Elemental - The Answer To All 'Whats wrong with my DPS' threads

[Deleted]

In general, whenever anyone asks whats wrong with their DPS, its always the same things. So I thought Id go ahead and post this so that people can use the search function and find out for themselves without posting another of the same post 5 times a day =) This is all already stated in the FAQ, very obviously, but it seems people don't notice it as its near the bottom of the FAQ, so I thought I'd post it again to make it clear for people.

Check the following:

- World of Logs (go to your raid, select the boss you want to view from the drop down at the top of the screen, also select Damage Done from the top of the screen, then click on your own character to bring up information on just your character)

- Armoury

- Extras

World of Logs Checklist

Lava Burst - Go to the 'Damage by Spell tab'. How many casts did you do? Where they all crits? Whats the length of the encounter. Divide the length of the encounter (in seconds) by the number of casts you did. With no Haste and no Lava Surge procs it should be one cast every 9.5 seconds, but in reality it should be closer to about 8 seconds.

Fulmination - How many casts did you do? Go too the 'Buffs Gained' tab on your analysis of your own characters DPS, and click on the 'Rolling Thunder' spell under 'Power Gains'. This will take you to a screen showing you the Count of how many times Rolling Thunder procced. Go back to the 'Damage by Spell' screen and look at how many times you did damage with Lightning Shield. Take this number off the number of Rolling Thunder procs you had. Now divide this number by the number of fulminations, then add 3 to this number (because you're never go below 3 stacks of Lightning Shield - assuming you have it Glyphed - which you should). This will tell you, on average, on how many 'stacks' of Lightning Shield you cast Earth Shock on. If its between 7 and 9 your good, but the closer to 7 the better, because its likely if you got 8.9 you wasted some stacks being sat at 9 stacks for too long. If your above 9 stacks you definitely wasted some and thats bad, if its below 7 you were casting it before you had 7 stacks which is also bad.

*Note that on fights with AoE (Yor'sahj, Spine and Madness) you may have higher stacks than you'd expect, because its not a DPS increase to use Earth Shock when AoEing 5+ targets, and thus you may well waste stacks, and thats okay*

Flame Shock - Again, on the Damage by Spell tab, look at Flame Shock, under the Uptime heading will be a %, this is the % of the fight you had Flame Shock running. You want this to be as close to 100% as possible, if not 100%.

Fire Totems - If you go to the 'Buffs Gained' tab, you will see Totemic Wrath. This tells you the uptime of your Flame totems (Searing Totem and Fire Elemental Totem both give this buff). This should be 100%. The only fight it may not be 100% on is Madness because of the time spent jumping between platforms, or on Ultraxion because if you are in a different realm to the person taking the log, due to the way it gathers data, it may miss that you have refreshed your Fire Totem and thus record a lower than accurate buff uptime.

*Checking Individual Fire Totem Uptimes:

If you go to the general raid Damage Done screen, there is a little drop down next to each players name. Click it next to your shaman's name, it will show you your character as well as your Elemental and you Searing Totem's uptimes. Add Fire Elemental and Searing Totme together is also another way to compare total Fire Totem uptime*


Armoury Checklist

Hit Cap - Make sure you have 17.00% Hit minimum. Any hit above that is a waste, and as such you should reforge out of any and all Spirit/Hit that you can, as long as you stay above 17.00%

Reforges - Use SimCraft to work out the best possible stats for your gear, Endus posted a very good 101 on how to use it here

Enchants - Make sure you have the best enchants you can get. The top level rep enchants, your profession enchants if it has them, 65 Mastery on gloves (lots of people miss this), 20 Stats on chest, and make sure your Boot enchant (50 Haste or 50 Mastery) matches whichever stat SimCraft says is better for you. Make sure you have a belt buckle in your waist and make sure you don't miss any enchants at all.

Gems - Make sure your gemming the correct choice between Haste and Mastery as dictated by SimCraft, and make sure you are matching socket bonuses correctly. Sim it to be sure, but in general 20 of a secondary stat is worth more than 10 intellect, so if a socket has 10 Intellect as a bonus, and a yellow slot, its better to put in 20 Intellect and 20 Haste/Mastery than it is to put in a pure 40 Intellect. Never, ever gem pure Yellow or pure Blue however.

Spec - Use the FAQ section found here, Endus goes into extreme detail on this.

