Elemental Shamans and haste

[whowherewhat?]

So now that Icecrown has rolled out I'm finding I have a great amount of haste. This helps me a good deal in non-heroism conditions, however i have a dilemma. I'm an engineer. As an engineer, I have the +340 haste every 1 min on my gloves http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=54999 which gives about 12% haste. Elemental Mastery now gives 15% haste instead of crit. Up until the change to Elemental Mastery I had been stacking these two CDs during Heroism...but now when I do that my Lightning Bolt Cast drops below 1 second.

My question would be should I keep stacking these CDs during Heroism (probably not), use one then the other during Heroism (probably better option), or Pop Heroism, wait for it to end, then stack both CDs outside Heroism's duration for a (kind of...~27% haste) second Heroism (no idea on this one)?

My armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...arithos&n=Wave
...i know *gasp!* a shaman with a staff? what blasphemy!
thanks and happy holidays!

[Carbunkle]

I as you used to stack BL with Berserking and EM but with the recent changes I have begun (in guild raids) doing BL when I know I can and the people knows it.
So how I do is, during a boss

Begin initial damage, after about 10 seconds i pop EM, when it runs out I do Berserking, when that runs out BL. After about a minute of the ordinary rotation EM is up and ready for a spin again.

[Deleted]

I as you used to stack BL with Berserking and EM but with the recent changes I have begun (in guild raids) doing BL when I know I can and the people knows it.
So how I do is, during a boss

Begin initial damage, after about 10 seconds i pop EM, when it runs out I do Berserking, when that runs out BL. After about a minute of the ordinary rotation EM is up and ready for a spin again.

Huh.... you're doing it wrong.
You pop BL, use EM immediately and as soon as EM runs out, you use Berserking. When that runs out, you could use a haste-pot.
The reason for this is, that you'll want to use your CDs when you're doing more damage than normal. And that's in most cases during BL. And seeing as it's rather unprobable that your LB is already fast enough for a CD to be useless while BL is active, I'd say stack 'em. (you need ~1300 haste or so for CDs to be very, very ineffective during BL)

On another note: Always keep your CDs for when they are needed.
Examples: Portals/Volcanos on Jaraxxus, Adds on Anub (not important for Elementals, but whatever), Shield on Twins, etc.
Will in some cases not increase your DPS for that whole fight, but you'll deal more damage when it's needed, which is more important.

[Carbunkle]

@DaDimi
I rather have a constant dps increase instead of having high burst and then you have a real flat period
And I infact do much damage doing this

[Deleted]

I rather have a constant dps increase instead of having high burst and then you have a real flat period
And I infact do much damage doing this

"I rather not use LvB but only spam LB so I have rather constant dps instead of high burst.
And I infact do much damage doing this"

Well, that's not what I do, but I COULD do it. And I WOULD do much damage that way. You wanna know why? Because my gear is good.
Is it the best way, which yields the highest DPS? No.
Does it help in most encounters? No.
Does it help in some encounters? Well... rather hard to decide... maybe if there's an encounter like Icehowl, just with longer damage-phases. (not only 15sec or what it is, but 30+ seconds each)

The thing is, as I wrote above:
Stacking CDs will yield higher DPS. You have to watch out not to get LB too far below GCD, of course. (0.95 or so is acceptable, since you also have to include latency)
It's the same reason you use your CDs against Icehowl, when he's stunned. The more damage-increasing effects you stack, the more you get out of it. (casting 12 LBs that deal 100% more damage will yield higher DPS than casting 10 within those 100% extra damage and those 2 extra LBs after the stun is over.)


So, to make it short:
The argument "I do much damage with xyz" is just fail. It's in no way the same as "I do more damage with xyz", which is what is important.
So if your LB doesn't go below 1sec casting time with BL and CD1, then use both at the same time. After CD1 is over, use CD2, if it's not too strong.

[Zamir]

You pop BL, use EM immediately and as soon as EM runs out, you use Berserking. When that runs out, you could use a haste-pot.

The trouble is that this can very quickly haste-cap a player, which means that you get a lot less benefit from each individual haste effect and will experience an effective cast time of 1.00 seconds + your latency due to the interaction of the spell queue (server side) with the global cooldown (client side).

All things being equal, chaining haste effects is the same as using them together. It's more beneficial to use them together if you can use them during another temporary damage boost such as a potion or trinket proc; it's more beneficial to use them apart if using them together wastes part of the proc due to the softcap (100% extra haste).

Most raiding elementals will be haste capped with BL+EM or BL+Berserking, so I would generally advise desynchronising the effects for maximum benefit. If there's a specific and important short burn phase (40 seconds or less) then it can still be better to use them together, or again if desynchronising means less use of the effect (e.g., EM comes off cooldown at the same time that bloodlust is called for the last 10% and the boss will be dead before BL ends; or, BL is used at the start of a fight and using EM with it will enable it to be used again later when otherwise it'd still be on cooldown).

With raid buffs and BL with EM, you'll hit the haste soft cap with 778 haste rating.