I hate to get into parse wars, since there are so many external factors involved. However, you outgear me pretty significantly (227dps according to EnhSim) yet I did equivalent dps to you on our Jaraxxus kill last week and I prioritize gemming for AP for the most part. Maybe I'm missing it but I don't really see where haste is shining through on that parse.

Our Jaraxxus kill from last week.
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Edit - actually last week you out geared me even more since I didn't get Dark Matter till after that raid as Algalon bugged on us so we couldn't loot the chest. Last week I was using Pyrite Infuser and the 3 Rigid King's Ambers were all Wicked Ametrines so you outgeared me by 265dps according to EnhSim.

I have been using the haste build and found it to be quite successful. Since the two of you seem to want to use Jaraxxus as a base comparison, here is our latest kill. As for gear, I'm a bit ahead, but I don't think by too much.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Now, I really don't know how much of a difference gemming AP with this gear would make, but I can definitely feel the Haste in the maelstrom stacks and using 3/4 MSW on Lightning Bolts. The latter is something I'm just getting used to, but it seems like it's working out alright.

Edit:
The only fight, so far, that I think a Haste build will fall below an AP build is Twins. I'm more specifically talking about the shields they put up. During these shields I know you are not getting MSW procs and I don't think you're getting Static Shock procs, but I could be mistaken there. The AP builds would allow you to get the most out of your SS, LL, ES which are unaffected by Haste and would most probably lead to more shield damage. Other than that, I don't see a Haste build falling behind AP at any point, even on Anub's aoe.

Hey Rouncer,
2 things to take into consideration when comparing our parses are:

1) I play on Aussie ping (typically 300-400 MS). This does have a significant impact on performance, especially for a haste build that requires quick reaction time to MW procs
2) I was frappsing that and my GCD was even further slowed by system performance.

My intent here was not to say 'look guyths haste is so awwsome!' but rather to demonstrate that it is 'viable'; the DPS yeild is comperable to an AP build. I do this because I, like many others, dont trust the sim when it comes to haste and so I wanted to provide some evidence that a haste buld wasnt a nerf.

I will go further to say, as I did in my last post, that gemming haste atm provides no real benefit but is rather 'break-even' vs AP. I think our parses tonight confirm this (when we take factors 1 and 2 into consideration). The sim tells us that future upgrades will see the value of haste increase, but this remains to be seen. Perhaps you and I can do 'sanity checks' on sim results by regularly comparing parses.

There is a best talent spec.
There is a best glyph spec.
There is a best priority system.
There is a best gear set.

Why isn't there a best profession combination? Or race?

There are players out there who have switched entire professions just for a 2 or 4 ap upgrade, and NOT factoring in these issues can skew the gear sets by not accurately informing the players which piece is 'better' depending on their race and profession combination. Before t9, Enchanting and JCing were widely considered to be the best professions for enhancement shamans, but with our new focus on haste, shouldn't blacksmithing be the new front runner? Certain race's have abilities that enhance their performance, shouldn't that be factored in? I'm not suggesting that you make a list for BiS gear for each race, but I do think it is worth exploring which race on each faction is best, and which professions you should ideally use. If you are not going to endorse a 'best' profession, then no profession-only enchants should be listed.

I would like to see a BiS list for an "ideal" setup (guessing that would be Orc, JC/something) myself, but it should probably be a separate thread.

Nothing stopping either of you from making a new thread to attempt to answer those questions that really only have relevance to people who think they already picked the best options already.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if Troll beats all at the moment considering we fight not one but two Jormungars where they get an additional 5% damage from Beast Slaying along with how Berzerking will scale at any gear level.

Command only scales on a small portion of our total damage and neither Blood Fury nor Axe Spec scale.

As for professions, don't forget to take into account engineer's bombs when you try to quantify which one is the best.

Its not +80 ap, its +40 haste from two Blacksmithing sockets. The last time I checked, 40 haste > 80 ap according to the simulator, ergo that would make Blacksmithing a superior profession when compared to Enchanting. They ARE adding race changes at some point in the future, therefor it would make sense to have a 'best race' for each faction even if the racials are going to change and the list must be updated in the expansion (along with everything else)

The point of the thread is to make a generic BiS setup so every shaman can have the same baseline to work from. If you start adjusting it based on profressions or racial abilities, then it's not a baseline anymore. It's easier to take the baseline and adjust it for yourself than it is to have the thread adjust for you and have everyone else fiddle with it to reach the baseline.

