Some thoughts: With +10% spell coefficient going onto our lava burst and a flame shock that will safely continue ticking through two lava burst casts, how much of our total (%) damage is going to be fire-based? Although those lava burst crits are going to be frighteningly huge, I don't see how fire is going to be more than 35% of our damage, due to cooldown times. Is our fire damage going to be significant enough that it will close the distance with other casters *and* keep us in sight of them as gear starts to accumulate?
Fire damage is more than 20%, and less than 30%, of total damage done in a FlS > LB^x > LvB rotation, according to every beta combat log I've seen. With the boost to Lava burst I'd expect something in the higher end of that range.
Is any kind of scaling or non-scaling buff to less than 30% of our total damage going to be enough to compensate for the near total lack of scaling that we have in the other 70%? Doubtful.
Hot damn, those are some encouraging posts. What they have in mind for "better AoE" has me very curious. It could either be something great, but the cynic in me is whispering something about a lower Fire Nova cooldown . We'll see soon I hope.
There's so much ground to cover to put shamans on par with other classes at AoE...we don't have a real ranged AoE spell, our only AoE spell without a cooldown is weak, and switching to nova/magma for AoE means no ToW for the raid which is a big raid dps loss if you don't have any alternatives. Judging by the last SE&F change it looks like Blizzard is trying to fill these gaps through CL buffs, but who knows.
Personally I'd like to be able to use thunderstorm like flamestrike and maybe keep nova/magma as they are for enhancement.
question about Fire Nova Totem: 10/20% damage increase + 50/100% chance to stun... does this mean it should stand there for damn 4 seconds before explode !?!?
If so, I dont like damage incresing part at all, pretty useless in pvp with macroing totems
With regular stats put into the spreadsheet, previous best rotation (FS-CL-3LB-LvB) produced 3236 dps. With LvB changes (higher base average damage + glyph), this lifts the rotation's dps to 3396.I've been trying to produce a more effective rotation, but there's a small issue with these: if I use CL as a filler, I come too short to fill up LvB's cooldown. If however, I use a more creative rotation (basically, FS-CL-2LvB-6LB, with LBs used as fillers when LvB is on rotation and CL + FS swapping places in rotation to fill the tiny gap), the Flame Shock's dot makes up for LB's lack of damage, producing 3506 dps, which is 8.3% better than our best rotation before, 15% better than CL-2LB (best no fire spells rotation) and whooping 21.57% better than LB spam. Seems promissing, tbh. A bit short still, but promissing nontheless.
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
With regular stats put into the spreadsheet, previous best rotation (FS-CL-3LB-LvB) produced 3236 dps. With LvB changes (higher base average damage + glyph), this lifts the rotation's dps to 3396.I've been trying to produce a more effective rotation, but there's a small issue with these: if I use CL as a filler, I come too short to fill up LvB's cooldown. If however, I use a more creative rotation (basically, FS-CL-2LvB-6LB, with LBs used as fillers when LvB is on rotation and CL + FS swapping places in rotation to fill the tiny gap), the Flame Shock's dot makes up for LB's lack of damage, producing 3506 dps, which is 8.3% better than our best rotation before, 15% better than CL-2LB (best no fire spells rotation) and whooping 21.57% better than LB spam. Seems promissing, tbh. A bit short still, but promissing nontheless.
If I understand right, your rotation is FS-LvB-3LB-CL-LvB-3LB which certainly seems a lot neater than trying to squeeze a CL in on evey CD. My only concern is how haste effects it.
Unhasted it appears to give 9.5 secs between the start of each LvB. With the LvB CD of 8 secs that appears fine and ties up nicely with the 16 sec DoT duration of the FS. It looks to me like we need 18.75% haste to throw the rotation out. With 5% from ToW this leaves 13.75% from stats.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a nice buff and a good rotation - all I'm asking is if your calcs show that we will be effectively haste capped at 13.75%?
