• Daler

If you follow the footnote at the bottom for that claim, it leads you here.

 

raptorgsus

I agree with Birkenstein on this haste issue. Whenever I pop Bloodlust I pretty much go to an awkward 4/1 ratio of casts. If I stick with 3/1 I'm basically wasting BL waiting to cast, and if I just spam LB I'm losing the benefit of CL.

What would be ideal is to get a static haste rating that exactly gets you one extra LB per CL cooldown.

2+2+2=6

1.5+1.5+1.5+1.5 = 6

So would it be ideal to go for 25% haste? Anything less and you're just messing up your CL cooldown rotation. I suppose you could go nuts and try to get haste to drop your LB down to 1 second but I don't know if that's possible.

with BL up, you should be

1.4+1.4+1.4+1.4+1.4=7 seconds between CLs, which isn't a good synergy for CL cooldowns, which is why I mostly just spam LB when BL is up.

 

• Binkenstein

25% haste isn't the "ideal" figure. It' the next "soft cap" for haste, following the same basis as going above 0 haste.

To be perfectly honest, I'd say that if you're at 25% haste, you're skimping on other stats.

 

Kasi

Yeah I agree with Bink in this as well. I tried it out. It was interesting, but it wasn't a dps upgrade when using CL. The only time it would be worth it is if only doing LB spam. So if you have no SP than it is good. On Kaz its good. On sunwell trash and other heavily cc'd trash where you can't CL its good. Other than that not really worth it imo.

 

• Binkenstein

Sky call on Kaz'Rogal?

Umm... no.

I'm not sure if you guys can access my EJ blog yet, but I've been doing a little ele-centric T6 raid notes series, and I'd say that Pulsing Earth > Skycall for that fight.

 

• Daler

I'd love to have the kind of regen I'd need to cast for 90% of this fight, but we roll with only one shadow priest, and the healers get him for Kaz (at least for now. My petition's making its rounds ).

Without the regen, I'm basically trying to dump my mana as hard and as fast as I can while staying alive, and more importantly, not blowing up the other ranged DPS who have better (any) mana regen options. I tried equipping my fathomstone (don't have 4t5 or 4t4 to equip), but it didn't make a lick of difference. Plus I'm moving in and out a lot as BigWigs' range monitor was bugging out on everyone, so the faster casts are making a difference.

Granted, we just got our first kill last night (on our first night of attempts no less), so we've got loads of tweaking to do. But until I get a mana battery of some sort, my plan is to nuke as hard as I can until I die. Probably should've included a caveat on that when I first posted. Oh well.

All that said, yes I would absolutely go the same route as you recommend in your blog, but sans the shadow priest, there's no way I'll cross the regen threshold needed to sustain DPS, nor do I have enough SR to rely on resists. Kamikaze style for the time being.

 

Kasi

Uhh yeah I can go with Skycall there, but then we run with 2 SPs almost 100% of the time and I'm always in a group with one. If you have a shadow priest in group and a sufficiently high crit rate and your raid dps is solid (and if you can pull him past the guards quickly and not get marks stacking up before the dps can go), then there is no need for pulsing earth. I have not used that totem since maybe the first kill. (I also had dark runes though) Just wear 2 pieces of SR gear and that is more than enough to resist over 50% of the marks.

Basically my point is that going with skycall and just spamming LB might give you more returns than going with AK and using LB exclusively. If you aren't using any SR gear though than sure use pulsing earth. You likely won't be resisting any of the marks and you'll need all the mana you can get (plus runes).

Edit: Basically the point I was trying to make is that if you're not using CL on a fight for whatever reason, than you can use that totem. I still on Kaz do about a 6-1 LB/CL rotation normally and use AK and can end the fight anywhere between 70 and 30% mana, luck depending. But if you spammed LB all the time I can see skycall being useful there. For anyone who doesn't raid with a sp it is probably the best totem for them.

 

Vesham

When using skycall totem, is there still a dead time interval in 2.4 with a 3/1 rotation?

Elemental Mastery - Lightning Bolt - Die - Reincarnation - Lightning Bolt - Lightning Overload Procs - Die

 

Croaker

If you wait for the CL, yes, because 2.4 didn't change anything relating to the 6 second Chain Lightning cooldown.

 

whave

Is Recount/WWS able to parse TLC LBs from regular finally, so one can test this? I know the combat log does so, but had no time to check it for these addons yet...

 

Handyhoof

If it still cannot be parsed automatically from a log, it is still possible to test.

The same methodology I used to test Overload and Skycall applies:

Nuke Boom. (In this case, we want to test resists, so I would recommend Venoxis. Remember, Venoxis resets if you leave his room.) Cast your spell, watch procs, manually record results. I used a hand written table on a pad representing each possible result, and added a tally to that cell whenever that result occured.

If TLC got nerfed down to a lvl 70 resist rate, it should be quickly obvious if a pattern is forming. 1% Resist and 17% resist on Capacitor procs is a huge difference.

I would run the test myself, but unfortunately I'm still not even first in line for TLC drops.

