Sorry to stray off topic but I recently went on the PTR to try out incorporating Fire Nova into my rotation. ShockandAwe works fine on the PTR so I was able to reproduce my rotation on a targeting dummy pretty well. I wasn't spec'd into Improved Fire Nova nor did I have the Fire Nova glyph, I was just using the baseline 10 sec CD Fire Nova with the spec I'm using live. I incorporated Fire Nova into my rotation just above Lava Lash in priority because I assumed Fire Nova would out damage Lava Lash. Where Fire Nova was to go into my rotation wasn't what I trying to figure out it was just an assumption I operated under for the time being and I wasn't terribly concerned with its ideal placement in a rotation just yet.

Anyway, what I noticed was how quickly I was going oom. Normally I can use my normal rotation on a targeting dummy without any kind of mana regeneration buff other than Shamanistic Rage and do my rotation indefinetly. Using Fire Nova however I went oom very very quickly. Even when I starting using Water Shield and Mana Spring Totem I went oom in a very short time. Even with only a 10 sec CD the mana cost on Fire Nova is incredibly restrictive. I realize that in a fully raid buffed situation I'm going to have replenishments and an increased mana pool but even so I can't see integrating Fire Nova into our rotation (or even begin to think about using a 6 sec CD Fire Nova for that matter) unless the mana cost gets reduced or we change our spec for increased mana efficiency.

JoW, replenishment and your larger mana pool make a very large difference to your mana efficiency, and don't forget that you will have even more mana in T10 gear (likely at or over 19k). My initial tests on PTR indicate that Fire Nova fits comfortably into a hasted rotation if you put it under LL given how often we are casting LB. If we moved it up above LL, I am quite certain that our mana pools will be able to sustain it. Either way, we should be using it in the event of all other abilities being on CD- we would certainly have the mana for this at least.

I don't know, I'd feel a lot more optimistic if they cut the mana cost by a good amount. I just can't see working it into our rotation even raid buffed unless we respec into Improved SS or maybe even Elemental Focus. Right now I'm using up around 50-80% (dependent on how much I'm using CL or having to re-drop totems) of my mana pool between SR cooldowns so I'm generally a bit pessimistic to the idea of being able to work Fire Nova into my rotation. Granted I'm basing the majority of my negativity on PTR target dummy testing but the speed with which I went oom was very discouraging. We'll see though, I hope I'm wrong but for the time being I'll be pushing for them to cut the mana cost.

think about it, if they cut the mana cost, their going to cut the damage... then they might as well not have given us a new toy to play with.

what we should be doing, and by no means using a premade shammy on the ptr, (use your main) is testing the possible specs and glyphs then add in what increases you would get from potential gear upgrades. Intel might even be over Agl for those of you who still swear by it and deprive rogues and dr00ds of their hard fought leather. >.>

as for pvp, how effective is something that is targetable and has 5hp next to you that takes 5s to get off? you really could be putting your points in better placement. Not to mention you almost never have them around said totem when it goes off.... if it lives to go off

It is always possible that they want you specced into Imp SS and increasing our mana consumption rate is their way to accomplish that. In any case the spell is as the spell is and it's mana costs are not something we can negotiate.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Gets you 2/2 Imp Fire Nova and all the important talents including Imp SS. Comparing that build to a build with 4/5 reverb and 1/3 Imp Shields shows a loss of about 75 dps on the Sim with a normal rotation.

Fire Nova should do at least as much damage as Lava Lash with 2/2 Imp Fire Nova and 3/3 Call of Flame. Lava Lash when used every ~8 seconds is worth close to 370 dps according to the sim. If you can sustain the mana with Imp SS then it should be a significant dps increase to use that build over the Reverb build even considering the 370 figure is inflated as there will be dps loss from trying to fit in the additional GCDs. Also keep in mind that the 75dps is including 4T9 so using Imp SS and Imp FN should become an larger dps increase as we move out of 4T9.