MMO Champion has this as an "undocumented change" to the latest build:
"Lava Burst base damage has been increased. (1082-1378 to 1192-1518 for Rank 2, 920-1172 to 1012-1290 for Rank 1)"
Is this in addition to "*Added* Glyph of Lava - Your Lava Burst spell gains an additional 10% of your spellpower"?
Also, I'm a little concerned that we now have 4 Major glyphs which we'd want to choose for only 3 slots. -10% Mana on LB (the one I'd probably drop), 2% crit on Flaetongue, 10% spell power on LvB and 6 secs on FlS. I'm guessing because we're pretty mana efficient already, it would be the LB glyph that we drop, but what's everyone elses thinking on that?
MMO Champion has this as an "undocumented change" to the latest build:
"Lava Burst base damage has been increased. (1082-1378 to 1192-1518 for Rank 2, 920-1172 to 1012-1290 for Rank 1)"
Is this in addition to "*Added* Glyph of Lava - Your Lava Burst spell gains an additional 10% of your spellpower"?
Also, I'm a little concerned that we now have 4 Major glyphs which we'd want to choose for only 3 slots. -10% Mana on LB (the one I'd probably drop), 2% crit on Flaetongue, 10% spell power on LvB and 6 secs on FlS. I'm guessing because we're pretty mana efficient already, it would be the LB glyph that we drop, but what's everyone elses thinking on that?
I believe that, as things stand, we should be getting both buffs to Lava Burst -I haven't seen any notification of the original buff being recinded. However, it might be that Blizz identified that the original boost to it also boosted Enhancement too much and are looking to replace the original with the Glyph, effectively forcing enhancement to drop another glyph to get the LvB one.
Regarding which Glyphs, I agree that LB is the one to go - mana really doesn't appear to be an issue.
Glyph of Flame Shock - Increases the duration of your Flame Shock ability by 6 sec and it is not consumed by casting Lava Burst. (Old - 3 seconds, didn't prevent Lava Burst from consuming it)
Any math/thoughts on how this will affect our rotations? Getting 2 100% crits instead of 1 on each flame shock and all ticks seems pritty good to me.
Glyph of Flame Shock - Increases the duration of your Flame Shock ability by 6 sec and it is not consumed by casting Lava Burst. (Old - 3 seconds, didn't prevent Lava Burst from consuming it)
Any math/thoughts on how this will affect our rotations? Getting 2 100% crits instead of 1 on each flame shock and all ticks seems pritty good to me.
I agree completely. This new glyph is definitely a step in the right direction. I still think we need a scaling talent for LB though, even though we're probably never going to see it because Blizz is hell bent on making LvB our go to spell for WoTLK. I have a quick question on glyphs - how many major glyphs can we have? edit: NM just realized we unlock a 3rd major glyph slot at 80
Also, I'm a little concerned that we now have 4 Major glyphs which we'd want to choose for only 3 slots. -
I never considered ever getting the 10% reduction to LB cost, mana is definitely not an issue whatsoever.
Glyph of Flame Shock - Increases the duration of your Flame Shock ability by 6 sec and it is not consumed by casting Lava Burst. (Old - 3 seconds, didn't prevent Lava Burst from consuming it)
Any math/thoughts on how this will affect our rotations? Getting 2 100% crits instead of 1 on each flame shock and all ticks seems pritty good to me.
4 posts above yours, Tufy has made a post on this.
If I understand right, your rotation is FS-LvB-3LB-CL-LvB-3LB which certainly seems a lot neater than trying to squeeze a CL in on evey CD. My only concern is how haste effects it.
Unhasted it appears to give 9.5 secs between the start of each LvB. With the LvB CD of 8 secs that appears fine and ties up nicely with the 16 sec DoT duration of the FS. It looks to me like we need 18.75% haste to throw the rotation out. With 5% from ToW this leaves 13.75% from stats.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a nice buff and a good rotation - all I'm asking is if your calcs show that we will be effectively haste capped at 13.75%?
