A little ele help plz

[cao2289]

Now, before I get flamed, I did thoroughly use the search function and I didn't exactly find what I was looking for so I will just ask here and hope I get the answers I am looking for. here is the link to my armory - http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...okkar&n=Myzery

My problem is very low DPS for my level of gear. Before the patch I could do low to mid 6K dps on a 25 man, now I can barely pull 4.5K which is embarrassing. I am enchanted properly, have correct glyphs (just changed over my glyph of lava for glyph of ToW just to try something). On a dummy today I noticed that when I don't have my weapon imbued with flametongue, I actually do slightly more dps than if I have it imbued. I just changed some gems around from pure SP to Sp/haste (since I wouldn't get the bonus anyways) and still not seeing any real changes.

I have the standard ele rotation - FS, LvB, LB until LvB cd, FS rinse and repeat. I really can't see any reason why I can't be doing over 6K like I was before so maybe someone knows why. But I digress, here are my questions. Some may be general, some not so please bare with me.

1. Everyone says spirit is bad for an ele shaman, but why? No one ever says. If it doesn't hurt us (which everyone will say) why does it matter if an item drop which is an upgrade that does have spirit matter? (my bracers for example)

2. Is there a known chart that graphs at which point a maximum DPS can be achieved given a known haste and SP value. For example, if I have 2000SP and 700 haste my DPS SHOULD be 5K, but at 2000SP and 800 haste my DPS SHOULD be 4.6K due to casting faster and having more damaging casts not proc trinkets or a critical strike. Those values are examples so please don't hold me to them.

3. At which point is my critical strike and/or haste percentage hurting me? Is 28% static crit and 738 static haste too much?

and lastly,

4. Is having too much SP and a low haste rating hurting DPS.

I apologize in advance if any of these questions have been answered but there are literally hundreds of pages to search through and frankly, I don't have the kind of time.

[Kinettik]

Ok, quick and easy answers.

Spirit is not bad for you, its utterly WORTHLESS. Why? Well its simple, you get nothing for it, period. Now there are some upgrades available that have spirit, as long as theyre itemized properly outside of that theres no reason not to take it UNLESS someone that can use spirit needs it.

The only known "Chart" would be to spreadsheet it or sim it (ElitistJerks.com).

Gaining stats such as crit and haste will never hurt you unless your stacking them incorrectly. SP>Haste>Crit So that being said you should be stacking SP unless its a yellow socket with a SP or Haste bonus then you use SP/Haste gems. NEVER gem for crit (This is all assuming hit capped) The only time you want large crit stats are on trinkets, Eye of the Broodmother and Mauradins Spyglass come to mind off tops.

Theres no such thing as too much SP, ever. As far as its ratio to Haste, again i say consult a spreadsheet or a sim. Basic rule is you want at least 600 Haste which is more than easily obtainable in gear alone.

Quick edit.

ToVP is NOT one of the crit trinkets i suggest,its quite terrible tbh. And holy hell, drop some hit. You are 130 over cap. SP and Haste seem fine. If your numbers are that low and you said youve seen a drop off of 1.5k then its either a latency issue or user error. You should hit 6k on a dummy self buffed, sadly though your numbers from a dummy to a raid will likely see little to no improvement due to the terrible scaling that Ele has.

And one last thing, and some will agree some wont. You pretty much wasted your Frost emblems on that Totem. Not only is the uptime slightly better, the DPS increase is minor at best. With all the other available upgrades from Frost emblems, the totem should be the last item you get. Too late now though.....

[Bergg]

T9's 4-set bonus was nerfed by over 50%. That, first of all, is why your DPS went down.

You can do several things to increase your DPS at this point:

- Replace Glyph of Lava with Glyph of Totem of Wrath.
- Use Chain Lightning. The Elemental rotation versus single target is LvB > CL > LB.
- Get the minor glyph, Glyph of Water Shield.
- You can drop Herbalism and get a crafting profession if DPS is that important to you. Tailoring and Alchemy are easy ones to level, and they will give you a moderate DPS increase, whereas Herbalism offers no DPS increase.
- You're using some non-epic gems. Upgrade them to epic ones.
- You're using some lesser enchants. Upgrade them to maximum enchants.
- Always use spellpower+haste gems in yellow sockets, if by doing so, you unlock a spellpower or haste socket bonus.
- You have some upgrades that you can craft. Look through this list of weighted gear to see what you can craft, or what you can try to get via instances and raids: http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter...00:104:59:20:0
- You may want to consider paging a GM and attempting to return Bizuri's Totem of Shattered Ice. Though the T10 2-piece set bonus is currently bugged, it is a large DPS increase when it works, and every Elemental Shaman needs to do everything in their power to get away from T9's 4-piece set bonus as soon as possible. Bizuri's Totem of Shattered Ice, on the other hand, is an extremely minor upgrade--when it's not a downgrade.

