The state of Elemental in 5.1

[Voltage]

So we're now at the point where we have been raiding for a few months now, and I am happy to say that the Elemental changes in 5.0 made it an insanely fun spec, with my favourite changes being the change to Lava Surge and the addition of Ascendance.

Those two additions / changes made the spec insanely fun for me in raids.
However I believe that we need a slight buff in output.

Beyond the amazing burst (if not best in the game) , our DPS seems to be slightly below the rest of the casters over a sustained duration.

I personally think that even buffing flame shock and lightning bold a bit might bring our dps up.

What do you guys think of the 5.0 elemental changes? What buffs / nerfs do you think we may need? (if any).

[Kralljin]

Buff scaling of secondary Stats, Elemental is pretty much the only Caster that keeps using 160 Int gems.

[Taoforums]

I don't see a problem with shaman DPS at the moment. Both Enhancement and Elemental are close until an ability breaking the routine comes in. I'm constantly on top5 on my guild's meters (25m pushing heroic progression). Warlock, Mage and Warrior is what I can compete with.

Though, I believe Lightning Bolt could use a little buff, since our set bonuses are directly related to it. I got my 4piece last night and I'm quite glad of how often I can hit my shocks on cooldown. To be honest, Elemental always has been highly dependant on gear.

And no, we don't only use 160 intellect gems. For instance, 60 mastery socket bonus with 80 intellect and 160 haste is far more superior than straight 160 intellect.

[Kralljin]

And no, we don't only use 160 intellect gems. For instance, 60 mastery socket bonus with 80 intellect and 160 haste is far more superior than straight 160 intellect.

My Values from Simcraft:

Int:3.77
Haste:1.87

So, A Int / Haste is slightly lower than a pure Int Gem.

Obviously you don't gem yellow socket with Pure Int, but other casters keep using Int / 2nd Stat in Red Sockets instead of Pure Int gem.

Rule of Thumb: If 2 Points of a Secondary stat are more worth than a single Point of Primary Stat, mixed gems are better than pure.

To be honest, Elemental always has been highly dependant on gear.

No, Fire and Fury have been highly dependant on gear, their damage was going through the roof if they had BiS Gear in the past, Elemental has a history of Scaling issues therefore they scaled by far inferior with Gear than other specs.


Just take the history of Shamanism:

Patch 3.0.8: Your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells gain an additional 3/6/9/12/15% and your Lava Burst gains an additional 4/8/12/16/20% of your bonus damage effects.

Patch 3.2.2: This talent now provides 4/8/12/16/20% extra spell damage to Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning, up from 3/6/9/12/15%, and 5/10/15/20/25% to Lava Burst, up from 4/8/12/16/20%.

Hotifx: Shamanism (Elemental passive) now causes Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lava Burst spells to gain an additional 32% benefit from the shaman’s spell power, up from 20%.

Patch 4.3: Now increases the spell power benefit to Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, and Chain Lightning by 36%, up from 32%.


I know this Talent got changed with MoP, but they wouldn't have buffed this talent 4 times if Elemental didn't have any scaling issues, considering that this Talent should address this problem.

[Taoforums]

I mean that they are gear dependant to be competitive not about scaling matters.

www.maxdps.com has intellect at 3.55 and haste at 1.35 which is pretty much the same, couple decimals margin. Doing maths I get higher using hybrid in yellow sockets than with a straight intellect one in most cases.

I didn't need all these information, I've been looking at blues since wrath about it. I wasn't talking about scaling I meant to be competitive in DPS to keep up with the raid, they needed gear... more than frost DKs and fire mages in past expansions.

[CHRONIClinex]

lol. shamanism. bandaid on a sucking chest wound since....

[Kralljin]

I mean that they are gear dependant to be competitive not about scaling matters.

www.maxdps.com has intellect at 3.55 and haste at 1.35 which is pretty much the same, couple decimals margin. Doing maths I get higher using hybrid in yellow sockets than with a straight intellect one in most cases.

I didn't need all these information, I've been looking at blues since wrath about it. I wasn't talking about scaling I meant to be competitive in DPS to keep up with the raid, they needed gear... more than frost DKs and fire mages in past expansions.

There is a serious difference in these Numbers.

On my Simcraft Numbers, Haste is .5 more than on yours, which is about on more than 1/3, that's a decent difference.

Also, Elemental is pretty gear independant, you got no serious Haste caps, secondary Stats don't affect your playstyle compared to other classes.

