T10 4set will dominate the T9 2set in terms of DPS, so you'll be using the 4set. BUT for high mobility fights it's suggestable to carry around T9 2set when you're not getting a benefit from LvB's CD reduction.
Having to move more doesnt mean you benefit less from the CD reduction.
e.g. if you have to move for 2 seconds every 15-30 seconds then it's just random which spells get delayed (e.g. LvB could get delayed by 2 sec, but you could also just lose 2 sec of LB cast time and benefit from the shorter LvB cooldown like normal)
Also, T9 2set does very little on high mobility fights cause you will have plenty of opportunities to refresh flame shock on the run anyway.
Also on a relevant note the double 2 piece does appear to synergize(?) well, I'm wondering if anyones take on 4t9 vs 2+2 has been updated with the 50% nerf to 4t9.
Even with two pieces of tier 10, the DPS value of individual lightning spells does not significantly increase. Reducing the cooldown of Elemental Mastery by an "extra" 2 seconds is potentially about 2-3% more uptime, or a couple of extra hasted spells. Spreading this small DPS gain over the length of a fight renders it almost insignificant, which is why the 2t10 bonus has been so underwhelming in the first place (and why EM was changed to make it slightly more appealing).
The stats provided by 4t10 will more than outweigh the benefit of casting flame shock less, especially in fights with lots of movement or target switching.
Generally speaking for average ilevel tier, the combination of stats and set bonuses means that:
4t10 > 2t9+2t10 > 4t9 > 4t8 > 2t9 + 2t8
This is all according to ZAP, of course, and YMMV.
Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies you will not find another.
Coming back to the glyph topic:
At which point will glyph of tow overtake lava?
Right now with nerfed T9 4-pieces?
When breaking 4-pieces bonus?
Any other point, like certain haste value or something like that?
Greetings,
After doing some minor testing on the PTR i'm under the impression that the Black Magic enchant is able to be triggered every ~35 seconds and is up for 10 seconds.
Tried casting LB only for about 15 minutes and the time between 2 procs averaged at about 37-38 seconds.None of it was < 36 sec and it was like 90% exactly between 37 and 38 sec.
It is a 250 Haste proc lasting 10 secs with a 50% chance and an internal CD of 35 secs. Whether this is more beneficial than a constant +63SP depends on several factors. Let's assume that due to the high proc chance that we usually get the proc at around 37.5 secs (tying in with your figures). The average value of the haste is then 250/37.5*10 = 66.7 haste. We can actually adjust this upwards a little as the haste effect covers all spells that have their casting started within those 10 secs which means that it will, on average affect about 10.75 secs worth of cast and the average haste rating will be about 71.7. How this compares to +63SP depends upon your gear and your specific DEP values. Whatever those values are, however, it's probably going to be close call as to which does the most DPS though it most likely comes out in favour of BM.
Then we get to the BIG downside. Once you add 250 haste onto existing haste procs from totems and trinkets, the chances are you will start exceeding the GCD cap devaluing the value of the haste. Under the effects of BL the haste value will be diminished further. With the new EM effecting haste now rather than crit, it's effect will be diminished then too. If you are a troll it will be diminished under the effects of Berserking.
So, the bottom line is that whilst you might get it to show better than +63SP on target dummy, in a raid situation with all buffs and procs taken into consideration, it will have an effect that is diminished in comparison to the theortical whereas the SP enchant won't. This is likely tip the balance in favour of the SP enchant as a significant proportion of our DPS will not get any benefit from the BM haste buff for significant portions of the fight.
Originally Posted by Zamo
Coming back to the glyph topic:
At which point will glyph of tow overtake lava?
Right now with nerfed T9 4-pieces?
When breaking 4-pieces bonus?
Any other point, like certain haste value or something like that?
This is another area where the theoritical and practical deviate making a simple answer impossible. On a straight spam, the breakeven point with 4pc T9 is around 4200-4500 SP (depending upon latency). However, in a pratical fight situation, ToW belcomes less valuable and LvB more valuable as a higher proportion of your casts become LvBs and the breakeven could drop to 3300 or lower. However, the difference from chosing the 'wrong' glyph is never going to be that much - maybe 30 DPS max out of 6-8k ~ 0.4%, so it's not really something you should be sweating over too much.
I don't really see how 66 (or 70) equivalent haste rating can compare with 63 constant spell power, unless you have a really low score of haste. Even before the soft haste cap, sp > haste. As you say, this is aggravated once you're over the cap and take into account movements and raid buffs. I guess this enchant won't be used by PvE elemental shamans with 3.3 gear. Actually I would be surprised if it is used by any caster at all. Why they decided to create this new enchantment so late in the expansion, I don't have a clue. Maybe for PvP.
