Ancestral Swiftness vs. Hailstorm

[WskyDK]

Well, the way I see it is that enha is all about RNG this expansion. I run with 2 other enha shaman in our raid, and we play at more or less the same "level". But we still range quite widely between each kill, just because of SS procs ^^.
So you might not be doing anything fundamentally wrong, but rather not have luck with gear/procs .

True, there are some pretty crazy variations in my own damage from week to week.
I suppose I just need to make sure my rotation is down I guess

[Tribs]

Love this feedback thanks.
But ... Maybe Enhancement is too RNG

You had 98 "hits" with Stormstrike in the same time that I had only 76 - and that won't relate to gear or talents (maybe points to underperforming AS haste).

I have an 865 log with Hailstorm and I was far worse there, *chuckles*. Next time I do H Ursoc I'll run HS and see.

Very nice ranking man!

There's nothing wrong with trying out other talents for fun etc.
But if you compare your 872 ilvl log to my 869 logs, you'll see quite a big difference.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

The only thing I'd want is to have the option of taking more talents. In Legion I feel like I've been forced into a very narrow cookie-cutter build .

[Darleth]

Love this feedback thanks.
But ... Maybe Enhancement is too RNG

You had 98 "hits" with Stormstrike in the same time that I had only 76 - and that won't relate to gear or talents (maybe points to underperforming AS haste).

I have an 865 log with Hailstorm and I was far worse there, *chuckles*. Next time I do H Ursoc I'll run HS and see.

Very nice ranking man!

Keep in mind that Stormflurry has its own Procrate too, adding a lot more hits than there are Stormstrike Casts. Depending on procs the number can vary a lot.

[Ghrog]

Well, the way I see it is that enha is all about RNG this expansion. I run with 2 other enha shaman in our raid, and we play at more or less the same "level". But we still range quite widely between each kill, just because of SS procs ^^.
So you might not be doing anything fundamentally wrong, but rather not have luck with gear/procs .

Yeah, I just got in with a new guild and ran my first raid with them (only a measly 856 iLvl though) and after a lucky string of procs through the night, some of them are convinced I'm the second coming... nothing like unrealistic standards set up by positive rng. LOL

[Lowland]

There's nothing wrong with trying out other talents for fun etc.
But if you compare your 872 ilvl log to my 869 logs, you'll see quite a big difference.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

The only thing I'd want is to have the option of taking more talents. In Legion I feel like I've been forced into a very narrow cookie-cutter build .

Hot damn that's an impressive parse - I didn't even know our ST DPS could go that high on heroic raid bosses.

I do want to touch on the RNG aspect of Enhance though in light of this.

I compared your parse to my H Ursoc from last week (391k; https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=3) because I just had to figure out how you were getting to nearly 450k yourself. There were a few things I expected - you had a few more SS casts even though your fight was 15 seconds shorter (you have higher mastery and haste too) and your SSs did more damage per cast, you never got focused by Ursoc's charge whereas I got focused twice, and that ring is about +25k dps on its own. But there was one thing that really surprised me - Unleash Doom accounted for 11.13% of your total damage and the 9.86m dmg it did was nearly double the 5.09m it did for me!

I've never seen Unleash Doom do so much! You have very high mastery which I'm sure helped, but DAMN. I have to presume that was all RNG since it has a chance to proc off Stormstrike and AFAIK there's no way to increase that chance? My sims put Unleash Doom, as a percentage of overall damage, exactly where I saw it in my Ursoc log (~6%+), so I'm guessing you got the top end of RNG there - but I'm honestly kind of shocked that the variance is so wide.

Amazing parse overall (the RNG does not diminish that) and thank you for sharing it.

- - - Updated - - -

And just so I can leave a post on topic for this thread:

AS sims (in SimCraft, most recent build as of this morning) as a 3% dps loss for me against Hailstorm (400s Patchwerk-style fight), this is with my current 873 ilvl and Appendages + Instinct as trinkets. It's definitely a lot closer to Hailstorm than I expected and I think moving forward will be my go-to for Mythic+ where I expect it will out perform Hailstorm overall.

[ehxy]

Don't get me wrong with enough haste you're going to be at a point during a heroism where you feeling like you can't even hit t he goddamn SS buttom fast enough

[Karlz0rz]

Hot damn that's an impressive parse - I didn't even know our ST DPS could go that high on heroic raid bosses.

I do want to touch on the RNG aspect of Enhance though in light of this.

I compared your parse to my H Ursoc from last week (391k; https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=3) because I just had to figure out how you were getting to nearly 450k yourself. There were a few things I expected - you had a few more SS casts even though your fight was 15 seconds shorter (you have higher mastery and haste too) and your SSs did more damage per cast, you never got focused by Ursoc's charge whereas I got focused twice, and that ring is about +25k dps on its own. But there was one thing that really surprised me - Unleash Doom accounted for 11.13% of your total damage and the 9.86m dmg it did was nearly double the 5.09m it did for me!