The Point is, in my view, Elemental will fall behind with more Gear, that has been the case in previous expansions and currently i don't see why it should be different this Expansion.

And btw. nothing needs more gear than Fire Mages, try playing Fire Mage without a decent Crit chance.

[Wunhunglo]

I don't see a problem with shaman DPS at the moment. Both Enhancement and Elemental are close until an ability breaking the routine comes in. I'm constantly on top5 on my guild's meters (25m pushing heroic progression). Warlock, Mage and Warrior is what I can compete with.

In normal modes Elemental does feel pretty ok but you hardly have any heroic kills under your belt. Compared to your other dps, you ranked 10th on your H Feng kill and 13th on your H Elegon kill (far from "top 5"). I have a feeling you will change your tune a bit once you have been through most of the other heroic fights in front of you.

Just take a look at the (limited) data from Raidbots right now. Go look at 25 man Heroic, all parses and you will see that elemental has the following things going for it:
(Out of the 12 fights that actually have data)
2 fights where we are not in the bottom half of dps classes.
3 fights where we are dead last (would probably be 4 if mages and hunters were not used primarily for trap duty on H Will).
Almost every other fight we are in the bottom 30%.

Based on the overall data that is available to us and based on my own personal experience I am very comfortable saying that Elemental is weak if you consider equal gear and equal play skill. I am ok with being somewhat weak given what we bring to the raid but do think we need to be buffed a little.

If you are consistently keeping up with your warlocks, mages, and warriors; they are probably bad.

[Evect]

It's poor. I could write a page essay but there's no need.

[Taoforums]

It still doesn't mean elemental is bad. Someone's gotta be at the top and someone's gotta be at the bottom. Also, please take more fights that has happened weeks ago and another I couldn't hit a single spell in the last phase of the boss. (Yeah, blaming it on the lag, Elegon got me on that one.)

There's no problem with our dps, but I agree it could use some tweaks.

[Bethan]

the main issue I'm actually having with elemental are with raid cd "stormlash" and "skull banner". At least in 10man (were you most probably won't have more than 2 shaman and 2 wariors), elemental is the class that is the most affected by thoses :
- ascendance is currently our best "burst" dps cd, and we take all +30% damage of skull banner during that duration, meaning we lose quite a lot of dps if we can't properly coordinate our cds with those of a war.
- stormash damage is accorded to the player dealing damage, despite beeing placed by the shaman, and there is no real "hardcap" to how many stormlash you can have in your raid. Therefore if elemental damage "alone" was already quite high, adding damage of stormlash would easily add a +4, +5% damage over all other classes, and elemental (enhance have the same problem), become "way better" than any other dps.

Basically : as long as you won't manage to coordinate with a warrior in your roster, and we keep current incarnation of stormlash, assuming devs try to have the game as balanced as possible, your dps will be slightly low on logs (decent+ if you can use skull banner optimally, but it's not that easy)

[binkenstein]

Also, Elemental is pretty gear independant, you got no serious Haste caps, secondary Stats don't affect your playstyle compared to other classes.
The Point is, in my view, Elemental will fall behind with more Gear, that has been the case in previous expansions and currently i don't see why it should be different this Expansion.

Actually, you'll find that Balance & Shadow are in the same boat, with Elemental a tad behind the other two.

[Nebria]

Buff scaling of secondary Stats, Elemental is pretty much the only Caster that keeps using 160 Int gems.

and what is so bad about this? IMO it would be really boring if each class would prefer hybrid gems about pures for pures sockets. Its the same thing like in DS were we put always int gems in it with one exception, if the bonus was int. That was pretty boring and ruined the gem market totaly.

our warlock was stacking massive mastery, mages and warriors massive crit. they even ignore strenght. is this what you want? I don't like this.

[mlodgor]

- ascendance is currently our best "burst" dps cd, and we take all +30% damage of skull banner during that duration, meaning we lose quite a lot of dps if we can't properly coordinate our cds with those of a war.

It's +20% damage. But you are right. Warriors in my guild already hate me.

[Kralljin]

and what is so bad about this? IMO it would be really boring if each class would prefer hybrid gems about pures for pures sockets. Its the same thing like in DS were we put always int gems in it with one exception, if the bonus was int. That was pretty boring and ruined the gem market totaly.

our warlock was stacking massive mastery, mages and warriors massive crit. they even ignore strenght. is this what you want? I don't like this.

