So can anyone come up with a AP number that up from there ele+enh spec does already significantly more damage than enh+resto spec in raids? Our AP with all the on proc stuff can go pretty high, so does spelldamage.

Looking at results so far, question is not weather one spec is doing more damage than other but at what AP does ele+enh spec does more (personal) damage.

Note: does sim take account searing totem dps?

Edit: Unbuffed AP does not give much info. Unbuffed AP + list of onproc items u have or some form of average procced-AP should be used? Stuff like stonebreaker totem, tier6 setbonus, MH ring, ashtongue talisman or AP trinklets doesnt make comparing totally unbuffed AP nor posting results based on that much sense.

With my current gear (PvP), I can go from my base 1300 AP, proccing:
SoE (imp 2/2, 202 AP)
Unraveler (200 ap)
Crusader (120ap)
Stonebreaker's (110 AP)

Total: 1300+202+200+120+110= 1932 AP

UR adds 10% (193.2 AP) to make 2125.2 AP

That nets me 637.56 spellpower, which is ~273 spell damage applied to ES.

I calculate averages of 150 dps for an untalented ES, 154.88 dps with Nature's Guidance, 162.63 dps with Nature's Guidance and Concussion, and 189.8 dps with Concussion and Reverb. Granted, at least one or two of the calcuations are actually overestimates - it's impossible to have 5/5 UR and SR with both 5/5 Concussion and 3/3 NG.

Taking out UR totally, it only drops the ES dps average by ~4 dps across the board.

Take this with a grain of salt, my spreadsheet needs to be looked at by more eyes than mine to ensure proper math.

Edit: If there is a flaw in my math, I'll edit / delete information as needed, to ensure correct information is being passed out.

I've sort of been avoiding this thread because the recent posting trends in our enhancement threads sort of makes me want to flop around like a fish.

Anyway, my personal theorycrafting numbers regarding this are buried somewhere in the other enhancement thread. I came to the conclusion that elemental talents did provide more personal dps, but since I totem twist, I would be better off with a restoration sub-spec. Based off of T6 content, I don't think you can totem twist effectively without Totemic Focus. If I didn't totem twist, I would spec elemental for T6 content. However, I do totem twist, and will continue to do so until Blizzard changes the mechanics or tells me it's an exploit. If you don't totem twist, my advice is to put your remaining points in elemental talents. Totemic Mastery is an unnecessary talent for the encounters in BT(this could change in Sunwell), so it really is that simple to me.

Also, regarding the shock cooldown interfering with totem-twisting; It doesn't. For some reason the Windfury Totem weapon buff actually takes longer than 10 seconds to fade, and you can prioritize shocking over re-dropping totems when the cooldowns collide without causing any gaps.

Lastly, I think the Frost Shock+Winter's Chill debate is so completely retarded it needs to go away and never come back.

Gentlemen.

After spending a wild, frustrating evening as 16/45/0, I have decided to abandon all speculation on this spec.

Yes, it's more damage. But it's also more threat. Remember, you're adding more overall shock damage while more or less turning ~3% of your current damage into shock damage. And unlike melee damage, we have no threat reduction talent for shocks.

The end result was a very noticeable increase in threat. And while I say noticeable, I mean absurd. I actually pulled threat off Nalorak, something I didn't think was possible. Ruined my group's shot at the timed run as a result. The rest of the run I had Tranquil Air down the whole time and still couldn't shock on the CD without climbing up the threat ladder.

Now, if I had a paladin, it'd have been a different issue. But this is the group I go to ZA with every Tuesday, and I've never had it this bad.

Here are some stats. Group was 2x Hunter, Rogue, Feral. Again, since I couldn't hit the CD without pulling hate or drop GoA, DPS isn't what it should be. But you might get some use out of 'em.

I will say this: doing my Netherwing dailies, I was doing much higher DPS without ever dropping totems. I usually get around 560 without totems, I was seeing 620+. Killing dimetradons took about 5s...shock pull, ss, shock, dead. I intend to keep this spec in mind for future farming use, and possibly during the upcoming grind to 80. But for now, I'm back to Resto. Enjoy your deathtrap!

