DPS issue - Elemental Shaman

[Andersn90]

Hi there!

We'r a casual guild that are playing slowly though mythic EN, and we'r having some issues with some players that have low DPS, and one of them is our Elemental shaman.

As I have no clue about elemental shamans myself, there is little I can do to help him to increase his DPS. I was hoping there would be a kind soul out there that could help him out by looking on some logs.

His logs
Last Raid

//Andersn

[netherflame]

Looking at them at a glance, they actually don't look like poor mechanics are to blame. Elemental shaman is just lower down then other classes DPS wise so he will lag behind unfortunately.

[Deleted]

Using legion potions instead of WoD ones would help somewhat.

[Deleted]

Ele shamans are currently bottom tier, like 2nd last. They will become good in 7.1.5 though, especially Icefury build.

[Pum]

I don't think this has anything to do with Ele being shit like the above posters are saying, your guildy is in grey percentiles which means he's pulling shocking DPS compared to other Ele's with the same ilevel.

Look at this log for example from the top ranking Ele on Nyth, https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...593&end=884787

You can see the differences there, the biggest one I can see is more than 10 fewer Earth Shocks used by your Ele compared to the one above. I have rerolled Ele in the last week so my guild is gearing it up in mythic, but at 852 ilevel I was at 200-220k sustained on Mythic Nyth while you're Ele is only at 270k with 881 ilevel. I'm on an iPad atm so trying to read logs is a nightmare, but there is nothing so glaring in them that I can see that reflects such poor performance on your guildy's part.

I would highly suggest perhaps him using Icefury rather than Greater Fire Ele, despite nearly every Ele choosing the latter. Even with mediocre LvS props, Frost Shock is my #1 ability by far. It's worth a try anyway.

[Deleted]

Let's look at this then.

First, he doesn't have either of the earth shock legendaries, so we should look for a high parsing log without those legendaries and similar kill time.
I will use this one with the belt and ring www .warcraftlogs. com/reports/cbp8mg4DXAfKQRdB#fight=12&type=damage-done&source=17

Damage spread:
CL Casts 39 vs 16
LB Casts 82 vs 76
Lava Bursts 25 vs 33
Earth Shocks 19 vs 14

Lightning rod hits 177 vs 102

Why draenic int potion. PP costs peanuts if you want to go budget.

Buff usage:
The op did not line up the potion with Elemental mastery. Lost dps here.

OP Fire elemental also dealt less damage during the fight. (Flame Nova?)

;trldr. Not CLing add (lost ES casts because less mael, lost rods), not using proper potions. Not lining up potion with a cooldown

[Haznomana]

Im looking at the logs and his timeline. I can only say how i do things and im normally above 60% for my Ilvl its not great but its not 24% either. I see he cast Stormkeeper at 4 sec and elemental mastery at 9 sec. This may not seem like a huge deal but the mage popped Timewarp right off the bat. thats a 4-9 sec ramp up of dps wasted. My suggestion would be to start casting Stormkeeper at 2 sec left on count down if your going to pop lust or Timewarp right off teh bat. Followed by linking a real potion to Elemental mastery and popping that BEFORE the pull. Formally called pre-potting. This early cast of these spells also allows for your CD to come off sooner allowing for possibility of more casts. Just my thoughts

[Riistov]

Looking at them at a glance, they actually don't look like poor mechanics are to blame. Elemental shaman is just lower down then other classes DPS wise so he will lag behind unfortunately.

There are some fights where it does quite well though.

[netherflame]

There are some fights where it does quite well though.

I wouldn't agree with quite well, outside of dragons its average at below average at best IMO. All of our dps seems to beat all 3 of us elemental shamans in our mythic kills.

[Deleted]

Let's look at this then.

OP Fire elemental also dealt less damage during the fight. (Flame Nova?)

While yes he has flame nova activated even on single target the biggest problem is that he just does not use it more than once on most fights.
Even on 5 min+ figths where it would be ready again even without the artefact trait...
That alone costs him ~5 % dmg on fights ignoring everything else the others already said.

[Haznomana]

I dont think the issue is that all Eles have low dps. They are looking at his Item level vrs other Eles of that Item level. for their item level they are only doing as good as the bottom 17% of the other Eles. at their level. That is low not just for a raid but compared to our class. The question was what can they advise their member on to help them.

[Deleted]

So i decided to look a little bit deeper into the ursoc log you posted. Most of this should apply to the other logs as well.

-Pots : as many people have said he still uses the old wod pots which are really bad when you can get prolonged power for cheap which stacks nicely with our one minute long fire elemental.

-Heal legendary: not something he can do anything about but a good 2nd dmg legendary would boost his dmg by another 3-4%. The ring will however be really nice in 7.1.5, so he at least has one good one.

-Fire Ele: As i said he should be able to cast it twice as it normally has about ~3:30 cd with the artefact trait (this can of course vary)

-Flame Shock: Uptime is rather bad in the usroc fight, he even only had 90% crit on lavaburst which is really bad. There is no reason to not have flamehock rolling on the ursoc and the nightmares live about exactly the length of a flamehock also, so dot them both up

-His weapon: It is 5-11(!) itemlvl lower than the itemlvl of your first 9 dds. That is up to half a tier of weapon difference

-lightning rod: the lightning rod damage is quite low, he had an uptime of 63.80% making the maximum dmg possible 10,3M from lightning bolt and 4,15M from chain lightning. He has 5,22/14,45 possible which would lead to him doing something else than lb+cl about 64% of the time during rod on average.
Yet 53% of his casts are lb/cl. This means he either uses stormkeeper without rod being up or really games rod badly.
Just to clearify he should have done around 7-7.5M with rod while somehow doing only 5,22M

[Andersn90]

Thx for all the answers! This will hopefully help him to get more out of his class!

