[Shaman] Raiding: Enhance or Elemental? - Page 2

Illundai · 02/26/08, 9:06 AM

Uh, can't add much to what's already been said in this thread, except that we have never raided with an Elemental Shaman and we do quite okay on the WWS rankings for what it's worth.

I'd go with... play whichever you like best, though. What use is speccing for something you'll eventually think is boring (and yeah, shaman specs do have that possibility, unless you really get into it)

ZRaids · 02/26/08, 9:18 AM

I also wanted to add that while DPS is obviously an important metric, it is only one of many considerations. Ele and Enhance both perform slightly different functions in the raid. This difference is not only based mechanics, but comes about simply by virtue of group placement. For example, the elemental shaman has the option of raising spell/healing output or lowering the group's threat production;an enhancement shammy cannot functionally use Tranquil Air totem. Raising the threat cap is nice, but it can still be insufficient to eliminate the need for Salv, and possibly the multiplicative bonus of Tranquil Air.

The importance of improved raid healing benefits and spellcapping is also something worth mentioning, but I'll leave that out.

So basically I would come full circle with others in this thread and say you still want to have both as an option, depending on the encounter. There is no 100% correct answer as to whether an elemental or enhancement shaman is the most appropriate. I use an elemental shaman and I love having an enhance shaman in the raid. All the same, my caster/healer counterparts love me even more

Rhaegal · 02/26/08, 9:22 AM

Yeah, from my experience, unless you're big into PvP as well, elem shaman are more likely to get bored. In most fights they tend to suffer from the same problem as frost mages... spam one button for ages until you get a "Your target is dead" error, drink, repeat. It's not quite as bad if it's a fight where you may be asked to spot heal, but melee just generally tends to be more interesting, especially with all the group synergies that most raids stack for melee groups. For me, being elemental with a moonkin and a shadow priest isn't nearly as fun as being enhance with a leader of the pack, improved battle shout, and the occasional TSA if our group balance is wonky. The only thing I've really enjoyed about elemental is my trinket+elemental fury+chain lightning macro on AoE groups, but I'd take big WF procs every 3-5 seconds over big CL crits every 3 minutes any day. =)

castille · 02/26/08, 9:28 AM

Originally Posted by ZRaids

an enhancement shammy cannot functionally use Tranquil Air totem. Raising the threat cap is nice, but it can still be insufficient to eliminate the need for Salv, and possibly the multiplicative bonus of Tranquil Air.

The importance of improved raid healing benefits and spellcapping is also something worth mentioning, but I'll leave that out.

So basically I would come full circle with others in this thread and say you still want to have both as an option, depending on the encounter. There is no 100% correct answer as to whether an elemental or enhancement shaman is the most appropriate. I use an elemental shaman and I love having an enhance shaman in the raid. All the same, my caster/healer counterparts love me even more

I somehow had a feeling you would be elemental. Healing is one of those few things that can be done undergeared in the game, and easily overcome. Spellhit is something your casters should be going for without an elemental shaman present. An enhancement shaman can effectively cycle in tranquil air, he marginally sacrifices some personal DPS and small DPS increases for the other people in his group. An elemental shaman cannot effectively leave a group buff like 'windfury' up while tranquil is down.

On top of that, raising the threat cap is the ultimately the single greatest thing that can be done to squeeze out more DPS out of those few classes that don't have an aggro drop short of death -- and that's something an elemental shaman cannot do. Enhancement shamans can be used as ranged interrupters more easily than elementals as they don't have to stop what they're doing to cast earth shock (as shocks aren't part of a normal ele rotation, but are integral to Enhancement DPS).

No matter how much your ranged loves you, enhancement offers much more than elemental does since, depending on placement, they can add something to almost the entirety of the raid rather than 4 people. And then even if they are in just a DPS group, melee scaling with buffs far outstrips ranged, given only the buffs that the two shaman specs provide.