I don't really see how 66 (or 70) equivalent haste rating can compare with 63 constant spell power, unless you have a really low score of haste. Even before the soft haste cap, sp > haste. As you say, this is aggravated once you're over the cap and take into account movements and raid buffs. I guess this enchant won't be used by PvE elemental shamans with 3.3 gear. Actually I would be surprised if it is used by any caster at all. Why they decided to create this new enchantment so late in the expansion, I don't have a clue. Maybe for PvP.
Then you are forgetting the fact that haste is valued fairly closely to spellpower. Using the 66 value, spellpower needs to be 4.76% "better" (11.11% if 70) than haste for your constant 63 spellpower to be worth more.
The thing that would count against Black Magic is the value of the additional haste if you've got a haste buff up at the same time that takes you past your GCD haste cap, or if you're almost there already. There's also considerations to make wrt how you gem (reckless vs runed).
Back on the topic of fire nova, i noticed everyone's discussing it on use for elemental build. I've tried it on enhancement and it rocks! I haven't run in on any sims. but its showing big numbers on a higher priority rotation than lava lash.
Back on the topic of fire nova, i noticed everyone's discussing it on use for elemental build. I've tried it on enhancement and it rocks! I haven't run in on any sims. but its showing big numbers on a higher priority rotation than lava lash.
We are all discussing Fire Nova for Elemental builds here because this is the [Elemental] 3.3 thread. There is a lot of discussion about it regarding Enhancement in the Enhancement threads and the WoW forums (if you are brave enough to go there.)
It does appear that the people benefiting the most from the Elemental ability is Enhancement, and Resto might even end up playing with it. For us, it will get used when we'd normally be fitting in CLs in an AE pack, mana permitting. I found that I can run myself OOM in short order rotating CL and Fire Nova with LvB/LB filler.
As regards Fire Nova on a single target, I had my first chance to try it in a raid tonight. I have to admit that I did find it nice to have another button to press when moving and shocks are on cooldown. Not that it had much affect on my damage output: On Marrowgar I used it 3 times for an astonishing 1% extra damage (40 DPS)! - but I don't think my movement or totem placement was that efficient. On Deathwhisper I only used it once (we were single-target killing the adds and I spent most of my time standing still) and it was less than 0.1% extra damage. I don't have logs for the other fights, though I know that I didn't use it at all on Saurfang because our shadow priest respecced disc for it and we only realised after the pull that we had ended up without replenishment.
For those of us without mana issues it seems it'd be worth speccing into Improved Fire Nova even for single target use, if we can place our totems near enough the targets without losing any damage. It's only two points out of Convection and it goes some way towards giving us extra damage while forced out of turret mode.
Last edited by Zamir : 12/09/09 at 9:15 PM.
Reason: Stupid latenight typos :(
Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies you will not find another.
I found that I can run myself OOM in short order rotating CL and Fire Nova with LvB/LB filler.
This is something I'm hearing from a lot of people and I'm puzzled as to how it's possible, since I never had any mana issues. If anything, I was surprised that I could go on as long as I did. I mean, Fire Nova costs around the same as Chain Lightning, which effectively means that it increases our mana expenditures, but does a whole lot more damage against multiple targets. If you'd be running oom, it would be logical to cut out Chain Lightning first. Even then, I've done several several 10 and 25 man runs (both PTR and yesterday's live), dungeons and a few solo AoE sessions while figuring out the best use for the totem and I'd say it's barely any less efficient than other, for instance mage AoEs. Then again, I'm used to drinking whenever I have a chance, so that may have something to do with it - if you'll pull with half a mana bar, you might have issues indeed.
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
Let's talk about Elemental Mastery. I know we have supported this idea, but does anyone else like me think that haste is being pushed on us too much? In my opinion and my logs at the practice dummy, my DPS is not the same with Elemental Mastery buffing haste instead of crit.
Because Lava Burst always crits, even at fairly modest gear levels, when fully raid buffed our Clearcasting uptime is already over 75%, so increasing crit chance by 15% would not increase your overall damage all that much. Unless your haste rating is so high that your Lightning Bolts are limited by the global cooldown, adding 15% haste will be a better net gain. That is compounded by heavy movement fights, in which your cast percentages are skewed towards Lava Burst, thus increasing your Clearcasting uptime.
