Anu

So far this thread has been amazing, I must thank all of you who put the time and effort into the theorycrafting and number crunching.

That said, I've read the entire thread, but I have not seen anyone mention adding Elemental Fury (21 point Elemental talent) into the mix.

Is getting to 21 in Elemental taking away too much from NEEDS in Enhance? With Lavaburst crits, improved spell crit ratings, more Stormstrike charges, and Maelstrom (possibly using Chain Lightnings with SS charges + druid nature damage buffs), it seems to me like a fairly decent dps boost. Or is this a "looks great on paper" idea?

 

kaasi

i'm going to say no. you can't max maelstrom weapon in a 21/50 build without cutting back other key elements.

this was the best 21/50 build i could come up with. i had to skip imp windfury and drop a point out of ment quickness and weapon mastery.

 

Anu

You're probably right, there's just too many needs in Enhance to get that far in Elemental. Perhaps a 21/50 build would be more pvp/Arena friendly, particularly 2v2 where Unleashed Rage wouldn't be as much of a MUST. The burst damage potential still looks sexeh to me.

edit: Reviewed your edit after posting...as for PvP having both Ghost Wolf talents would be a must, hence my mention of having to leave UR out. But again, sacraficing damage in one place to get it elsewhere.

 

• Toots Hepcat

Elemental Fury is certainly a possibility. I expect 21/50 vs 11+/51+ will be the big debate at 80, similar to elemental vs resto these days. Yeah, you lose a ton of juicy talents to get there...but perhaps the faster shocks and bigger crits are worth it.

For example, raiding with two enhancement shaman, it actually makes sense for one of them to skip enhanced WF totem and UR and pick up bigger personal damage instead. Something like this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

A clever idea, poorly analyzed, is cloaked stupidity.

 

Pitbuller

21/50/0
You can put one point at dual wield spec to static shock if its greater dps boost. This build lose 4% melee hit and static shock. With some number crunching with my own gear this is 60dps + 100-150dps loss. So you need 160-210dps from Elemental fury. With 20% spell crit(high number) you would need 1700-2000 crittable spell dps. Yuo get now 100dps from searing totem + 150dps from shocks(no flame shock dot) + 250dps flame tongue off-hand and about 400dps from lava burst(10s avarage rotation). Total 900dps from crittable spells or 90dps from elemental fury. We just don't have enough points.

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

Paladia

As the gear seems to contain mostly agility for crit (which gives only melee crit), your spell crit won't be overly impressive.

But lets be generous and say you have 20% spell crit and 30% of your damage comes from spells, elemental fury will increase the damage of a critted spell by 33% compared to not having it. That means elemental fury will add 1.98% overall dps. However, if you take elemental fury you cannot take spirit wolves. If you have 1500 dps, 1.98% of that equals 29.7, which means that the spirit wolves only need to do 29.7 dps (or 14.85 dps each) to be superior to elemental fury. I think it is safe to say that they will do more than 14.85 dps each and on top of that they may have an added utility.

Hence, unless something greatly changes, such as a huge buff to flametongue or frostbrand, spirit wolves will most definitely be better than elemental fury for enhancement.

 

kaasi

the way the devs are talking you can't rely on flametongue weapon to retain its on hit damage.

 

• Toots Hepcat

I'd rather not have this debate now though...it's going to be easier to make the decision when we see what raid makeups and WWS parses look like at 80 to see if trading melee damage for spell crit is really worth it.

The "leveling spec" will certainly be 100% enhance.

A clever idea, poorly analyzed, is cloaked stupidity.

 

• Toots Hepcat

Currently, my values for crit and agi are 1.64 and 1.69. Yo's suggests my value for spell crit is .5.

1.64 * 25 (current conversion) / 40 (new conversion) = 1.025. + 1.1 (Agi) = 2.125

1.69 Crit + .5 Spell Crit = 2.19

This implies I'd be stacking crit rating gems, and doesn't take EM, faster shocks, lightning shield or MW into account.

A clever idea, poorly analyzed, is cloaked stupidity.

 

◊ Malan

Anyone happen to play on the same server as Yo? Really need to find out if he's able to do some updates soon for Wrath changes.

Vyktianity already has over 75 billion followers. The first verse in his book "Gift of the Wild" is "In the beginning Vyk cast lifebloom and then maul."

 

Paladia

Still I think it is unlikely we'll see much more than 20% spell crit on an enhancement Shaman. However with the information we have at the moment, it would still be a minimal dps increase with elemental fury even if you had 30% spell crit.