Rhaegal · 02/26/08, 9:33 AM

Originally Posted by ZRaids

For example, the elemental shaman has the option of raising spell/healing output or lowering the group's threat production;an enhancement shammy cannot functionally use Tranquil Air totem.

This isn't technically true. If it's really that big of a concern, an enhancement shaman can twist TA just as easily as he can GoA. I'm not sure anyone actually does that, though... in fact, I don't think I've cast TA since the launch of BC. Maybe that's more a function of the fact that the tanks we run with are really good, but for the most part, TA just seems like it was a quick temporary fix to the fact that horde had no threat reduction at all, while alliance had Salv. Now that we all have Salv, the need for it has decreased dramatically, and unless you're running with ludicrously high DPS destro locks/fire mages who can't control their threat with soul shatter/invis, or just bad tanks, TA is mostly a moot point in a caster group.

Skorze · 02/26/08, 11:04 AM

Originally Posted by Terrastorm

Just so you know, Totem of Wrath does stack.

Indeed news to me. I've never had more than a single elemental shaman in the raid, so I haven't had the chance to test it. I apologize for making the assumption.

Despite Totem of Wrath stacking, I don't see any advantages to bringing an extra elemental shaman over an extra enhancement shaman. Even if your main melee group already contains an enhancement shaman, it helps to put another in the tank group, since your other melee dps usually gets stuck there. In addition, having the extra tank threat and avoidance is almost never a bad thing.

Don't take the above as an argument against elemental, but rather for enhancement. Elemental fills a DPS role very well, but if it came down to taking one or the other based on pure raid benefit, I'd have to choose enhancement. Of course, certain variables such as current raid makeup, fight dynamics (Hydross nature immunity, for example), and player characteristics should always be taken into consideration.

Kasi · 02/26/08, 11:23 AM

Originally Posted by castille

I somehow had a feeling you would be elemental. Healing is one of those few things that can be done undergeared in the game, and easily overcome. Spellhit is something your casters should be going for without an elemental shaman present. An enhancement shaman can effectively cycle in tranquil air, he marginally sacrifices some personal DPS and small DPS increases for the other people in his group. An elemental shaman cannot effectively leave a group buff like 'windfury' up while tranquil is down.

On top of that, raising the threat cap is the ultimately the single greatest thing that can be done to squeeze out more DPS out of those few classes that don't have an aggro drop short of death -- and that's something an elemental shaman cannot do. Enhancement shamans can be used as ranged interrupters more easily than elementals as they don't have to stop what they're doing to cast earth shock (as shocks aren't part of a normal ele rotation, but are integral to Enhancement DPS).

No matter how much your ranged loves you, enhancement offers much more than elemental does since, depending on placement, they can add something to almost the entirety of the raid rather than 4 people. And then even if they are in just a DPS group, melee scaling with buffs far outstrips ranged, given only the buffs that the two shaman specs provide.

Umm you're kinda wrong or not showing the whole story on a few things here.

1. Why would an elemental shaman be dropping tranquil air? If it is for something like a shadow priest, then the choice is between that and wrath of air. There is no WF for casters, so having to juggle totems on threat limited fights is not something you'd do. You'd just keep tranquil down the whole fight. So yes you're right in that the mechanics of WF does allow wf and another totem to be juggled. However its really not a worry in the current raid game and it is also something that blizzard said they'd fix in the future, so I wouldn't bank on it being there forever. It is a nice perk for now. Then again how many threat limited fights are there in the current game? Bloodboil is about it.

2. Never ever rely on shamans to earth shock anything critical. You're just asking for a heal on council or a wrath slipping through if you depend on this. They are way short of being capped with spell hit and can not be relied on to interrupt.

3. Why does an enhancement shaman add to the raid instead of just 4 people? You mean by tossing him with a tank group? Well a resto shaman can do that just as well and usually does. Unless you build a second melee group based around the mt group there is no need for the mt group shaman to be enhancement.