I dislike the new EM because while 15% haste is more valuable on face than 15% crit (especially at higher gear levels where each point of haste becomes more relatively valuable and crit becomes less so), there are so many other ways to get large amounts of haste that the buff can become hard to use. I'm haste capped even on Lightning Bolts if I use EM with Bloodlust, and this is to say nothing of Power Infusion or the Troll racial (if you are a Troll). Any fight mechanics that add haste, any time a Flame Shock gets dispelled (not common in raiding obviously), all these scenarios push me over the haste cap if I use EM. I have to use it not in combination with other powerful cooldowns, but specifically when those cooldowns are not active.
On the other hand, I don't see a way around this. Our damage is extremely bursty and as a consequence Blizzard will always keep our abilities on a short leash for PvP reasons.
This is something I'm hearing from a lot of people and I'm puzzled as to how it's possible, since I never had any mana issues. If anything, I was surprised that I could go on as long as I did. I mean, Fire Nova costs around the same as Chain Lightning, which effectively means that it increases our mana expenditures, but does a whole lot more damage against multiple targets. If you'd be running oom, it would be logical to cut out Chain Lightning first. Even then, I've done several several 10 and 25 man runs (both PTR and yesterday's live), dungeons and a few solo AoE sessions while figuring out the best use for the totem and I'd say it's barely any less efficient than other, for instance mage AoEs. Then again, I'm used to drinking whenever I have a chance, so that may have something to do with it - if you'll pull with half a mana bar, you might have issues indeed.
Bear in mind, when I said I ran myself OOM, it was done intentionally to see if I could. I tested glyphing Fire Nova (Something that is plausible in any fight with extreme AE - maybe Anub HM, but I'm testing for the future in the event ICC HMs require heavy AE.) Using a 3 sec Fire Nova, and 3.5 sec CL, you spend most of your time casting these high cost spells.
To be clear, I'm not complaining about the cost, it is predictable mana loss and if you run yourself OOM doing it in practice, you'd be a moron. Its easy to cut out CL and use Thunderstorm effectively (hopefully you'd have it glyphed in a heavy AE fight anyhow.)
Our AE damage is not extremely high, giving us more utility is something I am extremely happy about. I was just noting that unlike the past, we actually have a mana bar to watch now, something that is relatively new at least to me as an Ele shaman. Having played Ele since Karazhan, I've never had trouble keeping aggressive rotations going to the point I'd almost joke we didn't have mana bars. It was a refreshing change, and I welcome it.
Because Lava Burst always crits, even at fairly modest gear levels, when fully raid buffed our Clearcasting uptime is already over 75%, so increasing crit chance by 15% would not increase your overall damage all that much. Unless your haste rating is so high that your Lightning Bolts are limited by the global cooldown, adding 15% haste will be a better net gain. That is compounded by heavy movement fights, in which your cast percentages are skewed towards Lava Burst, thus increasing your Clearcasting uptime.
On the other hand, the increased crit will make our spells crit more often. If we cast 20 spells within the time span of having the original EM buff up and 15 out of those casts are crit, then our spells are doing more damage compared to the changed buff with 10 out of 20 critting, especially if we are at the haste cap. How does the new EM buff help increase our DPS when it doesn't increase the number of spells we can cast in 20 seconds?
On the other hand, the increased crit will make our spells crit more often. If we cast 20 spells within the time span of having the original EM buff up and 15 out of those casts are crit, then our spells are doing more damage compared to the changed buff with 10 out of 20 critting, especially if we are at the haste cap. How does the new EM buff help increase our DPS when it doesn't increase the number of spells we can cast in 20 seconds?
5 is not 15% of 10.
In effect it's:
13/20 crits
11/23 crits
The easiest way to look at this is in a vacuum 1% haste and 1% crit should both = 1% more DPS.
However:
1 in 6 of our casts crit automatically, crit loses value
Crit by its nature diminishes in value as it increases, (1% -> 2% > 99% -> 100%)
18% of our crit comes from talents / personal abilities
5% of our haste comes from talents / personal abilities
Lightning Overload procs off casts, not crits, at a static rate
All in all the number of situations in which crit > haste become incredibly slim.
Would it be worth switching the 2 points in Booming Echoes/Elemental Reach/Eye of the Storm(dont really like losing pushback and range) with 2 points in Improved Fire Nova Totem?
Out of those, the most logical sacrifice is Convection. as it does nothing to your dps and our mana sustainability is quite impressive as it is.
Barring Convetion you may also want to look at Elemental Warding, Elemental Weapons and Thundering Strikes. The latter 2 will drop your single target DPS slightly, so you may want to consider which fights you're taking Imp Nova for.