Glyphs - Flame Shock, Lava Burst and Lightning bolt are your best 3 Glyphs. Use Glyph of Unleashed Lightning on fights where you would otherwise have to interrupt 2 or more Lightning Bolts per minute. If you use this, replace Glyph of Lightning Bolt because Lava Burst glyph affects Lava Burst overloads, but Lightning Bolt Glyph does not affect Lightning Bolt overloads.

Extras Checklist

1 - Make sure your Fire Elemental and Earth Elemental last their full duration (2 minutes, 2minutes 40 with Totemic Focus talent)

2 - Make sure your elementals are placed when you have a Volcanic Potion, Power Torrent and any other spell power procs up. If you have Will of Unbinding, pop your Elementals as late into Power Torrent as you can, or when you reach max stacks, which ever comes first (don't wait too long and let Power Torrent fall off)

3 - Make sure you use Earth Elemental. Keybind it and Fire Elemental into an Elemental Call spell so you can summon both at the same time.

4 - Pre-pot!

5 - Fire Elemental ONLY scales with Spellpower (and Attack Power, but only by very little, enough to basically not matter). This means that Intellect (as Intellect gives Spell power) procs/use effect items, Volcanic Potion and Power Torrent are the only ways to increase its damage. You should stack these, but remember to ignore things like BL, Elemental Master ect. Even damage buffs on you to not benefit it (ie Kalecgos buff from Madness). However, damage DEbuffs do affect it (ie Cataclysm from Madness). Keep this in mind. It does not however benefit from Haste, Crit or the Crit portion of Intellect. Also, it takes a Snap snot of your Spellpower upon summoning it, and will keep that Spellpower even after you lose it, hense popping it (and Earth Elemental) during high Spellpower buffs is best. Earth Elemental scales in the same way as Fire Elemental, but to a much, much lesser degree.

Thanks. Once again, this is all already in the FAQ, but this exact information is posted 3 times or more a day, so I thought Id post it so that people using the search feature can get this up straight away.

[Takhisany]

My main question is; is the Earth Elementals taunt strong enough to grab aggro on most bosses?

[Deleted]

My main question is; is the Earth Elementals taunt strong enough to grab aggro on most bosses?

He, like Army of the Dead, does not taunt Raid bosses. Only mobs (ie the adds on Warmaster).

[Deleted]

My main question is; is the Earth Elementals taunt strong enough to grab aggro on most bosses?

It doesn't taunt boss level mobs except those in Baradin Hold. He will taunt the melee adds on Blackhorn though. I'm not sure about things like Hideous Amalgamations/Corruptions/Mutated Corrutions/Elementium Terror but it probably will taunt those too..

[Deleted]

As far as I know they don't taunt the adds on Madness HM (Elementium Terrors), I was seeing immune messages but I could be wrong.

[Deleted]

It doesn't taunt boss level mobs except those in Baradin Hold. He will taunt the melee adds on Blackhorn though. I'm not sure about things like Hideous Amalgamations/Corruptions/Mutated Corrutions/Elementium Terror but it probably will taunt those too..

It does taunt Hideous Amalgamations, but I'm fairly sure everything on Madness is a boss level mob. Maybe Elementium Terrors would be taunted, but it seems unikely because you could just get a DPS DK to pop Army of the Dead there and completely negate any threat from them because by the time they had killed your army and got back onto the tank, they would be weak enough for the tank to not be scared, and since I've never seen that strategy before I would assume they aren't taunt-able by Guardians either.

[Diranux]

Does the Fire ele gain the haste from hero? if so is it worth it to save him? or overall is best to use him right after torrent/pot/10 stacks of deathwing trinket

Also would you care to break down my wifes WOL? she feels low on H Ultrax http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/e...?s=8002&e=8322

Her armory http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ieoni/advanced

[Deleted]

Does the Fire ele gain the haste from hero? if so is it worth it to save him? or overall is best to use him right after torrent/pot/10 stacks of deathwing trinket

Also would you care to break down my wifes WOL? she feels low on H Ultrax http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/e...?s=8002&e=8322

Fire Elemental only benefits from Spellpower, nothing else. I will add that to the original post, its another question that gets asked like every other day. Everything you could ever possible gather from that WoL is explained in the original post, but okay.

Lava Burst - 41, over a 319 second fight, thats one every 7.78 seconds. Would be good normally, but she has the legendary. WoL includes Legendary procs as the same spell. For Elemental the Legendary has ~8% proc chance. So 41/1.08 means roughly 38 casts, which is one every 8.39 seconds roughly. Not bad but could be better. Obviously with Legendary this isn't as exact a number, but it does seem like she could improve a bit on this.