That being said, I agree that enhancement offers superior group buffs. ToW in no way holds up to unleashed rage and imp weapons/soe totems. Elemental shamans need to have a group buff that is dependant on them actually casting and provides a strong group buff, not just a 3% crit (and some hit that might be already achieved through gear) DPS wise both are very consistent in what they can output over fights of lengths. If your raid uses COR enhancement will likely win, if not then probably elemental. There is really no need for an elemental shaman past the first. I can see having multiple enhancement (up to 2) or resto shamans (up to 3 even) being useful.

Daidalos · 02/26/08, 12:00 PM

Originally Posted by Kasi

Umm you're kinda wrong or not showing the whole story on a few things here.

1. Why would an elemental shaman be dropping tranquil air? If it is for something like a shadow priest, then the choice is between that and wrath of air. There is no WF for casters, so having to juggle totems on threat limited fights is not something you'd do. You'd just keep tranquil down the whole fight. So yes you're right in that the mechanics of WF does allow wf and another totem to be juggled. However its really not a worry in the current raid game and it is also something that blizzard said they'd fix in the future, so I wouldn't bank on it being there forever. It is a nice perk for now. Then again how many threat limited fights are there in the current game? Bloodboil is about it.

More threat /rage and mitigation for the tank is always a good thing. With dps getting best in slot everything warlocks and rogues will be riding the tank in threat even with shatter/vanish. The less classes have to use these ability the better since that is time that could be spent dpsing. Perhaps twising will be fixed someday but I don't think we should base current recomendations on speculation on future unannounced patches.

2. Never ever rely on shamans to earth shock anything critical. You're just asking for a heal on council or a wrath slipping through if you depend on this. They are way short of being capped with spell hit and can not be relied on to interrupt.

Actually we do use enh sham on the heal but as backups if the mage CS is down or resisted. We have our resto shaman do the same but while elemental would be the only hit capped of the 3 specs I would argue it also affects your dps the most. The nice thing about enh shaman for interrupts is they use earth shock in thier normal dps rotation while ele shaman do not.

3. Why does an enhancement shaman add to the raid instead of just 4 people? You mean by tossing him with a tank group? Well a resto shaman can do that just as well and usually does. Unless you build a second melee group based around the mt group there is no need for the mt group shaman to be enhancement.

While this is true its more likely an enh shaman will have the imp str and agi totems and certainly will be the only one with imp WF totem. UR also helps with threat somewhat also its highly likely for there to be other melee in the MT group that would benefit from UR. I am not arguing that a resto shaman cannot do the same role for the MT, simply a enh sham does it better. THe synergy for an enh shaman in the MT group cs a resto shaman are numerous. At most there is 1 other caster (lock) and 3 melee. This also means the mana tide for the resto sham goes mostly wasted (unless you swap groups for tide which you certainly can do but is somewhat annoying when things are hectic)

That being said, I agree that enhancement offers superior group buffs. ToW in no way holds up to unleashed rage and imp weapons/soe totems. Elemental shamans need to have a group buff that is dependant on them actually casting and provides a strong group buff, not just a 3% crit (and some hit that might be already achieved through gear) DPS wise both are very consistent in what they can output over fights of lengths. If your raid uses COR enhancement will likely win, if not then probably elemental. There is really no need for an elemental shaman past the first. I can see having multiple enhancement (up to 2) or resto shamans (up to 3 even) being useful.

Unaz · 02/26/08, 12:46 PM

Originally Posted by mushar

Elemental has much higher +healing and can keep themselves up in a pinch easier than Enhancement.

While ele does have a larger mana pool which helps, I have usually as much if not more spell damage/healing as an elemental shaman as enhancement while raid buffed. With a bit over 500 spell damage unbuffed, and over 1000 while buffed.

Not a huge issue, but just wanted to clear that up.