[Deleted]

One thing to improve DPS is to only use Stormkeeper while he has Lightning Rod up on the boss.
Using it on CD without LR on boss is a DPS loss. He is doing quite low DPS for his gear.
I am running a 883 ele shaman with legendary boots and the ring (elemental damage one).

Depending on procs on the boots, I would do quite a lot more. Utilizing potions with CD's and Heroism is crucial as well.
Can't look at the logs right now, but he is doing something wrong.

Some tips to give him:
Only use Stormkeeper when Lightning Rod on boss.
Use Potions with cooldowns.
Chain Lightning when it will hit 2+ targets.
Plan movement ahead.

And ofc - Hope for Earth Shock legendaries!

[Antilurker77]

Holding Stormkeeper for Lightning Rod is a DPS loss. Do not do this.

[freddy090909]

Holding Stormkeeper for Lightning Rod is a DPS loss. Do not do this.

Only if it will cost you a cast. Just be smart about it.

@Andersn90: Biggest problem, to me, is that he wastes a LOT of maelstrom. He lost 3 earth shock casts to waste (not to mention the extra maelstrom he could have gained with better CL usage). He is also likely standing too close to the boss based on his spiked tongue damage. Also, with your kill time, he should be running ascendance.

Plus, as others have mentioned, his pot is wrong and he has no food buff.

[Antilurker77]

Only if it will cost you a cast. Just be smart about it.

It will almost always cost you a cast. Lightning Rod is too unpredictable to try and line up casts. You're just setting yourself up for bad RNG.

[Deleted]

I don't think this has anything to do with Ele being shit like the above posters are saying, your guildy is in grey percentiles which means he's pulling shocking DPS compared to other Ele's with the same ilevel.

Look at this log for example from the top ranking Ele on Nyth, https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...593&end=884787

You can see the differences there, the biggest one I can see is more than 10 fewer Earth Shocks used by your Ele compared to the one above. I have rerolled Ele in the last week so my guild is gearing it up in mythic, but at 852 ilevel I was at 200-220k sustained on Mythic Nyth while you're Ele is only at 270k with 881 ilevel. I'm on an iPad atm so trying to read logs is a nightmare, but there is nothing so glaring in them that I can see that reflects such poor performance on your guildy's part.

I would highly suggest perhaps him using Icefury rather than Greater Fire Ele, despite nearly every Ele choosing the latter. Even with mediocre LvS props, Frost Shock is my #1 ability by far. It's worth a try anyway.

Unfortunately most % are inflated by padding.

Also 2 people could play exactly the same but 1 guild kills boss 1 minute faster and thus the guy from that guild gets higher % too because (one of many reasons) bloodlust percentage-wise was a bigger part of the fight.

Ele ST is crap atm, there's no denying it either way.

You say you did 200-220k with 852 and he did 270k with 881. 881 ele would do probably ~300k tops with good legendary, maybe a little more. With same geared Frost DK and without dps legendary I get ~380k+ ST and would easily push past 400 with Toravon's bindings. My Ele sham which is 9ilvl below my main is nowhere near. Over a month ago (don't play my DK much atm) did 400k on Elerethe (HC) without padding numbers on trash.

But anyways, Ele is looking good on PTR

On shammy with 850 ilvl some time ago I see I did 93% and did only 232k dps on cenarius h (probably because there aren't enough parses due to ele being so crappy XD)

EDIT: 867 ilvl I see I did 300k on Nythendra, better than that 881 sham or w/e but still nowhere near my 880 dk even when accounted for ilvl difference.

[batmanstrange]

Unfortunately most % are inflated by padding.

Also 2 people could play exactly the same but 1 guild kills boss 1 minute faster and thus the guy from that guild gets higher % too because (one of many reasons) bloodlust percentage-wise was a bigger part of the fight.

Ele ST is crap atm, there's no denying it either way.

You say you did 200-220k with 852 and he did 270k with 881. 881 ele would do probably ~300k tops with good legendary, maybe a little more. With same geared Frost DK and without dps legendary I get ~380k+ ST and would easily push past 400 with Toravon's bindings. My Ele sham which is 9ilvl below my main is nowhere near. Over a month ago (don't play my DK much atm) did 400k on Elerethe (HC) without padding numbers on trash.

But anyways, Ele is looking good on PTR

On shammy with 850 ilvl some time ago I see I did 93% and did only 232k dps on cenarius h (probably because there aren't enough parses due to ele being so crappy XD)

EDIT: 867 ilvl I see I did 300k on Nythendra, better than that 881 sham or w/e but still nowhere near my 880 dk even when accounted for ilvl difference.

my elem sham is ilvl 886 and i do much more than 300k. im not happy most of the time when i do less than 380k.

[Deleted]

my elem sham is ilvl 886 and i do much more than 300k. im not happy most of the time when i do less than 380k.

Got dps legendary? Because 380k at 886 is still below majority of specs. My sham certainly won't reach this dps pre=patch because I am gearing for Icefury build to come so crit > mastery