Fulmination - 20 Fulminations, 102 Stacks of Rolling thunder with no Lightning Shield ticks. Means one Fulmination every 5.1 stacks, again though, she has legendary, so thats actually ~ 18.5 (so 19) casts, so one every 5.3 (8.3) stacks. This is pretty good.

Flame Shock - 97% uptime. On Ultraxion, it should definitely by 100%

Elementals - No Earth Elemental, her Fire Elemental did really low damage. It was only active for 100.4s. Should be 120s (or 119ish - popping Searing to clip the end so you don't lose TW buff is okay)

Searing Totem - The log says it was only active for 167.1s. This may be inaccurate because of the way Ultraxion works, but if it is it means she only had a Fire Totem active for 267.5s of a 319 second fight, and thats a big DPS loss.

Ultraxion Extra - On Ultraxion, she should make sure she always uses an instant cast before going into the normal realm. The Heroic Will button is off the global cooldown, so if she delays going in as long as possible, then hasn't got enough time for another spell, she can cast either Flame Shock if its due to be refreshed, Earth Shock if she has over 7 stacks of Lightning Shield, Searing Totem if it needs refreshing now, or (this is the only fight you should use it on) Unleash Elements if none of the above, and then she can press Heroic Will straight away, even with the GCD going. Its a big DPS increase compared to just doing nothing. She should also be aware of how much time she has left and not start casting just so she can cancel half way through to press Heroic Will, again, this is where the use of instants come in.

[Ardourdan]

Fire Elemental only benefits from Spellpower, nothing else.

I thought the Fire Elemental took a snapshot of your Intellect, rather than your spellpower, which is why you should always have as many intellect buffs up as possible when you place the totem?

Other than this possible misinformation, a good informative post that will hopefully be read by many of the Elemental Shaman that might be sturggling on certain fights

[Deleted]

I thought the Fire Elemental took a snapshot of your Intellect, rather than your spellpower, which is why you should always have as many intellect buffs up as possible when you place the totem?

Other than this possible misinformation, a good informative post that will hopefully be read by many of the Elemental Shaman that might be sturggling on certain fights

Intellect gives both Spell power and Crit. However, the Fire Elemental only scales from the Spell power portion. It scales from both spell power buffs and Int (because Int = spell power), but not crit or haste. And yes its a snapshot. I'll edit the original post to make that part more clear.

[Ardourdan]

Also would you care to break down my wifes WOL? she feels low on H Ultrax http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/e...?s=8002&e=8322

Her armory http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ieoni/advanced

She may want to consider using the following spec, a lot of theorycrafters seemed to have debated and proven it as a higher DPS gain for this fight, and this fight alone:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhGMGRfkzGZboZbhb

This spec grants you 48 seconds more to both your Fire Elemental, and Earth Elemental, I tend to make it my 2nd spec over Resto when heading to raids

Provided she pre-pots a Volcanic Potion, gets a good timed Power Torrent buff with high stacks (preferrably 10) on her trinket (Will of Unbinding) and THEN places her Fire Elemental Totem at this point her DPS should be noticeably increased...

My source for the theorycrafter debate and "proof" of increased DPS: www.elitistjerks.com ... as if it would be anyone else!

She should also glyph: Fire Elemental Totem, Lightning Bolt and Flame Shock... Although, with the increased strength of the Dragon Soul nerf, now at 10%, choosing Fire Ele glyph may begin to be less favourable compared to Lava Burst. Please note you should never glyph Unleashed Lightning for this fight.

[Deleted]

She may want to consider using the following spec, a lot of theorycrafters seemed to have debated and proven it as a higher DPS gain for this fight, and this fight alone:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhGMGRfkzGZboZbhb

Provided she pre-pots a Volcanic Potion, gets a good timed Power Torrent buff with high stacks (preferrably 10) on her trinket (Will of Unbinding) and THEN places her Fire Elemental Totem at this point her DPS should be noticeably increased...

My source for the theorycrafter debate and "proof" of increased DPS: www.elitistjerks.com ... as if it would be anyone else!

