I"m not sure I agree with the fact that melee suffer since they don't get push back or silences or run out of mana (cept maybe hunters, ret and sham don't have issues)

First of all I never said I would not use the hammer but that I'm at hit cap plus and the other players are far below and that its a bigger upgrade for them so I have been letting them have it first its only its -23 less crit, +22 hit and only +33 spell damage when I all ready have like 102.29% hit with totem. As far as the boots go if they would drop I would take them but the slippers have dropped like 2 or 3 times already.

True that is a thing that hurts the dps of casters. But I was thinking more along the side of the cost to the raid being higher. In most fights melee tend to need more healing. Rage, Anetheron, Azgalor, Naj'entus (since melee can't spread out like ranged), Supremus, Gurtogg, Council, Illidan are all fights that have parts that make it either harder to melee or for them to require more raid resources to maintain. Felmyst in SW seems to be an even more extreme version of this. Now if you can handle that than yeah melee gives you more bang. I do agree pushback and mana and silences are all a pain, but I think that contrasts fairly well to being at range and able to switch targets and take less damage.

1) I'm not sure what experiences you have in game, but:
Running at near 1500 dmg, 10% spell haste, 38% crit, and roughly 200 MP5, popping Destro Pots, Haste Drums, and Heroism, I will go OOM on a 4/1 cast rotation in a fight that extends for a longer duration. I've not timed all of my fights and made notes, so I can't say which. But I've had several where I had to pop MAP's in the middle. And that is with running a SP in my party at 800-1000 DPS.

In that case, by working out spell crit from you gear to select haste and damage, mana issues will increase. A 40 spell damage with 40% mana gain item in the long run should increase overall DPS on say 4+ minute fights. Maybe 5+. That's a guess. 1 good SP or 1 JoW isn't enough to keep me going if I am going all out on long fights.


2/3)I think you are wrong about the beating other classes. The main reason this impression is carried by so many is due to the capacity for top end burst (or "ramping up" their damage) in short durations. Arcane can unload over 2k DPS if they're somehow ok on mana for example. Destro + short fight + Heroism, etc also ramp up very well. Even going by WWS Scoreboard, which is a bad idea imo, only 1 hunter and warlock broke over 1800 DPS overall.

And for the record - stacking any one group with more than 1 Bloodlust/Heroism is always an invalid arguement. At that point you're stacking certain people over everyone else. Of course numbers will greatly vary then.

I agree with you that some classes if ramped up or stacked can in short durations break 2k DPS. But in extended fights, this is not always the case at all. Every single fight I start on I see people ahead of me. And as the fights go on longer and longer I start pulling ahead of a LOT of them. People talk about how we do well in 10 mans, but not in 25 mans. The same applies at fight durations. We will not do as well as other classes in short fights of around 3-4 min. But in 4+ fights we will pull ahead of others who cannot sustain their damage for the long term properly. Rogues being an exception of course as Energy is a constant when spec'd properly even ramps up. If your guild runs fights percetly and quickly, sure Ele Shaman can fall behind. But that's basically at farm content mode. When you're talking about longer fights due to the duration, or as you are gearing people out, then Ele Shaman do far more. And that's when you need it the most.


4) I'm sorry, but WWS Scoreboard looks (without fully understanding how it pulls all of it's data or what they mean by DMG/Time and using a different calculation from WWS - care to explain???) highly inaccurate. Without understanding how Scoreboard calculates DPS from WWS, I can't say how I compare properly. I'll just have to get WWS working on my comp and figure out how to setup WWS Scoreboard. Once I do that I'll come back to this one.

How do you have the mana set in there? Is it valuing crit high due to mana conservation? Daidalos's numbers will net you different results. Using his compare the cloth boots to the leather boots from RoS using his. You lose only 2.3 spell damage, but gain 140 HP and 7MP5. If the cloth boots are "best in slot", but your GAIN nets you only 2 spell damage in effect while you could give up 2 spell damage for 140 HP and 7 MP5, then you're being selfish and hurting all of the Locks/Mages imo. Those cloth boots are not enough of an upgrade (they are a side grade imo). Whereas they are hands down the best in slot for Mages/Locks without question.

QFT

1) I am surprised you run oom. You do have more haste than I usually go with. (I run with Akama belt plus ZJ neck) but there is no fight in the game that I currently run oom on. Perhaps if I was dps'ing full time on Council or if we actually dps'd during demon phases on Illidan but just chain spamming spells it takes me 5-6 minutes at least to run oom without potting once just because of 2p T6, water shield and a shadow priest.

