Issue maintaining Lava Burst Throughput

[Scyclone]

Hello Everyone,

Switched to a different group within the guild for raiding and kind of sucked at Heroic Highmaul this time around. On top of doing about 2k less damage than I typically do (Or did in the previous week), I noticed that my damage output was really subpar.

Taking that into consideration, I started looking at logs (I wish I had logs from last week, but I only have the ones from last night) and compared it to equal geared shaman and their damage output. Going from the top of the list (ranking wise for Elemental Shamans on Heroic Butcher, in my ilvl range), I noticed some very distinct things.

When looking at lava bursts, I realized that I was not using nearly as many as I should have and am starting to wonder if my problem isn't that I am not using lava bursts, but that I am unintentionally delaying my usage of them a second or so at a time.

In a 5 minute butcher fight, I did 52 Lava Bursts. While the shaman I am comparing myself to in the logs, did 58 Lava Bursts in a 4 minute fight. They have 3 more Lava Surge procs than I do (I have a 99% uptime on flame shock). So I can chop some of it down to RNG. But that doesn't change the fact that if our fights were equal time (even if he didn't gain a single lava surge on me), he would have put out about 7 more lava bursts (Or a grand total of 13 more lava bursts than I did).

Currently, I am using Elementarist to keep my rotation moving fluidly (with Earth Shock set to become a 'priority' if 8 seconds or more are left on flame shock, and I have 15+ stacks of Lightning Shield). It has been working well, but I cannot help but feel that it is luring me into a false sense of security by robbing me of a second or so per lava burst due to GCD or slightly too long of cast times to lightning bolt.

I am currently 658 ilvl and here is my log (Please be gentle, I know I sucked this time around, but it still doesn't excuse the fact that other similarly geared shaman are doing much better DPS and getting a considerable amount more lava bursts than I am, without the use of Echo of the elements). I am currently specced AS/PE/EF (I am not too much of a fan of Unleashed Fury or Unleash Flame, but from what I've seen, PE does just as well as it does when used optimally)

Butcher Log

vs

The shaman I am looking at in contrast

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I want to get myself up to the potential I know that I have.

[Deleted]

He is using Unleashed Fury + Unleash Flame. You are not. He has Weapon Enchant MOBH. You don't. Just some of the issues.

His opener (which is very important) was also a lot better than yours. Notice he doesn't have Fire Ele shown in Buffs but has dmg done by it. Why? Because he used FE 4-5s before the pull, used Unleash (and could've started casting EQ before pull too but did not) and threw shock the moment pull was made. Openers matter a lot


He is also using Unleash Flame buff on LvB which is a gain over UF Flame Shock.

He also had more LvB casts because he lined up Asc with EMastery.

Also very important thing: Your fight lasted 4:57 and his 4:05. Which means that Bloodlust and Elemental mastery was up for bigger part of the fight than your own BL. You had BL for 10,10%(repeating) of the fight. He had BL for 12,24% of the fight due to it lasting shorter time.

It's all in the little things.

Obviosuly also Archamge's Incandescency buff. 10% straight up Int increase with 32,58% uptime.

Some general pointers to what can be done to increase dps. His LvB may have been luckier AND he could've a lot lot lot more haste as well as prioritising it over most things.

If your FS ticks every 2,5s for example don't let Lava Surge procs sit for longer than 2,5s before using them or you may get double proc and 1 is going to be wasted. He has over 5% more Lava Surge procs than you do and in a lot shorter fight too.

PS
Personally for me in a scenario where there is 8s left on FS and you got 15 stacks of LS I would prio LvB, then FS, then ES. You should rarely use ES below 17 stacks.

[Scyclone]

Not sure I can agree on all of that.

Unleashed Fury + Unleash Flame, Yes, he is specced for it. I use Primal Elementalist. From what I've seen of all non-UF users, none of them seem to use unleash except for on the opening pull, is there something I am missing on that? I will admit on the weapon enchant, I have Shattered Hand (Also due to not having a raid level weapon yet, which does hurt me).