If your going to run a spec purely for Ultraxion (you could use that spec for Yor'sahj too - but really only if your allowed to just stay on Yor'sahj the whole time and not switch too the oozes), you're better off running

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhGrGofkzGZboZbhb

because Elemental Reach is useless on Ultraxion, so you may as well make your healer's lives easier. I do agree its a better spec for Ultraxion HC, I got rank 9 on 10 man HC this week with it, but I didn't really go into spec in this thread, because of how extensively Endus did in his FAQ, hense my link to it =)

[Ardourdan]

If your going to run a spec purely for Ultraxion (you could use that spec for Yor'sahj too - but really only if your allowed to just stay on Yor'sahj the whole time and not switch too the oozes), you're better off running

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhGrGofkzGZboZbhb

because Elemental Reach is useless on Ultraxion, so you may as well make your healer's lives easier. I do agree its a better spec for Ultraxion HC, I got rank 9 on 10 man HC this week with it, but I didn't really go into spec in this thread, because of how extensively Endus did in his FAQ, hense my link to it =)

You should be using Earthquake on Yor'sahj heroic though, during the dark ooze add phase it yields higher dps than a Chain lightning that will only hit 5 of the targets... this is of course provided the adds are clumped enough which they should be.

Also thanks for the tip about elemental reach, don't know why I didn't think of that! I will edit my own spec now haha congratultions on the WoL rank as well!

[Deleted]

You should be using Earthquake on Yor'sahj heroic though, during the dark ooze add phase it yields higher dps than a Chain lightning that will only hit 5 of the targets... this is of course provided the adds are clumped enough which they should be.

Also thanks for the tip about elemental reach, don't know why I didn't think of that! I will edit my own spec now haha congratultions on the WoL rank as well!

Ahh yes sorry, Im too used to my guild ^_^ In my guild our Warlock goes Demo every week on Yor'sahj, so I just drop Totemic Wrath hehe. We get bored on wednesday farm night so just respec all the time during trash to have fun with meters ^_^ I must respec for pretty much every boss except Morchok + Zon'ozz HC (just do this in the normal 32-7-2)

[Diranux]

Thanks so much for the information! Not sure what she did with her Searing totem. She did have 100% on Totemic Wrath so i just figured she did ok with it. I failed more then she did, I always thought her FE gained hero so she would save him for when we popped hero.
Now I'm excited to see where she will be when she pops him will all the int buffs at the start and with the different spec.

[Deleted]

Thanks so much for the information! Not sure what she did with her Searing totem. She did have 100% on Totemic Wrath so i just figured she did ok with it. I failed more then she did, I always thought her FE gained hero so she would save him for when we popped hero.
Now I'm excited to see where she will be when she pops him will all the int buffs at the start and with the different spec.

Like I said, its likely just Ultraxion mechanics messing with the WoL report. Take buff uptimes with a pinch of Salt on Ultraxion. Ultraxion is the best fight in the game for getting as close to your simmed DPS as you can (still got Heroic Will messing with it, but its the best fight), but for measuring how well you play your class, Zon'ozz is the best (though not so much HC because of all the low HP targets) because although the numbers mean little due to the huge damage buff, you can see when everything happens and such with no mechanics messing with WoL.

[Ekkoeu]

Nice Thread Undefetter. I found the WoL section especially useful.

The only part that I got a bit stuck on was:

..."Fulmination - How many casts did you do? Go too the 'Buffs Gained' tab on your analysis of your own characters DPS, and click on the 'Rolling Thunder' spell under 'Power Gains'. This will take you to a screen showing you the Count of how many times Rolling Thunder procced. Go back to the 'Damage by Spell' screen and look at how many times you did damage with Lightning Shield....."

I couldn't seem to find the damage done from Lightning Sheild itself. Maybe you could pass me link to it from your logs? As I can't find anything on mine.

[Deleted]

Nice Thread Undefetter. I found the WoL section especially useful.

The only part that I got a bit stuck on was:

..."Fulmination - How many casts did you do? Go too the 'Buffs Gained' tab on your analysis of your own characters DPS, and click on the 'Rolling Thunder' spell under 'Power Gains'. This will take you to a screen showing you the Count of how many times Rolling Thunder procced. Go back to the 'Damage by Spell' screen and look at how many times you did damage with Lightning Shield....."

I couldn't seem to find the damage done from Lightning Sheild itself. Maybe you could pass me link to it from your logs? As I can't find anything on mine.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...8/?s=513&e=941

Under 'Damage By Spell' is Lightning Shield. Ultraxion doesn't seem to proc Lightning Shield for some reason, ie:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=5235&e=5522

from that same log.

[Ekkoeu]

That would be why ; I was also looking at my log from Heroic Ultraxxion. Is the missing 4~5 % discrepinsy in Searing Totem/Fire Ele totem due to "Heroic Will" time?

[Endus]

Nice Thread Undefetter. I found the WoL section especially useful.

The funny thing is, the same info can also be found in the FAQ, and it's been there for over a month.