I was considering this for my BiS set.

25 - Normal :-Profiler - Wowhead
25 - Heroic :- Profiler - Wowhead

There are a couple of assumptions involved namely I am limiting it to 264 ( apart from the ring which is easily accessible) and below for now (it will take a while before all heroic items are available so I prefer aiming for normal mode gearing first)and that 4pc provides a dps boost and also I did not want to be competing with up to 4 other cloth specs on items so Ive avoid cloth items. Its entirely possible for me to claim on cloth items but tbh I dont like doing it unless there is no alternative which there are even if they arent as good since it just slows guild gearing with too much competition.

Does anyone have any comments or ideas on what could be changed?

Majority of items can be upgraded to their HC equivalent I imagine, Weapon would be upgrade to bonespike with some gemming maybe needing to be changed to reach hit cap. boots waist at least would need to be upgraded to cloth as I didnt see any alternatives.

Edit: Added a 25 Heroic version as well.

I assume you're talking about [Fetish of Volatile Power] which is from Togc 10^^. Anyway, the reason why the static haste is better is because the fetish will easily bring you over the haste softcap with the on use ability. The softcap is currently 1269, and that trinket procs up 512 haste. So if you remove the totemproc aswell you need to be at (1269-512-200=557haste) for it to be fully effective. Above that you will start clipcasting your LvBs and also CL.

Another thing to note is as you may have gotten sp>haste>>>crit. [Abyssal Rune] will have an equivalent amount of EP to the fetish because of this. The procrate of the abyssal rune is also at 25% so the uptime will be quite high when the ICD goes off. So basicly the passive bonuses are about equal while the Proc bonus>the on use one. Having a proc with spellpower will also be better because you won't have to modify your rotation either, which increased haste will means you'll have to.

Actually, just commenting on the heroic set, you have selected an unattractive piece of T10 to be replaced. The dps difference between yours and T10 shoulders is very small (~10 dps loss) while you can gain significant dps by either replacing the gloves or the legs while maintaining the hit (gunship mittens or plaguebringer's legs)

Otherwise it seems the logical set, where we all expect a better weapon to drop off Arthas

*Edit* The 4pc t10 changes were changed to something along the lines of "Successful Lava Burst casts will increase the duration of Flame Shock by 6 seconds," As such, this post is no longer valid.

Not really. 4pc T9 buffed our Lava Burst by increasing the spellpower it received by 20%. This new set bonus doesn't equal this one. Importantly, our Flame Shock has to be on our target in order for our Lava Burst to be a guaranteed crit. We can't increase the duration of our Flame Shock debuff when it has been dispelled from our target.

Your gear builds are pretty much exactly what I'm going for. I was a bit torn on getting the 4 piece set bonus, but with the proposed change of increasing the duration of Flame Shock I believe it will be worth it.

Even Troll engineers value haste > crit, because if you hit the cap with all buffs active you just chain them instead.

Yea, I changed the setup and it netted me more spell power and haste:
Original: Profiler - Wowhead
Modified as per your suggestions: Profiler - Wowhead

Sadly at the rate my 25 man group is going, I'm not sure I'll be able to acquire some of that gear. :\

I received a [Midnight Sun] from ICC10 on Wed. night, but don't think it's worth using over my [Blade of the Silver Disciple] yet. Sadly think we're gonna have to wait for Arthas for a weapon that's more itemized for us.

Item Being Discussed; Dislodged Foreign Object

I guess what I am trying to ask is, that item with the stats it has valid; 155haste / 1050 Spell Power granted on proc was stated the "Last" choice for it, as an elemental shaman.

I froze up as I never speak out, but to be put in the final decision on things is a bit drastic for the effort I put into the raid.

EDIT: As stated before a soft cap is over 1250 to start clipping our CL/LvB.. At this point I am sitting around 1132 or so raid buffed, valid argument when putting in for the trinket via Loot Council?

EDITx2: Took out the QQ

I would say so. Once you have enough haste, CL should be dropped from the rotation. It is true that haste's benefit will drop some as LvB will be below a 1 second cast, but it will still benefit lightning bolt enough to justify haste trinkets/procs/etc. This much haste in a single trinket may also allow you to change some haste/sp gems to crit/sp, though the dps gain will be fairly minimal.

Well, sorry to hear you have to deal with Loot Council instead of dkp, but in my view (check also Zamir's excel work) ele shammies have every right on this trinket, even when near the haste softcap.

We benefit greatly from haste as a class, (like e.g. mages) even as the softcap reduces the DEP of extra haste rating to 80%-90% of the pre-softcap value. Using this lower DEP per haste point, you will see the trinket still outclasses Muradin's (also the heroic one) and is about equal to the heroic Reign. In other words, it is still a great upgrade. The simple reason is that LB is still our most used dmg spell and this one is not adversily affected until you have 100% haste, which is way beyond the 1269 haste even with bloodlust.

Whether it is a better upgrade for someone else always remains a discussion, depending on what shitty trinkets the other guy has. Your Loot Council is however wrong in deciding this is not a good upgrade / great trinket for ele shammies, certainly with your current trinkets. This trinket is a ~300 dps upgrade for you and you will be hard-pressed to find a single item giving you this kind of upgrade!

And to continue this discussion further, the Sindragosa trinket is BiS by a long mile, also for shammies, although we may not historically be a dot-class.....

Edit: Answered myself.

