Dont forget improve faerie fire (+ 3% to hit melee) and insect swarm (+2% avoidance to tank). Last and for least moonkin can tank WoW-Europe.com Foren -> Lithanials' Guide to Moonkin Tanking v1.1

As soon as you get haste, a 4/1 rotation is preferable.

They are, I just haven't updated those 2.3 patch notes (the updates are on the spells themselves).
CSD is prime nerf material, and as I've said before, if I assume 3% it's still better than any other meta. Changing it to 9% for the calcs it's just going to be semantics.
Easy test for TLC: EM/CL on three targets. You'll get a proc.

Oh yeah obviously , but I mean what other things do you have that complicates things than just including chain lightning into the rotation? Also spell haste would effect TLC as well I suppose, by a multiple even.

Interesting fact: Lightning Overload procs from a chain lightning hitting 3 targets in a group of more than 3 can jump to targets that weren't hit by the original chain lightning. For example, from a Kael try today:

Wow Web Stats

At 3:33'17 there's a chain lightning that hits staff->dagger->sword and then overloads to dagger->sword->mace

It does happen again a few times throughout the 11 attempts we made on Kael last night, but it's more usual for the original 3 targets to be hit again in a different order (distance considerations, probably).

The amount of damage pumped out by a 3-target chain lightning which overloads is insane, incidentally. A number of the chain lightnings with overload procs do a total of 10k+ and pushing to 11k.



Huh?

If you have 1% haste, 3/1 is still better DPS than 4/1, and indeed if you have more than 1%. It takes a fairly good chunk of haste to make 4/1 actively better.

I still don't understand the interest in spell haste for shaman. The max theoretical DPS boost would be greater if the same budget were spent on spell damage, and in practical terms the benefit can often be completely lost due to lag anyway.

Insect swarm is nice, although I know quite a few resto druids who have it and are prepared to use it. I'm not sure if I've ever met a moonkin with improved FF (the practical benefit of it isn't that high anyway- not as good as +101 spell damage for 5 people, for example).

We run with both a ele shaman and a moonkin. I'm not knocking the moonkin, believe me. Neither spec stacks well, so you're better off with one of each than two of either, but if you could only take one I would take the ele shaman (of course, I m biased),

In fact, one Chain Lightning can hit 9 different targets.

With enough dmg, crit, and the T6 4pc, it certainly becomes useful.

I'd like to ask two things of you, (not specifically bink, but anyone who is reading this post).

I've tried to theorycraft and/or look up someone who's done this already (or has an updated spreadsheet to calc for me) but is there a definative comparison of the two items below:

Flashfire Girdle vs Anetheron's Noose

Skycall Totem vs Totem of Ancestral Guidance

I'm not sure the actual uptime of Skycall Totem, and I'm curious to know if the haste gain from it is > the flat damage from ToAG.

Current Gear Setup

I'm basically looking to know which belt is better of the two, and then knowing that, which totem would be best with the better of the belts.

Thanks very much.

I'd just like to ask why on earth are people asking questions in a thread that has the answers (or links to the answers) in the first 6 posts?

Asking questions = good.
Asking questions that you can easily find out the answers to = bad

Sorry if the answer to my question is there, but I've looked through every link and post up there, and still am unsure of the questions I posted. So perhaps I'm just overlooking the information I need, but a direct answer to my question is definitely not in the first 6 posts (aka x > y, a > b).

Does that make it any clearer for you?

Most people don't have 4-piece t6. And I'm not saying haste is USELESS, but it is not as good as the same item-cost in spell damage or spell crit. It's sub-par itemization, like strength for rogues.

Haste is good in situations where you can only lightning-bolt spam due to CC or mana-issues, this is certainly true. But mana issues have become rare, and CC'd mobs near the mob you're killing in any fight that matters is very rare, so...

At any rate, I was just objecting to you saying 4/1 is better than 3/1 "as soon as you get haste", which is not accurate.

I think in the next day or two I'm going to work out an optimal BT/MH gear setup and then compare spell haste vs the spell damage equivalants and then work out the math on the two rotations.

Right now the spell haste gear I'd consider would be:

Flashfire Girdle
Bracers of Nimble Thought
2 x Ring of Ancient Knowledge
Botanist's Gloves of Growth with 2x12 dmg gems
Loop of Cursed Bones
Skull of Guldan (possibly)

vs

Anatheron's Noose
Bands of the Coming Storm
Band of Eternity + Captured Storms
Skyshatterer Gloves
Kael's Neck

and see which wins out, the first with pure LB spammage or the second with LBx3/CL.

