Elemental- What am I doing wrong?

[InverseMatrix]

I am sick to death of my raid leader bullying me because of low dps. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong, I've gone through the guides, using the proper priority system, tried mods and macros and nothing's bloody doing it. Close to saying F this and canceling the damned account.

Could someone please take a look at my gear setup and WoL? Seriously, I'm not getting what the problem is, the only thing I can guess is our strats have a lot of movement.

Armory: Kariene/US-Muradin
Guild's World of Logs: Free With Mats/US-Muradin

Sorry about not having links, the forum software isn't letting me.

Thanks for any help, this is driving me god damned insane.

[vìcc]

I have experienced the same issues, at least with my shaman. I am dualspecced (Elemental/Enhancement) and I often find myself doing way more dps with my enhance spec, although the itemlevel of both gearsets is about the same.

BUT, a lot of people say that both specs are quite even when it comes the the DPS output.

You have to take care to always drop your searing totem, maintain Flame Shock up at 100% of the time and use Lavabolt on CD (you could maybe use power auras to see / hear the proc). The only difficult thing when playing an elemental shaman in my opinion is to use the LS stacks with Earth Shock at 8/9 and still keep up flame shock all the time. Failing at this, could mean a huge dps loss.

[Deleted]

Another thing that is the cause of a lot of DPS issues for ranged players, not just Elemental, is too much unnecessary movement.
Don't make slight adjustments to your positions when you don't need to, only move when it is absolutely necessary. Also make sure to always cast something while doing so.

[Gistwiki]

From a gearing standpoint there isn't much you're doing wrong, but there are a few things you can improve.

1) Change that +40 Spirit gem to either a +40 Int Gem or a +20 Int/+20 Spirit gem, and then juggle reforges to get back to the hit cap.

That's really the only thing that jumps out at me as being bad. I don't personally like the hybrid gems, but that depends on which source you trust for your personal stat weights.

Off to check the logs

Atramedes - What jumps out at me:

1) Wasted LS Charges. You cast Earth Shock 10 times and had 69 Rolling Thunder procs. This means that at an absolute minimum you wasted 9 (15%) of your charges.

I can't really say anything else b/c I don't know exactly how long you were dead.

Maloriak - You were dead for about 12 seconds here

1) Not casting Lava Burst enough. 36 hard casts in a fight where the expected minimum (assuming 0 Lava Surge procs) accounting for your 12 seconds of being dead is 74

2) Wasted LS charges. 178 RT procs and 21 ES casts. Means a minimum of 52 wasted LS charges. Now that isn't as bad on this fight as it would be on any other b/c of CL on the swills, but I can almost guarantee you're wasting charges outside the black phase too.

3) Only 1 SWG use. You should've used it 4-5 times. The opportune moments to use it are there.

4) 0 Thunderstorm damage, and 0 overall abberation damage. You should be getting 2 T-storms per Dark phase off on the swills, and 1 per green phase. Why are you not AoE'ing in the green phase?

I don't have time to look at more, but the overall issues of not enough LvB and ES casts will probably remain.

[Zykenwolf]

Get a power aura or something to track your lava surge procs. I would reccoment Endus power aura's he recently updated it to be better with the new power aura's and now tracks lava surge's perfectly. Remember to always ES at 7+ stacks and only if you have about 5 or more seconds remaining on your FS. You never wanna cast ES>FS if it will result in your FS falling off the target? I havn't looked at the logs yet but are you dropping your fire ele at all? Are you pre-potting before a boss pull allowing you to use 2 pots 1 for the first seconds of the fight with CDs like EM popped to get a good start and then again during BL for added dps. Also dropping your fire ele during BL+potion is even more dps.

I have even read on a few posts now that people are saying dropping earth ele during bosses with no adds is even a small amount of a dps increase since it no longer taunts raid bosses. I havn't tried this out myself yet but it sounds reasonable.

[Deleted]

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...mentarist.aspx is a nice addon that should help you maximize your casts
or if you think that such an addon makes to game to much faceroll, Power Auras like Zykenwolf mention are very helpful as well.

[Jenerena]

Just to be sure - is it ok to waste LS charges if your FS has under 6 seconds left? Sometimes I reach 7 stacks and at this point my FS would drop off if I hit ES. I then have to wait until FS is 1-2 seconds left, hit FS then by the time I get ES up I've been at 9 stacks for several seconds.

[Endus]

Just to be sure - is it ok to waste LS charges if your FS has under 6 seconds left? Sometimes I reach 7 stacks and at this point my FS would drop off if I hit ES. I then have to wait until FS is 1-2 seconds left, hit FS then by the time I get ES up I've been at 9 stacks for several seconds.

