Relwin edit: Keep the discussion towards deaths resulting from encounter abilities lining up in such a way that you could consistently die to the same thing despite superior play (example - Thorim hard mode: Sif novaing, volleying, and a CL bounce that other classes survive with low health) This should not be about how you are too awful to dodge fire or that you got unlucky once on an encounter with some RNG.
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I've seen a number of discussions lately re: Enhancement health in Ulduar and how it lags behind that of other melee classes -- possibly by as much as 10%.

This is nothing new -- those of us who have been Enhance for some time will I'm sure remember entering Black Temple with far less than the baseline health needed. However, when combined with the increased use of melee range environmental effects and dps stacking in hard modes, the decreased base health is apparently affecting survivability for a fair number of shamans.

I'm starting this thread to provoke some deep analysis on the issue and provide a set of best practices for boosting survivability at a minimal loss of DPS. This is not a thread to play armchair quarterback on how Blizzard "should" fix the issue -- let's stick to solutions that are within our immediate control.

Some questions to get us started:
- Which fights are common causes of unavoidable death by environment?
- How much stamina is required to ensure survival in these fights in case of an unlucky RNG? Don't just quote "well, rogues have X so we need it too" -- try to compare timing and amount of potential incoming damage.
- Can this problem be solved via self-healing?
- Can this problem be solved by requesting healers give us special attention?

Some potential solutions to weigh:
- Speccing into Toughness and/or Elemental Warding (possibly as a second spec)
- Carrying a few pieces of high-stamina gear to swap when needed
- Which pieces/slots offer the greatest +health buff for the lease EP cost?
- Situational use of Glyphed Stoneclaw Totem (3960 damage shield for 15s every 30s)

Onos I cross-posted you onto the other forums since this debate has been ongoing there and I raised a challenge there this morning that you unknowingly accepted.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Enh Shaman - Stamina, Survivability in PVE

If anyone else has examples of RNG killing you on a raid due to a low health pool post them in THAT thread since that is where the developers take note of things and potentially change/fix them. Post it here on the EJ forums and Juice will be displeased with you and that is not something that anyone really desires and will likely end in your being infracted or banned or both.

To stay somewhat on topic with this post, lowest dps losses giving greatest amounts of survivability are Stoneclaw Glyph (~60dps) or trading 1 point in Call of Flame and 2 points in Imp Shields for 3/3 Elemental Warding (~40dps in a single target situation)

I'm really upset with my survivability while progressing the Ulduar Hard Modes as Enhance. I died many times during a single GCD on random elements in boss fights. I just can't compete with the bigger health pool of plate wearer and/or the cooldowns of Rogues and Death Knights.

I'm running 3/3 Elemental Warding since we are progressing the Hard Modes. However it's not possible to get 5/5 Toughness without swapping great DPS talents instead.

The Stoneclaw Glyph isn't an option for me, since it causes the GCD.

Therefore I'm using [Flask of Stoneblood] for some encounters and I'm switching to [Slime Stream Bands]: Enchant Bracers - Major Stamina + [Solid Sky Sapphire].

I also recommend [Figurine - Ruby Hare] or [Figurine - Monarch Crab] filled with stamina gems. I won't put stamina gems into my common gear. Should I?


I'm very curious how do you survive Freya+3? If anyone can tell, I would really appreciate it.

Freya + 3 as enhance is definitely rough. You basically have to use [Flask of Stoneblood] while progressing, although I eventually switched to endless rage after the first full night of learning. You'll sometimes need to maelstrom yourself, but it's better than not using an endless rage.

I've found that well timed wolves/SR can go a really long way. For instance on Mimiron, I'll save my wolves until phase 2 (half the time they won't run out of shock blast on phase 1 when they're told). Wolves and SR will cover the entire phase, and help healers.

I also find that having a spare tank shield lying around can help in a pinch (on trash), sure it shouldn't happen, but CC's break, things don't always get picked up. I also find myself using maelstrom on myself or chains for melee. We haven't killed 3 trees yet, but I'm sure you're right, I'll have to start using a tank flask. Bleh.

Rounced I wish I could post that thread with few examples from our Heroic: I choose you Steelbreaker! training but I'm sure you get the idea.

