4/5 Reverb will give you a consistent DPS cycle, maelstrom procs aside. SS every 8 seconds, shock 3 times every 16.

Without Reverb you won't be able to get off more than 1 shock per 8 seconds and still stormstrike on cooldown. No matter when you throw your first shock/stormstrike, eventually your cycle will devolve into this:

0.0s SS
~1.5s shock
~7.5s shock comes off CD
8.0s SS comes off CD

Maybe when we see the new gear someone will come up with math proving that it's worthwhile to occasionally push back a stormstrike to keep up you shock rotation. However, if stormstriking > shocking, always, 4/5 reverb gives you a shock every 5.33 seconds instead of every 8 seconds. That's more than a 50% increase in shock damage for four talent points.

Thats just it, our DPS breakdown WILL be dramatically different in WotLK when compared to our CURRENT break down in TBC. I could easily see us doing 30% white, 30% wf, 10% SS and 30% spell damage at level 80. You have to start looking at some of the enhance talents in that context, IMO.

Kara through BT/Hyjal, I've never had a value for crit/agi higher than 2.0, and I've had values as low as 1.6. YMMV.

edit: Current value is ~1.75

In alot of sunwell/mh/bt leather, I just transferred over 2 days ago and have over 18% spell crit, whilst losing about 3% melee crit. Hit rating is of course applying to spells now as well, just a confirmation, not much of a surprise, obviously.

Elemental fury looks better than it is. If I do overestimeted 40% of damage from crittable spells and I got overestimated 30% spell crit. Elemental fury give +33.33% increase of crit damages(1.5 > 2). Then we will get 0.4*0.3*0.3= 0.036...3.6% of dps increase. I lose 4*dps talents and some utility talent from enhancement tree. So if we get only 0.9% increase of every talent point then elemental fury is worser without counting Feral spirit.

-Weapon mastery is nobrainer. +2% of 60% so 1.2% per talent point.
-Dualwield spec is 0.75% *2 * 60% so 0.9% per talent point.
-1/2 improved stormstike is 1.5% * 60% so 0.9% per talent point + 8 charges per minute.
-2/2 improved stormstike is 1.65% * 60% so 0.99% per talent point + 10 charges per minute.
-Static shock is harder to measure but it looks like 1-2% dps increase per point.

It's even not matter what you will pick all combination of those yields more dps than 3.6%.
All numbers come from Yo's sim. Melee side is lower estimate and spell side over estimate.

You will always need 5/5 Reverb to fit 2 shocks between the new SS (8sec) timer.
It would look like this:

0,0s SS
1,5s Shock
6,5s shock comes off CD
8s SS is rdy, and you are off your Global CD

With only 4/5 Reverb:
0,0s SS
1,5s Shock
6,7s shock comes off CD and is use imidiatly
8s SS is ready, but you are still on global CD for 0,2s
8,2 GCD wears off, you can now use your SS, 0,2 sec too late, I might add.


If want to cast 3 shocks and 2 SS in 16 sec, you will always get unused CD-time, since you need to shock twice inbetween 2 SS, and there is no other way than my first example to do it.


(To show the complete 16 sec cycle:
0,0s SS
1,5s Shock
6,5s shock comes off CD
8s SS is rdy, and you are off your Global CD
11,5s shock
16s SS
16,5s shock rdy, but you are on global CD
17,5s now you can shock, but lost a second, you are now at step 2.)

isn't haste rating also combined into one stat? that would mean that even as enhancement, you run around with a certain amount of spell haste, thus reducing your gcd to 1.4 or even less. in that case 4/5 Reverb would still do the trick

I have been toying around with the idea of an enhance build that only does 1/2 in Improved Stormstrike. Here's my reasoning.

1/2 in Improved Stormstrike would knock the CD on Stormstrike down to 9 seconds. At 9 seconds, Stormstrike would fit in very nicely with a Flame/Earth Shock rotation:



This diagram uses 1.5 second time increments (ie the Global Cool Down duration which is also, conveniently, a factor of the default 6" Shocks cool down and 9" Stormstrike cool down). The GCD's used are colored by which spell (shown below it in either the Stormstrike or Shocks tracks) triggered the GCD.

This rotation is very good in that there is no interruptions to either cycle and it is exactly tileable. That is, the Shocks and the Stormstrikes never slide forward or backward in relation to eachother.


Now, an 8 second (2/2 in Improved Stormstrike) cycle:



Note that I adjusted the time scale from 1.5 seconds (GCD) to 1 second so that it would be easier to break the steps up into half-second increments. In this cycle, one second delays appear in both Stormstrike and Shock cycles and the two cycles slide in relation to each other which is potentially a source of confusion in the heat of battle. Perhaps that is a trifle, but I like the consistency of the 9" cycle so far.

