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  1. #1
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    [5.2 PvE] The State of Elemental Shaman

    Hello guys!

    I decided to open this post since I didn't find anything similar on the forums. If I'm wrong and I missed something please delete this thread.

    I wanted to ask all of you who play as an Elemental Shaman how is the spec doing in the 5.2 raid? I'm currently leveling up my Elemental Shaman and I'd like to know how are you doing on the DPS compared to your raid.

    Raidbots.com says we are pretty much on the bottom of the list but since this things aren't always accurate nor reflect the reality I wanted to ask you personally

    Feel free of course to debate anything related to the matter, and as I said please delete the thread if there's already a thread similar to this one, thanks!

  2. #2
    Dreadlord Eruionmel's Avatar
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    It's a matter of some contention. I think we're doing very well, myself, but that's purely anecdotal from my own raiding. I regularly ranked first among my guildies during our first full clear, and these were all people that were beating me last tier. Raidbots is showing us as middle of the pack, not bottom, and a fair step above enhancement. If you're a good player and you push yourself to be the best you can be on each encounter, you'll be very much viable in raids. A lot of top guilds are now trying to recruit good elementals because we're so strong on cleave fights.

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    Bloodsail Admiral zenga's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eruionmel View Post
    Raidbots is showing us as middle of the pack, not bottom, and a fair step above enhancement.
    Care to link that, because I honestly don't see that:

    (keep in mind that mages got a major buff yesterday, so in absolute positions we will go down, but other specs got nerfs as well so in absolute terms that should close the gap a bit)


  4. #4
    My little 10M raid group id just starting up and just pugging 3 positions until the permanant fills come along on Silver Hand We are stuck on Elegon. We all are primarily gearing up and changes for 5.2 helped increase our DPS. I have noticed my DPS is in the top 2-3 (again we are just gearing up so the higher dps specs are not geared) when adds get involved. I pop acendance + EM at start along with glyphed fire elemental ( EM / Primal talents) so every 3 minutes my dps goes through the roof, and steadily drops off until the next 3 minutes again.

    As MoP is adds-happy, this increases our utility as Elemental in raids, as the Chain lightning has me competing for top spot for dps for add phases and drops to a medium-low afterwards (again my little guild is late to start raiding , tough on Silver Hand to find bodies...decent ones with brains present)

    So far we seem to be more use than in the past say like Ultraxion where only one target was involved.

    I guess my post represents a starting out guild raiding MSV. I can say for the new ToT on raid finder (2 drops week 1 from LFR) the adds is crazy lots so my dps in a 25 man randomly geared people that LFR is I can stay near tops on add phases.

    One thing i have self-confirmed (at leas for my lowly gear) is that ascendance lavabeam does less damage than chain lightning, Not sure if the glyph that gives 2 extra leaps the reason or what not ???

    oh and my profile is /silver-hand /Ackbahr/ simple (when can i post links yeesh :/ )

  5. #5
    Dreadlord Eruionmel's Avatar
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    I was looking at DPS, not spec score. What exactly is spec score? Also, I was looking at top 100, not overall. I think a lot of eles are not performing optimally right now because of the changes.
    Last edited by Eruionmel; 2013-03-14 at 01:12 AM.

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    Bloodsail Admiral zenga's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eruionmel View Post
    I was looking at DPS, not spec score. What exactly is spec score? Also, I was looking at top 100, not overall. I think a lot of eles are not performing optimally right now because of the changes.
    1. It has been overly discussed here why top 100 is not the best way to look at data. Though you have a point that not all eles are performing optimally, but why wouldn't that be true for other specs? The sample size of all parses is less prone to whoring, rng and a raid setup than the top 100.
    2. As to what spec score is, Ill just copy / paste raid bots:

    What is Spec Score?


    Spec Score is the best measure I've been able to come up with to compare specs across all fights of a given tier. The goal has been to minimize the effect a "gimmick" fight has on the overall rankings and generally normalize fights to have a common ground of comparison.

    In a nutshell, each spec is scored on a curve for each fight. For each individual boss, the spec with the top DPS on a fight gets a score of 100 and then all other specs are scored according to that top spec. The average across all fights for a given spec is the Spec Score for the current tier.

    As usual, this score is not the end-all, be-all measure of anything. It's merely an interesting collection of data trying to compress a whole lot of data into a single comparable value. Don't ever forget that each spec has its strengths and weaknesses and may be needed for any number of reasons. While raw numbers are absolutely an important facet of raiding, there are often other variables that are far more important.