We run with one ele shaman, and one enhance (me), and the rest are resto. While the ele shaman is handy, he only moderately buffs his group with Totem of Wrath and mana spring, with an additional bloodlust. It's all defintiely helpfull but not realyl anything to write home about. Mainly because it's exremely difficult for the rest of the group to gear around him providing spell hit. As they can't rely on him always being in their group, and can't typically swap out top end slot pieces to drop the spell hit.

His personal DPS can be quite high, especially with stormstrike up, but there's threat issues sometimes, and at best he may be on par with another ranged, rarely better in equivilent gear.

The utility of being able to kite/interrupt is questionable. It's another thing that's handy, but nothing to really go out of your way for. We've used him for interrupts, but we've also used myself. And while I'm not capped, with an occasional counterspell or backup shock from another shaman, it all worked out fine. As elemental he's usually at max range or would have to interrupt his own dps to maintain shocks. Kiting was only ever really usefull on Vashj, no other fight really needed it to any degree.

All this sounds negative, but I am still an advocate of elemental shamans, they can certainly hold their own, but in the broader sense could use a utility buff to make them more desirable in the long run. I enjoy being able to have totems and bloodlust in every group, and matching ele with a dps caster group is a definite plus.

On the other hand, enhancement brings almost another flask in AP from Strength of Earth totem, a huge amount of damage to other melee with Windfury totem, more then another flask in AP with UR, bloodlust, and competitive personal dps with infinite sustainability. I'm very happy with the state of enhancement shamans in pve, although they could use a bit of a survivability boost with how harsh some encounters can be on the melee. The -damage change to SR was a big step in this direction, although the fact that it's tied in to aspects of our dps make it hard sometimes to justify holding off on it for survivability reasons.

Kasi · 02/26/08, 1:00 PM

I think the only reason classes are riding the tank in threat in current content is because of being overgeared for it, both on the tanks part and on the raids part. A 2-3 minute Teron fight where classes blow multiple cooldowns with full consumable usage is just not something that reliably will show how classes and threat work in Sunwell. Fights will be longer so cooldowns will be up for a much shorter period leading to lower dps. The difference between a 1700 dpser and a 1900 dpser on Rage is not a matter of gear so much of fight duration. The same holds true for Teron.

Actually we do use enh sham on the heal but as backups if the mage CS is down or resisted. We have our resto shaman do the same but while elemental would be the only hit capped of the 3 specs I would argue it also affects your dps the most. The nice thing about enh shaman for interrupts is they use earth shock in thier normal dps rotation while ele shaman do not.

This is something that I found curious about it. Who is your enhancement shaman dps'ing? If dps'ing the paladin who is pretty much the only one safe to dps I find it difficult to believe that your shaman will be able to always maintain range on the priest while the Paladin is moved around his portion of the room? In this fight it is pretty easy for me to park myself at range halfway in between the Lady and Gathios and dps Gathios while getting all interrupts. Anyone who is dps'ing the Lady is going to do bad damage, especially the rogue(s) assigned to interrupt her heals while magic immune and so on.

As for the benefits of improved totems for a tank group, really that is pretty minimal. A tank is not going to gain much out of a few more str or more ap contribution from wf to much of a great degree. UR is going to be a very small amount of AP on any prot specced tank. However if you are building your MT around threat and not survivability with no tree druid or no warlock then yeah with two tank warriors and a feral that is a good place to put the second enhancement shaman and a last melee.

However from what I've read of the PTR testing, well the bosses hit very hard and you will be going for max survivability and raid healing. Which means a tree and likely a lock too. That is why I think a lot of the current live endgame stuff is silly atm. People are doing fights which they overgear massively and trying to draw conclusions from it. The conclusion shouldn't be that we need massive threat help for the tanks, it should be that you're overgearing the content. When that stops being the case, then those issues won't be there anymore and you'll be back to doing setups for survivability until you outgear the content again. Our guild might not be as progressed as you guys are, but we've had locks pulling 1900 dps on fights and with a SS they had no agro problems as long as they remembered to use the spell.