You said that enchanting and JC were the best. The implication there is that they were the best in a previous content patch. My point was that enchanting was no better than any other flat +80 AP profession ie leatherworking. Haste wasn't the stat to be stacking with our gear set up in previous content patches. I am very aware of the benefits that BS will have over a flat 80 AP profession, but you didn't even mention Blacksmithing in your original post.

If we're going to worry about races for this we may as well find a way to get a hold of the IC loot tables and count those too. We should also probably account for the known Cataclysm changes, right? The fact of the matter is that the only people who could possibly benefit from knowing the best races are the miniscule minority who are going to be faction changing, and even then.. if they care about DPS they won't choose a tauren so they win.

I agree that when they do release race changes we will need to discuss that, but that is not the case at the current point in time. As Orrion said, it is a baseline. If you're going to get that picky then I could say that since very few people play with 50-60ms latency, we should recalculate for the most common ping(s), right? No.

The bottom line: Vespasian chose Tauren/Enchanting/Leatherworking as a base, simply because it is the most generic template. As said in the outline, any DPS you gain from being a different race or profession is simply a bonus. Race and profession are not defined as variables to tweak. This thread isn't looking to determine which race/profession we should all reroll for maximum DPS.

I don't understand why one should not use CL instead of LB as long as you don't lack mana and as long as your not on CD at the moment your MW is ready (5 stacks).

I preferably use only CL and very seldonly LB (only if CL is on CD) while having no mana-problems, especially since last patch where CD for shamanistic rage has been reduced to 1 min.

I didn't sim that much for this to be honest, but I tested at the dummy and in raids. But this works fine for me and I get more DPS/Damage.

Please tell me if this question has been discussed anywhere else here at EJ (I don't ready every single thread).

My priority atm is:

1) Spirit Wolves
2) Maelstrom Weapon x 5 stacks - CL else LB (if MW stk5 and CL on CD)
3) Earthshock if Storm Strike debuff is on target
4) Storm Strike
5) Earthshock
6) Magma Totem
7) Lava Lash
8) Lightning Shield

I don't use MW if not stacked to 5.

Hm, in this case it seems i have "low SP" ... could you please either explain this more detailed or give me a hint where the mechanism behind this is described.

And what is the break even point of SP where LB gets over CL?

If someone takes a look at the tooltip it seems that CL is superior to LB:

LB
715 - 815 Nature damage

versus

CL
973 - 1111 Nature damage

I am updating my EP values on EnhSim and have also hit the point where haste is testing above AP (I'm getting haste EP values of about 2.4). I have 4/5 245 T9 and a few other 245 pieces and my AP is also around 4700 and my crit is at about 38%. It is rather interesting that suddenly haste is scaling so high when previously my EP for haste was a mere 1.88. I find it rather suspect that the EP vaule of one stat could increase so drastically, a swing of 0.6, on a few hundred AP and a few crit percentages.

I did notice that going from 4/5 T8 to 4/5 T9 I lost about 7% haste as there was a lot of haste on T8. Perhaps it isn't that haste becomes more valuable when AP and crit surpass a given threshold (or least that may not be the singular cause of it) but that haste is scaling higher based on haste values changing. I do recall someone doing some work on how haste scales for Enhancement Shaman (they had a graph and everything, couldn't find the post though) and its EP value fluctuated depending on how much haste you had, all else remaining constant. That is, the EP would move up and down depending on how much you had. Maybe because we moved from a higher value of haste in T8 to a lower one in T9 we set ourselves at a level of haste where its EP is higher where before we were sitting at a point where its EP was lower. This might explain why when we run the sim assuming full haste gems rather than full AP gems the value of haste is lower than it had been under a full AP setup. I just ran such a test in which I swapped all my AP gems for haste and the value of haste plummeted to 1.48. My DPS also dropped by 30 or so as well, which would also coincide with the idea that the amount of DPS haste gives (its EP) varies depending on how much you have.

On the other hand dropping all my AP gems dropped me below the 4700 threshold, so that could explain the drop in haste's value as well. It does seem like there is something about how haste is interacting with other stats (or itself) that we may be missing.