[Deleted]

Wow... it's just weird seeing people write about how they lost 1.5k DPS or something like that from pre-3.2 to 3.3.
I mean.... do you know the only changes we got single-target?
- Elementel Mastery was BUFFED from Crit to Haste.
- T9 4pc was nerfed. (it gave ~350-400 DPS IIRC, now it gives the half, so no way in hell you'd lose 1.5k DPS from that)

So what that means is, that you're doing something really, really, really wrong.
First of all: With your haste, I'd say try LvB/LB/CL/LB/LB/LB/LB/LvB ........
If you use 2 CLs, you might lose mana too fast, so first try this version.

As above players wrote, Spirit doesn't give you anything. And since it costs Itemlevel, you'll use an item with a worthless stat on it... so bracers with itemlevel 245 could be as good as ones with itemlevel 232 or less. So yeah, don't take items with spirit if it's not an upgrade... and in most cases it shouldn't be an upgrade >_>

The thing about the crit and haste rating... well...
There are several points where haste rating CAN hurt you... but only if you're bad.
Imagine this situation:
You cast 5 LBs and perfectly hit the LvB-CD.
Now you get a bit more haste, so after those 5 LBs you'll be a bit below the LvB-CD.

The way to lose DPS now is by squeezing in a sixth LB, by which you'll override the LvB-CD by so much that you will hurt your DPS.

And no, too much SP will never hurt your DPS.
Just if you have way too much SP and are neglecting things with haste.
I.e. if you have 4000 SP and only 200 haste and still take SP over haste, that could hurt your DPS.
But if you always take items with SP/Haste, then it won't ever be a problem.

[Arcsecant]

I'm not sure how it sims out but as long as you have 4 piece t9 it might be more beneficial to keep glyph of lava instead of glyph of totem of wrath. It also depends a lot on your playstyle. If you are very keen on hitting every LvB right on the millisecond it comes off cooldown then the LvB glyph would be the one for you. And lastly the LvB glyph will also be a must have once we start getting 4 piece t10 since our totem of wrath doesn't scale with our SP and thus the glyph would add the same amount of SP if you were in blues or in 4 piece t10.

Cheers

[Bergg]

I'm not sure how it sims out but as long as you have 4 piece t9 it might be more beneficial to keep glyph of lava instead of glyph of totem of wrath. It also depends a lot on your playstyle. If you are very keen on hitting every LvB right on the millisecond it comes off cooldown then the LvB glyph would be the one for you. And lastly the LvB glyph will also be a must have once we start getting 4 piece t10 since our totem of wrath doesn't scale with our SP and thus the glyph would add the same amount of SP if you were in blues or in 4 piece t10.

Cheers

Glyph of Lava is bad, and so is 4-piece T10. You don't want either of them.

[Gorgathor]

I read your post and was wondering why you were worried about spirit on mail gear. I then noticed that you are wearing leather and cloth. Rule of thumb....stick to your most common gear type. I.E. Mail for Shamans/Hunters, Leather for Rogues/Druids and so on. Don't be that guy in a raid stealing leather gear from druids and don't waste badges of cloth gear.

I'd suggest doing 25 man Ony and getting that helm instead of your cloth one.

Next. Take the 3 points out of Elemental Warding. Useless in a raiding scenario. You shouldn't worry about taking too much damage in a raid because....well nothing should be hitting you that much and you should be moving out of stuff that kills you. Also, when you are in mail gear, your armor goes up....thus reducing damage.

Also...get rid of the FlS glyph and get ToW glyph. Solid SP increase when you drop it is always better than a chance of FlS to crit considering it won't boost your DPS that much.

As someone said....get minor glyph for water shield and always keep it up.

