Enhancement shaman question.

[Cronzee]

I have been wondering what kind of % of stats you want to pioritise once you get the 17% haste i have read about.

I know I can sim for stat brake down and I´m just curious other people are taking.

If you want to give me some pointers feel free to look on my armory http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...3%ADmin/simple

Thanks in advance

[Gunwolf]

I would say try to get atleast 25% crit and 20% haste, and then max out your mastery as much as you can get without your crit/haste falling below those levels.

[Arachnofiend]

What? No. It's Mastery>Haste, only exception is that sometimes Haste is better if you have the Appendages. Agility is quite strong for Enhancement though so you can usually just go for item level if it's >10 iL upgrade.

There are no soft caps to any of our stats, Agility, Mastery, and Haste just keep scaling up in value forever while crit and vers lag behind (though not nearly as far behind as the bad stats for other specs).

[Gunwolf]

What? No. It's Mastery>Haste, only exception is that sometimes Haste is better if you have the Appendages. Agility is quite strong for Enhancement though so you can usually just go for item level if it's >10 iL upgrade.

There are no soft caps to any of our stats, Agility, Mastery, and Haste just keep scaling up in value forever while crit and vers lag behind (though not nearly as far behind as the bad stats for other specs).

Well yea, obviously it is mastery>haste.... and if you have high enough ilvl then getting those haste/crit caps I mentioned shouldn't be much of a problem, but my point was that you shouldn't be stacking mastery at the cost of ur crit dropping below 25% or haste below 20%. These stats are important too and u will prob end up doing less DPS if you sacrifice too much crit for mastery alone. There may be no "official" cap for crit, but atleast for me it has always made sense to try and aim for some kind of personal cap, either 20, 25, or 30% crit (based on class and how important crit will be) so you can get crits consistently 1/4 of the time or whatever.

[Gromthak]

Well yea, obviously it is mastery>haste.... and if you have high enough ilvl then getting those haste/crit caps I mentioned shouldn't be much of a problem, but my point was that you shouldn't be stacking mastery at the cost of ur crit dropping below 25% or haste below 20%. These stats are important too and u will prob end up doing less DPS if you sacrifice too much crit for mastery alone. There may be no "official" cap for crit, but atleast for me it has always made sense to try and aim for some kind of personal cap, either 20, 25, or 30% crit (based on class and how important crit will be) so you can get crits consistently 1/4 of the time or whatever.

There is absolutely NO reason to aim for some kind of "crit cap" currently. Please don't spread misinformation. We don't have any spec mechanic that is based around getting crits so there is no reason to aim for some kind of cap. There is also no reason to aim for 20% haste. There are cases where haste scales better than mastery but generally speaking mastery is still the way to go. When haste scales better than mastery a little change like upgrading a single item to a haste item usually skews the scale in favor of mastery again. Not to mention that even when haste scales better it's only very slightly better anyway.

If you're not sure what stat to aim for with your current gear, you simply sim it. It's not hard, you copy paste your stats and click a few settings and you're golden.

[Imnick]

There's no haste cap, no mastery cap, and no crit cap.
Stack Mastery/Haste and keep checking your personal sims for when they tell you to instead stack Haste/Mastery, that's the only gear guideline.

While no secondary stats for Enhancement are "bad" (compared to the values they get in other specs), crit is definitely the worst one and there is no reason to ever prioritise it on your gear as an enhancement shaman.
As it has no rotational effect it only provides an inconsistent chance of extra damage, one with mathematically less benefit that any of the other three stats.

[Ghrog]

There's no haste cap, no mastery cap, and no crit cap.
Stack Mastery/Haste and keep checking your personal sims for when they tell you to instead stack Haste/Mastery, that's the only gear guideline.

While no secondary stats for Enhancement are "bad" (compared to the values they get in other specs), crit is definitely the worst one and there is no reason to ever prioritise it on your gear as an enhancement shaman.
As it has no rotational effect it only provides an inconsistent chance of extra damage, one with mathematically less benefit that any of the other three stats.

I generally hate to do the "This ^^^" type of post, but... This^^^.

