Well of course it would, that was the point. Delay the shock not stormstrike.

Then you'll forgive me if I don't read yours.

That should be the other way around if WF is on cooldown, shouldn't it?

I recall Yo tested it a long while back and he said it didn't really make a difference to wait more than 1 second, but some guy recently tested it on the sim with the new changes and he said it looks like always waiting is best. So it could go either way I guess.

Request: Can someone draw up a nifty graphic (much like the ones in the Hunter Shot Rotations Illustrated thread) that depicts the 6second shock CD interfering with Stormstrike CD? And also one that shows how 5sec shocks remove that?

Waiting the full 3 seconds if needed or just one? I always wondered about this back in my enhance days.

Do you also want one that incorporates totem twisting cooldowns as well for both specs?

Umm I suppose so sure. More pictures hopefully means fewer people asking/proposing dumb things.

Well, if you want to play hard ball and play with small numbers, i forgot to mention that enhancement/elemental also has access to 5% increased damage with shocks, making the shocks from enh/ele 34.834482% higher in dps than resto .

I presume you're saying for the mana costs? I don't see what the twisting would have to do with the range of the totem.

You realize the guy you're quoting is like the de facto expert on elemental theorycraft right?

Im sorry then . By the way Malan, since we agreed and everything, can you write on the first post or on the shaman theorycraft main thread that a enh/resto spec cannot shock every 6 seconds if he doesnt want to lose Stormstrikes? Because i see many people do that false assumption.

A blanket statement like that isn't entirely accurate. Due to windfury's cooldown and recent simulation testing showing that it's always advantageous to wait on WF cooldown before Stormstriking, it's entirely possible that you can shock every 6 seconds. It's situational, and entirely luck based, but wholly within the realm of possibility.

Yah I plan to update with some things from here once we flesh some more things out.

If as a enh/resto you want to shock every 6 seconds, losing Stormstike time isnt optional, its mandatory. So i dont know what youre trying to say. An enhancement/elemental can wait to Stormstrike to whenever he wants too. Where's the advantage of enhancement/resto? Try as hard as you can, but you cant prove that 6 seconds cooldown give you more options that 5.

If (and only if) you want 6 shocks no matter what then yah ok that means SS gets pushed back.

But that's also dumb. SS is a hell of a lot more useful to have hitting every cooldown on the dot than the shocks are. Shocks aren't procing WF and they aren't procing Mongoose/Executioner/Ashtongue Trinket/DST/Hourglass/etc. SS does.

My shaman is 57 and climbing so I've been lurking in the thread trying to figure out how best to spec him when he hits 70. I'm leaning toward 16/45/0 in one of two flavors. The first has Convection/Elemental focus and the second has Elemental Warding/Call of Flame. I've seen much discussion about the latter spec in this thread and also discussion of the 50mp5 from water shield. Can I safely assume that I won't have mana problems with Elemental Warding/Call of Flame if I use the SS/Shock Rotations discussed in this thread? Apologies if this question is asked more appropriately in the other Enhancement thread.

And Illidan, Archimonde, Azlagor, Vashj, Kael, Lurker and probably some other's I'm forgetting. Totem range is something I really took for granted until I didn't have it. Knocked me right back in time to the BWL/AQ days of having to yell at my group to stay in range of totems.

Malan is absolutely correct about the importance of stormstrike every cooldown. If you don't believe him, try waiting 3 seconds after every SS cooldown to use it again and observe how much dps you lose. I believe Disquette said he waits if there's less than one second left on the WF cooldown (I don't have a link, but I'll dig it up if need be), that is probably the only case where you'd benefit from waiting to SS.

@adol: Once you are raidbuffed with the appropriate crit/ap/int level you shouldn't have mana issues at all (if you aren't twisting). Water sheild and proper SR use should keep your mana up through most fights.

About the totem range:
Lets face it: situations where you are too spread out for 20y totems, are mostly control-parts of a fight, and not parts where dps counts.
I.E.: Vashj-fight: Phase 2, if you are on the elements, you will kill them anyway, and your group is spread out. If you have to kill the Nagas, then Totems at Vashj will suffice. Phase 3 is also not so much moving, if done right, otherwise redropping can be done while getting in melee range.
Kael...I honestly can't think of a situation, where 30y would make a difference.

