Improve my enh shaman!

[fiziix]

I feel im lacking compared to other classes around the same ilvl (580), what do you guys think i could do to improve?

I was grouped in flex with a 582 enh the other day, his spells seemed to hit much harder than mine, on armory inspection - he had 92% mastery and less everything else (i have just short of 81% mastery). Im wondering if dropping some agi + mastery gems to pure mastery would help?

Take a peek and let me know what you think.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...iziix/advanced

[Mythricia]

I think it would be difficult to get much more mastery than what you already have without really gimping on Agility, which is still very good. The problem you have is you have a significant part of your stat budget spent on Crit - which isn't very good at all compared to neither Agi, Haste or Mastery. And I realize there's probably not much you can do about that - you get the gear that you get - but replacing those leggings, hoping for the shoulders off of Norushen, aiming for the Paragons ring, perhaps other weapons - you're not excessively over Hit cap, so the weapons from Protectors would definitely suit you just fine - Haste is good, and Hit can always be reforged into something more useful, and is thus more or less equivalent to any other stat. Then again, now that I think about it, pretty much all our weapon options in SoO got Crit on them...


Really, that's all I can think of as far as gear is concerned. Spam more buttons, more harder - if you can recall the name of the other shaman I could perhaps explain reasons why, or why not, the gear difference meant anything in terms of your DPS difference.

[fiziix]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

I cant remember his name unfortunately. We both started out at around 1.5m burst dps but as usual once the cds are over that started to fall away, i was down to about 650k while he stayed up at around 1.1m for quite a while. We had the same talents so it wasnt the primal elemental difference or anything. after that it was a losing battle, he finished around 600k while i was down @ 390k (mostly because i was thinking what the hell is he doing that im not!). His highest flameshock tick was over 100k more than mine.....

Lets hope my guild gets lucky on blackfuse HC tonight and i get shoulders + trinket

[Mythricia]

The trinkets you have are BiS - although iirc the Blackfuse one is not bad at all, and, if someone did the math, might actually turn out to be better than Multistrike for EM-PE combo (which we all use nowadays anyway)... It never seemed better when I run my character in SimCraft, but who knows. Anyway, I wouldn't worry too much about it if it was just one fight where he pulled ahead. Sometimes damage remains quite high after the initial burst, sometimes not. The other day I was still doing 1.1m when Thok hit 40% - like wtf, did nothing different from the normal. Just one of those pulls.

The hard-hitting Flameshocks might just be better management of applying it with Unleash up, in combo with procs and stuff, and higher Mastery. Which generally isn't worth it unless it happens automagically - nothing you really want to aim for unless you're AoEing heavily - on single target, the actual FS damage isn't that important, you just wanna proc LL... You already know this, but yeah.

Good luck either way - I think Crit is definitely one of the problems

Edit: Just realized I made it sound like Flame Shock damage is completely irrelevant - it's not, but just saying spending GCD's refreshing it when you have procs up and such when you have better things to do is not really adviced.

[Hekili]

For the gearing aspect of this question, you ought to run SimulationCraft and check Agility, Haste, and Mastery on the Scaling tab. That's going to tell you what each of those stats are worth in terms of DPS, based on how you've currently geared. If Mastery is worth 2x of the value of Agility or more, then gemming for Mastery is likely more valuable than gemming for Agility.

Then you should run it again, but check Reforge Plots for Haste Rating, Mastery Rating. This will provide you a handy graph that shows your DPS gain/loss as you trade some Haste for Mastery or vice versa. Reforge Plots are helpful, because sometimes you'll find that you have a really high weight for Haste in your current gearing, but that if you actually traded Mastery for Haste you'd lose some DPS. They're synergistic, and there are some points at which they trade places in terms of which is more beneficial. I typically run Reforge Amount of +/- 2000, with a Step Amount of 200 or 250.

Lastly, if you get stuck with some Crit gear, Crit isn't really that bad. It's not as good as the alternatives, but the margin is narrow. I wouldn't ever focus on building Crit, but it's better to sit on extra Crit than to end up overcapping on your Hit/Exp.

Outside of gearing, at an extremely high level of performance, managing your Flame Shock more carefully can result in a slight-to-moderate DPS increase, especially on bosses with packs of adds that are close enough to LL spread + Fire Nova. There's a WeakAura on TotemSpot that can show you the relative strength of casting a new Flame Shock vs. the strength of a Flame Shock that is still on the target. You can check it out here. I found it mostly valuable during an opener burst with an AOE pack (like Garrosh), so you don't overwrite a really strong Flame Shock that was cast with all your initial procs up, with a Flame Shock that's got no extra power behind it.

At a more typical level of performance, the thing that a lot of Enhancement Shamans struggle with is casting enough Lightning Bolts in the course of a fight. Waiting for MW5 is generally a DPS loss, as you run the risk of losing MW stacks that proc while you're waiting at MW5.