[Gunwolf]

There is absolutely NO reason to aim for some kind of "crit cap" currently. Please don't spread misinformation. We don't have any spec mechanic that is based around getting crits so there is no reason to aim for some kind of cap. There is also no reason to aim for 20% haste. There are cases where haste scales better than mastery but generally speaking mastery is still the way to go. When haste scales better than mastery a little change like upgrading a single item to a haste item usually skews the scale in favor of mastery again. Not to mention that even when haste scales better it's only very slightly better anyway.

If you're not sure what stat to aim for with your current gear, you simply sim it. It's not hard, you copy paste your stats and click a few settings and you're golden.

No, there is no official cap. These are my personal caps that I try not to let my stats fall below.... but as I mentioned, if you have high enough ilvl gear then something like 25% crit should be easy to get. I would not stack mastery at the expense of all my other stats falling too low.... if I had like 70% mastery but only 15% crit then that wouldn't be acceptable for me and I would try to get some more crit.... perhaps not for you, that is your choice. We are getting a 5% crit nerf as well, so I don't want my crit to fall off too much.

As for sims, I know how they work... thanks lol. Sims are not the end all, be all, definitive answer. Sims are a great way to get a baseline for your dps or to judge gear upgrades, but you shouldn't blindly trust them either without understanding how they work or their limitations. Sims work on a patchwerk fight, where you don't have to move from the boss or dps adds or anything. Some sims have a multi target setting for like 3+ targets, but again.... while it is a good base judgement, it does not really reflect the types of encounters you actually face as well as player error/delay. A stat like haste for example becomes much more valued in a static fight where you never move and a computer can accurately push every ability off cd.... haste making you swing faster and lowering CD's, the sim will take 100% advantage of every extra swing or every millisecond you lower your SS or whatever. But in a real fight, if you have to run around or switch targets or dps adds, every second you are off the boss means that haste is doing nothing for you, and every second you delay using an ability is wasting the value that haste is giving in lowering its cd. Crit is another stat that should be looked at differently.... if you look at a 5min raid boss, then crit may not make as much impact, wheras if you have to dps some adds for 30 sec, every crit you get in that window can double ur damage. The difference between getting only 3 SS crits vs 5 SS crits in 30 sec can make a big difference in your overall damage/dps as well as how fast u kill those mobs. For dungeons especially I would think that crit will be more important since fights are shorter. Now crit is not as reliable as something like mastery which is a good overall damage boost and still your best secondary stat, but the right ratio of crit and haste will boost your DPS in certain situations while too little can hurt it.

Again, to each their own. If you wanna stack mastery regardless of other stats then that is up to you but I don't like to play that way. I'm not saying mastery isn't important, because it is... it is def our best secondary stat, and I prioritize it on every piece I can get, but I also try to keep my crit and haste from falling too low.

[Imnick]

You can play wrong as much as you like, the issue is that you were telling other people to do it.
When you are just going with your gut for yourself, that's great! When you answer someone's request for advice with nonsense and then argue with people who provide the tested and proven actual facts, that's not fine.

[Cronzee]

Thanks for all the replys, really apprisated. Will look at it some more via sims etc.

[Gunwolf]

You can play wrong as much as you like, the issue is that you were telling other people to do it.
When you are just going with your gut for yourself, that's great! When you answer someone's request for advice with nonsense and then argue with people who provide the tested and proven actual facts, that's not fine.

"Play wrong" huh... and who are you to decide what the right and wrong way to play is?

I don't think I argued with any of the facts... I agree with the stat priority and mastery being the best. I see nothing wrong with the suggestion of not letting your crit or haste fall too low, esp when it shouldn't be too hard to do that with higher ilvl gear. If I suggested to stack crit instead of mastery then sure, that is clearly just bad advice... but I didn't say that, plus I clarified that those were my personal choices.

Also, where is the source of these "tested and proven actual facts"? I assume you mean the sims, and as I just explained sims are a good guideline but not 100% accurate. The sims still have limitations, they don't sim an actual dungeon or raid environment just something close to it, and they are programmed by people who can also make mistakes in coding. In game testing is the only real way to prove anything.... and I would be surprised if anyone has actually bothered to check the difference between different levels of secondary stats (tho I would be pretty interested to see it). People just use the sims since its easier and a good baseline. Looking at combat logs is another good source, which I have done but most of those top players have high ilvl, with lots mastery/haste gear and the occasional mastery/crit and so already have enough haste/crit that you can't really compare how they would have performed if they had less haste/crit.