A side note...your boots have a blue socket. A minor fix would be getting one of those purple gems in that blue socket and putting pure SP in its place. Not a big change...but a SP increase is a SP increase...even if its only 5 pts.


As someone else said. ALWAYS gear for Hit>>SP>>>HASTE>>>>>>>>>>>Crit

Crit is no longer important to us with the 100% crit from LvB

I coudl go on...but i have to get to work.

GL

[Deleted]

@Gorgathor:
Don't want to be an ass or anything, but you just said some shit about this leather/cloth-thing :/
Just to let you know, current BiS for Elementals is wearing 4! cloth pieces. Gloves, Belt, Legs and Feet.
And that's not because all of those are marginal upgrades over other gear, it's because they are HUGE upgrades over Mail gear.
Blizz sucks at Shaman-itemisation, which is why you're seeing so many Elementals with cloth gear.

[Zamir]

Elemental Warding is, point for point, one of the best raiding talents we have. It's incredibly valuable and there's no reason to talent out of it. If you're having mana problems and need to switch to convection then you've probably got bigger problems than 6% lower mana costs will solve.

Also, there's nothing wrong with wearing gear with spirit or MP5 on them. Those stats are indeed useless to us, but frequently we find situations where the other stats on the MP5/spirit gear are valuable enough to warrant it. This happens especially at lower gear levels, when pretty much anything with a higher ilevel will be a DPS increase - but it can even happen at BiS level; after all, a 25-man heroic BiS ring for tier 9 had MP5 on it.

(And at 10-man level, even more BiS stuff has MP5/spirit on it)

Cloth and leather are often the only viable options for elemental shamans. I for one think it's nice to have those options - they are better than nothing.

Glyph-wise, our highest DPS major glyphs are, from highest to lowest:

• Glyph of Flame Shock (yes, seriously - it's worth well over 200 DPS in current gear)
• Glyph of Lightning Bolt (yes, seriously - it's worth nearly 200 DPS again in a Patchwerk style fight)
• Glyph of Totem of Wrath
• Glyph of Lava (at very, very high gear levels it can overtake Glyph of ToW)

[Bergg]

Getting a little off topic here, but I've actually seen a small mana usage increase as a result of Elemental Mastery's change from crit to haste. I've had to drop Elemental Warding/Eye of the Storm to put full points in my mana conservation and regen talents so that I could last all the way through mana intensive fights like Heroic Anub'arak.

But yeah, Elemental Warding is amazing on fights where you aren't 100% sure that you can survive. The original Freya-3 sticks out like a sore thumb.

[Restless]

Getting a little off topic here, but I've actually seen a small mana usage increase as a result of Elemental Mastery's change from crit to haste. I've had to drop Elemental Warding/Eye of the Storm to put full points in my mana conservation and regen talents so that I could last all the way through mana intensive fights like Heroic Anub'arak.

But yeah, Elemental Warding is amazing on fights where you aren't 100% sure that you can survive. The original Freya-3 sticks out like a sore thumb.

And you obviously don't know what you're talking about half the time


Also, you're bad.

[Bergg]

Please, enlighten me. I'm always looking for a way to improve my DPS.

[cao2289]

Thank you everyone for the help and suggestions. I've tried just about everything I can think of and still no real changes to my DPS output. I know the T10 shit is bugged and the T9 stuff just sucks and I would love to get out of it but running ToC is hard at the moment since everyone is doing ICC now. Now I will reply back to some things that were mentioned.

To the person who said don't wear cloth/leather because its not ours...you're wrong. The best shaman in the game wears cloth pieces. Almost every ele shaman out there wears some degree of cloth because mail gear through vendors all have MP5 on them and that is useless to me. The only reason why I have the leather bracers I do is because they were given to me in a raid since no one wanted them. Considering I was wearing the lvl200 one from drak'theron, they were a hell of an upgrade.

Glyph of ToW actually hurt me substantially. Thats why I went back to lava. 85SP isn't really that much of an increase of SP.

Now, I forgot to mention in my original post an issue I was having, not really character related but maybe a more latency/frame rate issue. I've noticed since the patch its taking a lot longer for my casts to actually hit the target. I am thinking about decreasing my resolution and see if it helps. My frames rates in raids is right around 75-100 most times, and latency around 45ms. Othertimes, I can cast fine and there is a noticeable decrease in cast time and global cooldown. Othertimes, I think my global cooldown is more than 1 second and I find myself hitting my action button a couple times to get a cast off. I am looking into why that is happening too. Maybe it is all related to one thing, I don't know. But thanks in advance for the help.

