I would say that while a resto spec shaman may be more useful than an elemental, it depends on what you enjoy, your gear levels, and guildmakeup. We're recruiting for another resto because one of our officers has been nice enough to say that they won't ask me to respec.

In terms of T6 level DPS, even given the fact that I'm just short of 1k +dmg, have ~40% crit, I'm usually sitting MOTR on damage charts. When looking at "Average Instant DPS" I'm usually #1-2. All this means is that totem redropping/throwing the odd heal/recasting watershield is eating into the time I could be doing damage, and I need to work on that.

FYI I'm sitting at a minimum output of 1k dps, usually around 1.2-1.3 (although during heroism it can go up to 1.8!). As I pick up T6 gear (I have trash chest/mace/shield, the latter two I need to replace, and the belt on Anetheron atm) I'd expect this to go up, however the RNG has not been kind to me on drops so far (and we're doing the T6 goes to tanks first thing).

hey wodi, whats up man?
Tremor is a waste. If you get close enough to get feared, first things first, your gonna get hit for 50 percent of your life or more. Second, you just failed your job kiting bc now the strider is going after someone else..or coming after you feared and killing you.

In reply to Kungfoo:

Chain heal is hacks. However, if you do your best and gear yourself up there is no reason you cant compete with the other casters. And dont forget, you still have heals as elemental~

Read the 2 threads on elemental pve here. They are full of valuable tips to help you be a better elemental shm.

I think my dps group on the strider was asking for tremor for them not me. I try to stay at max range the whole time.

Yeah I did love Kael cause of how the weapons grouped. You won't find that too much in T6, although MH trash waves are amazing. High spell crit plus AF also means you can be a quality backup healer as well as responsible for keeping armor buff up on a couple fights. Only fights that I can really say grouping happens that you get to dps them is Akama (lol) and Illidan. Illidan is an amazing fight for shaman dps. I still play the fight pretty conservatively and got number 1 on our third kill the other day. Teron, Gurtogg and RoS to a degree are bad fights for us. But in the rest of T6 you should be fine.

We've killed Vashj a couple times now and are now working on Kael, so I can comment a bit at that gear level. I have 967 nature damage, 25% crit completely unbuffed and i usually hover around 1k dps. I can get lucky with crits now and then and shoot up pretty high, not to mention times when I can abuse chain lightning. My gear has slowly been improving since I switched to my shaman for main a couple months back. I only just upgraded to the t5 helm yesterday from the SMV quest reward such that I can equip a CSD. (I'd been looking for even the t4 head for a while but hadn't had any luck there.) I'm looking forward to seeing if I can pull my average dps up at least some noticeable amount. I'd really like to boost my dps a lot more (I formerly was one of our top mage dps), but I honestly don't see a way I could possibly do it at our current level of progression. Which is ok, I enjoy making a stacked caster dps group and love the machine gun lightning bolt effect.

Being the only elemental shaman, I naturally was tasked with strider kiting and am quite comfortable with it now. As soon as phase 2 starts, I've been removing salvation and switching to my +shock dmg totem relic. (I haven't done any math, but figure at an average 1:1 shocks/bolts, it's my best choice for threat generation.) While kiting, we have our shadow priests and locks helping with dps and use nets and the occasional blackout proc. I wear my pvp boots with boars speed as well as my pvp gloves for the extra range for shocks. (Bonus: extra sta to help survive unlucky streaks of forked lightning from Vashj...) A EM+frost shock to start things off. While I'm kiting I attempt to get into a rhythm with grounding totem, which seems to mesh quite well most of the time with the strider's mind blast. I can usually get off at least one lightning bolt before I need to get more range. I honestly don't bother with any totems except for grounding and a mana stream for when I happen to be nearby it. Noone should be near the striders. Period. If they are, they're wrong, except for a very few rare circumstances, imo. He's big. He's moving really slowly. He's super easy to avoid.

I can't wait for us to get busy with the Kael fight and start working on new content.

