Why should we use our lowest damage ability more often, just because we can? If I have the choice between MW_LB, ES, SS and LL, even if I could use LL every second, I would use everything else of this list with a higher priority. So unless they buff the direct damage of Lava Lash by some means, the 2 piece bonus is completly useless.

My guess is that these set bonuses are very early iterations indeed. If you use LL on every cooldown, the set bonus is a ~30% buff to Lava Lash (with the caveat of more melee strikes meaning more MW procs, etc.) while the 2T8 Setbonus is a straight 20% buff to LL and SS, it's hard to imagine that the set bonuses, as written, will compare. Both T8 set bonuses were more or less better than the T7 bonuses, so it's hard to imagine that Blizzard doesn't know what's good as far as set bonuses go for Enh Shaman (although the T6 bonuses left much to be desired, we've since been reworked and reitemized).

Has anybody an explanation why the t9 totem has a 200 ap bonus and the relics of every other class gets a bonus worth 400+ ap?
Seems to be kind of strange, that there are higher spellpower bonuses then our ap (234 spellpower vs 200 sp).

Together with these horrible t9 bonuses there is clearely some space to overhaul things.

According to the simulator, Lava Lash comes out to be roughly 5.5% of overall damage verses Stormstike's 6.5% of overall damage. Ironically that set bonus seems to make Lava Lash do more overall damage than Stormstrike does. However, I seriously doubt it even comes close to beating t8.25 4 piece bonus...you guys may be using that through Icecrown!

I wouldn't make much of these new set bonuses yet. They are most likely placeholders or early iterations as most of the earlier bonuses have given something interesting and yet these are just plain CD reduce/damage increase/crit increase. 61 second longer flame shock would really be an "interesting" bonus tho...

2 set bonus is complicated.As levva said we have to sim it to see the real value.Why you may ask.Why we may want to use our lowest damage ability more often.

Lets say your LL does 2300 dps on average.Now most shamans use it every 8 sec .So the dps is 2300/8=287.5 .With the 2 set bonus you will be able to use it every 6 sec so 2300/6=383.3.We have a 95.8dps increase.

Now we set the priority higher (1st LL then everything else) so we use it almost every 6 seconds.The dps is 383.3.With the new set bonus the dps is 2300/4=575.So we have now 191.7 dps increase.

Ofcourse we lost a lot of dps because we set 1st priority the lowest damage ability.So what sim will tell us is if what we gain is higher than what we lose.

With a quick look it seems that the 2 set bonus is very close to t8 2 set bonus which imo is wrong.The set bonuses from each tier to the other should be better just like the item itself is.

4th set bonus on the other hand must be a place holder.5% crit to stormstike is like 20-25 dps increase atm .If it stays like it we may end up using 2 pieces of t8

This is a faulty analysis. It assumes your only special attack is Lava Lash.

Two cooldowns are over. Which to choose? The one that does the most damage over the GCD/Cast Time it consumes is the correct answer.

You should always prioritize your lowest damage ability last, regardless of how often you can spam it.

If you frequently find yourself with your GCD expired and no talents off cooldown, then the set bonus for LL will offer a little more DPS.

Me? I frequently got higher damage talents off cooldown waiting for the GCD to expire.

I have to agree with set bonuses being weak. Priority system idea itself is that we pick best attack from available ones and LL cooldown change has absolutely no effect on the damage it does so it does remain in same place. Also it is curious that LL cooldown is reduced by set bonus while totem has far longer buff period than pvp one. It is kinda conflicting in sense that one helps to use it more often while other seems to realise we do not use it on every cooldown as is already.

Yah faster cooldowns definitely aren't useful right? Reverberation - Spell - World of Warcraft

I think i was clear enough in my 1st post .It WASN'T an analysis .It was a hypothesis .It was just maths to saw what someone told in a previous post :Why we MAY want to use our LL more often.I don't say we will.I told we must S-I-M it 1st.

You wrote exactly the opposite from what i said:
Ofcourse we lost a lot of dps because we set 1st priority the lowest damage ability.So what sim will tell us is if what we gain is higher than what we lose.

