• Binkenstein

Important!

Read this and this before asking any questions in this thread.

 

droppagrogan

From the PTR the set bonuses from Elemental are:

Shaman T9 Elemental 2P Bonus (Flame Shock) (Class: Shaman) -- Increases the duration of your Flame Shock spell by 6 sec.
Shaman T9 Elemental 4P Bonus (Lava Burst) (Class: Shaman) -- Increases the damage done by your Lava Burst spell by 20%

What exactly is this trying to say? I would have thought they were already affecting non-periodic spell critical strikes, or is this a bug fix?

 

tufy

Clarification. Some people might assume that since Flame Shock crits with T8, that it would have procced Oath / Focus, so Blizzard changed the tooltip to clarify that this isn't the case.

Also: 20% damage increase on LvB? As in, 20% damage done increase, not critical damage? That's decent bonus... 150... 160 dps increase at 2800 spellpower (calculated in my head, I'm afraid, but I'm sure Bink will have reliable numbers asap). A bit over 3%, seems in line with previous bonuses.

I sincerely don't like the relic, though, hope it's a placeholder.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

• Binkenstein

There are no actual figures for the set bonuses yet, just place-holder values (You can't increase the damage of a spell by 0.021 seconds, and increasing FS duration by 61 seconds is OP), unless you can prove otherwise.

Posted thoughts here: http://elitistjerks.com/blogs/binken...l_changes.html

 

Moshne

I'm a bit disappointed that they keep going back to the proc haste totem. It should be a bit more reliable with our haste levels than it was in BC, which means we can probably keep a pretty damn high uptime on it if they don't throw some hidden cooldown onto it.

I still have some of the old formulas I was kicking around for the BC badge totem I can plug it into.

20% damage on Lava Burst seems like they are trying to keep the spell relevant for us, which I suppose is nice, wouldn't shock me if you saw people trying to weave the 4pc bonus into PVP with the burst potential for it though.

However, the biggest thing I'm noticing is that we have 3 pieces of t9 with hit on it. The 258 level gear has 272 hit rating between the three pieces, meaning that they are over the hit cap on them alone for a draenei. It seems like wishful thinking that all the other top iLvl gear will have no hit on it, so we are going to have to be making some interesting choices on pieces of gear to take to minimize waste. One of those three pieces is likely going to be getting cut from our BiS to compensate for the massive hit overage we are likely to get.

 

Lucitron

2 piece bonus with 6 more seconds will roughly speaking save you a quarter of GCD on single target nuking (18+6 sec gives that instead of 4 casts to reach 72 sec, it takes 3 casts). The 4 piece bonus with 20%(confirmed?) boost to Lava Burst sounds nice, but worth to note here is that if you look on other class-sets, then you see a lot of "<insert ability> gets 5% crit chance". I.e. you get the impression that there are a lot of placeholders here.

Addendum:
Did some additional rough calculations on the DPS increase you get from the 2p T9 bonus, and we were then talking about 50-60 DPS. This should answer the question if you should break 4p T8 or not.

Update:
The 2p bonus is currently 9 more seconds on Flame Shock. This will allow you to save one GCD every 54th second, which in extension means that this bonus is roughly worth 55 DPS.


When it comes to the relic, then I would wager it is not set in stone either. Just some very rough calculations, with the assumption it has 10% proc chance and 45 sec internal cooldown, gives that it would in the long run offer about 40 Haste Rating.

For fun I asked myself how long duration the new relic should have, instead of 12 sec, in order to give it 65% uptime. My rough answer was that it should last for 40 sec in that case. One alternative to make it competitive to Totem of Hex, is if this new relic offers a lot more haste. Heck, 200 haste rating sounds a bit too even to be a final number, so it is quite possible that the haste rating is just a placeholder. A nice figure here would probably be something like 650 haste rating.

Later in the thread it is mentioned that it has no internal cooldown, and a high proc-chance, making the two paragraphs above meaningless.

At 7:45, offices are empty. Some could get bored, but I stay calm, I know how to adapt. While waiting for them I have time to take a coffee.

 

kraken_hs

Relic

The relic seems basically the same as the current 15 badges of heroism.

Badges of heroism item:
[Totem of the Elemental Plane] (196 haste, 10 secs)

New item:
Totem of Electrifying Wind - 200 haste, 12 secs

So, unless the uptime on this totem is close to 100%, which seems unlikely, this totem looks like it will sit around unused.

Set Bonuses

2 piece makes rotations longer, gives about 1500 extra damage per flame shock, and allows us to use less time refreshing it. Not terrible, but nothing special

4 piece bonus, a quick back of the envelope calculation:
Assuming lava burst averages of 12k (Probably reasonable for t9 gear, perhaps on the low side), the 4 piece bonus will push that average up to 14.4k, for an extra 2400 per lava burst. If we're casting lava burst every 10 secs (Again, not the tightest rotation, but not terrible), then it's 240 dps, and it will get better if my averages dmg and rotation times are conservative.

