New utility worth it for elemental?

[robblerobble]

By this I mean, is the new utility that shaman bring to a raid (ancestral guidance, stormlash totem) worth the dps you trade if say elemental dps ends up being like....23rd out of 25 or however many dps specs? This is a theoretical question, since we don't really know where the dps will stand when everything goes live. Any of you that have tried out these spell on beta, what is your opinion of them?

This is coming from my perspective of....when MoP goes live, I'll have all the dps specs to choose from for raiding minus 6 (warrior/lock/monk) and while I doubt me taking a class on the lower end of the dps chart would stop our groups progress, I want to take in something will help our raid progress. In cata, elemental shaman don't have enough utility to excuse the dps difference from a mage for example.

[oberetta]

Trolling? No offense, but it doesnt seem like you are clear on what values are most important to you. If you want to top the charts on dps the go mage and you have good odds that 1 of the 3 specs (if not 2 or 3) will be at or near the top of the heap. But "utility" is a hard quality to value. Utility in being able to switch to a powerful heal spec in almost completely the same gear is an awesome utility. Stormlash is a baseline ability and is ridiculously good, Ascendence, buffed totem pets. And mages have utility too so yeah...

TLDR; play what you want to play.

[Dundebuns]

DPS of classes tends to be typically over a range of 5-10k DPS. What you need to maths out is how much your utility is giving the raid per second, and then see if that makes up your shortfall. However this is an ideal case, which never really happens. Usually the answer is yes, since your cool downs will be used in conjunction with other peoples cool downs, giving an even greater increased effect.

[robblerobble]

Legitimate question, not a trolling... Ya, obviously if all I care about is topping charts mage would be the safest bet, I don't consider being able to change to a heal spec as being utility as I could just dps on my mage and bring my shaman in to heal if need be. I don't have access to the beta so all I can do is guess or get other people's opinions before MoP goes live. If I could do dragon soul over, I wouldn't have taken my elemental shaman, would have taken hunter or mage. I do good dps, but after doing the same fights on all my other toons it becomes clear which classes lag behind, and I just don't feel that I give enough buffs/debuffs/etc to the raid to make up for that. Now like I said, I can see even without being on the beta that we will have much greater utility in MoP, so I'm wondering will it be awesome enough so that being one of the lowest dps specs doesn't hinder progress. After all, someone has to be the lowest, and if they are, they surely better have something else very useful they bring to a raid other than their dps.

[Abysire]

The values are pretty hard to determine but I think Elemental will end up being better at the end of the expansion. It's always had better scaling later on.