testthewest

Don't care what Blizzard wants. Blizzards wanted us to stack mp/5 (see our T6 from BT), Blizz wanted us to stack spirit (see T1/T2), Blizz wanted Eles to stack hit. Frankly I don't care what Blizz wants, seeing what they planed for us in the past, you can see quite easy how human they are, how many mistakes they make.
Fact is: If you don't skill Reverb. your shock cd might as well be 8 sec, since you can't fit 2 shock with a 6 sec cd between the Storm Strikes. Basicly you will have the choice to skill Reverb an have 3 shocks every 16sec, or not skiling it, and only have 2 shocks.

Some pages before this was already discussed lenghtly.l

 

Toots Hepcat

Regardless of your timers, here's how you play. In preparation, put Flame Shock on a castsequence macro with Lava Burst, and a 12s reset.

1) Hit stormstrike every cooldown. We're still a melee class, Windfury still procs off SS.

2) Hit your fire macro if
a) It shows Flame shock, meaning the buff was consumer or rolled off
b) It shows LvB and MW is at 5 stacks

3) If the macro DOESN'T show Flame Shock, and the shock CD is up, it's safe to hit Earth Shock. You'll have time to shock before the next MW is up.

Sorry it's not some complex combat sequence, but I love simple.

Fast shocks vs. fast strikes
Strictly speaking, if there's a choice between 20% faster strikes with frequent GCD interference or 20% faster shocks with no GCD interference, most shamans will want to take the faster shocks and skip the faster strikes.

Quick simulation on my current gear (with no added spell hit or crit) shows 20 shocks per minute are worth 199 dps. Stormstrike is worth 137 dps; but if you remove strikes entirely, AA dps goes down by 13 (due to lower flurry uptime) and WF dps goes down by 38 (due to lower flurry uptime and no procs off SS).

This means that the total benefit of striking is 188 dps -- 137 + 38 + 13. 20% of 188 is obviously lower, even ignoring gains from less interference.

 

Orlgin

You can plan a rotation. I built one earlier using fast weapons. What I left unsaid (and probably should have emphasized) is that if Maelstrom Weapon isn't up, you don't use it. In that rotation, I set open slots right after Maelstrom Weapon that could be used if Maelstrom Weapon wasn't ready during it's allotted time. If both slots don't work, then the LB I would shoot in the next slot becomes Lava Burst. It's a little dynamic but not terribly so.

Think of it this way. Only Maelstrom Weapon itself is dynamic. Everything else in the rotation doesn't change. This naturally leaves gaps where you can fire your Maelstrom Weapon. I listed the best place to fire it. But it doesn't mean that I am firing it there. The odds say that I will likely fire it there. You look at the cooldown on Lava Burst and Elemental Devastation and decide what's best to fire at the time you use it. If you crit with one of your shocks, you may just fire a LB so Lava Burst is available at the next best moment.

There is a method to my madness. My theory is that the DPS you lose from smaller stormstrikes and Windfury is made up by the damage you can inflict with Maelstrom Weapon spells. This was discussed earlier in the thread for those who want to read it again. Fast weapons make for a smoother rotation that allows the maximum use of Shocks with Reverberation. It also combos extremely well with Static Shock. When you hit at least 40% more often, Static Shock starts to look a whole lot better.

Just remember this: in this type of rotation, if Maelstrom Weapon isn't ready, use Lightning Shield. Maximize your use of the GCD within the confines of your rotation. You'll need to weave in totems every so often but this isn't that difficult.

I will emphasize this again because it didn't sink in last time: I strongly suspect we'll be using Daggers in WoLK. Both Maelstrom Weapons and Static Shock gain a lot of value when you have faster weapons.

I forgot to add this: If you are getting a stream of crits, you can also fire a Maelstrom Weapon powered Lightning Bolt instead of Earth Shock which will also increase DPS.

 

Zackbumm

I really respect you toots, because nearly every post you did in the past was based on numbers and facts and not on feelings. but maybe you are wrong this time with lavaburst. i will do some testing tonight in dire maul and post the results later.