Holy mana consumption batman, I found I used Haste potions and Mana potions alternating in my TK Raid last night on all the bosses except phase 1 Al'ar. I don't have a WWS parse since my parser (I get a friend to do the WWS parsing for me and I run assessment in raid to compare the two) didn't make it to the raid, but personally I found the only rotation that worked for a good SS rotation was Twist -> FlS -> SS -> ES repeat, and I'd drop the ES when CDs collided.

I really hope those 'fake' 2.4 patch notes that came out are true and our weapon totems turn into weapon buffs like oils. If you have trouble with your rogues poison's consuming SS charges, show them the rogue thread first, so if their specced mutilate you can get rid of the envenom bullshit. Second, make them use sharpening stones on their OHs. Our wrath spamming boomkin goes from top 5 when I'm in the raid to 10-11 when I'm not on the DMs.

Then there is no point to you going Elemental. The only reason to go elemental is to shock more. If you don't shock more, all you're doing is burning mana and missing.

When I ran ZA with a Feral Druid MT and Arms or Fury Warrior OT (no Defiance), I had no problems shocking every cooldown with an Elemental sub-spec due to Salv (and I had pretty optimal T5 gear with DST). You should really look into getting a Paladin. BTW, you realise if Tranquil Air is affecting your tank, you're severely reducing the threat threshold of your casters while not really doing anything for your group?

After reading about the WF buff lag time to disappear from party members weapons, maybe I will do a cast rotation macro to just spam those 6 spells on a 10+a little bit reset timer and see what the WWS parse says about WF uptime and buff losses for our fury warriors and rogues.

I doubt either spec has any threat issues in an optimal 25 player raid group. Unless of course you're using Frost Shock in your dps rotation for some reason.

You should be testing with 9% hit for elemental, 12% for resto. You also need to be using 0% (or 1%) spell hit for elemental and 3% (or 4%) for resto. You are obviously going to see elemental do superior DPS if you completely ignore in your analysis the one talent in resto that provides a DPS advantage, and the entire discussion is moot.
This is good info to have, but a little misleading, since we don't consider the melee DPS from the hit given by Nature's Guidance. (Which should scale better with gear than Reverb.) I see that the isolated benefit of Reverb is 152.68-127.23 = 25.45 DPS. Nature's Guidance is worth 131.25-127.23 = 4.02 DPS. So taking Reverb over NG is 25.45 - 4.02 = 21.43 DPS.
Now let's say that you do 1000 overall DPS, white is 50%, and you have a 35% crit rate. That's 500 DPS, and if we try to find the "no crit" DPS we get 500/1.35 = 370 DPS. We can assume that this "no crit" DPS would be increased by at least 3% by adding 3% hit: supposing your miss rate changes from 13% to 10%, your DPS is multiplied by a factor of (100-10)/(100-13) = 1.0345. 370 DPS * .0345 = 12.765 DPS. So now the isolated benefit of Reverb over NG is 21.43 - 12.765 DPS = 8.67 DPS.

The question is, can you time your shocks accurately enough to eke out that 8.67 DPS? If we take your "base ES" number of 127.23 DPS, 8.67 DPS represents only a 6.8% delay in shocking. As your latency increases, the true gain of reducing the cooldown on shock decreases. Going from 6.0s to 5.0s looks better on the surface than going from 6.1s to 5.1s, which is in turn better than going from 6.2s to 5.2s. There is also the problem that you might have to "miss" a shock in order to redrop totems, chug a haste pot, eat a healthstone, pop Shamanistic Rage, or pop Heroism. While each of these things are occurring, your investment in Resto is still working for you. 3% hit can create autoattacks and those autoattacks can create WF procs even while you are doing something else. If you were invested in Elemental, however, your points wouldn't be doing anything for you during those times, because your shock timer is up and you aren't using it. What's that 6.8% delay work out to? Missing 1 shock every 73.529 seconds. I believe you are guaranteed to miss a shock at least once every 2 minutes when you must redrop totems, and I find it completely plausible that you would miss a shock more often than that if you must use cooldown abilities or potions. And all this before we consider that 3% hit scales better when Heroism is used, when trinkets are popped, when your gear improves, or when you are twisting.



Basically, Malan, I think this thread is kind of a wash so far. I don't see anything here yet that we didn't already know (Ele/Enh subspec is theoretically slightly better personal DPS) and I don't think the question will be answered because ultimately it's a matter of preference. We have to give Blizzard credit for making two equally viable choices.

