I think testthewest was suggesting that should fast weapons be a viable alternative, maelstrom stacks would build faster than the needed LvB crit cycle, thus extra stacks might be consumed with LB instead.
No it was not, if you reread what he said you'll see he was suggesting LB as it wouldn't consume the FS dot. I assume he just forgot about elemental devastation.
the whole point of this is to auto-crit a Lava Burst to proc Elemental Devastation for the extra melee crit. We will not be using Maelstrom to cast Lightning Bolt.
Don't forget that we will probably have a reasonable amount of spell crit, so we won't need to use lavaburst everytime we can to keep elemental devastation up.
I believe the best dps cycle will be the classical flame shock / earth shock rotation, and casting a lightning bolt when we have 5 stacks of maelstrom weapon, and only replaceing this by a flameshock/lavaburst rotation when we don't get enough critstrhough the first cycle.
No it was not, if you reread what he said you'll see he was suggesting LB as it wouldn't consume the FS dot. I assume he just forgot about elemental devastation.
Think about it again. If you were building maelstrom stacks twice as fast as what you needed to keep up ED, you would have extra stacks to consume in the interim. These stacks you would want to NOT consume the FS dot, because you'd want it to be consumed at the end of the cycle when you use LvB to refresh ED.
Think about it again. If you were building maelstrom stacks twice as fast as what you needed to keep up ED, you would have extra stacks to consume in the interim. These stacks you would want to NOT consume the FS dot, because you'd want it to be consumed at the end of the cycle when you use LvB to refresh ED.
I do not even see the point arguing about this.
This what he wrote:
"Aonther though is, that casting LB instead of Lava burst might be better, since it has a better coefficient and doesn't consume our Firedot from Flameshock. This is specially important, since I doubt that you can time Lava Burst so that it eats only the last tick of the dot, without losing Maelstromprocs through waiting."
Casting LB instead of Lava Burst. There is no window for you to ever use LB instead LaB, as the cooldown on LaB is eight seconds and elemental devastation is only up for 10 seconds. So if LaB is not on cooldown and your stack is up, you always want to use it instead of another damage spell in order to keep devastation up.
Indeed. LB costs more mana and does less dmg then LvB, nor does it guarantee a crit like LvB.
So far (after reading, a lot!) i ended up with a triple 11sec cast rotation. 3 points (only) in Reverberation. FS/ES/LvB on an 11sec rotation. With priority on FS/ES above SS (and LvB last), you still can manage 4 SS in 3 of these 11 sec rotations.
4x SS in 33sec, means only a 1/4sec lost per SS (is 3% of the SS-dps). Given the added damage from LvB (resulting in a bigger contribution of spell-dps) an inefficient FS/ES/LvB rotation can easily loose you more then those 3% SS-dps.
[e] Oh, and ofcourse you have 2 talents points left to spent elsewhere to improve dps.
Indeed. LB costs more mana and does less dmg then LvB, nor does it guarantee a crit like LvB.
So far (after reading, a lot!) i ended up with a triple 11sec cast rotation. 3 points (only) in Reverberation. FS/ES/LvB on an 11sec rotation. With priority on FS/ES above SS (and LvB last), you still can manage 4 SS in 3 of these 11 sec rotations.
4x SS in 33sec, means only a 1/4sec lost per SS (is 3% of the SS-dps). Given the added damage from LvB (resulting in a bigger contribution of spell-dps) an inefficient FS/ES/LvB rotation can easily loose you more then those 3% SS-dps.
[e] Oh, and ofcourse you have 2 talents points left to spent elsewhere to improve dps.
The problem I see there, though, is that Stormstriking as soon as it it's available isn't always the best option. If the windfury mechanics remain as they are, you'll want to wait a full cooldown on Windfury before you SS, otherwise you're potentially lowering your DPS. After much testing, it's been proven that waiting a full 3 seconds to SS (That is, Windfury goes off right as your SS cools down), you still end up with more potential DPS versus instantly SS every time its up.
As to the above debate - Slow / slow or you're slow yourself. Realize that with current windfury mechanics, you're wasting your breath. Losing more than 100 DPS from Windfury and Stormstrike is NOT worth proc'ing an extra instant cast (Which won't make up 100 DPS). Not to mention, you'll end up screwing yourself on mana, since you have to cast twice instead of once every few seconds.
Maelstrom Weapon activates on every white critical strike. If we assume we reach a 50% critical rate as some suggest we might reach, that means that on average that it takes 10 white hits to activate it.
I will make an assumption: that mana consumption is not an issue and that we want to use every single global cooldown we possibly can to improve DPS.