FE, mine was up before Butcher was pulled as well. 2 seconds out, I pop my potion, summon my fire elemental. Granted I could have used unleash there. So I am not sure why it shows my Fire elemental on mine and not his, but I can assure you, my fire elemental was standing around before Butcher even began. My opening is usually instant lightning bolt + flame shock, lava burst to place it on CD, then immediately Ascending. Now, I do see what you mean on Bloodlust... my guild seems to like using it at the enrage portion of the fight, so I try to coincide my second potion/asc/berserking with the blood lust. I do agree I'd get a good bit more mileage out of my elemental if we did lust from the start.

I am curious on the E Mastery side of things. I line up my Asc with Berserking, which combined with haste trinkets and such, puts me VERY close to 1.5 per cast. I may be mistaken on the cap, for some reason I thought it was 1.5, is it actually less than that?

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Noticed your edits, so doing the same :P

This is true, we both got off two ascends and what not, so a shorter fight without a difference in big cooldowns does make a big difference. 4 Minutes to 5 minutes, it definitely hurts to be doing more lbs and less lvbs, as well as spending more time without lust active.

I wish I had that ring buff, it is so nice :P.

I do try to immediately use up my lava surge procs (I wonder if there is a way to see how long they are sitting).

[Deleted]

I didn't meant to say to use UE without UF that's why i put + in. Will come back to you later with bigger response after I get back home from work.

Quick Edit,

Pot after ele, not before

[Scyclone]

Hmm...

On that scenario you mention, with 8 seconds remaining. Wouldn't you be doing Lava Burst (Potentially gaining 1-3 stacks), Flame Shocking, then Lightning Bolting two to three times (easily gaining 4-6 stacks more) before your shock is back available?

15 + 2ish = 17, but... then you are looking at 2-4 stacks of Lightning Shield wasted? Is that a better call than trying to make sure the stacks are consumed before they can be wasted?

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Ahh... doesn't the fire elemental gets its stats from your current int though?

I always thought you were supposed to pot before you drop your ele, maybe that is messing me up some.

[Reix]

Elemental Mastery is the big reason for the difference in # of Lava Bursts. When stacked with other buffs like Bloodlust, Racial, Ascendance, Int Pot and Shards of Nothing (if you have it), it far outscales AS or EotE.

[Scyclone]

So should I switch around my set up to use my Shards of Nothing, respec to EM instead of AS, and Berserking at the same time as my ascendance?

Currently, my ascendance is set with my berserking.

I have Shards of Nothing macroed into my lightning bolt so I am able to keep it going on cooldown, but perhaps that isn't the best way to utilize it.

[Reix]

Yes, macro it all together!

#showtooltip Ascendance
/use 13 (upper trinket)
/use 14 (lower trinket, remove whichever isn't your Shards of Nothing)
/cast Berserking
/cast Elemental Mastery
/cast Spiritwalker's Grace (optional)
/cast Ancestral Guidance (optional)
/cast Ascendance
/cast Lava Burst

You also want a 2nd macro for EM for long fights where you will want to get more uses of EM.
on pull: EM+Asc
2mins: EM
3mins: Asc
4mins: EM
6mins: EM+Asc

#showtooltip Elemental Mastery
/use 13 (upper trinket)
/use 14 (lower trinket, remove whichever isn't your Shards of Nothing)
/cast Berserking
/cast Elemental Mastery
/cast Spiritwalker's Grace (optional)
/cast Ancestral Guidance (optional)

[tobiashunter]

You don't need a 2nd macro. Since Ascendance is on CD it won't hurt pressing the same macro again for your EM/Trinket/Berserking. I only use 1 macro and works perfect for the same timings.

[Reix]

^ That's true, however unless you have a mod for tracking cooldowns you'll need to put EM on your bar to see its cd, might as well macro it as well. Just my personal preference - i keybind both.

[Scyclone]

I do intend on setting up some additional weak auras to help me track a lot of this. One thing in particular, perhaps a counter to keep track of my 'cast' time as a result of haste, so to know if I wind up hitting the cap or not and thus should hold back my haste cooldowns.

[Deleted]

The cap for gcd is 50% haste and the gcd is reduced to 1s since WoD iirc. Until you have 1s cast you are far from waisting haste (+FS ticks faster regardless)

[Scyclone]

True though, hitting 1s cast isn't too hard really.