 

Prost

Do we have any confirmation if Maelstrom Weapon is on a PPM like Mongoose? If it is not then you are correct, if it is on a PPM then a slower weapon would be of more benefit.

 

Gurth999

I could see using a faster weapon in the offhand as a compromise perhaps, but I don't see more consistent spell damage outperforming the difference in Main hand windfury dps. Doubling the value of static shock seems fairly minimal compared to slicing SS and WF in half. The gain for offhand might be worth it, but I'm still skeptical.

 

Rhaegal

What on earth would make you think Maelstrom Weapon is a PPM? It stacks when you crit with a melee weapon just like the tooltip says.

We've gone over the whole "fast weapons might be good lol" nonsense. Stormstrike. Windfury. We're melee. Slow is good. It didn't "not sink in" last time, it was disregarded as irrelevant, and will continue to be.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

Toots Hepcat

We have a confirmation that Maelstrom Weapon is an on-crit effect; we got this by reading the tool-tip.

Anyhow -- looking at my current gear, I'd lose 274 dps by switching from a 2.7s to a 1.3s weapon.

SS -- 569 damage per proc. 6% chance to proc per hit.
2.7s weapons, hasted to 1.73, avg 1.15 attacks per second, avg .069 LS procs per second: 39 dps
1.3s weapons, hasted to .83, avg 2.4 attacks per second, avg .144 LS procs per second: 81 dps

So the difference so far is 231. It's going to take a LOT of extra MW stacks to equate that.

How many? Well, assuming about 900 SP and 15% spell crit, we're looking at a rank 12 LB that does an average of 1459 damage. We would need to do 9.5 of these per minute, IN ADDITION TO the lavabursts we're already doing with the slow weapon, to simply equate the loss.

Let's assume we did a conservative 1 LvB every 10s with slow weapons, that's 6 per minute. We now also need to do about 9 LBs per minute. That means we'll need a full MW stack every 4s.

However, just to equate the dps we LOST from slow weapons, we've added a GCD every 4s around which we have to fit shocks, stikes and LS refreshes.

Please: math.

 

Malan

Amazing how many questions this suggestion would answer.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Hothgor

This is the best build I could come up with that gives us 5/5 Reverb, Elemental Fury and as many of the appropriate enhance talents possible:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

You'll be missing 5% totem damage, 2% LvB Damage, 2% melee hit chance, and 4% more int (less ap, spell crit, spell power for all attacks).

This is a useful exercise for timing.

00: SS - 1.50: FS - ?.?: LB - 6.50: ES - 08: SS - 9.50: LvB - 11.5: FS -
16: SS - 17.5: FS - ?.?: LB - 22.5: ES - 24: SS - 25.5: LvB - 27.5: FS -
32: SS - 33.5: FS - ?.?: LB - 38.5: ES - 40: SS - 41.5: LvB - 43.5: FS -
48: SS - 49.5: FS - ?.?: LB - 54.5: ES - 56: SS - 57.5: LvB - 59.5: FS -

As you can clearly see, its IMPOSSIBLE to get a MW LvB in after every SS with 5 second shocks. The timing just doesn't work. The GCDs for the shocks get in your way every other potential MW LvB cast. Essentially, if you want reverberation, the trade off is that you can only use a MW LvB every 16 seconds on average.

That brings us to 3.75 LvB (60/16) every minute of combat, or a guaranteed Elemental Devestation uptime of 37.5 seconds (3.75x10). That means our Elemental Devestation is worth a base of 5.625% crit instead of 9% crit ((37.5/60)x9). We would only need a full stack of MW every 16 seconds on average, which is easily doable on the Beta with the way MW is currently procing.

Now as an interesting side note, you could conceivably throw in the odd MW LB, but only if you can consistently get a full stack of MW every 6.5 seconds. Assuming you get 1 SS attack, 4 WF attacks and 10 hasted melee attacks in every 6.5 seconds, you would need an exceedingly high crit rate (minimum of 40-45%) to pull this off. Factoring in plain old melee misses due to a lower hit rating in general, and the always intrusive RNG, I would say this is a risk that is not worth taking.