    All of that said, I think Spec Score is a far better indicator of relative spec power than a simple aggregation of DPS values from all fights. Those values are still available but I hope and pray that you understand that they have their own variety of problems and caveats.

  7. #7
    Stood in the Fire shell's Avatar
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    Spec Score description: "Spec Score is the best measure I've been able to come up with to compare specs across all fights of a given tier. The goal has been to minimize the effect a "gimmick" fight has on the overall rankings and generally normalize fights to have a common ground of comparison.
    In a nutshell, each spec is scored on a curve for each fight. For each individual boss, the spec with the top DPS on a fight gets a score of 100 and then all other specs are scored according to that top spec. The average across all fights for a given spec is the Spec Score for the current tier.
    As usual, this score is not the end-all, be-all measure of anything. It's merely an interesting collection of data trying to compress a whole lot of data into a single comparable value. Don't ever forget that each spec has its strengths and weaknesses and may be needed for any number of reasons. While raw numbers are absolutely an important facet of raiding, there are often other variables that are far more important.
    " http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/

    Looking at each individual fight, in a 'perfect' world, all specs would be in the top 7/8 for a few fights, mid 7/8 for a few, and bottom 7/8 for a few. Or at least in my 'perfect' world that's what would happen because it gives all the dps a shot to be in the top. That's much more fun, in my opinion, than say Affliction being top for every single fight. The way its working out right now, we're close but not quite there yet.

    Just pulling this outta my ass because I may be doing this wrong, but if they buff LvB by ~8% we should be good. From what I'm seeing, it makes up 40% of our dps...so .40*.08=.032. So an increase of 3.2% to our dps. Or if my numbers are superbad, whatever it takes to get us buffed around 3%.

    I would have suggested another buff to elemental focus but I feel like that's just going to make lightning bolt hit that much harder. I think it's fine and we could use a buff to LvB, IMO.

    Edit: got beat again
    These words in my mouth... where did they come from? I don't think I'm the one that put them there...

  8. #8
    Dreadlord Eruionmel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by zenga View Post
    1. It has been overly discussed here why top 100 is not the best way to look at data. Though you have a point that not all eles are performing optimally, but why wouldn't that be true for other specs? The sample size of all parses is less prone to whoring, rng and a raid setup than the top 100.
    2. As to what spec score is, Ill just copy / paste raid bots:

    What is Spec Score?


    Spec Score is the best measure I've been able to come up with to compare specs across all fights of a given tier. The goal has been to minimize the effect a "gimmick" fight has on the overall rankings and generally normalize fights to have a common ground of comparison.

    In a nutshell, each spec is scored on a curve for each fight. For each individual boss, the spec with the top DPS on a fight gets a score of 100 and then all other specs are scored according to that top spec. The average across all fights for a given spec is the Spec Score for the current tier.

    As usual, this score is not the end-all, be-all measure of anything. It's merely an interesting collection of data trying to compress a whole lot of data into a single comparable value. Don't ever forget that each spec has its strengths and weaknesses and may be needed for any number of reasons. While raw numbers are absolutely an important facet of raiding, there are often other variables that are far more important.

    All of that said, I think Spec Score is a far better indicator of relative spec power than a simple aggregation of DPS values from all fights. Those values are still available but I hope and pray that you understand that they have their own variety of problems and caveats.
    Normally I would look at overall, but in this case, I think top 100 is a better measure. It's early enough in the tier that people are still figuring out the new talent systems, and there's a lot of death logs going on as well. Ele still suffers from some survivability issues, and doesn't have ways of recovering from a mistake in the case of one-shot mechanics. Once we've been in it for a month or so, then I agree, the other is better. But this early, the only way to really see the true DPS potential of ele is to look at the top 100.

    As far as spec score, I'm not sure if I agree with what it's doing, then. I've been #1 easily on cleave fights and middle of the pack on single target (sometimes higher if there's movement). According to that, I should be mid upper if not in the upper for spec score, since there's a lot of cleave fights. Top 100 seems much closer to my current experience.

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  9. #9
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eruionmel View Post
    Normally I would look at overall, but in this case, I think top 100 is a better measure.
    It isn't. It never is. The problem with "top 100" is that it artificially inflates higher-RNG specs thousands of DPS higher than they realistically should be. DPS distributions are bell curves; most people perform close to the median. Top 100 only looks at the very highest percent; for Fire mages, for instance, there's almost 10,000 samples at 25-normal, so top 100 is the top 1%.