I'll have a play on the weekend, unless someone else wants to do it.
I was assuming that the 33% was including talents you'd need to take to get Reverberation...

Concussion is a 1.05 multiplier
Reverberation is a 1.2 multiplier (20% more shocks != 33% dps increase funnily enough).
Hit is a 0.84 multiplier.

1*1.05*1.2*0.84 = 1.26 *0.84 = 1.0584
1*0.87 = 0.87

1.0584/0.84 = 26% increase from base or 21% from Resto, based purely on shock rotations.

The suggested 3/45/13 build would be a 6% increase from base, and 3% from a pure resto offspec.

Once again reiterating earlier analysis:
Reverberation = 20% more shocks != 20% more shock damage.
Clipping happens.
And even with clipping: FS->ES->FS->ES is still better than FS->ES->ES or FS->ES-FroS.

Straight sim shows that at max shock rate (12/minute versus 10/minute) Reverb = 8% more Shock Damage.

However, we need to see how many shocks are loss by SS/Shock interference with 6s cooldown. So this math will await Bink's graph on how many shocks are lost per minute. (Is it 1 or 2 or more?)

Okay, let me preface this by saying that my argument is that WF totem weapon buff lasts 10 seconds, not 9. When it starts, the buff duration begins at 9, but in my experience, a buff shows 9 when the more precise time remaining is between 9 and 10, e.g. 9.xx seconds remaining. When the buff is about to expire, it flashes 0 sec. That doesn't mean the buff is gone, it means between 0 and 1 sec remain. It displays 0 seconds for 0.xx seconds remaining. Therefore it displays 0 for less than 1 sec remaining, 1 for less than 2 sec remaining, so on, 8 for less than 9 sec remaining, and 9 for less than 10 sec remaining. If there is a mod out there that is able to time it more precisely that I'm unaware of, I'd love to be enlightened. I believe someone has brought this up before, but the search function on this site failed to yield another post on it. But, as it is, I believe it lasts 10 seconds.

Now, what I'm really posting to show is the 6 sec vs 5 sec shock CD and SS interference. I've generated two graphs illustrating what I believe to be the highest shock/min possibilities on the shock cycles without delaying any SS. I even added in totem twisting to the mix, with the assumption of a 10 sec WF totem buff duration. Totem twists (WF immediately followed by GOA) are in gray, SS is in green, FS is in orange, and ES is in yellow. The black bars indicate the 1.5 sec GCD following each action.

Below is for 6 sec shock CD, prioritizing first SS, then shocks, and then twisting. Perfect execution of this cycle yields:
- 97% WF uptime
- 82.4% GOA uptime
- 9 shocks/min (every 4th shock is delayed in order to SS)




The next is for a 5 sec shock CD, prioritizing first SS, then shocks, and then twisting. Perfect execution of this cycle yields:
- 100% WF uptime
- 85% GOA uptime
- 12 shocks/min



Once again, these assume the WF totem buff lasts 10 sec. If that is indeed incorrect, the WF and GOA uptimes would drop by about 10% each for the cycles above. Notice how if the WF totem buff truly lasts 10 sec, everything matches up for a perfect cycle with the 5 sec shock CD, aside from the clipping of the last FS tick. The 5 sec shock CD cycle also leaves a single free GCD to refresh a totem or WS. With the 6 sec shock CD, the best you can do without missing a SS is 3 shocks for every 2 SS.

Update: I've updated the figures. They may be a bit cluttered, which is an interesting parallel to enhancement GCD management, to be honest. If people think the totem twisting timing should be removed and we focus just on the shock/SS cooldown interferences, I have figures without the totem twists as well. Any other suggestions for improvement are welcome.

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13107-h...n_illustrated/ Is a pretty good example of how to do it.

Yah adding some labels to that is a must if we want to display them on the main page.

Trying to create a rotation is an exercise in futility because you wait on hitting SS if WF is on cooldown with <2 sec remaining. Therefore, for example, if SS and shock come up simultaneously, but 2s remain on WF cooldown, you lose nothing by shocking right away. You may be able to prove that 5-sec shock timers work better with this, but I would expect it to be some very complicated math.

Nobody here has yet touched upon the benefit of "Call of Flame", which is probably actually fairly strong incentive to go Elemental.