Once Runemaster Molgeim is dead the aura damage and damage from randomly targeted AoE ability static disruption, that Steelbreaker likes to do on melee targets, increase I find myself being always the first, and in over half of the cases, only casualty. Anyone who has tried the encounter knows that once Steelbreaker is alone every bit of dps counts. However today when we are going to try the vicious trio again I'm going to bring atleast 3/3 Elemental Warding and some nature resistance potions just in case.

My point of posting is that even tho you are sure to know you need every last bit of dps on an encounter, you still help the raid most by eliminating unnecessary deaths in earlier phases of the fight to ensure that the whole raid gets practise on last phase. The more tries that way the more the whole encounter is embedded to everyones reflexes. And then later on once you think that the healers have gotten hang of the incoming damage it's safer to use consumables for DPS.

Me being the laughingstock inside the guild for being the only one dead has nothing to do with Enhance survivability? The fact that rogues and other melee still have health to spare even after such splash damage has nothing to do with Enhance survivability?

In any case having another spec along in the raids as fragile spec and class to avoid unnecessary deaths and increasing number of tries for the last few phases would be a good idea in my opinion.

You're missing the point. But yeah, this isn't Steelbreaker discussion :>


It's pretty frustrating knowing that I have to consider putting together a stam based gearset and carry Stoneblood for learning/surviving certain Hardmodes. A well used HS, competent raid healers, anticipation of raid damage and use of 5x mael and an absurd amount of luck is obviously not something we should have to deal with just to survive a fight by a thin red line.

Hopefully the threads addressing it will get some blue attention.

I put my money where my mouth is yesterday and respecced to this The World of Warcraft Armory. Giving up 2/3 Imp Shields and 1/3 Call of Flame for 3/3 Elemental Warding. With 6% damage reduction it basically turns my 21k buffed health pool into 22.3k. There were a few times last night where I seemed to live through things that should have killed me so it feels worth the dps sacrifice while we are learning encounters.

Still feels like if I am making the choice of taking a survival talent like elemental warding that my effective health pool should be a lot closer to the plate melee dps classes then just barely equaling the leather ones, but that is getting close to qq and I'll keep that for the other forums where it might attract developer attention.

Auraiya can drop anyone if you get unlucky, though. I've seen a ret not being able to bubble in the time it took for that add to burst him down, I don't think that's really an enhancement health pool issue - especially since the add doesn't discriminate between ranged and melee.

Except we are just that much more likely to be burst down then the ret since we lack the health cushion they possess, however that is really not a discussion for this thread. We are not comparing classes here, we are trying to figure out the best options to maximize our performance since a dead shaman does no dps.

Ret not being able to bubble is the equivalent of us not being able to pop SR and is an issue with some defensive cooldowns being on the GCD while others aren't and again is way outside the scope of this thread since it is something we can bitch about but doing that here has no purpose besides pisssing off the moderators.

So far the only time I have found my lower health to be a issue is with Mimiron on phase 2 but using my wolves and Shamanistic Rage (along with my making sure to constantly be moving) gets me through the phase. I can definitely see it being a larger issue though as we begin trying hard modes in the coming weeks. It would be nice if Blizzard just increased the base health of shamans since we should not have to take talents such as Toughness and Elemental Warding for PvE.

As much as 10%? You mean 25%, right?

Our dps DKs, Paladins and Warriors have at least 6k health more than I do (Rogues/Hunters 3-4k). I'm currently sitting at 16.k HP. My BiS gear puts me at 15.5k. DKs BiS is ~22k.

On fights like hard-mode council, the only possible way to live if the green rune (whatever it's called) is cast under me, is if I receive at least two heals on my way out... or if I'm somehow lucky enough to have 5 stacks of Maelstrom just rotting to Healing Wave-save myself.

This was already posted, but a reasonable fix would be to add a 100% of INT -> STM conversion on one of our deep Enhance talents (like Mental Quickness). That may sound extreme, but we only have ~500 INT in good gear. That's 5k HP. It means we'd still behind the plate or "pure" classes, but at least we can survive all of the crazy AoE in the hard-modes.

Since shaman have ankh, don't they technically have twice the stamina that other classes do? I think that makes this mostly a non-issue.