1st off, my guild brings 1 enh, 1 elem, 2 resto.. sometimes 3 resto. Restoration shaman are irreplaceable, we use one in the healer group and one in the MT group for WF / STR to help aggro and can still put out considerable healing without a spriest. If we run 3 then the 3rd is in the hunter/warloc group where they always argue over what totems should be dropped blah blah. Anyway, tbh I can't see a guilds rationale in bringing 1 enh, 1 elemental and 0 resto. What a Resto shaman brings in quality of raid heals and ES for tank aggro is irreplaceable, meanwhile the dmg augmentation of a Ele / Enh is just supplemental, and not really required. If we don't have a resto shaman online I immediately respec, even though I go from full T6 Elemental to ~2000 healing with random pieces. It's a net benefit for the raid's success. You got 2 CoH priests, so that means at a cost to cover raid healing, you have no Improved DS? Or do you have a 3rd healing priest. (we bring 1 CoH priest, 1 Imp DS, 3 Spriests)

2nd, I felt like rating the T5 and T6 bosses relative to how the encounter is tuned towards Elemental Shaman DPS. SSC and TK encounters are mostly perfect for Elemental Shaman DPS... mmm excluding Hydross, although even there I manage to outdps some people sadly enough. Hydross: D, Lurker: A, Leotheras: A+, Karethress: A+, Fatty.. er i mean Tidewalker: A-, Vashj: A, Alar: A-, Voidreaver: B (threat), Solarian: B- (AOE favored), Kael'Thas A+ (we can dominate the meters)... Now for the T6 instances.. Winterchill and Anatheron are basically tank n spank.. A- on both. Kaz'rogal: C+ (mana burn, Lbolt spam only), Azgalor: B- (silence, and no good DOTs for us, rain of fire movement), Archimonde: C+ (depends how you look at it... Elemental brings solid offheals and tremor which are clutch on this fight, however keeping this to DPS, we are not the best). Naj'entus: B (tank n spank with periodic pushback), Supremus: A+ (advantage to short casts, time to drop totems), Akama: A+ (burst is huge), Teron Gorefiend: B- (pushback from raid dmg), Bloodboil: B (keep TA down, still aggro issues), RoS: phase dependant. overall C+ (phase 2 is the clutch phase, pushback), Mother Shahraz: B- (cant utilize other spell schools), Illidari Council: DPS wise from my experience, C- (tons of partial resist on Paladin, dpsing Mage is haphazard, and lots of interrupts required on Priest), Illidan: A+ fun as hell.

I found myself easily topping the meters (top 3) on all T5 bosses with the exception of Hydross, Voidreaver and
Astromancer. In the T6 dungeons I don't feel as powerful, and only recently with really tip top gear have I been able to creep back up in damage output. However we only bring 1-2 warlocs, and Destro Warlocks can dome me on DPS if they get into my group... it isn't even fair.

Another personal opinion: Enh shaman if put in the right group will buff raid DPS significantly more than an Elemental Shaman will. However from my experience Elemental can put out consistently higher DPS than Enhance during the average raid night all encounters included. The spot healing on fights like Archimonde, Bloodboil, Mother Shehraz, and the intterupts on Illidari Council are where Elemental can really make their raid presence noticed. The first time I missed an Illidari Council attempt my guild wiped 3 times because they didn't have someone dedicated to interrupt every single Divine Wrath (5000dmg on hit, 2500 dot after) which would pick off 1 or 2 people during the fight, easily causing a wipe depending who it was.

So DPS is not the only thing we have to offer, however the other things I mentioned that we can do to help the raid a Restoration shaman can also do just as well if not better (lower hit on shocks). Which is why I still think that bringing 1 enh 1 elem and 0 resto shaman is odd.

Our raid composition is, well, really strange, mostly based on the tools we have. We're on a server with a million middle of the road raiding guilds and even advertising for specific classes to recruit it's hard to find people a) geared for T5/6 dungeons, and b) skilled enough to even manage something as easy as "chain heal a lot."

I started resto, but got into a pseudo slump with it before 2.3 and the shaman changes, and went elemental just to get back into the swing of things, doing dailies again, etc. To cover the chain heal removal, two of our 3 raiding holy priests switched to CoH, leaving the third with imp DS. We also rarely have more than one shadow priest. Like I said, odd composition. I'm in a position where I can "go whatever route I want" and not being forced one way or the other, so the only rationale is "it's what was making me happy at the time."

