The state of Elemental in 5.1

[Deleted]

Mhh while I would certainly not deny buffs, I don't think that we are weak single target wise. On fights like WotE we fail ofc, because we suck at multidotting etc.
But if you look at WOL Parses, on most single target or cleave bosses we are in a pretty good place. We aren't top notch like firemages/affli locks, but we aren't at the bottom either.

Im usually TOP 5 dps in my guild too and I only lose against ppl with Sha touched weapons (I still have 476 LFR weapon with windsong and a Jade Spirit enchanted fully upgraded 504 sha gem weapon would give me at least 10k dps I assume) or on multi dot fights. Plus we have a hunter in our guild who is doing 1-20 rankings almost every frigging raid.

[SenSayNyu]

Except, we are dead last on most single targey fights if you exclude weak specs from other classes (frost mage, unholy dk, etc) according to Raidbots.

[Kralljin]

Except, we are dead last on most single targey fights if you exclude weak specs from other classes (frost mage, unholy dk, etc) according to Raidbots.

I giggled.

Single Target Dps is currently Comparable to Sp / Balance Druid, which is okay.

My Concern however is:
1. Are we able to hold this without Buffs (scaling and such)
2. Sp / Balance Druid go Apeshit on Multi Dot Fights.

It is laughable that Balance pulls better Burst Dps (in terms of Dps spike), is able to Multi Dot and pulls similiar Single Target Dps.

Even on AoE they are ahead, given enough time to multi dot.


Dots Specs used to have an Ramp uptime, now they pull more Burst Dps than Nuke Casters and are able to Multi dot, not okay.

[Deleted]

Except, we are dead last on most single targey fights if you exclude weak specs from other classes (frost mage, unholy dk, etc) according to Raidbots.

Not true,

if you look at raidbots in Heart of Fear 25m hc fights, we are not "dead last"...

Zorlok: 9th of 23 specs
Blade Lord: 13th of 23 specs
Garalon: 19th of 23 specs (k, we suck there)
Wind Lord: 7th of 23 specs (we kinda shine here)
Amber Boss: 13th of 23 specs
Empress: bottom (although I dont really know why, don't really know the fight but its single target plus cleaving when adds come right? Or is the difference on hc that much different than on normal?)

So, I wouldn't really call us "dead last". We are in the middle and on cleave fights we are decent.
Plus I don't get the thing about excluding "weak" specs from the calculation. Should we then all reroll enhancement just because it's a bit better? Hell no. Same goes for DKs and Mages. Fire is better than the other specs, sure. But what if somebody doesn't like the playstyle of fire and wants to stick with arcane/frost? Frost actually isn't that bad tbh.

And the other thing you are missing is, that in those TOP 100 parses.. Only the best players are listed. They are close to maximizing their characters potential. Which doesn't apply to the "normal" raider. So thats why I think that if you really like your char + spec and you put everything into it, you can beat other specs/guys, even if they theoretically sim 5% better than you.

I'm not trying to counterargue and don't want to imply that we don't need buffs. We certainly could use some and heck, that would place me even closer to the top of my guild's dps spots.

We will see the real results in about a month, when gear has equalled out and everyone is at around the same level. It plays a huge part. Then we can still whine and cry for buffs.

[oxpo]

If you look at the normal parses vs hc parses you can clearly see that we scale awfully compared to mostly all other classes.

Stormstrike: And why would you only look at HoF?

It is top 100 parses that counts because that is the potential of each specc. If you counted all gear and skill levels the result would be much less interesting due to the fact that that measures how good each specc scales with bad gear and skill level.

[Kralljin]

Empress: bottom (although I dont really know why, don't really know the fight but its single target plus cleaving when adds come right? Or is the difference on hc that much different than on normal?)

1. 2 Add Phases, Multidotters go insane on this part while Cl get punished if Adds spread because of Fixate, Altough Elemental can take some benefit out this phase and pull a Full Ascendance on 5 Adds.

2. Execute Phase is quite long, majority of Specs has any kind of Execute ability, the only one without are: WW; Shaman Dps, Druid Dps, Mage, 2 Rogue Specs

Talking about Executes that prove useful in PvE, Touch of Death is no real execute spell in PvE.