No need to get upset. I was just pointing out simple math.

If A > B, then Choosing B when A is ready is not maximizing your damage output.

And if a SIM shows otherwise, then there is something wrong with the simulation.

I dont remember saying that - probably because I didn't.

That said, I didn't explain myself well either. Your average usage will actually go up - but only slightly because LL is more likely to be off cooldown when all your other abilities are not. That is, you hit LL in the times you find yourself not in GCD lock and waiting for other cooldowns, but it's still unlikely to be any higher in your priority system.

That makes this bonus a little underwhelming - less than the 20% bonus to SS and LL from 2-piece T8? Possibly, but time (and ability) stop me from doing the math.

You'd be in a better position to judge on the average usage, however, as I know you like to run with 3/5 reverberation. Do you find yourself casting more ES than rouncer on the same fight?

You still don't get it....

Lava lash is our lowest damage attack.We ALL know this.If we use LL instead of another attack we will lose dps .We all agree in that as well.Lets say we will lose X dps.

Let's say K is the damage lava lash does and S is how often we use it now so K/S=LL dps K/S-2 - K/S the benefit we get from the 2 set bonus .

Now we use it more often lets say every N seconds where N<S. So now we have K/N=LL dps and the benefit will be K/N-2 -K/N.What you can't understant is that K/S-2 - K/S < K/N-2 - K/N with K,N,S>2.Why? As you said ... simple maths..
{KS-K(S-2)} / S(S-2) < {KN - K(N-2)} /N(N-2)=>2K/S(S-2) < 2K /N(N-2)

1/S(S-2)<1/N(N-2)=>N(N-2)<S(S-2) but S>N ....so...

So by using LL more often we have a dps increase of Y.if X>Y it doesnt worth to use it more often.But what if we see on sim that X<Y????

I really cant explain it better to you.So if the sim shows otherwise there would be nothing wrong with the simulation....

Our t9 stats (for the moment at least):
ilvl258 (Heroic: 25 man)
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/..._melee_258.jpg
There are ilvl 245 and 232 sets as well, but they are all itemized the same. We are getting loaded up with crit, replacing the large amounts of haste on our t8. The 4pc bonus on our tier (5% increased chance to crit with Stormstrike) is surely a placeholder, as is the totem. Although the 2pc bonus looks pretty good, sufficient to keep the rotation quick paced after losing 4pc t8. The t9 would be a lot more attractive if it lost some hit rating and gained some haste rating in its place.

The sim wont show it otherwise. This is simple logic and I'm really shocked to read, that some don't seem to understand that. If you're limited by the GCD, your best choice would always to use the ability at a time, that grants you the most damage per GCD, unless there is maybe some type of important secondary effect (like the debuff of Stormstrike). Lava Lash is our lowest damage per GCD ability and nothing indicates, that this will change in 3.2. And it's secondary effects are no way strong enough to counter-act that. So this bonus wont increase our dps by a noticeable amount, because we just don't have the time to use LL more often. There was a reason, that the cooldown and damage of LL was increased back in beta. And before someone mentions it, yes, Lava Lash scales better then Earth Shock, but I don't think, that this will be enough to give it a higher priority in T9 raiding, especially with the lose of the current T8 2pc bonus.

I would like to think, that both bonuses are just place-holders. But if I remember correctly, in all these years they always only changed the values of such bonuses on the PTR, never the whole basic design. And in the end, why invest time in progamming place-holders at all? Makes no sense to me, so I guess we will have to live with them.

With 4 blue sockets and in my opinion a over-abundance of hit rating the stats also don't look that nice. But sure, in the end it will be better then T8, just because the incredible jump in item-level with the heroic version (258 vs. 226).

In terms of totems, it could be, that the elemental one is better then the enhancement one for us depending on the proc rate of it.

After seeing the stats on the t9 I am getting a little concerned that the only expertise on mail gear that we have is progressively dwindling. After adding it to talents it is almost like we are about to end up where we were before that change. Anyone else feel this way?