Overall, not bad, if a little dull.

Badge gear

Another worry I've got is that yet again, the first pass of badge loot doesn't have anything an elemental shaman would want.

Helms/shoulders, there's an mp5 and a physical dps item. Rings, there's either a spirit or mp5 option only

The +hit trinket isn't horrible, but doesn't exactly fill me with wonder.

This is exactly the same as happened with emblems of conquest. Both the badge items, and the runed orb recipes were of very little use to elem shammies, unless we were willing to drop down and use cloth/leather items, and they make 5 different necks, and none of them are much use to us, unless we have very bad gear already, as so much budget is wasted on useless stats.

 

drakonslair

I have the same concerns as you Kraken about the items available from badges and also LW which I didnt see anything for ( and yet another spirit dps ring :/ )

I kinda hoped they would make the 2pc bonus the same as the Glyph of Flameshock ( not consumed) so we could use the Glyph of of Lava again which could go well with the 4pc bonus.


Edit: Also does anyone else kinda dislike where they are going with relics? They are turning them into mini trinkets that only proc on a single ability, I think I prefered them as more static effect.

 

Conq[SUN]

Did anyone test the 'badge'-changes? Emblems of Conquest will drop in Heroics? Meaning we can get Ulduar lvl gear from Heroics?

And they can be exchanged to Emblems of Heroism/Valor? Meaning I finally have a chance to aquire [Totem of Hex]?

 

Stel

Didn't yet had an occasion to try it but patch notes clearly state that we can get hero/valor badges for conquest ones.

 

Zoya

I just calculated the total Hit rating given by the whole 258 set.

- 94 on chest
- 102 on legs
- 76 on gloves

Totals up to 272 hit rating which converts to 10.37 %

Assuming the spellhitcap is 17%
-1 % dreanei
-3% talents
- 3% Boomkin/Shadowpriest

Leaves us alliance shamans..... overcapped by just wearing the tier gear..

 

Retherok

I had one question not about the tier gear, but about the new caster trinket that resembles The Lightning Capacitor from TBC, and later the Thunder Capacitor from leveling. Is this trinket proc effect better vs. straight spell power stacking for elemental? I can see the DPS calculations from the current trinkets that give static spell power, but there hasn't been a trinket like this that has been good enough to think twice about our current spell power trinkets.

Since the only ICD involved with this trinket is the 2.5 second delay on gaining another charge, would elemental's high amount of crits make this better for us than others?

 

Moshne

There is more to that 2.5 second delay. If you have a LC or TC in your bank to test, you can see that the 2.5 second delay is on generating another charge after a discharge. If this functionality stays the same it keeps the value a bit higher, but with it being static damage, (doesn't scale with our spell damage) I can't see it being a long term trinket for us.

 

kingkaos

I guess the only solution to this problem would be to remove that stupid unbalanced racial.

 

Zoya

Haha, I think all alliance dps count that buff as 'always there'.

Still means for horde shamans that with the set they shouldnt wear more then ~0.6 % hit which means that non spirit/mp5 non set pieces will be even harder to find.

As it is I'm wearing the T8.5 resto helm because I 'need' to dump hit ( and it has lovely stats in general ). With items where there is over 100 hit rating on it this will get worrse, making our itemization even harder.

 

Souai

The legs have crit over haste. They're probably not going to be the best source of hit available.

Both bonuses don't look very appealing to me. There are a few situations where an extension of flame shock's duration can be helpful and a significant dps increase but in the vast majority of available content it feels lackluster. If we want to take advantage of it in single target movement fights we'll be restricted to frost shock and earth shock's new range of 25 yards. I see it being a boon in encounters where we're expected to assist in interrupts. It is also beneficial in fights where we have multiple targets for dps that live more than 18 seconds. It's not the type of bonus that's easy to slap a dps number to. It is probably at its weakest for spreadsheet simulations.

I haven't seen anything about the four piece bonus that doesn't involve increasing damage by seconds. To equate to our current bonus provided by our tier eight, I think it would have to be at least a 12% straight increase to damage done by Lava Burst. Too little of our damage comes from the ability currently, even in the best of situations. It doesn't seem like a great target for a set bonus, as it's damage per cast may get ugly for battleground style pvp if they go that route.

The item level jump was big enough to the heroic gear to strip our tier 8. Going from tier 8.25 helm to the 258 tier 9 helm is going to be at least 150 dps using ilvl 245 stat weights.

The ilvl 232's, however, are only going to be 31 dps better a piece or so, and will probably be much more situational than straight upgrades. I can't imagine breaking our current set for the 10 man version unless the encounter specifically favors long duration flame shocks.