This leaves us with a baseline of 12 shocks, 4 LvB for a total of 16 spell casts per minute. Keep in mind that our other dps is lowered by the loss of 2% hit, ap and other missing talents. Not only that, but its very hard to throw in the Lightning Shield and Totem refreshes into this rotation.

Conversely, if you only used a Shock, LvB and SS every 8 seconds each, you come out with a setup like this:

00: SS - 1.50: FS - 6.50: LvB - 08: SS - 9.50: FS - 14.5: LvB -
16: SS - 17.5: FS - 22.5: LvB - 24: SS - 25.5: FS - 30.5: LvB -
32: SS - 33.5: FS - 38.5: LvB - 40: SS - 41.5: FS - 46.5: LvB -
48: SS - 49.5: FS - 54.5: LvB - 56: SS - 57.5: FS - 62.5: LvB -

This leaves us with a baseline of 8 shocks and 8 LvB every minute, also 16 spell casts per minute. The benefit of this is that we have 100% Elemental Devastation uptime, AND our full talent selection in the enhancement tree. Not to mention this is a much easier rotation for us to handle, and it only requires us to get 5 crits every 8 seconds. Additionally, we have plenty of time to drop new totems or recast Lightning Shield.

This points us towards the following build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Which one sounds best to you?

 

Gurth999

You do not have to use the full cooldown advantage of reverberation on every cycle. If maelstrom weapon is stacked up and LvB is available, skip an ES.

You can't do 8 LvB per minute, it has a cooldown of 8 seconds, that means 7.5 or less. You're also not getting near the most out of flameshock if you're firing off a lavaburst 5 seconds or less after you cast it. Obviously its easier to plan to do less with your GCD, but if the goal is the most damage, you have not convinced me.

 

Hothgor

The RNG is always going to kick your ass at some point. Else If Random casting orders don't make for effective game play. Juggling your cooldowns at random intervals depending on how lucky you are with crits is a recipe for disaster!! You MIGHT get 2-3 extra shocks per minute with reverberation. Or you might not. I'll take consistency over ifs any day of the week.

Show me the math.

15.5 casts per minute with 100% ED up-time vs 16 casts per minute with ~67% up-time seems like a no-brainer for me. You also still fail to take into account re-dropping totems AND recasting Lightning Shield for Static Shock procs. You're going to be messing with your timers having to mess with these other GCDs every minute or so. Spells will make up around 30% of our overall damage at level 80. Melee still makes up 70%. I'm more worried about making my 70% damage better by 3-5% than making my 30% damage better by 5%, and so should you.

 

Toots Hepcat

They both suck. Your second rotation doesn't give FS any time to tick, massively decreasing its utility, and your first one is just bizarre. The second is also 64 seconds long.

How about:

FS->SS->ES->LvB

forever?

Pretty laid back, I know. But it gives us:
- 12 shocks per minute
- 6 LvB per minute
- 6 strikes per minute
- 100% ED uptime
- 8s FS ticks

So that's 4 shocks vs 1.5 strikes and 1.5 LvB. Good trade off?

Let's assume 1000 spell damage (nice round number):

With a 65% coef, LvB will do 2500 damage per hit. 1.5 of those is 3750 damage.

Assuming 15% crit chance, 4 earth shocks alone is 5036 dps.

In addition, your flame shock is now getting 4 of its 6 DoT ticks, instead of none. Over a minute, that's 3984 additional damage.

In addition, two of your crippled flame shocks got converted to earth shocks. That's an extra bonus 1368 damage.

Sure, you still lose 1.5 strikes. But is that worth 8006 damage?

My point is, you can't just prioritize for the big abilities if it means stripping your little ones. If shocks offer 250 dps, and LvB 312, LvB is surely more important. And yet if you can trade 20% of your LvB damage for 50% more shock damage, you come out on top.

BTW: I'm not advising you use this rotation. I'm not advising ANY rotation. I'm advising we STOP GUESSING WHEN WE'RE GOING TO USE A HEAVILY RNG MECHANIC. I think we're going to need to be real dynamic players in wrath and we're all going to need to get a feel for MW.