Not really, since you lose all your buffs and don't come back with full health. I can't count the number of times I've ankhed and then been immediately killed by something small (XT bombs, chain lightning, Rune of Death).

I really think you are just trolling with this post but I'll let Vulajin answer this one since he stated it so well in regards to long cooldown dps abilities.

Each point in Improved Shields is worth ~9 dps or ~13 dps with the LS glyph.
Each point in Call of Flame is worth ~21 dps on a single target situation.
One point is required in Imp Shields to get to the deeper talents.
Elemental Focus is not required by any spec with points in Shamanistic Focus and Improved Stormstrike.
Each point in Elemental Warding is worth 2% more health.
Which means any enh shaman can trade 0.3% dps for 4% more health and 0.6% of their dps for 6% more health.
Using a Stoneblood instead of Endless Rage gives 1300 more health in exchange for 120dps or 6% health for 2% dps*.

So anyone bitching about their low health pool or getting gibbed or having to use a Stoneblood flask who hasn't moved at least the 2 points from Improved Shields into Elemental Warding (and probably should move 1 from Call of Flame into it as well) just needs to STFU.


*(in case anyone wants to argue with my math. 1300 is ~6% of 21000 health just as 6% less damage turns 21000 health into ~22300 health. One is static and the other is dynamic but they both round out to about the same on our current buffed health pools)

We do have a legitimate gripe about our health and how it compares to the other classes but this isn't the place for that and anyone bitching without trying to do anything about it is the equivalent of a drowning man refusing to grab the life preserver because the boat shouldn't have sank in the first place.

To determine the maximum gain of HP thru the lowest value of DPS lost thru all sources, I needed the values of DPS lost normalized to compare them. I used 1% DPS lost as the base.

So thru what Rouncer calculated above, 0.6% DPS lost thru EW talent = 6% HP gained. Divide both values by 0.6 to get DPS = to 1% for 10% HP gained (this just used to compare, did the same for flask, gem)
1 AP Gem = 0.4% DPS
1 STA Gem = 24 STA = 240 HP = 1.1% HP

Summary:
Thru Gems: 1% DPS loss = 2.8% HP increase
Thru Flask: 1% DPS loss = 3.0% HP increase
Thru Elemental Warding: 1% DPS loss = 10% HP increase
Thru Toughness Talent: reserved for when I can do the math or someone else before me

* Used same 21,000 HP as base assumption


Edited for a math error

My math is horrible, but the stoneclaw glyph is another great one for this calculation.

I believe that the 3rd glyph slot gives ~75 dps if i remember correctly.

Stoneclaw gives an on demand 4k damage absorb for 15 seconds with a 30 second cooldown. Calculating the usefulness of this is a bit harder as it's not a static thing, but let's just assume that since it last 15 and refresh is 30, it's a 2k hp buff. For simplicity, let's assume 20k hp, as that's usually what I sit at or close to, so it's a 10% hp buff.

75 dps is about a 1.5% dps loss for a 10% hp buff, so considering this, it takes 2nd place to Elemental Warding in terms of price for the investment.

The fact that it's a damage absorber that doesn't need to be healed to be useful probably accounts for any minor miscalculations on my part.

Actually if you are using that third glyph slot for Windfury, my calculations put it at at pretty much a 1% DPS increase.

Enhancement Glyphs a numeric comparison

It's actually a horrible option in most cases since the damage we are talking about is not a known factor so to keep it up all the time would require you to drop it every 30 seconds and then refresh SoE immediately after and even then it may not be up when you need it to be. The dps loss from keeping it up is definitely significantly higher because of the refreshing.

However it is a great option when you know the encounter well enough to predict when you would need the additional absorption. Since glyphs can be swapped at anytime and are generally cheap it should be easy enough to carry a stack for those fights where it would make sense to use it.

That 3rd glyph slot is a bit more tricky if you are the only enh shaman in the raid. Since you would have Stoneclaw down all the time, that would result in not having SoE down, thus losing that buff from you and the other physical dps.

Also I do not really agree with the 2k HP calculation, since once you take the 4k damage the shield is gone for 30s. If you have a flask, that is health that you can recover via heals for no cooldown, similar with Warding which has no real cooldown. It's more tricky than that, and we'd need to figure out HPS that we gain from each I think.

Edit; Bah beaten by rounced