[Restless]

Please, enlighten me. I'm always looking for a way to improve my DPS.

1.5second reduction on lava burst is bad? Please, enlighten me sweet heart. Have you tried it? No.

Glyph Of Lava sucks? Really? It's currently better then totem of wrath in DPS.

[Amana]

Glyph Of Lava sucks? Really? It's currently better then totem of wrath in DPS.

Sorry ?
Hi, have you noticed our 4p T9 has been nerfed ?

[Deleted]

1.5second reduction on lava burst is bad? Please, enlighten me sweet heart. Have you tried it? No.

The problem is, that it's not just "a LvB every 6.5sec instead of every 8sec", but you exchange a LB for that LvB.
So you only get the difference of that LvB versus a normal LB that you would have casted otherwise.
This makes the set bonus rather bad... which is why current BiS-lists only have 2 T10-pieces.

[pìka]

1.5second reduction on lava burst is bad? Please, enlighten me sweet heart. Have you tried it? No.

Glyph Of Lava sucks? Really? It's currently better then totem of wrath in DPS.

[Zamir]

Glyphs:
The more raid buffs you have, the more Glyph of Totem of Wrath improves compared to Glyph of Lava:

Glyph of Lava: affects one spell which is cast, at absolute best, every 9 seconds. On average this accounts for 20% of our DPS.
Glyph of ToW: affects every spell, always.

Glyph of Lava will often look better on target dummies because you don't have any raid buffs to prop up Glyph of ToW. ToW very quickly pulls ahead in a raid situation, and stays significantly ahead except with certain combinations of very high spellpower (>4k) and specific set bonuses (4t9, 4t10).

The fewer raid buffs and the higher proportion of Lavather spells you're casting, the less Glyph of ToW is valued compared to Glyph of Lava. But it starts out with quite a lead and in most cases - even high movement fights - Glyph of ToW will remain at least slightly ahead.

4t10:
It so happens that 4t10 is currently rated very low by the community's theorycraft tools, and has been described as "fragile" - that is to say, its already weak DPS boost is very vulnerable to circumstances. It's not terrible, but it ranges from "weak but better than nothing" to "equivalent to nothing". There are even some situations in which it has been theorized to be a DPS decrease (though we are unlikely to encounter that in-game).

I don't understand why so many people leap onto these forums determined to be absolute assholes to each other. Do we really need the sarcasm and personal attacks to make a point?

[Bergg]

Lava Burst also doesn't take advantage of your crit rating, Lightning Overload, Item - Shaman T10 Elemental 2P Bonus, and additional haste rating over a certain value. (We will surpass that value in ICC 25+ gear, but you may already surpass that value on encounters such as Hodir or Vezax, where temporary haste buffs are available.) The Lava Burst cooldown reduction will also lose value on encounters with a lot of movement, and it can lose all of its value on extreme AOE fights, where Chain Lightning, Fire Nova, and the reapplication of Magma Totem are more important than casting Lava Burst.

And uh.. Glyph of Totem of Wrath is better than Glyph of Lava in almost every scenario. The exception is if you are at 4050+ spellpower and you're on an encounter where you never need to move or AOE at all, and can use Lava Burst immediately off its cooldown without error.

[Zamir]

By the way, allow me to dispel this myth that the BiS list has only two pieces of tier 10. There are two BiS lists, one with 2t10 and one with 4t10, both made by the same guy. The one with 4t10 has been TCed as slightly higher DPS than the 2t10 list, but nobody's quite sure how it'll work out in-game so we're not committing to one list.

Some folks who know this are already saying they'll aim for only two pieces of tier 10, but the reason is not because 2t10 is coming out on top in sims (because it isn't) - it's a combination of the very small difference between the two sets' DPS values, the predicted fragility and awkwardness of trying to incorporate 4t10, and perhaps the availability or otherwise of emblems/tokens. In other words, nobody knows how 4t10 will really play out but it looks like it'll be a small enough difference that personal preference will be more of a deciding factor than numbers.