Without any haste rating at all, a 1.4 speed weapon becomes 0.98 sec with flurry up. It's safe to assume that Flurry will be up fulltime. So with this setup, you can fire off (on average) a Maelstorm weapon procced blast (either Lava Burst or LB) every five seconds. You need a lava burst every 10 sec to keep up Elemental Devastation. Let's also assume you take 5/5 Reverberation to max out your GCD use.
Filler would be things you need that use the GCD such as totems, Shamanistic Rage, refreshing water shield, or something like that. More haste can tighten the rotation by removing some GCD on the spell attacks so only cooldowns are the limiting factor. It also gives you some leeway in case the RNG hates you.
The question becomes whether this type of global management can squeeze out more DPS than the DPS loss caused by using fast weapons. The above suggests you get an extra lightning bolt every 10-11 seconds.
Rank 14 Lightning Bolt is 715-815 damage. Assume a nice round number of 3000 attack power for study purposes. That grants 900 spell damage. Assuming we get 71% spell damage modifier, we get an additional 639 damage. Add the effects of crits (15-20%) and concussion (5%) and you got more than 100 DPS.
If the difference really is only 100 DPS for slow weapons, Fast is definitely the way to go with full reverbation.
The problem I see there, though, is that Stormstriking as soon as it it's available isn't always the best option. If the windfury mechanics remain as they are, you'll want to wait a full cooldown on Windfury before you SS, otherwise you're potentially lowering your DPS. After much testing, it's been proven that waiting a full 3 seconds to SS (That is, Windfury goes off right as your SS cools down), you still end up with more potential DPS versus instantly SS every time its up.
Does this include Improved Stormstrike and the fact that the charges will be used a lot quicker than before?
Theorycrafting procedures per role:
DPS = Theory -> Spreadsheet -> Practice
Healing = Theory -> Practice -> Logs
Tanking = Theory -> Theory -> Theory
"Aonther though is, that casting LB instead of Lava burst might be better, since it has a better coefficient and doesn't consume our Firedot from Flameshock. This is specially important, since I doubt that you can time Lava Burst so that it eats only the last tick of the dot, without losing Maelstromprocs through waiting."
Casting LB instead of Lava Burst. There is no window for you to ever use LB instead LaB, as the cooldown on LaB is eight seconds and elemental devastation is only up for 10 seconds. So if LaB is not on cooldown and your stack is up, you always want to use it instead of another damage spell in order to keep devastation up.
I guess you can't imagine a critrate of 30% and above on your spells. What if I cast Falme Shock, 5 sec later ES, which crit and gave me ED and now my Maelstrom is at 5 stacks?
Cast a spell that has autocrit and cosumes half of my flame-dot? (and has a 15% weaker coeff...)
Cast a spell that has 30% critchance, leaves my dot on the target and has a a better coeff?
I just found a post, that Curse of Elements will include Nature dmg.
Disclaimer: I use slow/slow weapons, and never was a fan of daggers.
Still, think about it: If you can get a Maelstrom effect stacked in under 5 sec (whichs is very likely with fast weapons, the new windfury totem and haste as well as ED being up) you already have 4 spells with 30% critrate. This equals a refreshprobability of over 75% without ever touching Lava Burst.
After much testing, it's been proven that waiting a full 3 seconds to SS (That is, Windfury goes off right as your SS cools down), you still end up with more potential DPS versus instantly SS every time its up.
I think you don't know what you're talking about because it sure as hell was never conclusively shown that waiting for SS did anything.
You're also confusing "has a better coefficient" with "does more damage". If you want an example, consider alliance paladin tanking seals. Seal of Righteousness has a better spell coefficient than Seal of Vengeance. That is, it gets more benefit from +spell damage gear. However, with the current ranks, it requires somewhere around 850 spell damage for Seal of Righteousness to overcome Seal of Vengeance on single target threat. Does that mean Seal of Righteousness is better at < 850 spell damage, because it has a better coefficient? No. Saying something is better because it has a better coefficient is meaningless unless you can prove that we will have enough spell damage that the actual damage done will be higher.
Total shammy noob here. My current main is a rogue. I'm leveling and considering Enh Sham for WotLK. My concern is aggro. With the Blessing of Salv going away, are there any effective means for shammies to dump threat? I would imagine that without some tool, threat is greatly going to cap dps.
Total shammy noob here. My current main is a rogue. I'm leveling and considering Enh Sham for WotLK. My concern is aggro. With the Blessing of Salv going away, are there any effective means for shammies to dump threat? I would imagine that without some tool, threat is greatly going to cap dps.
