Eriazar

Wake up Guys ^^
Do you realy think Blizz will allow us to have an elem with no cd (or even 2min cd) :p
We will have in the best cases an 3-5 min reduction with the glyph, let's see it.

An elem with a 7-8 min cd will only work one time in fight. Not very usefull.

 

orion121

Given that it occupies our fire totem it's a perfectly feasible option when you consider that PVE frost mages will be receiving the same general treatment.

A chain-able fire elemental would adequately put us in contention with top DPS classes in the event that something like Totem of Wrath is not needed.

I'll concede it's not likely, but if I had to hazard a guess at the impact in DPS I'd venture it possible.

 

chill1

What's happening here is we are getting a much lower cooldown on an ability that is a significant increase to our dps. Not sure how that isn't useful. Rather than maybe using it every other fight, we may now be able to use it every fight, depending on raid comp and the length of the encounter.

 

Xunwael

Yeah I'm not so sure they want restoration shamans to be doing 1200-2000 dps passively all the time. It is highly unreasonable to expect to be able to drop it more than once per fight on average, maybe twice in the really long ones, nevermind to have it up permanently.

Frost mages are not exactly in the same boat since they, unlike elemental shamans, are worthless in PvE.

"Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."
- Clark's Law

 

cyloria

I'm not sure but i would find it hard to believe resto shamans would give up a major healing glyph for a dps ability..and its not usable in arena's or they might for them. Although i did transfer my Shaman to the ptr with some fire elemental glyphs..the cooldown reduction has not went live on the ptr yet...and the glyphs are the same for the time being.

 

◊ masanbol

Let's assume that the glyph will be changed to 5+ minutes, which would make sense (current glyph cuts the cooldown in half). Except on fights like Faction Champions (and that fight nerfs its damage due to the AoE penalty), none of the current encounters are ever long enough to warrant glyphing it over any of our current major glyphs. It's a once-per-fight ability, as opposed to its current incarnation where it sees use once every two at most.

The bottom line is that speculating about this is ultimately pointless because we don't know what the glyph will look like on live yet, but I would really doubt that Blizzard's answer to our fire totem issues would be a blanket +1500 dps increase. It doesn't make sense.

 

Lessmarvel

Yeah, might be dreaming.

Anyway, I hope Blizz just *discovered* a way to eventually up ele shamans (or Enche) without having always complaining about ele burst in pvp. A talent that would give us an elemental fire permanentely, assuming his dps would be decreased and you would have some kind of management of it would be fun I think. (At least for Wotlk, excpeting new stuff of course for cataclysm !!!)

But yes, the point that would not tend into saying that we are going to have a permanent elemental fire pet, ... is that elemental doesn't really need a buff now =).

 

Shadovv

Even if the glyph only took the CD to 5mins, I would glyph it for anub HM, which is a 10 minute fight. It would certainly be a DPS upgrade over lava or totem of wrath (whichever you use)

 

Masadar

Army of the Dead cooldown went from 20 minutes to 10 minutes, but I believe Ghostcrawler said on the forums that the existing talent that reduces the cooldown by 10 mins would now reduce the cooldown to 6mins, so they couldn't just chain AotD. Source below.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Army of the Dead!!

I find it difficult to believe we won't be getting at least the same treatment, given that Fire Elemental is a bigger DPS boost than Army. A six minute Fire Elemental would still be a decent glyph option though.

 

Ikefury

It wouldn't matter if it was a 10 or a 6 minute cd. Either way, you're only using it once per fight, and chances are extremely high it'll be up for next fight anyway. Outside of highly specialized fights like Anub where half the people are using glyphs special for it.

 

Zamir

I finally ran some numbers on different rotation methods for the present PTR implementation of 4t10. I used this profile based on Hakawa's highest-end tier 9 stats on the assumption this might represent a reasonable approximation of non-heroic tier 10 stats. This resulted in cast times of 1.01 seconds for Lava Burst etc. and 1.35 seconds for Lightning Bolt. All methods assumed no external cast-time increasing factors (such as latency).

I measured DPS as damage done until the point at which Flame Shock has to be recast.

1. The first method used three Lava Bursts per Flame Shock cast, only casting Flame Shock right before a Lava Burst to ensure there's always time for a 3-3-3 (etc) cycle. Space in between was filled with chain-cast Lightning Bolts. This resulted in 9084 DPS with FS recast occurring after 24.30 seconds. The final LvB cast began with 1.5 seconds left on the FS DoT, a margin of error of 0.4 seconds over the course of the rotation.
   
2. The second method cast Flame Shock if either of the following applied: (1) time remaining on FS DoT and LvB CD <= 1.5 (to try to account for reaction time or other factors) or (2) no FS DoT on target. This resulted in a consistent clipping of the last tick of the FS DoT. The DPS output was 9067 with FS recast occurring after 16.54 seconds.
   