Bloodlust + Berserking or Shard of Nothing can hit it with AS talent. Blood Lust + EM is overkill. EM + Berserking + Shard is able to go over the cap as well. Im just trying to find a way to maximize what I can do to stay near 1s as long as possible.

[Deleted]

Few problems with what people are telling you here;

(and could've started casting EQ before pull too but did not)

#1, you shouldn't be precasting Earthquake especially on Butcher. Maybe if you have a Council fight with 3 targets and they're stacked within the first 4 seconds, but there is no fight like that in Highmaul at least. It's a niche situation - infact EVEN THEN I think it would be a waste since you'd be missing out on the extra damage from Enhanced Chain Lightning casting it in the first few seconds... You should be precasting Lightning Bolt, or maybe Elemental Blast if you've taken that depending on your gear (it's better to precast Elemental Blast if your main proccing buffs will run out before the end of Ascendance, since it's more of a loss to waste uptime of Shards for example outside of Ascendance than it is Elemental Blast, even though you're using a global inside the EB buff on Flame Shock).

#2 You don't gain anything from macro'ing everything together, and noone should be putting Spiritwalker's Grace into an Ascendance macro, that's really bad. Elemental Mastery and Shards are both 2 minute cooldowns, and Ascendance is 3min. You should not be delaying those 2 cooldowns for Ascendance unless you're on Tectus or Butcher Mythic, with a fight that lasts less than 4 minutes. You mentioned your fight on Butcher was 5 minutes, so you definitely should not be doing that. Not only that, you want to be using Shards/EM BEFORE Ascendance on the pull, otherwise it's a loss on your opener in the first few seconds. Arguably you can macro Berzerking with Ascendance, it's not retarded in any way at all to do that, the only issue is there are times when you may want to use them separately or slightly delay one for some reason or another - for example, to use Berzerking on a huge AoE pack that has to be nuked with Earthquake, where Ascendance on AoE isn't as beneficial perhaps. Macro'd, you have no freedom to do that - but it's really down to whether you can handle pressing all the buttons at once. A Razer Naga makes such things a joke.

-- You should note here, Butcher is a single target fight with no adds so you should be using Unleashed Fury, it's ahead by a few percent on ST (depending on fight durations, PE CAN pull ahead but only if the fight lasts around 3 minutes or less, or < 8 minutes etc, with unglyphed Elemental ofc. Binkenstein explains it far better than me in his guide on WoWhead). You should also be using Elemental Fusion, and Elemental Mastery.

Therefore, your ideal opener on Butcher should be:

Countdown--
15-16 sec - Unleash Flame (putting up the +40% Fire spell buff for 20 seconds, buff will be up still for opener whilst Unleash Flame CD will have reset)
3.5 sec - Fire Elemental
<~2 sec - pre-pot and pre-cast Lightning Bolt to fire at 0
0- Flame Shock (empowered 40% by your Unleash Flame)
Unleash Flame (getting the +10% buff up for your Ascendance)
(Elemental Mastery, Shards of Woe etc - in your case, Berzerking as well)
Lava Burst
(Sometimes Lava Burst procs instantly from Lava Surge - react fast and use these BEFORE you hit Ascendance)
Ascendance and spam the shit out of Lava Burst for ~15 sec.

Now an important thing to note regarding the end of Ascendance + Elemental Fusion. In low gear levels, our Multistrike and Crit will be low enough that I believe running that spec, it's beneficial to unload your 20 stack Fulmination inside of Ascendance as soon as you get it, especially on Butcher. The reason for this is that if you do so, firstly Earth Shock has the +80% damage from Fusion from spamming Lava Burst, but it also clears the way to get your Fusion stacks back and get up a really powerful Flame Shock with +80% Fusion and +40% Unleash Flame straight after Ascendance, which is a DPS increase over using the Unleash on Lava Burst -- WITHOUT wasting loads of Fulmination charges by delaying Earth Shock for a good 10 seconds. By full Heroic Highmaul gear, you should be able to generate 2 full Fulmination stacks in your opener, so it's a waste to do anything otherwise. Thirdly, by the time you hit 20 stacks inside the Ascendance the Unleash Fury buff will likely be dropping off.

