Last sunwell i did about 200 dps more whereas our enh shaman did like 900 dps more The moonkin did considerable dps also and easily outdamaged me.

I used to beat them easy.

To add further weight to the above, I experienced the same. A very undergeared balance Druid beat me with ease and it was no contest compared to the enhance Shaman.

Just to add, I also re-wrote my personal DPS spreadsheets last night to look at Flame Shock. Assuming maxed SE&F, I found a theoretical DPS increase of - 17 DPS for 4 ticks, 39 DPS for 5 ticks, 55 DPS for 6 ticks. This is modelled on my own gear (everything bar the skull from BT + SWP goggles).

I am now trying a FlS rotation. As much as anything its practice for L80. With the possibility of additional lag when deviating from pure LB spam (as highlighted in the "One-Stop" thread), I am not convinced my DPS will be higher in practice, but I figure it can't hurt to try it out, as LB spam clearly won't be a solution to anything at 80.

Can anyone say how ele shaman are actually fairing in Naxx 25 with the new WOTLK talents?

After the weekends raids I can verify a comment made earlier (sorry I missed who posted it), my personal dps is up slightly (a gearing change, flametongue instead of wizard oil, and increased crit from talents accounts for all of it), but the raid dps roughly doubled. There were a large number of AoE pulls (we were goofing off and ran SSC + TKE to grab the Hand of Adal title for a few folks on Sat, Friday was a Hyjal clear).

So we are not nerfed, but everyone else was very buffed ... mostly on the AoE stuff. I managed to keep my spot in the top 5 dps'ers on bosses, but dropped waayyyy down the list on trash. I can't say I feel zapped, but we didn't get anything sexy or fun from the changes, and it is very dissapointing that our T10 and T11 talents are basically useless from a raiding persepective. The cool down on CL is a 'nice to have' but in no way is a much fun as one would expect from a T10 talent (at 75 this will prolly change as fire hits the rotation) ... and thunderstorm is useless in raiding (as has been mentioned many times before).

I know it is pointless to make suggestions, but it seems silly to me to keep the LB coef up, that makes it powerful for all shammies, why not put LB coef where it belongs and give Ele shammies a buff in SE&F? I believe that was the build at one point and actually made sense to me. Not sure why bliz backed off of it - but it would give a pre 75 shammie a reason to take SE&F.

Ah well. I love playing my shammie, and as she's not been nerfed into the ground, I will continue to enjoy playing her, and can't wait to get raiding at 80.

I may be missing something here but everybody is upset about their DPS dropping because of the talent changes and that to me is a bit silly.

Many of the changes revolve around Flame Shock and Lava Burst. The former only worthwhile once you have the latter, which nobody does. Why are people surprised that the changes designed around a level 80 character aren't working out fantastically on a level 70 character?

I'm not trying to say 'AMG WAIT TILL 80 NUB LOL L2PLAY' but people don't seem to be talking about theory 80 numbers, which would be way more valid than actual data at 70 right now. As it stands level 70 play is out of date despite there being a few weeks of it left. It's time to crunch numbers with level 80 info and spells and stop worrying about your current dps issues.

Edit: Reading back a few pages I see people are doing the level 80 work, so good on you.

-----------------------------

Edit 2:
With the addition of FS and LvB to rotations as well as the hefty change to CL's cooldown I don't think there will be a set rotation from 80 to 80+3 tiers. What works at 0 haste will probably be way off at max haste. Also, if there exists a 'rotation' where you can CL on every cooldown and not screw up other stuff it probably only exists in a small haste range.

It may come down to a flow chart system you have to run in your head if you really want to be eaking the the very best.

Is FS up? Yes. Can you cast LvB? No. Can you cast CL? No. Cast LB.

Then of course every so often: Are your totems up? Have you been forced to move and re-drop them?

I'm sure, eventually we'll agree on 'get this amount of haste, cast this rotation, win the game' but that is only going to work at that amount of haste. Anybody unable to match that will just end up back at the flow chart.

The Glyph of Elemental Mastery seems a bit poor to me too. It basically means you will maybe get in 1 extra EM in a boss fight. Assuming (using round numbers) you are hitting for 2k on a normal hit and 4k on a crit and that the EM'd spell would have crit 50% of the time even without it, it will basically add 1000 damage to a 10 minute boss fight. That's less than 2 DPS

Maybe we can use it as a way to get EO back up if that drops off but I assume it is more of a PvP orientated glyph so the big burst EM-LB-LVB can be used more regularly.

For raiding I'd would think that the following glyphs are mandatory:

Flametongue (+2% spell critical)
Lava (+10% spell power for Lava Burst)
Flame Shock (+6 second duration, no longer consumed by Lava Burst)
? Earth Shock (removes ES from the GCD)

So ... 3 slots available for 4 Glyphs. For those Shaman players that aren't going to go Inscription profession, what are the 3 most powerful?

I'd guess that Flametongue and Flame Shock Glyphs make the list pretty easily. Lava Burst vs Earth Shock glyph though?

