No other totem requires wearing different gear to benefit from the totem. If someone gears assuming they're getting WoA and MS then the shaman dies, they're still wearing optimal gear.

However, even ignoring the +hit part of ToW, there are no dps casters which do not benefit from it. Even affliction locks cast some shadowbolts, and as you progress through content, MB/SW becomes a steadily more significant part of a shadow priest's DPS (especially with the T6 set bonus). In addition, the comparison between resto shaman and ele shaman isn't very meaningful. Bringing a fixed number of people of one class then having them spec to maintain raid balance hasn't been a decent way to make a raid since MC. The only time you should even be thinking about ele shaman vs. resto shaman is if you have 6+ shaman in the raid. Otherwise, you aren't competing with resto shaman, you're competing with other casters. At worst, bringing an ele shaman means that the hunters get GoA, which is still far from worthless.

I still fail to see the point of these posts. Are you trying to convince the rest of us to respec resto? Is it some devious scheme to become to only Elemental Shaman left on all the realms so you can horde all that mail spell damage loot for yourself?

Yes, we know we can't put out the DPS of a mage or a rogue, or a warlock or a shadow priest. Thank you. You've been very helpful. This thread is about optimizing the DPS we can put out. Any thoughts on that?

But speaking of wishful thinking, I wonder what our possible DPS would be if Blizzard hadn't changed our Damage Coefficents, with the new LO. 17-1800ish? Maybe close to 2k with haste gear and LB spam with 4pc T6.

Ah I did see those stats, but I think I misunderstood. I was just saying that stat weights will be different. I am pretty sure mine are correct for the stats I gave if you have different stats and compare weights they will be off. If Bink's stats were exactly the same as the ones I had listed and gave different weights that would merit a closer look to see whats off.

1) Umm, we already do this in barely more than 2 4 hour nights. If we didn't wipe so much on Archi and especially Gurtogg we would easily do it in 2 nights.
2) I can do 1.4k dps already, and I don't have 4p T6. 4p T6 will boost me to that figure. (that being 1.5k +)
3) Already done this, elemental shamans actually do very well in that instance. Because of the high number of multi pulls where you get to use CL non stop.
4) We'll see.
5) We do ZA already in 1.5 hours.

This looks to be similar arguments to what happened in the ZA timed run thread. Elemental shamans are more than capable of good dps. Especially with fights where they can use CL.

I do agree that elemental shamans aren't as valuable as enhancement, nor do they scale as well. But our dps is decent. Not great, but decent. Certainly not bad. If they gave us COE like they should, we would be where we're at (well provided we could get enough locks to put it down and all). I'm all for giving shamans as well something like unleashed rage which buffs our group more when we're actually casting. Another thing that does hurt us is the 4 global cooldowns per 2 minutes wasted on buffing. If we could get most of those back (refresh totem spell please?) it would help our dps on some fights in a significant manner.

I disagree that we can't do as much dps as a shadow priest. We can definitely match them. From the SP thread here, people talk about not getting much over 1500 on any boss fight. That seems to be our upper limit as well, in the 1500-1600 limit. The thing is of course a SP gives a lot more to their group than we do, or at least as much anyway. (especially if you get into the resto vs elemental argument again)

We know rogues get the highest dps. And we know that right now hunters, locks and fire mages are all very close as well. All capable of breaking 2k consistently. DPS warriors on certain fights are beasts, and ret pallies and enh shamans are very close to them well in the 1800 range. These 3 seem to fill the 1700-1900 dps range on a lot of fights. Then its us, ferals, shadow priests and boomkins at the 1500-1600 range. Could a raid do better by replacing all their hybrids with pure classes for more dps? Sure, but who knows what kind of fights will go on in the future, what kind of buffs the classes will get, and so on.

There are fights that do promote our hybridity, but they're not really reflected in the damage meters. I know on early kills of Archi I was very valuable in helping keep uptime on the MT's armor buff. I also as a class who can heal can have the pleasure of saying I have never caused a wipe on that fight because I can heal myself (and the MT too) while both of us have doomfire. I have saved constant people on that fight. And have seen countless pure dps classes die because they couldn't. Funny thing is our group is always the group that gets hit most by doomfire. And we always survive the best and have rarely ever lost anyone because of the redundancy I provide.