[Dagonfel]

I think what Imnick is saying by your misinformation spreading is the fact that you have no real information to back up "letting your crit fall too low". It's all feelycrafting, which is fine, ya know. Play how you want to play, but if you're going to play in a way that goes directly against top theorycrafters and enh shaman players, then someone has to say something.

[Imnick]

I think what Imnick is saying by your misinformation spreading is the fact that you have no real information to back up "letting your crit fall too low". It's all feelycrafting, which is fine, ya know. Play how you want to play, but if you're going to play in a way that goes directly against top theorycrafters and enh shaman players, then someone has to say something.

This basically.
Suggesting any level of crit that people should aim for will cause them to make incorrect gearing decisions. Crit should never be something on your mind while gearing an enhancement Shaman at all.

When you claim otherwise, when someone asks you for gear advice and you provide it as a response, you need to back it up.
There is no reason to assume that crit would have any particular reason to be desirable. We have no interaction with crit, we have no spells that especially benefit from crit, we don't gain additional crit... why would we want any particular amount of it?
For yourself, this is fine. When you provide it as an answer to a question, it isn't.

The advice you gave will cause someone to have incorrect gearing priorities and lower their DPS. You've not provided any particular reason that your assertions about crit having really any value at all to our DPS. You've not provided anything backing up that there's any such thing as a crit level that is "too low".
As there's not any reason to assume that it's true, you haven't provided one, and you also haven't provided any numbers... you probably shouldn't have given it as advice.

"Not enough haste" and especially "not enough crit" are 100% feelycraft and not backed by anything, whereas "just stack mastery/haste and ignore crit/vers entirely" is backed by months of shaman theorycraft, sims, and ingame testing.

[Grumpypants]

For the first time I hit the spot with pawn stat weights so that simc suggests Haste 11.16 and Mastery 11.17.
I have Mastery 74% (10119) and haste 24%(7874). 18% crit and no vers.
Only 1 piece of gear that has crit, rest of them are mastery/haste (871ilvl).

My dps has been steadily rising the more i was able to replace crit/versa gear pieces away. So there definately is no reason to get crit to some exact %.
"just stack mastery/haste and ignore crit/vers entirely" is the guideline atm.

[Cronzee]

Thanks, been wondering about that for a while now since sims are telling me haste and Vers are allmost equal in stat weight. This clears my doupts.

[Gromthak]

As for sims, I know how they work... thanks lol.

My comment about sims was aimed at the person(s) asking for advice actually. But I'm beginning to think you don't know how they work either, or how game mechanics work in any case.

You begin by explaining how haste works, of which you do a great job I might add. But then you say haste doesn't do anything while running, which is absolutely true of course but then the other (primary and secondary) stats don't do anything either do they. Haste doesn't lose any value from running around. In fact purely mathematically speaking haste is actually pretty good for target switching on account of being able to push out more abilities in a shorter window (which you explained but then forgot somehow?). Unlike crit which doesn't actually provide any real benefit in this case.

So you give an example why crit would be great in a shorter time window and give an example. But honestly it's a terribly one-sided example. You might get that crit chain but you also might be crit starved. You make it sound like crit guarantees this amazing burst damage but it doesn't. Which is why the other stats are better, consistency. I'm not saying you should not get any haste or crit because that would be stupid. All the stats affect each other, but there is no denying some stats are mathematically better than others. Telling people to aim for certain numbers has no backing other than how you feel about them personally.

[Imnick]

Thanks, been wondering about that for a while now since sims are telling me haste and Vers are allmost equal in stat weight. This clears my doupts.

Versatility (and sometimes even crit) are often going to be quite close to Haste or Mastery, Enhancement doesn't have any stats that are awful (which is good, it means we easily scale well with item level), they're just not ideal.
If your versatility is pretty close to your haste then that isn't necessarily unusual, especially if you already have a lot of haste.

