Enhancement in Mythic+ - How do you handle trash packs?

[ehxy]

I don't believe that info is true. LL cleaves the same CL as SS, so it only does less DPS on your primary target.

Yep, if you're capped out go ahead and LL if everything's on cd and you're capped with no proc. If you get a doom vortex that's a nice little + too if it happens.

[Sezerek]

Versatility is worth pretty much half of agility. 1500 vers is equivalent to only 750 agi. Not every bigger number means better damage.

You should maybe look at your statweights again, because even the worst stat (crit) is in a really bad case already at ~70% worth of agility.

[Deleted]

I don't believe that info is true. LL cleaves the same CL as SS, so it only does less DPS on your primary target.

I think his argument here is to save maelstrom for that SS proc, rather than wasting it all on Lava Lashes. If you cast 3 Lava Lashes, but then drain your MS and you get a SS proc chain, then those Lava Lashes didn't do you anything, because now you can't cast Stormstrike.

But in the end, LL is used as a last resort to avoid wasting MS - but if you're at eg 100 MS and everything is up and on cooldown, I would probably not cast LL either just yet.

[vichnaiev]

I think his argument here is to save maelstrom for that SS proc, rather than wasting it all on Lava Lashes. If you cast 3 Lava Lashes, but then drain your MS and you get a SS proc chain, then those Lava Lashes didn't do you anything, because now you can't cast Stormstrike.

But in the end, LL is used as a last resort to avoid wasting MS - but if you're at eg 100 MS and everything is up and on cooldown, I would probably not cast LL either just yet.

Saving MS is one thing, I agree with your point on resource management. Saying that SS cleaves for higher damage than LL is another matter entirely different as the cleave damage is exactly the same. I'm just trying to keep bad information from being spread.

[Deleted]

Unless you factor in the MS cost of LL too. My LL hit for less than half of a stormstrike, but for 75% of the cost. The cleave damage is still the same, but my main target takes much less damage per maelstrom spent.

But, who am I to say what people think? :P

[vichnaiev]

Unless you factor in the MS cost of LL too. My LL hit for less than half of a stormstrike, but for 75% of the cost. The cleave damage is still the same, but my main target takes much less damage per maelstrom spent.

But, who am I to say what people think? :P

Which is the same thing I said before? I don't understand the "I will say the same thing he said, but make it look like I'm disagreeing" attitude.

"LL cleaves the same CL as SS, so it only does less DPS on your primary target."

Let's do some math:

6 targets:

SS hits for 200k on main target and cleaves for 100k x5. Total damage: 700k

LL hits for MUCH less, let's say 50k on main target and cleaves the same 100k x5. That's 550k. That's 78% damage for 75% of the cost, pretty even. And I don't think LL hits that low, I used a really bad number on purpose.

Now, obviously, SS procs a whole bunch of other stuff, which makes it way more valuable than LL, I'm not arguing otherwise. I'm just saying that it's not such a huge waste as some people are trying to picture it, it's worth it's cost if you know it won't starve you and there are a good number of targets (obviously it won't be worth it in a 3 pack).

[Deleted]

I honestly think that either you are misunderstanding me, or I am misunderstanding you. It's very likely its the latter. At any rate, I apologize - it was not my intention to stirr up commotion.

Anyways, since you brought math, let's see this one through to the end:

Crash Lightning cleaves nearby targets for 100% nature damage. This damage is independant of the damage done by SS or LL.

I just took some swings at a target dummy, and my non-crit, no buffs running damage from Stormstrike was 200k. Lava Lash hits for 100k*. Crash Lightning hits for 38k, the same as the cleave damage we do.

* Lava Lash is fire damage and is not mitigated by armor.

With five targets up, we are looking at:

Stormstrike: 200.000 + 5 x 38.000 = 390.000 damage for 40 MS (9750 damage per maelstrom spent).
Lava Lash0: 10.000 + 5 x 38.000 = 290.000 damage for 30 MS (9666,67 damage per maelstrom spent).

Let's try the same with different targets:

2 targets:

Stormstrike: 200.000 + 2 x 38.000 = 276.000 damage for 40 MS (6.900 damage per maelstrom spent).
Lava Lash: 100.000 + 2 x 38.000 = 176.000 damage for 30 MS (5866,67 damage per maelstrom spent).

3 targets:

Stormstrike: 200.000 + 3 x 38.000 = 314.000 damage for 40 MS (7.850 damage per maelstrom spent).
Lava Lash: 100.000 + 3 x 38.000 = 214.000 damage for 30 MS (7.133 damage per maelstrom spent).

10 targets:

Stormstrike: 200.000 + 10 x 38.000 = 580.000 damage for 40 MS (14.500 damage per maelstrom spent).
Lava Lash: 100.000 + 10 x 38.000 = 480.000 damage for 30 MS (16.000 damage per maelstrom spent).

This is actually some interesting findings. The cutoff point seems to be at 6 targets, where Lava Lash does slightly more damage per MS spent compared to Stormstrike. But of course, there are so many things not factored in to this:

- Stormstrike has two chances to crit, from the main hand and the offhand.
- Stormstrike might proc off itself and do more damage (and these can crit too)
- Stormstrike often has Stormbringer up, doubling the damage per MS
- Stormstrike can proc Unleash Doom.
- Lava Lash can proc Doom Vortex
- And so on and so on

So while the cleave component of the two spells is exactly the same, the overall damage done - and the Maelstrom you spend - greatly favors Stormstrike, both in damage and in what Stormstrike can bring to the table.