Similarily I've done well on Gurtogg healing squishies while BB is still being dealt with to help stabilize things. Illidan is obviously great because it has phase changes where we can drop totems. It is a fight that favors ranged. It has a couple points where CL is amazing. It promotes the use of earthbind. It really is a very good fight for people, and only classes who should beat shamans there are well geared locks/mages.

Speaking again on ZA timed runs, we got it this week going with 2 healers. There were times in that clear I was able to help out because of the fact that I can backup heal. Is that always valuable or necessary? No. But when we did the Eagle trash and our holy paladin stood in the wrong spot and got ganked by adds and the only healer alive was one priest, I was able to heal until our feral was able to brez him, thus preventing a wipe and thus allowing us to make the timed run.

Are any of the fights we're doing really that much of a dps race? I don't think so. Every fight with an enrage is easily made by the time you get to the fight. Faster dps certainly allows you to clear a bit better, but then again sometimes having more redundancy allows that too. If someone fucks up and we lose healers, that lock with the 300-400 more dps certainly ain't going to be able to do shit about it, while I certainly can.

Also to add in one thing that was mentioned in the shadow priest thread. Personal dps on fights is a function of raid dps. You go 2 weeks without an upgrade, but due to doing better on a boss your dps goes up 200 since the fight is shorter. So people show these WWS reports with massive dps. Well no shit, the fight is shorter and you spend more of the fight under beneficial cooldowns. For rogues, hunters, mages and warriors, this can be pretty huge. Now no one is discounting bloodlust here, but the premise is that a raid can just not bring elemental shamans and thus bring resto or enhancement ones and give the real classes their heroism/bloodlust. Our long cooldowns consist of a super exciting one guaranteed crit (which 40-45% of the time would have been one anyway) every 3 minutes. Compare this to a warrior or rogue who in a 3 minute Teron kill might be spending well over half of that under deathwish/recklessness/AR/Blade Flurry/etc not to mention heroism, which they stack with those cooldowns. In a fight thats more stretched out, shamans start to look better, not to mention spriests and other non cooldown classes. Warlocks are exempted because of the insane debuff stacking that SB gets.

Kasi can you post some WWS from your BT/ hyjal runs? I'd like to see what DPS could be expected on different bosses. My guild is rather DPS obsessed and I talked to my GM about doing a few runs as ele (usually resto) and I'd like to know what to expect. I think I'll wait till I have 4pc t6 (have 2pc atm) so I can be somewhat on par gear wise with other casters. A few WWS's would be good to see if I am going to be a net loss in dps or not.

Those look in general like my normal WWS, disregard xelzanoth. I believe he's some sort of robot.

Rage - 1268 - http://wowwebstats.com/3t5fvn2vad2pw?s=11283-11551
Anetheron - 1224 - Wow Web Stats
Kaz - 1162 with the shadow gear I have on - Wow Web Stats
And a stupid death to Azgalor in there as well, heh probably the worst azgalor kill we've had in a month. Also, my awesome Interupt duty priest DPS on or first Council kill is in there as well. And our awesome first Illidan pull ever.

I'll probably gain 20-30 dps from the 2pc when I get it, stupid double vanquisher drop on our first Mother and Council kills.

Geez you guys run with a lot of feral druids. :p I kept expecting to find a boomkin in there, but nope, shred shred and more shred.

heh yeah I wish, I think Veeshan is working on a Boomkin set, and our one HT Bomber Mattilaus has a second 70 druid who he keeps boomkin spec, but isn't attuned to BT/MH. Also I should point out this was the first time I was obviously trying for pure LB spam over CL/LB rotation. I don't really have the gear to support it yet, but the numbers came out pretty good, and I may work towards a haste set because of this run.

edit: Wow Web Stats
Normal DPS reports for BT, Naj->RoS, few wipes, we've really powered through a lot of these bosses, haven't gotten strategies 100%. And I suck at Naj for some reason, I don't know why. Running to get too many spines, probably. First kill on RoS, and a 0 shadow resist Mother try. God they nerfed the crap out of her. We put in 1 real attempt and got free shoulders.

Here's a complete Bear run, for those questioning above. WWS Loading... We finished with ample time to spare.

For the record, at high gear levels it takes 6 crit rating to equal 1 spell damage for a shadow priest, so Totem of Wrath is worth 11 spell damage. Not worthless, but nothing to write home about.

