbolt cast.
I don't think his analysis is correct, but I'm not positive. I want to say that a 1% increase in haste will result in 1% more dps for the person, regardless of the cast time of their nuke spell. Can anyone confirm/disconfirm/explain? Thanks.

 

Flamingcloud

1 haste is not gonna be >= 1.2 dmg in end game gear sets. So the only time you would be using seaspray emeralds is when you are socketing a blue in either a red or yellow socket because you don't have 2 blue sockets.



I think we can safely assume sunflare exists. I think we can also safely assume there is a helm as good or better than the ele shaman helm with no spirit out there. Clearly leaving us with the t6 shoulders. I repeat from before, the m'uru ring + hit gems is better than ring of captured storms/mana attuned.

21stam
14int
40dmg
31haste
22crit
20hit

vs ring of captured storms and 2 regular yellow socket gems

54dmg
29crit
19hit
10haste

so 21stam 14int(like 4 crit rating) 21haste 1hit vs 14dmg 7crit pretty clear which one is the winner.


The majority of these items are so rare(like brutallus pants 1/8 chance every week, with like 10 raiders needing it) that someone would need a monsterous dkp lead to get everything before wotlk.

 

sarcasm2k1

rutheford,

.9(X) = X - 1/10(X)

For any (non negative) value of X.

No matter the casting time of your spell, if you chain cast it, then it gains a proportional increase in casts over time from haste. If you cast 10 shadowbolts in 25 seconds with 0% haste you will cast 11 with 10% haste. If you cast 7.14(ish) fireballs in 25 seconds with 0% haste you will cast 7.85(ish) with 10% haste.

Obviously some spells treat haste differently than other spells (dots, instant spells and such), but I'm pretty sure fireball and shadowbolt both treat haste in the normal way.