If you just give me the total stats I can plug it into my sim. Personally if you are going with haste and LB build I would go for 4 pc t6 with the trash chest and the rest t6. Then add haste since the 5% to LB is more than any on gloves.

Well I figured that the gloves would be the best dps piece to replace there of T6. Other options would be cloth badge legs or mail badge chest. I wouldn't use the MH trash chest, no spell haste on it.

While the trash chest has no haste it seems silly to compare things of nonsimilar ilvls. And the trash chest is pretty much on par with t6 chest due to some of the t6 chest itemization being used with mp5. If you are going to make a BT gear list you really need to have the best gear not use badge / za gear unless you use equivalent ilvls in the nonhaste set. Swapping in haste gloves and lossing 5% dmg seems like a def downgrade anyway you look at it. It might be more fair to use badge haste gear vs t5 ele set or somthing. Personally for a haste set i'd use 4pc t6 trash chest then haste belt bracers quags eye etc.

Keep in mind haste scales with your other dmg you a mix of haste and dmg/crit will be better than mostly haste.

Well thats why I initially went with Botanists Gloves. In comparison to T6 it is 37 Spell Haste and 52 damage vs 26 spell crit and 58 damage. If spell haste is better stat than crit, than that would seem to be an upgrade. It is only a 6 drop in spell damage. Even though they are resto gloves, the new dmg/healing conversion can be very powerful for some items. Similar theorycrafting in Mage threads showed that the Illidan healing cloak was better for some specs than the Illidari Council dps cloak.

Although now thinking on it it is possible that the Kaz'rogal leggings might be the best. Even with the useless spirit, the massive damage and crit on it far exceed our T6 leggings. Point is that we only need 4 pieces of T6.

Options to replace the 5th:
Chest with MH trash drop. Honestly this seems a suboptimal choice for us. You can not make up for the triple sockets. T6 with 3 spinels is like 20+ more damage than the MH trash piece, although you then do lose 19 spell crit.
Gloves with Botanists.
Legs with Channeled Elements
Head with Illidari Cowl (doesn't seem a good choice either, T6 is our best itemized piece and going from it to Illidari would barely be an upgrade)
Shoulders with Hatefury (seems suboptimal based on the spell pen)

So I'd say leggings are probably best choice, but gloves are interesting in that it does give you a substantial amount of spell haste, which would help this test.

Helm: T6 v Cowl = 170 v 179
Shoulders: T6 v Hatefury = 123 v 121
Chest: T6 v Trash v Badge = 166 v 160 v 154
Legs: T6 v Ch.Ele v Avalanche = 146 v 147 v 160
Gloves: T6 v Bot v Nature's Wrath = 119 v 117 v 108

Legs may be best for replacement in that sense, but the T6 chest is the harder one to get.

Well I dont know any of the math and pretty much work off of Bink's spreadsheet and my combatlogs, Im pretty sure as the gear stands in game now I have the best haste without sacrificing superior gear.

Zhardoom 55
Bracers of Nimble 28
x1 Ring of A. Knowledge 31
Botanist Gloves 37
Flashfire Girdle 37
total=188

Ive got 5pc t6 and figure the gloves are obviously the best haste swap, and the only better piece to drop would be Legs for Channeled Elements(which in my guilds months of farming have dropped twice) which arent haste anyway. I havent gotten to test out the staff/gloves yet as I got the staff last kill and we havent raided since. The questionable pieces are neck and 2nd ring, as the spreadsheet shows a small difference between haste and dmg/crit counterparts but I plan on picking up the haste versions for testing/etc anyway.

I had one question Binkenstein. Do you have DEP ranges figured out for ShamStats for the different Tier levels of instances, like BT versus SSC? I am currently at a DEP of 2270 and pushing an average 1010 DPS on Vashj attempts up to the end of phase 2 per WOW webstats. Here is my WoW Armory: The World of Warcraft Armory

P.S. I think it would be cool if there were a check or display on the Stats page of ShamStats that told you what instance your gear was on par too versus DEP.

The problem with that is that tier/item level of gear often does not necessarily match up with DEP value (e.g., T4 helm has a greater DEP value than the VR helm and S2 arena helm, both of which have higher item levels. This will also be true for most PvP gear, though not all, simply due to the item budget spent on resilience).

Just my 0.02 USD.

TL;DR: No.

Long answer: Given the fact that Elemental itemisation is not ideal, and we'll see various "tier" items being better than later items. Part of the thing I've noticed is that lower ilvl items can be better than what mages would consider upgrades, and why I hate mages going "zomgupgrade!" on an item they'll replace, whereas we won't be replacing it unless they put a non-hit caster trinket in Sunwell.