    To use some numbers, imagine you have two specs, A and B, A averages 102k, B averages 100k (numbers made up for convenience). A's the better spec, right? The problem with "top 100" samples is, you have to consider RNG: if A averages 102k but has relatively low RNG, only varying +/- 1k or so based on random chance, their "top 100" are going to be close to 103k. And if B has much higher RNG, varying +/- 4k, their top 100 will be closer to 104k.

    By looking at top 100, you're thinking Spec B is averaging 1k better. When in fact they're averaging 2k worse. They can only do better than A if they're in one of those 1% of lucky streaks. This isn't a workable model for class balance. It's artificially giving inherent value to RNG, when RNG should have no value at all.

    The numbers will get more reliable as we get more parses, but Top 100 is flawed right out of the gate.


  10. #10
    Dreadlord Eruionmel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    It isn't. It never is. The problem with "top 100" is that it artificially inflates higher-RNG specs thousands of DPS higher than they realistically should be. DPS distributions are bell curves; most people perform close to the median. Top 100 only looks at the very highest percent; for Fire mages, for instance, there's almost 10,000 samples at 25-normal, so top 100 is the top 1%.

    To use some numbers, imagine you have two specs, A and B, A averages 102k, B averages 100k (numbers made up for convenience). A's the better spec, right? The problem with "top 100" samples is, you have to consider RNG: if A averages 102k but has relatively low RNG, only varying +/- 1k or so based on random chance, their "top 100" are going to be close to 103k. And if B has much higher RNG, varying +/- 4k, their top 100 will be closer to 104k.

    By looking at top 100, you're thinking Spec B is averaging 1k better. When in fact they're averaging 2k worse. They can only do better than A if they're in one of those 1% of lucky streaks. This isn't a workable model for class balance. It's artificially giving inherent value to RNG, when RNG should have no value at all.

    The numbers will get more reliable as we get more parses, but Top 100 is flawed right out of the gate.
    Yeah, but there aren't enough examples yet for there to BE that many RNG inflated logs. Most fights barely have a few hundred ele shaman kills (later bosses with fewer), and I doubt that's enough for serious RNG discrepancies to seriously impact the overall picture. And the top 100 are far more likely to be using the correct talent combinations for each of the fights, as well as executing the mechanics better (such as switching to cleaving when available).

    Basically, I don't think the results of the overall are matching with my current experience. And I'm not in some scrub guild where most of the DPS are bad and I'm some random prodigy. We're all very good players, and I was getting trashed by them last tier.

    I mean, are you falling behind already in your raid? Do you agree with the overall results? Maybe everyone in my guild is struggling with new talents or something. /shrug
    Last edited by Eruionmel; 2013-03-14 at 05:29 AM.

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  11. #11
    I'm not normally one to comment of forums but I'd like to answer the Holymorph's first question from my pov. I've played elemental as a main character since wrath and have always liked shamans although they were previously not that great especially in single target fights I had to work really hard to stay competitive in my raid team. Our DPS output was sufficient but not ever really great. Since Pandaland came along that has changed a lot, we are now more competitive than what we have been on a long time in single target fights but then our AOE seemed to have taken a hit. Since then they buffed chain lighting and now all seems right with the world. In my raid group the top dps is normally me, a fire mage or a warlock all 3 of us basically on the same Ilvl. So if you know this class well and know how to "handle" and adapt to the fight you are in, then you can definitely do very competitive dps. I tend not to care so much about what Raidbots.com or any similar website says or places our character according to dps statistics because at the end of the day it comes down to the player and play style as well.
    So in conclusion, with all the stuff going on with mages and locks at the moment elemental shamans are in a relatively good place.
    So if you know how to "shaman" you can’t go wrong:-)

  12. #12
    Ele is definitely competitive for now and is worth bringing to your raid.

    Anecdotal evidence : I (or the other ele in my guild) was consistently in the top 3 on every fight while competing against people having as much as 10 ilvl more than mine. This is just anecdotal ofc but since my guild is ranked 120 I'm competing with skilled DPS so that gives an idea. We still have to see how it evolves when people get some better gear.

  13. #13
    Viable and competative, but still (and forever will be) bottom of the pack when comparing Casters.