The Point is, it is fun to hit a "cap" on certain Secondary Stats?

If Bloodlust is running and we are on Sha of Fear Hc and already got the 15% Haste Buff, my Lb is sitting 1.1sec Casttime while Bl alone suffices to get my Lvb below 1Sec.

It is not fun to hit the GCD Cap on any spells, it feels like part of my Gear is totally wasted, i am sitting on 24.55% Haste atm. with Bl almost 15% (5% are from the passive Aura) are turned useless for Lvb and Cl, that is not cool and this effect will be apply to the uptime of the Essence of Terror Proc as well.

Some Classes stack Secondary Stats because their Gameplay is strongly influenced by it, as Elemental the only Secondary Stat that seriously changes my Gameplay is Mastery because of Rolling Thunder Procs, but there you lose LS Charges very often because of the Shock CD.


On any Encounter that increases Secondary Stats by a decent Rate, Gara'jal would be the example currently, Elemental can't pull the full use out of these Buffs because you hit GCD Cap or cannot dump LS Charges fast enough.


Personally i wouldn't mind if we keep using pure Int Gems, but in my view they show that Elemental has issues with the scaling of secondary Stats, especially if you can stack them into high rates.

[Nebria]

Personally i wouldn't mind if we keep using pure Int Gems, but in my view they show that Elemental has issues with the scaling of secondary Stats, especially if you can stack them into high rates.

Hm, I'm not sure if using int gems in red sockets means there is an issue with scaling of secondary stats in the direction of hitting a cap really fast. Is it really the case? I'm not sure if your text is based on a feeling or on mathematical stuff, you know? If mastery would increase all damage done by some percent it is a clear winner over int if the damage you get from it is lower.
For me it seems more we are balanced on our secondary stat.

For me, it just feels bad if I can ignore 98% of gem colors and just focus on one gem and on one stat. I get more the feeling of bad design.
Other may find it perfectly. I find it more fun to play around with all secondary stats.
Also often classes which are focused on one stat have issues if this stat is really low.
I mean the good thing about this is that all classes are different and so everything is needed from someone which is really good if you ask me.

What would happen if they remove the shared shock cd? will mastery be so much better than haste in this moment as a barrier is gone?
The T14 4 set bonus already is providing cd issues on earth shock.

It is not fun to hit the GCD Cap on any spells, it feels like part of my Gear is totally wasted, i am sitting on 24.55% Haste atm. with Bl almost 15% (5% are from the passive Aura) are turned useless for Lvb and Cl, that is not cool and this effect will be apply to the uptime of the Essence of Terror Proc as well.

I know it feels bad.
You said you sim craft shows 1.87 haste. What values do mastery and crit have?
Sim craft perhaps sees no issue here even if you get under gcd in some situations.

[Xentres]

@kralljin

I totally agree with Nebria above.

So, you are hitting 1sec Casttime for LvB in a few fights for like 15% of the whole fight?

I never understood why people bring up this argument. Haste still, has value for the other 85% of the fight. Otherwise just use mastery.

Fact is that we simply do not have a utterly important mechanic that is purely based on a secondary stat like crit for fire mages.

I really favor the current situation where I can nearly use every piece of mail armor as long as its item level, thus the amount of int on it, is higher.

In my guild, a mage yesterday was sooo glad because he kept some armor pieces without crit which he never thought of to be useful ever, since fire is now dead.

We also have some good and some less good secondary stats, but we can always be sure with int and ele gear is also very specific to the spec and can only be used by ele and partially by resto.

Still, I dont see any problem in being roughly below 1sec during bloodlust. Otherwise you would need to have loooong cast times for the rest of the fight.

Oh, yeah, I think, in PvE, Ele is ok!

[Kralljin]

For me it seems more we are balanced on our secondary stat.

Depends on what you mean with "balanced".

Balanced that all Secondary Stats are close to together?

Balanced that Secondary Stats have a similiar use to us as they have to other classes?

For me, it just feels bad if I can ignore 98% of gem colors and just focus on one gem and on one stat. I get more the feeling of bad design.
Other may find it perfectly. I find it more fun to play around with all secondary stats.
Also often classes which are focused on one stat have issues if this stat is really low.
I mean the good thing about this is that all classes are different and so everything is needed from someone which is really good if you ask me.

I am not talking how close our stats are in terms of numbers, i am talking about that the more rating you get from a single secondary stat, the more often it will happen that it will lose value under certain conditions.