Hopefully this will help get to the conclusion of what to do in 3.3 regarding elemental shamans.
I have been looking at other elemental shaman's in top raiding guilds, and seems to be something different with everyone, either a glyph or spec.
I noticed a few using either a Fire Elemental Glyph (Aiurr of Forlorn Legacy), Fire Nova Glyph (Mushee of Vodka), or some using both ToW glyph and Lava, etc.
I also noticed the variations of specs. What is the point of putting 3 talents into Eye of the Storm? Seems pointless to me. I went with putting 3/5 in Convection. 3/3 into Elemental Warding. 0/3 in Eye of the Storm and 2/2 in Improved Fire Nova and keeping the rest of the tree the same.
Hopefully this will help get to the conclusion of what to do in 3.3 regarding elemental shamans.
Well, much as we like to distil everything down to generalities and predicted scenarios, certain talents and glyphs are very situational. For example, what works best for sustained single target DPS may not be the same for controlling lots of adds through AoE or kiting stuff around. It's fairly easy to say what's best for standin' and nukin' and call that the cookie cutter, but it's up to the player's discretion if he or she wants to change anything around to fit his or her circumstances. After all, there's only one pure stand-and-nuke fight in the entire game (Patchwerk).
The Big Four glyphs (LB, FS, ToW and LvB) have less than a hundred DPS difference between them and each individually only accounts for a couple of hundred DPS in a best case scenario, so there's a lot of freedom there to pick and choose based on the particular requirements of a fight or raid balance setup.
Same for some talents. Eye of the Storm, Elemental Warding, Convection etc are all situational and we can't say what the "right" combination is for all time. It's up to the player to make the tough decisions based on the information available.
Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies you will not find another.
Out of those, the most logical sacrifice is Convection. as it does nothing to your dps and our mana sustainability is quite impressive as it is.
Agree with this. When I put together my 3.3 spec, I didn't think I had to even make any hard decisions. In a tree like Elemental where you have to spend ~55 points no matter what, spending 5 points for a measly 10% mana cost reduction seems like the definition of waste. As for Unrelenting Storm, I spec into it because point-for-point the benefit is considerably greater than Convection, and the talent scales with gear. I also don't think there's a more compelling use of 3 points at that place on the tree.
With spec as with glyphs, there are fights and situations where certain choices clearly win out over others (Fire Nova on Heroic Anub or the Airship Battle, and so on). But by the same token, the content at this point is either old (TOC) or trivial (normal ICC).
Hopefully this will help get to the conclusion of what to do in 3.3 regarding elemental shamans.
I have been looking at other elemental shaman's in top raiding guilds, and seems to be something different with everyone, either a glyph or spec.
I noticed a few using either a Fire Elemental Glyph (Aiurr of Forlorn Legacy), Fire Nova Glyph (Mushee of Vodka), or some using both ToW glyph and Lava, etc.
I also noticed the variations of specs. What is the point of putting 3 talents into Eye of the Storm? Seems pointless to me. I went with putting 3/5 in Convection. 3/3 into Elemental Warding. 0/3 in Eye of the Storm and 2/2 in Improved Fire Nova and keeping the rest of the tree the same.
Why would EotS be worthless? It's very nice for AoE heavy fights where the pushback is horrendous.
Anyway, I've choosen to keep Elemental Warding over convection for the usual raid damage help, but I've also noticed my mana is dropping faster. Nothing too scary, manageable it seems, but just faster. On AoE packs that is.
Is anyone really having such mana problems that Convection is worthwhile? The only way I could run myself OOM would be hitting CL and FN on cooldown for an extended period, and with raid buffs + Water Shield + Thunderstorm on cooldown combined with realistic fight mechanics I just don't see that happening. Convection is a poor use of talent points any way you slice it. Even if I buy that the regen is desirable, those points would be better spent just about anywhere else.
And a note to everyone reading this thread: Elemental Warding is great. Unless you have no intention of setting foot inside a Heroic-difficulty dungeon any time in the next few months, it should (IMO) be considered a must-have. 6% damage reduction for 3 points very low in the tree is, quite simply, irreplaceable for a DPS class. The difficulty of Heroic encounters is almost always based to some degree off massive, unavoidable raid damage. That 6% will allow you to survive many situations that another DPS caster wouldn't. YMMV, but even with the phenomenal healers we have in EJ I consider this talent to be absolutely essential for Heroic raiding.
12/08/09, 11:15 AM
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