Two questions from someone nearing Northrend on their first shaman...
1. What are the other staple shaman websites people use for information that may be omitted from EJ because it is considered too "introductory"? For instance, I would send paladin tanks to maintankadin to learn about def capping and general play style.
2. I'm trying to find a current (3.2) quick and dirty comparasson of elemental and enchancement. Who makes better use of wind shear, how the dps compairs, which is commonly more desirable in 10's or 25's, that sort of stuff.
Two questions from someone nearing Northrend on their first shaman...
1. What are the other staple shaman websites people use for information that may be omitted from EJ because it is considered too "introductory"? For instance, I would send paladin tanks to maintankadin to learn about def capping and general play style.
2. I'm trying to find a current (3.2) quick and dirty comparasson of elemental and enchancement. Who makes better use of wind shear, how the dps compairs, which is commonly more desirable in 10's or 25's, that sort of stuff.
1. I'm pretty sure you can find all the information you need here, or on MMO-champion.com, if you use the search function.
2. I find ele's are more common in 10s than enhance, but a 25man will usually have 1 of each. Enhance makes better use of wind shear because ele usually isn't within 20 yards. A successful 25 brings both, so play whichever you like the most.
1. What are the other staple shaman websites people use for information that may be omitted from EJ because it is considered too "introductory"? For instance, I would send paladin tanks to maintankadin to learn about def capping and general play style
There's a basic introductory guide to elemental on my blog, linked from my profile. For enhance and resto, I know they're not terribly friendly-looking, but the Think Tank pieces here on EJ should serve as a decent introduction. Just skip past all the scary maths stuff if that's off-putting.
Check out the stickies on the Shaman forums on the official site. They are very well done and I know that at least the enhancement is being maintained.
There's a basic introductory guide to elemental on my blog, linked from my profile.
I just finished leveling a Shaman to do alt raids with, and wanted to spec Elemental. Sadly the Shaman forums and ThinkTank were lacking in a basic guide.
I just wanted to take a second and thank you for a very informative guide for us noobs looking to spec Elemental.
Ok, simple question: Using Rawr and looking at my gear (ele) it's estimating me at 4300 dps. My rotation is solid and I use LvB as soon as it comes available (if cooldown<1sec I wait for it), but unless I'm lucky I can't seem to push past 3.6k dps. I'm not complaining here, I'm more curious how Rawr works this out, is if off of 80 elites, 80 trash, or raid bosses?
Second quick question: Is it now worth while (3.2.2) to put Chain Lightning into my rotation for a dps boost on single targets? I've read conflicting reports on this.
Second quick question: Is it now worth while (3.2.2) to put Chain Lightning into my rotation for a dps boost on single targets? I've read conflicting reports on this.
The gains you get from CL on a single target are very minor (generally on the order of ~50 dps in ilevel 245 gear), but its extreme mana cost may be be prohibitive. In the end, it comes down to whether or not your mana pool will last the duration of the fight.
The mana cost can be mitigated somewhat if you only use CL after LvB. Note that depending on distance to the mob, haste, and latency, you may need to throw a single LB first to make sure that the LvB crit has time to register. Some people choose instead to only use CL as a rotation fixer (i.e. when LvB is about to come off cooldown, casting CL rather than LB will enable you to cast your next LvB sooner.)
Last edited by Philondra : 10/22/09 at 4:09 AM.
Reason: Edited for clarity.
Ok, simple question: Using Rawr and looking at my gear (ele) it's estimating me at 4300 dps. My rotation is solid and I use LvB as soon as it comes available (if cooldown<1sec I wait for it), but unless I'm lucky I can't seem to push past 3.6k dps. I'm not complaining here, I'm more curious how Rawr works this out, is if off of 80 elites, 80 trash, or raid bosses?
Second quick question: Is it now worth while (3.2.2) to put Chain Lightning into my rotation for a dps boost on single targets? I've read conflicting reports on this.
The Rawr Elemental module does not factor in any lag or movement and assumes every spell to be perfectly timed. As far as I can tell this is impossible to reach and even when I have a very good streak I cannot touch the estimate.
Currently running with T8.25 4p bonus. Now, when should I switch to T9.25 ? Just wondering whether there's a general answer to that. If not, I'm going to have a few runs with the shaman_hep.
Second quick question: Is it now worth while (3.2.2) to put Chain Lightning into my rotation for a dps boost on single targets? I've read conflicting reports on this
Even on single target, CL is doing more damage than LB, you will need to see for yourself if you have enough mana to handle CL in your rotation to the end of the fight.
There is usually 2 ways to put CL in your rotation: on CD or after LvB.
Using CL as soon as on CD (but LvB still come in priority) will generate more dps, but will also eat up mana a lot faster.