  14. #14
    The main trouble with using Top 100 is you have a massive sample bias. Not all classes have the same number of players playing them, so by using Top 100 you are selectively taking a more elite sample of one class compared to another. If a class has 200 samples, Top 100 represents the Top 50%, if another has 1000 samples, you are taking the Top 10%. Comparing the Top 10% of one class vs. the Top 50% of another is not an apples to oranges comparison.

    This is a very common tactic used by disingenuous statisticians to manipulate numbers in far more arenas than WoW. It generates flawed results and it is why you need to either use random sampling (impossible) or regulate the bias. If you want to compare the top of each spec for the reasons you listed above you can tell it to only look at the Top X percentile and you'll have much more useful data. It'll still be susceptible to the RNG boogeyman that Endus mentions, but at least you'll remove your bias.

  15. #15
    imo our aoe/cleave is perfectly fine, if we could get just 4-5% more single target dmg id be perfectly happy.

  16. #16
    Where cleaving is involved we are really strong and can compete with any other class. However if it's a single target fight we still suffer compared to other specs. We are better now than in 5.1 but I'd still like to see a tweak in the Lava Burst department. Considering it hits for less than a crit LB now and is considered our "nuke" spell.

  17. #17
    i think blizzard has stated they wouldnt do it, but if lava burst dmg increased by the amount of crit we had, that would probably fix our single target dps, or at least come very close to it.

  18. #18
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by orderschvank View Post
    i think blizzard has stated they wouldnt do it, but if lava burst dmg increased by the amount of crit we had, that would probably fix our single target dps, or at least come very close to it.
    The big argument to do that, though, was to increase Elemental's scaling with Crit, because we used to scale pretty poorly with it. They addressed it a different way; by giving us 250% crits, making crit that much better for all our other spells, to make up for not increasing LvB's damage.

    The main reason NOT to do it is because we don't need to borrow other class' mechanics. Straight numbers tweaks or a Shaman-unique mechanic is a "better" solution, long-term, since Crit's scaling value's already been fixed.


  19. #19
    Hey all,

    I usually dont post on the MMO forums, just browse around, but this thread caught my eye. My guild had me swap from resto to ele this tier and currently my ele set is 518(i think). Ive been simming my gear and a lot of upgrades and my stat wieghts and doing some dummy parses. I know my ilvl is inflated compared to the average player so ill take that in to consideration, but in my raids last week (first full week of ele mainspec) i was staying in the top 5 places every fight. Simming with no buffs over 10k iterations im coming up around 131k dps. I think something that caught a lot of ele players off guard and is hurting our dps is that somewhere between 5.0 (i didnt keep up with ele much but played it as an offspec occasionally) and 5.2 our stat priorities swapped. Currently mastery for me is simming EXTREMELY higher than haste has ever simmed, i assume since at a certain gear point and spell power and extra spell beats a faster spell. After finding out that mastery was simming over haste i went and did a few dummy tests with my haste reforge then went and simmed with mastery reforged and noticed a HUGE increase in damage. A lot of the information for players out there still lists haste as the top stat for ele which may be injuring us as a "class" on things such as raidbot.

    Just thought i would drop in my 2 cents hope it helps!
    (Character: Pwningshaman - Shadowmoon)

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    The big argument to do that, though, was to increase Elemental's scaling with Crit, because we used to scale pretty poorly with it. They addressed it a different way; by giving us 250% crits, making crit that much better for all our other spells, to make up for not increasing LvB's damage.

    The main reason NOT to do it is because we don't need to borrow other class' mechanics. Straight numbers tweaks or a Shaman-unique mechanic is a "better" solution, long-term, since Crit's scaling value's already been fixed.
    I disagree it has been fixed. Yes, crit is not completely terrible now, but that isn't the same as our secondary stats being in a good place. Our biggest problem right now is secondary stat scaling, as none of our major spells are benefited by all our our secondaries. (Everything but LB/EB haste cap, Lava Burst crit caps, and our totems don't benefit from mastery. Our only baseline spell that receives benefit from all stats is LB. EB does as well, but it generates the problem in its procs.)

    Making Lava Burst scale off crit would fix this. Our best cooldown still receives zero benefit from crit, as well as being able to be haste capped, which hurts our overall scaling.

    Not "borrowing other class' mechanics" isn't terribly compelling. They already did that in the way Lava Burst is designed in the first place. They just borrowed it in a strictly worse fashion.

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