The AOE stun of Fire nova only affects 5 mobs however, and if it is 5 mobs or less I don't even bother as CL is just as good.

Yeah thunderstorm I only use when I know I will run out of mana without it.

However consider that other classes have to waste GCDs on mana regen like Evocation and Lifetap, druids have the best in innervate but they are much less mana efficient than we are from what I've seen so far.

On Patchwerk positioning yourself within thunderstorm range of patch will not hurt your DPS much when you use thunderstorm.

Right now I cant choose between FS LvB CL LB LB CL LvB and FS LvB CL and LB until LvB is off CD. I play at a lower frame rate and higher MS (~300) so the second one is easier to manage for me. What Im wondering is if I could keep up with the first one will I be able to put out more damage? Sorry if these questions have been asked in previous replys.

Modelling anything to account for latency can be difficult especially when you throw in the effects of the short spell queue system that Blizz have incorporated in the game. I have tried to include for it in my spreadsheets but really have no idea whether or not the adjustments I have made are accurate.

With those caveats, I believe you won't get any more DPS out of the first rotation you mentioned over the second at 300ms. There is also the added disadvantage that even with perfect latency, you cannot guarantee on the first rotation that all of your CLs will be effected by clearcasting making it less mana efficient. With those points in mind I would be inclined to stick with what you are doing.

I think the consensus here is sort of what Shadow Priests arrived at when the 2.0 talents came out and the class was radically overhauled. Rather than planning out big rotations and attempting to execute them, use a priority system in-game to determine what you should cast next. By all means, use your available haste rating to figure out a rotation on paper (so you know where you can squeeze in an extra nuke, that sort of thing) but in-game just use CL every cooldown, always keeping an eye on your Lava Burst cooldown so you clip it as little as possible, and fill the rest with Lightning Bolt (obviously you need to refresh Flame Shock but that's just one GCD every 18 seconds or so).

Hi, as a first time poster I have to begin with just a general kudos to this forum and to Bink for his hard work, keeps doofs like me in business.

Re the quote, I'm not understanding it. Bink, are you saying that the value of the T6 4pc bonus is 398 EP? Meaning before we reduce our T6 to 3 (or fewer) pieces, we should be sure the replacement represents at least a 398 EP gain? I was using your EP values from your SEIC spreadsheet, and it doesn't appear that it's possible to do that even replacing all 4 pieces at once, with items currently in-game.

Though I didn't model the T7 4pc bonus, of course.

Maybe I'm missing the point, the question I have, that I thought was asked, is when does it make sense to replace 4pc T7?

The number has since been revised, now about 162.

Is it not chaining or are the graphics just not happening? What does the combat log say when you use CL on those packs (or CH, for that matter)?

Well, noobish me did not check the combat log itself, to be honest.

But checked the following:
-SCT. I'm getting 2 lines of damage instead of 3, sometimes 4 when LO procs. That's how I noticed for the first time.
-Graphics. Jumps are literally not happening.
-Recount. The damage/healing rises with the sum of 2 jumps exactly.
-Built-in floating combat text (for both CL and CH), only 2 numbers pop instead of 3.
-Lag, which I did not have according to built-in lag-o-meter, Laginfo addon & Quartz addon. So it can't be because of the laggy mob movement. Tested on mobs which are being tanked without movement to filter out this issue.

The only thing that springs to my mind is that Chain Lightning, like Chain Heal, doesn't like to change directions when bouncing. So if the first jump goes in one direction, the spell usually won't go the other direction for its second bounce. So depending on positioning of mobs, you may lose a jump here and there. I don't know how you tested this so it's possible something else is going on.

Whave,

My guild's enhancement shaman and I have both noticed strange behavior from Chain Lightning in Naxxdramas. Most of the time (9/10 casts) CL is only arcing once, hitting a total of 2 targets. It is happening in all wings of the instance for me, especially noticeable in the military quarter and spider wing. I don't recall this happening during week 2 of WotLK but it commonplace now.

That works. And the 2pc is worth about 56 EP I think. Any reasonable way to estimate the range of EP contribution from the T7 4pc when first acquiring it? Like many, I'm sure, I'm trying to determine how much valorous/heroes' T7 I need to justify sloughing off good 'ol T6.

Well, reading over the forum I'm pretty sure that following the advice of a priority system is ideal for now, but how about when we get Shamanism in (hopefully) 3.1? Doing some quick math and accommodating for the 8second cooldown on Lava Burst, you have an 8 second cooldown to fit in x amount of spells. From my math, the most damage you could (realistically) fit into that 8 second cooldown realistically would be 4XLB - CL (perhaps timing CL for an Elemental Focus). At 390 haste and a value of 32.7811 haste per %...

390/32.7811 = 11.89%
+Wrath of Air Totem = 16.89%

This haste rating would effectively reduce Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning to

100.0000-16.89=83.11 of original cast time
Lightning Bolt: 2.00*.8311= 1.662 cast time
Chain Lightning: 1.5*.8311 = 1.3365 cast time

With these cast times, 4 LBs and a CL will equate to 7.9845 Cast time, which is close enough (my math methods are slightly flawed so I can't get an exact haste rating value) to the 8second Lava Burst. Considering how with Shamanism with the currently proposed %values the breakeven point will be unobtainable, this isn't an ideal rotation. However, we'll probably see what Elemental shamans saw in the past, which is human error reducing overall DPS by complicating things with Chain Lightning. The higher your spell damage gets, the more and more narrow the DPs gap between the two spells become and the more DPS you'll lose due to human error when you could just use a simple rotation and throw in CL as somewhat of a haste buffer.