[Deleted]

If you look at the normal parses vs hc parses you can clearly see that we scale awfully compared to mostly all other classes.

Stormstrike: And why would you only look at HoF?

It is top 100 parses that counts because that is the potential of each specc. If you counted all gear and skill levels the result would be much less interesting due to the fact that that measures how good each specc scales with bad gear and skill level.

I only looked at HoF because there aren't any terrace logs yet (dunno why) and Vaults was just the entry raid and I don't think that most raids are playing 100% on bosses they had on farm for weeks /doesn't matter anymore.

Like I said, of course there are theoretical differences between those specs and we theoretically don't do too well. But how many ppl in your raid would you say are maximizing/closing in on their theoretical potential?

What Im implying with this is, that the "skill span" of each spec is different. Some specs are easy to play and do well dps with low skill, whereas some specs are harder to play and they only really shine when the player behind them is really good as well. And tbh, elemental isn't one of those specs, which is very hard to play.

[zenga]

We will see the real results in about a month, when gear has equalled out and everyone is at around the same level. It plays a huge part. Then we can still whine and cry for buffs.

What makes you think that certain specs have more gear than other specs? Npw is when it matters what dps you can do, not when you have beaten all content and are BiS geared.

For 10m hc, ele shamans relative to the other specs (only used the specs that raidbots considers relevant, i.e. specs that have enough parses). For terrace there isnlt enough data so going for the normals. 10/17 means that ele is 10th out of 17 dps specs.

all parses, timespan 1 month, sample period 1 week

10/17 Imperial Vizier Zor'lok
15/17 Blade Lord Ta'yak
17/17 Garalon
07/18 Wind Lord Mel'jarak
10/16 Amber-Shaper Un'sok
Grand Empress Shek'zeer (not enough parses)

13/20 The Stone Guard
07/19 Feng the Accursed
18/19 Gara'jal the Spiritbinder
16/16 The Spirit Kings
17/18 Elegon
15/17 Will of the Emperor

13/19 Protectors of the Endless
12/19 Tsulong
14/19 Lei Shi
16/17 Sha of Fear

In short: in about half of the fights eles are (lower) middle of the pack, on the other half of the fights eles are (near) the bottom. That is for 10m hc, and seeing how raid buffs are redundant nowadays, the crap that only 25m hc matters is no longer valid. 10m is what most of the raiders do, not to mention that fights are different. Besides getting all buffs ca missing buffs evens out given the large pool of data.

But it's been the same story for the last 5 tiers, with firelands being the exception, and we all know why.

[Endus]

Plus I don't get the thing about excluding "weak" specs from the calculation. Should we then all reroll enhancement just because it's a bit better? Hell no. Same goes for DKs and Mages. Fire is better than the other specs, sure. But what if somebody doesn't like the playstyle of fire and wants to stick with arcane/frost? Frost actually isn't that bad tbh.

It depends on how you play.

If you just want to faff about and maybe eventually get some (H) kills, play whatever spec you want.
If you want to progress as quickly as you can manage, then yes, you should be swapping specs as needed. This becomes more problematic with hybrids like us; we have two completely different gearsets required for our two DPS specs, meaning that you generally cannot swap between the two freely; one will have a higher item level than the other and this will throw off these calculations. Unless you 1> don't have any Agility users in your raid group and 2> have gotten luckier with Agility drops than caster drops, if you started out as Elemental, you probably can't swap to Enhancement without losing significant item level.

That factor is not true for pure DPS specs. For the most part, they share gear. If one spec has a slightly different stat weight, that's a quick and relatively cheap trip to the Reforger to optimize, and if you decide it's not worth it, you can often still gain a significant DPS increase by playing the proper spec for the content. Along with pures, Warriors also have this flexibility available; the weapon differences between Arms and Fury are minimal if they were playing 2h Titan's Grip Fury. Those classes can and should be swapping to their optimal specs as they can; doing so is not much different than swapping talents or glyphs as needed; there is no gear differential to cope with as there is for Shaman DPS (and Druids, for that matter).

And the other thing you are missing is, that in those TOP 100 parses.

