Daidolos: Ah, my apologies. I must remember to read more closely. IME (this includes a Holy Paladin, an Arcane Mage, and a Moonkin Druid), such talents are a quick but fairly static boost. Once I get home, I'll try to add talent points to Mind Mastery one at a time to see what kind of influence there is on damage. Luckily, since there's only one spec that will take it (deep Arcane), so the cross-contamination is minimized.

Hey guys I was wondering what the needed hit is going to be needed after this patch(Patch 3.0.2)

Is this correct? 3% from the elemental tree, 3% from spriest, 1% from dran aura?

83%+3%+3%+1%= 90% so need 9% hit total for pve?

The reason I ask is because I thought I remember hearing you can cap at 100% hit in LK but I cant find it listed anywhere to confirm its true. Was this just a rumor I heard or should I be going for an extra 1% hit after Patch 3.0.2?

Thanks for your time.

17% - 3 - 3 - 1 = 10% for PvE

I fixed my above post, was using the wrong base +hit%. Now I'm getting a total of 9% needed unless we can cap at 100% rather than the past 99% cap, is this true? Sorry to be a pain but I just want to be clear whats needed and why.

Spells have a 17% miss rate. Add up talents, buffs, and +hit until it reaches 17%, and then you won't miss.

I'd thought they'd retained the minimum 1% miss. Did this change?

What about thundering strikes? I thought I heard about that being taken back away from elemental with the last build (9061 or 9038) is that true? What I mean is, that it will no longer effect the spell crit - only melee crit.

Current build on the Beta still gives the 5% to spell crit.

So how many spell hit point do you need on 3.0 ? 12.6x10 = 126 spell hit point for draenei ? 139 for horde ?

Frankly, I'm smarting over the changes to the avilability of hit talents. I don't have access to high end raids in my casual guild, so I attempted to supplement that by spending hundreds of heroic badges to get as much elemental gear as I could. I took cloth and whatever else I could lay my greedy little fingers on, and I consider my dps to be reasonably respectable. Now, however I find myself with a total hit of 7%. I'm at a loss as to whether its worth my while going back to re-gem and regear the whole lot, or whether to just shift my focus to my Paladin in 3.0.2.
Taking into consideration that almost all reviews Ive read have said that Elemental is struggling to match tanks for dps in raids, have their been any notable changes? I mean in all honesty, are we essentially going to have to go back to Enhance to stay competative until we get Lava and can start improving our dps again?

Apologies for the more emotive than factual post, but Elemental has served me well to date and I'm loathe to see myself going back to raiding as Enhance.

Baeleth, Scarshield Legion (EU).

This is my first post, and after about a month and a half of reading this thread, i feel somewhat ready to share my ideas.

Seeing as we have excellent mana efficiency right now, but we are lacking in dps; I have thought of a solution in the form of a glyph, however this effect could be folded into a talent of some sort as well.

The current Glyph of Lightning Bolt decreases the cost of Lightning Bolt by 10%.

My suggestion is that we change the effect of the glyph that the Lightning Overload procs for Lightning Bolt applies a self buff that adds a 15% (tweakable) of our intellect as spell damage for 20 seconds.

This would help elemental scaling by trading DPM for DPS and allow all spells to benefit from Lightning Overload by allowing it to scale other spells. It would also allow us to take a better advantage of the shorter cooldown for CL by making it hit harder. Since this also makes use of a talent that is deep within the elemental tree, it is out of reach from Enhancement Shamans.

Even if Blizzard acknowledged that Elemental has a DPS issue (which they don't), a glyph is the last way to fix it. Any change needs to come in the form of baseline changes, and if that severely impacts the other builds of the shaman, they need to be in correctly placed locations in the Elemental Tree.

Blizzard has acknowledged that Shadow Priest DPS is not where it's supposed to be, so they're obviously still keeping a watch on DPS performance. And with the many patches already partly in the pipeline, hopefully they'll come around at some point soon.

I agree with Teenee, Blizzard doesn't acknowledge the problem, they're completely blind to it. We're in the exact same boat as fire mages were in during TBC Beta. Blizzard back then destroyed Ignite rolls and completely changed fire dynamics. What happened was, mages in Beta reported massive damage loss and warned of too low the dps. In response, Kalgan stated that their internal tests have shown mage damage to still be too high, which, against all odds, led to yet another mage nerf (the infamous Improved Fireball/Frostbolt penalty). It took almost half a year of live proofs before Blizzard even acknowledged the problem - and we all know mages weren't fixed all the way until now. You don't believe me? Check for yourself the number of mages in endgame raids.

As it stands, elemental shamans are in the same boat. Luckily, I was actively encouraged by our raid leader to remain elemental as main spec, so I'll survive. But many others won't.

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Upcoming Shadow changes

Blizzard realized shadow priests have a damage problem, 'especially on epic level'. Shadow priests, who are above us on Junox's meters, and they tend to fix it before Nov 13th. Let's hope for the shadow priest/moonkin way instead of TBC firemage way.