So are we confirming that the GCD for shocks is 1 second instead of 1.5? If not, the earth shock glyph still initiates a GCD. The earth shock glyph removes 1 second from the GCD, not the GCD itself. Even assuming you have Wrath of Air up, it would take 1400 haste rating at level 80 to get the GCD from 1.5 seconds to 1 second.

1.5 = 1.05 * X
X = 1.428

42.8 * 32.7 = 1399.56

However, assuming no GCD on Earth Shock, you would take Lava, Flame Shock, Earth Shock as your three glyphs. 2% critical is not going to define the spec the way the other 3 will.

No, I'm not confirming anything, that's why I put a "?" next to it. As in ? I'm not sure if this is accurate or not. If it doesn't remove the shock from the GCD it's pretty much a waste of a glyph slot.

Agash: How exactly would EO drop off? It lasts 15 seconds and every 8-10 seconds, you'll have a forced crit with Lava Burst anyway.

jimmyolsen:The global cooldown for shocks is 1.5 seconds. This means the glyph reduces the GCD of earth shock to 0.5 seconds. Consider this tested and confirmed

Ocyr:
1. Inscription's extra glyph slot was removed for now, so even us scribes will have only 3 major glyphs.
2. Blizzard stated that they want people to make choices depending on their playstyle, so they'll make more glyphs than you could use. It's also been stated that more glyphs will be coming, probably as badge/raid rewards (kinda like gems)
3. On most tests I've done, Lava Burst contributed somewhere between 20 and 25% damage. A 10% increase to spellpower would equal roughly 1.4-1.7% increase in dps at 2000 spellpower. If Earth Shock used in rotation would increase dps by more than this, then it is better. If it would not, then it's worse.

Hello,

Sorry I am new and come out of the blue in this conversation.
I have tested 46/15 and 51/10 at lvl 70 too and have approximately same DPS, still very low compared to all the upped classes and enhanced.
I tend to last longer on mana pool with 51/10 tho
let s hope that at lvl 80 with LvB we get our raid credibility back (I remember being 1st DPS in our downs of Vashj and Illidan, now when I am in top 10 someone slacked)

Hello fellow ele shammies
On theese calculations over the last couple of pages, did you have any haste at all?
If so, how would that influence the overall dps compared to pure spellpower(both at 70 and 80, i guess there is a difference)?

Atm i got a 51/10 build with close too 15% haste with totems(+ a additonal 6.4% from the skycall totem)
My dps seems like it has stayed on about the same level as before but i guess i could squeese out a bit more on fights that allow me to cast FS

Tufy: Reconfirm please. While we agree what you describe above is the intended operation of the glyph and the Earth Shock global cooldown, it was revealed that there is a hard cap on GCDs at 1.0 seconds. Of course, some abilities are off the GCD all together, but for those that are impacted by the GCD at one time they could get no faster than 1.0. Blizzard stated this was a bug - did they correct it?


For those people above posting about raid dps at lvl 70 - our DPS in a raid environment at lvl 70 has gone up. If yours hasn't, then you're doing something wrong or you have a raid with really poor synergy. My brutalis dps went from 1800 to 2400* simply due to change in the way raid buffs stack. The issue, of course, is that everyone else's dps went up to a greater extend than our DPS.


(One might argue that some of this is a result of higher trinket + bloodlust up time due to the fight being shorter)

Juice is correct.

We finally revisted BT last night and here are my observations:

Prior to 3.0 I was always in the top 5 for total damage and never more that 1.5% behind the leader ... average dps for a raid was ~1225, on bosses ~1400 (huge variance here) and never more than 1% from lead.

Last night I was the only shammie and given the large amount of melee dps had to drop WF instead of WoA ... that would move the numbers slightly. My dps for the entire raid was up to 1325, on bosses my average dps went to just under 1800 (1798 to be exact). Interestingly, I finshed 8th in overall damage, and good 3% below lead and 7th on bosses but only 1.5% behind lead.

I found the trash annoying as things were being AoE'd to death before I could get off a second CL <grin>. This leads me to the conclusion that we *do* really need an effective AoE. On the trash mobs I finished a DISMAL 8th ... a full 3% behind the number 5 damage doer.

Juice and the others are 100% correct. We've not been nerfed, just not as buffed as the rest of the pack.

Bottom line:
Am I pissed off that I am no longer one of the top DPS doers? A tiny bit, but we shammies bring a lot to a raid ... at least at 70.
Do I still like playing my Shamman? Hell yeah!

Looking over my spreadheet and tryin to look busy at work one day I decided to model my dps as it currently theroy crafts at level 70 vs. if we had access to LvB and all the glyphs at 70.

My current elemental dps theorycrafts out to about 1940 dps (no bloodlust, drums, destro pots) when raid buffed.
With LvB (using the level 75 flavor) my dps went up to about 2250dps.

My older calculations have my raid dps at about 1780dps in 2.4 for comparison. Which was about where I landed on Brut between 1700-1850 dps.

My personal dps is higher on brut now then theorycrafting out and I was thinking that yes I must be modelling it wrong, but then what you just wrote makes all the sense in the world, higher BL/trinket uptime because the fights are so short.

