I have personally spent some time trying to evaluate how good Nibelung is. Considering that I have already crunched the number for myself, I thought I might as well share them here.

t = time the valkyri stays up
p = proc chance
o = opportunities per second to trigger the proc
d = average damage per smite cast from the Valkyri
c = crit modifier
r = rate of smites, i.e. the cast time.
h = hit chance of the smites

DPS gain = (h*d*(1+0.5*c)*t*o*p/r) + f(Intellect,Spell Power,Crit Rating, Haste Rating)

• The developers have stated that the smite will always hit (h=1).
• The developers have stated that the proc chance equals 2% (p=0.02).
• The reported base crit, on wowhead comments-section, for the Valkyries is 5%, Totem of wrath/Heart of the Crusader gives another 3% and finally Improved Shadow Bolt/Improved Scorch/Winter's Chill gives 5% more (c=0.13).
• The reported damage, on wowhead comments-section, for the smites have been listed between 1591 and 1785 (d=1688).
• The reported cast time, on wowhead comments-section, for the smites have been listed as 1.81 seconds due to server delay (r=1.81).
• The opportunities per second depends on the number of attacks and what attacks are accepted. If we assume that only Flame Shock, Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt can trigger the proc, and not the DoT from Flame Shock, nor Lightning Overload or T9 4 piece bonus (considering the post by Bornakk), then for a given haste value you can take out the cast time for each spell, and the number of times each spell is used in the rotation. If we have a haste rating of 900, then the average cast time will be:
  (8*1.04 + 36*1.38)/44 = 58/44.
  
  The opportunity per second will thus be the inverse (o=44/58).

DPS gain = t*(1688*1.065*0.02*44/(58*1.81)) + f(Intellect,Spell Power,Crit Rating, Haste Rating)

For us mortals that do not have access to heroic ICC-gear, then it might be valuable to check how Nibelung is in comparison to the Frozen Bonespike and Bulwark of Smouldering Steel.

Intellect = 107 - 67 - 69 - 25 = -54
Spell Power = 741 + 18 + 2*23 - 741 - 106 = -42
Crit Rating = -59 - 60 = -119
Haste Rating = -60

The scaling factors for Intellect, Spell Power, Crit- and Haste Rating, are gathered from SimulationCraft, giving:

DPS gain = t*1581.9936/104.98 -54*0.4781 -42*1,7640 -59*1.3856 -60*1.6047

This give us that the break even point for the duration is: t = 17 sec.


Addendum:
There are posts claiming that Lightning Overload will trigger Nibelung. If this is true, then you will of course have more opportunities per second. This means that you can cast 33% more Lightning Bolts with zero cast time. For 900 haste we had 36 Lightning Bolts in the cycle, giving that with Lightning Overload we will cast in average 12 more Lightning Bolts. This gives in extension that the opportunity per second will be:
o = 56/58

The new break even point for the duration will be: t = 15 sec.

SimulationCraft and ZAP! both model fire totems already. In the latter, crit doesn't become that much more valuable compared to haste with fire totem use. Remember that the Fire Elemental doesn't benefit from the player's crit chance, only the player's intellect.

Reign of the Dead's damage in ZAP! was tweaked to get it as close as possible to actual combat log parses while still making sense mathematically. The fact that it's working out so close to things like Muradin's and Phylactery means that there's unlikely to be much significant difference between them, and in some cases (I'm thinking in particular of the potential for wasting Phylactery procs) I would expect RotD to come out on top in play. The best way to determine this would be to examine WoL parses for RotD use and compare its damage output against the expected benefit from alternative stat options (as Skajin does).

I would think that anyone with a heroic RotD would probably not want to bother spending DKP on either Phylactery or Muradin's. RotD(h) + DFO(h) is probably a serious contender for BiS. (It does, by the way, scale with both haste and crit though obviously much more so with crit.)

source: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Phylactery Underbudget?

I would think this means either a spellpower boost or a duration boost (as compared with Deathbringer's Will, see post) and would either way bring this trinket more up to par with other 264 items.

http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/2932/phylptr.jpg
The Proc was buffed to 1074 spellpower for 20 sec.

From 918 to 1074 spellpower?
That's an effective sp increase of about 30, or some 60 dps. I assume (hope?) the same kind of increase may be expected for the 277 version?

Although this still leaves DFO untouched as the best trinket, I think it ends the debate about the second BiS trinket as it should now surpass RotD and Muradin's ...

It's too bad the ICD of the trinket is so long, the recently announced change of hasted dots have hardly any effect

Our 4p has been changed on the PTR to:

Item - Shaman T10 Elemental 4P Bonus
Your Lava Burst spell increases the duration of your Flame Shock effect on the target by 5 to 6 sec.

Does wearing both DFO's, normal and heroic, work?

No, the 3.3 patch notes specifically state that Normal and Heroic versions of Icecrown Citadel rings and trinkets are considered Unique-Equipped and cannot be used at the same time.