2/3) Not sure how accurate you are on this with mages. Mages fire right now is currently their highest dps spec. At top t6 gear fireball spam beats arcane blast spam. Their fireball spam is just as sustainable as our LB spam given a SP.

Locks well, SB scaling is crazy and while the cost is higher, well that contrasts to their damage.

Lets look at a parse of mine from Supremus last night. Neither myself or the warlock in question here were flasked. I was using oil and food. Not even sure he was using any special buffs.

Wow Web Stats

I had Icon/Hex and would use both during every tank and spank phase. We both pretty much have 2-3 pieces shy of best in game gear. The numbers speak clearly for themselves. When my trinkets are up my LB crits for around 4700 damage. Obviously a bit less when it is down. LO of course is just 10% more to my damage, but it drags down the value a bit in the WWS.

Now look at his shadowbolts. 3500 average regular. 8k average crit. Obviously he got a bit of luck in having ISB up at the right time with some near 10k SBs. Yet SB is only 0.5 slower than LB. SB however is clearly 2.5/2 (125%) stronger than LB. Heck I wouldn't be surprised if SB dps was higher than CL at 1.5 seconds. There is mathematically no way we can compete. Especially when you have to add dropping 4 totems every 2 minutes. When you get rid of buffs we share, we are left with mooching SS vs CoS, Imp SB and Shadow Weaving. That is without going into the plain fact that pet sacrifice plus shadow and flame are far better than LO and our 5% damage bonus.

If you look at the log, I do almost beat him on the fight. But that is because of much higher dps time. I've worked hard to make sure to stay in range on that fight and get as much dps out of my toon as I can. If I played a desto lock I'd just destroy meters utterly and completely if I had an elemental shaman and SP in my group.

We currently don't have a fire mage right now, but even our Arcane/Frost mage routinely beats me.

Gspike - WWS

2700 average frostbolt hits, 6300 average frostbolt crits. It would be even worse if all our mages were fire which they plan to go soon. Fireball hits very hard, has a ton of talented scalars and scales very well with gear.

Until we get CoE or SS becomes a permanent debuff (like a 10 second debuff) that gives us the equivalent dmg to COS/CoE we will not be able to compete unless we outplay the other players. Which is fine, there are a lot of stellar shamans out there. But if I had better tools it would go a lot better.

4) WWS scoreboard is weird. I wouldn't bother with it too much.

I might be coming late to the discussion w/ old news, but in case this hasn't been mentioned: there is some control of when we BL/heroism, not only when we set off trinkets. Granted, as it's a group buff, there is likely to be a *relatively* inflexible "right time" to do it on *some* fights, but given that even then there will be a little fudge factor involved, we can respond to proccing trinkets (sexytant, nexus-horn, etc) to take full advantage of their buff.

This also may have already been considered, but when you're comparing TLC, you did factor in that during a BL there are 30% more procs off that (when comparing to clicky trinkets), right? I assume that accounts for the 101 vs 107 difference as listed on pg 44?

I am also surprised you are running out of mana. I'd have to see how much mana your spirest is returning and the duration of the fight but our mages don't even pick up clear casting right now simply cause they don't need to. Can you post some wws reports so we can see them?

Well we have had all content on farm for awhile and I've seen what high skilled highly geared destro locks can do. Ele sham are not even remotely close. I'm not saying you can't beat the people in your guild simply that with equal gear skill and effort you will not beat a destro lock. (I also don't think we should since we are a buffing class)

WWS scoreboard just collects the reports from WWS posts and re-does some of the calculations to filter out invalid reports (4 man Illidan with 2M dps or broken parses where everything gets doubled and the boss takes 2x the Hp he has) and fix some of the things WWS does oddly. The primary thing is that for WWS it calculates dps as instant dps. meaning if you blow every cooldown do 2k and die 30s into the fight it will still report 2k dps for the fight. WWSscoreboard simply takes total dmg done / total time of encounter. So you will see rogues doing 1500 dps on Illidan where their instant dps is more like 2400 since part of the fight they are running or just standing around.

With WWS you have to look at AVG dps witch you have to check because it is not on by default. This will give you a more accurate DPS for the fight for you. I have seen lots of WWS reports where one guy is bragging about his DPS then you click AVG over the fight and he drops on the list because like Daidalos said above the DPS that is on when you pull up WWS is instant DPS not AVG over the fight. I have hit over 4000 DPS on a mob with nature venerability but only averaged 1100 DPS for the encounter.

If the combat log changes work the way I think they will when the patch comes out. Are fire totems will be able to be added into our DPS like others pets and or DPS should go up to after the patch just from the change.

