Ayrish

I wonder if Windfury crits from a fist weapon that proc'd Windfury count for this. I'd guess no but if it does, that's a sizable increase to how much the proc stacks.

This makes enhance shamans more interesting I guess. Assuming that Lava Burst doesn't reset the swing timer when made an instant, would double fist weapons beat out the use of an Axe in the main hand (if the weapon spec now stays like this)? There'd be a crit Lava Burst probably every 15 seconds or so (I can't really do the math right now, just making a guess) and so Elemental Devastation would be up most of the time then if spec'd into Elemental. We'd have to have the mana to support this though... but things are going to be very interesting I guess when Beta opens.

 

Leviathon

Don't look into that video too much since it was done on a emu server and so the skills were not working as they would in the actual Alpha.

 

Beowolf

I don't think the change helps at all. Keep in mind they are combining item stats in the expansion. Melee crit will now also work for spell crit, and vice versa. Assuming you have a reasonably large amount of +crit gear, we should be seeing 20-30% spell crits as a base anyway. That's enough to make Elemental Devastation viable by itself.

 

Buanna

Or, my assumption, gear will continue to have Agility and Attack Power instead of Strength and Crit. They specifically added a talent to make Hunter loot more useful to Enhancement, I doubt they'll also start making Enhancement gear.

Boni and Bonii are not words.
Bonuses is.

 

Skreekins

With the change to weapon specialization for fists making any spell instant with a full stack, it would seem that Axe MH/Fist OH would be the raiding setup of choice in order to force elemental devastation to proc and keep it up almost indefinitely. Even if it did reset the swing timer, it would likely be worth it for such a large buff. After all, getting elemental devastation up will also increase your chance to stack the fist spec charges. We would need to see if windfury and stormstrike crits from the fist hand also added a charge before it can be determined if it is a truly viable strategy or not.

It also introduces the possibility of hitting yourself with a healing wave in an emergency situation. Not really something that can/should be theorycrafted for, but might be an acceptable substitute for our poor (nonexistent) raid/splash damage mitigation and lack of +stamina talents.

Assuming all of the above is true, it looks like we will be burning through mana very quickly. Lava Blast is a pretty hefty mana cost and will not benefit from the mana reduction talents we pick up in the enhancement tree. Hopefully improved shamanstic rage will be changed to also increase its duration (or lower its cooldown) to make it more appealing to a raiding shaman and offset the intense mana usage.

 

Rhaegal

I wouldn't be too sure about that. Ghost Wolf has its mana cost reduced by Mental Quickness if you have the two talent points to make it instant. Of course, MQ doesn't come close to the mana savings of Shamanistic Focus, but maybe if Blizzard really wants us using LvB as part of our routine DPS, it might get rolled into SF. Probably wishful thinking, though, given how powerful of a nuke LvB would be, and how much of an advantage this would give fists over other weapons.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

Phlis

While true, if you're speccing for elemental devastation, you could spec something like This. With Crit working for both spells and melee hits in WotLK you can probably actually expect Elemental Focus to be up for a significant portion of time, helping your longevity in fights.

 

vesicular

Yeah I was just gonna post this, and that's probably the way they're going with this. Also, I expect there to be a lot more Int on our gear than there ever was (or people ever wanted there to be) to help out with the mana demand. Seeing the synergy of all this come together is pretty exciting, I'm just still wondering where Spirit Wolves come in to play. Unless that's specifically a PvP talent to throw on casters for pushback or something.

 

Pitbuller

Why one point to anticipation?
There is 3 talent that raise dps and elem warding is better for damage migitation.

This is best for own dps but 0/0 imp weapon totems would make other melee mad.
War Pirate :: Shaman WotLK Alpha Talent Tree




Lavaburst crit hit 888-1132 avarage 1010.
With +1000damage and 2/3.5 co-ef you gain 571 bonus damage.
+4% for call of flame 2/3
+15% scorh stack
+10%(13propably malection and coe/cos merge)
+5% misery
+5% concussion
and
150% crit

So 3439 crits.
So maximum gain from lava burst would be 429dps.
If 5 fist weapon crit take about 15s its about 200dps in avarage.
Not counting almoust 100% uptime for elem devastion.
Also not counting -dps from missing Fs dots.

This huge spell crit dps would make speccing 21/50/0 viable if feral spirit sucks(I bet so)
War Pirate :: Shaman WotLK Alpha Talent Tree

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

Stopokingme

Well, this wouldn't matter much, the dps from improved weapon totems is next to nothing, been a while since I seen the math, but I think it was 10 dps per wf totem recipient, the increase in personal dps should more then make up for the loss.

 

◊ Malan

You say this on a board devoted to finding the best way to gain 0.5 dps.

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."

 

Low Life

Seeing how they're planning to give Enhancement this and warriors have the talent to reduce Slam's swing time by 100% on Bloodthirst crits, it would almost seem like they're fixing this.

 

• Aeolian

I personally would like to hope that Blizzard wouldn't be so blind that they would give us this ability to reduce a spells cast time down to Instant and then reset your swing timer, which is the source of that Instant spell. Granted if the spell hits for enough, and current indications say that Lava Burst will hit for decent amount, I could see it happening, although wouldn't agree with it.

Edit: I'm dumb at work. Leaving the changes in the cost of shocks though.