Actually, no. What I did was use the following: I start with enough haste to put LB to 1.73s cast and everything else to 1.3s cast. Each FS tick is 3 seconds, so we get 2 extra ticks at the total time of 18 seconds. Now, I try to fit this into a rotation. Start with FS, that's 1.3 seconds after cast for next spell. This is 1.3 seconds for flame shock ticks. Now we cast LvB as highest dps spell, 1.3 seconds. Right after this cast is done, LvB cooldown initiates, so we're 2.6 seconds into rotation starting our LvB countdown of 8 seconds. Now we cast CL and 4 LBs, bringing us into 8.22 seconds after start of countdown, a total of 10.82 seconds into rotation. We can cast another LvB now, for 1.3 seconds, that's 12.12 seconds into rotation when second countdown starts. We have 5.88 seconds before FS runs out and we can use it again and 8 seconds before we can use LvB again. Thus, we have to use CL, 2LBs and a CL again for a total of 6.06 seconds. We just crossed the FS last tick countdown, meaning we can put up new FS. However, we are still short one spell before next LvB is used - CL is stuck here, basically starting the whole rotation again, but with FS, CL and LvB slightly rotated around.
The thing here is, if you stack on haste, you can replace CLs with LBs to cover the lost cast time. The trick, though, is that LB does relatively low damage, so we'll need to be very careful, what increases dps and what doesn't.
As stated above, I'm just running numbers, trying to figure a perfect rotation. It seems reasonable to cast LvB as soon as possible, followed by CL as soon as possible, while keeping FS dot up. LB is a mere filler.
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
I think your rotation must be pretty close to optimal to be honest. I ran a hypothetical calc, maximising the number of LvB and CL casts over 10 FS durations without trying to fit them into a usable rotation. This came up with ratios of 10FS:18.48LvB:37.5CL:49.48LB. If you were able to somehow squeeze these exact numbers into a rotation, my figures showed only a 2.7% increase in DPS over your rotation.
As mine in clearly not achievable and is only meant as a guide to determine the absolute top limit assuming that you can keep 100% FS up time and use LvB and CL immediately they are off CD (which is almost certainly not possible as some CDs will clash) I think you've squeezed out pretty much everything you can.
Just noticed a problem:
Thus, we have to use CL, 2LBs and a CL again for a total of 6.06 seconds. We just crossed the FS last tick countdown, meaning we can put up new FS. However, we are still short one spell before next LvB is used - CL is stuck here
If I read you right, you have just put a CL-FS-CL in that section of the rotation? The CL CD prohibits this so i think that you need a LB after the FS.
Tzarr,
Is it possible to make a table, where one can see which rotation is the best for the given haste value?
To me it's not looking like a 'rotation' as such is really possible - as the LvB CD and the FS tick do not coincide, it looks like (unless we let the FS tick drop off for a few secs) It's going to end up more as a series of guides as to which spells to use when they are off CD and which out of CL and LB you use as your fillers dependent upon haste. The more I look into it the messier it is getting!
One significant problem is that it appears that our 3 highest DPS spells (LvB, FS & CL) don't scale well with Haste due to the CDs on 2 of them and the DoT aspect of the other. This is going to end up making haste a very poor stat for shammys as those spells represent about 60% of our DPS.
Hm I'll double check on the FS coef I was thinking it was .210 untalented but I could be off by .005 or some such so if the coef is .215 untalented it would be closer to your result.
I had mis-remembered. According to my data I have FS at .214 coef untalented
In other news on the beta realms it seems that LvB is not critting for what it should.
After doing some testing I had a few examples of where the crit multiplier was 2.14 or 2.15 even with 3 points in lava flows.
concussion, call of flame and lava flows.
Concussion and call of flame stack additively according to the tooltip
To verify the multipler for how they stack I took
1192 without talents and
1323 with concussion and call of flame.