-- This means, you Earth Shock inside Ascendance as soon as you get 20 stacks, and keep spamming Lava Burst. Ascendance ends, you finish off your Lava Bursts, cast Unleash Flame and instantly Flame Shock, then revert to normal rotation - by which point, as I mentioned above, you will likely have another full Fulmination stack. If you're not using the Elemental Fusion talent, you should not be using Earth Shock inside Ascendance at all.

Unleash Flame will come off cooldown before the end of your Ascendance -- don't use it inside, since it wastes a global that could be spent casting another Lava Burst without CD and on your opener as mentioned you will want to use it on Flame Shock afterwards. Generally during the fight after your opener you want to use Lava Burst -> Unleash -> Ascendance so the buff is up for the full 15 second duration and none gets wasted, and then Unleash again straight afterwards.

If you haven't already, you should check out Bink's awesome guide on WoWhead at: http://www.wowhead.com/guide=346/ele...emental-shaman

In answer to the OP though, those Haste buffs will make the difference in the number of Lava Bursts you cast due to Ascendance.

Also make sure you're using the 250 stat flasks, that 50 int actually makes a noticeable difference.

Final note, you should take Glyph of Spiritwalker's Focus for Butcher since the 1 min CD on Spiritwalker's Grace is AWESOME for repositioning on the knockback. Between that and your Unleash Flame/shocks/Searing totem etc you should be absolutely fine filling every global whilst moving. Good luck!

I might have to edit this 'cus I haven't read through it and wrote a lot haha!

[Scyclone]

Platex, this is a lot of awesome information . Do you mind if I talk to you in game at some time to go over shaman stuff? May be tricky given our time zone differences, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to try.

[Deleted]

sure man, if it's easier you can PM me and I'll add you on Skype.

[Deleted]

Not sure I can agree on all of that.

Unleashed Fury + Unleash Flame, Yes, he is specced for it. I use Primal Elementalist. From what I've seen of all non-UF users, none of them seem to use unleash except for on the opening pull, is there something I am missing on that?

Try do the pre-build of pot, unleash + elemental, then at pull flame shock, use the following cooldowns : ascen, trinket shards of nothing and the talent elemental mastery

and spam lava burst.

and imagine if you also started with hero/BL

just imagine the burst.

[Scyclone]

Alrighty then, got some updates after my guild knocked out heroic highmaul in one night.

I switched over to Elemental Mastery and have worked out the following set up for cooldowns:

1) Fire Elemental by itself
2) Int Pots
3) A 'full burn' ascendance macro - Basically, Elemental Mastery, Shards of Nothing, Berserking, Ascendance, and casting off a Lava Burst
4) A 'half burn' ascendance macro [For times where bloodlust is active during my ascendance] - Berserking, Ascendance and Lava Burst.
5) My Haste Macro - Elemental Mastery and Shards of Nothing

That way I hit my haste hard cap (1 second cast time), but do not waste my haste cooldowns by going past it. As soon as blood lust ends for example, I'd then immediately fire off my haste macro for a nice boost to my spells.

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I am still using Primal Elementalist and Elemental Fusion (Tho I am toying with the notion of trying out Liquid Magma, mostly since I do not use UF and Unleashed Flame aside from the initial pull, I am beginning to wonder if Elemental Fusion is all that powerful for me given that I simply only flame shock to keep the debuff off, and the only other time I shock is to keep lightning stacks down. Whereas a UF/Unleashed Flame shaman would at least be putting out much more damage on their flame shocks specifically, would they not?)

That all aside, thanks to your guys feedback above and some WA tweaking on my end. I got my damage much higher than I ever have before. Almost hit 28k on Kargath at ilvl 659

So just keeping in theme with things, here are my new logs and any thoughts on things I could improve or adjust upon? (I am still getting used to managing my haste appropriately, but I am getting better at it).

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

Please note that our Twin Ogron and Butcher went very wierd this time around (All sorts of wierd issues on Twin, and Butcher got ninja-pulled / plus I kept hitting my healing stream totem button instead of my spiritwalkers on my mouse, which is embarrassing lol)

Thanks again for the help