I'll also echo that the real benefit of elemental shaman is that you get another bloodlust and set of totems without spending a healer slot. Bloodlust and totems are so good that I really think every raid with fewer than 3 shaman could be improved by going to 4. The only group that doesn't get huge returns from a shaman is the tank group, and even then a shaman is useful. But you don't want to bring 4 or 5 resto shaman to a raid, so elemental and enhancement let you cheat the raid makeup numbers. It's as simple at that.

We usually just throw a resto shaman in with our (admittedly mostly druid) tanks. On threat fights, Bloodboil, and Reliquary phase 2/3 transition, they heroism right away. Literally Pull, Mangle, Heroism. It's such a huge threat boost no one else has to worry. Yes it's not optimal saving it for "burning down" but I'm of the mind Heroisms are generally best used early in almost every T6 fight if only to maximize the benefit. Just examples backing this up I guess: In Hyjal Rage, Kazrogal and Azgalor we Heroism at 90% to avoid people dead (icebolts, mana burns, dooms). In BT, Gorefiend and Naj get heroismed right away before someone is spine'd/ghosted, Supremus usually on the second phase 1, Bloodboil the first Fel Rage. Akama and Reliquary are special cases. Mother and Council so far I'd Heroism to get that last 25% finished, and Anetheron is just whenever, but normally when we're killing the second infernal or so.

But I guess this gets back to the point: Heroism is the greatest DPS boost in the game, and having a lot of them is good. Elemental shaman are the greatest benefit to a pure dps caster group, and hell no slouch in a mixed healing group either(3% crit for Inspiration anyone?). A Deep talent to improve Wrath of Air totem would go a long way to cementing this, but hey, thats what WotLK is for right?

The problem is most fights are biased against Elemental.
Najentus, ROS, Teron shadowbolts, Mother? We are one of the only caster DPS with no spell pushback prevention. Not sure how well a 4 piece pvp set would fare.
Supremus? We have no DOTs. Don't mention flame shock. Totem range can also be a problem here.
Gurtogg? In a solid caster group that is obviously threat limited there (unless you don't have good destro locks/shadowpriests), you will have to constantly switch between TA (phase1) and WOA (insignificance), losing DPS time.
Pretty much the only fight in BT where Elemental doesn't get shafted in some way shape or form is Illidan. And we do good there, unsurprisingly.

I've broken 1600 on Teron though, and no, I wasn't ghosted.
I'm consistently top 5 on Illidan along with random lock/hunter/mages.

Here's a WWS of our last BT run. Please excuse some new and brain damaged recruits on Gurtogg.
Wow Web Stats

Quoting for High Truth Density.

Shaman are all about utility. Enhancement and Elemental shaman are decent dps if played well, but lets face it, if you don't play well then you won't get far. We have heals, which is more than the "pure dps" classes can say, although it does mean that we suffer a bit on the damage output side of things (funny story, those classes you see topping the DPS meters? They're the pure dps types, with multiple trees devoted to different ways of doing damage). We have buffs, which can make a difference. Sure, a restoration shaman may offer more regen to a group, but if you have a bunch of fire mages, is 12.5 mp5 more, plus tide, really going to make a difference? Do you really want more than four restoration shaman in a raid? (Hint: Unless you lack healers, the answer is not yes). Enh/Ele specs allow for more totems, more shaman, more bloodlusts to be used in the raid.

To be quite honest, the only times I ended up on the lower end of the damage meters was just after I hit 70, and was immediately dragged into SSC/TK.

Wow Web Stats <-- WWS from a couple of weeks back, Naj/Sup/Akama(Bugged)/Gorefiend/Winterchill

Not totally amazing, but I am holding my own in the damage output front. More importantly, I've added gloves/belt/dagger/shield to my gear since then.

Elemental Shaman = Milkk (me)

Wow Web Stats
WWS Loading...
WWS Loading...

These are from two different weeks, and they are not my record breaking WWS reports.... those were lost when we took our guild forums down. Just showing some average Elemental Shaman DPS on various T6 encounters.

