• Daler

How many boss fights actually require split melee/ranged DPS once you're in T6 and SWP? The answer is very few, if any.

 

Croaker

You can interpret that as an insult if you want, but the reality is that Elemental Shamans will not have a threat problem assuming they have Salv. Ever. Our hunters pull aggro at least 5 times for every time I do, and they've got FD. Threat problems are irrelevant to this discussion.

 

Jimmysnuka

From what i've done Anetheron and Azgalor. From what i've read it seems to me you could up your raid DPS by putting your WS(s) on the priest rahter then your ravager(s) on the paladin in the cousil fight (only at RoS so don't flip out if this is incorrect). And i havn't bothered reading Illidan on yet, so can't say either way.

So ya, certainly not many, but a few.

 

• Amelas

Obviously if ranged and melee are DPS'ing different targets, then Wind Serpent is the way to go. However, as Daler mentioned, these fights are few and far between. Just because you can use your WS on Azgalor doesn't justify bringing it on the other four fights.

Back on topic, the issue is based primarily on raid composition. The increase in Raid DPS from having only elemental shamans use SS charges will be the same whether you use one elemental shaman or five as its based on charges. However, each hunter who doesn't use a WS will have a loss in DPS. Therefore, the more hunters your raid uses the more likely the results will be in favor of using Wind Serpents.

 

alienangel

Quoting Intermission's post just for the variable definitions, not to reply to it specifically:


Further word of warning: while a model like Cheeky's spreadsheet is probably the best tool for gathering non-anecdotal estimation of the value of (A), until Cheeky can do the reworking he's been planning to it's not at its best for answering this particular question, since I'm fairly sure it does not take into account several factors that affect Wind Serpent DPS, while it does take into account the corresponding factors that affect Ravager DPS:

i. I expect LB damage is increased by Misery being on the target, but given that the spreadsheet never asks whether this is up or not, I doubt this is being considered
ii. LB has an extra 1% spellhit for alliance hunters grouped with a shaman (very common), again I don't think the sheet considers this since it never asks about it (to be fair it doesn't count the 1% melee hit from being grouped with a draenei hunter, warrior or paladin, but that is generally a less common scenario).
iii. LB has either an extra 101 spell damage or 3% spell hit/crit when the hunter is dumped in a caster group with a shaman dropping caster totems. Not as common as (i) and (ii), but not terribly rare either. Again, sheet never asks about this, so probably does not factor it into WS dps. 5% spell crit from a Moonkin too, but that's probably sufficiently uncommon enough to not worry about.

In contrast, all the buffs and debuffs that affect the focus dumps used by ravagers and cats (sunders, GoA, SoA, BS, BoM, BoK, Blood Frenzy, FF, Imp FF, CoR) can be input into the spreadsheet, so I expect they are counted when calculating the DPS for those pets. This makes comparing the two types of pets a bit iffy currently, since the magical damage the serpents do is the main thing that sets them apart from the other pets.

 

• Binkenstein

2 is semi-likely, depending on the number of shaman in the raid.
3 is completely not-likely. If a resto shaman is in a hunter group, they'll be dropping GoA. The only way you'd see a hunter in the same group as an elemental shaman is if there is a massive lack of caster dps classes, or the raid leader doesn't understand how to put groups together.

 

Manito

No joke. If I wasn't "lending" threat to the tank through misdirects and dumping my own through feign death every single cooldown (sitting there mashing the FD button as I watch my threat continue to overtake the tank). And our tanks are really good at generating threat.

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

 

alienangel

Since it's a DPS maximization situation I'd hope every BM hunter would get a shaman, which guarantees (2) for alliance.

(3) doesn't need to be an elemental shaman though, it doesn't seem uncommon to run an spriest + mage + mage + BM hunter + resto shaman group group, which would not be running GoA. Hunter is gypped on buffs, but 3% more damage and mana for everyone, mana tide for the mages, sub 20% heroism. We're not optimizing for Brutallus yet, but I've sadly spent more time with +101 spell damage from a totem than any other totem buff.

 

• Binkenstein

It's not as common as you may think. The "hunter" group will be the third dps group to get a shaman, which requires at least 3 shaman in the raid.

