• Binkenstein

For SS to be worth 60 dps to an elemental shaman, they would be doing roughly 900 dps without it.

 

Mirranda

The answer to the bolt part is below and answered by Bink.

And yes, it seems that the dps from windserpents varies quite a bit, which part of it may be due to stormstrike charges being taken, so someone really needs to record it without stormstrike charges (thus the beginning of this thread and the issue of a WS getting gains from SS).

Pretend I typed something witty.

 

proxx

Yeah, the conclusion I've come to through this thread, and the maths and research I've done on the pet dps side because of this thread, is that it's better for the shaman to get them and have no serpents, unless you have a crazy number of hunters in the raid.

Basically, some things I'm happy to have people disprove:

-Once you get over a certain gear threshold, Windserpent is better than Ravager for DPS.
- The better you gear from there, the bigger the DPS gap between Windserpent and Ravager becomes.
- HOWEVER, Ravager actually gets a bit more from the various buffs available if you pretty much have them all, compared to a wind serpent.
- The wind serpent STILL winds up being more DPS despite this, however the gap is greatly reduced (from, with my gear; approximately 50dps, down to 30dps).
- Because of this, unless there is a disproportionate number of windserpents available, the over all increase they provide, will not offset the decrease no stormstrike will have on the ele shamans DPS.

The only alternative would be to find where all your ele shamans live, steal their kidneys and sell them on eBay, which will likely leave them unable to attend the raid.

 

KraxisSingular

Personal Anecdotal evidence is similar for me, however it is much harder to evaluate if the WS gains from Totem of Wrath. 3% crit/hit is a pretty significant boost to LB power.

Gotta ask, have you tested it? From your comment it doesn't look like it. That slightly better critchance is outside raids 5%. 5% crit is no mean thing, and the reason it is so much is because Warriors (and Rogues) don't get spellcrit from Int. Add to that that the caster pet actually benefits from Arcane Brilliance and you can add another 0.5% crit to LB. Further, since the caster pet is a Paladin it only needs 25 Agi to 1% crit, as opposed to the normal pet which is a warrior and scales at 33 Agi to 1% crit. Which, if we assume the pets are buffed with Scroll of Agility, Improved Mark of the Wild and improved totems, would result in 126 Agi. For the caster pet it would be 5% extra crit, but for the normal pet 3.8%.

Anecdotal evidence from high end raids have shown a very interesting, but highly curious, difference in spellhit. Basically the caster pet has a significantly higher spellhit. And overall those results have shown the caster pet to be viable for DPS.
As noted it is anecdotal evidence and incomplete, so what is needed is more tests and less "caster pets = bad DPS" comments. Personally I haven't converted my pet as I'm not sold on it, but really don't just stick to old dogma if you haven't done the testing or been presented with tests, the world is not flat.

I might sound overly harsh here, but you are a major player in forming the accepted values. And as such your words have tremendous weight. If you say "don't bother" then people won't, and we will never actually find out if caster pets could be worth it. If however you said "we have to look into this" then maybe something would happen and we could either bury the caster pet forever or find a new avenue of gained DPS.

 

Manito

Actually, we've been crunching the numbers over at BRK forums, and there is practically no loss in DPS (depending on the encounter), just a difference in where the DPS comes from.

Original thread:
Caster Stats

Ska did a number of different runs on the same mobs with both Caster and Melee pets, and the Caster pet had (1) Higher crit rate (2) Higher crit damage for spell casts (3) Better spell and melee hit rating. The major issue at this point has been the hitpoint loss, requiring the pet be buffed considerably as well as having its health watched. This problem makes the use of a Caster version more situational than anything, Melee pets are definately more consistent because of survivability.

My Death Knight Armory
Manito's Modified Steady Macro
Separated macro that allows chained commands.

 

Manito

Why in the world does your WS have Bite? Who in their right mind would put a 25 focus 10 second cooldown skill on a pet with a 50 focus zero cooldown (1.5 second GCD) skill that does almost 40 more damage per hit? Raid DPS WS should only have 3 skills trained: Growl, Max Rank Lightning Breath, and the option of Max Rank Dive for those who like the ability to quickly move their pet in and out of AOEs. Outside of these 3 skills, no other focus using skills should be trained, to do so defeats the purpose of taking a WS while having a high crit rate entirely.

My Death Knight Armory
Manito's Modified Steady Macro
Separated macro that allows chained commands.

 

◊ Lactose

While we were learning Brutallus, I alternated between bringing a caster Wind Serpent and a normal Wind Serpent. Going all out, fully buffed, both Hunter and pet, the caster pet did still not exceed the normal one in terms of DPS. Crit rate for Lightning Breath (especially) and melee (less so) was higher, but overall DPS did not live up to my expectations.
I also did some comparisons looking at various ZA runs (mostly looking for miss rates, due to varying buffs available).
From my tests, swapping to a caster version doesn't drastically change your pet's DPS (I've never observed a DPS increase), but a caster pet's survivability (in the fights it matters) is noticably worse.