[Phaty]

if someone is asking on a forum how he should gear, he obviously cares about his performance. so telling him he needs 25% crit is wrong, performance wise. also, "who are you to decide what the right and wrong way to play is?", he isnt, the game designers are with how they made enhance this expansion. mastery and haste are by far the best stats

[Gunwolf]

My comment about sims was aimed at the person(s) asking for advice actually. But I'm beginning to think you don't know how they work either, or how game mechanics work in any case.

You begin by explaining how haste works, of which you do a great job I might add. But then you say haste doesn't do anything while running, which is absolutely true of course but then the other (primary and secondary) stats don't do anything either do they. Haste doesn't lose any value from running around. In fact purely mathematically speaking haste is actually pretty good for target switching on account of being able to push out more abilities in a shorter window (which you explained but then forgot somehow?). Unlike crit which doesn't actually provide any real benefit in this case.

So you give an example why crit would be great in a shorter time window and give an example. But honestly it's a terribly one-sided example. You might get that crit chain but you also might be crit starved. You make it sound like crit guarantees this amazing burst damage but it doesn't. Which is why the other stats are better, consistency. I'm not saying you should not get any haste or crit because that would be stupid. All the stats affect each other, but there is no denying some stats are mathematically better than others. Telling people to aim for certain numbers has no backing other than how you feel about them personally.

You are right, both haste and crit can be useful in a shorter window or target switching. And its true that we don't have as much crit based stuff as in the past like when it would proc flurry (kinda wish they added something like that back in).

I was trying to show how haste can be slightly overvalued in sims. When they give haste a certain weighted dps score it is based on several factors. For example... lets say haste reduces your CD's like SS and Ascendance. In a sim, it will use those cds asap and take full advantage of those reduced cd's. So in a 10 min fight, lets say with enough haste you can squeeze in an extra ascendance and like 5 extra SS's. That is obviously alot of extra damage and will result in haste having a high weighted value. But in an actual raid you have to delay your ascendance some for a certain mechanic or to burst down some adds (so you don't end up with an extra ascendance at the end), and you have to switch targets a few times which delays your SS by a few sec so it may have been available at 14sec instead of 16sec but you couldn't use it at 14 sec so that 2 sec reduction from haste was not taken advantage of (and at the end, you get 2 extra SS not 5). By not taking advantage of those reduced cd's right away, the contribution of haste to your dps isn't as high as it could be... so its weighted value can be misleading. The same logic can be used on SB procs... sometimes you get a SB proc but you can't use SS right away, either you have to refresh your buffs or throw out some heals or spam purge or you just made a player error and didn't use it right away. This is all stuff that a sim won't do, it doesn't make mistakes or do stuff like utility, so SB procs are highly valued because it can always take advantage of extra SS's.... but if you don't take advantage of SB procs right away, even just a few gcds, then that value from haste (or even mastery really) is wasted.

Now, I'm not saying haste is bad... its still very good, it still helps alot in those situations where you CAN take advantage of the lower cd's plus extra benefits like more melee swings for more SB procs or MS generation. Mastery is also clearly the best secondary, as it provides a passive damage buff to most of your abilities plus it increases SB procs which means that it indirectly also buffs SS damage.... I see alot of people complain that "our mastery should buff SS" or "our SS should do nature damage so mastery works on it".... and I have always thought that was a dumb suggestion since SS got plenty of buffs from weapon damage and AP already but now they fixed that issue too by actually finding a way to let mastery buff SS as well.

As for crit, it doesn't have as much synergy with our abilities as it did in the past with flurry but its still crit and does almost double damage... whether you are using SS, or refreshing imbues, or even throwing an offheal they can all crit and be more effective. Sure, its not as reliable as a flat damage buff like mastery or vers, but thats why getting a certain %crit can make a difference.... like 20, 25, 30, 33, 35% or whatever. Then it becomes more consistent and can multiply ur damage. In dungeons where adds can die quicker or you use more aoe, then benefit of crit can be more noticeable. Is that good enough to make it more useful then mastery or haste? No, not really.... but I personally don't think it should be ignored or undervalued to the point where you end up with <20% crit for example cause you want more haste... when that extra bit of crit might end up doing more for you then that extra bit of haste (esp if ur haste is already pretty high).

