In Depth Elemental Shaman Guide

[Accia]

Hi everyone, this is a guide to the PvE elemental shaman. It is meant to be an in depth guide to playing as elemental, with some more detailed and advanced pointers for more experienced players. It is my first time writing a guide so there might be something missing here and there, but I'll try to cover everything about playing as elemental to the best of my abilities without repeating too many facts that other basic guides would cover. I try to give reasoning to how something is good, as oppose to just tell people to get this or be called a noob. In the end, if you don't agree with my points, you can always do your own thing.

*Feel free to just skip the details and just read the opening for each section. I didn’t realize how much I wrote until I was done. The majority of important stuff will be at the top of each section, rest are details.


Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Talents
3. Stats
4. Glyphs
5. Rotation
6. Utilities
7. Totems
8. Others


1. Introduction

The elemental shaman is a caster DPS class that revolves around nature and fire damage. We don't have a huge single target burst damaging spell unlike warlocks and mages, but we make up for the damage in terms of number of actual casts. Upon specializing in the elemental tree, we get the following unique abilities:

Thunderstorm (Active): Calls down a bolt of thunder like Pikachu's thunderstorm in Super Smash Bro's at your location, dealing damage to everything 10yds around you, and knocking them back 20yds. Also gives 8% of total (not base) mana back to you. This spell is extremely powerful if you have any sense and awareness of your surroundings. The mana restore also plays an important part in terms of our mana management. Keeping it brief for now, will go into more details later.

Shamanism (Passive): Just your basic spell power bonus and reduced cast time benefit for the typical caster.

Elemental Fury (Passive): Increase critical damage by 100% for your spells and damaging totems, another basic typical caster passive.

Mastery: Elemental Overload (Passive): The spell responsible for what makes elemental shamans do so good at what they do. This gives a percent chance to trigger a secondary cast off your initial cast, dealing 75% damage with no additional threat. I would assume proc'ing a LB overload should give you another chance to gain a LS charge, as well as the 2% mana recovery from Rolling Thunder. This would make sense in terms of spell synergy, however I have yet to see this happen.


2. Talents

As of 4.0.3, my recommendation in talents distribution for PvE is the following:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhG0GRfkdGobhM:0omrozmM0

This covers every talent that an elemental build SHOULD have, with the exception of 2/2 Earth's Grasp and 2/2 Ancestral Swiftness - which are purely my own personal preferences. For details of each spell, refer to any Wow Database. There are 2 points remaining for your own personal preference.

Earth's Grasp gives a 100% chance to root targets around the Earthbind totem when you lay it down, which is very convenient when you need to hold extra adds in place for a brief duration.

*Note#1: When casting this - don't cast it and root mobs next to your party members, I believe most mobs will attack the next closet target when rooted, if they can't reach the person highest on their threat list.

*Note#2: Don't pop every cooldown and trinket then throw a 50k double LvB on a mob you just ensnared and expect it to still be rooted afterwards, because pretty much one hit from a butterfly will break the root. Ditto for dropping it when everyone is aoe-ing a pack of mobs, the pulsing slow still helps, but don't expect entangle to last long.

Ancestral Swiftness makes your Ghost Wolf ability an instant cast, and in my opinion is one the most useful utility as a shaman, both PvE and PvP wise. For PvE scenarios, anything that helps reduce time spent on moving around generally equates to more time spent on casting your damaging spells, which is the main purpose of a DPS role. Ghost Wolf's ability to reduce hindering effects also means if a boss does a slow before doing something that requires you to move, you'll be moving faster than your teammates as well. Although there might be exceptions to this, for I have not fought against every single boss in WoW with a slow effect and test it out, and some fights Blizzard might want to screw you over and make you eat the slow effect.

*Note: Usable INDOOR, so use it indoor as well.


The remaining viable options for the last 2 points (and assuming you are putting both points into each talent) are:


Elemental Tree

Convection: Reduce mana cost for offensive damaging spells by 10%. Nice to have when you have mana issues, like at the start of reaching Lv 85, or you like to spam Earthquake for whatever reasons. (Or if you are just so cheap and so lazy that you don't buy water and use it in between pulls, and simply want to stretch your mana pool out as long as possible)
*Currently, I have 2/2 in this, because yes - I'm that cheap and lazy and the one mage in my guild of friends is even cheaper and lazier to make a refreshment table. This was left over from when I just got to 85 and still having mana issues. I will invest the 2 points in a mitigation talent for sure, if I can afford the ~30g to respec

Elemental Warding (2/3): You take 8% reduced magical damage. Self explanatory and purely defensive, pick this if you anticipate lots of magical damage. Personally if I have to pick a defensive talent, I would pick Ancestral Resolve from the Restoration Tree because you take 10% reduced damage while casting - which should be what you are doing for the majority of the fight and it reduces ALL damage taken, not just magical. Again, what you want depends on you and your own understanding of the fight encounters.