Coming back to what I read his message as: Unless you're about to cap your Maelstrom, it's better to not cast Lava Lash and wait for Stormstrike to be ready, than to spend your MS on Lava Lash - unless the targets have to die ASAP, or you know you have MS to spend (say, if you have Feral Spirit available).

Finally, allow me to repeat myself: I think we are probably just misunderstanding each other. I just had to elaborate because.. math :P

[Martinius]

Does there happen to be any trinket that provides a decent AoE boost at the cost of single target dmg?

[Deleted]

Not really. You might want to argue that some trinkets are better for single target and some are better for AOE. But even those which are good for AOE are also fairly good for ST. For example, the spontaneous appendages: it shines in AOE and you could go for a single target trinket when you don't need to AOE. But the difference in damage isn't going to be massive.

[asamu]

Does there happen to be any trinket that provides a decent AoE boost at the cost of single target dmg?

There are AOE trinkets from neltharion's lair, DHT, CoS, and Arcway. EN also has some AOE oriented trinkets, though I'm not sure if Unstable Horrorslime (which would be by far the best for enh shaman), would work, since it specifies ranged spells. As far as I'm aware, Ft, Fb, crash lightning, and boulderfist/rockbiter count as ranged spells, but I could be wrong.

Versatility is worth pretty much half of agility. 1500 vers is equivalent to only 750 agi. Not every bigger number means better damage.

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UD is equivalent to approximately 5% increase in DPS and that doesn't go any higher in AoE.

This guy pulled 2.5 million DPS in the first Maw pull, look at UD: 4,3%. There's no "crazy numbers" from UD, Supakitch doesn't understand how UD works.

It looks like they pulled all of the trash and the boss then dropped lust + all CDs with the teeming affix for even more mobs. With a pack that size, classes with better AOE, such as mages, hunters, warriors (w/ bladestorm), DKs, Paladins, Monks, DHs, and warlocks, would still pull way more DPS than that.

Also, that's a 2.5mil spike, that lasted a few seconds, out of the group's total of 14mil; the mage spiked over 8mil. Towards the end of the fight, his overall DPS was still below 700k, below both the tank and the mage.

Not saying it that dps isn't good, but you can't really use it as justification for saying enh AOE/trash damage is good.

As for UD, it's around 10%+ on most of the top parses for raid bosses. That's not AOE though.

That said, Enh shaman have their place in M+ for ST damage + lust. The main issue I see right now with DPS class balance is that the disparity between AOE damage for specialized classes vs non-specialized classes is so much greater than the single-target difference, so for M+, where aoe/trash is more important, the AOE focused classes are always the better choice, unless the affixes screw over the group if you go too heavy on AOE.

[vichnaiev]

Finally, allow me to repeat myself: I think we are probably just misunderstanding each other. I just had to elaborate because.. math :P

I'm sorry for any misunderstanding as well, we are saying the same things from a different perspective. SS is way better than LL, I never questioned that. What we disagree on is: 80 MS is not "about to cap" and I would hit LL on that, for example. If a group of 6 mobs is in front of me and there is no SB proc I would rather LL than not. Yeah, it might not be the BEST MS usage, but it's still a 328k hit and I don't think I won't have enough for SS because there's MS regeneration. Yeah, I'm going down to 50 (at which point I would NOT LL anymore) and I'll need 80 for a full SB proc, but that's 3 GCDs ahead. By then I'll probably have it. I'm not saying that 80 is THE exact number, maybe it's 90, I never tested it myself, but I feel safe to say that it's not 130.

- - - Updated - - -

Also, that's a 2.5mil spike, that lasted a few seconds, out of the group's total of 14mil; the mage spiked over 8mil. Towards the end of the fight, his overall DPS was still below 700k, below both the tank and the mage.

Not saying it that dps isn't good, but you can't really use it as justification for saying enh AOE/trash damage is good.

As for UD, it's around 10%+ on most of the top parses for raid bosses. That's not AOE though.

You are misquoting me. This is how discussion went:

One guy says: my AoE damage feels too low. Other guy responds: it will get better with UD because it's AoE. I say: no it won't because UD doesn't increase AoE damage and I proceed to use the log to prove my point.

In no point during that discussion I was arguing that enh AOE is good, so yeah, I can't use it as justification and I did not.

As for UD, I can't find a single top parse in Mythic+ where UD is 10%+. It's usually under 5% because over 20 minutes it normalizes, you take lucky SB proc streaks out of the picture.

Edit: actually, I can't find any raid boss parse where UD is 10%+ as well. Care to link?

[Deleted]

I have my WA's set up to turn my MS bar red when I'm above 110 MS (it also shows the Lava Lash icon). This is pretty much the only time I want to consider casting LL in a normal rotation.

I'm generally too "scared" to drop down below 80 MS by LL'ing, but that's mostly due to the amount of SB procs I'm getting. I suspect it's probably due to the Spontaneous Appendages trinket, cause I'm seeing so many SB procs throughout a fight. If I allow myself to drop down to 50, I fear I would run out of MS if I get two Stormbringer procs in a row.

On the other hand, there's no reason to end a fight on 100+ MS, so if you are comfortable managing MS down to 50, that just means you can squeeze out a bit of extra damage overall