It really depends on how often you are healing the tank. For me, Improved Ghost Wolf is a waste of two points for a raid resto spec, but if you are committed to keeping it, then Elemental Weapons is a good candidate for removal. It's only a decent talent for resto if you are severely undergeared (mainly ilvl 175-200 blues), as at 3/3 the talent only provides a non-scaling +45 healing. Going from 2500 to 2545 SP would give you an increase of only ~+1.8% healing spellpower for three talent points. The actual benefit is slightly worse than this, because increasing spell power is not the same as increasing total healing done. For chain heal, for example, a quick calculation shows that the first jump of chain heal is ~5833 for 2500 SP, and ~5911 for 2545 SP. This is an increase of 78 healing, or ~1.3% for those three talent points (.43% healing per point, approximately 1/5 the value of purifcation). As the talent provides a static benefit, the numbers get even worse when fully raid buffed or with Ulduar level gear.

If you find yourself healing tanks enough that Healing Wave starts to become more than just NS fodder, then Healing Way is a talent that could fill an important niche. Elemental Weapons is a poor investment unless you find yourself with nowhere else to place your last few points.

I hope this is the right thread for this, because while my question is simple, the answer likely isn´t.

How do I decide when dropping Magma Totem instead of Totem of Wrath is going to be a net DPS gain for a 25man raid?

Example situation: Sarth + 3D on the Hatchlings, Resto Shaman is providing Flametongue, Ret Pala has Crit debuff on the drake, but no Demo Lock.
Calculating the magma totem DPS is easy enough, but how do I come up with at least a rough estimate of what the rest of the raid looses?
The trouble is that while this guestimate doesn´t have to be very accurate, the margin of error must be known so I can "play it safe" if it´s a toss-up, or justify my decision (in case some other DPS decides to start whining) if it isn´t.

I apologize if someone already did the number-crunching on this, I couldn´t find any despite searching thouroghly. In that case if you´d toss me a link before banning me. ;P

Totem of Wrath provides 280 spellpower. Untalented Flametongue Totem provides 144 spellpower. The difference is 136 spellpower. Your magma totem needs to do more damage than 136 spellpower * coefficient * number of other AoE.

It's easiest to look at this on a per tick basis. Blizzard for example has a little under a 15% per second coefficient. Over 2 seconds (the tick of magma totem) it will deal 30% of the added spellpower in extra damage. 136 Spellpower * .3 = 40.8 extra damage per tick of magma totem. Rain of Fire according to Wowwiki has a 69.32% tick every 2 seconds. 136* .7 = 95.2 extra damage. Your magma totem hits how hard? 800 per tick? 800/95.2 = 8.4 casters needed to break even.

So these are rough numbers, but it looks like: unless you have more than 8 warlocks AOE'ing, Magma totem will outdps Wrath when there is a Flametongue backup. The disadvantage is having to play the totem game. Movement time to the drop spot, refreshing often, etc. Totem of Wrath is set it and forget it.

Easy. If you have 24 AFKers in the raid, drop Magma. Otherwise, drop ToW. Adding 3% crit and 280 spellpower to the raid makes such a boost to raid DPS, you cannot reach in personal. Add that you have to run in the middle of the pack, drop the totem, then wait 2 sec for the first tick, most of them should be already dead by that by your mages/SPs/etc, if they take their job seriously.

Magma has only fun factor to me: yell in vent "yay, it's magma totem time", then enjoy the screen beeing flooded by numbers.

My guild usually runs with 2 Elemental Shamans, and as of right now the other guys is using ToW. I tried searching around and I was not able to find much information on Fire Elemental Totem. Does anyone have any numbers on it? Is it worth using over Searing Totem for, say, Patchwerk? And if so, how much of a DPS increase will it be over Searing?

I'm pretty sure Magma is always better than Searing, regardless of how many targets you have.

Edit - Yeah, I know he was talking about Fire Ele, but I wanted to make sure he knows that Searing is a lemon these days, so when he compares DPS totems he should really be talking about Magma. =)

If I wanted people presenting their personal opinion as fact without offering any kind of supporting analysis, let alone evidence, I would have gone to the official WoW forums.

I can make unfounded claims just fine by myself, but that will get neither me nor my guild anywhere.


Excellent point. Hell, same goes for Enhancement shams. Their Spell Power might be a bit lower, but they can pick up Call of Flame. Otoh, they may also have Enhancing Totems...

I vaguely rememeber some theorycraft that yes, Magma Totem is more DPS then Searing, even with the increased GCD usage. I´ll run some tests later.
However, he was asking about Fire Elemental totem, not Magma. I´m afraid I haven´t seen anything on that one. My gut feeling is no, since Fire Ele seems to have scaled rather terribly in WotLK. Rather cumbersome to test, though, with the 20min CD...

(keep in mind that I only tested the following for Elemental; additional testing from Enh and Resto ppl welcome! Also, I´m hitting training dummies here, so no raidbuffs.)

It isn´t; just did some testing, and Searing has ~50% better DPCT then Magma. I guess my memory deceived me, or the theorycraft was applicable only to Enhancement. Sorry 'bout that.

Edit:

It also turns out that my gut-feeling was wrong: Fire Elemental actually has very impressive DPCT on single targets (>400% better then Searing, >600% better then Magma), thanks to its 2min duration, and it´s DPS is about 30% above Magma, 100% above Searing.

But because of it´s pitifull manapool, it ironically is actually much better on single targets then in AOE situations. Against 3-4+ mobs, you´re better off putting Magma Totem once the Elemental is OOM.

Fire elemental is slightly more damage than searing totem especially in multi target environments, but way less than magma totem regardless. GC posted a while back that the elemental totems need an update.

Im thinking about making a Shaman just for raiding and i am wondering what the best race for a ele or resto shaman would be (horde side)?

I was thinking Troll for berserk for faster casts and the added 10% regen rate.
Thanks in advance.

I'm thinking about respeccing my shaman to enhancement, but I haven't been able to find some solid answers to what I should be doing. I've got a enh shaman-like piece for every slot except my rings (both haste spellpower ones) and my gloves. I've also got a selection from 2x LPC, 2x Heirloom Daggers, and a [Stormstrike Mace].

Do I want to go 2x LPC, and FT/FT? Or do I go [Stormstrike Mace] with WF and LPC with FT and get the Windfury glyph?

Thanks for the help