@ Rob (And everyone else, for that matter)

I'm definitely on the bandwagon that yes, elemental adds more personal dps - if you can keep up with your shocks and totems. I figure it's not unlike Hunter Shot rotations in many respects. Latency is an issue with that, and it's certainly an issue with Shock / SS / totem weaving no matter which route you go.

I'm not a twister, and to me, it seems like a waste of mana - though I'm sure there's plenty of benefit to it that justifies the mana consumption. On the same note for twisters, overall utility and totem efficiency, yes, resto is the way to go. I agree fully -

Well, that's one more thing on the list that they've gotten right, which is great in my book.

As for threat... Yeah, it sucks sometimes. But I guess I've been playing high threat characters long enough to understand that going all out 100% isn't a good thing - unless you've got an even bigger threat monster in your raid (hopefully your maintank). Having to wait an extra few seconds buys you time to do that thing that drives us all nuts - totem stomping. After that 6 seconds, there's usually enough threat window that you can smash away to your heart's content - within reason, as per any spec. Salvation is a godsend.

For threat sensitive encounters, I'd prestage all but searing, and then start slow dps, working up to full rotations. Optimally, I drop WF, SoE, then SS, ES, Healing Stream, FS, Searing, SS, ES, FS, etc. until my totems run out, weaving them into the shock and SS cooldowns for the duration. My totem priority from least to most is: Healing Stream Searing, SoE, WF. (Windfury being substituted with GoA upon group makeup). For Bloodlust / Heroism, and SR, I just weave them into my rotation, making sure I'm not losing my totem rotation along the way. Do I miss some? Yes. Would a Resto build miss some? Yes. Honestly, I think the overall loss in dps from either subspec mistiming a totem or a shock is going to be very similar.

For world encounters - grinding and whatnot, I actually have to be careful to not kill my nether rays (yeah, still doing that daily), so I pretty much just autoattack. PvP, it's glasscannon time. It really does show up as enough difference in burst to warrant it - if it's your thing.

One thing that I think seems to be overlooked again and again is that the melee hit isn't the only part that really ups your dps - unless I'm missing something. 16 hit rating nets you ~1% hit. I can get that on my helm enchant from a rep vendor. Picking up another 30-35 hit rating - to hit that magic 9% - isn't awfully hard on raid gear now, and without even doing a thorough search, I know there's plenty of it out there, and granted, it does take away some from AP / Crit etc. (Cyclone has 33 - 19 on gloves, 14 on shoulders). Is there a need for more? Or are we merely upping offhand dps, and that's why we're trying to get more from talents?

For my calculations, I'm assuming I just walked up to you, started a duel, and we go to town. In that case, I have 5% miss rate for spells and melee, if I'm not mistaken. On a raid boss, I could adjust my numbers accordingly - I'll look to make sure.

I didnt read all the posts but it seems a lot of people do one major mistake when calculating shocks per minute. You assume an enh/resto speced shaman will be able to do 10 shocks per minute. Im sorry, this is mathematically impossible. Why?

Because SS and Shocks will meet somewhere my friends. 6 doesnt divide 10 perfectly. Although its pretty simple ill make it even simpler:

Time(s) Spell
0.0 SS
1.5 Shock
7.5 Shock
10 SS
13.5 Shock
19.5 Shock
21 SS

Oops, you just delayed your stormstrike by 1 second

If you want to SS at every cooldown the highest shock/minute a enh/resto can do is 9. To calculate better the shock frequency of the enh/resto spec we need to see their actual dps cycle.


Time(s) Spell
0.0 SS
1.5 Shock
7.5 Shock

10 SS
13.5 Shock

20 SS
21.5 Shock
27,5 Shock

30 SS
33.5 Shock

As you can see two SS cycles repeat one after the other. 2 shocks on one and 1 shock on the other. Thats 3 shocks in 20 seconds. So the actual frequency is 20/3= 6.666sec

On the other hand, a 16/45/0 spec can actually do 2 shocks on every cycle. Thats a true 5sec frequncy.

Dividing 6.666 with 5 you find the true shock dps difference of the 2 specs. Thats 33%. The 16/45/0 spec will get 33% more shock damage from the resto one.