Edit - Just did 10 minutes on a targeting dummy with the build above. Used mana spring and lightning shield and SR at about 2-3k mana and had no issues at all sustaining a "rotation" with Fire Nova. Ended up using Lava Lash and Fire Nova about every 11 seconds, Earth Shock about every 8 and Lightning Bolt about every 7.5 seconds (so it was definitely sloppy with room for improvement). Fire Nova hit for 1967 average and crit for 4110 with a 30.8% crit rate. Lava Lash hit for 1267 and crit for 2564 with a 53.8% crit rate; just to put the damage into perspective

Really liking the spell, can't wait to get to use it on live.

Would it not be more effective mana wise to uses 1 imp SS 1Elemental Focus? Considering now you are even using more spells in your rotation vs LL physical? After raid buffs of course.

In Tier 10 I honestly don't see mana ever being a problem. Ever. We'll be popping Shamanistic Rage ideally every minute thanks to our 2-piece. Between that and raid buffs, I don't see myself ever running out of mana, no matter how mana-intensive Fire Nova might be. As for pre-T10, raid buffs might be enough to sustain our mana anyways and SR will always be there when we need it.

You already spec Imp SS so the conversation doesn't really pertain to you (or to me actually, although that bit about ele focus and 1/2 Imp SS has potential).

This is about people who are already "pushing the limits" of their mana regularly by dropping the mana regen talents in exchange for, well Reverb. The question is whether that type of build can sustain itself with the inclusion of Fire Nova.

You would have to pick up the two fire nova talents which would drop reverb to 2/5 instead of 4/5. Right now, it seems that with the t9 4 piece bonus ES is essentially equal to or more important to use than Stormstrike. That will change when you no longer have the set bonus and thus it would seem to become less important to have those 4 talent points put into Reverberation. It would make more sense to put those two extra points in Imp SS or even another dps talent like Improved Shields.

At that point, I almost wonder if it would be much simpler to do a SS - FS - LL - FN - SS - ES - LL - FN rotation: you would have two free cooldowns for shields, wolves, rage and mw_lb every cycle and your FS would at worse only get 5 of 6 ticks per cast. Trying to squeeze in another shock would seem to complicate things immensely.

You aren't the first person to state that the Fire Nova ability does roughly the same damage as Lava Lash. The real question I imagine is would 2 FN every 16 seconds do more damage than one extra shock every 16 seconds? I would have to say it would.

Talk of a "rotation" hasn't been relevant for enhance dps since Maelstrom Weapon went live. Also, Flame Shock is only barely better than Earth Shock. Deliberately clipping ticks makes it not worth using at all.

Pretty sure its been stated time and again that as long as you get 5 of the 6 ticks of the FS dot in, its better than Earth Shock. Also, please take not that I did not insert MW_LB into any part of that dps cycle. And in all honesty, you are only kidding yourself if you think you are a special and unique butterfly when it comes to DPS cycles: even a seemingly random rotation has a lot of hidden order in it.

A benefit of building your dps series around a few fixed points is that it does allow for an enormous amount of flexibility. At any time in that cycle, you can throw in a MW_LB, Lightning Shield, Shamanistic Rage, Spirit Wolves or Magma Totem and still have time to 'catch up' on the next series. It could go something like this:

SS - MW_LB - ES - LL - FN - MW_LB --- SS - ES - LS - LL - FN - MT --- etc

Without the benefit of the 25% bonus shock damage from the t9 set, ES_SS will fall below SS in the priority list. Assuming you plan on spending two talent points in Fire Nova for the added damage/reduced cooldown, you will not have enough (if any) points placed into Reverberation to justify throwing in two shocks between each and every Stormstrike use. Getting two FN casts off every two SS casts will yield you higher overall damage than getting only one extra Earth Shock off in the same rotation: the cooldowns simply do not align themselves for such an occurrence to happen!

But do not take my word for it: log onto the PTR with a premade and see for yourself!

Ah yes, I just ran the numbers for myself and without the 6th tick FS does ~90 less total damage than ES with 3000 spell power and 40% crit. That just means you would use all Earth Shocks instead of Flame Shocks.