 

Gurth999

You're more dependent on luck trying to get 8 LvB off per minute (not that its even mathematically possible) as I said before I'd aim for 6 LvB per minute, but reverberation actually gives you some leeway as you're less cooldown restricted.

60/8 = 7.5 That math?

Your first build is horribly broken, there's no point in referencing it as the only alternative. Obviously you would want to LvB more often than that. As for refreshing totems, it only becomes an issue if you can maintain contact with the target for 2 minutes and then even if you can the GCD on totems is only 1 second there's enough room to allow 1 refresh every 30 seconds.

Even if it's going to be 70/30 melee spell doesn't mean that adding in more spell damage at the cost of a minor reduction in melee can't be a net benefit.

 

Hothgor

I will have to assume that you would take this build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

0.00: FS - 1.50: SS - 5.00: ES - 8.00: LvB
10.0: FS - 11.5: SS - 15.0: ES - 18.0: LvB
20.0: FS - 21.5: SS - 25.0: ES - 28.0: LvB
30.0: FS - 31.5: SS - 35.0: ES - 38.0: LvB
40.0: FS - 41.5: SS - 45.0: ES - 48.0: LvB
50.0: FS - 51.5: SS - 55.0: ES - 58.0: LvB
etc...etc...

If you are that concerned about your personal damage, why take improved SS at all? You are correct that you get 12 shocks in per minute this way, but you only get 4 more Flame Shock dot ticks over my method, not 8.

I wont be using other class talents for this comparison, as the scaling affects both equally.

So lets assume you have 1500 spell damage at level 80, and a 25% spell crit rate and zero misses. Max rank FS does 500 initial damage per cast, getting 630 extra from your spell damage for a total of 1130. It also receives 52% spell damage over 4 ticks, or 195 extra per tick for a total of 334 dot damage per tick, 668 damage over all. Earth Shock gets a flat 42%, for a total of 1502 per cast. Lava burst does an average of 1010 damage per hit, for a total of 2801 damage every cast (100% crit rate)


Toots Spell Damage:

6 Flame Shock Casts
7628 initial damage
4008 dot damage

6 Earth Shock Casts
10139 initial damage

6 Lava Burst Casts
16806 initial damage

Total Damage: 38581

Hothgor's Spell Damage:

8 Flame Shock Casts
10170 initial damage
5344 dot damage

7.5 Lava Burst Casts
21008 initial damage

Total Damage: 36522

Toot will do 5.6% more spell damage, or 2059 total spell damage more than I will. So the question is: will my 2 extra Storm Strikes per minute do 1899 total damage? Of course they will!!! What do you think?

Edit: What would happen if Toot took an 8 second cooldown for SS and used it every cooldown?

0.00: FS - 1.50: SS - 5.00: ES - 8.00: LvB
9.50: SS - 11.0: FS - 16.0: ES - 17.5: LvB/SS.......woops!!!


Edit 2-Gurth: Show me your build please. I'm going out on a limb here with several different alternatives, and all you are saying is that mine is 'horribly broken'.

Edit 3-Toot: I understand what your saying, I'm just trying to emphasize how complicated of a juggling act this will be and why its ridiculous for people to flat out state that a 5/5 Reverberation build is better than all others.

Edit 4-Hothgor: I 'changed' my timing macro to cast FS first, then SS then finally LvB 1.5 seconds before the 8 second mark, giving me extra flame shock ticks!!

 

Gurth999

Sorry, I meant that first rotation you had was horribly broken where you were only using 4 lava bursts per minute.

This was basically what I had in mind. There's some things I would move around depending how they work out (regarding elemental shields, AK, dual wield spec and call of flame).

I would think imp SS is still valuable even if you aren't making the most of it, just for the extra debuffs.

 

Hothgor

Ah, well you should take another hard look at my first rotation listed. Its actually a 61 second rotation from start to finish. I tried to use a shock every possible cooldown as I good. Remember, Reverberation simply means you can do 2 more shocks per minute, 12 instead of 10. Tha'ts the primary and, well, only reason you take the talent, and if you aren't getting any benefit out of it, then there isn't any point in putting talents into it in the first place.