 

kaasi

With LB auto crit with flame shock up wont spell hit be of more value than crit?

Or will the same theory of you don't have to hit to crit apply to spells as well? Lava burst 100% chance to crit = no full resist?

 

Sydane

Certainly looks true for 3.0 at level 70, but crit rating becomes twice as expensive at level 80. I'm inclined to believe that the only gem that will get stacked will be Armor Penetration (assuming base gear takes you across whatever hit/crit/etc thresholds are considered must haves). Even now point for point Expertise (below cap) and then ArP gems would be tops at 70, and the ArP will almost certainly scale the best.

 

Pitbuller

Can some one in beta test is 9% miss now not only melee but spell too. Also last 1% miss change for spells is gone too if rumors are true.

Using these numbers and assuming there is moonkin and elemental shaman in raid. And some how we get Totem of wrath. Then we only need 3% hit to soft cap.

Edit: For gem selection: After expertice cap: Agi will be best for leveling(extra dodge + armor). Armor penetration gem with sunwell ep values look good but ep value go lower when spell portion of damage go higher and this is just opposite what happen for crit.


I got 110str in gems now. If I change this all to crit rating I get 5% more crit. I got now 13.45% crit from crit rating. 5% from buffed int. +3% from JotC and if totem of wrath range +3%. Total 29.5% spell crit. I will assume now on that we hoover 20-30% in Wotlk raids.

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

LazyJoe

Crit is always capped by hit rate (and glancing blows for melee attacks). I think however you can have a spell that simultaneously crit and gets partially resisted (not really sure about this).

 

◊ Malan

Nite_Moogle has been testing the spell miss rate. With 9.26% Hit he was able to test against +3 level mobs and never had a spell miss (yes, spells 'miss' now).

Vyktianity already has over 75 billion followers. The first verse in his book "Gift of the Wild" is "In the beginning Vyk cast lifebloom and then maul."

 

LazyJoe

Something just came to my thoughts. Since lightning shield is a spell, wouldn't static shock be able to trigger elemental devastation ?

It seems something interesting to investigate s it would have some impact on the dynamic of our dps cycle.

 

Paladia

Unless something has changed since I played, lightning shield cannot crit.

 

Merovingiann

Apologies if this has already been covered.

I've been trying to reevaluate item stats based on the new int&agi=ap. Seems like the EJ numbers would change agi to 2.79 (from the BT 1.69) and int would get a straight 1:1 value.

Thoughts? And I've been thinking about how this applies to current end game gear as well.

 

kaasi

i do not believe agi value will raise as much as you think. yes it will likely go up due to its AP contribution but it will have to also be adjusted for the new 40/1 agi/AP ratio.

additionally int will have a higher value. INT in wrath will be AP (1/1.1 talented) and spell crit


these values are only good @70 since we do not know the rate of decay as you lvl.

 

Gurth999

Agi would be lower because it is now only 1% crit/40 agi.
Int would be higher because of BoK, and talent.

 

pseale

Does it bother anyone else that a larger chunk of our damange is now going to be spell damage instead of melee?

In my view, something is seriously wrong with the design of enhancement shamman in WotLK if we are seriously discussing 21/50 and not maximizing our top end talents.

From my perspective the talents being proposed are very poor and belong more in the elemental category than ehancement.

I am probably in the minority, but the gimping of or melee strengths and retooling of our class mechanics combined with the caster and spell oriented talents leave me wanting.

I rolled enhancement shamman - not elemental.

 

• Toots Hepcat

Exactly. You rolled Enhancement Shaman (you might have seen that spelling before, it's pretty common), and not Rogue. Or Fury Warrior. WotLK seeks to give us a sizable DPS upgrade and make us really stand out as THE class that does both melee damage and spells.

Furthermore, nothing has been GIMPED in our melee talents. We're getting a big boost from our current gear via the AGI and INT -> AP change. WFT is sure to be a big deal, same with 20% faster strikes, same with removal of the need to forge the perfect group (improving the change we'll get the battle shouts and feral buffs that help us maximize our DPS).

Save your QQ for strafing to the left, please. This forum is for abusing maths.

A clever idea, poorly analyzed, is cloaked stupidity.

 

Imabug

Maybe I'm the only one on the Beta, but I've noticed that occasionally I'll see Windfury go off and it'll proc my Maelstrom Weapons. However, close to 80% of the time, it doesn't. Has anyone else noticed this oddity? I assumed Windfury was still concidered an "Attack" by a melee weapon, unless something has changed.