[Hunter/Shaman] Wind Serpents with DPS Shammies - Page 2

Jerem · 04/22/08, 6:10 AM

Hunters using a windserpent generally bind the serpents' lightning breath to their steady shot.
LB is instant cast, and hunters cast Steady Shot (more or less) whenever it's ready (1,5 sec GCD).

My serpent's average LB is 258 damage (without any specific buffs), in a 41/20/00 spec (Beastmaster) with Beast-Tamers shoulders (+3% pet dmg).
Letting my serpent consume Stormstrike charges will give it an additional ~50 dmg every 1,5 sec or so.
That is a ~33 DPS increase.

The serpent's LB average damage would need to be at least 3 times higher (around 7~800 dmg per hit) to benefit more than an Elemental Shaman from Stormstrike (based on Binkenstein's 100 DPS number).
Ant that is assuming the serpent will have a Stormstrike charge to consume every 1.5 sec.

I think it's pretty safe to consider an Elemental Shaman is the raid actor that makes the best use of Stormstrike charges (until a Windserpent's LB hits for an average of 800 dmg, which would require ... 3 patches back in time ?).

When I play my Shaman in Elemental, I ask our Enh. Shaman to change his shock rotation (no Earth shocks) and Rogues to use poisons that wouldn't eat the Stormstrike charges (I believe Dots achieve that). I'd ask hunters with Serpents to stop at the stable also.

Binkenstein · 04/22/08, 6:54 AM

Originally Posted by Philondra

Again, I don't think anywhere in this thread has anyone argued that an enhance shaman benefits more from the SS charges than an elemental shaman. We're trying to figure out what the interaction between elemental, stormstrike, and windserpents is in order to determine at what point a hunter can bring a windserpent into a raid with a stormstrike debuff and the raid will do greater dps than if they had brought another pet (cat, ravager).

Thusly, I posted the information I had on what stormstrike means to an elemental shaman, or in other words, what sort of damage a wind serpent would need to gain from SS to be viable.

KraxisSingular · 04/22/08, 9:12 AM

Originally Posted by Jerem

Hunters using a windserpent generally bind the serpents' lightning breath to their steady shot.
LB is instant cast, and hunters cast Steady Shot (more or less) whenever it's ready (1,5 sec GCD).

My serpent's average LB is 258 damage (without any specific buffs), in a 41/20/00 spec (Beastmaster) with Beast-Tamers shoulders (+3% pet dmg).
Letting my serpent consume Stormstrike charges will give it an additional ~50 dmg every 1,5 sec or so.
That is a ~33 DPS increase.

The serpent's LB average damage would need to be at least 3 times higher (around 7~800 dmg per hit) to benefit more than an Elemental Shaman from Stormstrike (based on Binkenstein's 100 DPS number).
Ant that is assuming the serpent will have a Stormstrike charge to consume every 1.5 sec.

I think it's pretty safe to consider an Elemental Shaman is the raid actor that makes the best use of Stormstrike charges (until a Windserpent's LB hits for an average of 800 dmg, which would require ... 3 patches back in time ?).

When I play my Shaman in Elemental, I ask our Enh. Shaman to change his shock rotation (no Earth shocks) and Rogues to use poisons that wouldn't eat the Stormstrike charges (I believe Dots achieve that). I'd ask hunters with Serpents to stop at the stable also.

I don't think anyone would argue that an Elemental Shaman benefits more per SS charge, that is plain obvious. The matter at hand is if the WS gain on DPS (over Ravager/Cat) overcomes the Ele Shammy loss of DPS from lost SS charges. So far I don't think so, and I don't think I would bring my WS if I knew an Enhancement and Elemental Shaman was coming too.

Osse · 04/22/08, 9:54 AM

The 80 dps difference between pets was with 1x ele 1x ench shaman in the raid. Two wind serpents in the raid btw.

Think about it this way:

2x BM hunters gain ~80dps each compared to wind serpent. That's 160dps.

With ravagers you lose 160 raid dps but gain how ever much ele shaman gains when only he/she uses the charges.

If you raid with one hunter the answer is obvious, if you raid with two it's questionable. If you raid with three hunters using three wind serpents the answer again is obvious.

One thing to think about is stormstrike uptime in some fights and what happens if the ench shaman dies. Obviously you want to think about how things are in optimal conditions but raiding is not always that.

Pixen · 04/22/08, 10:00 AM

Just thought I'd ask because I haven't seen it specifically addressed, but do the enhancement/shammy combos requesting hunters not use WS's also request rogues not use poisons? Honest question, because I could see that creating a similar problem.