I've never seen Unleash Doom do so much! You have very high mastery which I'm sure helped, but DAMN. I have to presume that was all RNG since it has a chance to proc off Stormstrike and AFAIK there's no way to increase that chance? My sims put Unleash Doom, as a percentage of overall damage, exactly where I saw it in my Ursoc log (~6%+), so I'm guessing you got the top end of RNG there - but I'm honestly kind of shocked that the variance is so wide.

Amazing parse overall (the RNG does not diminish that) and thank you for sharing it.

- - - Updated - - -

And just so I can leave a post on topic for this thread:

AS sims (in SimCraft, most recent build as of this morning) as a 3% dps loss for me against Hailstorm (400s Patchwerk-style fight), this is with my current 873 ilvl and Appendages + Instinct as trinkets. It's definitely a lot closer to Hailstorm than I expected and I think moving forward will be my go-to for Mythic+ where I expect it will out perform Hailstorm overall.

The sad part is, if you look at my buffs on that fight, you'll see both hailstorm and flametongue falling off for a small amount of unneeded time. So even with in my eyes, shitty play, I still managed to parse high just because of RNG :P.
And as you say yourself, not having the ring and getting charged twice will easily make up that difference with a little more SS procs as well.
I love my shaman, but holy FUCK I hate the RNG fest Legion is...

[WskyDK]

The sad part is, if you look at my buffs on that fight, you'll see both hailstorm and flametongue falling off for a small amount of unneeded time. So even with in my eyes, shitty play, I still managed to parse high just because of RNG :P.
And as you say yourself, not having the ring and getting charged twice will easily make up that difference with a little more SS procs as well.
I love my shaman, but holy FUCK I hate the RNG fest Legion is...

That's my only complaint with Enhance.
When we're off we're way off, but when we're on it's insane

[grandpab]

Just for fun I simmed my character once with AS and again with HS today. I compared both single target and cleave for AS and HS. The cleave was set up as 4 enemies, but all the other options the same as single target. AS did 14k more damage for cleave, but HS did 7k more damage on the single target. It's not too huge of a difference for it to really matter.

[melissabella5]

hailstorm for sure

[Nitwit]

The way Crashing Storm works isn't that there are two up. If you use crash lightning again while crashing storm is up, it will reset the tick timer and make a new one, but the new crashing storm lasts 1 second longer. The net effect is the same, but the timing is different than just overlapping them. You can test this by using crash lightning and putting a crashing storm under one enemy, then run over to a different enemy (out of the original crashing storm) and crash lightning again on that one ASAP. You will see that the first target takes 6 ticks of crashing storm, and the second target takes 8 ticks. It doesn't overlap them, it just makes the second one tick an extra time.

Yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about, since that's not how it works in-game and never has been to the best of my knowledge.

00:00:08.589 Crash Lightning Raider's Training Dummy 1 52179 (original crash lightning)
00:00:08.589 Crashing Storm Raider's Training Dummy 1 7100 (1st tick of 1st crash lightning's crashing storm)
...
...
...
00:00:11.570 Crashing Storm Raider's Training Dummy 1 7100 (4th tick of 1st crash lightning's crashing storm)
00:00:12.602 Crashing Storm Raider's Training Dummy 1 *14200* (5th tick of 1st crash lightning's crashing storm)
00:00:13.189 Crash Lightning Raider's Training Dummy 2 *88541* (2nd crash lightning on a different target)
00:00:13.189 Crashing Storm Raider's Training Dummy 2 *12523* (1st tick of 2nd crash lightning's crashing storm)
00:00:13.594 Crashing Storm Raider's Training Dummy 1 *12523* (6th tick of 1st crash lightning's crashing storm, +1.0 second after the 5th tick as expected)
00:00:14.268 Crashing Storm Raider's Training Dummy 2 6261 (2nd tick of 2nd crash lightning's crashing storm)
00:00:14.637 Crashing Storm Raider's Training Dummy 1 6261 (7th and final tick of 1st crash lightning's crashing storm)
...
...
...
00:00:19.272 Crashing Storm Raider's Training Dummy 2 6261 (7th and final tick of 2nd crash lightning's crashing storm, +6.0 seconds after the t=0 tick as expected)

So yeah, there are 2 independent crashing storms up, and there's no tick timer resetting or extra ticks involved.

[Swol]

Well, it certainly was working how I described at one point in the beta for sure. I can take a look at it again now - blizzard changes stuff like this rather often.

When I try it in-game right now, it does have the two overlapping. Just a few days ago it was doing what I described before - I saw it tick 6 times on the first target I hit and 8 times on the second target I hit.

It won't affect single target simulations (or our current gearing strategies, since they are based on single target). It could affect multi-target simulations when you have high haste, so, the change will be in there for the mythic+ (AoE) script I'm making this week.

[Nitwit]

Well, it certainly was working how I described at one point in the beta for sure. I can take a look at it again now - blizzard changes stuff like this rather often.

When I try it in-game right now, it does have the two overlapping. Just a few days ago it was doing what I described before - I saw it tick 6 times on the first target I hit and 8 times on the second target I hit.