I skimmed through all your other posts, and some of them sound very similar to long and arduous posts I made on the WoW forums pre 2.3 regarding the serious nerfs that were being tested on the Test Realm (coefficient nerf, LO buff not equaling out). I made some serious QQ fests that essentially boiled down to the fact that Elemental shaman bring less raid/group support in the form of DPS buffs than an Enhancement shaman, and if this is to continue, we need to always offer higher DPS. At least this was my contention then, it was all moot though since the nerfs on test realm were reversed at the last second into reasonable DPS buffs for Elemental. With Enhancement getting serious +dmg/heal they could also now throw out just as good offheals as Elemental could. I contended, then, that if the nerfs on the Test Realm were to go into effect as is, that Elemental NEEDs an added raid/group buff, imp WoA or something to offset the DPS hit. I received alot of responses with other really cool ideas, as well as alot of hate from mages/warlocs saying that they wish they could wear 13k armor and heal themselves yadda yadda grass is always greener right?

But aside from the random drop itemization use idea, bringing a sub par DPS Elemental shaman really does not give a net gain to a raid, whereas an Enhance shaman CAN (Fury warrior DPS takes a huge hit with no WF, all melee receive scaling benefit from 10% atk power). Skill based factors play a heavy role here. But Elemental shaman do not give any scaling benefits to the group, WoA is static, contributing less and less as a casters gear totals more and more, similar for ToW with the +hit. Also a Restoration shaman actually buffs a caster group nearly just as well if not better (much more mana gain) as an Elemental shaman, if you have another Resto shaman to stick in their group. The same is NOT true of an Enhancement Shaman, with imp totems and 10% atk power. My guild utilizes almost all specs of all classes, to bring balance to any encounter. We rarely stacked the raid with certain classes even during learning attempts, with the exception of more healers for pre nerf Mother. I'm currently pushing for one of our priests to test out a Holy smite spec for shits and giggles since we have 3 Spriests every night anyway.

If you are worried about your guild ostracizing you as an Elemental Shaman because your DPS is low, prove they need you with other utility/skill related aspects. Kiting/Interrupts/Clutch Offheals/Totems (TA/Tremor are huge utility on some fights) are all strong reasons to bring a Elem Shaman over a Mage/Warloc provided their special roles are accounted for. If the question is to bring a Elemental or an Enhancement to the raid for the last spot when neither are already present in the raid, then you might have a problem. Tell them the Enhancement Shaman will want to bid on melee DPS gear, including leather, that always works with our melee officers. =P

--Milkk

I don't find the aoe pushback on Najentus to be much of an issue. It just isn't concentrated enough to bother me. Supremus sure dots are nice, but we do very well in there because we have a long range nuke with a short cast time. We can also shock liberally. I consider Supremus to be a strong fight for Ele dps. Teron past the first 2 minutes gets worse. Gurtogg yeah I agree threat with SP group and dropping totems is an issue, not to mention running for BBs. RoS we're fine in p3, just bad in p2. Or you can wear pvp gear and be great in p2, but worse in p3 which I have done. Mother I find isn't that bad for our dps, but I find physical do better there because so much is about their weapons. IC would be fine if I wasn't the shock bitch. :p

So yeah for T6:

Great: Illidan, Anetheron, Akama. Archimonde
Good: Supremus, Najentus, Rage, Azgalor, Kazrogal
Average: IC (if you can dps), RoS
Bad: Teron, Gurtogg, maybe Mother (but thats kinda sucky for everyone)

Well it would seem one is a full dmg spell, one is a LO damage. 1850 seems too high for LO hit. Thus the LO must be the 2725 crit.

CL has a range of 100 damage. Lets say that 1850 hit is the smallest that it can go for. (actually from my logs it seems it can vary more than 100, lets say about 150) So then take that 1850 and add 150. You get 2k now. You now on a LO hit get 1k. You multiply that by 20% and you get 2400 damage. Still off by 300 or so, but thats about the closest I can get.

If a Shaman dies and the mage has his normal gear on, he just loses some buffs. If the shaman dies, and the mage dropped 4% spell hit, and now no longer has the buffs or the full 16% spell hit for the boss, his dps dropped by a much larger margin. It's not the same if you suggest people regear for the totem. The +4% spell hit an elemental shaman offers to his party is worthless at end game.



1.5k is currently the primarily held benchmark for Ele Shaman. And 1k is generally speaking the entry level benchmark for someone new to the BT/MH content when talking about *all* dps classes. In the context of my post, I felt that was established. Perhaps I should have been more clear.