Tazrach · 04/22/08, 10:18 AM

One of the issues some hunters had was the lack of tamable lvl 70 Ravagers. This is no longer the case and thus if you have cause to use the WS because your crit is high enough to take advantage of the improved focus dump, you should also have a backup Ravager ready to go should raid comp dictate this.

Daler · 04/22/08, 10:27 AM

Originally Posted by Pixen

Just thought I'd ask because I haven't seen it specifically addressed, but do the enhancement/shammy combos requesting hunters not use WS's also request rogues not use poisons? Honest question, because I could see that creating a similar problem.

If they have an enh shaman, any rogue worth a damn will have no poison on the MH and Deadly Poison on the OH, so it's not a problem. The DoT ticks don't consume SS charges.

Daidalos · 04/22/08, 10:30 AM

Originally Posted by Binkenstein

Thusly, I posted the information I had on what stormstrike means to an elemental shaman, or in other words, what sort of damage a wind serpent would need to gain from SS to be viable.

Just expanding on what bink posted in case people want to see the math.

LB average dmg for a ele shaman starting sunwell (fully raid buffed) would be around 2771.55 dmg(including crit) on average but this is not counting LO. LO dmg would be 1385.7

LO has a 20% procrate so every 5 LBs you can expect 1 LO so taking the average of this
5*2771.55+1*1385.7 = 15243.45 total dmg for 6 "casts"
15243.45dmg/6 hits = 2540.5 average dmg per hit

20% extra dmg = 508 additional dmg on average per SS charge

assuming 1 charge per 10s thats 508dmg/10s = 50.8dps
assuming 2 charges per 10s thats 1016dmg/10s = 101.6dps

Pixen · 04/22/08, 10:30 AM

Originally Posted by Daler

If they have an enh shaman, any rogue worth a damn will have no poison on the MH and Deadly Poison on the OH, so it's not a problem. The DoT ticks don't consume SS charges.

I knew that Rogues should be WF MH/DP OH. Wasn't aware that DP ticks don't consume charges, so I'm sure that helps a lot. Carry on.

vokzhen · 04/22/08, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by Daidalos

LB average dmg for a ele shaman starting sunwell (fully raid buffed) would be around 2771.55 dmg(including crit) on average but this is not counting LO. LO dmg would be 1385.7

I was under the impression that LO was NOT just half the damage of a lightning bolt, but instead half the BASE damage but then with all the normal modifiers. In fact, iirc Bink's elemental shammy post even points out that LO has an 8% higher coefficient (I assume a remnant from pre-nerf). Or am I reading and remembering incorrectly?

Philondra · 04/22/08, 11:10 AM

Originally Posted by Pixen

I knew that Rogues should be WF MH/DP OH. Wasn't aware that DP ticks don't consume charges, so I'm sure that helps a lot. Carry on.

There are, however, certain situations, in which rogues would likely be using Wound Poison (Anetheron in Hyjal, for example). Wound poison acts as a direct damage ability, so it will consume SS charges. Admittedly, this is the exception, rather than the rule.

Daler · 04/22/08, 11:16 AM

Originally Posted by Daidalos

Just expanding on what bink posted in case people want to see the math.

LB average dmg for a ele shaman starting sunwell (fully raid buffed) would be around 2771.55 dmg(including crit) on average but this is not counting LO. LO dmg would be 1385.7

LO has a 20% procrate so every 5 LBs you can expect 1 LO so taking the average of this
5*2771.55+1*1385.7 = 15243.45 total dmg for 6 "casts"
15243.45dmg/6 hits = 2540.5 average dmg per hit

20% extra dmg = 508 additional dmg on average per SS charge

assuming 1 charge per 10s thats 508dmg/10s = 50.8dps
assuming 2 charges per 10s thats 1016dmg/10s = 101.6dps

Bold is mine. There is simply no world in which a hunter's pet consuming SS charges adds more DPS than an elemental shaman.

To break it down further, let's compare LB and LO separately.

2771.55*0.2 = 554.31 extra damage from SS
1385.7*0.2 = 277.14 extra damage from SS

Pet's get 12.5% of RAP as spell damage. Base damage of pet's LB: 99-113/2 = 106
(106 + 0.125*X)*0.2 = 554.31
X = 21324.4

Repeated for LO:
(106 + 0.125*X)*0.2 = 277.14
X = 10237.6

A hunter would need 21324.4 RAP for their pet's LB to gain as much from a Stormstrike charge as a T6+ elemental shaman does from his LB, or 10237.6 RAP for LO.

Not gonna happen.

Moshne · 04/22/08, 11:31 AM

However, Daler, you are answering the wrong question. The question isn't "Do hunters get more value from SS charges than an Ele shaman." The question is "Do ele shaman get more damage from SS charges than a hunter using a WS instead of another pet" The argument from the hunters is that the SS charges are completely irrelevant, because the DPS gain vs. their 2nd best pet outweighs any benefit we get from 100% charge consumption.