There's a question of viable vs. most useful. As a shaman, a gear will always be less useful for you than it would be for someone else, simply because we scale worse. If your loot council will use that logic, you may as well quit now, because there will be NO loot for you in heroic mode, none whatsoever. However, given that you do have Leggings of Awakening and Icehowl belt, I'll assume your loot council is reasonable. If that is the case, tell them this: Elemental Shamans scale best with spellpower and haste. In your current gear, both Object and Reign will be close together, but a massive upgrade in dps (side note, you're one of the few people I've ever seen that has Abyssal Rune far under both of those). Even if you do hit the softcap, you'll still have haste worth more than any other stat but spellpower and BiS projections show both Dislodged Foreign Object and Sindragosa dot-based trinket as our major upgrades.

As far as I can see, since the trinket is so superior for everyone, the raid would benefit the most by giving the item to someone with bad trinkets. If they're looking for long term itemization, then elemental would be under mages and warlocks, but definitely parallel to each and every hybrid. In fact, at some item levels and in certain situations, Object is a bigger upgrade for an elemental shaman than for an arcane mage, the spec mages will be running with most - one could therefore even argue that for those specific item levels and situations, giving Object to elemental would be prefered (of course arguing this point would be silly, as it can easily be countered by pointing out other situations, it just shows how silly your loot council's claim is).

In other words, your loot council is wrong. I'm somewhat puzzled that you didn't discuss this ahead of looting, especially since presenting evidence is easier early on than in the very situation.

Just to clarify something here: Haste over a certain point doesn't affect LvB, neither does crit. 33 haste rating = 1% whereas 45 crit rating = 1% crit. Both crit and haste affects LB, but you also have FS's direct damage and dot that is affected by crit and not haste, so you'll end up with crit affecting roughly 10% more of your damage than haste does. This however is not nearly enough to make up for the gap in rating per percent between the two. Another thing is that crit has a diminishing return on keeping clearcasting up, meaning that if you crit with 2 procs of CC up you'll have "wasted" 1 proc. I know this isn't a very good way of putting it, but it works to make this rather simple as I can't be bothered with doing the math . The point is that haste will be better than crit for us until you get your LB's down below 1 sec, which won't happen unless you get 2k+ haste, which is highly unlikely. So changing sp/haste gems to crit/sp gems would just be a waste of money and a loss in dps unless the above criteria is met.

Thats the BiS Gear for heroic modes but the weapon will change if blizz published the Arthas loots. Horde must change the ring with the neck

-> 25 Heroic BIS Gear WoWHead-Profiler <-

I just noticed Wrath of Air Totem is doing alot more then 5% Haste since its bringing my spell cast times down twice as much as items that have even more then 5% Haste. i.e. Disloged Foreign Object/Totem of Electrifing Wind. Anyone know why?

Actually Ike, it's a tie.
If you do the math using Zamir's coefficients, the dps of a BiS 4T10 + mittens or a 4T10 + plaguebringer's is the same within 5 dps. This is both true for a full 277 gearset (8 vs 2 over hitcap, no gems required) or a full 264 gearset (need gems to get to hitcap).

There is a slight difference in haste/sp/crit for both configurations (legs config give more haste/sp and less crit)

I must say I like this because it gives us every freedom of picking what we like and upgrade through 2 paths. You can either pick whatever you fancy based on the stats or the looks or on what non-set item comes your way first; it makes no real difference

Edit: it does appear slightly different for a draenei where you are over hitcap already in 264 gear using the offset legs but under hitcap using the mittens. Even so, the difference is smaller then 10 dps between the two

It's because of the way haste buffs work. Add up all the haste you get from ratings, and then multiply each source of haste you get otherwise.

If you have 25% haste from gear (820 rating), then adding WoA will not give you 30%.

1.25*1.05=1.3125% haste

That means with 25% haste from gear, you will be at 31.25% haste after dropping your totem.

If you have 1270 haste rating, WoA, and Moonkin aura, then it'll be as follows:

1270/32.79=38.73% haste

1.3873*1.05*1.03=1.5003 which means 50.03% haste. If it were additive, then it'd be 46.73% which is wrong

And Blizzard just fucked us over on weapons.

[Royal Scepter of Terenas II] is our best in slot. Sure, there's a dagger ([Tel'thas, Dagger of the Blood King]), but 100 sp trumps 70 haste.


Yay for healing weapons.

That isn't even a healing weapon, since resto shamans prefer haste on their weapons - it's essentially the same itemization issue than with early Quel'Delar mace - and given that there are two perfectly itemized swords, I'm now 100% certain they're doing it on purpose. What the purpose is, though, is beyond me.

It seems indeed done on purpose for 25 raid players. My guess is Blizz is on the standpoint that as hybrid dmg dealers we are already not allowed to output the same dmg as a pure dmg caster, but also must have hybrid weapons (or at least less uber weapons) decreasing our relative dps further.

We are 71 haste behind the well-itemized sword which is >135 dps; this to me seems a much too large difference. Of course said pure dmg casters will be happy to see they will not have to compete with elemental/resto shamans for the best itemized weapon (which is indeed a major issue <sarcasm>)

I neither understand nor appreciate this policy since all our unique buffs can also be provided by a resto shaman, and other buffs are usually accounted for anyway. I don't see why the high-end raiders should be punished further by having to work with sub-par weapons...

There is no whining, Alliada. This thread was created with the intent of finding optimal gear and a simple cold fact is that the optimal weapon for us is a mace with wasted stats (or before Lich King, dagger with wasted stats). Since Quel'Delar had the exact same mace and had to be fixed later on, it is logical to assume that the stats must be intentional - simply because doing the same mistake twice back to back is highly improbable, especially since there ARE perfectly optimized weapons in ICC that just so happen to be swords. Now the question is whether this is it or the weapon will be optimized in the future. Personally, I find the latter unlikely, as we have had a similar situation before.

In other words, at this point, BiS gear includes Royal Scepter of Terenas II (spellpower, crit, mp5). This means that our projected bis gear stays as it was, the only modification being the weapon.