It won't affect single target simulations (or our current gearing strategies, since they are based on single target). It could affect multi-target simulations when you have high haste, so, the change will be in there for the mythic+ (AoE) script I'm making this week.

SimC has modeled it with a t=0 tick and overlapping since alpha or whenever the ability was originally introduced. I suppose it's possible that it randomly changed behavior temporarily between then and now before reverting back to the original, sensible behavior, but we never took any note of that.

But, I noticed while digging into it that SimC has that trinket modeled incorrectly. It is doing too many attacks. A quick look at some logs on WCL can confirm this. I also finally got it in-game so I was able to confirm in-game as well.

Also, I have repeatedly pointed out to the SimC authors that the doom wolves are using the wrong attack speed in SimC and using their abilities more than they do in-game. So, the damage on doom wolves in SimC is wrong.

Also, I didn't see these things before.

@ 1: SimC purposefully models the trinket "incorrectly," since it seems to proc much more often than game data would suggest. We don't know the exact proc rate, but it's currently set to 1.25 rppm (modified by haste) instead of the game data's reported 0.7 rppm.

@ 2: Going to need more specifics than that on Doom Wolves to comment too much. As far as I know, wolves use their first doom wolf ability ~4 seconds after summon and then they each use one every ~5s or so thereafter (haven't tested that in a good long while, though).

[Dioxy]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

Dunno. I run HS. Every time I tried AS my DPS dropped, but I do a pretty great job of keeping near 100% up time on all my buffs.

[Rouncer]

I'm not seeing this in the default profile. Are you using a profile with the legendary ring or something? APLs may not be optimized for that.

Nope, running my own profile and I don't have any legendaries yet. Ran the sim running AS and Tempest and on the damage breakdown saw frostbrand show up so checked the list and it was casting it with some regularity. Was also casting LB without being talented for overcharge. Pulling frostbrand from the priority list narrowed the dps gap between hailstorm and AS. So hailstorm is still better, just not by as much of a margin as people have been thinking.

With that legendary the gap between AS and Hailstorm would probably get even larger, I just haven't spent any time simming it cause don't have it.

[RuneDK]

Now that I got a good WA set, im starting to see big gains with Hailstorm.

[Professor Expert]

About a month ago I already explained why for MOST players, 'ancestral swiftness' is going to be the best choice. People say "well hailstorm is doing 15% of my damage. It's so good", but they never acknowledge the fact that they're shifting at least that much away from all other damage sources by letting go of the 10% haste.

Haste buffs all of your damage, and higher attack frequency does infact translate to more maelstrom generation as well as more RNG procs. Haste also lowers your GCD and several key CDs.

Hailstorm is a PvP-centric talent that was intended to maintain your DPS and help conserve GCDs. With CCs being as heavy as ever, there are plenty of times where one or two wasted GCDs means the difference between winning or losing. If you are able to get FT and FB up in pvp, you'll be doing some nice burst even though your net DPS over time would be lower.

Hailstorm may be better if you have very high amounts of mastery, or in situations where you cannot stay on the target. These situations occur more in pvp than pve, but there are some encounters where you can't just stand in one spot and do a rotation. Hailstorm's main benefit is that it front-loads damage (aka burst) but is a net DPS loss over +10% haste in addition to being yet another short duration buff that requires upkeep.

In pvp, I choose hailstorm if I'm up against a CC-heavy team or a team that is likely to be kiting me a lot. In that case, it's better, because haste's main benefit requires you to always be on target. If I'm with a healer or up against a team that isn't going to keep me running around, I'll stick with ancestral swiftness. It feels a lot better and blends very well with the shamanism honor talent.

[Mhyroth]

Having some really odd behavior with Simcraft and Pawn.
I had +- 72% Mastery and 14% Haste when I simmed my character. It gave me a stat weight string which I used ingame to see which items could be upgrades.
I swapped around 3 items (none of them were Trinkets) and ended up on 66% and 19% respectively. I did another Sim + stat weight and it gave me an entire different one. The worst thing was it had dropped my DPS by over 25k just from swapping 3 items around which (according to the weights etc) should've given me a DPS upgrade.
Are there any Haste breakpoints to where you gain an additional Melee swing, Wolves attack or Doom Winds swing which I might've gone over ? I read somewhere in one of the threads here there are "some" and going over one devalues Haste all the way up to the next one ?
It would be too much work to list all the Gear I have in my bags available so I rather ask it here on how exactly those weights work and how they influence each other.
Before I used the weight scaling I just went all-in for Mastery (hence why I had such low Haste values) but since most people tell you to "just sim it" it's quite confusing as to the reasoning for this.

[Nitwit]

Stat weights are a snapshot approximation of stat value. They don't communicate interactions between stats, and most people use them with the assumption that stat values are roughly constant to one another, which isn't true.

[EooELE]

So...... is Ancestral Swiftness better for Mythic +8 or +9 then Hailstorm or?