From:
To:

 

drats

We'll have mental quickness, convection, shamanistic focus, and elemental mastery by the time we're lvl 80. It seems like blizzard is trying to push us away from the resto subspec, probably as a way to deter us from twisting. In any case, with all of those talents a shock costing 1000 mana would end up only costing about 200m with EF 340 without (if my math is correct). Considering we'll have a larger mana pool to work with, it's really not that big of a problem at lvl 80.

 

• Aeolian

This is what happens when I try to think about WoW while trying to juggle everything at work. While I was doing my math I left off the Shamanistic Focus proc. The cost will be a bit higher then we are use to. I'd say Blizzard was trying to balance out our spell costs with the proc, and as you said most likely another move to push away from twisting.

 

Rounced

If melee crits end up decreasing cast times this should be a much better raiding build.

War Pirate :: Shaman WotLK Alpha Talent Tree

Going heavier in the elemental tree to capitalize on those instant cast Lava Bursts.

I just don't see how Static Shock could end up being more dps then Elemental Fury, especially since the lightning charges could potentially eat stormstrike charges that could be better used by a Boomkin or an Elemental Shaman.

The only real sacrifice is Improved Stormstrike for the cooldown reduction and the extra charges and 1 point in Weapons Totems.

I don't see the wolves having any real raid viability and being able to drop a Fire Nova totem for a stun would seem to offer a lot more raid utility then the pets (although nothing really seems known about how they will function yet).

 

◊ Malan

I doubt it, there's quite a lot of trash mobs in instances that are immune to War Stomp.

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."

 

Rhaegal

In addition to what Malan said (and the fact that a two-second-cast stun has limited use when it's really needed anyway), remember that the wolves aren't even close to finished yet. Even if they only do minimal auto-attack DPS themselves, we have no idea what their abilities will be or if the rumors are true that they will be able to apply some raid-DPS-increasing debuff to the mob. As to Static Shock vs. Elemental Fury, even the most optimistic EF numbers I've seen have been lower than the rather thorough Static Shock analysis a page or two back, not counting the addition of Lava Burst, though. Of course, EF is a mana-free DPS increase, whereas Static Shock will certainly have a noticeable mana and GCD cost.

We might start running into the same situation as rogues and arms warriors, though, where certain weapon choice changes will require a respec and a change in DPS abilities to optimize our damage. With a fist weapon and the new weapon specialization, you would get much more use out of Elemental Fury and be much more likely to need the mana efficiency of Elemental Focus, but those talents would probably be wasted given axes and maces.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

Rounced

The issue isn't personal dps it's raid dps. If that static shock eats a charge and the next lightning bolt from your elemental shaman hits an undebuffed mob you just lost a lot of rdps. Its the same reason why you don't earth shock immediately after a Stormstrike only magnified since the static shock is a lot less damage then an earth shock.

Think about it this way, buffing a 750 static shock hit by 150 damage hurts raid dps a lot if it means a 3k lightning bolt doesn't get a charge to eat.

Edited for Grammer

 

Rhaegal

I understand that, and I agree that it's something you should take into consideration when deciding whether or not to take Static Shock. However, keep in mind that WotLK adds a 10th class and raid slots are still capped at 25. That's a little bit less room for two DPS shaman. Personally, and perhaps this is just a fault of my server, I've only raided with elemental shaman a small handful of times, and the odds will only decrease in WotLK. I don't think anyone would argue with you that for raid DPS in the presence of an elemental shaman, Static Charge is a bad choice. However, for the rest of us, I think it's worth determining optimum personal DPS for all of those times when we don't have to worry about Stormstrike charges. Otherwise, we might be short-changing ourselves just because some other raids have a different set up.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

Rounced

It's not just elemental shaman, it's also Boomkin and your own shocks. Boomkin aura is basically Windfury for casters so I expect to see a lot more of them in raids.

Charges are very limited on Stormstrike and wasting one of them with a craptastic Static Charge when any other spell does more damage just seems like a bad call.


Quick question,

Does Elemental Fury also affect flametongue weapon imbue crit damage?

 

Rhaegal

You're missing my point entirely. Dismissing the question of, "Is Static Shock or Elemental Fury better DPS if you have to choose between them?" just because a reasonable amount of raids (I'm going to assume that this number isn't 100%) will contain someone else spamming high-damage nature spells is not helpful. Even if it turns out that elemental shaman and boomkin become so useful that 95% of 25-man raids will have at least one or the other, there's still 5% of enhancement shaman out there for whom this is a relevant question and likely a significantly larger percentage of enhancement shaman in 10-mans, which are going to be a much larger part of raiding in WotLK. Also, with a FS/ES rotation, you use maybe 1/3 of your own SS charges on shocks, the other 2/3 of which are wasted damage potential, even with only 2 charges on Stormstrike. Static Shock, in the absence of an elemental or boomkin, increases the damage output of the Stormstrike debuff, if anything.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

Rounced

Except Elemental Fury is a dps increase in EVERY PvE situation while Static Shock is a dps loss for the raid under any circumstance when there is a Elemental Shaman or a Boomkin present.

Static Shock is a bad raiding talent unless they change Stormstrike to a straight buff while active without any charge mechanisms or they make it so that the static shocks don't eat the charges (they should still get the benefit just not eat the charges).