Well for one example Krazen said: If you look around the other posts there are similar comments along the same line for or against, whether the ele shaman is raid viable. I chose to offer my opinion as well, however I only see you rebuking my point, and no others. I know what works for me as a dps'er. However I am aware I do not by any means know every trick in the book. Hence I've been asking to see other WWS from Ele Shaman pulling 1500+ dps to compare their gear, spells cast, dps time, etc. To the best of my knowledge the only way to increase my dps in the end is to choose all of the correct gear and buffs. You already know to cast one of two cast rotations, what to buff, etc... My first questions all centered on stat weights, and how to select the most optimal gear pieces. *I* am not one of the shaman who has consistently pulled off 1500+ dps, and *I* am trying to learn how the existing ones do it.



The original post has the full math on how I got these numbers:
My numbers with all buffs except for Kings:
1450 dmg (with trinket fully up)
42.23% crit
4.4% spell haste
121 MP5 (not counting Mana Spring or BoW)

1 spell dmg (Bink) = 1 spell damage (Daid)
0.262 crit rating (Bink) = 0.756 crit rating (Daid)
Bink had no listed value for haste.

So, his rating for crit % was significantly lower than yours using my stats. So much that I wanted to find out which was more accurate.



Not remotely. They're perfectly happy with my performance. While I may not bring as much overall to the raid, because I regularly stay in the top 5 on both bosses and trash mobs I'm fine. I've got a "Core" member status and always get a primary invite to the raid over others. However that is a measure of skill versus class balance. I happen to be good. Other people if they were as good, or better, would beat me down like I was a lil sissy girl. >.< Then I *would* have to worry...

The thing you're not considering is classes are not just balanced around Raiding. In group play, soloing or even PVP the ability to heal is worth a lot more than in a raid environment. I may be biased after playing a warrior for 2 years (most of which as Protection) but I don't think a Hybrid class should be able to match a 'Pure' class in their area of expertise. In my mind it's all about balance and which is why the things I highlighted can be just as useful as Soul Stone or banishing in certain encounters or situations. This doesn't mean we shouldn't be competitive or situationally superior on encounters as we are now.

It's a fine balance.

I don't deny that the current 41 point talents across all shaman spec's in their 2.3 state are lacking be it from their lack of hit points or the fact they can be dispelled. Totems as a whole are generally a flawed mechanic that could use a review.

I don't disagree with some of what your say I just don't think things are as Dire as you imply. Elemental is hardly pre-2.3 Ret or Balance.

everwatch, the biggest thing for maximizing shaman dps is not really the rotations. Anyone can do LB spam or LB/CL spam. As long as you can use the blizzard spell queue system and don't mash keys too much you'll be fine. Synergizing things like trinkets/drums/heroism always helps too.

But the biggest thing is positioning and recasting totems. If you waste less movement, you dps more and get higher dps times and values. If you waste time in a fight where you're standing still redropping totems when you could be dps'ing, that is also an issue that drops your dps. Those two things I feel to be the biggest thing in getting the most our of your dps in a raid, especially the totem issue. Most fights have times where you have to move where you should be redropping. Some that don't make you move have forced periods of inactivity. Only a very few do you have to actually redrop when you could be dps'ing.

I've had many a discussion with other shaman about this inadequate totem buffing that Elemental offer over a Resto shaman, that being ToW is shit for a 41pt talent. The 3% spell haste instead of hit is a cool idea. Another idea I have been in support of is either removing the +hit and adding say a 20-30% concentration aura, or attaching a concentration type buff to Stoneskin through an Elemental Talent (since it is basically useless endgame) to give Elemental Shaman an earth totem to drop that benefits casters in encounters that don't have mass Fear. Hell if they put in a Improved Elemental Totem (2points to max) talent up in the 30pt tier alongside Elemental Shields which improved WoA and put a concentration effect on some sort of earth totem I would gladly give up 1 pt in Tidal Mastery (1% crit) to max it out. Although I think if such a thing ever did happen the points would be worked out to allow max Tidal Mastery.

I mention this mainly because Elemental only uses 3 talents tier 30 and above (7 total points). This may explain some of the previously mentioned "shortcomings" of Elemental when compared to the 11 and 12 points Enhance/Resto spend in their respective tier 30+ talents. Of course, careful what you wish for right?

Is this really the appropriate forum to discuss what unlikely changes would be nice or whether people shouldn't be Elemental instead of Resto?

I always thought it was a place for objective mechanics.