 

Moshne

On the Pulsing Earth topic, I too have seen no real use for it in endgame content. However, we run relatively shadowpriest heavy, and even when we don't, and only have 1, our healers don't seem to complain that they don't get him. The spirit/int regen changes will make this even less of an issue, as the guilds that have embraced Priest/druid healing will see a massive mana regen increase.

On the haste question, I've been accumulating as much haste as I can. I'm not necessarily all of it at this point, but I'm seeing some impressive gains when mana is a non-issue (we also run our token Ret pally quite often, making mana even less of an issue.) I feel the crunch when the shadowpriest dies/kills himself/inevitable happens, but switching to the LB spam over CL/LB rotation solves most of the problem, and the more haste you end up with, the less this actually lowers your damage output. (Bear in mind that from a pure damage per second standpoint, LB scales with haste faster than CL, as you deal the same damage output, but LB is losing more "time per cast" than CL per point of haste.)

 

Daidalos

While LB does lose more time per cast it is the same for both pertentagewise. So a 5% decrease in cast time would yield the same dps increases for both CL and LB since it is a percent. Hasted LB spam can be very good dps tho for a very reasonable mana drain. I def agree with that just not the math of why.

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

 

Zensai

I haven't noticed a change in my DPS related to TLC... My general rule of thumb has been I want 45% spell crit raid buffed... Stack spell dmg, and working on haste in the right slots... I have yet to see a good reason to replace TLC. I've tried dbl haste trinkets, and my current combo seems to still be the best.

I did pickup the new gloves from Sunwell, soon as I get them enchanted I will be replacing the Botanist gloves from Gorefiend. They should be a good upgrade.

9/10 my group is always Me, SP, Boomkin, Lock, Lock.

I'm doing a 4/1 rotation since I don't wait for the CL CD... We also do a 4x Drums of Battle Rotation..

 

Croaker

I've started noticing a lot more resists - I don't know if it's TLC resists I'm seeing or what, but I know my gear hasn't changed since pre-2.4. Don't have any solid statistics yet, just an observation. I'll try to get some solid numbers next raid.

 

• Daler

Hmm. I've been staring at the haste graph on the first post for a good while now, and it has given rise to a question or two for me. I probably just need more coffee, but here goes.

1) When it says "LB = Lightning Bolt damage", etc., does that refer to the bonus spell damage or the expected output of 1 LB cast? I'm suspecting the latter, but I'd like confirmation before I go spouting off something incorrect to guildies.

2) With 4t6, wouldn't the 5% gain to LB damage decrease the haste requirement for swapping to a 4:1 rotation faster than a shaman not using 4t6? I may be missing something, but it seems that the opposite effect would be expected. The increased damage from LB would offset the loss of DPS from delaying CL faster than normal, wouldn't it?

 

• Binkenstein

Expected LB damage. I could have put all the LB calc stuff in, but that's going a bit overboard.

It does decrease the haste requirement. It's the blue line (ok, maybe the graph isn't that clear).

 

Chim

Using the shamstats spreadsheet, I am getting Pauldrans of the Furious Elements coming in at 5 higher dps than a Hatefury mantle with 2, 12 damage gems.

Now I realise the importance of spell haste, and I have witnessed an increase myself since using more spell haste items, but a trade-off of 39 spell damage and 1.01 spell crit, for 33spellhaste just doesn't add up in my mind.

Am I placing too much importance in the results of this spreadsheet? Or perhaps somebody can recommend a better one?

 

• Daler

I'm probably just mis-reading it, the 2.3 normal line in particular. When I plotted my own graph of that equation with just the current spell coefficients and what not, I got something that looks a lot like just the green and blue lines. So what exactly is the 2.3 normal line representing? Because there should be no spell damage value that doesn't have 4t6 at a higher haste requirement, no?

 

Handyhoof

Chim, my numbers are putting Furious Elements at an 11 dps loss from Hatefury. (Insert spreadsheet is only a guide explanation here.) Good eye.

 

Chim

Thanks for the clarification. I had my doubts anyway, just strange that a spreadsheet would get that result in the first place.

 

• Binkenstein

The 2.3 line is the "no 4pc T6 bonus" line with 2.3 mechanics to highlight the fact that you will need more haste to go to 4/1 from 3/1

 

• Daler

Ah, I think I see where I was screwing up. The 2.3 line is using the pre-2.3 coefficients (old), everything else using the current coefficients (post spell time reduction from patch 2.3), yes?

That would explain my confusion. Thanks for clarifying

 

Naraya

How would you rate the [Battlemaster's Alacrity] trinket for PvE? I don't see it in your spreadsheet.

 

galzohar

You would need 243 unbuffed SR to resist 1/2 of the marks, which won't be achieved by just shadow protection and 2 SR pieces. Don't be mislead by resist statistics, you'll see what you want to see if you don't actually count how much you're resisting. People seem to keep forgetting we already know the exact resist chances for resistable binary spells (and average damage taken from resistable non-binary spells).

Wether this means you should or shouldn't wear SR gear though is a completely different story. Less SR means you'll go oom that much earlier but the boss will run out of HP earlier too. The real question is if SR increases your longevity more than it increases the boss', which probably depends on the actual pieces you're swapping and raid/party makeup and everyone's gear.