3 pieces with hit rating could potentially be an issue...because they added the new hit trinket as a badge item. While that isn't necessarily a bad thing (since we won't have to worry about spellcapping even in 10's w/o 3% hit debuff), hit tends to sim for less value than haste, at least for me. Plus I think that haste may become more valuable once we drop our T8 4pc.

It depends on what the weapons, rings, necks etc. have on them...in ulduar it's possible to cap it w/o using gems and enchants. So there will be some more coming from gear surely.

When determining which ability to prioritize you will need to take into account the opportunity cost of using the ability as well. In this case time with CD's up since that is damage lost.

Since SS brings added benefits i'll give the example with LL vs ES where both abilities are off CD at the same time.

So, with a 6 sec LL and a 6 second ES we basically have

ES - 1/4LL > LL - 1/4ES

Now, what changes with the new CD is the opportunity cost so we get approximately

ES - 1/3LL (<=>) LL - 1/4ES

Now, put in your average LL and ES damage and you'll have the answer of which one to prioritize.

Cooldowns will in no way affect priorities. Prioritisation is purely based on what will give you the most damage for your GCD use. It has been pretty solidly proven that ES > LL. Even if LL had no cooldown at all, we'd still be prioritising every other direct damage ability over LL, because LL does less raw damage for your GCD.

Let's look at an extreme example - if neither ES nor LL had a CD. Mana issues aside, you'd be spamming the hell out of your ES button, and LL would only even be used to keep your relic buff up.

The only way that LL would move up in the priority list would be if Blizzard implemented a change that upped the attractiveness of casting LL, either through a damage buff or some other fringe benefit.

Your math is entirely flawed. It doesn't work like that at all. At any point in the rotation the correct choice of ability is the one that gives the highest dmg/cast time, regardless of cooldowns. This of course assumes that the abilities does not affect each others damage so there are some exceptions (SS debuff). If Lava Lash had no cooldown at all, would that make us want to use it every GCD? No, we would still use ES, MW and SS when they are up since they have higher dmg/cast time and fill in any remaining holes with more LL.

I wonder if that is why we get the totem which gives us AP from LL. That could make LL more attractive, although assuming a standard 45s ICD you would still not use LL more than other abilities.

However I disagree that cooldowns do not affect priorities. What we need to look at is maximum damage per multiple of CDs. I know that sounds badly expressed, so I will try and clarify it.

What we will have with this set bonus is:

SS - 8s CD
ES - 6s CD (assuming no points in reverb because the calculations get more complicated)
LL - 4s CD
1.5s GCD (again no haste because it mucks up the calculations)

So, our period of evaluation should be 24s (common period to get for each ability a full number of hits).

This means we will get - 3 SSs, 4 ESs and 6 LLs. Also assuming no MW5 procs in this, and that the SS debuff is always up (such that I prioritize ES over SS)

Assuming the standard priority we will have (with tx meaning time x):

SS (t0) - ES (t1.5) - LL (t3) - LL (t7) - ES (t8.5) - SS (t10) - LL (t11.5) - ES (t14.5) - LL (t16) - SS (t17.5) - LL(t20) - ES(t21.5) - LL (t24)

Now the standard 6s LL will result in:

SS (t0) - ES (t1.5) - LL (t3) - ES (t7.5) - SS (t9) - LL (t10.5) - ES (t13) - LL (t16.5) - SS (t18) - ES (t19.5) - LL (t22.5)

So we basically gain 2 extra LLs per 24s (now those calculations are very rough, as MW5, reverb and haste will modify all that)

And what has that to do with our priorities? It's clear, that if you leave MW5, Magma and LS out of the equation, we would have some spare time to use the additional Lava Lashes. But that changes nothing with our priorities. Even in your example, you just fit in some more LLs, while nothing better is ready. In reality with all our other abilities this wont be the case, which brings me again to the conclussion, that this 2pc bonus is of no real use. Well, except for the situation where the mob is magic/nature-immune or you're maybe the only interrupter and need to use Wind Shock. But I think we can all agree, that a tier set bonus shouldn't be that limited.