Reverberation: Reduces cooldown on Shocks and Wind Shear by 1 second. To this day, I cannot understand why someone would put points into this for a PvE situation. FS will be up for 27 seconds (if glyphed), and it's unlikely to get to 7-9 stacks of LS for another ES(Fulmination) within 6 seconds, let alone 5. Therefore there is no reason why you need a faster shock cooldown. Some may argue it helps to not clip your shocks during a rotation, but you shouldn't be running into this problem if you are executing the rotation properly. The ONLY other reason that I can think of is if there is a fight where you need to interrupt every single spellcast, AND the boss casts it every 5 second, AND you are the only person in the entire raid with an interrupt. Highly unlikely scenario, even if such boss fights exists - since it's not rocket science to rotate interrupts with another person. This is mainly a PvP talent.


Enhancement Tree

Totemic Reach: Increase the range of your totems by 30%. Useful for increasing the range of your Searing Totem or if your raid will be spread out really far for an encounter. Also helpful if you wish Earthbind or Magma Totem to hit more targets. Personally I never put any points into this.

*This may be a bug, but I've noticed as long as I put my Searing Totem down and it's in range to shoot the boss initially, even if the boss later on moves far far away from my totem's range, the Searing Totem continues to shoot properly. And if I refresh my totem, as long as I’m in combat, my totem will continue to hit from far (40+ yds) away.


Restoration Tree

Ancestral Resolve: See Elemental Warding above.


Any other talents are for Enhancement or Restoration spec, and I personally can't see a situation where they will be useful in terms of DPS, but there are people with a weird sense of reasoning out there. I've also read some people claim Elemental Reach is unnecessary if they don't have to be at max range. I suppose that's true and if they want to invest those points elsewhere, it's their choice. Earthquake is an arguable choice. It is completely useless for single target DPS fights, but the knockdown helps reduce some damage dealt to your tank when he/she is tanking lots of adds. It is particularly useful for:

• Packs of caster adds *the knockdown interrupts their casting
  
  
• Packs/spawns that do lots of damage and have very little HP *they'd die before they come back up from the knockback
  
  
• Chain channeling with several other shamans at a narrow choke for fun in BGs *won't kill anything, but just for lols and giggles

Nevertheless, it is only one talent point, and if used at the right situations, it's well worth the investment. If you are very strict about your talents and you must have max single target dps and an additional 4% damage reduction for this one boss, otherwise you won't perform as well and go wtf bbq QQ /ragequit... then by all means, take this point out.


3. Stats

Basic Cataclysm caster knowledge - Int now gives SP, and has replaced many of the items that used to grant SP, with the exception of weapons. General stat priority is:
Spirit/Hit (til hit cap of 17%) > Int > Mastery > Haste > Crit


Spirit vs Hit
With the talent Elemental Precision, your spirit gets converted to hit, thus if you need hit, reforge/gem into spirit instead of hit. The mana regeneration you gain from the small amount of spirit that you'll have is negligible, it's just a human thing to want more out of what you have. If you have something against spirit or that talent, by all means, reforge/gem hit instead. Another bonus to spirit over hit is, if you ever choose to play resto for fun, all that spirit you have is now useful.


Mastery vs Haste
This is from personal opinion, for I have not done any intensive simulation testing the two. I recommend mastery over haste for the following reasons:

Reason#1 - Mana Issues: If you just got to 85 and still hovering below iLvl 333 gear, pick Mastery over Haste. Simple concept, more haste = faster cast, faster cast means OOM faster. When you are undergeared and your crit rating is low, you can't proc Elemental Focus often enough to get Clearcasting states. From personal experience, I had a lot of trouble keeping my mana pool up during first couple days of heroics after Cata was launched (Especially if you are triggered happy with Earthquake).

Reason#2 - Haste Cap: it was easy to reach GCD in Woltk and cast 1.0 second LBs like a maniac, but that's not the case in Cata. You need a lot more rating for each percent of haste, thus you won't be haste cap with the gear available anytime soon, therefore not really worth it.


Critical Rating
Crit has always been one of the lower priority stat, and I can't imagine it overcoming haste/mastery any time soon. Our LvB is already a guarantee critical strike as long as FS is up (which it should be at all times if the mob will be alive for the entire duration of the FS). One may argue that a large portion of our damage comes from LB, and more crit rating equates to more LB crits, but that's another scenario that needs to be tested through extensive simulation - which I have no time to do. A Good ~16% crit is adequate to proc clearcasting states frequent enough to sustain your mana.


4. Glyphs

As of 4.0.3, my recommendation in glyph selection for PvE is the following:

Prime: Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Flame Shock

Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt are must haves, because they boost two of our primary sources of damage

Flame Shock extends the dot duration, which means we have to reapply it less often

Fire Elemental Totem can be viable, if you know you can use it twice within the boss fight. Our fire elemental actually makes up a sizable portion of our overall DPS. More fire elemental uptime, more DPS.

Flametongue Weapon was viable back when we had 4piece t10 bonus, but not anymore. You pretty much need the Flame Shock glyph


Major: Lightning Shield, Chain Lightning, Stoneclaw Totem

Lightning Shield is a must have, not having to waste a GCD to refresh it means more DPS

I highly recommend Stoneclaw Totem because it buffs you with a nice shield absorbing ~16k damage on a 15 second cooldown. This glyph is essential for PvP, and very nice for PvE as well. You don’t have to drop it every time it’s up, maybe while you are moving around during a boss fight.

