Ezareth

Compare it to a gemmed Ilvl 109 Blue quest helm from SMV.

503 Armor
24 Stam
15 Int
55 Dam
28 Crit
4Mp5

550 Armor
66 Nature
42 Crit

You are gaining 47 Armor, 11 Nature Damage, 10 Crit Rating(15 int=4.14 crit rating) for

24 Stam
225 Mana
5.5 MP5
55 Healing, Fire, Frost


Even in PVE you DO need some stam for survivability, and considering how easy that quest helm is to get and socket, I just don't see the advantage of 11 more nature damage and 10 crit, especially considering how much your are liable to pay for it and then Enchant it.

Sure it would look nice for some crit video or short burst fight but that is really situational, and the shamanistic helm can be used in PVE as well as PVP without the cost of buying and enchanting another helm.

I've had several chances to buy the helm for 150g and each time it just wasn't worth it to me(even before I got T4).

 

Kegsta

I just did my first grull. I won the damage on the ogre bosses (unless you count damage from enslaved locks pets) then i was 3rd.

Grull himself was a different story, while i was constantly in the top 5 (took us about 6 tries to get him), but its pretty hard to tell as some noobs always blow people up screwing the DM, i was in a Boomkins group and never looks like running out of mana. Fully potted mages with +13% COE +15% fire vun i couldn't touch, but i was giving them 4% hit 3% crit, heroism and a few heals made me feel a bit better about not keeping up. We didnt have any shadow priests on the run, so locks would have blew me away aswell i suspect.

Also myself and the other ele shammy were getting tonnes of partial resists on grull (700 LB crits all the time FTL) Is this because of the level difference between the boss and me or the lack of COE lowering the resistance. Or a combo of both. This would make spell penetration a usefull stat for us if this is the case.

2 TOW do stack, but i doubt it will ever be viable to put 2+ shammys in the same group as the air totem isn't likly to go to full effect in the same group.


EDIT: Yer agree on the Lightning Crown, my second sight will tide me over till T4.

also WOOT got worlds end bracer's today. Invisibility pots makes heroic BF easy, just walk past those stupid felguards at end and kill lootbag. now i gotta pay $450 for +15 damage on it. ouch.

 

Ezareth

I've covered this pretty extensively in the Shaman forums on WoW.

Gleaming Dawnstone is the worst gem for us by far.

22.075 crit rating = 1% crit.

1 Crit rating = .0453% Crit

Lets bump your damage up to a end game amount of damage and say your lightning bolts HIT for 1500 damage and a (relatively) low crit rate of 30% with lightning which is going to make crit more valuable than with low damage.

Every % point of crit you get beyond your current % adds 15 damage so 1 crit rating = .6795 Damage in this case per point.

Now lets look at the +damage per point. Lightning Bolt is your staple damage and receives
6/7 or .857 Damage per cast. Now that damage can also crit based upon your crit rate so take that .857 multiply it by your crit rate(30%) and you get 1.114 or 64% more damage point per point on lightning bolt.

Now lets compare each modifier for the gems. 8 crit rating = 5.436 damage per bolt on average and 9 spell damage = 10.026 Damage or 84% more damage than the crit gem.

Now you are going to mention Elemental Focus and clearcasting but remember extra mana is only useful when you run OOM.

I am using pure spell damage gems and I do NOT run OOM, nor have I since patch(in PVE).
Considering every shaman here CAN get the same gear or better this pretty much means stacking crit isn't NEARLY as good as stacking +damage.

Now in my example I overvalued crit, few people are hitting 1500 damage lightning bolts, most of you are doing 1200-1400 which means in your example crit is even worth less and spell damage worth more, for most people a 9 spell damage gem will provide over double the damage of a 8 spell crit gem.

Keep this in mind when comparing gear as well for +damage is valued far less than +crit rating in item values as well.

 

Ezareth

With capped hit and about 25 penetration I'm not getting that much partial resists. Remember bosses have 24 unmitigatable resistance based upon the level difference, even mages and warlocks will see occasional partials even with COE up due to this.

I've also found a way to maximize my DPS by using a /stopcasting macro at the start of my lightning bolt. Once you get the hang of it this can increase your actual DPS at the cost of mana by about 150-200.

 

subscience

I tried out a PvP-oriented 36/0/25 Elemental-hybrid build and pick up Eye of the Storm over Unrelenting Storm. While EotS is definitely nice and very beneficial in PvP (particularly against Hunters and their annoying pets), I find myself always short on mana and was thinking about investing in Unrelenting Storm.

For those of you that do have it, is it worth taking US over EotS or even Elemental Shields?