90% of the time, getting into this situation in the first place is avoidable. You can't play Elemental via reacting to what happens, you need to be acting proactively to how things will go over the next ~10 seconds or so, constantly.

Also, being AT 9 stacks isn't a bad thing, as long as you're not casting LBs. If you hit 9 stacks and you've got an LvB to cast and/or movement in the near future, it's not a bad thing. The thing you want to avoid is getting into a situation where you'd want to cast a lightning bolt while sitting on 9 stacks of LS.

[Gistwiki]

Just to be sure - is it ok to waste LS charges if your FS has under 6 seconds left? Sometimes I reach 7 stacks and at this point my FS would drop off if I hit ES. I then have to wait until FS is 1-2 seconds left, hit FS then by the time I get ES up I've been at 9 stacks for several seconds.

If you're at 6 stacks with 6-8 seconds left on Flame Shock you should be casting Earth Shock to get back down to 3. You should also be refreshing Flame Shock once the duration goes under 2 seconds remaining, as you do not lose anything by doing so and could in fact prevent wasting LS charges. However, I know that it'll happen sometimes where you'll be at 5 stacks with 5.5 seconds to go on FS and then you're at 8-9 before you refresh Flame Shock. In those situations it is better to maintain your FS dot than it is to waste LS charges. I won't bother repeating what Endus said, but that would've been the gist of the second half of my post.

[InverseMatrix]

From a gearing standpoint there isn't much you're doing wrong, but there are a few things you can improve.

1) Change that +40 Spirit gem to either a +40 Int Gem or a +20 Int/+20 Spirit gem, and then juggle reforges to get back to the hit cap.

That's really the only thing that jumps out at me as being bad. I don't personally like the hybrid gems, but that depends on which source you trust for your personal stat weights.

That I should be able to juggle around pretty easily. I'll lose some haste, but int's more important.

Off to check the logs

Atramedes - What jumps out at me:

1) Wasted LS Charges. You cast Earth Shock 10 times and had 69 Rolling Thunder procs. This means that at an absolute minimum you wasted 9 (15%) of your charges.

I can't really say anything else b/c I don't know exactly how long you were dead.

It was about 15-20 seconds. I got hit with the beam during air phase, then waited until the fire was gone and picked myself back up. As to the wasted charges, I'll switch around my spec a bit and grab Reverb, should stop that.

Maloriak

Maloriak last night was a special case. I'm on Arcane Storm interrupts and for some reason I can not fathom, my /stopcasting macro simply doesn't work any more. Before this week, it was ending my casts and Wind Shocking, since I changed specs around, it's just not operating. So, I said screw it and just stopped casting when it got close to interrupt time. If my RL has an issue with that, well, he can deal. The SWG issue though is still completely valid.

Get a power aura or something to track your lava surge procs. I would reccoment Endus power aura's he recently updated it to be better with the new power aura's and now tracks lava surge's perfectly.

I am using Power Aura Classic, though the Lava Burst icon broke with my spec switch and I haven't yet had a chance to fix it. I'll check out Endus though, thanks.

I havn't looked at the logs yet but are you dropping your fire ele at all? Are you pre-potting before a boss pull allowing you to use 2 pots 1 for the first seconds of the fight with CDs like EM popped to get a good start and then again during BL for added dps. Also dropping your fire ele during BL+potion is even more dps.

I have even read on a few posts now that people are saying dropping earth ele during bosses with no adds is even a small amount of a dps increase since it no longer taunts raid bosses. I havn't tried this out myself yet but it sounds reasonable.

Yeah, I drop Fire Ele as much as possible and Earth Ele when there's no adds. I am pre-potting, but some of our heroism uses are weird, like in Atramedes we blow Hero right after the first rings spawn, since we had a LOT of people standing in sound. I didn't know about dropping Fire Ele during Hero/Potions boosting him, thanks.

Thanks for the help everyone, hopefully it gets my RL off my back.

[isadorr]

My main is a elemental shaman and I do well in most of the raids in the guild. I noticed a decent dps increase when I balanced my haste and mastery out a bit. I was way ahead on my haste compared to my mastery, I changed a few gems and chants bringing their numbers closer together and ran our normal 10man in Bwd and my dps seemed to be up a good amount. Either that or my rng was high that night but playing overall seems better with bringing my mastery up closer to my haste.

[grandpab]

I didn't know about dropping Fire Ele during Hero/Potions boosting him, thanks.

Haste has no effect on Fire elem at all. Only spellpower, crit, and hit, so only worry about dropping him when your dmc:v and power torrent is procced, use synapse springs if you have them, and a volcanic potion. You might not get dmc:v and power torrent at the same time, but you at least want dmc:v up when you use it.

I think has everybody has different experiences when it comes to haste vs mastery, I've tried reforging everything into mastery and different places in between, but for right now I'm reforging everything to haste.