Chain Lightning is good as long as you hit 4 or more targets, below is a little math showing why:

Plus when your CL overload procs, your CL hits so many times that for a brief moment your toon looks like it's blanketing the field with electricity.

Thunder is not bad if you have a need for a shorter cooldown on the punt. It also helps a lot if you have problems keeping up your mana. In the latter case, this glyph will be best partnered with the minor glyph of Thunderstorm

Healing Stream Totem is situational. The nature resistance is a nice bonus, especially if your raid is going to take a lot of elemental damage. I generally drop Healing Stream Totem when I have Might from paladins, and a fight is not so AOE intensive that your casters will need Totem of Tranquil Mind, and no other resto shamans to drop it

Elemental Mastery is arguable, 20% less damage is nice, but personally I don’t use an offensive cooldown for defensive purposes. Nor will I wait to use such a powerful offensive ability just to mitigate some damage. I’d choose Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem over this.

Grounding Totem is arguable, reflecting a 10 stack Arcanotron’s Arcane Annihilator back at him for 90k noncrit may sound fun… but I’m not sure if all single target spells from bosses can be reflected, and if it doesn’t your guild probably going to hate on you for wiping them. If it does work, someone tell me and I’ll try it out next raid.


Minor: Water Walking and Renewed Life (Although this really doesn’t matter)

Thunderstorm if you want to remove the knockback or you really need the additional 2% mana back. But I consider the utility of the knockback fairly important if used right.


5. Rotation and Gameplay

The Priority List

If you can understand the elemental talents or have read any other elemental forums, then you should know we operate on a priority list. Something to the likes of:

Flame Shock > Earth Shock (7+ Charges) > Lava Burst > Lightning Bolt

Now I wrote up to this point without first checking other elemental shaman forums (Mainly because I simply don’t want to plagiarize anyone’s idea). Upon taking a break and reading http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ataclysm-Guide, quoting him - “Unleash Weapon is a DPS loss in a standing, straight rotation. Almost every other spell you have is better DPS per GCD”. Up to now I’ve always used UE whenever it’s up and before a LvB. I did some very simplified number crunching, excluding haste, crit chance (aside from LvB’s 100% crit), FS dot ticks, and ES in the rotation. For a minute of fight time, my calculation shows including UE in our rotation actually gives a boost to damage. Maybe per GCD-wise, UE’s damage is lower, but its effect on the overall DPS is positive.

*Note: Everything on top is my unbuff, stand alone stats, and the damage that my tooltip displays when I scroll over the individual spells (which to my knowledge is your average damage for that spell, although does not really matter because I'm just using the numbers for a relative comparison). Keep in mind I am excluding Elemental Overload procs, therefore the actual effect of UE should be even greater.


*Note: Although UE’s tooltip says buff our next fire spell by 30%, the actual buff says 20%. Don’t QQ to blizzard, they might change it to 10% to mess with us!

Maybe somebody with a more detailed DPS simulation that incorporates everything I’ve excluded for simplicity’s sake will show Endus is in fact correct. But I personally think UE should be in the rotation. Thus my recommended rotation is the following:

**Flame Shock > Earth Shock (7+ Charges) > Unleash Element > Lava Burst > Lightning Bolt**

Earth Shock and Fulmination

The number of charges you cast ES at corresponds to your LB's damage. Fairly simple concept of maximizing damage per GCD suggests the minimal number of charges you want is:

(Total # of LS Charges x Damage per Charge + Damage from ES) > Damage from a single LB

Simply put, if casting ES with your current charges results in a lower damage than your LB, you’ve just gimped your DPS. Granted, you can argue the single LB may proc a second LB, thus their damage together is greater than the ES + Fulmination… But that’s more theorycrafting that I don’t want to do.


Unleash Element

Side notes, ALWAYS UE then LvB, never UE then FS. Simply because a 20% increase to FS damage (hit and dot together) is dwarfed by a 20% increase to LvB – and gnomed by a 20% increase to a double LvB. And finally, UE then Fire Nova – if the AOE damage will be greater than your LvB damage.

If you’ve used UE on FS instead of LvB, you would’ve done 467 less damage, and even less if overload procs. This is again very simplified, if you actually theorycraft all the numbers and spell coefficients, the gap between the two will most likely be even greater as your stats increase. In general, if you choose to use UE, use it:

• Whenever it is up, because you'll never know when your FS might refresh your LvB.
  
  
• When you are on the move

Don't use it:

• Before a FS (When you know for sure you'll be refreshing FS within the next few second)
  
  
• If you won't have time to cast a LvB afterwards (As in mob dies, or phase change, etc)
  
  
• If you are about to enter an increased DPS phase within the next couple seconds. Save it at the start of that phase.

Side Notes

1. I ALWAYS go into a raid fight in Ghost Wolf, simply to get into position faster (Unless I’m in my furbolg/BE form, in that case I don’t want to lose my form buff).
   