 

Daler

This may be a noobish question, and my search didn't yield any results, but could someone explain exactly how using /stopcasting increases overall DPS?

I saw this mentioned in the gigantic mage thread as well, and it's probably just my lack of knowledge on how the various macro functions work, but I'm just failing to grasp it.

Any clarification would be greatly appreciated, as once I farm the mats for my netherstrike and netherscale sets, I'll be switching back to elem as soon as I can.

 

Ezareth

For PVE EOTS and ES are pretty useless, and US is pretty essential for longer fights.

 

Ezareth

Basically there is a delay between the end of your current cast and the start of your next cast that is some number based on your latency with the server. While you are spamming your lightning bolt key you wont end up casting your next spell until you current spell ends + this latency.

Now I have averaged out through timing my total LBs in fights of pure spamming that my average lightning bolt is taking me 2.3 seconds to cast.

What the stopcasting macro does to my understanding is stops the client side cast yet before it hits the server the spell is already off, this allows you to start casting your next spell before you would normally be able to.

The problem with this is, if you press the key too early and it hits the server before the spell is finished, it stops the spell and thus you LOSE DPS. There is an ecastingbar mod that will estimate latency for you and you just press your lightning bolt key during the latency portion of your cast, but I've found that if I press the macro at 80-85% on the cast bar of my lightning bolt I'll never mess it up.

This requires a LOT of practice though, and on fights where you can't be watching your spell cast bar it is better to just use normal spam.

This really shines on tank N spank fights.

 

Daler

Thank you, Ezareth. That's exactly what I was looking for.

 

Kegsta

I used to use fastcast back in the day on my priest, I belive they removed the function that allowed it to work, I haven't tried doing it manually yet, I am from Australia so it will improve my DPS a LOT with 600ms ping.

I already overwrote my +20 spell pen on cloak with subtlty, I guess i'll just wait till I get a new cloak to try it out.

Started a 3v3 all shaman arena group today, all 3 of us elemental, one just hit 70 so his gear is horrid, very fun stuff. We need 2 more shaman friends for a 5v5 now, all zapping the first thing that steps within 35 yards is very funny. 5 shammys i can imagine would drop 2 people instantly if all specced ele mastery NS.

 

Shivani

The Functionality that allowed fastcast to work was automatic /script spellstopcasting(); by mods. This was the same functionality that enabled mana conserve which saw widespread use when it became included in CT_raidassist. The devs felt this was abusive and removed that functionality, instead requiring a buttonpress for that script to fire. I doubt we'll ever see a return of a fast-cast like mod as a direct result of that.

I find that using a /stopcasting \n /Cast Lightning Bolt Macro on the overall reduces the amount of attention that i can pay to a given fight, which in turn has me killed. In My Opinion, the DPS increase is not worth the time spent inspecting the floor. Obviously those better capable of multi-tasking will see better returns.

Related to a discussion at the top of page 11, I might be alone here; But I don't think there is much benefit to having crit past 30%. On my server at least, A major Dreamless sleep potion costs a mere 1g20s, and restores a healthy more than third of my 10k mana. Even with those on hand (and not considering using them) I believe the only fights I go Oom on - I'm aware this is anecdotal evidence - Are grull and nightbane.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...lygos&n=Avijit

As Both the Bracer and Boots from Keli'dan Evade me to this day (10+ runs); I was seeking an opinion on whether you Guys think that Netherstrike, and the associated time to level LW are worth the upgrade from the three pieces I current have in those spaces (Moon-touched bands, Wave-song Girdle, And Worldfire Chestguard) I'm perhaps third in line for the chestpiece from magtheridon, but a recent lack of tanks has stalled our progression on that fight, which is what brings this up.

My nether supply is steady, but as at least one other poster said - when i can make 700g per nether, I make and sell whole stalwart helms - the cost of nether is not insignificant, though the expenditure of resources is recoverable.

 

Ghando

My biggest problem with Elemental was how freaking BORING it is. Spam Lightning Bolt. All day. Every day. That's not even lazy playing, that's your highest DPS. If you have a Shadow Priest in your group, hit CL every 3 bolts. Re-drop totems when they expire. Do good damage. I felt like a mindless DPS drone. Eventually I went back to full Resto and am working hard on getting my Mage to 70 for when I want to nuke things.

And before somebody else says it, DPS classes do not mash one button over and over. Bad DPS players do that.

 

• missiletoad

You've pretty much described Gruul, but what about most everything else? There's a lot that you can be doing as an Elemental spec. Just because you do one thing really well doesn't mean it should be the only thing you do, especially as a hybrid class. I know you pretty much expected this reply, but I find the opinion sort of odd, as the reason I love playing Elemental shaman is because of the wide array of tools available and ways to apply them in party/raid situations.

