Oh I was referring to things dieing before the dot ticks out. I know it won't be like our 4pc t8 where sometimes the dot would never tick as it kept stacking...

For example killing tentacles on yogg-saron (my guild is still working on yogg0), this dot is a nerf to constrictor dps as they are only up for a few seconds.

It is clearly a nerf. However, it's not aimed at reducing out pve dps and losing ticks is just an unfortunate side effect - the nerf is directly aimed at reducing elemental burst power with 4set T9 in pvp (arenas).

For those of you that use SimulationCraft, I've implemented this change (assuming patch=3.3.0 is set).

One thing to consider about the change is that since the damage won't be as front-loaded when we Lava Burst (which should be right off the bat), our burst aggro generation will also be more manageable. Though not often, there are certain fights where I can't hold back, but I ride the aggro line quite close right from the start (25 Heroic Twins, 25 Heroic Anub)

Yeah I revisited my math and redid it using higher haste and dropping the T9 bonus. My numbers were dirtier but the effect you posted seems correct. Once you toss the T9 2pc the pendulum swings towards not using FrS. I also forgot to factor in the fact that you can't spell queue out of a shock so the marginal benefit in the most favorable situation is nullified by that.

It will naturally stack faster on fights with multiple targets or force you to move, and the higher haste values in Icecrown will further mitigate the potential benefit.

I've been doing some thinking about how 4t10 fits into a "rotation".

First, assuming that you cast LvB on cooldown every cooldown the sequence starts like this:

With no latency this allows 3 Lava Bursts to fit into the duration of the first Flame Shock, but leads to subsequent cycles looking more like this:

That is, you can only fit 3 LvBs in when LvB is the first cast following FS, and all subsequent sequences until the two align again (if they do at all) are normal 2 LvBs per FS cycles. Plus as already mentioned it'd be extremely difficult to pull this off in an actual encounter especially if latency is factored in. And the gain of the extra LvB cast comes at the cost of LB casts sacrificed to allow LvB to be used precisely on cooldown.

Where it looks more attractive is in a situation involving frequent movement, allowing us to regularly recast (overwrite) Flame Shock at almost no DPS loss, making the lower LvB cooldown a meaningful DPS increase.

In a stand-and-nuke scenario, it seems we'd have to regularly clip the last tick of Flame Shock to ensure the DoT's ticking when Lava Burst lands, leading to 2 LvBs per FS with what is effectively a reduced Flame Shock DoT duration (15s) and a higher frequency of both LvB and FS casts over the course of a fight. In this case the damage gains from a higher LvB frequency is slightly offset by the lower DPSC of FS and the higher ratio of FS:LB casts.

1. Apologies, perhaps I was unclear. I was saying that the rotations would not alternate 3-2-3-2 unless you deliberately synch your FS/LvB casts to "force" it (in which case, why not just go 3-3 with FS downtime? - see point 3 below). Otherwise it'd be 3-2-2-2-[...]-3-2-2-[...] depending on haste. The point of this observation was not to provide a practical rotation, but to illustrate that such a rotation was impractical and had very little value for increasing DPS.

2. I'm not sure how this relates to my post. I guess I didn't explain what I had done well enough. I modelled the rotation in SEIC to account for remaining duration of Flame Shock and cast times of all the spells in the rotation, as well as the wait time necessary for 3 LvBs to fit into that single FS duration without the DoT falling off before LvB is cast. In that case, Flame Shock falls off the target a fraction of a second after the third LvB cast, thus meaning the natural response is to recast after the 3rd LvB (after a filler LB/CL to avoid clipping). However, this allows for only 2 LvB casts from that point on until you happen to cast FS right before LvB again.

3. Of course, if you delay FS recasting until right before the next Lava Burst cooldown, you end up with a 3-3-3 rotation with reduced FS uptime, but that depends on pulling off that first "rotation" perfectly every single time you Flame Shock, with a margin for error of a fraction of a second and depending on using non-casting time waiting for LvB's cooldown (until something like 1500+ haste with 0 latency assuming LB fillers - I did not model for CL fillers). At present I can't see the precision required being practical in a real encounter, especially given latency considerations.

This leads me to conclude that aiming for 2 LvBs per FS with regular DoT clipping is much more practical and still seems to result in a real DPS increase. However, I've not actually modelled that scenario yet as I'm still working on a prior project.

Here is my question with the 4 piece set bonus taking time off the cool down to Lava . Would we want to wait for it to cool down to hit it is our spells don't match up to where its ready when we do the last Lightning or Chain lightning? otherwise the set bonus looks good on paper but does not seem to be as good in use.