I agree, and like I said, in the back of my mind I've always known that having elemental over resto is mostly silly, but it's also what I needed just to stay happy with the game. Reading your review of T5 dungeons looks I could have been the author (top 10 on Hydross? WTF are you dipshits below me doing???).

I'd like to "stick" with a spec as my primary, for lack of a better term, just because I don't want to be "that guy" who's playing Pokemon with loot drops, which is where part of this inner-debate stems from. I enjoy the hell out of both specs, and I'm in a comfortable position now (gold stockpile, epic flier, tons of stocked consumables) that I could go resto and not have to worry about the tedium outside of raiding for a looooooong time, so that combined with this post are making me yearn for sweet Chain Heal loving.

Just a quick follow-up. I'm linking the WWS from a somewhat rough night (tonight) in SSC. Hydross-Lurker-Leotheras-Karathress. I was on loot duty, so my overall damage is fairly low due to lost trash dps time.
Wow Web Stats

I noted earlier that I had only just updated my helm and was looking forward to this raid to see how it would impact my performance. Our caster group for Lurker through Karathress was 3 mages, a boomkin, and myself. On Lurker I had a crazy 48% crit for my lightning bolts, yet only averaged about 1050dps, which is still a fair bit higher than my 'lucky to pull off 1000dps' average before. Our Karathress kill was my best fight to date, though. Over 80% of my damage was LB spam, yet I had 1250 dps, while saving chain lightning to nuke down the spitfire totems. And I forgot to swap in my scyer's blood gem, though most of the fight is vs non-boss mobs. Hmm.

Overall the distribution of our top rogues and hunters vying for the upper dps spots is pretty average. Sometimes one of our AB spamming mages (I used to be one) will be up there, along with our boomkin. Despite the somewhat random nature of the Leotheras fight, the top dps there are in the usual spots there.

Edit: Between my draenei racial 1% hit (12.62), tier 5 headpiece hit (18), head enchant hit bonus (14), and wub's hit bonus (13), I'm drowning in hit. With totem of wrath, I'm well over the amount I need to cap. I've been gimping myself with the stupid blood gem. Doh. GG.

i don't know how to explain it, but i'll show this comparison. 2 Teron Gorefiend fights, back-to-back weekly kills, same tank. Pay attention to players Phaj and Midoc, both destruction warlocks. I was at a party on the 10th so no elemental shaman. I was grouped with those 2 warlocks last night (15th)

1.10.08

4 Phaj 100 % 362,490 7 % 1510
5 Niroth 100 % 361,341 7 % 1439
6 Midoc 100 % 357,724 7 % 1478
7 Sias 100 % 357,658 7 % 1436
8 Nz 100 % 347,297 7 % 1378
9 Synn 86 % 336,203 6 % 1608
10 Jyle 100 % 335,258 6 % 1379
11 Lightstar 100 % 332,694 6 % 1314
12 Doff 100 % 310,900 6 % 1233
13 Branwin 100 % 281,971 5 % 1141
14 Kayria 100 % 163,416 3 % 1361

1.15.08

1 Phaj 100 % 477,173 9 % 1908
2 Midoc 94 % 455,191 9 % 1953
3 Nath 100 % 425,535 8 % 1611
4 Synn 100 % 411,712 8 % 1565
5 Lightstar 100 % 383,499 8 % 1441
6 Jyle 100 % 354,192 7 % 1351
7 Doff 100 % 343,486 7 % 1306
8 Priori 100 % 338,084 7 % 1275
9 Eldodin 100 % 324,670 6 % 1253
10 Daguero 100 % 270,819 5 % 1045
11 Flindra 100 % 268,576 5 % 1029
12 Elacarzel 93 % 230,276 5 % 1599
13 Kayria 70 % 193,971 4 % 1301

I don't know how to explain it, but they improved their dps by 400-500 having an elemental shaman in group. I didn't do anything special, typical totems, 2x drums of battle, heroism. I never expected to see this kind of increase...guess I'll shutup about the sp thing=p

