Alerias

anybody besides me who thinks about using the changes to go meleemage style?

21/40/0, slow Mh, fast Oh (both fists), stacking the hell out of crit and throwing LB and CL around in addition to whacking at the target.

 

Toots Hepcat

Enh. Shaman DPS has five main damage elements in five separate cycles: melee, windfury, stormstrike, shocks and searing totem.

Any channeled cast would interrupt the melee, windfury and stormstrike cycles. The channeled cast would need to exceed the DPS lost by interrupting these cycles, or it wouldn't be worthwhile to cast it.

To make LB, CL or LvB worthwhile, you'd need to stack spell damage. At which point you'd decrease your melee damage, and you'd be better off just going elemental.

Hybrid specs ONLY work when the strengths of one tree complement the strengths of another. Elemental complements enhance by offering stronger shocks (which don't interrupt case time). Resto complements elemental by offering cheaper totems, Nature's Guidance and + to lightning crit.

 

Buanna

Ain't the survey still out on the whole Lava Bolt/Elemental Devastation question?

Boni and Bonii are not words.
Bonuses is.

 

Lujaar

Well, yeah. We don't have enough information to say whether instant Lava Burst will be good or not. We don't know its coefficient, we don't know if the fist proc has an internal cooldown, and we don't know if lava burst can consume another shaman's flame shock. All anyone's arrived at so far is that it's worth considering.

Instant chain lightning is still bad unless there are more changes we don't know about.

 

Brasidas

You presume that static shock will even consume a stormstrike charge. In my raids even if i attempt to use earth shock immediately after stormstrike often it will not consume a charge. Im not sure whether you experience the same but most hunters favour wind serpents for raids which consume many if not all charges, so if you are running with around 2 hunters i doubt your elemental shaman will be receiving many charges right now. How things transpire with rogues and boomkins will have alot to do with the raid viability of static shock. Depending on which are the optimum poisons in the expansion and whether boomkins cycles will mostly include arcane damage which i believe is what most do now. It may simply come down to enhancement and elemental being the only two to use the charges, in which case it may work out viable for us to get static shock.

 

Alerias

Like Elemental Devastation + Fist Specialisation?

Shaman are (as far as i know) the only class with an AP --> spelldmg converter. With melee- and spellcritrating becoming essentially the same, guaranteed crits from LvB, instant spells from meleecrits and increased meleecrit from a spellcrit, there is an obvious synergy between the elemental and enhancement tree.

 

Utters

This is again assuming that LvB does not reset the swing timer. I think that it is a little futile to try and dissect the WotLK top damage formulas at this point when we know so little about how the new mechanics are actually going to interact with each other. Let's wait on saying 'I think x setup will be the best dps' or 'Y and Z weapon speed combos will yield the highest dps potential with A, B and C talents and abilities' until beta when we can actually test the new mechanics, spells and talents. Right now let's focus on theory crafting the things we do know, which admittedly is not as interesting and very limited but doing the other things is futile and useless at this point in time.

 

TeachMeMic

People have been asking whether the armour penetration bonus to fist weapons from Weapon Specialisation will apply to all attackers against that target, or just the shaman.

Based on the current wording of the descripton "...chance to reduce the armour of your target by 20%" I would say that the effect applies to all attackers and not just the shaman.

Surely if it applied to just the shaman then the description would say something along the lines of "...ignore 20% of your targets armour".


Note: This may be irrelevant if the bonus for fist weapons is changed to reduce cast time as suggested a couple of pages back.

 

Urgok

First off I'll assume you mean a 21/50/0 build. That build only looks practical if you dropped points from Improved Weapon Totems or Improved Storm Strike. Getting rid of Improved Storm Strike looks like the best option, with out putting much thought into it, since windfury will still play some role in a raid environment.

And then two completely unrelated issues.

It doesn't look practical to stack Intellect at all. The total bonus's work out to something like: 106% Intellect conversion to AP (assuming you take 3/3 Astral Knowledge). Say for the sake of argument that you manage to acquire 500 Intellect on your gear, this only works out to a 530 AP increase. If that 500 Intellect was all strength you'd manage a 1000 AP increase. I'm not particularly speedy at math, but it seems like the synergistic properties in the Elemental tree would have to be really good to equal the damage increase in straight white/windfury proc's to beat that difference. Intellect right now looks like it will pull a rating < hit after the yellow hit cap. The point being, rogue leather will still probably be better then hunter mail, if current trends continue, but druid leather might be a better option then rogue leather in some cases.