But really even then letting the paladins and druids respec dps and my going resto optimizes the raid a lot more. I mean I don't touch boomkin or ret dps, and my healing is off the charts in my 2piece elmental and 4 piece resto set, so I'll be healing for a couple more weeks until LK comes out at least .

Ok.....I am not sure if I missed somethign in the subsequent posts after mine, but I don't think my question was really answered. Would Glyph of Flametongue Weapon indeed be a better choice over Glyph of elemental Mastery?
I'm still thinking Flametoungue is better in the long run, but would like someone to tell me if I am thinking correctly or if I need to see it from a different perspective.


And with all things considered (hasting, all cooldowns rocking, etc), would tufy's previous rotation of FS>LvB>CL>LBx4>LvB>CL>LBx2>FS still be as close to an optimal rotation as once could hope to achieve?

That is exactly what the person you quoted said. And yes, there will be an "uber" rotation where the best DPS can be min/maxed by theorycrafting for any particular set of gear. It may include glyphing for reduced ES GCD cooldown, for example (though unlikely). That's why smart people sit around and theorize such things - because it's not completely obvious how to get the most out of elementals' spells. It's hasn't been as complicated as Enhance was to gear for, but that may change in wotlk with the introduction of LvB.

It's not worth any of us getting into a dither over what's best at lvl 70. And lots can still change on our way to 80. As a result, everything right now should be considered 'draft' and should be expected to change as wotlk develops.

Given 8% haste, which you can get with 0 haste rating I believe (Moonkin, WoA), that works. Once you pass that you need to insert a 3rd LB at the end or you're clipping the last tick of FS.

According to my spreadsheet that I endorse only a little :p

Edit: I want to be clear that I was only speaking about timing. I have no damage numbers in my spreadsheet at this point, only timing. So 'optimal' I don't know, I was just pointing out the missing last FS tick.

Defining optimal comes down to figuring out if losing the CL every CD is worth delaying LvB or the other way around etc.

Edit 2: Also, adding ~200 Haste rating to 8% creates a problem where LvB is not quite off CD when you want it again. More haste making the gap bigger, but even up to 300 haste the gap still remains ~.3 seconds. Three tenths of a second, over an entire rotation, can easily be made up for by lag, however.

I'm pretty sure, from looking at some gear on wowhead, that 200+ Haste rating won't be hard to have at all, and in fact might be hard to avoid. So from what my spreadsheet tells me (again, I remain cautiously in support of it) the rotation listed + 1 more LB at the end is probably a good rotation. Best? Optimal? Dunno yet, but it's almost certainly a solid one and one that would be easy to maintain as it's not too complex.

You didn't get answered because it's a silly question. That's how silly questions are handled, generally.

Why don't you tell us. Do you think the EM glyph is better than Flametongue weapon? Is it possible the EM glyph was designed for useage outside of a raid environment?

Another silly question that previous posts have just addressed. It will depend on your gearing - particularly haste. The lads will build a simulator to allow you to enter your stats and determine your best rotation. While that may be a contender for the best rotation, right now, it may well change or need to be modified by different gearing level - none of which will matter until you're level 75 anyway. So why do you want some sort of confirmation or promise that this is the best rotation?

This is mostly a time for the people who want to be a part of the theorycrafting solutions to talk, and for those who want to ask a lot of questions about the best this or that to shut up. If you think something is good/better, think it through and justify it so it can be discussed. Showing up and asking for the best rotation right now is just silly.

QFT

My wife is in the beta. She has a resto sham but chose to pick the pvp Ele sham pre-made character as one of her 3 picks for the beta.

She went to the lvl 80 target dummy and stuck with a LB/LB/CL rotation, 2 mins each test, 5 tests, and averaged around 2050 DPS in the crap PvP blues at lvl 80. In the exact same gear she changed to a FS/LB/LB/CL/LB/Lava rotation, 2 min tests & 5 tests, and she averaged closer to 2300 DPS.

And lava hadn't been given it's 10% buff yet (maybe it still hasn't... not sure... but she did these tests well over 2 weeks ago).

So if we had access to Lava burst at 70 our DPS would be going up by maybe 200 or so (scaled down from 80)? Maybe a little less, maybe a little more, but the bottom line is; we wouldn't be having troubles competing with Boomkins and Hunters on Trash.

Ok...in my mind, Flametongue IS better for the simple fact that it will ALWAYS be active and isn't basing its ability on lowering a cooldown. It increases your crit chance by 2%.....period. I know right now things are still fluid and subject to massive change, which I am totally expecting to happen, but I keep hearing everyone cry that elemental got killed on DPS charts, and right now I just am honestly not seeing that at all. I am looking long term for when I hit 80 and even now I am still killing mobs in 2 or 3 LB's before they ever get near me. So a glyph that would increase my crit chance, in my mind, would be of more benefit overall.....raid setting or not. I am also basing my opinion on the fact that Elemental Mastery only benefits a SINGLE spell cast based on the wording of the ability itself....so why would we want to choose a glyphg that lowers the cooldown of an ability by 30 seconds when it only benefits a single spell cast over a glyph that could proc repeatedly in a good rotation during the time between the EM cooldown coming back up again?

Now...tell me how that is a silly question. Please.....I'm all ears.