Ya I'm rather hopefull the combat log changes will finally be able to allow us to differtiate between totems not only for dmg but all the totem tracking mods. For example if you are in a group with another shaman with both of you having healing streaem totem down and your healing stream totem gets destroyed mods can't distinguish between the two. This isn't a big deal in most raids but it has happened to me before esp in BGs.

I too bad ele shaman won't have searing totem up much to pad our numbers ;-). I will say that the new 1s gcd on totems is alot bigger change than I expect even though its only .5s difference if feels like night and day after totem stomping on the ptr. My personal idea for totems was to remove the GCD but have each totem type (fire earth air water) on a 1-1.5s cooldown so you could stomp your raid set or arena set instantly but coudn't spam totems without any cooldown.

There is no point to doing that spec. If you're going to try it, do it right and abuse the fact that Naj's dagger is 1h and go 30/31/0. Without the 270 extra damage one gets from the 1h it is not worth doing. Add in there that that group is pretty silly. So you are in with an enhancement shaman and a ms warrior. Two other melee most likely. It would still be better group dps for you to drop grace of air than wrath of air for yourself.

If the group wanted to care that much about making one class uber at dps, they would choose a different class than an elemental shaman. Just stick a rogue in your spot in that group and bring a destro lock. I do plan to try the 30/31/0 spec once before 2.4 comes out just to see, but I no longer plan to do it in a melee group. Any advantages of me being in a melee group and getting battle shout are hurt badly by having no shadow priest and not being able to CL as well as not being able to drop wrath of air since i should be dropping goa or wf.

DPS with shocks? Are you planning on being melee or casting LBs? This spec has been looked at if you have Naj in your Oh and a similar Damage in your Main hand trying to make up for the lousey spec with shear amount of plus dmg. Naj dagger is no longer one hand in 2.4 making this a novelty spec and not really usefull for anything.

I understand, what your are saying but if indeed, he got put into an enh shaman and warrior grp, how would his dps be if he dropped the right totems.. ect

My friend is going to test it tonight in a raid if he likes or not. But yea, 2.4 with the revered, faction you can get that 1h spell wep. If he dont like it now he will try it again in 2.4.




Shocks and LBs

We are a dps/hybrid buffing class so planning on being in a melee dps group and only giving totems for yourself to do magic damage just seems odd. I understand people get put in sub-optimal groups sometimes but if you are always in a melee group you should most likely spec to help melee and you would do more dmg as a melee spec. Who is buffing the caster if you put ele sham in the melee group? I just don't understand why you would do this.

You could go in a melee group, but I don't see the justification to drop WoA there, even if there was a second shaman. I think GoA would be more dps for the group than WoA would be for you, the enh shaman and lets say a ret pallie. Ideal group being a hybrid shaman, enh shaman, ms warrior, ret pally, one other (rogue, feral). If the ret pallie is keeping JoW up, you might be able to go without a SP. But even factoring in the extra dmg to the enh shaman and ret pally from woa, I still think GoA for 4 physical dps'ers would be better on top of the WF the enh shaman is dropping. Unless of course you can get him to totem twist while you keep WoA down. Pretty much I think that group setup would be the only way to justify you being in the melee group. You have to have a ret pally in the raid and your group has to have a ms warrior and enh shaman. If all these conditions aren't met, you might as well just be in a caster group.

Guys, I understand about the spec not being so good,but the main question I am asking is, that IF

I am in the perfect Group and fully buffed out.


How would it Fair. IF I was hit capped, yada yada.



Thats all

That's a pretty big IF to just assume away, especially with as much spell hit as you're disregarding with this spec.

Not with that build. But with the 1h dagger it is possible. 10% dps and 8% crit (176 rating) I'd gladly trade for 550 spell damage. And threat is not much of an issue. Some fights make dps'ing full time on the boss impossible. And some fights the tank is usually 100% to my 75%. Maybe I am blessed with a strong tank, but thats how it is for me. And this is with currently pulling 1600 dps on some T6 fights. Spell hit yes is an issue, but then again, our gear is loaded with it. 5p T6 plus draenei racial plus ROS neck plus Naj ring plus MH mace to mh leaves me at 153 spell hit rating. Only just under 50 off from the cap. If you use a belt like Belt of Blasting, that can get you most of the way there. It's not like this gear is bad. Most of it is best in T6 for an elemental shaman.

That being said I've not tried it yet. But I have done the math and as long as you don't pull agro you should be fine. When I try it I will get my last spell hit by just switching Icon for Scryer's Bloodgem. That should be about all I need to do. If you just treated yourself like a normal caster and got into a group with an elemental shaman, than even better as you could get 3% hit from there and you might be able to drop -threat totem too. I will try it on a SSC soon and post the WWS here. Until then well we can only say wait and see.