Also, is anyone following this thread up to date on how the different tank classes TPS will improve? If it stays mostly the same compared to how it is now this spec might be even harder to pull off just because you wont have the 30% threat generation reduction on you shock side of your cycle, although I really couldn't back this up since i have no idea how Threat generation will improve or change.

 

Kolt

I can tell you the exact Value of Intellect right now, it will be 1/1.1 if you expect BoK (with full Mental Dexterity, but without Ancestral Knowledge - nothing more to say about this Talent).

It was mentioned a view Posts before; we have to wait how the new Items will look like. Maybe "Rogue"-Leather will be the Gear i'm looking for, or maybe Hunters' or Druids'. In the End i'm wearing 100% Enhancement Shaman Gear, and it will be beautiful.

 

Pitbuller

Dw spec and imp SS is almoust good dps per point for yourself.
But if there is someone to use those charges then Imp. SS > DW spec.
2 per 10s
or
4 per 8s
+150% dps from charges.
If there is someone who use those charges effectively then you can drop points at static shock and elemental shields.
Put 2/3 to dw spec.
You can take 1/2 imp totems and 1/2 imp gw(only 2 is good) or drop point at imp totems for 2/2 imp gw.

Reason why drop point at dw spec is that you wanna be spell hit capped and then that talent are just for melee hit.
Link to build

I would use slow mh Axe(+10% damage with 45% effective crit) and fast oh fist with flametongue.
With 1.4 speed off-hand assuming perma flurry and some minor passive haste you get attack per sec with off-hand.
You can use lava burst once per 8s(cd) but flame shock 3-4dot tick window is 9-12s(least dot loss dps). So almoust 65% crit is needed for smooth rotation. You get 9% at elem devastation and 3% at ret paladin. With double mongoose this still too high end gear but at 80lvl there might be only nerfed mongoose. So this build need very good(uber) gear or you can use douple fist, wf in off-hand, try to get feral or use 16s rotation.

16s rotation.
ES(0s), SS(1.5s), FS(5s), SS(9.5s),ES(11s),LvB(14.5s)
You get only 9/16s fs dot uptime and 10/16s for elem devastion at lavaburst.

In 16s you get 16+2 off-hand hit and yuo need least 5 crit.
This look much less gear needy.

Edit: maybe there is no rotation only prior list -> LvB when instant(Fs after), SS, Es(if Fs is still up least 5s), Cl(if instant up and LvB is still long Cd)

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

Atren

Has there been any development that non-instant spells being instant no longer reset swing timer? If there is not then also timing LvB might require some thought making perhaps static 16 second rotation too confining.

 

Pitbuller

If LvB still reset swing timer you should wait wf proc (and maybe 3s - Mh swing timer) and then burst it. You lost some white dps and miss some spell in rotation but over 3k LvB crit and wf cd abuse would make up that loss. Mh axe wf crit will be very high and you dont want miss any possible wf. I hope blizz will fix instant spells becouse our rotation will be complex even without wf cd timing.

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

Urgok

It sounds like your assuming at least end t7 or mid t8 gear levels, since your assuming a 48% crit rating partially buffed. (I'm only rocking 32% at end t4). Losing 5% hit rating from talents that must be made up on your gear, since you assume a capped hit rating. Even if you just lose 2 white swings, one could assume that these two swings would work out to roughly double the damage of an end t4 mid t5 character, or roughly 1k MH 500 OH, both with a 56% crit rating. So in between 1500 and 3000 white damage. Which would work out in your favor since the LvB hit is going to do more damage more reliably.

I might suggest that this tactic would become less viable in the later raid tiers though. The less then 1/3 AP to spellpower conversion seems to be the biggest weakness. As weapon quality increases then the value of the 2 white hits would increase faster then your spellpower could enhance your shock damage, and your shock damage would stay comparatively flat during raid tier advancement. The only thing increasing shock damage is your crit rating and AP. Since you have to weight Hit and Crit more to make a Elemental/Enhancement build viable, when compared to the level 70 standard build, you would have less AP and spelldamage then other wise.