I don't think there is a way to strike a balance between providing enough of a dot duration increase that it's meaningful in pve and at the same time not fun destroying in pvp.

 

Dra

From a short test on training dummies it does seem to have 100% uptime. It has a high proc chance (25% or so) and no internal cooldown.

 

Borninexile

I can get you some numbers after i finish raiding tonight, but it is 6 seconds added onto flame shock and there is actually a very large jump in damage for lava burst, somewhere in the vicinity of, top end damage on the tool tip goes up to 1900. I can try and get some screenshots after my raid but it is a VERY large jump.

On target dummies in 4pc T9 with Thunderfall totem my lava bursts were critting for no less than 13,500.

 

daia

The set bonuses are +6 seconds on Flame Shock and +304 damage on Lava Burst.

The totem is very very close to 100% uptime. With minimal testing it's easily past the threshold to having it surpass ye olde totem.

 

sleepcontrol

Where did "+304" come from? On the PTR, is it 20% or +304 damage?

Also, has anyone looked into the professions? Is Tailoring still overpowered compared to everything else?

 

tufy

Something I'm not certain about at this point is Engineering. At my current gear, the hand-mounted pyro rocket alone adds about 52 dps (it gains on spell crit, with my gear, it has 45% crit chance), which equals about 39 spellpower according to Bink's spreadsheet. Projecting this crit rate to the new rockets, I'll be getting 61 dps from the new boosted pyro (btw., yes, the tooltip is still wrong. It can be launched once every 45 seconds, not once every minute), equaling roughly 46 spellpower. Again, fairly close to all new professions (which end up at 48). EXCEPT, at this point, I haven't counted back enchant boost (about 9 spellpower gain over current bis 23 haste) or bombs (about 22 dps = 16.78 spellpower) yet.

Thus, in my honest opinion, Engineering is our "sleeping beauty" here. It can be very powerful when used properly, but a player has to invest into it (through using abilities or paying for bomb mats). Personally I've been using Engineering for about a month now and it works great, constantly giving me predictable dps boost (about 1.5% from pyro rocket, about 0.7% from bombs, latter number can cross 1% if there's targets to AoE; note, however, that I'm usually not chaining bombs, so 1% could be a rule on single target too). Too bad EJ doesn't have a proper profession subforum, that thread in general discussion is too cluttered for coherent dps testing with professions...

*****

On a more shaman related topic, that Lava Burst picture above is interesting. According to wowhead's PTR site, Lava Burst's tooltip wasn't changed, so top damage remains 1518. If 2271 is on Borninexile's tooltip and if he uses a regular build, then we can do some calculations:

2271 / ((1 + concussion + call of flame) * (1 + 4pc T9) = 1705; 1705 - 1518 = 187

Hm, where did this number come from? Next try

2271 / (1 + concussion + call of flame + 4pc T9) = 1733; 1733 - 1518 = 215

Interestingly, this number is equal to Thunderfall totem's boost, but I wasn't aware it shows up on the tooltip?

Just for the kicks, let's try our friend daia above who claims that 4pc T9 adds 304 spellpower:

(2271 / (1 + concussion + call of flame)) - 304 = 1742; 1742 - 1518 = 224

Again, not fitting expectations.

Curious. So, does Thunderfall pop up on tooltip (I'm sorry, can't check myself right now, as I'm not at my gaming PC), or am I missing something?

EDIT: I've checked it ingame, Thunderfall does indeed pop up on tooltip, specifically it gives me 239 extra damage per tooltip, which would equal 215 * (1 + concussion + call of flame).

This suggests that the formula is:

(1518 + 215) * (1 + concussion + call of flame + 4pc T9) = 2270.23

Let's test it with our low number as well:

(1192 + 215) * (1 + concussion + call of flame + 4pc T9) = 1843.17

It fits perfectly.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

• Binkenstein

Yes, Thunderfall does affect the tooltip.

Without: 1323-1685
With: 1561-1924

Incidentally, the difference is Thunderfall*1.11, which is the Concussion + Call of Fire bonus (need to add it to my spreadsheet).

On a different subject, I'm using a blogspot blog to rebuild the TTT entry in bite size chunks, and was wondering if anyone wants to assist in said subject (especially with 3.2 on the way). That way we can have a bigger better guide ready to go when 3.2 hits + a quick important bits post on my blog.

 

• Binkenstein

New set bonus figures. Working on EP figures atm.

 

daia

nevermind, misread tooltip!

 

Flau

The question is if the T9 4P Bonus will improve the viability of Totem of thunderfall and/or glyph of Lava and by how much. If the tooltip is right the bonus will affect both of them.
Perhaps its an interesting alternative for totem of hex/the new haste totem and/or glyph of totem of wrath