Also, I would seriously reconsider groups like a shadow priest/mage/mage/bm hunter/resto shaman, as I would expect that replacing a the hunter with a lock would be a better choice. I'm not completely up to speed on the sort of dps increase that a BM hunter would give such a group, but I'd be pretty sure on a warlock in that group increasing the overall dps than a BM hunter would.

However, this is a bit off track.

For the sake of the argument at hand, I would suggest using a more "typical" hunter buff group, eg: GoA, and the 1% spell hit aura if you are alliance, from a shaman

 

• Eliirion

This is a semi-thread necro for what may be a stupid question / stupid pov, but I can't see where this was brought up anywhere else in the thread.

Why does the DPS component matter (either the Windserpent or the Elemental shaman)? This isn't a consideration of damage over time, this is a consideration of damage done with a charge / use of charges.

What we know for sure:
1) Stormstrike places 2 charges on a target which lasts for 10 seconds.
2) Elemental Shaman PER CAST does more DAMAGE than a Wind Serpent when considering the benefit of Stormstrike.
3) Wind Serpent casts consume Stormstrike.

A lot of the argument I've seen so far is: 1 Hunter does THIS much more DPS with a WS eating SS' vs. a Ravager. If you use 2 hunters you'll get 2x the DPS! I find this to be a slightly fallacious argument. You still always have a limited number of Stormstrike charges available to you (assuming 1 enh shaman, which is the norm).

The real question should be: Can a single Elemental Shaman use all of the Stormstrike charges and never waste them? If the answer is yes, then due to point #2 Wind Serpents should not be used.

Am I oversimplifying or completely missing something with this point of view?

 

alienangel

You are IMO completely missing the point which was raised earlier, which is this:

- how much damage the consumption of SS charges yeilds for anyone in the raid is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is which of these combinations yields the highest total raid DPS:

1. All hunters using WS, Elemental shaman being deprived of some/all SS charges
2. All hunters using non-WS, Elemental shaman getting all SS charges

If 1>2, use WS, if not, don't use WS.

 

◊ Shalas

Suppose lightning breath was a .0001 second cast and did one damage. 1.2 damage would be rounded down to 1 and the ele shaman would never manage to use a SS change, so SS would do absolutely nothing. You'd still be a fucking moron if you brought anything other than a wind serpent in that situation, though. By itself, the benefit per charge from SS is an entirely meaningless number. It is a consideration of damage over time, because total RDPS is the stat that matters.

 

• Eliirion

Right, I wasn't considering the DPS difference between a Ravager/Cat and a WS not including Stormstrikes, and how if that DPS difference + SS extra DPS is higher than Elem sham SS extra DPS.

Has this been modeled anywhere or had time put into figuring this out beyond isolated empirical testing by 2-3 people over a 2 week period? (This is what most of the results in the thread indicate).

 

nosyt

I was wondering

1) What would be a good macro to use for casting lightingbreath without the serpent running out of melee and casting it?
2) Asumeing there are no Stormstirkes up in raid, would Windserpent beat a ravager pet in raids as a MM hunter tier6/sunwell geared with about 38% and 2700 AP self buff with no raid buffs?
3) Is useing Bite+LB better than just LB?


-thanks

 

Talithin

Slightly curious as to whether numbers have actually been modeled yet to get down to the bottom of this problem. If it helps in any way I would like to add the estimates which I am being shown from Cheeky's spreadsheet with regards to damage differences between BM hunters using wind serpents and those using ravagers.

Modelling my current gear (typical MH/BT progression gear) using standard raid buffs on a boss with 7700 armor. Numbers will obviously vary depending on the level of gear although I would expect that the gap between pet dps increases as gear level increases due to higher crit chance (which is the main factor to wind serpents' superior dps). I achieve the following results.

Wind serpent - Lightning breathe primary special

Pet dps - 505.53
Hunter dps - 1897.96

Ravager - Bite primary special, Gore secondary special

Pet dps - 459.35
Hunter dps - 1851.79

From this very rough model we can assume that the raid benefit of a hunter using a wind serpent over a ravager is roughly 46 (or 50 for simplicity sake) dps per wind serpent.

