Auditing Elemental Raid DPS - Feedback Please

[noogie]

I am a raid leader in a relatively progressive guild, ToGC25, IC25m, decent clear times, averaging anywhere from 110-150k DPS per encounter. We're nothing special but we're not horrible either.

We have an open auditing of our members to try to improve performance on an individual basis and we do this so we don't have to replace members of our roster but improve the efficiency of raiders that we like having around. That being said, I'm having a hard time auditing our Elemental Shaman. I'm not looking for 10k DPS here but 6-7k consistently would be great.

The problem is, unlike other classes, I can't figure out what the hell is wrong with his performance other then his overall damage done and DPS is low (that much is clear). Perhaps I simply don’t understand the output of an Elemental Shaman but with some research, I do feel that ours cold do better. Allow me to post some statistics.

<PLAYER IN QUESTION>
2874 sp
270 hit
25 crit
894 haste
268 mr
Trinkets: Reign of Unliving, Embrace of the Spider
and a chef's hat when he logged off on the armory, so let's expect a bit of an increase there given the loss of that item.

Having gone over a lot of the higher DPS Ele shamans out there (Lowe, Northernlite, Neokarasu, Nahu, Shandara, Cytokinesis) I see that our Elemental Shaman's itemization isn't really that far off from the mark. So if itemization isn't there, sure it's rotation.

The damage break down is always similar, no matter which player I'm watching (outside of preference on Chain Lightening), the breakdown is generally around 50 LB, 15-18% LB, 7-10% FS, 5-8% BS. Our Shaman has an active DPS time of 99% on most fights. Given similar kill times and similar itemization I'm still seeing our shaman around 1-2k less then other players on a given encounter.

Our strategies are generally devised to minimize raid movement (Marrowgar is done inside the hit box, etc), but surely this isn't the cause for his lack of DPS. However, I'm stumped as to what it could be, applying other DPS class mechanics to this fight, perhaps other Elemental Shamans already reaching the 7k mark on most of the fights within reasonable kill times could help me out with some suggestions.

Here are some specific questions but general suggestions would also be appreciated.

1) What is being done to maximize DPS during movement oriented fights other then "move precisely"? Specific totems, instants, holding a proc, etc.
2) What macros are using within your given rotations that are somewhat creative (I'm not looking for /use trinket1 /use potion of wild magic), something clever but rather important to your raid dps.
3) What mods are absolutely crucial to playing an Ele?
4) When are you timing your potions, with hero, w/o hero, on trinket proc? Etc.

All feedback is helpful but feedback from those who have already achieved higher DPS levels would be more beneficial. Before it's suggested, the point of this thread is not to replace our player but to improve his efficiency when he's present in the raid.

[evan_s]

Elemental dps is pretty straight forward. Keep Flameshock up, use Lava burst every cool down and lightning bolt otherwise. Chain lighting can be useful when it helps your rotation line up with the CD of lava burst but otherwise Lightning bolt will do more damage.

My first question would be is your shaman using ToW or are they able to use fire elemental/searing totem? If they are using ToW they are having to sacrifice their dps totem for a raid buff which will lower their dps.

Is he queuing his casts? Due to the mechanics of the way the game handles lag if you wait until you see yourself finish casting before you cast your next spell you'll end up with a small delay between casts reducing your dps. All casters should be trying to cast their next spell about .5 a second before the current spell finishes so it queues up and immediately starts casting.

[Walkingsteak]

I take it you've checked all the silly stuff, aka forgetting too train max rank spells, using flametounge weap enchant, etc etc.

You never mentioned what kinda damage he is doing ?

Judging by his SP, haste, mana regen, his gear is about on pair with mine, but his crit is 13 % lower for some reason.

If he doesnt have T10 two piece allready thats a good bonus.

There isnt any mandatory mods for elementals as such, enhancements and restos have use for shield tracker mods, priority trackers etc, only usefull mod is perhaps a debuff timer for flameshock, that being more usefull if T10 4pc gets changed too extend it.

On movement fights theres not much we can do other than renew FS if its low or using using earthshock for some quick damage, If he's not on totem of wrath duty, proper usage of totems might help out.

http://elitistjerks.com/f79/t80396-e...p_spreadsheet/ Might be usefull too spot some errors, other than that i havent got any real suggestions.

[rad]

It's a very good question, and something I've been thinking about hard myself recently.

