WF damage will increase by (almost) exactly the same for both ele and resto; if we assume that the WF "downtime" is essentially zero we can ignore the tiny, tiny difference in WF proc between the two specs. Therefore I left it out, because all I was calculating was the difference between the two specs. WF damage increases equally for both specs so I left it out.

My calculations dont say 3% hit is 3% white damage either; they say it is 1.03*(100+crit)/100 damage, which means if you had around 30% crit your damage increase would be 3.15% from 3%hit; which matches the simulator.

If you havent even looked at the math please dont critique it. The math says that, even with 100% crit, ele scales faster than resto with AP. And the DPS from searing totem isnt 1 dps from 500 AP; 500 AP is 150 spell damage, which is 30 damage. Thats 10dps*1.15= 11dps + Improved scortch+misery+CoE. So about 15 dps, not 1 dps.

Putting in 100% crit doesnt prove anything, because I never stated that ele scaled better than resto with crit. If you start adding in a huge amount of crit and IgnoreArmor then you are obviously going to swing it towards resto. My comment was SPECIFICALLY to do with AP.

140ap = 10dps. Yes with two hander and without flurry.

1. I did say that searing totem scale 1dps better with elem than resto if you dont include spell hit change, not 1dps with 500ap. 11 dps - 10dps = 1dps.

2. Avarage WF down time isnt anywhere near 0s. Wf dps modelling is so complex that you cant model it with simple linear function and you cant ignore wf dps boost when gain +hit. Easiest way to see how much its increase is check it at Yo's sim. Rule of thumb you can think when gain x% hit: wf dps gain is x% / 2.
With base values going 9% -> 12% to hit give 1.81% more wf dps. Or 9% - > 28% to hit give 10.8% wf dps boost.

3. "1.03*(100+crit)/100 damage" just wrong.
One roll system dont work this way. Check how its work there.

4. Do you really think your math is better than simulator?

This is directed at Rapparee. I was reading some of your posts about rotations while totem twisting. Here is what I came up with in regards to 5s rotations. I have a 6s one, but it's no effiecent, any pointers on how to move it around would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.offlineguild.com/mat/rotation.php Each "block" is 0.5s of game time.

In rotations 1/1.5 totem twisting is not a problem, as ss/es/fs are all cast whenever they're up. In rotation 3, shocks take a huge hit. My guild is pushing dps to it's limits, so totem twisting is something we are very very very encouraged to do (pretty much necessary). I don't think I've ever had mana problems with twisting.

Hi Macked, I didn't exactly model a rotation and then figure out what key strokes to use.
I use the following hot keys, in what i hoped was common sense fashion.

2 - uses a macro looks like: /castsequence reset=8 [combat] stormstrike, windfury totem, tranquil air totem
3 - uses a macro looks like: /castsequence reset=8 [combat] windfury totem, grace of air totem, stormstrike
4 - flame shock
5 - earth shock

basically a fight starts with 3, 3, then the repeating sequence of *3, 4 or5, 3, 3, 4or 5, wait 2seconds*
So that's essentially your rotation 1 (which if I were you, would rename to shock immediately after SS, your other rotation as SS immediately after a shock, perhaps you'd choose one over the other based on if there was a elemental shaman or moonkin in the raid). I don't automatically cast FS, then ES and back... I tried to cast FS whenever it was not still ticking on the boss. I failed miserably at that, but I only had one night of attempts... our new enhance shaman has pretty decent attendance, so I won't get a lot of experience with it.

For when I'm resto and have 6seconds shocks, I'm brain dead about the rotation... I don't even look at what I'm casting, i just put two fingers up on the number row. One always over the number 3, the other finger alternates between number 4 and 5.... and then I just rock back and forth on those fingers, eventually they'll be pressing down when a cooldown and the GCD are both gone I'll cast whatever. If the boss lights up green, i move the finger that was obviously over the number 5 key back to the number 4 key and keep rocking both fingers. I realize that in no way does this utilize the keen aspect of waiting on a stormstrike until the WF cooldown is up, but I've tried that in the past and failed more miserably than I fail at flame shock prioritizing. I think any shaman who can pay attention to the WF cooldown vs. stormstrike, and gain benefit from it, should do so. But that shaman is not me.