[Gistwiki]

Maloriak last night was a special case. I'm on Arcane Storm interrupts and for some reason I can not fathom, my /stopcasting macro simply doesn't work any more. Before this week, it was ending my casts and Wind Shocking, since I changed specs around, it's just not operating. So, I said screw it and just stopped casting when it got close to interrupt time. If my RL has an issue with that, well, he can deal. The SWG issue though is still completely valid.

Ewww! The only one they have me interrupt is the odd one in a blue phase where our assigned interrupters are out of melee and if he does one at the back of the room in a green phase. It would be better to have anyone else on it full time >.>

[MrSerious]

I am sick to death of my raid leader bullying me because of low dps.

Not sure why but hearing that annoys me. tell him to back off. The game is about fun. Is your dps THAT much lower than the rest of the guild? Someone has to be at the bottom and elemental shamans suffer greatly on movement fights.

I just can't stand your raid leaders mentality. I wouldn't take it myself and would of left a long time ago, I don't take criticism lightly especially when you are trying everything you can to improve other than get better gear.

good luck in getting better, I hope you ram your improved dps down your raid leaders throat.

[Endus]

Not sure why but hearing that annoys me. tell him to back off. The game is about fun. Is your dps THAT much lower than the rest of the guild? Someone has to be at the bottom and elemental shamans suffer greatly on movement fights.

I just can't stand your raid leaders mentality. I wouldn't take it myself and would of left a long time ago, I don't take criticism lightly especially when you are trying everything you can to improve other than get better gear.

good luck in getting better, I hope you ram your improved dps down your raid leaders throat.

I don't want to de-rail, but as a raid leader since Karazhan, I'd like to comment. Bear in mind that my guild is not "hardcore", we don't raid 6 hours a night 5 nights a week, we don't harass people over having slightly sub-optimal enchants or gems or what have you.

If you're not performing up to par for your spec/gear, and you're wiping on bosses because healers eventually run OOM or you hit Enrage mechanics, then your performance is directly negatively impacting the enjoyment of 9 or 24 other players. You might not be the ONLY one causing the problem, but you're definitely not helping. If you don't take the time to figure out what's wrong, like the OP is doing, then you're essentially telling your fellow raiders that you don't care if you waste their time, and you just want to tag along whether or not you can pull your own weight.

It's a disrespectful attitude. We may just be playing to have fun, but success and everyone working together is PART of that fun.

Every now and then, we get someone (again, this is NOT aimed at anyone here) who thinks they're a special little princess and we should be thankful they grace our raids with their presence. We point out the issues they're having, they get angry that we would dare suggest they're not perfect as they are, and they ragequit. And, without exception, we keep seeing them trying and failing to PUG raids in /trade for months afterwards.


That said, you can definitely go TOO far, and raid leaders need to know that their raid members are their peers, not their employees. The raid lead's job is to lead, not herd. If raiders can't keep the pace, we'll work with them to get them up to speed. If they refuse, or can't pick it up, we'll move on and find another who can. I occasionally express disappointment with our execution in general, if people are playing like arse, but if there's a specific person causing the issue, it always gets handled privately; shaming them in front of everyone helps nobody.

[Kwontanamo]

I think if your dps is low relative to the rest of the raid we have to consider a few things. If everyone else in your guild is a peak performer (as in ranked on Logs for heroic fights for their spec) and you are as well, then there's nothing that can be done, your performing at near 100%. As Endus said, if your performance is a direct contribution to an enrage timer, then it's time to get crackin on that dummy till you get it right.

I've looked over your most recent logs. You are dead.... alot. You were in the top half of your 25 chim, which leads me to believe in a tank and spank you know how to hit your buttons, as well as anyone else in your guild anyway. You seem to be caught up when a fight gets complex, which is nearly every other fight in HM. As many people have pointed out, elemental might not be the most complex spec, but it requires attention nonetheless, especially some foresight and good gcd/short cd management. Every fight requires proper timing of your offensive cds, I have a feeling you may need to learn when to use what.

There's nothing anyone here can really guide you with. Learning to dps while moving, providing utility, and keeping yourself alive is a matter of paying attention and not tunneling. Personally alot of it is feeling comfortable with what I'm looking at (my UI). Important things (trinket procs, raid damage, debuff warnings) need to be immediately visible and reacted to. Elemental as a playstyle is a balance of proc reaction and foresight with your current cd's. I don't think thats your biggest problem, but doing it in conjunction with 5 raid mechanics might be. Just my thoughts.

Oh also, 372 bracer with speed enchant? Weaksauce. If you really want to stop getting harassed by your RL/GL, at least get the proper enchants. You're also desperately low on mastery.