Using CL only after LvB (but generally advised to put a LB in between as if your CL landed too soon you wont get the benefit of CC, so the cycle is more like FS > LvB > LB > CL) will still be better than LB spam and doesn't put as much strain on your mana, while slightly lower on dps than using CL on CD, if the fight last long enough you can keep CL in your rotation til the end of the fight; Whereas using CL on CD might end up OOM before the fight finishes, which will result in loss in dps due to you will have to take CL out of the cycle to keep LB going, so it all depends on mana management.
Currently running with T8.25 4p bonus. Now, when should I switch to T9.25 ? Just wondering whether there's a general answer to that. If not, I'm going to have a few runs with the shaman_hep.
Here's a snippet from my last combatlog report running with tier 8 4 piece bonus:
Tier 8 2-piece:
Number of casts before cooldown would have been up: 172 (8.78% of riptide casts)
Combat casts: 172 (8.96%)
Tier 8 4-piece:
Chain Heals benefitting from T8 4-piece count: 1910 (100.00%)
Combat count: 1881 (100.00%)
Chain Heal without T8 4-piece HPS: 8084, EHPS: 4377
Combat HPS: 8025, EHPS: 4318
Chain Heal with T8 4-piece HPS: 8955, EHPS: 4849
Combat HPS: 8904, EHPS: 4791
Spamming chain heal Combat EHPS gain: 413, HEP gain: 991
Combat time saved: 6 mins 16 secs
Combat EHPS increase: 12.0437
HEP: 28.8406
Here's a snippet from my last combatlog report running with tier 8 2 piece bonus:
Tier 8 2-piece:
Number of casts before cooldown would have been up: 159 (2.79% of riptide casts)
Combat casts: 159 (2.88%)
Tier 9 2-piece:
Effective: 5280209 (2.91%), Total: 10636818 (3.21%)
Combat Effective: 5128063 (2.87%), Total: 10251828 (3.28%)
Combat EHPS: 46.6892
HEP: 88.7195
So, for my personal situation (gear, latency, raid composition, personal healing style, guild progression, boss strats, etc), the tier 9 2 piece bonus is almost 3 times better than the tier 8 4 piece bonus. As soon as I found a piece of non-set gear that was more than 30 hep stat points higher than my tier 8, I chose to upgrade. (I ran with [Robes of the Umbral Brute] for a week or two before I got my tier 9 chest. With the current value of haste it's far better than the tier 8 chest.)
The Rawr Elemental module does not factor in any lag or movement and assumes every spell to be perfectly timed. As far as I can tell this is impossible to reach and even when I have a very good streak I cannot touch the estimate.
How close are you getting?
I'm using simcraft, enhsim, and rawr to figure out what dps I -should- be at. (Armory is in profile link if you want to look at gear). After reading through here, my priority system is pretty standard, i.e. MWx5->SS->ES-LL .
Rawr gives me 6992 dps points. Enshim tells me 2842 dps. Simcraft tells me average of 6400 max of 8300.
This is a link of our unsuccessful grand crusader run last night, and shows my dps (I'm zepia, obviously).
Recount shows that I averaged around 5.4k which is a lot higher than EnhSim and Wow Meter Online, and a lot lower than Rawr and Simcraft, and a lot lower than my guild leader wants it to be.
So I guess the million dollar question is, where am I screwing up? (And yes, I've read every single article on enhancement shammies on elitist jerks, so its not that I just haven't read)
Last edited by godzirra : 10/22/09 at 12:19 PM.
Reason: corrected spelling
Rawr gives me 6992 dps points. Enshim tells me 2842 dps.
Enhsim and rawr never agree exactly for me, but they're closer than this. You probably have something missing from your enhsim config. Check to make sure you have everything appropriate selected in the Consumables and Buffs tab. Also, if you have Simulate Mana selected, make sure you also select appropriate mana regen buffs, and have SR on top of your priority list in the Rotation and Misc tab.
Enhsim and rawr never agree exactly for me, but they're closer than this. You probably have something missing from your enhsim config. Check to make sure you have everything appropriate selected in the Consumables and Buffs tab. Also, if you have Simulate Mana selected, make sure you also select appropriate mana regen buffs, and have SR on top of your priority list in the Rotation and Misc tab.
Everything is checked (though I've not changed the values of the buffs) and I checked replenishmen, mana spring, bow and jow. Still getting the exact same DPS.
Ah ha... I was using enhsim incorrectly and didn't have anything checked in my rotation priority... now its telling me 5721.
That's still lower than Simcraft, but higher than I'm doing now for dps according to the WMO link. So I'm still not sure what I'm doing wrong (although at this point it seems like something wrong with something I'm doing, as opposed to weird data from the sims).
