[Shaman] Elemental vs Restoration - Page 11

Ezareth · 03/21/07, 5:29 PM

Originally Posted by Shabadu

I am literally agape and saying holy shit while the people in the garage that I'm getting my car fixed at are staring at me. I must have this.

By the time your gear is up to the level where that trinket drops, you will no longer have need of mana trinkets.

You can effectively use the mana trinket from Aran to greater effect than this trinket using the same lightning bolt spam.

Ghando · 03/21/07, 6:03 PM

I'm specced 36/0/25 right now, tried a number of different specs with the idea that I would be main-healing in almost every 5-man and raid I did. Was full Resto for a while, but with that build I couldn't solo anything and it felt incredibly limited in terms of what I could do on my own...soloing or farming was freaking impossible and PvP was miserable.

So with this spec (and decent gear, not great) I can top damage meters by a substantial margin in 5-mans (heroic or otherwise). In raids I occasionally DPS on trash (to speed it up) but I leave the hybrid-spec nuking to Shadow Priests...haven't been dedicated DPS on any bosses outside Kharazan. Basically a geared Shaman can heal close to his full-Resto capacity as long as he specs for both NS and Healing Way. You're losing some volume by not having Purification, but the 45ish mana/5 I get fully buffed from Unrelenting Storm makes up for it. I have no complaints about my healing or nuking capabilities with this spec.

I've said this before in these forums (and Maniq took a similar view with his Enhance gear) that a Shaman who can't heal doesn't belong in raids. You need to gear for healing and (unless you're 41+ Enhance) spec for healing. The high-end Enhance talents bring a TON of group utility and DPS longevity to the table, so they're worth compromising for. But the 35-41 Elemental talents just aren't worth what you're giving up, particularly given the synergy between that and the Resto tree.

Bottom line, if you're Elemental you should spec for NS and Healing Way. 30/0/31 builds force too many compromises in both trees, and if you're going hybrid you need to REALLY min/max the hell out of your talents. You CANNOT spec 30 in Elemental and get the worthwhile talents...you can't have 5/5 Unrelenting Storm, Elemental Fury and 5/5 Lightning Mastery with that build, to say nothing of Elemental Precision and Storm Reach.

Binkenstein · 03/21/07, 10:56 PM

Originally Posted by Ezareth

This is not true.

Eye of the Storm is a melee/physical proc and is based off the melee hit/miss/crit rules.

Elemental Sheilds is STILL in direct conflict with Eye of the Storm even after the recent change to resilience.

I have parsed hours of combat logs while grinding and in PVP wearing zero resilience and I have never seen EOTS proc on a HIT unless I put resilience on.

Both talents are still very useful in the Arena and I wouldnt advise an Elemental Shaman to skip either of them.

From what I've read, ES should act in a similar fashion as Resilience. Might want to get some combatlogs to check it, may be a bug.

Ezareth · 03/22/07, 12:51 PM

Originally Posted by Binkenstein

From what I've read, ES should act in a similar fashion as Resilience. Might want to get some combatlogs to check it, may be a bug.

Should and do are different things. This is Blizzard here. It makes sense so expect them NOT to do it.

I've tested this extensively. In hours of grinding with both Elemental Shields and EOTS I checked every time my EOTS procced and it was from a crit not a hit.

I put on my PVP boots with @.5 resilience the next day and twice I saw EOTS proc on a hit. It will never proc on a hit with only elemental shields unfortunately.

Binkenstein · 03/22/07, 5:26 PM

Post it on the bug forums then, as the change that allowed on-crit procs where the crit was mitigated by crit reduction is supposed to include talents, not just resilience.

Ezareth · 03/23/07, 11:30 AM

Originally Posted by Binkenstein

Post it on the bug forums then, as the change that allowed on-crit procs where the crit was mitigated by crit reduction is supposed to include talents, not just resilience.

Well the patch only mentioned Eye of the storm + resilience. Elemental Shields was left out so I don't consider it a bug.

It SHOULD have been added to that list IMO, but once again I wouldn't expect Blizzard to fix/change this any time soon.

Jezele · 03/27/07, 9:19 AM

Binkenstein,

Took a quick look at your item comparison sheet, and I can't tell whether your item comparison worksheet incorporates the new mechanics for Elemental Focus or not. I'm certain I can figure it out with a little monkey'ing around, but figured it'd be easier to just ask. Thanks!

Binkenstein · 03/27/07, 6:04 PM

Gear comp does iirc, but I'm re-working that atm anyway (see the third link to the work-in-progress theory craft for healing).
The talent sheet does definately have it though.

*checks*

Yeah, it's there. I add the extra damage generated by the extra mana return into the calculation for the Average value for Crit on the LB tab

replied to PM :p

Emily · 03/28/07, 4:21 AM

My guild is currently looking over an application from an Elemental Shaman. However, there is some concern among the officers as to the viability of the spec in a raid environment. Is this thinking outdated in the wonderful world of TBC specs?