1192*1.05*1.06 = 1326.7 ( does not match tooltip with talents)
1192*(1.05+.06) = 1323.12 (ding ding we have a winner)
Ok so I had heard reports of people getting 2.18 as the multiplier with lava flows and I had just assumed it was correct since it made since if there was 6% a point. I decided to verify this value in game and something is def wrong. Either I made a major math error or lava flows isn't even close to what it should be.
stats: 1710
talents: concussion, call of flame, lava flows, ele fury and a standard ele build at lvl 80
data gathered. Crits only
5164
5185
5207
5225
5242
5263
5423
5472
5477
5500
5519
5580
5609
5649
5653
5740
5747
5834
5837
5851
5868
So lets take 5164. Now even assuming we did the bare min lava burst dmg it would be
(1192+(2/3.5)*1710)*(1+.06+.05) = 2407.75
2407.75*2.18 = 5248.89
notice this is MORE than several of my low end crits meaning that a 2.18 crit mul is impossible.
so what was teh crit mul for my tests then?
5164/2407.75 = 2.14
If other people could gather some data (either on live or on beta) to verify my results I'd greatly appreciate it. If you don't know how to do the math thats fine just send me the combat log and I can use the additional data to try to verify its lava flows thats the culprit.
Note: In my testing I also gathered alot of non crit data and it seems to fall into the range of expected values so I don't think its a concussion or call of flame issue.
Oki, I'm on Beta, taking LvB shots on a level 70 dummy. I'm doing base LvB, Concussion only, Concussion + Call of Flame and finally full Elemental. Comparison should tell us where the glitch is.
First things first, I can confirm Daidalos' comment on Concussion and Call of Flame, they are indeed additive.
Now, as you can see above, the lowest figure I got here is 2916. Now, let's calculate the expected lowest figure:
(1192+(1287*(2/3.5)))*1.5=2891
Seems to fit. Let's try again with highest figure:
(1518+(1287*(2/3.5)))*1.5=3380
Highest number I received was 3358. Seems to fit. So far, so good.
Let's go on, Concussion:
3323
3166
3054
3072
3229
3446
3247
3529
3440
3317
This would be acceptable if I can't get any lower crit. Let's try...
4534 first crit.
I have a theory - we take 1.5 multiplier crit, take the crit part only (0.5) and multiply it by 1.24 (for 24% increase), then add Elemental Fury on top of this additively (+0.5). This way our crit multiplier will be (1 + (0.5*1.24) + 0.5) = 2.12. Funny enough, the lowest figure I could get trying to spam Lava Burst for like 15 mins with this gear was 4535, which is just above the minimum possible crit. The upper figure would be 5302 - again, I couldn't get any higher figure in the testing time.
Note that if I use this multiplier for Daidalos above, all his test figures likewise fit the window.
Last edited by tufy : 10/18/08 at 2:47 PM.
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
I have a theory - we take 1.5 multiplier crit, take the crit part only (0.5) and multiply it by 1.24 (for 24% increase), then add Elemental Fury on top of this additively (+0.5). This way our crit multiplier will be (1 + (0.5*1.24) + 0.5) = 2.12. Funny enough, the lowest figure I could get trying to spam Lava Burst for like 15 mins with this gear was 4535, which is just above the minimum possible crit. The upper figure would be 5302 - again, I couldn't get any higher figure in the testing time.
Good to see independent confirmation. 2.12 sure seem a little under any of the values I got but again I can't confirm I ever did the min LvB dmg so this could be possible. To me this still sounds like a bug even if your theory is correct.
I'm not so sure. Lava Flows "increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Lava Burst by additional 24%". It may well be that what Blizzard does is base damage+standard crit*(100%+Elemental Fury+Lava Flows), which would result in 100%+50%*(100%+100%+24%), or mathematically 1+0.5*(1+1+0.24)=2.12. This is also how all crit modifiers except Ignite and crit meta gem work, so it may well be that it's intended. If so, of course, Lava Burst is weaker than we thought and we need to go back to the drawing board with calculations.