Never use Top 100 for class balance comparisons. They are statistically useless for this, as the top 100 is determined at least as much by RNG differentials between classes as any other factor.

If you look at "All parses", Elemental is currently dead last overall in 25m HC. If we look at HoF specifically on a per-boss basis;
Zorlok; 9th of 16
Ta'yak; 14th of 16
Garalon; 17th of 17
Mel'jarak; 14th of 18
Shek'zeer; 17th of 18

The reason it's out of 16-18 specs, there, is because for 25-man HC, the remaining DPS specs simply don't have enough parses uploaded to accurately establish an average that's meaningful. In some cases, the few parses they do have are still averaging higher than Elemental, so the lack of use is more to do with having better options they can easily swap to, for pures, as I mentioned above.

That's why I say we need buffs; we're average on one fight and pushing the bottom on the others. MSV is the same. If we had some fights we were above average and others we were below average, I'd be 100% fine with that. We could even have some fights where we're dead last, if we're performing better in other places to make up for this.

The issue is that we AREN'T making up for it elsewhere. We're just averaging the lowest of the regularly raiding specs, overall. It's a problem.

It is top 100 parses that counts because that is the potential of each specc. If you counted all gear and skill levels the result would be much less interesting due to the fact that that measures how good each specc scales with bad gear and skill level.

Seriously, no, Top 100 parses is basically completely useless and misleading for class balance discussions. I wrote a blog post about this waaay back when the log collation site in use was stateofdps.com; How not to use stateofdps.com and worldoflogs.com. The specific numbers used as examples are out of date, but it's a post about statistical theory and those numbers are just examples; the same facts hold true today. There's a reason everyone stopped using stateofdps.com and started using raidbots.com (which serendipitously started out around the same time as I posted that; the devs there contributed to the thread in fact). It's because "top parse" models are bad for class balance discussion; it biases things towards who's had the best luck doing gimmicky stunts, or who's got the greater RNG and got a lucky parse to upload, rather than class performance and player skill.

If you want to control for player skill, just look at (H) content; those players are performing well enough to get (H) modes down. Trying to go by top 100 brings in far too many irrelevant factors that cannot be controlled for, factors you CAN control for simply by using "all parses".

[Deleted]

1. 2 Add Phases, Multidotters go insane on this part while Cl get punished if Adds spread because of Fixate, Altough Elemental can take some benefit out this phase and pull a Full Ascendance on 5 Adds.

Whats the benefits ? Better Glyph CL.

Ascendance = Pure LvB spam, otherwise its dps loss.

[oxpo]

Endus: You are completely overestimating RNG here ENDUS. You just cant crit on each spell. Second elemental is more RNG dependent than f.ex aff lock. Still they dont get high logs at all. Elemental is underperforming og almost every boss. You cant blame that difference between good performance speccs and bad on RNG.

Stormstrike: I agree with you on the fact that elemental is pretty easy to master. But what does that have to do with the fact that elementals do bad dps with high skilled players compared to other speccs? Elementals scales awful with both gear and skill and that is a really bad thing.

[Endus]

Endus: You are completely overestimating RNG here ENDUS. You just cant crit on each spell. Second elemental is more RNG dependent than f.ex aff lock.

I am by no means overestimating anything. It's a major factor in Top 100 rankings. It isn't about "critting every spell". If one class is 100k +/- 5k, and another class is 101k +/- 3k, then if you have thousands of parses, the first class is going to be hitting close to 105k fairly often, while the second is topping out at 104k. If you look at the "top 100", you incorrectly see the first class ranked ahead, when the average is actually lower, because you're not just ignoring RNG, you're deliberately selecting a sample that's already biased by it.

There's no reason to selectively sample like that. None. It's just bad statistics, period. There's a reason stateofdps.com died. It only used top 200 as a model, and that model was bad. Raidbots provided "all parses", and everyone moved there for their collective log analysis.

And this issue was never about Elemental specifically. Elemental's RNG is traditionally lower, but the issue is that certain specs that have high RNG get favored by Top 100 models, unfairly. It's not about trying to make Elemental look better; our RNG is fairly average. It's about using an honest and reasonable statistical analysis, rather than deliberately biasing our results.