There is also something else to consider. The stonebreaker totem has 10 seconds cooldown from the moment it procs. Meaning you cant refresh its timer, another proc will occur only if the previous one is over. Ok now lets say a enh/resto spec procs the 110ap buff. He will do another shock averagely after 6.666 seconds. That shock wont be able to proc the 110ap buff. Now he does another shock at 6.666 seconds. This one can proc stonebreaker totem again, but the shaman has lost 3 seconds after the buff has expired.

Now the elemental shaman procs the buff. He does one shock after 5 seconds, he cant renew the timer. Now at the moment the buff is over, he can shock again losing 0 seconds possibility to proc.

You can see it my friends, all the roads lead to 16/45/0

The sub question misses another major raid benefit. 3% spell hit cuts down on ES resists when you are interrupting. I consider their interrupt ability part of what makes enhancement shaman very attractive to raids because elemental and resto shaman tend to be casting other things while enhancement only needs to manage the GCD and shock cooldown. As a further point, the calculations are assuming a full shock rotation. In many cases I can't do that because I need to save my cooldown for interrupts, so on those fights the benefits of elemental are significantly less that what the base scenario would indicate.

No the smarter thing to have done would be to delay the shock until after you had used SS, pushing your shock timer off a bit. This is no secret, it happens to me every night I raid.

Incorrect. While Elemental can have 33% more shocks, there will still be a 84% chance to hit. Resto will have 87%.
1.33 * 0.84 = 1.12
1.00 * 0.87 = 0.87

1.12/0.87 = 1.29 or a 29% increase in shock damage output.

However, it is important to remember that your shock damage will be relatively small.

29% of:
100 = 29 dps
150 = 43.5 dps
200 = 58 dps

While % based comparisons can be useful, always remember to put them in context, or convert them to a standard figure (even if it is an estimate). We could say that a build would give 100% more shock damage, but if shock dps is only 50, the 50 dps gain wouldn't be very exciting, would it?

Regarding the sub-question: assuming that the Enh shaman is always going to be in melee range of his (or her) target, and that their group members will be warriors/rogues/feral druids doing the same, an extra 10 yards range will be irrelevant.

Yah we've basically agreed that the totem range is a 5man/10man or Elemental/Resto shaman talent. It can be phased out of any build I'd say.

I would've assumed that the "buff falling off" lag is actually client-side only. Ever disconnected/lagged and had buffs supposed to wear off during that time, hitting 0 duration and not falling off? I sure have. Easy to test, too - get some kind of a buff, and as it's close to wear off unplugg your internet. You will see the buff timer keep ticking but you'll keep the buff with 0s duration until your connection is working again. So while there may be more to it than that, I wouldn't jump to assume that the windfury buff lasts longer than 10s in practice, as it's most likely just the client latency. Also if you actually measure the buff's time you'll probably still get 10 seconds if it's 10 seconds on the server assuming your ping remains the same when you receive the buff and lose the buff (which is, in fact, often not the case).

Again this isn't anything solid, but would take more than saying that "the debuff doesn't fall right as the timer hits 0" to claim that you don't have to cast windfury totem at least every 10 seconds.

Which again, would keep you from casting 10 shocks a minute. Delaying your shocks for even half a second will change your total from 10 to 9, as you can not make up that time.

I was enhance tonight, and decided to collect some tier6 enhance/elemental numbers. Shoot, my guild leader has not posted the WWS yet. I will do my best to update this with a link. Also, spec... i was 16/45, concussion, call of flame, reverb max.
Rapparee - Enh/ele Wow Web Stats
Rapparee - Enh/res Wow Web Stats

I was able to totem twist + as good of a shock rotation as I could manage. I'm not perfect with the cooldowns, so I probably won't be able to realize a DPS gain, other than just the randomness of high crit.