   
2. I ALWAYS do a Wind Shear right after my initial FS and before popping Elemental Mastery then LvB (and 2 – 4 more times whenever the cooldown is up) at the START of the fight. Reason for this is you never know if your threat will bypass your tank’s with that initial burst. If you proc a double LvB, and first tick of FS refreshes your LvB, and you proc another double LvB – You would most likely pull off the tank and mess up the raid position. Wind Shear operates outside of GCD, thus it doesn’t affect your actual rotation at all. On fights where bosses are untauntable or threat sensitive, it’s good practice to throw in a couple Wind Shears here and there, providing that you are in range.

Additional Advanced Notes:

1. If you’ve reached the magical # of charges you need and ready to cast a ES, try to time it after a crit (like LvB), so that you do 10% more damage on that big Fulmination hit. If you are even more of a perfectionist, do your ES when you have 1 charge of Clearcasting left, because Fulmination hits before ES (according to log). So technically you want a Big Spell” – Fulmination – ES combo, where the “Big spell” and Fulmination will benefit from the 10% more damage; as oppose to just a Fulmination – ES combo, and having that weak ES eat one of the charges.
   
   
2. The 10% increase in spell damage from Clearcasting actually increases your LS’s charge damage, thus increasing the “total” (Fulmination) damage by 10%. You actually see a jump in the LS’s damage in the tooltip when you are in a Clearcasting state. Now this I haven’t tested out but in theory, if you get hit during this time, and the shield procs off a charge at the boss, you might be losing one charge of that delicious 10% spell damage. Again, just a theory of mine, and not like it makes a major difference in most people’s play style.
   
   
3. In general, try to develop a sense of how fast you are casting with respect to how fast you accumulate charges on LS, and combine with knowledge of boss fights that might have abilities that reduces your charges from time to time. This is a good habit, just so you have a little more sense in knowing how often you can ES. If you can't, then use pretty addons to remind you.

6. Utilities

Spiritwalker’s Grace

This allows casting while moving (like what you can do on the camels in HoO). Awesome ability and tons of potential areas in which you can use. Do note it can be activated WHILE you are casting other spells. So for those who have a habit of canceling cast by pressing Esc or movement before casting the next spell, you have to practice making an exception, in order to maximize all 10 second of this spell.
Use this to continue DPSing during movement, pretty basic concept. For example, pop this and continue to channel CL or Earthquake while running into the AOE pack to drop your Magma totem and run back out before the buff ends.


Thunderstorm

I can’t stress how useful the knockback is, when you know what you are doing. Obviously don’t punt everything afar when your tank is tanking because it’s just plain annoying for your tank. You really need some sort of common sense to use it right. This is very useful when combined with talented (2/2 Earth’s Grasp) Earthbind totem. In general, use it:

• If you have a good sense of positioning, then you can cast it just at 11-12yds without punting back anything
  
  
• If the mobs are tanked DIRECTLY (or very close to directly) on top of each other, then TS will push everything back the same distance + same direction without scattering everything all over
  
  
• If the mobs are against a wall, then your punt won’t change their location by much
  
  
• If the mobs cannot be knockbacked, then TS is just straight damage + mana back
  
  
• When you are kiting a mobs. Earthbind > cast til mob crosses the snare radius > TS it back to the other side again > continue casting
  
  
• If a mob runs loose or an add comes out of nowhere and your tank is currently occupied with bunch of mobs on him already with taunt on CD, and the add is heading straight for your healer to chew on him, you can position yourself with respect to the mob and punt it into the group being tanked (Your tank will be happy). Wind Shear right away to drop your aggro, and Earthbind to keep it in place long enough for tank to pick it up.
  
  
• If you know your tank well, and he knows how to react to your punt. In this case, you can scatter everything, wait for them to move back in, drop an Earthbind to root everything back in place in front of your tank. If you are good enough, rooting them just before they reach your tank (as in the mobs forms a small arc in front of your tank but just 2-3 yds away from hit box) can buy a couple seconds for your tank. This situation is useful when your healer is afk or dead and you know your tank will die soon, this way buys a small window of time for your tank to bandage or for you to squeeze 1-2 quick heals in.
  
  
• If you can’t react to surroundings and do any of the above scenarios, just glyph Thunderstorm and use it for mana return. But this seriously is one of the most useful abilities, and being aware of your surrounding is a pretty important skill in WoW (and in life).

Healing Rain

Although this is a restoration ability, I find myself dropping this from time to time to help out the healers when the whole raid is under heavy AOE. A fairly costly spell mana – wise, but nevertheless has its usefulness. As elemental, obviously your Healing Rain won’t heal for as much as a Resto shaman’s since you won’t have Earthliving Weapon active, and you won’t have the talents (Soothing Rain) to improve this. However, if swapping out a LB to cast this when your raid is bunched up can relieve your healers for a bit, I don’t see why not. The mana cost shouldn’t be an issue to you, but don’t spam this every time it’s up either, use your own judgment. This stacks on top of other Healing Rain effects.


Ghost Wolf

As mentioned in detail in the Talents section, this ability is very useful for the sole purpose of being able to instantly gain a 30% movement speed and bypass hindering effects. Do note Ghost Wolf will not bypass a Daze effect (ie. if you get whacked by a mob behind you).