Assuming he has no glyph/talent/gearing issues:

- If you can parse a combat log effectively, you can check to make sure he's not experiencing too much dead time between casts. If he is, he could work on his timing and/or is being hampered by internet latency.
- The time between Lava Blast casts should be consistent and close to the cast time + cooldown length. If it's particularly longer or variable, he should work on tightening up his rotation, perhaps using chain lightning when appropriate (debatable, and highly dependent on haste).
- Lava blasts should be 100% crits.
- Check to make sure he's keeping good flameshock uptime, but also not clipping ticks by refreshing early. Either way is a DPS loss. If he's refreshing flameshock early (while moving) consider having him use frost shock when possible. There should actually be a good hit to tick ratio to check for this, but I don't know it off the top of my head.
- Elemental mastery on cooldown (especially important for getting full use of 2pc t10)... within reason of course, not to be used just prior to an aoe stun or the like.
- Minimizing movement and effective use of time spent moving. Sounds like you're already doing the first part. The second part is really hard to judge, and something I'm personally working to improve. Dropping totems (especially when using dps fire totems), using frost shock when appropriate instead of clipping flame shock, thunderstorm when its up (and the knockback won't cause problems)

As far as mods:
The most important thing for me is keeping track of the state of all my different rotation abilities: flame shock duration, LvB cooldown, CL cooldown, elemental mastery, fire nova (when appropriate), and duration on fire totem(s). How you actually go about this depends on what works best for the player and how addon savvy they are. Currently, I have a somewhat elaborate power auras setup to keep track of most of it. I've used dottimer and experimented with a few others as well - Event Horizon, Elementarist, etc.

I haven't seen any macros that make a huge difference for the basic rotation.

Last I heard potion use (wild magic) is best when used during heroism, but that could have changed.

[Barawr]

I would have to say that computer/server lag and not knowing how to fight it effectively is one of the worst enemies for an elemental shaman. As others have mentioned already I would look to whether or not your shaman is queuing his next spell ahead of time instead of waiting for his GCD. You might also ask him to tell you what sort of FPS and Lat he gets while raiding.

[jontaxe]

A good thing to do is surf around world of log parses and look at logs of other shaman on the same fights. What you are looking for is number of spells cast.

Take this random uber shaman doing more DPS. Your shaman and this guy should have the same (or very close to the same) number of lava bursts casts, and they should all be the crits. The higher DPS shaman and your guy should have roughly the same number of (lightning bolts + chain lightning) cast when adjusted for different haste levels. ie if your dude has ~80% of the haste that the higher DPS shaman has, he should also cast ~80% of the lightning bolts.

Take a look at the WoL parse of another shaman and compare. Or post a WoL link here and we can take a look at it and give opinions. Don't pick the world's highest DPS shaman to compare. The gear disparity will be too great, and often the world record attempts are rigged (chaining whatever that drood haste buff is, for one). I'd say see if you can dig up logs of other elemental shamans you know to be good from your server at a similar level of progression and see what you can learn from that.

Or, again, just post a WoL link and let us look at it.

[fakestreet]

Horray for being mentioned

Anyways, here are the tiny things I do to maximize damage:

• Wait until procs (Trinkets, Rings, whatever) to use EM/Fire Elemental.
• Wait till the DP lock's procs to use EM/Ele (if you don't have procs of your own).
• Fast target switching (i.e. should know when a secondary target will die and not waste an extra cast on it).
• Place Fire totem as close to boss as possible (obviously fight dependent but being able to cast Fire Nova on the move is good).
• Chain Lightning is good. Use it outside of hasted conditions or low mana situations. Just like Arcane, the goal is to manage mana to run OOM at the end of the fight while doing the most damage.

[whowherewhat?]

Horray for being mentioned

Anyways, here are the tiny things I do to maximize damage:

• Wait until procs (Trinkets, Rings, whatever) to use EM/Fire Elemental.
• Wait till the DP lock's procs to use EM/Ele (if you don't have procs of your own).
• Fast target switching (i.e. should know when a secondary target will die and not waste an extra cast on it).
• Place Fire totem as close to boss as possible (obviously fight dependent but being able to cast Fire Nova on the move is good).
• Chain Lightning is good. Use it outside of hasted conditions or low mana situations. Just like Arcane, the goal is to manage mana to run OOM at the end of the fight while doing the most damage.