It seems like ignoring fist weapons and sticking with a dual axe/mace set up would be slightly better. A higher crit rating should keep Elemental Devastation up longer then is possible now and the melee haste or the increased critical damage/increased critical chance would increase your damage more. Since both effects can happen at any time in your dps cycle wile the instant LvB can at best happen once every eight seconds. Mace usage seems less viable since it will probably not stack with itself and simply refresh the buff if proc'ed again during the initial proc.

But it does seem that there will be at least a window where a LvB fist spec will be better then the other available options.

 

Atren

T7 will probably have equal, or quite close, crit rate of T4. Remember that attack power is not based on ratings, but rest are.

 

Urgok

So values like crit rating and hit will stay the same when comparing t4 and t7 but values like AP and weapon damage will go up?

 

Pitbuller

Point was that 8s rotation is nearly imposible to achieve before the very end game of expansion. 16s rotation is much more reasonable. Rotation will be complex. Priory list is only what could work.

So you lose white dps and its scale with ap like LvB scale. But how well those scale.
Worst case is you lose two full swing and best case is you dont lose any time from swing timer.
So avarage you lose ½mh + ½ oh attack this is (2.6 + 1.3) / 2 ---> so loss is 1.95s worth of swing.
This give (1.95*1.1 / 14) * 1.1 * (1-armor reduction) = something... Yo's sim give 0.138985 dps coef for ap with only non crit white dps.

LvB get dps from ap: 0.3 * (2 / 3.5) 1.1 * 1.15 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.06 = 0.2534 dps per ap from non crit LvB and LvB is allways crit.
So LvB scale allways twice better than white dps from lost auto attack. But we can still hope that LvB don't reset swing timer.

Axe/fist look so amazing right now. Both scale well with crit and fist spec make more feeling of hybrid class.
Maybe best starter build will be double fist. But when you cap hit and get more crit you can swap axe on mh.

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

• Smithist

They won't necessarily be the same, but there won't be huge jumps between tiers either. This is the reason the rating system is in place. At level 80, any rating based effects from your old gear will be devalued, so you can 'upgrade' your gear without reaching ridiculous levels of crit and hit.

my paladin

 

Malan

Cat's outta the bag at the WWI, totems will now be raid-wide and GoA and SoE are being combined into a single totem. I hope that this will include some visual indicators of totem ranges.

Windfury will no longer be a weapon buff, its just a "buff", and feral druids can now use it, and it will be usable alongside poisons and sharpening stones.

Interesting solution to the Twisting issue by just giving up on it and giving the buffs to everyone. I didn't think they'd go that direction.

 

gunsmithx

Part of the reason probably is that it just seems like the easiest way to 'fix' it and make everyone happy. I wonder what other totems they are going to mix together.

 

Atren

Twisting solution is the magic buff vs weapon buff changed into magic buff for all air totems involved (WF, Agi and Tranquility) so it is overwritten. I am assuming WF totem will be like for example agility totem now. The raid wide part is to make shaman stacking less efficient. I hope they dont lessen gains from str/agi totems now that they unify them. What totem will it be? What about tranquility totem altough now? Is its placement going to be art of its own to let melee get it and tanks not?

Hmm, thinking some more i fear how do they fix our weapon enchant and totem effects mixing? I am praying at the moment that they dont add some shared cooldown for them. This all assuming we keep WF weapon enchant.

 

Pitbuller

Lets hope that str/agi totem is earth school.
Stoneskin + windwall is good candinate for mergin also disease/poison cleansing totem would me most likely.
I hope tranquil + wrath totem but then tranquil have to be reworked or protadins would be angry. With these changes 25man raid need only two shaman not 3-4(5 now)

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

Malan

I'm sure it will be earth, these changes are doing 2 things I think. 1 - Fixing totem twisting and 2 - making it so that its easier for a shaman to figure out what totems a group needs. Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Feral, Shaman? Drop WF & GoA/SoE, same as you always do. If they changed Str/Agi to an air totem it would render Windfury useless.

Windwall and Stoneskin need to be completely reworked or removed, combining them into one totem isn't suddenly going to make them useful.

 

Ralgarog

So does this mean a shaman with Windfury weapon (the personal buff) can also be affected by windfury totem now?

 

Mygore

I would assume that a shaman with Windfury on his weapon/s would mean that the buff wouldn't get applied and would carry on being normal for us.

I doubt Blizzard would want us to be DW Windfury and also get the benefits from the totem as well.