Kasi · 02/26/08, 1:08 PM

Originally Posted by Unaz

While ele does have a larger mana pool which helps, I have usually as much if not more spell damage/healing as an elemental shaman as enhancement while raid buffed. With a bit over 500 spell damage unbuffed, and over 1000 while buffed.

Not a huge issue, but just wanted to clear that up.

We run with one ele shaman, and one enhance (me), and the rest are resto. While the ele shaman is handy, he only moderately buffs his group with Totem of Wrath and mana spring, with an additional bloodlust. It's all defintiely helpfull but not realyl anything to write home about. Mainly because it's exremely difficult for the rest of the group to gear around him providing spell hit. As they can't rely on him always being in their group, and can't typically swap out top end slot pieces to drop the spell hit.

His personal DPS can be quite high, especially with stormstrike up, but there's threat issues sometimes, and at best he may be on par with another ranged, rarely better in equivilent gear.

The utility of being able to kite/interrupt is questionable. It's another thing that's handy, but nothing to really go out of your way for. We've used him for interrupts, but we've also used myself. And while I'm not capped, with an occasional counterspell or backup shock from another shaman, it all worked out fine. As elemental he's usually at max range or would have to interrupt his own dps to maintain shocks. Kiting was only ever really usefull on Vashj, no other fight really needed it to any degree.

All this sounds negative, but I am still an advocate of elemental shamans, they can certainly hold their own, but in the broader sense could use a utility buff to make them more desirable in the long run. I enjoy being able to have totems and bloodlust in every group, and matching ele with a dps caster group is a definite plus.

On the other hand, enhancement brings almost another flask in AP from Strength of Earth totem, a huge amount of damage to other melee with Windfury totem, more then another flask in AP with UR, bloodlust, and competitive personal dps with infinite sustainability. I'm very happy with the state of enhancement shamans in pve, although they could use a bit of a survivability boost with how harsh some encounters can be on the melee. The -damage change to SR was a big step in this direction, although the fact that it's tied in to aspects of our dps make it hard sometimes to justify holding off on it for survivability reasons.

Some misconceptions here. An enhancement shamans spell damage is nowhere close to an elemental shamans. Sure if all your procs and UR are up you can hit 1k for a few seconds. In raids if all mine line up I can hit 1.7k+. Even without any trinkets up I ride at well over 1400 spell damage. The two really are not comparable.

Threat as well, not an issue for elemental. 10% of our damage is completely threat free. The other 90% that is is helped out by staying at range. We are just not capable of outputting enough dps to actually pull threat of a well played T6 tank. The closest I ever got was when I started Illidan with 11 straight 4600 trinketed spell crits (with some LOs,TLC procs tossed in, while having drums of battle up). I got to 105% of the tank's threat. Once I stopped critting non stop I fell back to my usually 60-80%.

Kite/interrupting yes usually are rare things, but yes we can do it. And there is not that much need in most fights to stay at max range. Some yes, but its not a concern on fights where we do need to get closer. And if you do need to stay a bit further away, there is always s3 gloves.

Daidalos · 02/26/08, 2:13 PM

Originally Posted by Kasi

I think the only reason classes are riding the tank in threat in current content is because of being overgeared for it, both on the tanks part and on the raids part. A 2-3 minute Teron fight where classes blow multiple cooldowns with full consumable usage is just not something that reliably will show how classes and threat work in Sunwell. Fights will be longer so cooldowns will be up for a much shorter period leading to lower dps. The difference between a 1700 dpser and a 1900 dpser on Rage is not a matter of gear so much of fight duration. The same holds true for Teron.