The major feature I saw that would cause elemental sub-specs a big headache is interruptions on bosses.
These were all the major interruptions, I had during my test of enh/ele spec.
One melee D&D in the Winterchill fight.
Two infernals on the melee in the Anetheron fight.
Kaz was warstomping, screwing up my GCD rotations a ton of times.
Azgalor (i was on doomguards) silences + warstomps.
Archimonde (one doomfire in melee, and i think 3 airbursts).
Najentus, his shield screws up the GCD rotation..essentially resetting it.
Supremus, our guild runs away during the kite phase.
Akama, I found out that 20yard range on totems is more than adequate to allow you to drop them dead center and reach every guy on the platform. Great fight... flame shock, earth shock, earth shock, move to next guy.
RoS, I'm not allowed to EarthShock if Deaden is casting soon.... so I do a frost shock rotation or just screw the rotation on that phase. This is a boss where you want obscene raid DPS, so try to do something with your free time.
Gurtogg, i used the prism of inner calm and only did melee attacks for the most part and still had to hold DPS every so often. But you can go all out on FelRage sections which are 30seconds long, exactly the correct length to allow an elemental subspec to land one more shock than a resto sub.

That's as far as we got in 5 hours. I totally didn't expect to be enhance that night, so I didn't chug haste pots, since i had just one and i didn't move the icon to my action bar.

Response to interrupting on bosses: For FathomLord Karathress, I was interrupt the priest detail. Way back then, i was always resto subspec, but because that add wasn't boss level, it was very rare to get a resist while wearing no +spell hit. Once priest was dead I had to actually do DPS so I wore standard enhancement gear. We use the enhance shaman to interrupt Divine Wrath on the Illidari Council fight. They are boss level creatures, and so they resist a lot of ES's. Since an enhance shaman on Lady Malande is doing almost 1/4th of their normal DPS. I suggest, if you use this strat to wear a lot of +spell hit gear, even if it's not melee friendly.

For Sebudai: mana is such a non-issue that I totem twisted and did shocks on Kaz. I wore 331ish shadow resist.
At first I had the same concerns as you, but after a little while even though I was shocking much more feverently than normal, mana was of no concern through almost all the bosses in the tier6 category.

Here's some math I did before making the switch to 16/45. Using the following assumptions for both simplicity of calculations and conservitism when looking at the amount of dps increase from the 16/45 spec.

Without the elem talents:
Earth Shocks hit for 1000 damage every 6 seconds.
Searing Totem that hits for 150 damage every 3 seconds.

With Concussion (+5% shock damage) that increases the damage of your Earth Shocks by 50.
With Reverberation (-1 sec to shock CD) you can now do 6 shocks every 30 secs rather then the 5 you could before.
So now;

Earth Shock hits for 1050 damage every 5 seconds.
Using the 30 sec window for shocks again, this in an increase of 1300 damage over that 30 seconds. 1000 from the additional Earth Shock, and 300 from the extra damage. 1300/30sec = an increase in dps of 43.33.

With Call of Flame your Searing Totem will now do 172.5 damage every 3 seconds, or a dps increase of 7.5. So using these simple figures getting the elem talents will get you an additional 50.83 dps. And of course as I said these are very conservative figures, and the more ap and spl dmg a shaman has the higher these numbers will be.

I'm ashamed to admit that I don't personally have the knowledge of how the resto +3% hit talent improves our dps to calculate my own figures, however from reviewing several dps charts and spreadsheets using conservative figures like the ones I used for the shock damage the average increase in dps from it was around 15-20.

I can also say from personal experience that the elemental spec has given me higher dps, not drastically not noticably. I have the rather dubious and unfortunate honor of being the best geared ehnc shaman on my rinky dink server (Akama) and have been looking desperately for ways to increase my dps when I can no longer get more badge gear and raid drops are few and far between.

The main disadvantages I have noted about the elem/ehnc spec (which others here have noted as well) are;
- an increase in threat from the slighty stronger and more frequent shocks
- an increase in mana comsumption from the more frequent shocks (and having to recast totems more often if you are moving around)

I haven't deluded myself about ehnc to think we aren't a support class and if my fury warrior, ret pally, and rogue aren't getting WF then I'm not doing my job. I have found myself often having to recast totems for my group in fights where we are moving around even just a little. Vashj in phase 3 tonight is a good example, I had the honor and priveledge of being in the tank group (lawl) and as I'm sure you know we have to keep grounding totem down to ground her stun, but because we had to move around a lot to avoid the ooze pools our tank would eat a few stuns. Same with A'lar where I had to keep recasting WF and STR whenever we had to move in phase 2.