Like I said in the spreadsheet thread when caster windserpents were brought up, they do not seem to be worth spending extra time modelling.


EDIT: Bite can be useful when you have crit droughts. Getting stuck at ~40 focus, Lightning Breath can't be used, while Bite can.

Look, Lactose, we'd rather you didn't eradicate the whole human race.
- Sam & Max

 

KraxisSingular

Thank you, that was I was looking for.
I remember that post in the spreadsheet thread, but at the time it didn't look like you had done any serious testing due to how it was worded. Now I see you had tested.
And there is a vast difference between it not being viable due to survivability, and due to damage potential. Obviously it fails at the first and as such can't fulfill the second. But it's damage under perfect conditions should be pretty damn nice. Too bad it won't happen.

 

Manito

Sorry, the whole stuck at 40 focus thing is absurd, no offense. Between Bestial Discipline and GftT, you won't be "stuck" at 40 focus for long, and instead, you have a skill that has a duplicate purpose, for less damage, that can not only drastically reduce LB casts because of bad timing, it's extra cooldown triggers also slow LB cast speed. Not to mention that its damage is mitigated by armor, whereas LB's rarely is. I've seen other hunters in the same raid running a pet with both LB and Bite, and my pet blows theirs out of the water every time, hands down.

My Death Knight Armory
Manito's Modified Steady Macro
Separated macro that allows chained commands.

 

Partil

Reasons for training bite?
Bite may be mitigated by armor, but it doesnt have as high of a miss rate as LB. Also, now granted I don't have the best gear (most of it is arena s2/s3, I am at about 32% crit 1500AP unbuffed as BM), Bite has a higher damage per focus than LB. And the stuck at 40 focus thing actually happens a lot on fights that require movement or force you to stop attacking for a period of time. Also, if you string back to back crits, you are getting +100 focus in <1 second. If you are at 40 focus, you are wasting 40 focus from tht +100. If you had used bite beforehand (assuming the pet was not stuck on a GCD) that is less focus wasted. It happens. Honestly I don't expect it makes a difference either way significantly - Cheeky's has the pet at 0.41dps less when NOT using bite than when using it. Also, to stay on topic, using bite is less chance of those SS charges being eaten by LB.

Anyway, personally, I use both bite and LB, and it works fine for me; however I mever have a good hunter with a WS without bite to compare it to in practical experience.

 

Manito

The back to back crit +100 focus thing is irrelevant, you're wasting focus time with or without bite because of the GCD anyways. If bite went off when you had 40 focus, leaving you 15, then you back to back critted and capped your pet on focus within the next <1 second, you're still waiting on the GCD from bite for another 1-1.5 seconds, in which time you would more than likely crit again (if you're running a WS with the proper crit rating) and the point of using bite is moot, other than the fact that you pushed back LB casts. To each his own, I suppose.

My Death Knight Armory
Manito's Modified Steady Macro
Separated macro that allows chained commands.

 

alienangel

FWIW, using the setup from the thread on Best DPS gear setup is slightly misleading, since that setup is incredibly high on armour penetration (~1900 passive iirc), which most hunters aren't at around brutallus. ArP has no effect on pet DPS, so it skews it slightly. Probably not significantly, but it's still worth mentioning if we're trying to do something with a current model.

 

• Intermission

I just want to throw this out there to make sure people know what the initial post was trying to achieve, because it seems many people are missing the goal and simply sprouting numbers.

• Find out difference in dps from Ravager to Wind Serpent (assuming each serpent in the raid gets an equal share of the SS charges, none going to Shaman*). (A)
• Number of hunters used in the raid. (B)
• Find out difference in dps from Elemental Shaman with SS to without SS (assuming the serpents get every SS charge*). (C)
• The number of Elemental shamans is not important, as they are limited by SS charges.

Question: is (A * B) higher than (C)? If so, stick with the Wind Serpents. If not, stick with the Ravagers.

I know I am repeating what some others have said, eg the responses to the people that said "shamans get more from SS than a serpent", but hopefully putting it into a simple formula can help us get to the important thing: finding the most accurate values of (A) and (C).

Gear, group composition, etc are the variables that need to be considered in (A) and (C) that may change the results for different levels of gear/progression/composition.

*I think this is a fair assumption, considering 3 Wind Serpents each LB'ing every second or two. I suppose with only 1 Serpent, the Elemental Shaman may get a few charges in. If this rate is discovered, it can easily be put in as a percentage of dps difference with/without SS to the Elemental Shaman (C). Eg if the Shaman dps loss with 0% SS charges is 100, but he gets 10% of the SS charges, his dps loss would then become 90 dps, roughly.