Frostbrand Weapon

Unleashing this on a target slows it by 50%, slows for 70% if said target is already slowed by a frost effect. Mainly for used for kiting, although the usage is minimal if you can utilize Earthbind and Thunderstorm well.


Rockbiter Weapon

30% threat generation and 5% less damage taken, unleashing this does a range taunt. Not a whole lot of use with this. I’d imagine it’s meant for us to range tank particular mobs in raids like warlocks back then. Our damage reduction is actually fairly decent if talented for mitigation. I can’t picture this being used for higher tier melee tanking, because melee mobs can crit you, but boss’s spells don’t. Nevertheless, a range taunt can be a useful tool to kite with.


7. Totems

Determine which totem to drop is fairly basic. If your totem has a buff, don’t overlap someone else’s buff (or have their talented buff overlap yours). A shaman has a lot more options in terms of which buff they can provide, whereas other classes not as much, so provide the totems to supplement their buffs. If it serves as a utility spell, time it right. In terms of which buff interferes with which buff, I believe Endus mentioned a list of them on his guide; therefore I won’t repeat them again.

Fire Totem

Fire Elemental if possible (especially if you glyphed for it and can use it twice within one fight). Fire elemental adds a good chunk of DPS to
*For some reason ever since Cata launched, I find my fire elemental getting killed within 20 seconds of laying it down. Some bosses’ abilities are killing my elemental and I think this is a bug, because this never happened in Wotlk to me before. As for which ability it was, I can’t remember, was too busy raging on vent and plotting an angry letter to Blizzard.

Searing Totem for single target. In my experience, my gimpy totem sometimes doesn’t start attacking my target with the FS when I drop it before fight starts (so I don’t have to waste a GCD). Either that or it starts attacking 10 second into the fight… or just doesn’t attack at all. Sometimes mine doesn’t attack the target with the FS on like it says it should in the tooltip, and end up building Arcanotron’s stacks to 10 stack and one shot me back in the face. Maybe my totem is defective, or simply hates me.

*This little guy now kills itself if the mob spell reflects its little spitfire back. 100% certain one mob in Throne of the Tides reflects and will kill your searing totem, for I stood there recasting it 5 times on that same mob watching it reflect…

Magma Totem for AOE targets. I set mine up with Earthbind Totem and Tyrande’s Favorite Doll (No GCD on this trinket’s active burst) into one key, and use it when running in and Fire Nova when running out to throw down some AOE. Another option is use it with Stoneclaw Totem (if glyphed) in case the mobs cleaves or has a small radial damaging aura. Don’t use this if:

• There are only a few adds
  
• The adds will die before you run in, do your thing, and run back out
  
• The adds will mince you if you get the slightest bit of aggro

There are times you will be better off CL cleaving from afar, since it’s on a much shorter cooldown now.

Flametongue if your other totems are out of control and hitting things they shouldn’t be hitting. Although it results in a loss of DPS, it’s still better than wiping your raid.


Earth Totem

Tremor for fear, and it works by pulsing every few seconds. If you are good you can anticipate and time the pulse, so that as soon as a boss’s cast goes off, your tremor pulse will hit and clear the fear.

Strength of Earth is just static boost to strength and agility. An Enhancement shaman, DK, or Warr’s buff will override yours. Drop it if there are none of those classes in the raid, or your raid is very melee – heavy.

Stoneclaw for the shield (if glyphed), otherwise useless. If there are adds that has a normal threat table and are suppose to be kited, laying this down at the proper location can sometimes taunt the adds and stun them for a couple seconds (providing the mobs aren’t immune to stun). It is purely unnecessary, just a nifty trick you can try out to buy some time. Stoneclaw by itself protects your totems with a ~4k absorb shield, maybe Blizzard meant for the Fire Totem to get kill, forcing us to drop more Stoneclaw in PvE!?

Stoneskin is just static boost to armor; use it if you have no Devotion Aura.

Earthbind, situational and useful. I think I covered this in detail in the Talents section.

Earth elemental is generally useless, it’s nice if you want it to AOE taunt small adds, but it usually dies really fast if tanking any raid mobs. I suppose it can serve as a small DPS increase when your fire elemental is down, but I don’t recommend it because you never know if it’ll malfunction and taunts the boss/adds and face them in a direction that might AOE frontal cone your raid.


Water Totem

Tranquil Mind, if the raid will be constantly suffering spell knockback from AOE effects.

Mana Spring, if you need the mana and there is no paladin to give Might.

Healing Spring is my favorite choice, if the two above aren’t being used. Simply because small amount of heal raid wide is better than no heal.

Elemental Resistance, I generally don’t bother with it. If the fight calls for resistance, I would glyph Healing Spring and drop that instead. Note that if the fight requires resistance, a paladin’s Resistance Aura trumps this totem (providing the damage is fire or frost based). Reason is that a smart paladin times his Aura Mastery (Improve the effectiveness by 100%) at intervals of big AOE damage.


Air Totem

Wrath of Air is the optimal choice. However a moonkin or shadow priest also provides the same buff.