I'm using simcraft, enhsim, and rawr to figure out what dps I -should- be at. (Armory is in profile link if you want to look at gear). After reading through here, my priority system is pretty standard, i.e. MWx5->SS->ES-LL .
Rawr gives me 6992 dps points. Enshim tells me 2842 dps. Simcraft tells me average of 6400 max of 8300.
This is a link of our unsuccessful grand crusader run last night, and shows my dps (I'm zepia, obviously).
Recount shows that I averaged around 5.4k which is a lot higher than EnhSim and Wow Meter Online, and a lot lower than Rawr and Simcraft, and a lot lower than my guild leader wants it to be.
So I guess the million dollar question is, where am I screwing up? (And yes, I've read every single article on enhancement shammies on elitist jerks, so its not that I just haven't read)
I took a look at your armory and a big part of it is gear. You have a bunch of ivl200 items including a weapon. I see a bunch of leather as well, some of which has ArP on it. Mail is generally better now that we get AP from int coupled with the way the ilvl mechanics work. ArP is just bad after the last round of changes. At low levels of ArP it'll lead to meger DPS increases. If you look in the BiS thread you'll see that ArP is somewhat decent but this is only because we're forced to take so much of it and thus ArP gets pushed into acceptable ranges.
I would also question your gemming of haste. At those levels of gear I'm not sure I ever saw haste creep over the value of AP (you may want to double check this with Rawr and EnhSim imports).
To boot you have worse items in some slots than the craftable items. Belt of Dragons over your current belt and crusader's dragonscale bracers over the 219. Also, there's also a better cloak than yours for valor badges.
I took a look at your armory and a big part of it is gear. You have a bunch of ivl200 items including a weapon. I see a bunch of leather as well, some of which has ArP on it. Mail is generally better now that we get AP from int coupled with the way the ilvl mechanics work. ArP is just bad after the last round of changes. At low levels of ArP it'll lead to meger DPS increases. If you look in the BiS thread you'll see that ArP is somewhat decent but this is only because we're forced to take so much of it and thus ArP gets pushed into acceptable ranges.
I would also question your gemming of haste. At those levels of gear I'm not sure I ever saw haste creep over the value of AP (you may want to double check this with Rawr and EnhSim imports).
To boot you have worse items in some slots than the craftable items. Belt of Dragons over your current belt and crusader's dragonscale bracers over the 219. Also, there's also a better cloak than yours for valor badges.
I was using the Rawr "optimizer" to regem... perhaps that was a mistake. This is what enhsim shows me for EP for my gear:
Its rating haste as pretty much #1 over everything else except mh/oh dps. Its also rating ARP as just below agility, crit and hit.
Should I not be using these EP values?
As far as the gear suckage, I've been working on getting that many crusader orbs to craft the stuff, just haven't had the money or gotten lucky with rolls yet.
If you're trying to answer a question like "should I gem ArP, haste, or AP," then no you shouldn't be using those -- or any -- EP values. EP will show you what relative value different stats give you with your current gear. As soon as you change your gear (or gems), your old EP values aren't helpful anymore.
Use rawr to change your gems. Export an enhsim config. Sim it, and see what the difference is.
Originally Posted by godzirra
At this point it seems like something wrong with something I'm doing, as opposed to weird data from the sims.
Rawr and enhsim both assume 100% contact time on the boss, attacking from behind. The only WotLK boss this is true for is Patchwerk; every other boss has some amount of movement or attacking from the front. A fight like Freya with lots of movement, or Kologarn with lots of parries, will show lower dps than the ideal sim environment. A fight like Hodir or Thaddius with encounter-specific buffs will show higher dps than the sim.
The sim shouldn't be a target dps, but a comparison tool. Don't compare the sim to your in game experience, compare different setups with the sim to each other.
I'm currently not in BiS gear and have mostly AP and crit gems equipped. Without the best in slot gear i'm short quite a few gem slots. Is it worth it for me to gem haste yet? or should I wait? I noticed that when I logged on to find the ideal gemming to have switched from ap/crit to haste, the max potential dps wasn't really that much higher. Is there a number we're tryin to shoot for with haste that we should ignore before we get close to?
If you're trying to answer a question like "should I gem ArP, haste, or AP," then no you shouldn't be using those -- or any -- EP values. EP will show you what relative value different stats give you with your current gear. As soon as you change your gear (or gems), your old EP values aren't helpful anymore.
Use rawr to change your gems. Export an enhsim config. Sim it, and see what the difference is.
Okay... so using rawr to do gems is bad... Got it.
Shoud I be enchanting and gemming everything currently for AP then? Or Agi? What -should- I be gemming/enchanting for?