 

Unaz

It was mentioned in passing that rogue Deadly Poison benefits from SS as well which will also need to be taken into account. Even though an ele shaman will be eating charges if he is in the raid, that still means there are around 2-3 seconds of DP ticks times the number of rogues in the raid per 10 seconds.

While fairly small, it's another source of damage Wind Serpents will be decreasing.

And when there are no Ele shamans in the raid, the delta will be an almost permanent stormstrike bonus on all rogue DP ticks. I imagine the Wind Serpents will still pull ahead in this situation, but the margin will be smaller then expected.

 

Mirranda

In reference to this post, for a Brutallus kill one week apart, I had a 150 dps difference in DPS and the only difference was a Survival Hunter in the raid using a WS.

I had the same # of BL, same # of procs on ring and use of trinkets, and 1% lower crit the second week. Group composition was also the same except we had a Survival Hunter instead of a second BM Hunter.

Pretend I typed something witty.

 

Kyuki

DP does NOT eat SS charges. Think it's been said numerous times now.

And let's be frank, the answer may differ from raid to raid, since diffrent compositions in diffrent guilds are as they are. What we can apply to all cases when each individual want to know the worth however is this: (which was said very early and very simple by bink)
Windserpent total DPS needs to be worth more than 100 DPS in comparacy to Ravager total DPS to be worth bringing to a raid where SS and a Elemental Shaman is present.

After that it's just a bunch of diffrent situations and setups you have to apply to get the info you want. It WILL differ from raid to raid.
So for example if you run 3 hunters all with windserpents, their own windserpent only needs to do 35 DPS more than their own Ravager does. Adding it all up, the windserpent DPS exceeds full SS acces for a ele shaman.

And these numbers would then apply to startout sunwell geared people.

 

Jimmysnuka

Different numbers coming from all over the place with no conclusive results. My take is there is just too many variables to be considered and tested to give a definite 100% yes or no answer to this question. But that pretty much holds true to most hunter mechanics these days. So, hi and welcome to Hunter Mr. Shaman!

 

• Daler

With our hasted LB casts, with 1 wind serpent in the raid, I'm finding about 50% consumption for me during boss fights (according to our combat log parses. FYI, scrolling through the combat log file on WWS sucks something fierce). Which makes some intuitive sense to me, as between passive haste, Quag's Eye and Skycall, I'm more often than not around a 1.8 cast or better.

 

Daidalos

There seems to be a conclusive answer. That answer depends on raid makeup. The math seems quite solid on the the gain from multiple hunters with windserpents. 1 wind serpent seems more iffy but looks like the math is showing a slight loss.

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

 

Jimmysnuka

I don't know.. maybe i'm blind, maybe I missed it, but I’m seeing numbers supporting 3x+ WSs to be worth it using them. I’m seeing the opposite saying a WS is worth using short a 2500 DPS ele shammy. I’m seeing 1 shammy is 8 more DPS then 1 WS. I've seen a lot of different numbers and conclusions.

I'm a hunter and most certainly wouldn't mind dusting off the old ravager if it is clearly shown that they are hurting raids DPS, but I’m seeing too many numbers thrown around in too many direction to figure out which to believe.

You'll have to forgive me if I’m being defensive about another class telling me what to do via numbers as I’m still to this day DSTless from different GM's who hold to the misbelieve that DSTs are a million times better for rogues and Hunters should only get them if all the rogue alts have them (I exaggerate, but you get the point )

That and I'm pretty damn partial to feeding my pet mage food as I won't lie and say that I haven’t forgotten pet food more then once back in the day..

 

Korikin

What about threat cap on elemental shaman? At certain points an elemental shaman will find he is threat capped during the fight, at such points a WS eating up Stormstrike charges seems like a great idea. So, I'd put forth the theory that if your elemental shaman is often threat capped during a fight then having a WS eat some Stromstrike charges might net little to no loss for the raid's dps.

Additionally, often the ranged and the melee find themselves on different targets. In such cases, my pet is often found on the melee target. In which case, the elemental shaman isn't using the Stormstrike charges at all and the WS can eat them up at its leisure.

* tosses 2c on the floor *

 

Daidalos

Threat cap for an ele shaman is not an issue with a good tank. This is about dps not bad tanking and how to compensate for it.

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

 

• Daler

EDIT: Too slow. Please delete.

 

Jimmysnuka

Good point.

 

Korikin

Ouch, no need to toss a random insult about tanks in there bud. I'm fairly sure that a good deal of dps classes could out TPS even the best tanks. I've seen some pretty ridiculous dps out of elemental shaman. But at any rate, along the lines of "it's based on a raid by raid basis", I feel that my point is still valid. Some raids will find that threat cap issues are critical in considering total raid dps and where buffs need/want to go.