Still they dont get high logs at all. Elemental is underperforming og almost every boss. You cant blame that difference between good performance speccs and bad on RNG.

I don't. You should maybe go read the rest of that post where I use "all parses" models to show that I absolutely agree that Elemental is underperforming across the board.

That's a completely separate point. Top 100 models are flawed. You can't use them to discuss overall class balance. If you're trying to, you either don't understand basic statistical theory (and that's why I wrote that blog post; I don't expect the average person to understand it), or you're being deliberately dishonest.

Elemental's issues are real enough we don't need to jigger the numbers to try and make it look worse. Especially when it really doesn't do so, anyway.

[oxpo]

Still, elemental's deviaton is greater than affliction's, and that should after your calculations favor elemental, shouldn't it?

However, i agree with you that all parses is more meaningful than top 100.

[Endus]

Still, elemental's deviaton is greater than affliction's, and that should after your calculations favor elemental, shouldn't it?

No.

1> The "top 100" thing has nothing to do with Elemental's relative position. It's just bad math, period.

2> Affliction's RNG is completely irrelevant to that argument, since the entire point is that RNG deviation is not identical across all specs. As long as any specs have higher deviations than other specs, "top 100" will favor them unfairly, either ranking them too high when they're more average, or making them seem average when they're too low. Similarly, specs with relatively low RNG is unfairly be ranked lower on Top 100 charts, for the reverse reason. Affliction's relatively low RNG is just more reason to not use Top 100 models, it's not evidence in their favor.

[binkenstein]

What makes you think that certain specs have more gear than other specs? Npw is when it matters what dps you can do, not when you have beaten all content and are BiS geared.

For 10m hc, ele shamans relative to the other specs (only used the specs that raidbots considers relevant, i.e. specs that have enough parses). For terrace there isnlt enough data so going for the normals. 10/17 means that ele is 10th out of 17 dps specs.

all parses, timespan 1 month, sample period 1 week

I'd say the biggest flaw to your argument is the fact you chose 10 man raids for the basis of your analysis, rather than 25 man. The reason I call this a flaw is because there will be substantial variation around buffs available in 10 man raids, so in one you may be missing magic damage taken, while another is missing the crit debuff. In 25 man raids, we can make a reasonable assumption that raids will include all buffs.

Also, looking at Heroic modes skews the data again, as there will be smaller sample sizes to look at.

If we look at 25N, we see an average rank of 13 & are doing ~80% of the max DPS for each fight (range of 61-95% & 8-19). If we compare performance with whichever class ranks halfway between Elemental & #1 (ie: roundup(19/2,0) = 10) it's a much better 92%, with ranges from 82-97% (3 less than 90%, 4 higher than 95%). This tells me that, aside from certain fights like Will of the Emperor & Garalon (Sha of Fear is the other sub 90% but it's only 89% vs 82/83 for the other two) we're not doing too badly.

There are also some fights with large outliers like Stone Guard, with Combat at 120k vs Affliction & Shadow at #3 & #4 with 101.5k & 99.5k. Likewise, Garalon is dominated by melee classes because of the Weak Points buff, so pulling 93k vs Fire/BM/Aff at 117/116/115k isn't as dire as one would think.

Could improvements be made to Elemental? Yes. However blindly pointing to Raidbots results and saying "here is proof" is shortsighted, misleading, and more often than not wrong.

[Kralljin]

Whats the benefits ? Better Glyph CL.

Ascendance = Pure LvB spam, otherwise its dps loss.

Pulled 6 Million Dmg with lava Beam by just using a Single "AoE Ascendance" On Sha of Fear during P2, that's 400k Dps for 15Seconds just by Lava Beam itself.

Try that with spamming Lvb.

I hardly reach 400k Spike Dps during a Pull with every CD available.

My tooltips say:

Lava Beam damage: 32k

Lvb Damage: 38k

Lvb average damage without any buffs should be 95k
Lava Beam average dmg with 5 jumps should be 160k, consider that Lava Beam scales well with Mastery because he get 5/3 of the original Overload chance on 5 Targets.