Cyloria, you forget that most fights in 3.3 will probably require a lot of moving around. This means having a LvB off CD more often will always be a DPS increase.

That set bonus may not make it live. It seems very good for PvP since LvB hits hard and the 100% crit helps a lot on Resilience.

To answer your question, it depends on how long you have until LvB is back up, but in general you should be continuously casting. The shorter cooldown helps on the heavy movement fights of ICC, since you should be able to cast a quick LvB as you are running from fire.

Item - Shaman T10 Elemental 2P Bonus - Your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells reduce the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 2 sec. (Old - Your Lightning Bolt spell reduces the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 1 sec.)


Item - Shaman T10 Elemental Relic (Shocks) - The periodic damage from your Flame Shock spell grants 44 haste rating for 30 sec. Stacks up to 5 times. (Old - Your Earth Shock, Flame Shock, and Frost Shock spells grant 73 haste rating for 30 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.)

this should be interesting.

I'm glad they at least added chain lightning. Even w/ 2pc/4pc conflicting its overall an improvement. The relic looks a little more useful now too 15sec build up time.

Not bad. Doubling the cooldown reduction took T10's 2-piece value up to almost as much as T9's 2-piece in the model I've been working on. The 4-piece is still pretty underwhelming compared to T8 and T9's 4-piece bonuses, though.

Just for giggles, I did a model based on the 4-piece bonus I've seen suggested on the WoW forums: Lava Burst refreshes your Flame Shock duration. The DPS gain turned out to be much closer to T9. Still lagging behind slightly, but probably close enough that it would be worth upgrading to the higher item level gear.

T9 2pc: 110
T9 4pc: 259

Updated T10 2pc: 108
Current T10 4pc: 85
Suggested T10 4pc: 204

Cael

What your saying is the dps on tier 10 4-piece is 1/3 of tier 9?

Elemental rotation is already very basic, Suggested T10 would make it even more so.

I would prefer to see something a little more complicated that would allow us to squeeze more dps out of a bland rotation.

Edit: I realized that I did the cd wrong for lavaburst, yet ironically, it doesn't really make a difference. Redid the math, though.


I'm trying to find out how much is actually reduced by the 2p bonus, when you have 4pt10.

Assume roughly 1 second gcd and 1.4 second lightning bolts (what I have on live).

0-1s: Flame Shock
1-2s: LavaBurst
2-3.4s: LB (Cd on Lavaburst started at 2)
3.4-4.8s: LB
4.8-6.2s: LB
6.2-7.6s: LB
7.6-8.6s: CL
8.6s-9.6:LvB
9.6s-11s: LB (Lavaburst CD started at 9.6)
11s-12.4s: LB
12.4-13.8s: LB
13.8-15.2s: LB
15.2-16.2s: CL
16.2-17.2s: LvB
17.2-18.6s: LB
-----------Start Over

This is roughly what I would cast on live right now, with the same haste I have with latency. So about every 19 seconds, I'm casting 11 spells that reduce the cd by 2 seconds, or 22 seconds for every 19 seconds.

57 seconds in, I've reduced the cd by 66 seconds (or to 114 seconds total). 76 seconds in I've reduced it by 88 seconds (or to 96 seconds). So after about 1:25, the CD is back up.

Lets just round that up to 1:30 and toss the other 5 seconds to latency.

That's 1:30 of straight chaincasting to get the cd back up. Assuming I popped the cd right at the start, and the cd refresh effect starts right when the cd is popped, means that every 1:30, for 15 seconds I have 15% increased crit.

That evens out to roughly a flat 2.5% crit increase, assuming ideal chaincasting conditions, or about 112 crit rating.

That doesn't really seem worth it.

At all.

I assume you mean "resets the flame shock dot duration" rather than doing anything to the shock cooldown, right?

Yup. Fixed.

News on MMO this morning (PTR build 10747 - Official Notes Update), I was just wondering if this would be a GREAT increase dps, assuming you have one demono lock in your raid, among with :

[Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem]

I think it obviously would be a nice dps boost, and I just didn't see any glyphs change at the moment .

I definitely see a nerf to the Fire Ele glyph coming. Probably will become a 2-3 min CD reduction. But even then it is a nice boost assuming you have a demo lock.

Er, would that mean 0 min. with the glyph?

If so, would the idea be to replace either FS or Lava/ToW?

Permanent fire ele would be super OP. But even if the glyph gave it a 2min CD, I dare say it would be a DPS increase to glyph it.