I admit this is pretty much "feelycraft" as people put it... its based on my understanding and experience with the game. I will try and test it out more once I have the right gear choices. Getting mastery/haste for all your gear slots is pretty obvious, but I'm thinking more like switching between same ilvl neck/rings with haste/vers or crit/vers to see how they compare in game (since the sims will obviously rate haste better). As for my suggestion, I prob should have worded it more like "Mastery is ur best stat, the priority is mastery>haste... but I try not to let my crit fall too low personally". I did clarify that in my next post... I wasn't trying to claim crit was more important then mastery or anything.

[Deleted]

You are right, both haste and crit can be useful in a shorter window or target switching. And its true that we don't have as much crit based stuff as in the past like when it would proc flurry (kinda wish they added something like that back in).

I was trying to show how haste can be slightly overvalued in sims. When they give haste a certain weighted dps score it is based on several factors. For example... lets say haste reduces your CD's like SS and Ascendance. In a sim, it will use those cds asap and take full advantage of those reduced cd's. So in a 10 min fight, lets say with enough haste you can squeeze in an extra ascendance and like 5 extra SS's. That is obviously alot of extra damage and will result in haste having a high weighted value. But in an actual raid you have to delay your ascendance some for a certain mechanic or to burst down some adds (so you don't end up with an extra ascendance at the end), and you have to switch targets a few times which delays your SS by a few sec so it may have been available at 14sec instead of 16sec but you couldn't use it at 14 sec so that 2 sec reduction from haste was not taken advantage of (and at the end, you get 2 extra SS not 5). By not taking advantage of those reduced cd's right away, the contribution of haste to your dps isn't as high as it could be... so its weighted value can be misleading. The same logic can be used on SB procs... sometimes you get a SB proc but you can't use SS right away, either you have to refresh your buffs or throw out some heals or spam purge or you just made a player error and didn't use it right away. This is all stuff that a sim won't do, it doesn't make mistakes or do stuff like utility, so SB procs are highly valued because it can always take advantage of extra SS's.... but if you don't take advantage of SB procs right away, even just a few gcds, then that value from haste (or even mastery really) is wasted.

Now, I'm not saying haste is bad... its still very good, it still helps alot in those situations where you CAN take advantage of the lower cd's plus extra benefits like more melee swings for more SB procs or MS generation. Mastery is also clearly the best secondary, as it provides a passive damage buff to most of your abilities plus it increases SB procs which means that it indirectly also buffs SS damage.... I see alot of people complain that "our mastery should buff SS" or "our SS should do nature damage so mastery works on it".... and I have always thought that was a dumb suggestion since SS got plenty of buffs from weapon damage and AP already but now they fixed that issue too by actually finding a way to let mastery buff SS as well.

As for crit, it doesn't have as much synergy with our abilities as it did in the past with flurry but its still crit and does almost double damage... whether you are using SS, or refreshing imbues, or even throwing an offheal they can all crit and be more effective. Sure, its not as reliable as a flat damage buff like mastery or vers, but thats why getting a certain %crit can make a difference.... like 20, 25, 30, 33, 35% or whatever. Then it becomes more consistent and can multiply ur damage. In dungeons where adds can die quicker or you use more aoe, then benefit of crit can be more noticeable. Is that good enough to make it more useful then mastery or haste? No, not really.... but I personally don't think it should be ignored or undervalued to the point where you end up with <20% crit for example cause you want more haste... when that extra bit of crit might end up doing more for you then that extra bit of haste (esp if ur haste is already pretty high).

I admit this is pretty much "feelycraft" as people put it... its based on my understanding and experience with the game. I will try and test it out more once I have the right gear choices. Getting mastery/haste for all your gear slots is pretty obvious, but I'm thinking more like switching between same ilvl neck/rings with haste/vers or crit/vers to see how they compare in game (since the sims will obviously rate haste better). As for my suggestion, I prob should have worded it more like "Mastery is ur best stat, the priority is mastery>haste... but I try not to let my crit fall too low personally". I did clarify that in my next post... I wasn't trying to claim crit was more important then mastery or anything.

who the fuck even plays ascendance in raids? also haste lowering ascendance cd.. lol.. do you even play the spec dude?