Here's an 8 second cycle with 5/5 in Reverberation, making the the Shock cool down 5 seconds:



Same scale as before. This time, note that after 16 seconds of starting the cycle, the Stormstrike cycle and Shock cycles end within 1.5 second of each other so that the shaman would be forced to either delay the Shock cycle by a second by using Stormstrike first or by delaying the Stormstrike cycle by casting Earth Shock first.

What this suggests to me is that 2/2 in Improved Stormstrike is more complicated than simply "faster CD's are better."

If talenting for 5 second shocks and 8 second Stormstrikes improves the DPS of those skills by 1/6 and 1/5 respectively, then the second-long gaps in the cycles would reduce the improvements of those talents.

Considering the uselessness of Malestrom Weapon, the 45 point Enhancement Talent (what Enhancement shaman is going to spend much if any time casting anything but instant totems and shocks? Thus, what benefit is talenting for cast time reduction?) and that the Feral Spirit (51 point) may or may not be worth taking frees up a lot of talents for use elsewhere.

Since the Restoration tree is losing Nature's Guidance, the changes to (or implimentation of) the spellpower stat, and the Elemental tree's mana conservation talents and Elemental Focus, Elemental Devastation and Elemental Warding, might a 23/48/0 build, which reaches all the way to 3/5 in Unrelenting Storm (which would return about 16 Mp/5 to the Enhancement shaman in my guild using her stats in the current expansion) one of the stronger raiding builds?

Any thoughts / arguments?

You definitely haven't read anything on this topic to say such nonsense. 5 stacks of fully talented Maelstrom waepons will make instant any damage spell. Its primary use will be to cast lava burst on a flame shocked target in order to refresh elemental devastation. This talent will definitely be mandatory in pve (more difficult to tell if it will be efficient in pvp, but it will still probably be good).

1. maelstrom weapon is far from useless. if skilled 5/5, it provides a nature's swiftness every 5 melee crits. as far as i know, it is even intended to NOT reset the swing timer.
2. if fast flametongue offhands will not prove more effective than 2x windfury, you might still want to time your stormstrike out of the WF CD. this would mean that there still won't be any real "cycle".

hmm, there was a 3. somewhere but i somehow lost it :/

Maybe that gaining 16mp/5 is almost insignificant for an enhancement chaman, and using 3 talent points for this is definitely stupid ?

It doesn't seem to work like that. Totems are already at the lowest possible GCD and stormstrike doesn't seem to have it's Gcd affected despite being a "spell" and I have noticed no distinguishable increase from shocks with about 6.6% haste.

I guess you can't distinguish a difference under 0,1 sec simply by your eyes. Maybe haste is not working in fractions with GCD (kind of like expertise). You will need 7,15% haste to make a 1,5 cast go down to 1,4 sec. Is it possible, that if you have less, the game is rounding up an putting you at 1,5sec?

To clear this up, we would need a Shaman with that haste-proc trinket from Underbog heroic. Cast until a proc occurs and then shock and watch the GCD.

Why not simply put down wrath of air totem which provides 10% spell haste or windfury totem if you want to test it with melee haste?

This is also an option, I though 320 haste is about 20% and should at least warrant a reduction by 0,2 sec, which is more easy visible then 0,1sec by the totem.

Speaking as a caster, it's very difficult to see or feel the difference haste makes on the gcd, mostly due to lag issues. Unlike spells with cast times which you can chain, your client has to wait out the gcd in order to become live for the next spell. However, since most of the projected skill cycles are based on ideal situations which virtually never happen, haste will naturally correct some of that error even though you won't really notice it as you are doing it. You will notice it with heroism up, but it doesn't matter nearly as much if it feels faster than if you actually see a few more casts in a parse making it into your play over a whole boss fight.

Stormstrike is of the physical school which makes it an attack and not a spell. Stormstrike - Spell - World of Warcraft
That's why haste rating/spell haste effects don't reduce it's GCD.

It the same for hunters - their shots are "physical" and not affected by GCD, but their traps are spells and affected.

Where did you see that at? I am on travel this weekend but rest assured if that is in the beta build right now Ill raise a ruckus. Koraa told me during alpha that they were looking into making SR more stable so that people didn't get screwed out of mana.

It's listed as an upcoming change on MMO-Champion.

Maybe they are changing it to 15% but then increasing the proc rate significantly.

ha! Also changed maelstromto work on ALL spells. Incoming arena hijinks as shaman drop combat with a full stack and install rez.

All they have to do is make it so you can't get ooc with a stack of Maelstrom active and that will be a non-issue. I like the idea of it affecting heals, it truly seems like Enhancement shaman could be the closest thing to a true active hybrid in a raid that there has ever been. At very least it will make soloing much easier.

Well, that would make us more viable .

Actually, it'll make us damn near unkillable, unless Maelstrom is purgable. Being able to drop an instant cast max rank heal every 8 to 10 seconds (assuming a 15% adjusted crit rate) is begging for a nerf. Healing shaman only get this once ever 3 minutes.