I'm still leveling, and doing 5 mans, but I take it a few people on the forums have all ready made it to 80 and are doing 10/25 man content, so I'm wondering:

How is Elemental working out?

In small group content, the 5 mans I've done, elemental has been really good so far, I bring a ton of buffs, and do good damage, but again these are leveling instances I've been doing with guildies. Granted we're in Sunwell gear, but still. I assume it's the same in 10 mans, where their are fewer people with overlapping buffs and Shaman bring quite a few.

What have people's experiances been in 10 and 25 man content? Is elemental holding up as a viable spec?

I ran a Naxx 10 man last night as an Enhancement shaman and there was an Elemental shaman in the group as well. The whole group was similarly geared (almost entirely still in Sunwell level 70 loot) and the breakdown was like this:

Rogue 16.1%
Enh Shaman 16.0%
Feral Druid (tank) 16%
Ele Shaman 15.8%
Ret Pally 15.5%
...

So barring skill differences and relative attention paying levels, it seems like all things are pretty equal at the moment.

(e) early morning spelling failure.

It's looking like Elemental might be a mandatory spec until Blizzard fixes the ToW buff, it gives more spellpower than any other buff right now.

Totem of Wrath is pretty ridiculous between the 100 spellpower and the 3% crit to all abilities. Elemental Oath is sweet as well, and if you're being optimal with your Flame Shock/Lava Burst rotation (Burst landing just after the third tick of the DOT) the damage is acceptable. The spec could probably use some buffs in terms of raw damage output, but it seems just as good as it was in TBC. Every 25-man will want one, 10-mans will as well unless they're super heavy melee.

Probably a stupid question, but why would you wait 3 ticks of FS for landing LvB?

Lava Burst eats the Flame Shock debuff. Therefore removing the dot. You'd want as much DoT up time for the most DPS. (Tooltip)

[e] Not sure how the Glyphs factors into that.

Thanks, I was indeed assuming the Flame shock glyph, which is why I was confused as to the 3-tick wait. W/out that glyph, it makes much more sense. The glyph is quite amazing though, for having played with it a bit.

^ This.

Just hit 80 tonight. So far in instances I've found my optimal rotations, with the Flame Shock glyph and some haste to be:

FS, LvB, CL, LB, LB, CL, LB, LB, LvB, CL, LB, FS

Something close to that, basically running off of cooldowns, in This order FS DoT, LvB, CL, with LB used as Filler in between, and Thunderstorm as a quick mana pot when I start running low(round 80% mana then when it's off cooldown after that). Though, even without an Spriest I haven't had many mana problems in 5mans.

Malan: No. A demonology warlock in T7 gear will give more spellpower to the raid, while doing more damage.

Phlis: just as we predicted, static spellpower base (flametongue, tow) is all that is saving us right now from total and complete decimation. When people gear up... ouch. Most instances I went to, I ended up being a healer, tbh, so if things don't improve, I'll probably end up Resto in a month or so :p

Maybe a slight tangent but it kills me that there is no scaling for things like fort/totems/AI. Would be so easy to give them some minor scaling based off anything from stamina/spell power/attack power/strength/intelligence. Stamina makes the most sense for shaman totems since its something that generally increases for all specs as gear gets better, so it would just allow these otherwise stagnant buffs to get some scaling, even if it is small. Fixed number buffs have always created problems.

This isn't even remotely true. Demonic Pact gives each person in the raid their own buff that increases their spellpower by 10%. So if you have 2000 spellpower, you gain 200. Until the average member of a raid has over 2800 spellpower (probably late T8 or even T9), Totem of Wrath is superior. At current gear levels, it is drastically superior. Also, Demonic Pact is currently spell damage only, whereas Totem of Wrath is straight spell power, thus also improving healing.

The value is actually based off the Warlock's spell power, not each group member, but people are probably seeing this because the pre-80 rank of ToW is 140 spellpower (which can get pushed off by a warlock in BT gear+trinkets) and the 80 rank is 280 spellpower. Once you hit 80, ToW isn't going to get pushed off by Demonic Pact anytime soon.