I was also trying to make a 'macro' out of it. Essentially what the rotation shows is that you can only throw in a Lava Burst every 16 seconds or so in the rotation due to how its 8 second GCD lines up with the shock and SS cool downs. Essentially its impossible to be perfect every time, so why waste the talent points trying? So lets prioritize Shocks over LvB, and LvB over SS timers:

00.0 - SS
01.5 - FS
05.0 - LvB
06.5 - FS
08.0 - SS
11.5 - ES
13.0 - LvB
16.5 - FS
18.0 - SS
21.5 - ES
23.0 - LvB
26.5 - FS
28.0 - SS
etc etc

As you can see you quickly get into a 10 second SS and LvB rotation REGARDLESS. If you only get 11, instead of 12 shocks in per minute, 5 points in reverberation is WASTED. I'm not sure why this concept seems so hard to grasp for our posters here. :/

 

Gurth999

No, if I never shock less than 6 seconds apart its wasted. If the reduced cooldown allows me to get in more spells, stormstrikes or even allow another tick of FS without stepping on other cooldowns it can be worthwhile. While it certainly wouldn't be easy to put in a macro there's definitely potential there for more damage. I don't know that it's better than the 5 points I'd be giving up, but I'm far from convinced its not.

 

Tornaz

Derail: Has there been any word or discussion about removing the increased threat mechanic from Frost Shock? With the added raid utility Frost mage has, and the Death Knight frost tree, there are potential synergistic benefits for Frost Shock.

 

panny

what the fuck?

I'm saying Totemic Mastery is why people go into Resto for PvP. I wasn't saying anything about PvE.

 

Jheherrin

Hoth, assess the following rotation.

0.0 - LavaBurst (non crit) It is only a non crit for the start of the rotation
1.5 - Earth Shock
3.0 - Stormstrike
6.5 - Flame Shock
8.0 - Lava Burst
11.0 - Stormstrike
12.5 - Flame Shock
16 - Lava Burst
17.5 - Earth Shock
etc etc etc.

I think what make this a potentially higher dps is that Flame shock gives higher dps when cast every 5 seconds than it does if you allow the dot to tick, and besides, you end up eating Flame Shock ticks with Lava Burst anyway so flame shock dot becomes a much smaller part of your dps.

 

testthewest

What about:

0 sec: SS
1,5 sec: FS
5 sec: LvB
6,5 sec: FS
8 sec: SS
11,5 sec: ES
13 sec: LvB (consuming FS from sec 6,5)
16 sec: SS
17,5 sec: FS
21 sec: LvB
22,5 sec: FS
24 sec: SS
27,5 sec: ES
29 sec: LvB (consuming FS from sec 22,5)
32 sec: SS

Rinse, repeat. Please tell me, where my fault is, as I can have an 100% uptime AND fit in 12 shocks/minute.


On another note about weapon speed:

Was the decrease of WF-dmg linear with increased weapon speed? Because Maelstrom weapons increase is, so there might be a right weapon speed to use, not max slow or max fast.



Edit: I edited my cycle to make it more clear.

The point is: You have 6,5 sec betweeen the SS. This means you have 4 GCDs. Since the first, the second and the last are needed by the shocks, the third is always open, and can be used to LvB on a 8 sec cd.

 

Jheherrin

Test, I think we have got essentially the same cycle.
Yours however manages to get a few extra flame shock ticks squeezed in and gets the start of the cycle going with a Lavaburst crit.

You are not however running 12 shocks per minute, you are running 12 shocks per 64 seconds, which is effectively 11.25 shocks per minute

 

testthewest

Yes, I thins so too, I always start with SS, since it's the style with the highest priority.
If you switch around one ES with a FS, you'll have exactly my cycle.

About the 12 shocks a minute: You are completely correct. It is only 11,25. Still, adding the 7,5 LvB, you have 18,75 casts a minute, 100% ED uptime. This is better than any other options given by the poster I orginally replied to.

 

LazyJoe

Getting 5 crits in 3 seconds seems extremely unlikely.

And when you start your cycle again, LvB won't be up at 35 since you used it at 29

However this may work if you put your first LvB at 5 sec (but still you need some luck to get 5 crits in 5 seconds)

Reading Malan improves my english