Thanks,
Sal
First advice: Don't sign your posts.
Don't worry about threat. We don't currently have an aggro drop, and we won't in WotLK either. Tank threat is being scaled properly for once, and the DPS is being balanced accordingly for all classes. Threat won't cap us in WotLK any more than it does now (that's not to say that it doesn't now, it just won't be any worse). The only difference is that paladins won't be a required element of every 10-man, and when we do have them, they'll be able to use actual DPS buffs instead of just defaulting everyone to Salv.
You're also confusing "has a better coefficient" with "does more damage". If you want an example, consider alliance paladin tanking seals. Seal of Righteousness has a better spell coefficient than Seal of Vengeance. That is, it gets more benefit from +spell damage gear. However, with the current ranks, it requires somewhere around 850 spell damage for Seal of Righteousness to overcome Seal of Vengeance on single target threat. Does that mean Seal of Righteousness is better at < 850 spell damage, because it has a better coefficient? No. Saying something is better because it has a better coefficient is meaningless unless you can prove that we will have enough spell damage that the actual damage done will be higher.
I'am very well aware about the difference of coeff vs actual dmg. But the Problem is: I have no idea how the stats will scale at lvl 80.
At lvl 60 I was playing Elemental, I had about 450 spelldmg.
At lvl 70 I had more than the double.
If AP values continue to rise, chances are good LB will deal more dmg than LaB.
Example with 1000 spelldmg, all buffs:
LB: basedmg: 715 to 815 => 765
coefficient: 0,71* 1,41 (20% SS debuff, 10% CoE, 6% Moonkindebuff, 5% Concussion)= 1,00
so 1000 spelldmg will bring average LBs with 2079 dmg.
LaB: Basedmg: 888 to 1132=> 1010
coefficient: 0,57*1,31 (15% Scorch, 10% CoE, 6% Call of the Flame)= 0,7467
so 1000 spelldmg will bring average LaBs with 2070 dmg.
As you see, with the spell values I got from mmo-champion, it is very likely that LB will deal more dmg than LaB in raidgear.
Last edited by testthewest : 07/28/08 at 10:29 AM.
Reason: fixt math
I'am very well aware about the difference of coeff vs actual dmg. But the Problem is: I have no idea how the stats will scale at lvl 80.
Two problems here:
1) You said it yourself. We have no idea what our level 80 stats are going to look like. This is entirely speculation, and not relevant until we do know.
2) Even taking your numbers, and ignoring that LaB automatically refreshes ED, LaB still does more damage. Even if we have egregiously high spell crit (30%), LB's average damage with +1000 spell damage would be 1765 * 1.15 = 2030. Lava Burst will crit every time, so, 1757 * 1.5 = 2636.
[e] Okay, let's say for the sake of argument that since we don't know how much AP and spell power we'll have, we want to know at what point Lightning Bolt with 30% crit will outdamage Lava Burst with 100% crit, but a worse spell coefficient. In other words, we want the breaking point where average LB damage = average LaB damage, or:
1.15 * (765 + 1.00*x) = 1.5 * (1010 + 0.7467*x)
where 'x' is your spell damage. Each side is exactly what you had for average base damage, multiplied by crit damage. Solve for 'x'. We would need over 21,000 spell damage (over 60,000 AP). I doubt we'll find that on level 80 gear.
The whole notion that you can generalize MW and treat it like an ability with a cooldown is absurd. It will never work like that and time spent analyzing it as such is wasted.
I think it is long past time that people stop trying to graph out enhancement damage cycles for WotLK. There will not be a carved in stone damage cycle, really there won't be. We will have to react and prioritize the best that we can and this is a good thing.
Almost every dps class is being somewhat randomized in this regard. Reference the abilities that can extend warlock/shadow priest dots or extend slice and dice for rogues or have mages/warlocks bouncing between different schools of magic.
Two problems here:
1) You said it yourself. We have no idea what our level 80 stats are going to look like. This is entirely speculation, and not relevant until we do know.
2) Even taking your numbers, and ignoring that LaB automatically refreshes ED, LaB still does more damage. Even if we have egregiously high spell crit (30%), LB's average damage with +1000 spell damage would be 1765 * 1.15 = 2030. Lava Burst will crit every time, so, 1757 * 1.5 = 2636.
crit everytime and eat half of your Flame Shock tics. Did you subtract them?
Honestly: Fully buffed I easily get 2500 AP now. With lvl 80 and buffs my guess goes to about 4000-4500 AP attainable.
1000 spelldmg was a very conservative guess.