We are also doing these calculations at 100%, when in reality, if your hunters run a WS, they are not going to consume 100% of the SS charges, but some portion of them. I would like to see Cheeky's numbers once he is finished remodeling the Wind Serpent damage. The other problem in these calculation is that we are treating all hunters as equal. As was pointed out above, its not that the Wind Serpent is on face a highest DPS pet, it is once hunter crit gets to unreasonably high level that their pet can't use their focus effectively, "wasting" DPS. Your survival hunters hit this point very quickly, but others much less so, so simply saying "(DPS gain * hunters) = impressive math" is quite fallacious.

The modeling for Elemental gain from SS has been done, and is reasonably solid, but everything in regards to hunters in this thread has been anecdotal at best, and without any real evidence. Once we have that this thread can go somewhere, but at this point it seems to be an "Elemental vs. Enhancement vs. Hunter" debate, which contributes nothing. Anyone who plays an elemental shaman is doing it because we believe that it adds to the overall raid in terms of class synergy/DPS output, if compelling evidence is given that hunters using this pet is a net raid increase, we will give it up, but the flawed numbers being given is not helping it.

Manito · 04/22/08, 11:35 AM

The base skill for Lightning Breath Rank 6 for a Wind Serpent has the following numbers: Breathes lightning, instantly dealing 99 to 113 Nature damage to a single target.

This damage scales off hunter stats with respect to AP, as well as to specific gear enhancements (like Beast-Tamer's Shoulders).

The average raiding level hunter with sufficient crit to support the improved focus regeneration levels from Go for the Throat is typically geared enough to the point that the average hit for Lightning Breath Rank 6 is about 250 damage non-crit, non-buff enhanced.

Lightning Breath has no cooldown except for the Pet GCD, which is 1.5 seconds. It is Instant cast, but is "channeled" meaning the pet cannot cast this spell while moving.

The skill takes 50 Focus per use, pets have a total of 100 Focus maximum. Go for the Throat regenerates 50 Focus every time the hunter critically strikes. Current study numbers show that a hunter must have somewhere in the neighborhood of ~30% crit to make using a Wind Serpent "worth" it in terms of special attack DPS.

There is also a raging debate currently going on over at the BRK forums about the difference between "Caster" (Paladin classed) and "Melee" (Warrior classed) pets. Currently, Caster pets run off the "Paladin" base set, meaning buffs to them are more beneficial to all critical strike/damage numbers. They must sacrifice a small amount of melee peak damage, as well as about 1000 hitpoints, but their "spell" damage abilities and critical strike capabilities are much higher than the Warrior classed pets. Would be interesting to see the difference numbers wise between Warrior and Paladin classed pets with respect to stolen Stormstrike charges.

Fola · 04/22/08, 11:36 AM

Using the Best in Slot hunter represented above (post #10) and Cheeky's spreadsheet I produced the following numbers fully raid buffed:

Ravager DPS
Melee DPS: 395.41
Special DPS (Gore): 80.61
KC DPS: 141.10
Total DPS: 617.12

Wind Serpent DPS
Melee DPS: 384.62
Special DPS: 132.85
KC DPS: 137.26
Total DPS: 654.73

Edit: for additional reference (Cat vs Wind Serpent/Ele Shaman = Essentially 0 raid DPS change)
Cat DPS
Melee DPS: 395.41
Special DPS (Claw/Bite): 73.37
KC DPS: 141.10
Total DPS: 609.88

It is safe to assume that the Windserpent will consume one of the SS charges while the other is consumed by the elemental shaman. To calculate the consumption of the SS:

Lightning Breath Damage = 199.28 (every 1.5 seconds)
Total Casts over 10s = 6
Total Damage w/out SS = 1196
Total Damage w/1 SS = 1236
New Special DPS = 137.33
New Total Wind Serpent DPS = 659.21

Net Total Difference in using the Wind Serpent over the Ravager:

659.21 DPS – 617.12 DPS = 42.09 DPS

Taking the numbers from the Abananax's gentleman's post (post #23) above (wwscoreboard rules btw) the net gain for the Elemental Shaman from charges are:

1 Charge = 50.8 DPS
2 Charges = 101.6 DPS

So in essence the hunter bringing the Wind Serpent is a personal DPS gain of 42.09 DPS for them but a net loss of 50.8 DPS for the elemental shaman. So overall the raid loses a grand total of 8.71 DPS.

To place this is in perspective (using the numbers provided) consider a raid wide DPS output of 30,000, 8.71 DPS makes up .03% difference.

If the numbers calculated for Elemental Shaman benefit change I will edit the post.