Windfury if the 5% spell haste buff is present, and no one has the melee haste buff. Even if there are limited melee in the group, 10% melee haste for the tanks is always nice.

Grounding Totem requires you to know when to use it. It absorbs SINGLE target spells only, not AOEs. As I’ve mentioned in the glyph section, a glyphed grounding totem in theory can reflect a boss’s direct spell back to it, and this is neat because generally its nukes >>>> your nukes. Anything groundable should be reflectable in that sense. If this works, whether the damage counts towards your DPS or the boss’s (o_0”) DPS… your guess is as good as mine.


8. Others

By no means everything I wrote in this guide is 100% correct, it is simply what I’ve experienced during the gameplay (Aside from trivial math calculations, can’t really multiply AxB wrong…). The UE calculations may be iffy since I’ve simplified it so much and scrambled it up in 15 min. If anyone has a precise simulation out there, I’d love to see the codes and learn what you did just for the sake of learning more myself. To my understand, it takes a fair bit of coding knowledge to simulate a spec with so many priority spells, procs, and triggers. Frankly, I left my brain with all the coding stuff at school after I graduated. \m/ (^_^)

I do approximately 14k on a basic tank and spank fight in a 10man raid. Obviously the number varies depending on movements, how much Healing Rain I'm dropping, purge/interrupt duties, how awake I am during the fights, and how lucky I get with LvB overloads. Below is a sample Recount and my stats completely unbuff (Yes I know my hit isn't 17% because I've recently got some upgrades and haven't had the chance to reforge yet). If I fully buff up with flasks + food + potion, AND there are mobs to cleave, AND doing a perfect rotation with good procs - I "can" do around 17-19k.

Thanks for reading my guide. I hope this helps other shamans improve their game play a little. I think I covered everything there is to know about playing elemental. If you find some calculations or statement horrifically wrong, let me know and I'll edit. If you are confused as to how some numbers were calculated, I can include the exact calculations. For those who find it useful, I’m glad it helped. For those who wants to troll, I’m glad I wasted a good 30min of your life have to read up to this point. For admins and judges, I hope I get a prize~ Feel free to chop the guide in smaller sections because I do understand this feels like reading an engineering report. Credits would be nice if you are using the content somewhere else since I did spend a good portion of the day writing this. Merry Christmas~ Cheers!

[Deleted]

I'm sure it's a good guide, but I admit that I stopped reading it after you recomended NOT taking Reverb, taking Mastery over haste, & having ES higher on prio list than LvB....

[Skod]

I'm sure it's a good guide, but I admit that I stopped reading it after you recomended NOT taking Reverb, taking Mastery over haste, & having ES higher on prio list than LvB....

This.
And also your rotation calculations is to simplified, they dosen't include elemental overload, if you did you would see another result. The guys on EJ have done calculations with elemental overload, showing that it is a dps loss using UE in a standing rotation. Only use it when moving.

[Deleted]

This.
And also your rotation calculations is to simplified, they dosen't include elemental overload, if you did you would see another result. The guys on EJ have done calculations with elemental overload, showing that it is a dps loss using UE in a standing rotation. Only use it when moving.

Mm. I didn't read that far, but just noticed it. Also, he forgot that LB procs Feedback, which reduces our Ele Mastery cooldown. Oh, and that it procs Rolling Thunder, too.

I actually remember doing some quite complicated math on this back when I just dinged 85 (around 330 avgilvl). UE came out ABOVE Lightning Bolt, giving me a prio queue looking like this: FS > LvB > ES (7-9) > UE if less than 5 seconds left on LvB CD > LB.
I'm pretty sure Lightning Bolt is better at higher gear levels, due to the scaling with mastery & crit. ((Only UE is affected by crit, and not the 30% increase on LvB, because it's a garanteed crit. Mastery only affects the increased LvB damage, and not the damage from UE, since UE cannot overload. Lightning Bolt scales with both crit & mastery)

---------- Post added 2011-01-08 at 05:40 PM ----------

Actually, I'm gonna do some numbercrushing now. I'll edit this post with the result when I'm done.

---------- Post added 2011-01-08 at 06:26 PM ----------

At 25% haste, 25% chance for overload (= 12 marstery POINTS, not rating), 7.2k SP & 20% crit chance I found that if you time UE perfectly it does 11.6k damage per second casting, where LB does about 9k-9.1k damage per second casting.

This is all things taken into consideration. Feedback, Rolliung Thunder, Overload... you name it. Please note that Feedback was quite tricky to convert to numbers, so this math might not be entirely accurate.

Also, I'm assuming the GCD scales with haste just like casting speed does; i.e if you have 25% haste the GCD would be 1,125 seconds. Can anyone confirm/deny this?

[Endus]

Upon taking a break and reading http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ataclysm-Guide, quoting him - “Unleash Weapon is a DPS loss in a standing, straight rotation. Almost every other spell you have is better DPS per GCD”. Up to now I’ve always used UE whenever it’s up and before a LvB. I did some very simplified number crunching, excluding haste, crit chance (aside from LvB’s 100% crit), FS dot ticks, and ES in the rotation. For a minute of fight time, my calculation shows including UE in our rotation actually gives a boost to damage. Maybe per GCD-wise, UE’s damage is lower, but its effect on the overall DPS is positive.