Actually MW3/4 is a sort of self-fulfilling profecy - if you watch for it, you will consume MW charges with it and you'll get to MW5 less often. Using spells with cast times comes with side effects too (you can be interrupted, spell locked and you can't move as freely). Personally I am still on the fence on whether in the real world it's worth it or not. Oh well the point is becoming moot soon anyway.

For well over a year now, we have operated with a priority, rather than a rotation. By advocating a fixed rotation, even when you grant the ability to impose SW, SR, MW, LS, and totem refreshing into it, you're saying the best practice for optimal dps is a standard cast sequence. We avoid this for the same reason we avoid a /castsequence macro.

In part this is a paradigm conflict. For a death knight (which your profile says your main is), the dps cycle depends on rune cooldowns. All 6 runes have the same cooldown, so the optimal behavior has to accomodate that. Do a bunch of stuff to put all your runes on cooldown and build runic power, and then dump runic power. If you plan ahead what "stuff" to do, you're better prepared.

Unlike a death knight's, shaman skills don't share the same cooldown. Further, you're underestimating the frequency and importance of the maelstrom weapon proc.

Try creating an enhsim combatlog output. As you say, the spells used by the simulator to emulate perfect execution of a priority create a sequence of casts that can look a lot like a rotation. Maelstrom weapon and other high priority casts interrupt or reset that rotation. It turns out this happens, both in simulation and in game, a lot. Whenever this happens, I could mentally reset my rotation, or recognize based on what's currently on cooldown that I'm now in a different place in my rotation.

So we have 2 different ways of thinking of the same behavior. By Occam's Razor (or Gardan's Steelyard), I prefer the simpler approach. When something comes off cooldown, use it. If more than one thing is available, use the better one.

^truth

As was stated above and more importantly Enhance is run off of RNG. MW, WF, LS and soon to be increased damage off MW... are all "chance on hit", so a rotation would never work b/c of the randomness of said abilities which are most of your top end damage when you check the meter on most fights. If we weren't so random then yes by all means we'd have a "set" rotation.

The only thing that can be confused with a rotation is that when you first engage the boss, you drop totems and hit SS, then either ES or LL (depending on set bonus and relic choice) after that is ALL RNG with refreshing your totems and LS as well as keeping your debuffs on the boss

This isnt enhance specific, but fire nova does have an aoe cap. I was hitting about 30 mobs for 400ish damage in wc. Fire nova would still obviously have a place in our priority system, but its not really an amazing aoe buff.

Why should a possible DoT clipping be an issue in using flameshock or not ?
If you will run into a clipping scenario just do an earthshock again.
I mean where is the sence in:
"It is not worth it, im using earthshock all the time, because maybe i have a clipping."
I cant have a damage loss, it is just not possible, if i react to my given damage possibilities.
And as you already said, we dont have a fix rotation, we have only a best damage priority.

The issue is that in order for Flame Shock to be better than Earth Shock, we need the Glyph. But in order for the Glyph to surpass other options, we need to use Flame Shock as often as possible. This puts us in a catch 22, making it so that by trying to fit Flame Shock perfectly in we would most likely lose out, and making Earth Shock more reliable and a hell of a lot simpler.

Can you please point me to the source proving that ES is better then FS (unglyphed)?

To my knowledge FS comes out superior.

I believe the point they are trying to make is that FS is better than ES by a small margin when you execute perfectly. Small mistakes (which are very easy to make) not only cost you the DPS increase but actually result in a loss of DPS over just plain old ES spam. ES spam might be lower DPS in the sim but in the real world it's at least dead even but often better and simpler, freeing you to pay attention to the encounter mechanics/purge spam/etc.

Only if you get every tick of the DoT. Lose a single tick and Earth Shock ends up being more damage. That is the problem. Flame Shock glyph is better then say Lightning Shield or Windfury if you get every tick of the DoT but not by a significant margin. So if you lose a tick then that specific Flame Shock wasn't worth casting and if you don't cast that Flame Shock then the glyph wasn't worth using as opposed to the alternatives.

So the easy solution is to ES if the the DoT is still up, but if you don't have a debuff up, FS away.