Sydane: Demonic Pact buffs raid members with a boost of 10% of the warlock's spellpower. At level 80, it requires the lock to have 2800 spellpower in order to compete with Totem of Wrath.

Let's assume a fairly regular dps gear will include around 2000 base spellpower (it's actually a wee bit above this in T7, but that's close enough). Fully raid buffed warlock will have over 500 (+300 on life tap) spirit, so that's 200-240 spellpower (let's take median 220). Fel Armor grants 234 spellpower. Buffed up, an imp will have around 800 intellect (possibly a tiny bit more, but again, I'm taking low figures) and 540 stamina. That's 160 spellpower from pets. So, 2000 + 234 + 220 + 160 = 2614. Add a few more raid buffs (intellect + stamina on warlock, which indirectly translate to damage through pet) and you're there. Note: I was taking Buzzkill's (25th november, ex nihilum) gear into account for help (mainly stat-wise, I've already run down spellpower for mages, shamans and druids, finding only tiny differences between them, so it's logical that spellpower for locks is the same), but he's destruction and still has quite a few old items. If you want, I can run full stats for you and give you the exact spellpower you'll get at level 80 T7 gear. Also note that I've taken Imp pet when comparing numbers, but parallel with Felguard, the stat differences are tiny (like 10 spellpower variation), the only difference is that for one pet, most stats comes from int and for the other from stam.

That said, I wasn't aware Demonic Pact only increased Spellpower. If that's the case, it makes ToW quite a bit more powerful raid-wise, as there would be no other compareable spellpower boost for healers. Together with "AoE Heart of the Crusader", the totem might warrant our place in raids. The question is - would this be enough to compensate for considerably lower damage output?

Dinian: yes, I noticed. There's been a reply that they want to start changing totems or even totem system as well, so something seems to be moving on their part. I hate to say it, but - seems we'll have to be patient /ducks behind desk to avoid incoming bananas from vanilla shamans

One problem with scaling buffs is they demand you gear in a certain way to help your group, and that generally hurts your own flexibility. I know I wore 2 piece T4 for way longer than I wanted to for the buff to SoE -- basically, until the personal DPS benefit of the two pieces outweighed the group benefit of extra STR.

The same happened to Survival Hunters (old Expose Weakness), their only stat to look for on an item was agility.
And for a progression guilds with gem queues, the first thing to do was throwing spinels at their survival hunters.

I don't think anyone was really happy with that kind of design.
So, it has been removed and reappeared with Demonology Warlocks, who get locked into "Runed-Ruby-Spam".


I mean, I really like the idea of having buffs or debuffs scale with gear.
But it requires a lot of very fragile balancing, and may lead to something silly like players banking their good gear just t slip into a set that maximises a certain stat they're buffing, while more or less gimping their own performance.

Seeing what a hard time Blizzard already has with balancing classes and specs, I'd rather not have them try to design scaling buffs right now.
Especially when we already have an elephant of this kind in the room (Demonic Pact).

I wonder if 2/5 Elemental Shaman T4 still works and if it's viable at level 80 content.
On second thought, I'd rather not know because it probably the best for min-maxers.

This isn't necessarily true.

A demonology warlock would need to have their buff up constantly, which is rarely the case, and either way this buff has limitations due to how it is procced.

2800 spell damage locks are not T7 either....we are a ways from this happening.

I've justed my rotation in the event of trash or multiple targets to be FS>LvB>LB>CL,LB,LB,LvB,LB,CL,FS.

Basically instead of CL after a LvB I use LB because CL hits multiple targets and has a chance that is multiple by the amount of targets up to 3 to proc Elemental Focus. This ensures that Elemental Focus is up almost 100% of the time after your first lava blast and makes your rotation that much more efficient without really hurting your DPS sicne you are only swapping 2 spells in the rotation.

even if we are a "ways" from demo locks overtaking ele shaman utility, it will more than likely happen since the numbers are getting at least somewhat close even at a T7 level. that being said, unless ele shaman scaling improves to compensate for the dps difference, we're likely to see min-max raids removing ele shamans from raids at a T9+ level just as we saw in sunwell with mages and whatnot.