Maybe somebody with a more detailed DPS simulation that incorporates everything I’ve excluded for simplicity’s sake will show Endus is in fact correct. But I personally think UE should be in the rotation. Thus my recommended rotation is the following:

Since this was addressed specifically to me, I'll throw my two cents in. The issue is, basically, that there's a few factors you've forgotten.

Warning, math and theorycraft ahead

First, just take note that in your no-UE sample, there's 21 LBs cast, and in the with-UE sample, there are 18. This will be important.

Now, let's apply mastery. I'm going to skip the math steps, but I'm adding all the LBs and LvBs together, assuming a 25% proc chance for simplicity's sake, and 75% damage boost. This works out to 48913 damage for the first, and 46680 damage for the version with UE. This is because the three extra chances to proc on the extra LBs is worth more than the higher procs on enhanced LvBs. The totals, with Mastery included, are 315764 vs 316924, squeezing down the advantage to a mere 1160 damage. Which seems like UE is still ahead.

Except, with 3/3 Feedback, this drops our EM cooldown by 3 seconds for every LB cast. So the without-UE side is also getting 9 seconds off their EM cooldown in that 1 minute timeframe. That adds up and will overtake that 1k gap when you look at a few hours of simulated gameplay, rather than a minute, to account for longer CDs like that.

And, as a parting shot, I'll point out that while both instances have 7 LvBs, the last one done on the without-UE side was at 52 seconds, while the last on the with-UE side of things was at 59.5. Your LvBs are getting pushed further apart, and on longer samples you'll see a DPS loss there, as well. If you stretched the same pattern out to 2 minutes, you'd have more LvBs cast on the no-UE side.

End math and theorycraft


In a nutshell, that's why I say UE isn't worth the GCD if you could cast LB instead. LB's chance to proc mastery and reduce your EM outweighs the benefits to LvB from UE. That said, it's still a solid spell, and as your math shows it's very close to the value of an LB. Having to run for a couple seconds and tossing UE and an earth shock isn't much of a DPS loss at all, which is a great thing for us. I actually prefer UE as a while-moving spell, because it fills a needed hole there, as opposed to trying to fit it into our rotation, which doesn't really need it.


There's a few other kibitzes I'd make on some choices you suggest, but those are more matters of personal preference than anything else, overall the guide looks great. If you want to poke me about any other differences, feel free to post in my own guide thread, in my sig. Don't want to clutter up your guide post with a big debate between us about relatively minor differences.

[Deleted]

Since this was addressed specifically to me, I'll throw my two cents in. The issue is, basically, that there's a few factors you've forgotten.

Warning, math and theorycraft ahead

First, just take note that in your no-UE sample, there's 21 LBs cast, and in the with-UE sample, there are 18. This will be important.

Now, let's apply mastery. I'm going to skip the math steps, but I'm adding all the LBs and LvBs together, assuming a 25% proc chance for simplicity's sake, and 75% damage boost. This works out to 48913 damage for the first, and 46680 damage for the version with UE. This is because the three extra chances to proc on the extra LBs is worth more than the higher procs on enhanced LvBs. The totals, with Mastery included, are 315764 vs 316924, squeezing down the advantage to a mere 1160 damage. Which seems like UE is still ahead.

Except, with 3/3 Feedback, this drops our EM cooldown by 3 seconds for every LB cast. So the without-UE side is also getting 9 seconds off their EM cooldown in that 1 minute timeframe. That adds up and will overtake that 1k gap when you look at a few hours of simulated gameplay, rather than a minute, to account for longer CDs like that.

And, as a parting shot, I'll point out that while both instances have 7 LvBs, the last one done on the without-UE side was at 52 seconds, while the last on the with-UE side of things was at 59.5. Your LvBs are getting pushed further apart, and on longer samples you'll see a DPS loss there, as well. If you stretched the same pattern out to 2 minutes, you'd have more LvBs cast on the no-UE side.

End math and theorycraft


In a nutshell, that's why I say UE isn't worth the GCD if you could cast LB instead. LB's chance to proc mastery and reduce your EM outweighs the benefits to LvB from UE. That said, it's still a solid spell, and as your math shows it's very close to the value of an LB. Having to run for a couple seconds and tossing UE and an earth shock isn't much of a DPS loss at all, which is a great thing for us. I actually prefer UE as a while-moving spell, because it fills a needed hole there, as opposed to trying to fit it into our rotation, which doesn't really need it.


There's a few other kibitzes I'd make on some choices you suggest, but those are more matters of personal preference than anything else, overall the guide looks great. If you want to poke me about any other differences, feel free to post in my own guide thread, in my sig. Don't want to clutter up your guide post with a big debate between us about relatively minor differences.

How would using UE instead of LB push LvBs further apart?

[Endus]

How would using UE instead of LB push LvBs further apart?

Look at your own data. The LVBs in your UE sample are father apart. They start off 1.5 seconds apart (the GCD you used on UE) and by the end of a minute, they're 7.5 seconds apart, that's a creep of 6 seconds, almost a second per cast. If you continue the trend, your UE sample will get its 9th LvB at around the same time as the non-UE sample gets its 10th, meaning you're losing LvBs.