We have two primary tanks. One is brilliant at agro. The other, not quite so much.

I think I'm just going to shut up on the whole Ele/Enh hybrid subject, as the arguments I've been making don't seem to be getting through. Plus who the hell is going to have two elemental shaman in a raid?

Us, fortunately or unfortunately. Usually it's 1 enh, 2 ele, and a resto or two if they show up for the night.

But even then, I still don't think it's worth depriving a caster group of totems just to try something that Blizzard defintely wants to stop floating around (dual wielding 1-handed healing or caster weapons). It's probably up there with the dual-wield flametongue weapon spec I've seen somewhere around here.

You can wait and see, but it won't work. Why? Simple. You're sacrificing 8% crit, 5% hit, 10% dps, totem range, totem mana cost, as well as threat and shitloads of mana efficiency. Let's assume you gain 550 +dmg in return.

Now me personally, I'm running with 1391 +dmg, with a few crucial items (such as Naj'entus dagger, damn you!) still missing. So let's take 1400 for an average BT shaman. For the sake of the argument, let's assume this shaman also has 0 haste (affects both builds the same anyway) and 25% crit on gear (should be about average). I'm also assuming 2.4 talent changes (in essence, 1% less crit from Call of Thunder). The rotation used is maximum dps (CL-3LB):

Normal 41/0/20 build

((([CL spelldamage modifier] x [Spelldamage] + [average CL base damage]) x 1.05 x 1.1) + 3 x (([LB spelldamage modifier] x [Spelldamage] + [average LB base damage]) x 1.05 x 1.1 x [T6 4/5 bonus]) x [crit modifier]) / [total cast time of the rotation] = 1527 average theoretical dps.

Modified by hit: 1512 dps.

Ele-Enh hybrid:

((([CL spelldamage modifier] x [Spelldamage] + [average CL base damage]) x 1.05) + 3 x (([LB spelldamage modifier] x [Spelldamage] + [average LB base damage]) x 1.05 x [T6 4/5 bonus]) x [crit modifier]) / [total cast time of the rotation]

[top] 1629 average theoretical dps.

Now, as we know, Elemental Shamans tend to have loads of hit on their base gear. In my example, the +hit on very base gear is enough to cover 2% hit from Nature's Guidance. This leaves us with 3% hit you lost:

1629 x 0.96

1564.70

(note: if you think the numbers are a bit high, I should warn you that LB and CL get more +dmg from gear than their respective cast times would allow. Figures are 71.43% for CL and 79.4% for LB. But I guess most of us already knows that)

So far, so good. But now comes the true killer: If we assume the group is composed of 2 destruction warlocks, 1 fire mage, 1 shadow priest and 1 elemental shaman, how much damage would ToW add? Let's assume all those classes are hit capped. That's shadow priest out. We've already included the shaman, so that's him out. If we look at destruction lock and fire mage spread sheets, ToW will add 27.78 dps for mage (4.19 every 10 crit rating at same gear level) and 37,06 dps per warlock (5.59 every 10 crit rating at same gear level). This is of course assuming 1400 +dmg, 25% crit from gear (i.e. both same as shaman) and maxed out hit (to neutralize ToW's hit contribution).

Since only 41/0/20 has this dps contribution, let's now compare both builds:

Standard Elemental: 1512 + (27.78 + 2 x 37.06) = 1613.9 dps.
Hybrid Enh-Ele: 1564.70

This, of course, is ignoring mana efficiency, totem range, contribution from totems (same for both classes) and possibly additional dps contribution from ToW if people aren't hit capped.

So in the end, the question is whether you're doing dps for yourself or boosting the raid. That is, of course, assuming you'd get 550 +dmg from strenght. Given regular buffs, you'd get around 240, no more than that. Even if you'd get into a group with warrior and enh, shaman, that would be 370 +dmg. So yeah, the only way to make up for that damage would be with offhand dagger, the last of which get changed in 2.4 anyway.

In other words, I find this discussion kinda counterproductive. Don't get me wrong, I was playing with the idea of trying a hybrid spec as well, but in the end, you give up everything in order to get something that's only possible in theory (I mean, seriously, who the hell will stick an ele-enh shaman into melee group instead of, say, a rogue?). Sure, it's a cool build now for making nice movies with high crits, but that's about it. 41/0/20 is the way to go for raids. Kinda sad, tbh, a hybrid would be fun to play.

We have em lately, one for mage group, one for warlock group (then one enh for melee and 2 resto for healers)