I think there's some pretty wide acknowledgment that Elemental Shamans are underpowered at the high end and have scaling issues. I wouldn't be too quick to make pronouncements of doom, though. In the coming weeks, Blizzard's devs will be able to collect huge amounts of information regarding class performance in raids in a live environment. They'll make adjustments as necessary, and I suspect Elemental Shamans will get some bones thrown their way. So by all means talk about our performance, just keep some perspective.

With level 213 items (Naxx only), you'll have 2039 spellpower, 332 spirit, 699 intellect, 826 stamina, 296 crit rating and 146 hit, with 4 red, 4 yellow and one meta gem available. I'm assuming gems will be used to cap hit, so we can ignore them and set bonuses. Base stam is 94, base int 156 and base spirit 169 for an orc warlock at level 80. Raid buffs include DI (60 intellect), gotw (51 sta, int, spi), kings (10% extra stats), fortitude (165 stam), possibly also divine spirit (80 spi + spellpower), but I'm ignoring this one, as there may be no discipline priest in the raid. Fel Armor gives 234 spellpower + 30% of spirit (not sure if this is increased with demonic aegis, so I'm leaving it at 30%) - 281 spellpower. Total stamina is increased by 10% through demonic embrace, so 1363 stamina. Total intellect equals 1062. Imp's base stats are increased to 87 and 340 (extrapolated based on level 70 stats; figures may be incorrect, would need testing. Level 70 base stats were 70 and 276. He gains 43% (33% + fel synergy) stats, with total increased by 15% (fel vitality). 774 stamina and 916 intellect are final numbers, which gives us 1690 joined pool, of which 12% are converted into spellpower. 202 spellpower here. This brings us to a total of 2756. Oh, wait, we've forgotten actual raid buffs, such as Fish Feast (don't tell me you don't have at least one cook in raid :P) for 45 spellpower and 40 stamina. 2801 spellpower, there we go. Of course, we can still add Flask of Frost Wyrm for 125 spellpower for a total of 2926 spellpower, but then that would be pushing it.

Don't question the numbers - the only thing I did go wrong at was mechanics (I assumed Demonic Pact applies to heals to, but I stand corrected, thus my point was null).

Oh, btw., using a felguard or imp, this buff will be up pretty much all the time, they both have enough crit with demonology for that. Do you want me to prove that too?

The spirit increase from Fel Armor does increase with demonic aegis, essentially meaning that talented with kings a demo warlock gets 0.44 spellpower per spirit. However, that spell damage from spirit does not count towards the spellpower gain from Demonic Pact. While that may be considered a bug, it is clearly the result of that damage being determined as the same buff that IDS is (as it doesn't stack with IDS either), and is unlikely to get changed. That drops your numbers at that gear level to at best 2645 effective spellpower including a flask which puts the crossover projection back at mid to late T8.

Even if that is the case, demo is also worst scaling warlock spec and the sims have it starting off on the bottom dps for warlocks even in the T7 level. Not only that, but a demo warlock can pick up 5 dps talents if they drop Demonic Pact from their build, whereas every Elemental Shaman has Totem of Wrath. It is also the only buff that warlock would be providing. Even if your demo warlock is running at 3000 spellpower, that's a 20 spellpower increase raidwide coming from a less reliable source. It's far more likely the demo warlock should say "I'm worthless because of elemental shaman" than the other way around. But that would be just as pointless of a whine.

If elemental is underperforming, it needs to be fixed. Even if you have a vital raid buff (which you do), that isn't reason for poor dps any more. At some point Demonic Pact becomes the better raid buff, that is inevitable because Totem of Wrath doesn't scale. Elemental needs to do competitive dps even assuming it provides no buffs, which is the goal Blizzard has clearly stated. Either way, dps is going to be affected the most by gear luck for the foreseeable future, and elemental's raid slot is probably one of the most secure for quite a while.