Does that factor in the the next flame shock would still only get 2 LvB... or will we delay casting FS until LvB is nearing the end of cd?

I think this neglects how those CDs effect the ensuing FS cycles. Assuming a 6 minute fight with the following times between casts:

Pre 3.3 : FS 18 secs, LvB 9.2 secs (ignoring the T9 FS bonus for now)
Post 3.3 : FS 18 secs, LvB 7.7 secs

We will get the following numbers of cast of the 2 spells:

Pre 3.3 : FS 20 casts, LvB 40 casts (2 per FS)
Post 3.3 : FS 20 casts, LvB 47 casts (2,35 per FS)

So whereas, looking at a single FS cycle might give 50% more LvBs, over an extended period, the increase will only be about 17.5% more casts. ie. you will only get 3 LvB in your FS cycle in 1 out of 3 cycles.

That doesn't seem to work out.

A timeline for 150 latency would look something like this:

0 (FS applied, start GCD)
1.3 (begin casting LvB)
2.6 (LvB Fires CD starts, begin casting CL because timing is gonna be tight)
3.9 (CL fires, begin LB)
5.4, 6.9(more LB's)
8.4 (CL probably? 0.7 sec remaining on lvb CD, the better your connection or higher haste goes the less time is lost here I guess)
9.7 (0.6 sec of casting CL over LvB because of ability timing, begin LvB)
11.0 (LvB fires, CD starts, begin LB becuase CL on CD)
12.5 (LB)
14.0 (CL off CD at 13.2 so cast one here)
15.3 (LB)
16.8 (LvB is going to come back off cd at 17.5, FS expires at 18 so no go here, can clip the FS dot here to get faster LvB so FS I guess CD starts cycle repeats you're going to always clip FS on this scenario, seems uncomfortable)
18.1 (LvB)

With slightly better 50 ms latency:
0 (FS applied)
1.2 (begin casting LvB)
2.4 (LvB fires CD to 8.9, cast CL)
3.6 (CL fires CD to 7.1, begin casting LB)
5.0 (Another LB)
6.4 (LB)
7.8 (CL)
9.0 (CL fires, CD to 12.5, cast LvB, tighter this time, low lag always feels great)
10.2 (LvB fires CD to 16.7(uh oh), begin LB)
11.6 (LB)
13.0 (CL is available, casting it produces the following ugly events)
14.2 (CL fires, CD to 17.7, begin LB)
15.6 (1.1 seconds to LvB up, CL is on CD, LB would make getting LvB in impossible, I guess you can FROST SHOCK for less dpsc?)
16.8 (Begin casting LvB, cross your fingers and pray FS doesn't fall)
18.0 (LvB fires, FS falls, cast FS within milliseconds and repeat)

Changing the above CL:
13.0 (LB because CL makes down the road ugly)
14.4 (LB)
15.8 (0.9 seconds until LvB, even worse, doesn't help)

So you're casting a deficit dpsc spell in the rotation to fix an interval so you can break the timing needed to get the third LvB in. The other permutations of abilities I tried seemed even worse.

Are you expecting people to have razor fine sense of timing and have no latency with the server to always know exactly if they'll make the cutoff for not sending off LvB without?

To get some sort of huge benefit you would have to have extremely good latency, an extremely stable connection (huge risk of sending off LvB without FS), and assure that you never not cast LvB almost immediately when it comes off CD. Even consistently great elemental shaman would have unacceptable variation on their casting of LvB to every realistically utilize that, judging by WoL reports during stationary dps sessions. This kind of set bonus makes you really appreciate the flexibility you get with the 2pc T9 right now. At least it's probably possible to get 2 pc 258 before Icecrown and the new expansion will be out before people can realistically get 4pc 277 T10. Now that you've encouraged me to look in some depth at the way spells overlap with the new bonus I don't want it at all.

Posting the relative hast values you're working from would be helpful. Your numbers however appear logical, implying that even if you second-guess your latency with things like Quartz hitting the cool downs will be amazingly tight and in all likelihood 2 tics of FS will be lost on a clean rotation.

Right now the usefulness will be minimal, not many progression fights call for AE. BUT with that said on fights like Valks and Anub'arak, to where every bit of extra damage you can throw out (adds for Anub, Shields on Valks) is a benefit.

With that said, the spell would have been EXTREMELY handy in Ulduar to where many of the fights had AE friendly fights, Hodir (breaking the adds out), Freeya, Mimiron, Thorim, Auriya, and Yogg-Saron.

Current progression (sense most guilds have not downed Anub on heroic) means its an extra spell to use when we have nothing better to do, enhancement more specifically.

For elemental's this spell is more of a blessing and a curse. I don't see the damage of Fire Nova being worth interrupting your standard rotation honestly and unless your fire totem is placed close enough to the boss to hit with fire nova a complete loss of Damage to move the totem closer.

As for the new mechanic? Amazing, taking something useless and making it useful. Keep it up Blizz, this is what we like to see.

From what I can see the 2 piece bonus will be taking Chain Lightning out of our single target rotation again.I just wish it read 2 Pieces (Elemental): Your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells reduces the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 1 second.

read up to page 4 and didn't see anything else on this so I'll go ahead and confirm the Fire Nova spell counts as being cast by the player and not the totem. Just look in the combat log and it'll say Fire Nova damage is attributed to you. what I like about this change is that it gives me a way to aoe tag mobs when thunderstorm is down; obviously that's not helpful for pvp or raiding. Losing the stun means one less tool for buying extra moments to heal or dps.