[PhattWobblez]

the real problem is, that you're playing elemental. Ele dps is awful cuz mobility blows, all you really have to be good at is interupting.

[SkodLife]

the real problem is, that you're playing elemental. Ele dps is awful cuz mobility blows, all you really have to be good at is interupting.

Oh, go QQ somewhere else, will you? I've been able to outDPS people for years on my Ele-shammy.

Also to OP, I find your mastery very lacking.
As seen on many theory-crafting-sites (as well as Endus' thread) Mastery has the same (or roughly the same) priority as Haste.
Now, I know reforging can be hard, especially in terms of trying to get the hit cap, but I've seen two items where you reforged Mastery into Haste (Wrist and Boots), which kinda wonders me.
In case you didn't know, Elemental Overload gives extra stacks of Lightning Shield, and with the amount of haste you have, I think it should be ok to change your wrist and boots into their original state.

Just my two cents.

[InverseMatrix]

I must admit, a lot of the vitriol in my opening post is coming from outside stresses. (I actually exploded on a guy over mumble after a wipe HARD today. There was a short pause, then everything smoothed out quickly. I still feel bad about it. It was pretty much a Falling Down kind of moment.) My RL's quick to smash people, but also quick to praise. I wish I hadn't included it as part of the thread, but I posted at stupid o'clock in the morning while I was still incredibly frustrated. My DPS has been pretty bad for a long time, I've tried a lot of different stuff and nothing was clicking. Also, Muradin has exactly 1 Elemental Shaman in heroic raids last time I checked, so there wasn't even anyone local I could ask.

Ewww! The only one they have me interrupt is the odd one in a blue phase where our assigned interrupters are out of melee and if he does one at the back of the room in a green phase. It would be better to have anyone else on it full time >.>

Well, there's a big reason for that. I quickly took the stance of "If my DPS is bad, I am going to contribute something, gawds damnit." I made damned sure that I was Captain Awesomeface at interrupts. I didn't want to be carried, I wanted to help out too. Of course, side effect has been that if I'm not there, it takes a lot longer to get things rolling appropriately.

Anyway, these few changes have had a huge effect. I was 4th in overall DPS on our best H VnT try of the evening and ranked on WoL during Conclave N. I think the main issue was wasted LS stacks, I always seem to get to 7+ when FS is going down, then with the longer CD I would waste charges. I did notice that the elemental was a huge DPS increase, along with using SWG appropriately.

I'm sure there's more that I can tweak, but for one night of raiding that's some huge steps. Thanks for the help!

[Jenerena]

Ewww! The only one they have me interrupt is the odd one in a blue phase where our assigned interrupters are out of melee and if he does one at the back of the room in a green phase. It would be better to have anyone else on it full time >.>

Shamans have the best interrupt in the game. It wouldn't be better at all.

For the OP the best way to improve is to always know your priority system when moving, and when stood still. Know exactly what you should be doing at any one second. Whatever the fight throws at you, you'll know what to cast. Know the fight well and have some timers clear for when things are about to come up. Also, learn from your mistakes. At the end of every attempt, think about what you could have done better. Always have a list in your head of things you need to try to do, to remember. It will take some time and practise unfortunately, but as long as you convince your RL that you are determined to improve, then he'll let you (if he's decent). Let others help you also.

It looks to me like you're maybe getting a bit flustered with the tools available to you, and you're maybe not comfortable with 'keeping it up' when things get complex. You simply have to raid and practise a lot; heroics are a good place to improve because heroic bosses often have complex mechanics that you need to move out of or interrupt, or that will change your game slightly. Get on the dummy and practise practise practise. Even pretend you're about to move in 10 seconds time and begin to plan. The more you plan ahead the more smoothly you can play and you won't feel you're having to react all the time because you can easily drop everything when you suddenly get Caustic slime and you're half way through a lava burst.

Hope this helps.

---------- Post added 2011-04-08 at 09:08 AM ----------

90% of the time, getting into this situation in the first place is avoidable. You can't play Elemental via reacting to what happens, you need to be acting proactively to how things will go over the next ~10 seconds or so, constantly.

Also, being AT 9 stacks isn't a bad thing, as long as you're not casting LBs. If you hit 9 stacks and you've got an LvB to cast and/or movement in the near future, it's not a bad thing. The thing you want to avoid is getting into a situation where you'd want to cast a lightning bolt while sitting on 9 stacks of LS.

Sorry to derail a bit again (but this may help the OP) but the only options I see to 'avoid' these situations (due to the RNG around RT procs) is to either clip FS early or use ES at lower stacks (like 5-6). I'm a bit unsure about the latter option. I would imagine wasting 1-2 charges would be better than fulmination at 5 stacks, but I'd maybe need to get my calculator out for that.