What would happen if they remove the shared shock cd? will mastery be so much better than haste in this moment as a barrier is gone?
The T14 4 set bonus already is providing cd issues on earth shock.

Before i acquired the T14 4pc, Mastery was ahead of Haste for me, so yes, i think Mastery will be better than Haste if you can dump every LS Charge instead of just producing excessive charges.

I am not quite sure if a removal of the shared shock CD would solve this issue entirely, you would still have a massive overflow if you use Cl.

I know it feels bad.
You said you sim craft shows 1.87 haste. What values do mastery and crit have?
Sim craft perhaps sees no issue here even if you get under gcd in some situations.

About 1.67 Mastery and 1.55 Crit.

Yeah currently, but brought up the concern that Haste may not increase as much as it does for other classes.

---------- Post added 2012-12-05 at 04:35 PM ----------

@kralljin

I totally agree with Nebria above.

So, you are hitting 1sec Casttime for LvB in a few fights for like 15% of the whole fight?

I never understood why people bring up this argument. Haste still, has value for the other 85% of the fight. Otherwise just use mastery.

Bl usually is used at the pull, all trinkets and CD's are used, it is a crucial Phase for your Dps.

And if you don't use at the pull, you use for another crucial Phase of the Encounter, if the Boss is taking increased Damage, such as Windlord Mel'jarak.

Also, take a Haste Proc Trinket and it won't be just 15% of the Fight.

I really favor the current situation where I can nearly use every piece of mail armor as long as its item level, thus the amount of int on it, is higher.

In my guild, a mage yesterday was sooo glad because he kept some armor pieces without crit which he never thought of to be useful ever, since fire is now dead.

Again, i am talking about the scaling of secondary Stats, not the difference between them.

On a personal Note, i'd say fire isn't dead, it has become balanced and now Affli and the other 2 mage specs are next.

[Xentres]

@Kralljin

I agree with you that it is crucial to pull all during Bloodlust.

But you are talking about scaling of secondary stats and that if you stack a lot of one stat that stat might lose its value.

And this is where I can't follow your argument.

I mean - THAT is the whole point about gear optimization.

You should use your gear wise, reforge one stat into the other, optimize your gear.

And you can do that with mastery and haste - with int on top of all other stats.

Every class has certain values from where on a stat starts to lose value - even healers have!

Maybe, if you truly want to optimize, you have to reforge before each boss ^^

[Nebria]

Depends on what you mean with "balanced".

Balanced that all Secondary Stats are close to together?

Balanced that Secondary Stats have a similiar use to us as they have to other classes?

I mean that one "Balanced that all Secondary Stats are close to together?"

I am not talking how close our stats are in terms of numbers, i am talking about that the more rating you get from a single secondary stat, the more often it will happen that it will lose value under certain conditions.

Yeah ok. But I don't think this is an issue with that secondary stats are weaker than int.
It is more some mechanic issues that prevent us from pushing some stats above some values.
Be is haste cap or mastery cap due handling of shock cd.
You haste cap is only reached in some situations. I don't think it is that bad or else simcraft would show you this.
Mastery the same. You don'T should count rolling thunder only. All spells have a chance to be duplicated (by a weaker copy). And thats the main part of it in my opinion.


But I don't think thats not because our secondary stats are "weaker" than int.
It is possible that it is because no secondary stat is THE stat with an open end cap.

Before i acquired the T14 4pc, Mastery was ahead of Haste for me, so yes, i think Mastery will be better than Haste if you can dump every LS Charge instead of just producing excessive charges.

I am not quite sure if a removal of the shared shock CD would solve this issue entirely, you would still have a massive overflow if you use Cl.

it is switching for me also a lot. currently with 4piece mastery is ahead for me... so you see master and haste (and even crit) are more or less equal.
Once I had mastery = haste = crit in simcraft^^

Yeah currently, but brought up the concern that Haste may not increase as much as it does for other classes.

Yes for sure. But the good thing is it doesn't matter.
You can reforge to crit or mastery and still get a benefit.

If haste would be the top stat you would reach a cap too at some point. And then you have to reforge to a much weaker stat. So I prefer our current model.
I have to agree with Xentress it is beautyful how every peace you find is an item you can use as it gives you more stats and is usefull overall. Perhaps not perfect but nothing you would throw away like other classes would do.
Also it is really difficult to compare the stat scaling model of two classes. It depends a lot from the skills you use what kind of mastery you have etc.