[Accia]

I'm sure it's a good guide, but I admit that I stopped reading it after you recomended NOT taking Reverb, taking Mastery over haste, & having ES higher on prio list than LvB....

The only reason I don't take Reverb is I never seem to run into problem with shock CDs with that rotation, thus I didn't see a reason to reduce the CD to 5 seconds. Perhaps with a different priority queue may prove Reverb is necessary. Nevertheless, there are extra points, and if you run into trouble with managing shock CD, then Reverb isn't a bad a talent.

I suggested mastery over haste because when I first hit 85, I prioritized haste over mastery, (seeing as how haste was so good in Wotlk) - and I ended up with mana issues over long fights. But recently I reforged most gear back to haste and I have been doing an increase in damage (roughly 16-17k on a standing still fight). So yes, that was misinforming on my part.

---------- Post added 2011-01-08 at 09:11 PM ----------

I understand that the rotation sample i showed may be too simplified. Endus's post makes sense and I'll try excluding UE in the stand alone rotation next raid and only use it on movement. I came up with a simplified rotation because I wasn't able to find an updated spreadsheet elsewhere. For those who says EJ has one, can you point me towards it? I've tried looking for one, but I think I only recall a fulmination spreadsheet, and not a detailed second by second DPS simulation spreadsheet.

Much appreciated.

[Deleted]

Look at your own data. The LVBs in your UE sample are father apart. They start off 1.5 seconds apart (the GCD you used on UE) and by the end of a minute, they're 7.5 seconds apart, that's a creep of 6 seconds, almost a second per cast. If you continue the trend, your UE sample will get its 9th LvB at around the same time as the non-UE sample gets its 10th, meaning you're losing LvBs.

First off, please do not confuse me with Accia.
Second, we all know it's a dps-loss casting UE when LvB is off CD; it's just gonna delay our hardest hitting spell, and we're going to waste Lava Surge procs on it. What I'm talking about is a PERFECTLY timed UE; a perfectly timed UE would be to cast it with LvB being on less than 5 seconds cooldown, but more than 1.5 seconds cooldown.

Am I missing something?

PS... I just discovered the UE 'bug'. I always thought it was 30% (like the FT tongue tooltip says), but apparently, it's only 20% (source: some math-thread in the shaman forum... ) -- so it's probably not worth using AT ALL until they fix the bug (if they do; they could as well change the 30% tooltip to 20%).

[binkenstein]

First off, please do not confuse me with Accia.
Second, we all know it's a dps-loss casting UE when LvB is off CD; it's just gonna delay our hardest hitting spell, and we're going to waste Lava Surge procs on it. What I'm talking about is a PERFECTLY timed UE; a perfectly timed UE would be to cast it with LvB being on less than 5 seconds cooldown, but more than 1.5 seconds cooldown.

Am I missing something?

PS... I just discovered the UE 'bug'. I always thought it was 30% (like the FT tongue tooltip says), but apparently, it's only 20% (source: some math-thread in the shaman forum... ) -- so it's probably not worth using AT ALL until they fix the bug (if they do; they could as well change the 30% tooltip to 20%).

Yes, you are missing something. UE is not an ability you want to use in a stationary rotation because it is not a net gain on DPS.

[Mr.Pineapple]

I'm sure it's a good guide, but I admit that I stopped reading it after you recomended NOT taking Reverb, taking Mastery over haste, & having ES higher on prio list than LvB....

this, entirely this. inc flaming:

please rename your 'guide' to "misinformed opinions with no basis or proof"

go read ej. go read endus' guide, or better yet, delete the whole thing you wrote and just put a link to endus' guide. you've caused mindless damage to the poor players reading your guide who are now gunna run around and get made fun of for being bad shamans. your 'theory crafting' is far from complete or thought out and it's easy to see that you are not in a progression guild.

again, someone please delete this sad excuse for a guide.

[Serendipity_09]

this, entirely this. inc flaming:

Flame, flame, flame.

Really, first off that ugly bit of text your fingers mindlessly typed into the reply box was really uncalled for. I realize you said "inc. flaming", but still, if you cannot properly articulate your thoughts and refute certain parts of the theory crafting or math like the posters above have done then I don't think your reply carries much weight to it at all.

Secondly, inserting snide comments and rude remarks don't get people far in this world, you catch more fly's with honey then with vinegar. Perhaps you should look over your comment since you were clearly out of your state of mind and the rage pent up while posting was obscuring your thinking.

[Deleted]

Thanks for this amazing guide!

[binkenstein]

Really, first off that ugly bit of text your fingers mindlessly typed into the reply box was really uncalled for. I realize you said "inc. flaming", but still, if you cannot properly articulate your thoughts and refute certain parts of the theory crafting or math like the posters above have done then I don't think your reply carries much weight to it at all.

He is, however, correct on the accuracy of this guide. Having a guide based heavily on personal opinion, taking information from other guides, contradictions, and poor math/theorycrafting does not result in a "Rare" quality guide that this one has been labelled as.