Edit: I thought perhaps increasing the EP amount of haste in EnhSim from 30 to a higher number (I went with 120) would capture a more accurate picture of haste's EP value if you are looking to stack it rather than just looking at a marginal increase. When I ran the test I got an EP value for haste of 1.91 (my other stat values stayed roughly the same) which is noticably lower than the 2.4 I had been getting using a marginal increase in haste. In my mind this shows that haste can scale oddly based purely on your own haste value. If I misused EnhSim my adjusting the testing value of haste like that please let me know, but it seemed to make sense to me given that I wanted a longer picture of the value of haste.

Do your maths here and you will understand why LB > CL on single target with a high SP.

Pretty sure the reason they went to LB instead of CL was due to Totem of Electrifying Wind not due to the spell coefficients.

The base damage on max rank CL is 973 to 1111. (AvgDmg = 1042)
The base damage on max tank LB is 715 to 815. (AvgDmg = 765)

CL has a cast time of 2.0 seconds, so its spell power coefficient is .5714.
LB has a cast time of 2.5 seconds, so its spell power coefficient is .7143.

AvgCLDmg = Base+SpellPower*Coefficient = 1042+SpellPower*0.5714
AvgLBDmg = Base+SpellPower*Coefficient = 765+SpellPower*0.7143

At 1000 Spell Power:
CLDmg = 1042 + 571 = 1613
LBDmg = 765 + 714 = 1479

At 2000 Spell Power:
CLDmg = 1042 + 1143 = 2185
LBDmg = 765 + 1429 = 2194

At 1937 Spell Power:
CLDmg = 1042 +1107 = 2149
LBDmg = 765 + 1384 = 2149

So, above 1937 spell power, it is better to cast Lightning Bolt on a single target. Below 1937 spell power, it is better to use Chain Lightning on a single target.


With raid buffs, 1937 spell power is pretty easy to achieve.

Vespasian, there is a flaw in your BiS list that you need to correct. Synced weapon speeds.

Change the offhand to 2.59 (or 2.61) to counteract the sim granting an additional flurry charge due to synced weapons. It was an active bug when the sim was coded but has since been corrected in game but has not been corrected in the sim.

The graphs I think he's talking about we're posted in the old discussion thread somewhere. From memory it was basically showing haste value "sweet spots" where the EP values were high for haste because weapons reached a certain swing speed under flurry, like 1.5 would be worth 2.6, but if you had slightly more or less it would be worth say, 1.6 instead. But yes it was all about haste interaction with windfury.

OT but, hey - as I typed that I realized that I have that magical 2.6/7 EP value haste completely by mistake, 20.42% in my current setup.

I had a point where I was simming ~2.3-4 for haste. I believe it was around 20% haste as well. I was also sitting at 4606 unbuffed AP. Then I replaced the crafted belt with the leather one from 10 Yogg+1. Haste dropped down to ~1.75 (I dropped to 16.73% haste, I believe). Has anyone tried simming different values of ArP to see what the effect is on the EP of haste?


This is off topic, but Trollpriest (I'm pretty sure I killed your shaman in an Isle battle the other day):
Put the orange AP/Crit gem that you have in your helm in your GSD and put the Dragon's Eye in your helm. Make the 16 expertise gem in your shoulders a 10 hit/10 expertise. That's 14 hit rating for regemming!. :p

I've stated this many times before but it bears repeating:
Finding a EP value for haste is almost completely worthless. Vesp basically admitted as much when he created this thread (why create a BiS list if EP did the work for you?). However, it can be even more worthless when you leave it at the current EP range of 30 and then extrapolate the resultant EP value over hundreds of haste rating (as some of you are doing when you are regemming your sets to all haste based on this resultant EP value).

The bottom line is that the value of haste spikes and dips when you add minuscule amounts of it. Among the reasons for this are WF interaction and MW GCD crowding. Your best bet if you truly want to test something like this out is to sim your current set and then sim your set with haste gemming and enchants. Then go back and slowly remove haste 10 at a time until you find the sweet spot (or maybe you already hit it with that last bit of haste).

TL;DR: Don't treat your EP values as divine proclamations. Sim and compare your gearset with your alternate gearset you think might be better.

Yes thank you. I don't believe that I said at any point in my post (I didn't) that when I reached that I completely regemmed for haste. I merely mentioned, as did Trollpriest, that my haste EP values were high. That's all. If you want to consider regemming you need to remove say 40 AP, or an enchant... whatever it is you are considering changing, and sim it again.

How does [Totem of Quaking Earth] compare to [Totem of Electrifying Wind], even when using LB in rotation now that the AP proc was buffed to 400 in 3.2.2?

- Totem of Quaking Earth: Attack power value increased to 400.