The real question is what is the raid losing by stormstike charges being consumed by a windserpent instead of elemental shamen? If a rough number can be given to the raid dps gain, given the chance that all stormstrike charges are consumed by a hard hitting nature damage spell (i'm not sure how hard, on average, lightning bolt/wrath hits for), then one can evaluate exactly how many wind serpents would need to be present in a raid for their presence to be a raid benefit rather than deficit.

Optimistically assuming that an average lightning bolt hits for 2000 damage and that every 10 seconds exactly 2 of these lightning bolts will receive an extra 20% damage from stormstrike then we conclude that there is an effective raid dps increase of 0.2*((2000*2)/10) = 80 dps.

From such results, if these rough calculations are accurate enough, we can conclude that a raid would need 2 hunters, both using wind serpents, to effectively outweigh the loss in dps of an elemental shaman not taking full effect of stormstrike charges.

These results are of course variable with gear, raid composition and style of encounter but hopefully the above is an effective approximation of a typical encounter and results shouldn't skew too far away from the 2-serpent rule.

 

Rast11

I've done testing with the WoA an LB does not receive any benefit from this totem. I also messaged a GM to see if this was working corrrectly and he said it was. I have not tested with totem of wrath but I did a ZA in a goup with an ele shaman and my pet seemed to be doing higher DPS than normal but that could just be the RNG.

 

KraxisSingular

One problem is that the Enhancement Shaman might himself eat up one charge. Since Stormstrike has 10 sec CD and the Flame Shock/Earth Shock rotation is 12 secs, they will overlap at some point. So even with no WS in the raid the Elemental Shaman will not gain the full benefit. Nor will he lose it all with a WS as he is bound to get a few of the charges.

So I think, that while a single WS is going to outweigh the loss, the overall loss will be considerably less.

 

thesmoosh

The regular wind serpent does not benefit for WoA totem or AI/Divine Spirit. If you tame a caster version however, it will be. The reason is that *caster* pets are considered paladins and they scale differently with buffs. For example they get 1% crit from 25 agi, vs 33 for warrior pets.

There's a good thread about this on big red kitty if anyone's interested.

 

Bovii

Ultimately, this discussion is based around a soon to be moot point. With the changes in WotLK, or perhaps earlier if they decide to let it go now, Bite will now be equal to Claw in terms of Focus cost, damage, and cool down. Because pet abilities do not share the same cool downs, you'll be able to focus dump a bite and claw at the same time. This means that the benefits of the Wind Serpent will ultimately become negligable and you'll see Hunters going back to cats, raptors, and whatever else due to the higher benefit of Sunder Armor, Curse of Recklessness, etc.

But, for right now, I think that the discussion has really been answered by the whole concept of: If you take 3 Hunters and all 3 use Wind Serpents, the DPS gain/loss for anyone using the charges is a push. If you don't take 3 Hunters (some guilds only take 1-2) and they're using a mix of various pets, then using a different pet would be more valuable for total RAID DPS even if the Hunter(s) will take a slight DPS hit.

 

Pixen

Um...what? As far as I know, pets will still be limited by a global cooldown on their abilities. All the change to Bite means is that pets that can't learn Claw or Gore will no longer be automatically laughed out of the raid. Lightning Breath will still be better. So will Gore. The only other effect the change will have is that Ravager and WS owners will no longer have to debate whether to train Bite, because it'll become worthless for those pets (lower DPF than Gore and LB).

Edited for clarity.

 

• Binkenstein

If your Enh shaman is eating SS charges, then either there is no Elemental shaman in the raid, or he's "doing it wrong" (more rDPS to have the elemental shaman using the charges than an Enh shaman with earth shock). Ideal rotation should be SS -> FS -> ES

 

KraxisSingular

Well obviously. But did you read my post? the FS/ES rotation is 12 secs while SS is only 10 secs. In time, in fact a minute or so, SS will coincide with ES, or do you mean that the Shaman should not go for SS on every CD and wait until FS is 1.5 sec from CD?

 

Iluminati

would you mind linking me that thread?

 

KraxisSingular

Ask and you shall recieve.

Mind you it takes a few pages before it gets going. The first pages are more about establishing the caster pets are more than just nerfed pets.

 

• Binkenstein

They should always use Flameshock after Stormstrike, no matter whether it is clipping the dot or not.