I've seen this mentioned but not addressed.

Are your calculations for stat weight based on the premise that the lightning bolts and chain lightnings from the mastery bonus being able to proc rolling thunder and clearcasting?

Or, is the fact that lightning bolt and chain lightning spells (as well as Lava Burst) cast by the mastery Elemental Overload being unable to proc any abilities (Rolling thunder, clearcasting) already taken into account with stat weight?

I've done the same as a few previous posters, stood at a target dummy and cast individual lightning bolts at the dummy, watching for lightning shield charges to go up based only on the elemental overload spell (since the original seems to be working fine). Given a 60% chance to proc rolling thunder on any given cast (assuming the mastery effect has already happened, only counting mastery procs) Seeing even 20 happen without a single rolling thunder makes the chances of Rolling thunder properly working off mastery cast bolts >.001%. When you go to 50 without a single success, it shows far smaller chances of this working.

Assuming the original calculations were taking mastery procs working with clearcasting and rolling thunder into effect, does this make crit weigh higher on the list? Or is it still that much worse than mastery, given that there are only 2 benefits of mastery over crit. 1: No threat, 2: effects Lava Burst. While the primary disadvantages being 1: Less damage per proc, 2: inability to proc clearcasting.

Any word?

I am horrible at the math, so I am going to throw this out there:

Because haste now affects our Flame Shock ticks, does higher levels of haste decrease the value of crit rating even further because of Lava Surge?

An easy way to test that would be to run recount while running your rotation on a dummy, then reforging a large amount of haste into a useless stat (expertise comes to mind), and doing the same. Check how much of your total damage is due to lava burst. This should give you a rough estimate of how useful haste is for you (and your current crit/mastery levels).

The increased amounts of FS ticks from extra haste will, as josemite said, benefit from Crit, but it will depend on your personal gear level at the moment how negligible (or not) that amount is.

I'll edit this post with my results shortly.


I ran my rotation for 5 minutes, following standard rotation on a Raider's Dummy (Searing, EM on cooldown, ES at 7 stacks, etc). Procs are Hurricane, Hymn of Power, and Battle Magic.

Setup 1:
7515 SP (including Totemic Wrath and Flametongue)
2173 Haste (21.97% including Wrath of Air)
Slightly over hit cap
545 Crit (19.51% including Int, talents, etc)
744 Mastery (12.15, 24% chance)

3656935 damage, 11900.2 DPS.
150 LBs , 128 Normal 22 Crit, 1712141 dmg (52.1% of total damage)
42 LvBs, 901745 dmg (27.4% of total damage)
16 Fulm, 14 Normal 2 Crit, 274388 dmg (8.3% of total damage)
130 FS ticks, 106 Normal 24, 264698 dmg (8.1% of total damage)
16 ES, 13 Normal 3 Crit, 89347 dmg (2.7% of total damage)
13 FS, 9 Normal 4 Crit, 44661 dmg (1.4% of total damage)


Setup 2:
7515 SP
1519 Haste (16.86%)
Way over hit cap (in the name of SCIENCE)
545 Crit (19.51%)
744 Mastery (12.15, 24% chance)

3425194 damage, 11191.3 DPS
143 LBs, 120/23, 1603146 dmg (51.8% of total damage)
43 LvBs, 899140 dmg (29.0% of total damage)
16 Fulm, 15/1, 252419 dmg (8.2% of total damage)
118 FS ticks, 102/16, 223850 dmg (7.2% of total damage)
16 ES, 13/3, 89220 dmg (2.9% of total damage)
11 FS, 11/0, 27625 dmg (0.9% of total damage)




Not honestly the results I was expecting. I think I'll need to run more of these, or perhaps for longer durations, as my sample size seems to be at the whim of the RNG-bound nature of Lava Surge. If anyone else feels like making the Reforger rich, try doing this for 10 or 15 minutes?

So while I may not have proven anything about higher-haste FS ticks proccing more Lava Surges, I'm confident in saying that more Haste = more filler spells, so Crit will improve slightly with higher amounts of Haste.

Dummy tests aren't useful unless you have very consistent players, testing for very long periods of time, with dedicated friends willing to provide all relevant raid buffs and debuffs. We don't use them here, except for specific tailored theorycrafting purposes, like establishing proc rates and internal cooldowns.

Instead of using Recount or a combatlog parse to test your theory, use a simulator instead. Your results will be more consistent and provide better predictions.

For the engineers out there, High-Powered Bolt Gun can be used while moving if Spiritwalker's Grace is on cooldown. Even better is that the damage is fire, and seems to scale not only with your gear, but also with Unleash Elements.

Here is a small portion of the ranges of damage (It's a 2 minute cooldown, so the damage testing is a little slow going).
5770 spell power
1384 haste
302 crit
1273 mastery

No buffs

Your BIS is wrong. The smooth way to make it would change [Helm of the Nether Scion] to [Headpiece of the Raging Elements]
and replace [Hauberk of the Raging Elements] (crit) [Circuit Design Breastplate] (Mastery Spirit) , while still obtaining the hit cap and swapping 1% crit for 1% haste

I haven't heard this talked about but I was playing around with talents and came up with:

WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie.