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
I'm not so sure. Lava Flows "increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Lava Burst by additional 24%". It may well be that what Blizzard does is base damage+standard crit*(100%+Elemental Fury+Lava Flows), which would result in 100%+50%*(100%+100%+24%), or mathematically 1+0.5*(1+1+0.24)=2.12. This is also how all crit modifiers except Ignite and crit meta gem work, so it may well be that it's intended. If so, of course, Lava Burst is weaker than we thought and we need to go back to the drawing board with calculations.
Right well the issue is our flame dmg was already weak and it turns out it was even weaken than initially calculated. Yes I realize bliz is a little inconsistent on this but they at least should try to buff this to help with our flame dmg and we shouldn't have to rely on Glyphs to scale like other classes.
I'm not so sure. Lava Flows "increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Lava Burst by additional 24%". It may well be that what Blizzard does is base damage+standard crit*(100%+Elemental Fury+Lava Flows), which would result in 100%+50%*(100%+100%+24%), or mathematically 1+0.5*(1+1+0.24)=2.12. This is also how all crit modifiers except Ignite and crit meta gem work, so it may well be that it's intended. If so, of course, Lava Burst is weaker than we thought and we need to go back to the drawing board with calculations.
It would be logical for crit calculations to be that way.
For practical purposes (i.e. sheets), you should check whether it works correctly with a meta gem.
It should be (1 + 0.545*(1+1+0.24)) = 222.08% crit damage then. (Fixed! Math with actual numbers is hard.)
LB/CL rotation is still our best dps even with any glyphs?
If you have 5 points in S,E&F and you have the Flame Shock Glyph then FS is better DPS than LB but not by a huge amount. So if you really want to push your DPS to the limit you should use a CL/LB rotation but keep FS up all the time in the background so something like: FS-(CL-2LB)x3-2LB. The exact rotation depends on haste of course but is heavy on mana.
If you have 5 points in S,E&F and you have the Flame Shock Glyph then FS is better DPS than LB but not by a huge amount. So if you really want to push your DPS to the limit you should use a CL/LB rotation but keep FS up all the time in the background so something like: FS-(CL-2LB)x3-2LB. The exact rotation depends on haste of course but is heavy on mana.
While the math I did for a 51/10 build agrees, I'm seeing WWS logs showing 45/16 doing the classic LB/CL rotation puts out basically the exact same DPS for Sunwell-geared Shaman. Maybe there is a theoretical difference, but in reality the DPS logs between the two builds are giving basically the same results from what Ive seen.
Originally Posted by Agash
Is that with the current 5 tick FS glyph on Live or the soon to be implemented 6 tick glyph? I appreciate that at the moment the difference on Live is very small but the 6th tick should push it that little bit further ahead and maybe make it noticable in practice aswell as theory.
Talking about Live. I wasn't aware that the patch FlS Glyph was adding a 6th tick, I thought it was making Lava Burst not consume FlS. If it adds a tick, it's worthless with LvB. If it makes it not consume FlS, it's very beneficial (though if that happens, there'll need to be a mod to keep track of FlS because the rotation will become very non-linear due to several spells in the rotation with different CDs).
While the math I did for a 51/10 build agrees, I'm seeing WWS logs showing 45/16 doing the classic LB/CL rotation puts out basically the exact same DPS for Sunwell-geared Shaman. Maybe there is a theoretical difference, but in reality the DPS logs between the two builds are giving basically the same results from what Ive seen.
Is that with the current 5 tick FS glyph on Live or the soon to be implemented 6 tick glyph? I appreciate that at the moment the difference on Live is very small but the 6th tick should push it that little bit further ahead and maybe make it noticable in practice aswell as theory.
Just a reminder that Surefooted is now a viable boot enchant for caster DPS now. It grants 10 crit strike rating and 10 hit rating, which should help with reaching the hitcap after patch 3.0.
10/17/08, 9:42 PM