3. The third method was meant to be the most "intuitive" and only cast Flame Shock if no FS DoT was on the target, with LvB cast only if remaining FS duration was greater than 1.5 seconds. The resulting DPS was 8935 with FS recast occurring at 19.24 seconds. Allowing for DoT clipping (but still a reasonable reaction time for LvB casting) resulted in a FS recast at 17.89 seconds and a DPS of 8996.

The DPS difference between the three methods is 149 DPS or about 1.5%, with methods one and two separated by only 17 DPS. That's even less than the DPS value of using Chain Lightning after Lava Burst. Method 1 would fall slightly behind Method 2 if you allowed for the occasional LvB non-crit as a result of reaction times, but I can't see any of the above methods as being clearly superior. I think how we optimally handle 4t10 (if it remains in its current form) will be totally up to the individual player to decide.

[e] Point of interest, the DPS for the same setup using 4t9 was 9330.

My Elemental Shaman blog: Planet of the Hats!
Home of the Beginner's Guide and the ZAP! spreadsheet.

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.

-- Carl Sagan

 

n0us3

I guess it's the best place to ask that question

What happened with the Elemental TTT?

 

Chickonfire

I think Bink, who used to keep an eye on it, quit the game.

 

Zamo

I've been on the ptr today and Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem reduces the cd to 2min. With an uptime of 2min our elemental is chainable atm, Hurray

 

Ikefury

Niiiiice.

Given that the Fire Ele does insane dps (for example, he did 1300 dps for me on H25 Gormok last night, 2853 dps on H25 Anub (phase3), 2396 on Hodir 25, and 2107 on Mimiron 25, Here and Here), I'd presume that on any fight where he could conceivably hit more then 1 target, like all those listed above, It'd be worthwhile to take.

Probably be LB>Lava/ToW/Fire Ele in ICC, with Fire ele subbing in for ToW (If you have 4pt9 or 4pt10) or Lava (if you don't have either 4p), on any fight with adds. Without adds, someone would have to do the math on if its single target dps is worth more then just dropping searing+ToW/Lava's personal benefit.


And this all presumes you get a warlock who specs demo, which frankly, in ICC, is highly likely anyway with the changes to the spec.

 

Zamir

In its present form even a 2-minute cooldown wouldn't be useful enough to justify glyphing it. We can't control what it attacks and it can only attack in the radius of its totem-tether; it's destroyed if the totem is and the 2-minute cooldown would prevent us from redropping it; it's not counted as a party member, so isn't targetted by normal AoE heals, so we have to micromanage its health ourselves; if it gets killed or destroyed or the fight moves elsewhere, there's absolutely nothing we can do about it.

I don't expect that either the totem or the glyph will remain in their present PTR forms, but if they did I don't think it's something to be hugely excited about.

My Elemental Shaman blog: Planet of the Hats!
Home of the Beginner's Guide and the ZAP! spreadsheet.

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.

-- Carl Sagan

 

Ikefury

I've dropped it on several heavy aoe fights and its lived the entire 2 minutes (Gormok's stomp, Algalon's Cosmic Smashes, Hodir's ice drop, which ya can check in the above linked WoL).

The redropping thing is a slight concern, that's true, and so is the targetting thing (you could never ever ever drop it on Anub hardmode before phase 3, because there's the chance it'll start knocking down ice patches), but for the most part, intelligent placement prevents the location of the totemdrop from being an issue (It certainly isn't a problem with any of ToGC, and the only bosses I can think of it being an issue on in Ulduar are Razorscale, and Phase 2 Yogg).

 

Rootzo

On a boss fight situation, you go and drop your fire elemental totem, it usually lives the whole time. It is rare that I have to micro manage its health. I really think it would be worth it to glyph it. 100% uptime on a boss fight if glyph stays that way and reduce cooldown by 8 minutes. I would remove Glyph of Lava for it.

We'll see how it goes. Will be doing some testing on PTR with it in ICC anyway. I'll make sure to post the results on the uptime.

Also, on an AOE boss fight, I would drop it close to where the adds will be tanked to make sure to be able to Fire Nova!

 

Zamir

It's not AoE which kills the totem itself, it's mobs or those RSTS abilities that can target totems.

[e] Maybe I've just got really unlucky with my Fire Elemental, but it never seems to last long in 10-man Ulduar. It doesn't survive any fight involving adds or killer AoEs/RSTS. ToGC is more forgiving but it's also far from a normal raid instance design, and it's still possible for the Elemental to spectacularly kill itself/end up out of range. It's just not reliable.

