• Binkenstein

Currently, I'm doing about 1.4k dps, when looking at "average instant DPS" through Assessment.
I use this because comparing damage (or damage/fight duration) doesn't reflect how well I'm going while actively casting. Damage gets affected by recasts (I can see myself drop 3-4 places on P1 Illidan when I recast totems/shield), so I don't use it that often. Although it does mean that if I top the damage chart, I get to laugh at the hunters/mages/rogues depending on how the fight works (Supremus is the only fight I've got a #1 on, but I've done well on Shade (multiple 2nds) and Rage (3rd-4th) too)

Rule of thumb: if an Elemental Shaman is out-damaging you, there are two points to note: 1) He's good. 2)You're not.
Because, well, lets face it, we're a hybrid DPS class, and we don't have much in the way of funky synergies. So without a shadow priest (preferably in the same group) or an Enh shaman, we're as useful as a non-scorching Fire Mage without CoE. So then it comes down to the fact you can pop a few heals out, have more totems for the raid, and an extra heroism.

So if you're a Max/Min guild that looks purely at solo DPS, an Elemental Shaman will most likely not feature on your roster. If you look beyond solo dps, and notice that the mages/locks argue for an Ele just as much as a Shadow Priest, and that the damage lost by replacing a underperforming mage with an Ele Shaman (which should be fairly minimal) is surpassed by the gain from group buffs, then you'll probably have one. It does come down to the player as well, as a crap Ele Shaman is no better than a crap Mage.

On a side note, I'm playing with ShamStats again (shock horror!).
Very very buggy alpha (ie: don't even complain when something doesn't work) can be found here.

 

Kasi

Well I don't think its quite as simple as you're good, he's bad. I think numbers wise we are pretty competitive with enhancement shamans, feral druids, boomkins, shadow priests, affliction locks, frost mages, arms warriors and non combat swords/fists rogues. Me and everwatch are to the point where we can do 1600-1700 dps consistently. There is differences between BM hunters and surv/marks, but both should beat us. Destro locks, fire mages, combat rogues and general hunters are the top of the dps chain though, and we lag behind. But I don't think an elemental shaman should have issues doing equivalent damage to the classes I listed in the first group.

Edit:

Curious what you mean by "Currently, I'm doing about 1.4k dps, when looking at "average instant DPS" through Assessment." Is assessment a referral to some mod, or do you mean the breakdowns you can do on WWS? Which of the columns or customizable options are you using there to get the 1400 value?

 

Kargoroth

So am i getting this right Binkenstein, you need to toss an accasional heal to prevent people from dieing to be viable as an ele from a min/max point of view, or else that totem of wrath and "subpar mage" dps aren't worth it?

I mean, we do not have to switch out of say, moonkin form or shadowform to do this, is that the perk we have? High crit rate probably makes it worth the mana too, if you really had to throw a heal there..

 

Kasi

I don't think we should be playing like that. If you toss out heals and just shoot some random dps, then well either they should bring another full healer or another full dps'er. What it does do though is give flexibility for certain fights, as well as give us a bit more survivability on others. Examples:

Archimonde: If in a 4 group strat the other 3 groups are chased out because of doomfire, it becomes valuable for you to spot heal. This is the only fight in the game currently that I would agree with Bink that shaman healing is valuable as elemental on its own merits. We have high crit, and you should have AF. Thus crit heals on the tank makes the fight much more stable. Also if you can save someone dying, then of course do it. Staying alive is the name of the game here, not dps.

Gurtogg: If a clothie gets targetted, I do throw some LHWs at the start to allow time for the people coming off bloodboils to join in. With high crit and the huge armor fel rage gives, AF is once again very valuable. Once all the healers are in though then its back to dps.

Those are the only 2 fights that I would ever outside of a dire emergency (we lost most of our healers but not our dps'ers) that I'd heal a lot on.

There is plenty of fights though that a single heal can be strong, and won't effect your dps much.

Illidari Council: You don't want to die here. So when I get DP and know an envenom is coming, I toss a LHW on myself to help the envenom healer.

Illidan: I've tossed a heal on targets being barraged. Also when spreading out in demon phase and when the blue aoe thing hits, makes sense to heal yourself or others after the aoe damage. Its not like you're doing much but waiting for demons to spawn anyway.

Azgalor and Mother are two fights I've tossed myself a heal or two because of healer strain, but no I don't make it my business to heal. Healing is the healer's job. I will heal if everything goes to hell, but if the fight needs another healer, then bring one in. I refuse to be "support". I refuse to be taken as some weird hybrid that splits their time doing 2 jobs half decently. I work my ass off in raids to dps. And like Everwatch, my numbers support my being there as DPS. 1600+ on rage, anatheron, kaz'rogal, naj'entus, Teron, Gurtogg, etc. Always top dps on Illidan, top dps on ZA raids who clear Bear with 7-8 minutes left. If I ever felt my dps wasn't enough to be valuable to a raid, I'd go as resto. They have all the totems and such we have, and a different powerful totem that is about as good. Plus they're amazing healers. Or more likely for me I'd go enhancement. Because UR and such is that powerful.