This is something that I found curious about it. Who is your enhancement shaman dps'ing? If dps'ing the paladin who is pretty much the only one safe to dps I find it difficult to believe that your shaman will be able to always maintain range on the priest while the Paladin is moved around his portion of the room? In this fight it is pretty easy for me to park myself at range halfway in between the Lady and Gathios and dps Gathios while getting all interrupts. Anyone who is dps'ing the Lady is going to do bad damage, especially the rogue(s) assigned to interrupt her heals while magic immune and so on.

As for the benefits of improved totems for a tank group, really that is pretty minimal. A tank is not going to gain much out of a few more str or more ap contribution from wf to much of a great degree. UR is going to be a very small amount of AP on any prot specced tank. However if you are building your MT around threat and not survivability with no tree druid or no warlock then yeah with two tank warriors and a feral that is a good place to put the second enhancement shaman and a last melee.

However from what I've read of the PTR testing, well the bosses hit very hard and you will be going for max survivability and raid healing. Which means a tree and likely a lock too. That is why I think a lot of the current live endgame stuff is silly atm. People are doing fights which they overgear massively and trying to draw conclusions from it. The conclusion shouldn't be that we need massive threat help for the tanks, it should be that you're overgearing the content. When that stops being the case, then those issues won't be there anymore and you'll be back to doing setups for survivability until you outgear the content again. Our guild might not be as progressed as you guys are, but we've had locks pulling 1900 dps on fights and with a SS they had no agro problems as long as they remembered to use the spell.

We dps the pally like everyone else the enh sham simply wears the s3 gloves for increased range and I help shock sometimes as well. Our best time on council is 5:48 so it obviously doesn't hurt dps ;-)

Yeah we run a feral 2 wars a extra ret or rogue and a enh shaman in the MT group. Obviously if you are using a lock and tree druid it changes somewhat. My guild hasn't had much luck in sunwell when we have tried to go we had server issues. However, when learning BT when we weren't "overgeared" our groups were pretty much the same so saying groups should to be a certain way when not overgeared depends on many factors and our guild hasn't really found it to be neccesary to comform to what others say is the "safe" route. For example our very first Illidan kill was 14mins 45s or so the tank was very stressed to keep threat up and shield block up for shears. Enh sham is a very nice thing when trying to generate that extra rage and keep the dodge up.

Blazingwater · 02/26/08, 6:03 PM

I appreciate the responses you guys have put up here, but I would like to know where exactly you're getting this from. I want numbers! A good part of what I was trying to do here was get evidence that enhance are better than elemental. I can't just go post on my guild's forums "Ok, well, I asked around, and a lot of people said enhance are better than ele, so there."

If anyone could get some WWS sheets of them in a 10 or 25 man raid, list their spec, and their gear level, I could have a baseline to work off of. I really just want to know how much better enhance are than elemental shaman.

Kasi · 02/26/08, 6:16 PM

WWS isn't going to show you a lot really. Yay to having stacked melee groups or sub 3 minute fights where a majority of the fight is spent under beneficial cooldowns? I could show you some really nice WWS parses with abnormal crit rates too. Really the best way you could really compare the two is through each classes respected spreadsheets/theorycrafting.

Thus the dps difference of the specs individually are hard to contrast. They are roughly equal though and are both capable of beating 1600 dps on a WWS. Even higher with good luck or short fight duration. What is a lot easier to contrast is the group benefits. Being elemental more often than I am Enhancement (I am enhancement at the moment, even logged out in my gear) it hurts to say but enhancement brings the raid more. The only thing an elemental brings that a resto doesn't is a 3% hit/crit totem. An enhancement brings over a resto a bit more str/agi, stronger ap bonus on WF as well 10% ap to everyone in his party. No doubt that is better. Ideally I'd say have one of each, because an elemental is pretty strong and gets good benefit from the Stormstrike debuff. But if you had just one shaman to add to a raid, then unless your raid is obscenely caster heavy than make it an enhancement shaman.

Touf · 02/26/08, 7:25 PM

Well, the question is, how many resto shamans do you want before you think about adding hybrids? I wouldn't give up my restos for anything.