[e2] And we know that Icecrown will feature sprawling engagement areas (that aren't necessarily connected by ground), lots of adds/swap targets NOW fights, fights where you phase in or out repeatedly, fights with massive killer AoEs and stringent positioning requirements and heavy duty RSTS mechanisms. I honestly can't see the present PTR FE Glyph being a better choice than what we presently use. And unless Blizzard is planning on doing something very different with the Fire Elemental (maybe ala Frost Mage), I'd be worried if it was a better choice.

My Elemental Shaman blog: Planet of the Hats!
Home of the Beginner's Guide and the ZAP! spreadsheet.

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.

-- Carl Sagan

 

Ciege

Some encounters it will be useless as the random AE it will eat, not a normal pet as you stated and does not get the pet AE damage reduction, it will die horribly often. But others it will do fine during, bosses rarely target totems anymore for abilities (this makes me sad), and if there is only 1 boss, its not like its going to have alot of choices and what to attack.

It will be situational at best, but i can easily see it being nice for some bosses, even on current content i can think of fights i would use this on:

Beasts
Twins
Anub
Jaraxxus

Useless vs the worms in beasts, but easy to place vs Icehowl or The centaur. In twins it will be immune to the light orbs (unless fixed), Jar its more DPS without the pain of constantly moving your fire totem, Anub it will help drop the adds faster.

 

cyloria

I do think you have been unlucky. I have used them on many fights, because we have had a full time demo warlock since the end of Naxx.Mine never dies and usually attacks what I want . One big exception to this is Ony. that room is bad for them.The dps increase to me will warrant a glyph spot if the glyph stays in its current form...I kind of think Blizz did this cause they are not usable in arena so its not affecting arena to give us some DPS help.

 

Zamir

I'm still not comfortable with the idea of sacrificing guaranteed single-target DPS to something fragile, on a high cooldown and that we have no control over when so many encounters depend on swapping quickly to the right target and DPSing it as hard and fast as possible. It'd be great for whoring the meters on farm fights though. Shrug.

Admittedly, if we assume the glyph it replaces is worth 150 DPS, then the Fire Elemental only has to do 18k damage every two minutes to be worthwhile on paper. Which means surviving and hitting the right target for what, 20 seconds? Which is all the more reason to assume it's not going to go live in its present form. It'll be interesting to see what it does end up as, though.

To quote Rava in the Enhancement thread:
I don't think [the 2 minute glyphed cooldown is] intentional. The 2 minute thing is shared by the elementals to prevent you from dropping both at the same time and it probably forces a blanket cooldown on all of the spells that includes the elemental that you just dropped.

My Elemental Shaman blog: Planet of the Hats!
Home of the Beginner's Guide and the ZAP! spreadsheet.

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.

-- Carl Sagan

 

Gamesetmatch

Has anyone tested for how much DPS the Fire Elemental puts out on average, over the course of its 2-minute duration? It would be beneficial to know how much of a DPS increase it is to put down a Fire Elemental versus our other damage-dealing fire totems (maybe even on single targets versus multiple targets?). From experience, my guess is that this glyph would be worth it on single-target bosses that do not need to be moved much, as the Fire Elemental's DPS is definitely the most for any of our fire totems by far.

Also with that being said, I can see instances, such as those where there are maybe 4 mobs+, where it might be more beneficial to have just a normal Magma Totem, or even fights where there may be a lot of ground to cover. The Fire Elemental does eventually run out of mana I believe, and so it may not do its AoE ability as often (in which case Magma Totem would presumably do more DPS). And on fights that have a lot of ground to cover, we wouldn't be able to keep dropping the Fire Elemental totem. Just my 2 cents.

 

Jaestas

On the note of magma totem I've found that the constant recasting and moving is more of a detriment to my dps than the totem is a gain. I tend to drop searing when I can because of the full minute duration. A fire elemental totem has the 2 minute duration, which means I can basically go about my regular dps without having to worry about what's going on with my totem.

I'm pretty sure the totem itself has the same hp as the elemental. I know it's true of the earth elemental (to prevent people form getting the totem's 5hp instead of the elementals 10kish). The only time I've noticed RSTS hitting totems is on faction champs. I realise this is only anecdotal evidence but I'm sure others can let us know what they've seen as well. Also, the worst that could happen is you lose the fire elemental for near 2minutes (random hit kills it early) and you go back to other totems until the CD is up.

It's got a pretty large leash range from the totem once it's been aggro'd. On freya our path to avoid bombs is pretty large (our tanks like to move a lot) and the elemental followed her for a majority of the room. It seems that once it's attacking something the range is larger than tow/searing. Unfortunately, we don't have the 3% crit debuff from anyone else in our raid so I'm still stuck with tow, but if it is a 2min duration, 2min cd I'd definately like so try and get more use out of it.

 

KraxisSingular

Your reasons fur not trusting it are valid, but glyphs aren't permanent. Just grab a stack of the two gluphs in question sn switch as needed.