If your guild is like Abananax, than maybe there isn't space for an elemental shaman in their min/max world. But for most guilds there certainly is. EJ went through T6 with 1-2 elemental shamans in all their raids. If its good enough for them, it is certainly good enough for me. As long as I feel my dps remains competitive. And it has.

 

Degruune

To offheal or not to offheal is not a real question really.
If you can provide a descent survivability for your raid in certain fights (looking at bloodboil mostly) while still doing a substantial part of the total DPS, why not?

I can top the meters on Naj'entus, Supremus and Akama (only been in a Teron raid once and I got the shadow of death twice) in BT, and can top the meters on Rage, Anetheron and Kazrog'al (if I get enough resists of the mana drain thing).
RoS is very hard for me to top since locks do insane damage there and as said, I offheal on Bloodboil.

However, a shaman may never forget that they have a heal button (an imba one = chainheal) for which they don't even need to switch out of forms. Use it wisely and you can be welcomed for all your skills in a raid.
I'm not saying DPS isn't reason enough to take you along, I'm saying that we can provide so much more then pure DPS.

 

Wodi

As far as healing in raid there are tons of fights where I am DPSing at top and if it looks like there is healers strugling to keep someone or whole raid I don't even think twice about going all out healing till the healing stablises then go back to DPS. Thats why my GM loves me I out DPS most fights and fights where extra healing is sometimes needed he knows I'll pick up the slack.

 

Noobshock

I'm fairly sure if you care for big numbers you'd look at possible group synergies. Like Elemental/Moonkin. Add a shadowpriest to that and fill the 2 remaining slots with fire mages or destro locks. Yeehaw.

WWS Scoreboard

Works for us anyway.

Hell everyone pimps out their melee groups, so why not do it with ranged?

If your guild doesn't believe in Elemental Shamans, just tell them to get a Moonkin too -_-

 

Kasi

I honestly don't have any problem healing on emergency in fights. I recall one Mother kill we had a lot of bad ports on healers and for the last 10% I had to spam Chain Heal on the tanks to get the kill. I'm proud of that. But if that happened regularly, than maybe your guild should be bringing another healer for the boss or making sure that your dps doesn't have to cover healer's jobs? If your guild never did group switching, than I could possibly see an elemental shaman actually wearing resto gear for certain fights (like council or archi) but since we do rotate people in and out based on the fights it is not an issue that faces us.

 

Daidalos

Oh I def agree that ele can be great healers in a pinch and bring on their own dps comparable to other hybrid dps classes. Don't get me wrong I am not arguing that bringing ele shaman is a bad idea I firmly believe skill>spec>gear. My only point is that from a theorycrafting standpoint melee synergy is basically perfect and caster synergies are fragmented and somewhat weak.

I think there is sufficient sample of elemental shamans out there I don't think there is a hidden reserve of dps that can be gained to be able to argue that WWS isn't really reflecting the truth about our dps. Theorycrafting seems to be fairly closely matching what people are getting in dps parses I see no reason to argue that some super skilled player out there can really put out numbers that will surprise anyone here. As was mentioned as the length of a fight trends downward dps goes up due to higher percentage time for lust and click trinkets (click trinkets are cyclical but when stacked with lust they increase in effectiveness).

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

 

• Binkenstein

Amusing thing (no WWS yet, I'll try to get one tonight) from our attunement runs last night.

Al'ar. My group was me, moonkin, shadow priest, and a pair of fire mages.

We got chained heroisms through the whole fight, so that me & the moonkin had ~12% of the damage between us (and the end of P1 were sitting at 1.6k dps). Suffice to say, it was fun.

 

testthewest

Are you sure about the flame shock dmg increase? Could you provide me a link to the math or tell me the coefficients of flame shock.
Have you included the fact that the ticks don't benefit from the high critrating a elemental shaman posseses? Furthermore the initial dmg will have 11% (2.4 = 10%) less critchance than lightning spells.
Last but not least it will not benefit from the totem that grants 85 spelldmg to LB/CL.

 

• Binkenstein

Easy.
Because LB is a 2 second cast, and FS is an instant (with the 1.5 second GCD), LB will need to an extra 33% damage to make up for the faster "cast" of FS. Then there's the fact that FS will get extra damage from Scorch & CoE (if present) as well as Misery.
With a lower co-eff overall, the difference can be overcome somewhere around the 1.2-1.4k dmg mark from memory, but it is still slightly higher damage.

Of course, despite this, you shouldn't use it due to the mana cost and range.

 

Kasi

I am going to try in MH tonight using the haste totem and see how it works out in some of the boss fights there, as well as using some other haste gear I have. Got a quick question on totem swapping. Switching them does incur a 1.5 sec gcd correct? I'm just curious how viable it is to switch to my teron totem right before I use heroism.

 

• Daler

Switch to it immediately after popping heroism (macro it), and you'll be able to avoid the GCD from swapping relics.