My attitude would be that an elemental shaman can do decent sustained dps, while having gear/spec better suited to emergency healing. Do enhancement shamans bring that much more to a group with Unleashed Rage, and do caster shamans have the mana reserves/threat reduction to represent a contribution on par with enhancement, assuming we could choose between two recruits of either spec?

Starbucks · 03/28/07, 9:11 AM

The main problem with an elemental shaman is threat, now we have a talent to reduce this threat and it is pretty reccomended that anyone who intends to do DPS consider picking up for two reasons

1. It gives you + Spell hit too
2. It increases a Shaman's theoretical DPS by 10% as you can do 10% more DPS without pulling aggro than a Shaman without that talent.

The second problem is Elemental Focus, it seems Blizzard has graced us with a double edged sword in order to have sustained DPS we need to crit and crits have extra aggro and to do more damage we need to crit more and as such threat UI Mods are pretty much nessisary and any aggro touchy fight would cause major problems.

You have to remember that a Shaman is pretty much the most versitile healing class in the game, a Paladin can tank and heal but cannot do both at the same time (until they fix the way retribution paladins can do dps in PvE they will not be as effective at doing healing/dps as a shaman would). Druids have to shift forms to heal from DPSing and this can be costly in mana compared to what a Shaman with one "form". The only comparable class would be a Shadow Priest which does DPS while healing the party, Shaman can heal out of party so that is handy.

In short, an Elemental Shaman can bring healing and DPS to your group as well as an Enhancement Shaman and both are able to heal and do damage at the same time, one of these is in melee range doing damage and the other is farther away doing damage, overall they will have the same amount of +heal as an enhancement Shaman can DW +healing weapons to get the edge but will have less mana than a elemental shaman but the enhancement Shamans DPS is not reliant on using the mana pool (much) for DPS.

In even shorter words, if the player knows when to heal and when to DPS you will have a very indispensable member of your guild.

Teewee · 03/28/07, 9:23 AM

Originally Posted by Emily

My guild is currently looking over an application from an Elemental Shaman. However, there is some concern among the officers as to the viability of the spec in a raid environment. Is this thinking outdated in the wonderful world of TBC specs?

My attitude would be that an elemental shaman can do decent sustained dps, while having gear/spec better suited to emergency healing. Do enhancement shamans bring that much more to a group with Unleashed Rage, and do caster shamans have the mana reserves/threat reduction to represent a contribution on par with enhancement, assuming we could choose between two recruits of either spec?

I believe they are just as viable as any other dps class, even though they won't put out numbers as high as a well geared DPS class. I believe that enhancement shaman adds more to the raid, maybe because the buffs help out the MT, which is the most important person to have buffed in the raid. But the elemental shaman have an easier time with healing then enhancement shaman, just because of the gear and spec offers itself to healing and casting more then enhancement.

With that said it just sounds like you have a weird way to recruit new players, and this may just be because of how EJ works.

Valia · 03/28/07, 9:42 AM

I know totem of wrath has a very bad wrap but I am impressed with the increase of numbers that we are putting up in the raid now that I have respec'd to test it in our caster groups. My heart is really in healing since I am a mage re-roll but it has really been a signficant caster DPS buff for one group. This has a real spot in a raid so long as the player can intelligently switch between DPS and healing.

Jezele · 03/28/07, 10:07 AM

Originally Posted by Valia

I know totem of wrath has a very bad wrap

I don't think the complaint is really about the totem of wrath so much as that you're required to put 5 points into Lightning Overload, which is generally considered a waste of points.

RK · 03/28/07, 10:30 AM

Originally Posted by Starbucks

crits have extra aggro

No they don't. Old rumour, long since de-proven. 3000 damage = 3000 threat before modifiers, whether it was caused by two bolts for 1500 each or one crit bolt for 3000. The only way that crits cause threat issues is that if you're riding the line, a crit might pull aggro because you've done too much damage. But there's NO extra aggro for crits.

I agree with most of the rest of what you say, though.

RK · 03/28/07, 10:35 AM

Totem of Wrath has a bad rep for three reasons:

1) Having to take lightning overload to get it.

2) Using totem of wrath means you can't use searing totem (both are fire totems), and searing totem is an easy and cheap 100 dps, so that's not an insignificant loss. That means that totem of wrath (even in a full group of casters) is not as big a DPS gain as you would expect from a 41 point talent.

3) Taking Totem of Wrath means no NS.

I'm currently experimenting with 41/0/20 myself in place of the 47/0/24 I had been using, but it will take some more raids to get a feel for whether the numbers are improving enough to justify losing NS and Healing Way.