Finally:
IF the boss has some ability that totally screws over the rotation I recover the rotation by knowing just one thing.....
Is WF still down?
if yes, cast stormstrike (2) followed by shock(4 or 5) followed by WF(3), goa(3)....bam you're back in rotation.
if no, then re-cast WF(3), then SS(2), shock(4 or 5), goa(3).... back in rotation.

If you have a lot spare time, because you're running back to the boss, i usually cast water shield, because i probably lost a tick of it, or I refresh one of the non-air totems. Instead of forcing a shock cast early. That's just me, it quite possibly is lost dps.

You rotations didn't indicate it, but you probably already knew to recast totems on the 2.0 second GCD holes. That are available every 10 seconds, which means you should refresh Str and Mana if they have 25seconds or less, and refresh searing if it's 15seconds or less. That gives you breathing room in case the boss interrupts your cycle.

Also I want to stress, that the only reason I was able twist and use 5sec. shocks is due to wearing mail, not leather. Believe me, I wish I had midnight chestguard, cursed vision, stranger's shoulders and so forth. But those never dropped or just dropped once for us, so they went to rogues. When I'm enhance, I have 4pieces of skyshatter, 9k mana, wasted stat points on mp5 on my gear. All of which lets me cast tons of shocks and totems. I'd trade it in a heartbeat for some expertise leather and fall into the Rava-trap of "it's impossible to twist and 5sec. shock".

Thanks for the quick reply! Yeah, i agree with pretty much everything you said. In rotation 1.5 when you're saying i cast the shock before the ss, if you do some quick tests (or plot it out) you'll see this is the only way to get everything in on time. If you were to cast ss first, then shock, the shock cooldown wouldn't be up in time, and your rotaiton would be off, i'd be willing to sacrifice 1.5s of ss over the course of a fight for a perfect shock rotation.

I agree with the 6s one being weird, and from my pov inefficent, wasted time just doing nothing hoping something will land.

In all the rotations you can see i put a "gcd free" section where you could cast anything, this would be where i would refresh searing totem/str totem/blow cooldowns (i just didn't indicate it, as there's a lot of stuff that can be done). I have a hypotheical cast sequence of cooldowns that would still allow them all to overlap. I'll repost it, go check the site again.

Unfortunetly, i probably don't have enough hit to do t6 content (Which i'm starting) to spec out of resto. With resto though, i feel that i'm waiting too much on the gcd to finish, and wasting time not dpsing. With the 5s, everything fits so conviently that it's almost like they planned it that way.

Ill try to avoid bullet points.
I misread your comment, I agree that searing scales around 1dps better, but 1dps is 1 dps; ignoring it is one step from saying "hit isnt worth much so Ill say its worth nothing".

The crit thing was a straight mistake, but makes the math more interesting, it would be come a conditional on your average swing damage, Ill try reworking it this evening. Kinda annoyed I let that one slip through given I spent a week explaining to my guild what the 1roll system is.

Finally, I dont beleive my math is better than the simulator, I believe it is different; more importantly I believe it agrees with the simulator. The question that keeps being asked is "At what gear level is does one spec become better than the other". My answer was that gear level will not change the result, because ele scaled better with AP ( it may not, that needs to be rechecked) but that the difference was very small (around 1-2 dps per 140 ap), and almost entirely due to searing totem scaling better with ele build. Your results from the simulator agree with that, and therefore support my conclusion; both specs scaled equally on the simulator, but the results did not include the searing totem.

So, yes I made mistakes, but your results still support my statements.

Pitbuller, I checked some recent WWS and didn't get conclusive data, however, a Draenei shaman should have 1% more spell hit than you do, so that could be enough of a difference given a large enough sample size. Best thing is that you should be able to just muck around in other peoples' WWS logs and get this information.