 

Daidalos

Yes all those things are taken into account. It is only with CoE and full scorch stack does the dps become comparable. So it is situationally better depending on your raid make up. An abundance of storm strikes will also swing it back in favor of CL/LB.

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

 

Daidalos

It incurs a GCD if in combat it however being on gcd does not prevent a switch. I have macros for all of my spells to switch to appropriate relic after I start the cast. Since all effects are cauclated at the end of the cast you can
/cast chealheal
/equip totem of the healing rains

/cast Chain lightning
/equip totem of ancestral guidance

/cast healing wave
/equip totem of the maelstrom

etc. One caveat is if you are out of range silenced etc you will get the gcd from the totem switch (assuming you switched).

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

 

Kasi

After playing around with that totem tonight on Rage -> Azgalor, unless I am off by several deviations, there is no way that the uptime on that totem is 79%. Even when chaincasting LB and not using CL at all I am lucky to get much above 50%. But 80% is a figure I don't see as being realistic, even though currently I am running with over 120 passive spell haste.

 

SilentMunkey

It says up for me a bit more than 50% of the time. I have never recorded and watched it though.

 

Kasi

I think the only way that it would be better than the Teron 85 dmg totem is if you never used CL at all. But if you work CL into your rotation (and you should if you have the mana) that hurts the uptime and drops it some. I guess I prefer to have passive controlled haste and not rely on procs.

 

tufy

Assuming CoE and Imp. Scorch are up:

Spell damage coefficients:
Flame Shock: DD = 15%, DoT = 52% over whole duration
Lightning Bolt: 79.4%

Average base damage:
Flame Shock: DD = 377, DoT = 420 (12s)
Lightning Bolt: 603 (median)

For the sake of the argument, I'm using 25% crit on gear, regular 41/0/20 spec, 2.4 talents (-1% crit from talents)

(([dmg] x [DD flameshock coefficient] + [DD flameshock base damage]) x [crit rate bonus] + [dmg] x [DoT flameshock coefficient] + [DoT flameshock base damage]) x [Imp. Scorch] x [CoE] x [Concussion] x / [Flame Shock "cast time"] = ([dmg] x [Lightning Bolt coefficient] + [Lightning Bolt Base damage] + [Teron totem additional bonus]) x [Concussion] x [Lightning Overload] x [crit rate bonus] / [LB cast time]

((([dmg] x 0.15 + 377) x 1.25 + [dmg] x 0.52 + 420) x 1.15 x 1.1 x 1.05) / 1.5 = (([dmg] x 0.794 + 603 + (85 x 0.794)) x 1.05 x 1.1 x 1.38 x 1.05) / 2

(([dmg] x 0.1875 + 471.25 + [dmg] x 0.52 + 420) x 1.15 x 1.1 x 1.05) / 1.5 = (([dmg] x 0.794 + 670.49) x 1.05 x 1.1 x 1.38 x 1.05) / 2

[dmg] x 0.6265 + 789.2018 = [dmg] x 0.6644 + 561.0643

[dmg] = 228.1375 / 0.0379

[dmg] = 6019.4591

Well, that's a bit better than 48k I got initially, but still high above achievable (and expected). Seems StormStrike is a must to run along Flame Shock rotation.


EDIT: forgot to include 4-set T6. Recalculated.
EDIT-2: also included Teron totem into calculation

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Filin

This damage number is a bit off due to not including haste into your calculation ( the difference becomes noticeable until 2.4 goes live due to haste not effecting FS cast time) the dmg needed with 100 haste without SS is 2397.913 (in 2.3)if you include SS then the dmg is reachable.

Also I always thought that totems damage are add to the base damage of the spell thus not effected by coefficient which in turn should bring the value even lower.

 

Nacht

I showed in this post that the Skycall Totem uptime would be 55.5% if LO does not proc it, and 66.7% uptime if LO does proc it. I do not recall anyone claiming a 80% uptime. What I did claim was a 80 damage equivalence based on a 66.7% uptime and a conservative 1 damage = 1.2 haste equivalence. Others have since argued haste is even more valuable than that, and I don't disagree. Basically, your observations seem in line with calculations.

In other words, I know of no claims of 80% uptime, and your observations don't discredit the conclusions I have come to. Whether or not the Skycall Totem is better than 85 lightning damage is dependent on how you value haste and the mechanics of the fight, and most value haste highly enough for 66.7% uptime of 100 haste to be better than 85 damage.

It still would be nice if we could figure out for sure whether or not LO procs the Skycall Totem.

 

Daidalos

I think that haste isn't needed in this calculation it would effect both by the same percent (in 2.4 although it would be needed for 2.3). Haste would change the dmg done but not which was one more if my reasoning is correct.
No they are added like normal spell dmg.

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

 

Filin

Agree that in 2.4 you can ignore haste until you reach 785 haste which is the time when FS will reach 1 second cast time and will be limited.

And thank you for correcting me about totems.

 

tufy

"up to" = added like normal damage.

Well, as I said, I calculated things using 2.4 parameters.To be honest, I personally expected a MUCH lower figure, but I guess one can't argue with math :p

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.