I agree, much better to recruit a new Resto shaman than for me to spec Resto and slip on my non T6 healing gear, and we do (recruit resto shaman) but once and again we will have 2 missing, and I just fill in the lost healing. That said, we dont have a surplus of paladins/healing priests to compensate when we are lacking resto shaman, so there isn't really much of an alternative if healing is required (we are lucky to have 1 resto druid on). Another reason to bring 1enh 1elem 2-3 resto is totems. With an entire 25man utilizing totem buffs, which indeed are flexible and can be changed based on the situation much easier than paladin buffs, can add more than one might expect. WF for MT group and Manaspring/GOA for hunters is a huge plus (if we dont already have a Spriest in the hunter group, which for us is often the case). Hunter's DPS receives a significant boost by having a Spriest (until they grab an Illidan Bow), even though Blizz has taken steps to improve Hunter mana regen in a raid setting.

This brings up another point. Blizzard knows it needs to remedy the near requirement to have 1-2 shadowpriests in high end T6 environments to cope with the duration of the encounters as well as the inability to reach non casting regeneration rates...
Note: before TBC and the influx of Stamina, healers could easily downrank and cast/cancel (precast) untill a heal was needed on the MT, thus maintaining out of casting mana regen until the spell is allowed to complete. This is no longer the case. Paladins are able to spam indefinitely, however Priests/Shaman can't afford this luxury and precasting and canceling is not a safe practice in most fights where substantial burst is possible, plus almost all of Druid healing is done with Lifebloom now which does not allow for precasting.
This factor is 1 reason I truly believe that in 25mans at least 1 Resto shaman is a must, in the healing group. WoA and Imp Mana Spring are significant buffs, Mana Tide is a nice bonus and Drums of Restoration when used every 2min is another 25mp5 (I don't know of any priest/paladins with drums do you?). This coupled with a Spriest in the healing group pretty much means non stop heal spam, which may be not be required, but makes for a much MUCH smoother PvE experience. As soon as a Healer must choose who to spend mana on you run the risk of deaths. Strict healing assignments without overlap also leads straight to people being picked off when their designated healer is out of range, feared, silenced, on global, oom, or just plain bad.
You might say that just the Spriest alone in the healing group is enough, but Spriests without the aid of a Shaman/innervate will go oom after 4-8min depending on their gear. WoA for them is in and of itself a Mp5 boost because their VT restores more to the entire group.

Above all else, enjoy the game. If playing Resto makes you miserable, don't do it. I played as resto for 2+years from MC-> BWL->AQ40->Naxx->Kara and then made the transition to Elemental, but I still enjoy healing. There is plenty of random non tier set restoration gear that can be crafted, picked up as scrap in T6 dungeons, bought with heroic badges and farmed from ZA (neck, ring, mace are incredible, better than most Hyjal/BT items). I have T6 Resto helm, T4 gloves/shoulders, and rest just random stuff and I have 2000+ healing with quite a bit of spell haste. So you don't need to really be "that guy" with the loot in order to fill in effectively as Resto. Resto shaman also can putout alot of dmg now with the changes to +dmg from healing gear and the cast time change to Lbolt. Farming as resto is alot less painful than it used to be.

Arg so annoying I can't look at wws while at work. Did they not have any shaman before? I could only see that much of a difference if they gained lust, WoA, and ToW.

I know this is kind of moot since most use the gem already but is there any theorycraft on the Chaotic Skyfire Diamond and it's equivalent spell damage boost associated? I've been trying to search for a model of it and haven't yet found anything. But as always, if all else fails, I'll put pencil to paper and try modeling it myself....just didn't want to beat a dead horse.

Hmm. Item theorycraft eh? Nope, sorry, completely unheard of around here. It's not like there's a whole post devoted to theorycraft in this thread, and if there was one, it'd be really nice if it linked to a database that does all that handy item comparing for me.




Oh, wait, there is.

In my current guild we are happy in running with 4 Resto/2 Enhancement (We are recruiting one but most of the last trials just failed miserably)/2 Elemental (Trialing one atm) and we have found shamans very valuable if played properly and able to dish out good dps while providing a good dps boost to there groups.

P.S. Nothing beats a fully heroismed raid in Vashj phase 2 on the first kill.

Are you for real? Does it play my shaman for me too?