You could then replace CL with Flame Shock every 8 seconds and keep a fairly static rotation. Well, until you get to the point where Flame Shock runs out at the same time Lava Burst does, in which case you could just use an Elemental Mastery - Lavaburst and then apply flame shock immediately afterward (note that I haven't done anything to prove or disprove this as the best DPS alternative, it's just mental math).

I'm not the best mathematician by anyone's standards, so could someone check and see if my math is correct, or am I way off base?

Your Maths is a bit out. Haste is best viewed as increasing cast speed rather than reducing cast time and comes out with slightly different numbers than you posted as a result:

100/(100+16.89) = 85.56% of original cast time.

So your 4LB/CL now takes 8.13s. Longer if you take a bit of latency into account. In fact if you assume you lose 100ms per cast due to latency, you will be closer to the 8 secs by trying to replace a second LB with a CL rather than delaying your LvB by over 0.5s. Of course you won't get 2 CLs into your second 8 sec rotation and there you run into exactly the issue being discussed. Your proposed rotation is likely to delay your LvB cast yet by trying to adjust it so that it doesn't, you get an non repeatable rotation. And this is of course just based upon 1 particular haste rating.

However, this leads us on to the biggest problem - the variability of your haste rating. Every time you get a new piece of gear and your haste changes you will need to play around with your ideal rotation. Every time you pop Bloodlust it goes out the window. Procs on trinkets/totems can put everything out of synch. You spend 1 second moving out the fire so should you drop the CL or a LB from the rotation? What if it was 1.5 or 2 secs moving? As shaman these days we need to be able to adjust to these changing situations with a degree of flexibility that a static rotation cannot provide.

Incidently, if your FS and LVB were going to ready to fire at the same time, I believe you would be better off clipping 1 tick off your FS and saving your EM for a LB.

Regarding Chain Lightning.

It's always been a buggy spell.

Sometimes it works exactly as intended. Sometimes it can't hit targets right on top of each other. Sometimes on large bosses it chains on the same target... I used to have it happen all the time on Nightbane, and I still see it happen on dragon bosses now.

It's one of the great in theory spells, that expansion made irrelevant. 1027 mana for a spell that might hit a couple of extra targets with a cooldown?

I'm just hoping they go with a new lightning type spell for the Elemental AE they are adding. How about Cone of lightning???

Well I swear I was able to slip it in mid travel and autocrit. But it appears I was just getting lucky crits, or they hot-fixed it last Tuesday. It was a nice option to have, alas, we do not (or never) had it.

I exclusively tried it in HoS and HoL last night and there were very many occasions that the FS landed before LvB and no critical damage. Most tests were at max range, so the travel time was much greater than the GCD triggered.

It definately makes it hard to maintain maximum dps while switching targets.

Before (LvB) we could tab over to next mob, CL to arc and finish last mob, and have a LB queued up for zero downtime at maximum dps.

If there is movement involved, one can always FS the next target early, perhaps even use a focus macro, and be able to start off with the LvB (if off CD) and not lose dps incurred from using FS while LvB is off CD.

I paid attention to my CL's last night and there were definitely instances where I was only getting two hits, even accounting for positioning. So it looks like a legit bug, though not really a big deal. Elemental DPS is so pathetic that the third CL hit is gravy.

Regarding travel time, it appears that Lava Burst's check for the Flame Shock debuff comes at the instant the cast is finished, while the fireball is still in the air. I can't definitively prove it, but naked on a target dummy to minimize the chance of a random crit that appeared to be the way it behaves (much the way a Mage spell on a frozen target will still crit if the Freeze ends while the projectile is in the air). So Flame Shocking while the fireball is in the air does nothing.

What about clearcasting? Does the buff activate when the spell finishes casting or when the spell hits the target?

I think the clearcasting buff goes active once the spell acutally hits. Spell crits arent calculated untill it hits the mob. Easy way to test would be to find a mob and throw a single EM/LB at max range. Watch your buffs to see if CC appears before the bolt lands.

When it hits. You don't get the buff 'til you see the numbers on your screen.

OK, I got my 4th piece last night, and yes, it looks like Bink is right on the money.

2033 spell damage
CSD Meta
Maxed SE&F, Concussion and Lava Flows
... and 4 piece T7

After over an hour of spamming, I got

Crit
Smallest 6456
Largest 7269

Normal
Smallest 2846
Largest 3190


I realise these don't quite indicate the widest range of possible values, but spells with an 8 sec CD aren't the easiest to test.

Anyway, when reverse engineered through my spreadsheet I came to a crit multiplier of 2.274 - 2.271 which seems close enough for now. I imagine those with a few more hours to spend spamming could get it a little more accurate.

Edit: Also have Glyph of Lava, which shouldn't exactly be a surprise, but will impact on the calculations.

Hi all! I'm quite new here and i'd like to post what i've done to find the better rotation.
Just take a look if there are some formula error, i like to find a way to solve rotation problems with haste!

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...8aN4Fh7iq6V6HQ

OK so that sounds like 4pc T7 ~ 23 EP is confirmed.

If 4pc T6 ~ 162, and 2pc T6 ~ 67 (with the new EP values), I find the gearing implications disheartening...

I never got my T6 belt, so my options are constrained. I get a higher EP from wearing Skyshatter Boots, Bracers, Gloves, and Chest than I do from replacing ALL of those with T7.25 and/or highest-EP gear in-game for those slots.

So nevermind the gear I've already pocketed, the only armor I should be looking for is Helm, Legs, and Shoulders.

Unless spellpower is going to see a sufficient DEP boost from the new talent to skew strongly in favor of T7... seems pretty weak.

The EP-maximizing combo using items in game would appear to be T7.25 Helm, Legs, Shoulder, and Chest, with T6 Belt, Bracers, Gloves, and Boots - better than the second-best combo by ~180 EP.

Anyone on Bloodhoof want to go on a Sunwell run? =(