I wonder what is the best spec for level 70 raiding, patch 3.0.2 before Wotlk release.
Something like this 51\10\0
Or better get 38 spelldamage from Elemental weapons ?
Or take Lava Flows and use Flame shock in rotation 51\10\0
and want to ask if Thunderstorm is necessery for PvE atm.
I know it is just about last month time only, but still makes sence for me

When I read about the incoming changes awhile back I started gathering bits and pieces to help. There are a few things you can get without going to end game raids such as the Caster Dagger or Mace from ZA and the Cloth Caster Helm from ZA also. I have chose to drop some of my newer gear in favour of using the Mace from Mount Hyjal trash, the ZA Caster Cloth Helm, Belt of Blasting and Chronicle of Dark Secrets. If I team those up with the Leather badge reward boots and the Hit Ring I am Hit capped. I'm the GM of my guild we only do BT and MH as we formed so late but this way I don't at least have to worry about respeccing as my Guild would never see me or want me as anything but Elemental. They all know I would refuse to change. I can't see Blizzard leaving us this way and I am in it for the long haul. Anyway this quick post I decided to make has become longer and far worse then I had hoped for. All I guess I was really trying to say was I wouldn't change yet as we will get fixed eventually and that there are a few things you can get hit wise from ZA to help. As the Mage's in my guild like to point out to me, they have have had to get hit like this for a long time, sure they have access to more hit gear but it isn't that hard to get it for ourselves if your willing to try.

@Rotha: All I'm doing as soon as I'm home is basically just swapping haste gems with hit ones. In essence, I'll be losing 85 haste rating and 36 spellpower for 115 hit rating. This plus existing 50 hit rating will give me 165 hit rating, which results in 13.07% hit. Since I'm a draenei, this gives me another 1% + 3% from talents = 17.07%, hit covered. Meanwhile, I'm also getting 5% haste from Wrath of Air Totem, which almost covers lost haste from gems (the loss is 0.39% haste with new gear), as well as 140 spellpower from ToW (replacing old WoAT's 101 spellpower and spellpower lost through regemming) + 96 spellpower from Flametongue, a net gain of 99 spellpower. This of course still doesn't offset LB coefficient nerf, but at least it's a decent start.

@Agash: I personally view Thunderstorm as more of a solo/pvp (and fun) tool. However, it's a tool that also doubles as some sort of Evocation (one that can be used while moving and potentially does damage too). But as you said and as we've discussed with Daidalos above, with lower mana cost on Lava Burst now (compared to before and an additional Shamanistic Focus talent covering the shocks, mana isn't really an issue (or might it just be me, used to doing fights like Brutty without a shadow priest?), the only remaining drain being Chain Lightning. But whatever the case, Thunderstorm is fun as hell, so I can't imagine a build without it now. Besides, most raid mobs are immune to knockback anyway, so storm away

i meant having thunderstorm for mana regen just. What for call of flame( lava burst is 75 level spell) and reverberation? I thought about using Flame Shock not ES ( it is useless) and with S,E,F it makes some good additional damage and u can use CLs more often?
I got ur point about shamanistic focus. So take Shamanistic focus instead of Thunderstorm may be a good idea.
Something like this can be a good build

So about the last few weeks of raiding before WOTLK actually hits

Is it better to get the ES glyph ans use that in a ES, CL LBx2 Rotation
Or then not get that but use FS in our rotation

And is the spec with elemental weapons better compared to one with Thunderstorm

Just your basic Elemental Shammy asking for some tips from the great gods of elemental shammys ;<

@ Rotha
Aye, I'd forgotten the ZA helm, thanks, the only problem I see there is the pain-in-my-rear loss of my Meta, 3% more crit damage is hard to dismiss. I had the belt of blasting and Wub's anyway, think I can regem the crit and spelldamage gems on the Tormented Demonsoul set till I get capped, since as pointed out I can supplement it to a degree with the changed totems and the glyph of flametongue weapon to make up for the loss in crit.

I've done some quite extensive calcs on our spell rotations and IF the Earth Shock Glyph reduces GCD to 0.5 secs (there is some doubt - see bottom of previous page in this thread) it is far from useless - it is in fact our highest DPS spell until we get LvB at 75. The call of flame is just something I like in there because we are still farming MH at the moment and my magma totem has been known to do 1.5M damage on a night in there if I buff it with CoF. Reverberation is required for what I have calculated as my highest DPS rotations - here's a few numbers comparing various rotations with a straight LB spam at 70:

100.0% LB
100.8% CL, LBx3
103.3% FS(4), LBx6 (with S,E&F)
109.5% FS(4), LBx3 ES, LBx3 (with S,E&F and Glyphed ES - reverb needed if haste>8.3%)
112.6% ES, LBx3 (Glyphed ES, reverb needed if haste>8.3%)
114.7% ES, CL, LBx2 (Glyphed ES, reverb needed, S,E&F needed for CL CD reduction)

*FS(4) = 4 ticks from Flame Shock DoT

This is of course based upon my current gear and will vary depending on what you might be wearing but it is clear that rotations using ES provide the best DPS at 70 IF the glyph is working correctly.

Regarding mana regen, remember we will now get +10% crit from having frost or fire mages in the group - I don't see it as being a problem removing what would have been the biggest plus to having Thunderstorm in your spec. This is of course speculation and I could be wrong.

Are we talking >8.3% haste without totem or on the haste on your character sheet?