Comparing yourself to that other Shaman, and his abilities were hitting harder, then Mastery is a good place to look. Was he running with the same talents? If he had UF, his Lightning Bolt would be hitting harder. If you're running EM+PE and not popping your FET as much as possible, you're not getting the full benefit of those talents.

I think that's about as much as I can say without actually seeing logs.

[Vizslakane]

There's a WeakAura on TotemSpot that can show you the relative strength of casting a new Flame Shock vs. the strength of a Flame Shock that is still on the target. You can check it out here. I found it mostly valuable during an opener burst with an AOE pack (like Garrosh), so you don't overwrite a really strong Flame Shock that was cast with all your initial procs up, with a Flame Shock that's got no extra power behind it.

Couldn't this logic be added to your add-on?

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We both started out at around 1.5m burst dps but as usual once the cds are over that started to fall away, i was down to about 650k while he stayed up at around 1.1m for quite a while. We had the same talents so it wasnt the primal elemental difference or anything. after that it was a losing battle, he finished around 600k while i was down @ 390k

Were you using the Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem (which you have equipped in above link)? I feel that this can be a DPS loss when not used correctly and only for specific encounters. Could be one reason he stayed up at 1.1m, having an extremely hard hitting GFET up for a full minute. And I would assume later in the fight he might have coordinated his CD's again to coincide with another 1 minute GFET.

Just a thought

[Hekili]

Couldn't this logic be added to your add-on?

There's a little bit more complexity to adding it to my addon, because I'd have to predict which buffs you'll still have after several seconds, and recalculate your stats based on what has fallen off. Given that snapshotting is gone in WoD, I am not planning to bother with it.



- - - Updated - - -

Were you using the Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem (which you have equipped in above link)? I feel that this can be a DPS loss when not used correctly and only for specific encounters. Could be one reason he stayed up at 1.1m, having an extremely hard hitting GFET up for a full minute. And I would assume later in the fight he might have coordinated his CD's again to coincide with another 1 minute GFET.

Yeah, Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem is not going to be a DPS gain ever. 50% cooldown, 50% duration means you have more flexibility with when to use it (though, you don't want to cause yourself to delay so long that you miss dropping it again). Having an uptime of 1 minutes almost guarantees you're going to get benefits from all your procs over the course of its uptime. When you glyph it, 30 seconds is too narrow a window and it's easy to miss your trinket procs, etc. because of it. Good point.

[Deleted]

Using the FET glyph also prevents you from using EET, which is still around 1-2% of your total damage.

In terms of the OP, he might have gotten better RNG with RPPM trinket procs during FET, which is what would cause him to stay over 1mill for an extended period of time. If the fight was short (I'm guessing it was with 2 580+ DPS in a flex) then his Blackfuse trinket probably came out ahead as the fight was too short for you to take advantage of AoC's CD reduction. The fight needs to last around 3.5-4 mins+ for AoC to come out ahead.

Which fight was this and can you remember approximately how long it lasted (could be easier to remember how many FET's/etc you got off and how long before the end)? If it was a 3-3.5min fight I'd say that 390K is probably a bit low anyways for your iLvl. All that could probably be the cause. Ending on 600K at the end of the fight suggests he either got really good RNG on trinket procs during FET, it was a multiple target fight or it was just a very quick kill.

[Deleted]

I'd try to go for your heroic tier pants and the heroic shoulders from Norushen. My Enh hasn't gotten to many of the heroics, but those pieces are much better itemized for you than the pants you're using and tier shoulders.

Those are indeed BiS, but judging from his posts he's 11/14HC, and since legs drop from Klaxxi it'll be a while before he gets them.

[fiziix]

Wow, a lot of awesome replies! Thanks folks

Ill start from the end and work backwards. i got the Norushen shoulders today (yay!), in real terms i dont think the unabashed anger (HC) leggings are worth using over normal tier, id rather have the 2% haste than a very minor increase in damage and a little crit. I may swap them in on single target bosses as we all know the 4pc proc isnt great on 1 enemy fights.

The fight was iron jug. We had exactly the same talents but i didnt check his glyphs, i really didnt think about the reduced duration of the elemental 2bh, that was probably the difference, my dps was low after that as i was watching the dps meter more than i should... naughty me.

Im pretty good with timing my flame shocks with unleash i think, i always use my CD's as soon as they are ready (and can be used for full duration) so thats not a problem.

Im going to swap out the FET glyph and see how i get on with it.

I need to work on my rotation a little as well, until this expansion i mostly played as a healer and i sometimes find myself worried about other things around me and watch my grid set up a little too much causing me to miss a spell...a bad habit i need to get rid of!

Im a complete novice when it comes to sims! are there any decent guides out there? Maybe its time to learn....

Thanks again, its much appreciated!