Furthermore, I am sure, that if you want to, your Maelstrom Weapon will stack faster than 8 sec, therefore you waste Procs waiting for your FoB cd.
Anyway, in this question is too much speculation to say for sure, so only time will tell.
The whole notion that you can generalize MW and treat it like an ability with a cooldown is absurd. It will never work like that and time spent analyzing it as such is wasted.
I think it is long past time that people stop trying to graph out enhancement damage cycles for WotLK. There will not be a carved in stone damage cycle, really there won't be. We will have to react and prioritize the best that we can and this is a good thing.
Almost every dps class is being somewhat randomized in this regard. Reference the abilities that can extend warlock/shadow priest dots or extend slice and dice for rogues or have mages/warlocks bouncing between different schools of magic.
Agreed 100% here. Even if you can say that we'll get one full stack of Maelstrom on average every 10 seconds, so it would fit nicely into some hypothetical FS/SS/ES/LaB cycle, there will still be times that we'll get a full stack in 5 seconds, and times where it takes 20 seconds. It's going to be an entirely dynamic "cycle" and we're just going to have to fit it in wherever we can.
Both spell get misery(+5%), and newest version of CoE(+10%). LvB spell coef is 2s / 3.5s and Lb coef is 2.5 / 3.5(beta value)
LvB get also imp. scorch(+15%) and Call of flame(+6%) but every flame shock dot tick missed is -13.025% but then its 100% crit.
[(2 / 3.5) * 1.05 * 1.15 * 1.06 * 1.1] * (1 + 1.5*crit%) - Number of dot tick eated * 0.13025
1.2068 - N * 0.13025.
N = 0: 1.2068(last dot tick perfectly same time when lava burst crit not likely scenario)
N = 1: 1.07656
N = 2: 0.94631
N = 3: 0.81606
N = 4: 0.68581
LB can get stormstrike charge(+20%) and benefits Concussion(+5%)
2.5 / 3.5 * 1.1 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.2 * 1.06 = 1.10187
1.10187 * (1+ 0.5*crit%)
So if you got 100% SS charge uptime and elemental devastion is up Lb look scaling better than LvB. Break point will be somewhere very high tought.
I think you don't know what you're talking about because it sure as hell was never conclusively shown that waiting for SS did anything.
Well, no. It was shown that waiting up to 3s IN SIMULATION could increase your dps by about 1%.
It was also shown that the net effect is less than 0 if you miss a single shock, or if the SS hold interrupts your twisting cycle.
Which it certainly does. Holding SS randomly adds about 4s per minute to all your cycles. So no raiding shaman should be doing it. And it's way too early to speculate on advanced mechanics in a beta.
Last edited by Toots Hepcat : 07/28/08 at 11:13 AM.
Both spell get misery(+5%), and newest version of CoE(+10%). LvB spell coef is 2s / 3.5s and Lb coef is 2.5 / 3.5(beta value)
LvB get also imp. scorch(+15%) and Call of flame(+6%) but every flame shock dot tick missed is -13.025% but then its 100% crit.
[(2 / 3.5) * 1.05 * 1.15 * 1.06 * 1.1] * (1 + 1.5*crit%) - Number of dot tick eated * 0.13025
1.2068 - N * 0.13025.
N = 0: 1.2068(last dot tick perfectly same time when lava burst crit not likely scenario)
N = 1: 1.07656
N = 2: 0.94631
N = 3: 0.81606
N = 4: 0.68581
LB can get stormstrike charge(+20%) and benefits Concussion(+5%)
2.5 / 3.5 * 1.1 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.2 * 1.06 = 1.10187
1.10187 * (1+ 0.5*crit%)
So if you got 100% SS charge uptime and elemental devastion is up Lb look scaling better than LvB. Break point will be somewhere very high tought.
Edit: Corrected major miscalc.
Dont forget CoE also works on Nature spells too in WotLK :P
Well, no. It was shown that waiting up to 3s IN SIMULATION could increase your dps by about 1%.
It was also shown that the net effect is less than 0 if you miss a single shock, or if the SS hold interrupts your twisting cycle.
Which it certainly does. Holding SS randomly adds about 4s per minute to all your cycles. So no raiding shaman should be doing it. And it's way too early to speculate on advanced mechanics in a beta.
The only situation I can see waiting for SS being viable would be if you have the WF go off just as your shock and SS is off CD. If you pop the shock first and then SS, it could net you an increase in DPS.
However, this is so random that you can't calculate it, but I've noticed that it sometimes happen so I usually refresh my FS before SS'ing in such a situation. Usually I get another WF off the SS.
07/27/08, 7:28 PM