I'm not sure if there actually is a simple answer to the following, but I figured I might as well try. I'm not asking you to check my gear, spec or tell me how to play (although I won't be offended if you tell me something constructive in this regard =D). This situation just confused the hell out of me...
This is a combat log of a recent vezax hard mode kill.
WoL - Damage Done (Vezax)
The report shows me (Convenient) doing 5600 dps, while the other enhancement (Phaythe) did 6450. Phaythe out-gears me by a decent amount, but it really doesn't explain this much of a difference. I'm in t8.5, hes in t9. He also used a potion of wild magic, I used nothing. I took the time to total up all of our actions (net damage done by each is irrelevant due to gear differences) because I thought I was doing something wrong, and ended up with this :
Obviously, the WF attacks are what concerns me. The LS proc difference can be mostly explained by his 2 piece t9. But why did I have about 24% less wf attacks than him? I have more melee attacks and only 1 less stormstrike, so I had more chances to proc it than him. Am I just extremely unlucky? Do I have too much haste (599) and it's clipping WF procs (my flurried MH attack speed is 1.46, with imp. wf but no 3% haste buff)? Am I just stupid and I'm missing something?
I thought that the increase to white damage from stacking haste was supposed to balance out the loss from WF procs or even slightly increase DPS in the 1.51-1.41 range, not screw me like this. Gaining 12 extra melee attacks definitely does not balance out the loss of 22 potential wf attacks. Another 22 WF attacks would have put me a lot closer to him in terms of damage done.
Has anyone else experienced a sharp drop in the relative positioning on DPS scales in 3.2 vs 3.1? In Ulduar I was coming in top 3 on every fight, however in ToC I am usually in 7 - 9 position. My gear is relatively equal to all the mages, rogues, hunters, DK's I used to beat in Ulduar but they seem to have scaled so much better in 3.2
Has anyone else experienced a sharp drop in the relative positioning on DPS scales in 3.2 vs 3.1? In Ulduar I was coming in top 3 on every fight, however in ToC I am usually in 7 - 9 position. My gear is relatively equal to all the mages, rogues, hunters, DK's I used to beat in Ulduar but they seem to have scaled so much better in 3.2
Yes. When you factor in the armor pen nerf, with the fact it wasn't too good for us to begin with, with the fact that everything in ToC has it, it's not hard to see why we're not scaling so well. I'm trying to recall a single item in Ulduar that had Armor Pen that I was forced to take. Plus the top end weapons were 2.7 speed.
I wouldn't be surprised if you saw larger DPS jumps in Icecrown. Pet scaling is supposedly coming, we get Fire Nova, and hopefully with the number of available bosses it will be possible to give hunters the ArP they need and us the Crit/Haste we need.
The ArP nerf isn't actually a nerf, in the way that it made it not useful to stack Arp. It's still quite possible, and it isn't really a stretch to get there with the current items in ToGC. I like to think about it as a scaling adjustment inbetween content so that classes who favor those item builds are grossly OP. Weapon speed also isn't that large of a factor because other classes had access to the same weapons as us, although the drop frequency was quite a bit lower.
The DK's had their single target buffed, and unholy blight nerfed.
Rogues had access to better weapons, Golden Saronite Dragons were pretty much defaulted to enh shamans because rogues can use swords, but GSD was still BIS for them. Now it's incredibly easy (I run with 3 rogues and we all have DW axes) to get a BIS combination of weapons. This allows them to change their spec, and do more dps.
You have situations like hard mode Gormok where it's beneficial to be a cleaving class that can attack snobolds while still dpsing the boss. This is even more apparent on Anub. We have our totem, but it doesn't compare to any class that can actually cleave, which DK's actually do now with Death Strike (or heart strike, forgot :< )
All the 2h using classes got a huge DPS increase with the insane 2h's that dropped in ToC which are still pretty easy to get. Especially fury warriors which have always been amazing towards the end of every expansion.
Then you have the encounters. Pretty much every encounter in Ulduar is a single target fight, and if you do it right you never have to move. This is really good for us because of magma totem and not having to of its range and re drop it wasting GCD's. Pretty much every fight in ToC is the opposite of that, you have a majority of the fight where you have either something more important to do, or you have to chase something around. That 600 or so DPS from magma totem isn't very consistent, that alone will drop you from top 5, towards #10.
You also have the ilvl's from gear. If you've read how item stat mechanics work, it's not just "I got x ilvl's, that means x amoutn of crit and x amount of ap" it's a lot more than that. This is going to let all the other DPS that favor arp and haste to get their caps pretty much without trying without skimping on very nice stats like AP and crit. There's a massive amount of DPS there.
10/21/09, 11:10 AM