 

Daler

Oh, sweet irony.

 

Ezareth

I think it is worth it, especially considering you can use a haste drum or a restoration drum for long fights to help your group as well.

Save farming professions for alts IMO.

I try not to think of things in terms of gold, I translate everything to time. How much time have you spent trying to get those boots and bracers in your heroic run? Now take that time and translate it to gold farming, and then figure your cost to level LW and make the netherstrike set.

700 gold isn't 700 gold to me, it is about 3 hours which really isn't much considering how long we sit in an instance trying to improve our gear.

 

• RK

Elemental shaman in 2.1:

Elemental focus grants 60% discount on crit in place of 100% discount.

Elemental raid DPS still viable, yes/no? I guess right now I don't have to chug super manas to keep up, so I have room to increase mana regen that way, but this is kind of big.

Netherstrike socket bonuses will be fixed- although this might be annoying if we need to replace costly gems to get the socket bonuses!- and other classes will no longer have such a large consumables advantage over us (due to the existance of major firepower/frostpower etc but no major naturepower, but we'll all probably just flask and be done with it from now on), but this loses us more than half the gain we made from the original elemental focus change.

TBH, I fail to understand the point of nerfing elemental, other than in the "go heal or hit things with daggers, silly shaman" sense. It's the one disappointing point in what's otherwise a very comprehensive set of patch notes.

 

panny

There were changes to the "clearcasting" meta gem too, I think primarily to prevent people from getting out of the 5 second rule too often.

 

• Nite_Moogle

Honestly I'm kind of surprised they didn't change it to a mana restore on crit to parallel it better with Illumination. You can still fart around with downranking/upranking on clearcast in this setup though, so it's not a total loss. Elemental DPS is still very good, it's just not sustainable like a real casting class' is. I'd guess with this change really the only place you can't DPS effectively are on long boss fights, you'll still be able to last through most any instance pull and raid trash.

It's worth noting I said this would get changed even before it was pushed live :P

 

• RK

I think I'll log into the official forums (can I get WoW-O over as the standard acronym for that, as Eve-O is for Eve?) for the first time in ages, go to the test realm forum and agitate for Curse of Elements to apply to nature damage as well. In a patch of a thousand changes, what's one more?

I concede that Elemental Focus (especially as a single talent point) was overpowered, but it was a one-shot solution to the otherwise underpowered nature of the elemental shaman and it wasn't making elemental overpowered If they're going to take away from it, they really should address the rest of the concerns with lightning overload, totem of wrath, lack of group utility, jealousy of shadow priests for having all the toys, etc.


To stay on topic, this also has the side effect of making elemental less useful as emergency healers, since they've got less free mana to use on heals. However, elemental is still better as emergency healers than enhancement because they removed the off-handable healing weapons.

 

archz0r

Just did a quick test with my elemental gear, not very good but better than decent.

I did 90 000 damage in 2 minutes and 11 seconds, where I used Major Mageblood and a Adept's elixir, I also used the Superior Mana Oil. After the 2 minutes I was flat out dry on mana and had 20 seconds left on another Super Mana Potion. I don't really see this nerf being needed, in my opinion elemental was fine before patch. After patch it's not mana effective enough to be worth it.

 

Miaxi

My guess is that we will be forced to use tier sets, mana reduction relics and their "class trinkets" just to reach some level of sustainability with this change instead of having free gear choice. It's the Earthfury story all over again and I don't like it at all. -.-#

This is even worse due to the fact that we still get only one tier 4 pants/chest per week - what's up with that anyway? [/rant]

Edit: To illustrate my point a little better...

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30663 - Fathom-Brooch of the Tidewalker was deemed unnecessary because Elemental Focus would provide us with sufficient mana. This change kills our sustainability, making this trinket very desirable.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29389 - Totem of the Pulsing Earth was changed to a reduction of 24mp on test servers. That is still diminished by talents, giving an effective reduction of 22mp after Convection. While currently deemed trash, the efficiency boost will become highly desirable after the change.
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=37237 and http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=37237 - The 4-piece bonuses of our tiered epic sets all give sustainability bonuses. The big downside is that we get forced to keep a worse piece just for the set bonus and pick up higher tier loot for the bank till we reach 4 parts.


So in conclusion, instead of making our itemization more desirable in proper ways, they force us to take it just to be able to function at all. That balances things out for progressing raiders but leaves people without weekly access to tier 5 instances behind. This also makes sure that people with arena gear will not be able to function in a raid environment.

 

Muroka