Elemental Devastation is a terribly overcosted talent. You get the equivalent of maybe 0.35% crit per point (0.5% if there's a ret paladin in your raid). That being said, as overcosted as it is, it's still a DPS increase. Why is it that no one is including a single point in Elemental Devastation in their ele/enh builds?

Find a WWS with a 40/0/21 elemental shaman who didn't respec from PvPing and dropped searing totem if you want to see if ST is affected by spell hit.

It comes down to 3% elemental damage reduction or 5% fire totem damage.

1 point in call of flames is 5 dps from what I've read earlier in the thread, a few quick sim runs with and without the added crit bonus from elemental devastation(it's a bit less than .35%, ~.27 for me, little higher for someone who uses t6, but I used .35 for comparison's sake). Anyways, I showed a 2 dps gain from the added crit so the point in call of flame easily trumps it, not just due to dps but consistency. So it comes down to 3% less elemental damage or 2 dps. From a pure DPS point of view devastation would be better, but both are rather insignificant.

From my WWS of this weeks BT (I know I was the only one dropping searing totem) I got...

10% miss on Najentus (71 ticks)
8% miss on Supremus
7% miss on Teron (73 ticks)
20.1% miss on Bloodboil (95 ticks)
14% miss on Mother shaz (124 ticks)

Thats with 4% spell hit, I guess you need a huge sample of 500+ ticks.

But next week when I spec pve elemental with capped hit, I could conclusively test it if it hasn't been by then.

i think being able to shock every 5sec is cool, but i am just wondering, if i keep using ES + FS as i should, by the time i need to use FS again, the FS dot will still be ticking ???

and about the fire totem, somehow it doesn't show on my damage meter, it shows sepeartly and named"fire totem",,,it doesn't count into my damage ??

I think you will indeed lose the last tick of every flame shock. This would mean that only 75% of the dot's damage should be accounted for. However this could be migitated by using ES, ES, FS rotation perhaps ? It would result in a more optimal rotation but I don't know how its dps will be compared to ES, FS, even with the 1 tick loss per cast.

Poor grammar and structure aside...

It is not relevant if the DPS tracker shows your Searing totem or not, this is about total raid contribution, not an impressive e-peen visual. If you are competent enough to use a DPS parser of some sort, it is assumed you can figure out the contribution from your totem, even if the Blizzard interface cannot. It is also assumed that your raid leader/GM should be able to tell the difference as well.

I'm working on doing some elemental logs to test the effect of hit on Searing totem, should give us some more definitive answers when working with maxed spell hit vs. lower levels of it. I should be able to post the results later tonight, provided someone hasn't given us something conclusive before then.

TK Farming Run, I dropped only searing totem, slightly better data:

1/27/08
Searing Totem VII
74 Hits
3% Crit
13.4% Miss

I'm not sure if this has been answered yet, but has anyone considered putting that 1-2 extra point(s) into imp fire nova totem? That would be if you were twisting searing and fire nova. Another question could be, would a fire nova/searing twist be an large enough increase to dps to consider it?

Build thought of is 16/45/0: WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Shaman -> Talent Calculator

Or maybe 17/44/0 (depends on your choice of spec): WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Shaman -> Talent Calculator

With any build, you'll end up with 1-2 points floating around, which most people will put in some enhancement talent, or ele devestation (I know, I know, it's a crappy talent, but still puts forward a lil dps). So I guess the real question is: What's more dps, imp fire nova with fire totem twist, or a point in ele devestation?

Hey, if I knew how to do all the math, I would

While following this thread as best I can I noticed that this match seems to come up pretty much even. It would appear that who actually comes out better in the end game would be the best of the two people playing.

My question is, at anytime earlier in raid progression; example of having just entered kara; do the numbers support one build over the other. Do they even out over time or were they basically even from the get-go?

If you're low enough on hit that your specials aren't hitcapped without Nature's Guidance, Resto subspec is probably better, but even when you're just starting Kara this shouldn't be a problem. Similarly, if you don't have enough mana to shock more often, Resto would be better. If you're twisting this may be true, but otherwise even early Kara gear should be able to sustain a Ele shock rotation.