Another disadvantage is the loss of the Imp Reincarnation talent, which if you have to ankh mid battle that extra 20% health and mana can mean the difference between getting right back in the fight or getting killed right when you rez back up. Not to mention the -20 min off the CD.

However despite these problems my current opinion is that the ehnc/resto spec is likely better for less experienced or less geared ehnc shaman who may not watch their totems closely, may pull threat and die often (or just die often), and likely don't have the spl dmg to benefit as much from the elem talents.

I have done a lot of work on excel sheets mapping cast sequences for shocks and storm strike. I have found that (assuming that all your storm strikes hit and no one is eating the charges) in a 90 sec window you will get in 12 earth shocks, ALL of which earth shocks will get the buff (assuming no resists), and 6 flame shocks with the 5 sec CD. Where with the 6 sec CD you will get 8 earth shocks in a 90 sec window, 7 of which will get the buff, and 7 flame shocks.

With the 6 sec CD you will (again assuming no resists) have a 100% flame shock up time, with the 5 sec CD there will be a pattern of a 3 sec gap between flame shock debuff up times. No matter what ability you lead off with with the 5 sec shocks if you map it out you will always fall into the pattern of ES, ES, FS, with a 3 sec downtime between flame shock debuffs if follow the use of your abilities logically.

Looking back to the difficulties of having to recast totems, after mapping my cast sequences I found the open spots where I could safely drop totems, refresh water sheild, bloodlust, basically use any GCD without messing up my rotation. As far as the mana issue goes I have about a 5k mana pool unbuffed (I wear a lot of leather) and I never have mana issues. Between Shamanistic Rage, Water Shield, and Mana Spring Totem mana really isnt an issue. As far as threat concerns with a BoS I haven't found the 16/45 spec to much worse with threat, and its still much better than we had it before 2.3. And if I find myself threat capping I always hold back a bit, wait a second or so extra on the shocks to dimish my threat while I wait for the tank to build some more threat.

To summerize, my conservative math and personal experience show the 16/45 spec to be better dps. However I wouldn't recomend it to less experienced or less geared ehnc shaman who may not be good at watching totems, GCDs, or have the ap needed to make the elem talents worthwhile, or restore enough mana with shamanistic rage. The difficulties of diminished totem range can be solved if you watch your cast sequences closely and recast totems when needed within the open spots in your rotation. If you're in a guild with good players with decent gear your tanks and healers (and yourself) should be good enough to where losing the Imp Reincarnation isn't a huge problem either.

While skimming through the Paladin Retribution forum (I know, I know...), I managed to find what I was looking for to be able to share my spreadsheet and have it error checked. Here it is: Earth Shock DPS Calculator

If there's errors, PM me or leave info here, I'll fix it.

Edited, a couple months late:

Spell damage coefficient - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

ES gains 42.86% of spell damage, according to Wowwiki. As of 7 March '08, I've gotten 1 pm (back in January, sorry, been busy) about the coefficient being 38.6% due to a penalty from interrupts. I've looked, but I can't find solid proof. If there is definitive proof otherwise (give me a link so I can be educated), I will change the formulas accordingly.

I think the people who tried out sub-Ele spec showed a bit more than theorycrafting did. Most found a noticeable dps increase in their performance. So if such is the case, and the majority of the sound theorycrafting supports this, then the answer is plain.

But I agree wholeheartedly with Rob. Blizz did a very good job on this one, and it is about preference. Which spec suits you the most? The dps increase is nice, but then again its not so much to ignore cheap totems, faster reincarnate, faster heals, etc.

Toots, I'm shocked that you only pulled threat with ele and not with resto. I find myself pulling agro whenever I don't have Salv and go all out. Are you sure you just are not doing more dmg now than before due to better gear you've earned over time or your tank was just slacking a lil because he was so used to no one stealing threat? Or were you focusing more on shocks than you do normally as resto, so you saw a much larger marked increase? If it was only a one time event, it could have been a multitude of variables that lead to such an event.

I'm a sub-ele spec man myself. Mana is never an issue so I just watch totem timers for those who have issues with losing shocks due to totems. I just drop totems between the GCD's. And if that means dropping a new totem 15 seconds early, so be it. I never go oom anyways, so why not? You should never actually lose a shock or ss due to totems or GCD. Only if you totem twist too, will mana be an issue, but then you're gonna lose shocks in there anyways most likely.