[zenga]

I'd say the biggest flaw to your argument is the fact you chose 10 man raids for the basis of your analysis, rather than 25 man. The reason I call this a flaw is because there will be substantial variation around buffs available in 10 man raids, so in one you may be missing magic damage taken, while another is missing the crit debuff. In 25 man raids, we can make a reasonable assumption that raids will include all buffs.

Also, looking at Heroic modes skews the data again, as there will be smaller sample sizes to look at.
...

Could improvements be made to Elemental? Yes. However blindly pointing to Raidbots results and saying "here is proof" is shortsighted, misleading, and more often than not wrong.

1. I made a point about 10m heroics. One can as well make a point about the state of ele in 25m and or normals. The fights are different, so are the numbers most likely. You can't use 25m numbers to prove anything about ele in 10m.
2. The sample size of 10m is much bigger than the sample size of 25m. e.g. roughly 650 guilds have killed more than 2 heroic bosses on 25m, roughly 3100 guilds have killed more than 2 heroic bosses on 10m (according to wowprogress). And the more hc bosses you take into account the bigger the difference becomes.
3. Raid teams who have knocked out the heroic bosses in that list tend to be somewhat serious about covering their raid setup/buffs. Point being: in my opinion it's pretty safe to assume that most of these raid teams had the most relevant buffs when they made their kill. This is mop, it's really challenging to make a raid setup that doesn't provide all caster de/buffs, since we assume that the shaman is in the raid. And even if raids teams still miss a certain debuff/buff, it will even out given the sample size.

Not sure if your arguments to call my post a flaw make sense. Really the buff/debuffs are a non-issue in MoP. And if anything the sample size of 10m is 5+ times bigger than the sample size of 25m. And as said, I stated clearly this was about 10m hc, I didn't say a word about the state of ele in dungeons, 25m. normals or while questing.

[Sarevokcz]

Pulled 6 Million Dmg with lava Beam by just using a Single "AoE Ascendance" On Sha of Fear during P2, that's 400k Dps for 15Seconds just by Lava Beam itself.

Try that with spamming Lvb.

I hardly reach 400k Spike Dps during a Pull with every CD available.

My tooltips say:

Lava Beam damage: 32k

Lvb Damage: 38k

Lvb average damage without any buffs should be 95k
Lava Beam average dmg with 5 jumps should be 160k, consider that Lava Beam scales well with Mastery because he get 5/3 of the original Overload chance on 5 Targets.

the issue isnt really how much burst Beam spam does, its how much more than CL spam it does compared to LvB spam <> standart rotation. Lets talk random numbers. Normal rotation does 70k, LvB spam does 220k, CL spam does 250k, Beam spam does 350k. On paper, Beam does most dps, however you only gain 100k dps for the CD compared to 150k dps if you use it on single target burst. The numbers are totally made up, but they show why "omg biggest burst evar" isnt always the best choice for the CD. I honestly have no clue if its worth it to use for AoEing or not (if its not crucial like feng adds or when CD finishes before the single target burst start like blade lord) but I wouldnt be surprised if it was worth using on AoEing with good gear, since Beam scales with crit, unlike LvB

[kayoticwrath]

I changed my Shaman to Elemental from Enhancement and while at the start I loved the change. Now I just hate the play style all over again. I don't know why I can't get into Elemental. Like I want to like it but I just can't... Not sure why.

[Bethan]

well, just loged my shaman to check tooltips, glyphed cl does 25803 single target damage (no spell buff), so 71,554dmg (*(1+0.7+0.7^2+0.7^3+0.7^4)) on 5 target (no mastery/crit proc). Lava beam does 31,600 base damage, but does the same damage on five target, so 158,000 total damage per cast (no buff, no crit, no mastery). So lava beam does ~2,2 times the damage of cl assuming all hit including mastery proc hits five target (hiting less target will lower the difference). Assuming cl spam does ~200k dps, then beam would (ideally) do ~440k dps.

I'd say best way to use ascendance is whenever your trinket/cds are up and you'll have 15sec of free cast (and shock up for at least 15sec on a single target if you won't be able to cleave for all 15sec), and you should delay it for a "single target" or "aoe situation" only if the strat ask you to burn down something specifically (because of the huge burst dps it provides, be it single target or aoe)