So the observations made at #261 seem to point towards the idea that the old belief (see the enhancement shaman thread) is wrong, there is a valid case for this ele/enh combination and it occurs more often in raids than than not; having consistent JoW and needing to twist. I would say I am surprised by this but from my experience reading this forums I can say I should not be anymore.

Theorycrafting is good but

I am posting some screenshots of my dps in an actual boss fight. (i am not trying to brag :P)

with 4tier6 on me, elemental/enhancement spec (actualy 17/44, i do some pvp too )

and yes! my following DPS results in two bosses at BT are with TOTEM TWIST spam too!

Mana problems? in whole BT i may use once or twice a mana potion (Bloodboil mostly, where i safeguard my shamanistic rage for Fel Rage on me). A wise use of Shamanistic rage makes mana problems obsolete with ele/enha spec and totem twisting, even when your raid power pulls to make the run faster.

Boost on group? Best possible, Rogues are in love, so are warriors, but especialy the rogues get a significant boost.

So the screenshots are from Najentus, 1st boss at Black Temple and from TeronGorefiend 4th Boss at BT




and



.
As i said, my current spec at armory is the spec i use at the raids too. I also totem twisted, i wouldn't suggest it without 4 items of tier6. The rotation i used is

Start autohiting, placing Strenght/searingtotem/mana totem, [Stormstrike/Flameshock/Windfury-Goa(totemtwist)/Earthshock] and again [Stormstrike/Flameshock/Windfury-Goa(totemtwist)/Earthshock]

If you have very low latency then when WF timer of your addon goes to 1or0 you will be ready on GCD to redrop Windfury/Goa Sequence/macro. Even with my 250ms the 1second my group lacked WF buff was insignificant compared to 8seconds of GoA, especially for rogues. If theorycraft proves the opposite then do what i do only at >100ms latency then.

I wasn't satisfied at all with Enhancement/Restoration in terms of rotation. There was no "harmony" on the cooldowns of shocks and totem twisting so i decided for 1 week to test Elemental/Enhancement but with my 4 tier6 gear on. I may be one of the very few, if not the only enhancement shaman who used elemental/enhancement spec and totem twisting.

About my personal dps, i have to admit that GoA totem for 7 out of 9 seconds is very very welcome. The truth is i don't want to stop totem twisting now. Until blizzard deals with it anyway.

I don't think enhancement shamans at high end gear should be enhancement/restoration. With 1-2 high end leather items and 4 tier6 you can get a 200+ hit rating from gear, making the 3% nature guidance not-so-important and making the elemental tree more interesting.

PS If you see me on armory with alternative BT gear, check 70 Troll Shaman

Nobody here cares about your speculation. We also don't care about "this one time I did awesome DPS on this one boss with X spec." You're not offering evidence you're offering an emotional attachment. Its already been shown in this thread that the two sub specs are nearly equal in dps potential anyways, so your claims of ridiculous.
You're also delusional. Have you read any of this thread at all?

I am the only one on my server to play this way. And my server has many guilds farming T6 content the last months. At Horde side all enhancement shamans who totem twist at T6 content are enhancement/restoration.

My opinions are not speculated or emotionaly attached. In single dps target of this long fight uninterrupted, i never reached dps of this number as Enhancement / Restoration and totem twisting. In fact all the last week where i tried Ele/enha and totem twist i was top 5 easily. I could even try and see how this WWS addon works and show you data for the whole next week, but i wont be bothered if i just need to prove just to you something.
I made something really interesting happen last week with my spec and my effort trying to totem twist and achieve best personal DPS. I wouldn't care less for other shamans to know, if all were like you .

The 3% of Nature's Guardian is obsolete when you play at 235 hit rating. I may exaggerate on this but this is what my last week's raiding shows. If you want to Theorycraft about it go ahead , it will prove your approach at what it is. Ironic and "words of the air"

I think i am out of this forum, the lack of perfect english from my part and the "jerk attitude" without the "elitist" part from some people on this forum really makes me lose fast any sparkle of interest i have to talk or say stuff.