Look, I asked a simple specific question after numerous searches of all these forums yielded nothing of solid value. I only cared to know if there was a simple formula or graph already published on the Chaotic Skyfire Diamond equating its benefits to spell damage. If yes, a point in the right direction would be nice, or if not, I could perhaps do some math on it and add to the great pool of information contained here.

And while my question will ultimately help me decide between different helms for pve, not everyone uses your DEP calculations for items. So while I do appreciate all the things you've done for this community, it would do well to lose this sense of grandeur when responding to others. Or maybe I'm reading too much into your response...who knows...it's late...and I still didn't really find an appropriate answer.....

Dude you are a joke. If you spent half the time it took you to write this post reading his response youd have had youre answer. Oh and by the way whatever you do, do not click the portion of Binkenstein's sig marked Theorycrafting- Shaman TC Calcs,as you see there are black magicks inside that may devour your soul.

Incorrect on multiple accounts. I scanned through Blink's spreadsheet multiple times here. Perhaps the answer is hidden deep within the macros used to make this spreadsheet but I was not able to break down those macros to give me my answer.

I click into DEP for the meta to see the formula he used so I could parse it for my own use and I get

"=VLOOKUP($B26,gems,2,FALSE)"

So I went to the Gems tab and found a dead end. I then looked at the DEP tab to see if that would help me out and there's a box full of numbers for CSD but just from an average onlooker, these seem to be completely random. I would imagine they have some meaning and if my answer is in this box, please help me to decifer it.

The other spreadsheets aren't related to this topic (and I've checked). I would use Blink's DEP if it matched my own stat weighings I use when selecting gear but the fact is I don't. This is no offense to Blink and any of his work since I go through all his spreadsheets and theorycraft everytime he updates them.

I pretty much agree that [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond] is well covered by Bink in his stat sheets, but the math isn't layed out in the OP here on EJ. So I guess I'd go ahead and post some info.

Assuming crits are 2.09 multipliers vs 2.00 wtihout meta:

Basically we just do an average dmg comparison.
(1-critchance)(hit dmg done) + (critchance)(crit dmg done) = avg dmg done

for example. lets say you have 1048 spell dmg so your LB does 1500 dmg and you have a 35% critrate.
(.65)(1500)+(.35)(1500 * 2) = 975 + 1050 = 2025 avg dmg per cast

SO what about the increased crit dmg? We just increase the multiplier
(.65)(1500)+(.35)(1500 * 2.09) = 975 +1097.25 = 2072.25 avg dmg per cast


Then we solve for the amount of spell dmg that would result in 47 additional average dmg to LB without a meta.
47dmg / 1.35 = 34.81 additional dmg if you had 0 crit. (obviously the meta is worthless if you dont' crit I'm just solving for spell dmg assuming a 2.00 multiplier for crit)
Then we solve for the amount of spell dmg using LB mechanics.
Assuming LB12 (611 + (spell dmg)(2.5/3.5 +.08) )(.05)(.1) = 1534.81
So if we so want to only see the gains in spell dmg we take 34.81 and convert into +spell dmg.
(spell dmg)(2.5/3.5 +.08)(1.05)(1.1) = 34.81
spell dmg = 34.81 / ( .9174 ) = 37.94.

Anyways it looks somthing like that if someone can check my math and TC. Basically with a reasonable crit and spell dmg its by far the best thing you can put in your helm. I didn't even factor in the additional 12 crit raiting since its mostly inconsequential.
The meta is better than 3 12 dmg gems in case anyone is looking at ZA loot and thinking to just put in 3 pure dmg gems vs using a helm with a meta.

Stop posting this kind of useless crap on this forum, else you will all be relegated to where your posting style will be more at home.

I'd infract the lot of you if I could block do it.

You forgot Binkenstein's post, and included pickles's first post that was a legitimate theorycrafting question.

I thought you might like to know.

Is the value of haste in the spreadsheets going to be updated to reflect it's actual value, or is that going to be left as an exercise for the reader?

Binkenstein said he was working on it, but that was quite awhile ago.

Its actual value will vary according to your latency and cast rotations. As we have shown haste can be very good with a pure LB spam rotation.