THANK YOU i was hoping to find someone else with the same policy on Chain lightning. One thing the OP didn't mention was whether or not he is actually running with a demo lock in his raid or not. Having a Demo lock (so that we can put down fire elemental or searing totem) can make or break elemental dps. Coming from a 10 man guild myself, I've been the ToW bitch for a longggg time and when i pug 25s and can drop searing...my dps goes up 800+
food for thought

[evan_s]

• Chain Lightning is good. Use it outside of hasted conditions or low mana situations. Just like Arcane, the goal is to manage mana to run OOM at the end of the fight while doing the most damage.

Haven't played Elemental in a while but my recollection of things was Chain lightning was a little bit better dps at low levels of gear because it hits a little bit harder and casts faster but it doesn't end up scaling as well as lightning bolt as gear increases.

Chain Lightning
2 sec cast 6 sec cooldown
Hurls a lightning bolt at the enemy, dealing 973 to 1111 Nature damage.

Lightning bolt
2.5 sec cast
Casts a bolt of lightning at the target for 715 to 815 Nature damage.

Each ends up getting their cast time reduced by .5 seconds by talents and the same buffs to damage from talents. At the levels of spell power an elemental shaman should be at now Lightning bolt should be doing more damage per cast, per second and per mana. The only reason I can see why you would want to use it on a single target is to better match your Lava burst cool down. EG waiting an extra ~.5 a second to use lightning bolt instead of chain lightning before a lava burst ends up loosing you ~1 lava burst every 2 minutes which is a dps loss. Obviously is chain lighting can bounce to other targets it is good to use.

[fakestreet]

Haven't played Elemental in a while but my recollection of things was Chain lightning was a little bit better dps at low levels of gear because it hits a little bit harder and casts faster but it doesn't end up scaling as well as lightning bolt as gear increases.

Chain Lightning
2 sec cast 6 sec cooldown
Hurls a lightning bolt at the enemy, dealing 973 to 1111 Nature damage.

Lightning bolt
2.5 sec cast
Casts a bolt of lightning at the target for 715 to 815 Nature damage.

Each ends up getting their cast time reduced by .5 seconds by talents and the same buffs to damage from talents. At the levels of spell power an elemental shaman should be at now Lightning bolt should be doing more damage per cast, per second and per mana. The only reason I can see why you would want to use it on a single target is to better match your Lava burst cool down. EG waiting an extra ~.5 a second to use lightning bolt instead of chain lightning before a lava burst ends up loosing you ~1 lava burst every 2 minutes which is a dps loss. Obviously is chain lighting can bounce to other targets it is good to use.

Strictly single target fight: Festergut

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/h...?s=6447&e=6706 (note my damage is shit because I got puked on 4 times)

LB avg hit = 5193
CL avg hit= 4705
LB avg crit = 10966
CL avg crit = 9764

LB cast time (WoA + totem) = 1.38s
CL cast time (WoA + totem) = 1.04s
Let's also assume 50% crit.

LB DPS = (5193*0.5 + 10966*0.5) / 1.38 = 5855 DPS
CL DPS = (4705*0.5 + 9764*0.5) / 1.04 = 6956 DPS

Looks higher DPS to me.

edit: and yes, LO will bring up the value of LB but not enough to overcome the CL advantage. Too lazy to do the math so just search EJ.

[cyloria]

No one has asked the obvious question...is he using TOW or fire dps totems? without using searing/ fire elemental / magma and using TOW our dps is terrible...no amount of perfect rotation will fix that.

[Barawr]

That was asked by the very first person that replied. Did you read all the replies before posting? :P

[barrsftw]

Haven't played Elemental in a while but my recollection of things was Chain lightning was a little bit better dps at low levels of gear because it hits a little bit harder and casts faster but it doesn't end up scaling as well as lightning bolt as gear increases.

Chain Lightning
2 sec cast 6 sec cooldown
Hurls a lightning bolt at the enemy, dealing 973 to 1111 Nature damage.

Lightning bolt
2.5 sec cast
Casts a bolt of lightning at the target for 715 to 815 Nature damage.

Each ends up getting their cast time reduced by .5 seconds by talents and the same buffs to damage from talents. At the levels of spell power an elemental shaman should be at now Lightning bolt should be doing more damage per cast, per second and per mana. The only reason I can see why you would want to use it on a single target is to better match your Lava burst cool down. EG waiting an extra ~.5 a second to use lightning bolt instead of chain lightning before a lava burst ends up loosing you ~1 lava burst every 2 minutes which is a dps loss. Obviously is chain lighting can bounce to other targets it is good to use.

Remember, CL also has no travel time. So for certain bosses/mobs if you dont think your bolt will land on the target before it dies using CL is a good alternative. Then again this would be a VERY MINOR dps increase.