New! (3/2) Shaman Tier-10 4-Piece Elemental set Bonus: This bonus has been slightly adjusted to account for the fact that haste now modifies Flame Shock's periodic damage ticks. The bonus now makes the shaman's Lava Burst cause Flame Shock to tick at least two additional times before expiring. (Patch 3.3.3)

Please Discuss because I think Blizz is making changing our 4-Piece set bonuses a monthly thing? Makes it hard to plan out and decide on gear dealing with this

As discussed in the 3.3 thread, it's not much of a change, and in fact in some cases it can be a buff. Essentially it's a tooltip clarification that says "you will always get at least two extra ticks of FS regardless of your haste, and it is possible for you to get more."

Edit: For those of you running Simcraft or using BiS stats for testing, I've updated my BiS lists with the changes since 3.3.2 (this includes changes in the upcoming patch). It's been established at this point that 4pc t10 is superior to 2t10+offset. Gear profiles can be found below.

T10 277 BiS Alliance

T10 277 BiS Horde

One note about these profiles: although Blizzard did change the mp5 on both versions of [Royal Scepter of Terenas II] to haste, the heroic version has not been updated on Wowhead yet, so haste values in both profiles should be increased by 71 haste rating (and mp5 reduced by 35).

Also for the sake of simplicity the professions chosen for both profiles and used in the stats comparison were JC/Enchanting.

The Alliance version does not have enough hit. You should exchange another ametrin.

Couple of problems I see with the alliance list.


First, it's under hit cap.

Second, it's using Icewalker over Tuskarrs.

If you're in BiS gear, you're doing heroic mode encounters. That extra bit of run speed is clutch on too many fights to lose.

So assuming you do drop Icewalker, to get to cap you need to put in 2 more sp/hit gems.

Compared to, say, dropping Ring of Rapid Ascent for Valanar's Other Signet Ring and no hit gems, you gain 68 crit with your setup, but at the cost of 22 SP and 28 Haste.

At that level of gear, I'm not exactly positive with his better (I know both haste and crit lose a lot of value relative to sp), but I don't know if that much crit outweighs the smaller amounts of lost haste and SP.

It does, according to the tests I ran. See above for the notes on the hit cap for that profile.

Again, no one should be taking this as some kind of bible for a single gearing path. There are always more options, these are just the two (out of many that I tried) that put out the largest numbers in the spreadsheets and sims I ran. It's not supposed to be a measure of anything other than optimal DPS under the absolute best stand-and-nuke fight conditions, or a testing tool for spreadsheet authors to test changes being made to our spec and etc.

Nibelung

So I just picked up this staff to play around with, and I'm actually very impressed with it. I have a question on whether or not it will be viable in the upcoming future.
Does it scale with raid buffs, but more importantly, does it get any benefit from the ICC dmg/healing/health buff? If it does not, this will make it crap compared to the conventional weapons.

I would hope not since I was having fun with it on the fights that I could use it on.

In my BIS list I took the t10 legs and replaced the t10 gloves with Gunship captains mittens.

This resulted in 23 more sp, 20 more critrating but 16 less haste and 18 less hit(still capped). Not sure if I overlooked something but this seems to be a better combo?



It didnt change anything. It just adjust to the future patch where flameshock is effected by haste thus the set bonus is adjusted as well.

I reran the Horde set this morning and got some conflicting results. ZAP says you're right, and shows Gunship+tier legs as being better by 3 DPS for horde, but Simcraft disagrees and has Plaguebringer's up by 2 DPS. The difference is likely small enough to be within the margin of error, so from a stats testing point of view it shouldn't matter which you use.

Just tested it to make absolutely sure; but the Flame Shock is refreshed when your Lava Burst is cast, not when it lands but is NOT refreshed if your lava burst is going to miss.

If you replace your neck with Blood Queen's Crimson Choker, your gloves with Sanctified Frost Witch's Gloves, your pants with Plaguebringer's Stained Pants and your second ring with Valanar's Other Signet Ring, you should see the following changes (also I swapped Tuskarr's Vitality for Icewalker and I have a Veiled Ametrine in my bracers to reach the hit cap):

+ 17 Spell Power, - 35 Crit Rating, and + 16 Haste rating which is showing as a small DPS increase in ZAP!

Here's my profile, although I'm a Troll with Engineering/Tailoring as, again, ZAP! supported those as the highest theoretical DPS.

Simulators don't accurately show the value of tuskarr's, you're better off runing 2 veiled imo.

No, you misunderstood me. In order to calculate the stat changes, I made a temporary profile using his professions/enchants and swapped the items around.

His profile did not have Tuskarr's Vitality and I changed the boot enchants in both profiles to use Tuskarr's when I was performing the comparison. I am aware that Tuskarr's is a large DPS increase which is why I thought it was strange the other profile was using Icewalker even though all of the hit was over cap (i.e. useless).

I am an Engineer though, and that is why you'll see Nitro Boots on my profile instead of Tuskarr's.

Finally managed to get Zap working for myself again, and the first thing I notice is that apparently, Glyph of FT weapon is now our 3rd best glyph (on fights were you can't maximize use of Glyph of Fire Ele, that is).

Anyone else see this, or is the new glyph of FS really that bad and somehow FT Weapon managed to scale back up?

Probably better for the 3.3 thread, but yes, with the changes to FS, haste, and the 4pc, Glyph of FT looks like it's #3. Won't take effect until 3.3.3 though.