You give up instant ghost wolf and fulmination damage, but gain 40% longer fire elemental totem. I'm no good at math, but fire ele pulls around 2-3k dps by himself dependent on gear. Adding an extra 48 seconds on the totem along with fewer recasts of your fire totem throughout the fight may come out ahead on pure dps. I'd guess its more a question of the importance Ancestral swiftness versus the added dps.


*Fire ele is also has a much more reliable A.I.

His susceptability to death I could see being a large concern. However, if one were to choose a Fire Ele spec, the Glyph of FS could certainly be dropped for the Glyph of FE and have a 5 minute CD on him. In most fights, that would mean two uses PER fight. Let's break it down, assuming a Fire Ele that does 4000 dps:

Standard Glyphs = 1 Fire Ele per fight/Improved Shields/Movement Speed
Length of Fight = 300 seconds (5 mins)
4000 x 120 = 480000
480000/300 = 1600 dps

Standard Glyphs = 1 Fire Ele per fight/Improved Shields/Movement Speed
Length of Fight = 480 seconds (8 mins)
4000 x 120 - 480000
480000/480 = 1000 dps

Standard Glyphs = 1 Fire Ele per fight/Imp Duration - No Shields/Speed
Length of Fight = 5 mins
4000 x 168 = 672000
672000/300 = 2240 dps

Standard Glyphs = 1 Fire Ele per fight/Imp Duration - No Shields/Speed
Length of Fight = 8 mins
4000 x 168 = 672000
672000/480 = 1400 dps

Glyph of FE (only becomes noticable on fights LONGER than 5 minutes)
Length of Fight = 8 mins
4000 x 336 = 1344000
1344000/480 = 2800 dps

Feel free to double check my numbers, but I believe they're pretty accurate. And pretty interesting. A Fire Ele has a 40%/25% uptime on 5/8 min fights in standard form, 56%/35% uptime on 5/8 min fights with the talents, and 56%/70% uptime on 5/8 min fights with talents AND glyph. Without attempting to do extremely complicated math involving movement speed, totem recasting, FS recasts, I would venture to guess that having average fights in the 7.5-8 min range or fights that have a burn phase post-5 mins, this could be potentially the best way to go (provided he stays alive). The cost of going this route completely is losing the Shields/FS glyph/Movement Speed. If someone wants to do that math, feel free. I'd certainly be curious.

Edit: Forgot to also mention the increased survivability of the first tier resto talents as an opportunity gain of choosing this spec. 10% reduced damage across the board and 15% increased healing on you could make your healers fall in love with you.
-Judge

There is absolutely no way that you should be dropping Glyph of Flame Shock.

Doing some rough math.

Searing: 2000 dps
Fire Elemental: 4000 dps
Net gain: 2000 dps for 2 minutes
Total extra damage = 240,000
DPS from having Flametongue as the third glyph = 250 dps (FS & LB are the other two)

Bonus damage:
>5 min = 0
6 min: 120k
7-10 min: 240k

Actual dps bonus
>5 min = -250
6 min = 83 dps
7 min = 321 dps
8 min = 250 dps
9 min = 194 dps
10 min = 150 dps

This is assuming that the elemental does not die early, or stops attacking for whatever reason.

Increased totem duration boost that to 336k damage per use.
>5 min = 70 dps
6 min = 483 dps
7 min = 950 dps
8 min = 800 dps
9 min = 683 dps
10 min = 590 dps

So now we need to consider the losses.
Dropping 3/3 imp shields drops ~130 dps. This means we're looking at a -80 to 800 dps spread as follows:

>5 min = -80 dps
6 min = 333 dps
7 min = 800 dps
8 min = 650 dps
9 min = 533 dps
10 min = 440 dps

The intangibles in the equation are extra runspeed (15% rather than 8% from the boot enchant), instant ghost wolf and increased totem range vs damage reduction while casting (only useful for stuff you have to take, doesn't work when moving) and extra healing received.

Is it worth going for this longer, more frequent Fire Elemental? Maybe. Personally I wouldn't sacrifice the movement & positioning gained from an enhance subspec for this setup.

PS: We're not here to do your math for you. Do it yourself.

Does it ever make sense to wait for LvB to come off cooldown? For example, LvB has .5s left on cooldown, do I start a new LB or wait?

Also, if I have JUST started a LB and Lava Surge refreshes LvB, should I /stopcasting and cast LvB?

The priority list is straightforward, but I always find myself wondering if these options make sense, or if I should keep casting at all costs.

I've been going over my logs and I see way less of a difference between the searing and fire elemental damage than previously posted, my searing is between 2k and 2.5k DPS and the fire elemental is between 3.5k and 4k DPS.

The only reason I see to glyph your fire elemental is when, you are learning a new fight and are putting in a lot of fast wipe tries and were the elemental is important to use at the start.