Basically my test was to wind shear a target; drop searing; let it fire one off and hit Fire Nova. I had no shield buffs or anything else that would have affected my threat and the mob stuck to me. So its not a perfect test but as far as i can tell the threat goes to us. When I get back home tomorrow evening I'll be able to log onto the ptr and try a better test.

I see your problem... from the start you'll need to have the totem pull the mob, anything you do pulls the mob to you over totems, unless its a face pull with a stone claw out or dropping Earth ele totem.

So drop a stone claw, drop a fire totem, then use FN and see where the mob goes first, to the fire totem or to you.

Also it should be noted searing isnt the best for this test, I have had many a boss or mob turn and destroy the searing totem after it hits them like 1 to 2 times, but they are still focused on their current target.

Unless they increase the threat drop in wind sheer the only reason it drops your threat is by popping a G/cd when u use it so u cant cast for 1s. Keep in mind if its your first move to them threat is still threat, even if its a threat drop. Said mob will still agro to you if no one else is around or doing anything.

I did the test on just random mobs though so it wasn't like I was dpsing them first; I made sure the mobs turned to searing before popping Fire Nova though so I'd think that might be enough but as i said can't really do anything more until later tonight. If anything consider it a really really basic test; if I can find someone tonight to do some tests I'll keep you updated on any developments.

Wind shear has never caused a global cooldown. The previous version called wind shock shared a cooldown with shocks.

As I said before the combat log attributes the spell and the spell damage to us (meaning the player, not the totem); it stands to reason that the threat is also attributed to us as well. I bet the totem isn't doing anything but providing a location for the spell to be automatically cast at. It's using a totem instead of a fancy targeting glyph and the graphics for each are just combined.

Item - Shaman T10 Elemental Relic (Shocks) - Spells - Sigrie
T10 totem:

219 crit vs 200 haste? Seems like another totem to skip over

You mean 73 crit vs 200 haste.

With the 15 seconds duration you won't stack that buff

Well, with the T10 bonus reducing LVB's cast time by 1.5s (which is a garunteed crit, and more will be in the rotation) actual crit rating should get devalued more than it is right now, making it inferior nearly because of that fact.

The second thing that comes to mind is the 15s buff lasting period... Flame Shock is 18s so you'd be refreshing it at 13-14s in the rotation, or popping an Earth Shock in there when the Shock timer is off CD (meaning you'd refresh Flame Shock roughly 11-12s after popping out an Earth Shock).

And if I recall right, a minimal GCD cast of Earth Shock is a bit less DPS than a Chain Lightning or LB.


If they made the Haste Totem have a larger IGCD it might be better, who knows what they are going to do though... It doesn't seem like they are doing to well for Elemental Shaman stuff this patch.

I'd be really surprised to find out that this actually becomes the elemental totem.

What is the supposed enhancement totem?

e;fb

OK, so 219 haste, which takes 32 seconds to build up. In terms of pure haste-seconds, it sounds like the break-even point is 203.5 seconds. I'm assuming 100% uptime on ToEW and that it's up on first LB cast, which seems close to accurate.

0s-18s: 73 haste (127 less than with ToEW)
19s-32s: 146 haste (54 less than with ToEW)
33s-Ts: 219 haste (19 more than ToEW)

It takes 171.5 seconds of 19 "extra" haste to make up for the 32s set-up time. That, plus the set-up time means the fight needs to last 203.5 seconds to break even. On a 5 minute fight, it's a 6.1 haste-rating boost (compared to ToEW), and 8.25 haste-rating over 6 minutes.

So if my math is right (and I'm new to this), it's a very slight boost on boss fights and a DPS loss on trash (not that that's a consideration). I wouldn't spend 25 Emblems of Frost on this, and even blowing GP on this sounds unwise.

On the same note, how much would it cost (in terms of dps) to flame shock early (with a quick 4s CD) to build up the haste buff quicker. Instead of taking the 30+ seconds mentioned to get it stacked and ready to go, it would take less than a third (in optimal situations). Which would mean that you have 0-4s with 73, 4-8s with 146 and 8+ with the 219. It sounds like you'd need a lot less time to build it if you took a bit of a hit early on to apply it.

With the 30 second time it's unlikely to see the buff fall off, and could possibly have better uptime than ToEW (however it's a difference of 90+% to close to 100%).

The difference doesn't seem like a significant upgrade, if we can get it from emblems like we have been in previous tiers, I think I'll save it for a later upgrade.

Edited; Needless dickery, point already covered.

Rough guess, 2x FrS in the first 12 seconds will probably cost you 2-4000 damage or -300ish DPS for those 12 sec.

While the upgrade seems to be minimal and arguably if it is even worth it, but on high movement fights wouldn't it be a lot better than ToEW? As we might not always be able to stand still to cast a line of LB and you can get unlucky and lose the buff (although it pretty much come back right on within the next 2 LB anyway), whereas the new totem a) last 30sec b) refreshed by shock spells which is usable while moving.

So while might not be a good dps upgrade, it might have a better up time compare to ToEW on high movement fights.

Lets hope Icecrown is full of critters to shock before the pulls.
This doesn't sound like a big boost to us even if you can get it maxed up before the pull. Kinda want to see where else i can spend my Emblems before more theorycrafting. Should be some upgrades that give more than 19haste, but you never know.