[Enhance] - having issues in 5.2

[TecPontificates]

Hey guys-

I'm looking for a little advice here. Over the last couple of weeks I've been experimenting with talent combinations, reforges, etc, and no matter what I choose, I can't seem to produce numbers I'm satisfied with. I've been playing Enhance since Wrath and I frequently ranked during T14 progression including a dozen top 10s or so with far from BiS gear (no heroic weapons). So, I know what I'm doing, or at least, I did.

http://www.wow-heroes.com/character/...ing/tecknique/

For T12 normals I used AS and glyphed PE for the most part, and I did okay but nowhere near what I could do (relative to the rest of the guild and to the world via ranks) just a few weeks ago. I've tried EM but it seems like that option only comes on top when the fight timing lines up in such a way that I can get a full 20 seconds every single time, and seems to kind of suck with the way the other CDs line up e.g., 2nd EM comes up when no other CDs are available and is thus not that great of a CD. I found the 10% haste all the time seemed to be better, but I don't know.

My gear is currently a hodgepodge of the crappy pieces which I took in desperation since our guild has seen only a handful of mail pieces lately, and I passed early on on tier gear because the T14 4pc was so much better compared to the 4pcs of the other specs. The T15 bonuses don't seem particularly enchanting, but they sim BiS, so last night I passed on two heroic thunderforged pieces on Jinrokh (the legs and the shoulders) because the sims show T15 4pc producing BiS numbers and I didn't want to take a 541 and then replace it with a 522 to pick up a 2pc set bonus.

Now we're doing Horridon heroic progression, and the fight's making me want to quit the game. I am usually 30k off of what I see from parses that have killed the boss. I know there's a big burn phase with increased damage (which we haven't reached yet), but what is frustrating me is that I'm usually 12th or lower in our 25m, and I'm used to being top 5, even on add pad fights. I went back to UF/EoTE for the CL/Fire Nova action on the big add packs, but it's still not producing for me. I can't seem to get higher than about 105, 110 by the last gate. Usually around 100. Part of the problem is that our tank is constantly dragging adds all over the place and it's very hard to chase down the target I just flame shocked, but part of it feels like the spec just sucks. Or I do. I don't know.

My item level is 518 but it got there mostly with sub-optimal pieces and I'm only running the T14 2pc bonus right now. I broke my T14 4pc without replacing it with a T15 2pc just so I could boost my item level since 502/509->522 on multiple pieces seemed like a better choice.

What's your experience this tier been so far? I'd love any advice you guys can share. What spec/reforge should I be using? The top parsers appear to be all over the place but I suspect that they're swapping spec/reforge per-fight.

Tec

[Corixa]

honestly i dont like this tier as enhancement. We are also working on horridon I'm doing more damage than you overall but still bottom
we were told not to dps horridon at all if adds were up, and they weren't tank near boss at all.

Your log for reference: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...pes&boss=68476
This is mine for tonight: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-me...pes&boss=68476

I'm at 519 and running 4pc t15. I used EE/UF tonight but i am going back to EM/PE tomorrow as our aoe is shit no matter how we spec (that is in comparison to other classes).

This is our longest attempt,
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-me...s=9792&e=10523

I caught up in the end, but I'm certain i'll do more if i was spec'd into EM/PE
Last 2 min on horridon: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-me...519&target=158

2pc t15 is probably a downgrade over 4pc t14 unless your t14 were normal or lfr version, so its probably a downgrade upgrading to non tier? unless they have good stats.

[Ryethe]

Horridon is one of our worst fights this tier for overall DPS but probably the best suited to our strengths (in terms of helping the raid). You'll never be satisfied with your overall numbers here. Our AoE appears to scale pretty horribly and we don't really use EoE anymore. EoE makes AoE serviceable but, imo, not good enough to take at the expense of single target. Multi-dotters also get to dot the boss with its juicy damage buff.

What we do bring is:
1) Very awesome target specific DPS which helps you take down the deadly adds at each door rather than padding on trash mobs(especially if you take UF),
2) A ranged interrupt (amazing for a boss like this with shit on the ground and movement)
3) A curse dispel for the final door (which is the worst debuff imo)
4) Amazing CD burst for the war god (which is one of the most dangerous parts of the fight).

All you can do is take solace in the fact that you are helping kill the boss via your utility and burst damage even if it doesn't show on the meters. If you want to show your RL something cool, show him your War God damage skada link where you pop BL, EM, Primal FE, and Ascendance. He will love you long time.

[Corixa]

I agree we bring a lot of utilities for this encounter but theres nothing listed an elemental shaman/mage can't do
without specifically saving cd's war god already die in 30s for us, and we had no issue at all with that, so i'm not sure if its beneficial for me to save all cds for that, compared to using it on the 3rd/4th door. My plan for tonight is to use some of those cds in the 3rd/4th door which we have issue with if they dont die fast enough. They wont be up for jalak but will be on horridon.

For T12 normals I used AS and glyphed PE for the most part, and I did okay but nowhere near what I could do (relative to the rest of the guild and to the world via ranks) just a few weeks ago. I've tried EM but it seems like that option only comes on top when the fight timing lines up in such a way that I can get a full 20 seconds every single time, and seems to kind of suck with the way the other CDs line up e.g., 2nd EM comes up when no other CDs are available and is thus not that great of a CD. I found the 10% haste all the time seemed to be better, but I don't know.

I dont have much issue with non AOE fights, not as good as last tier in comparison to other classes, but still acceptable. I've also tried a lot of different specs, I like EM/PE most, with the more controlled burst. I'm still using bottle/VP trinket, and find out they line up pretty well with EM.

For T12 normals I used AS and glyphed PE for the most part, and I did okay but nowhere near what I could do (relative to the rest of the guild and to the world via ranks) just a few weeks ago.

I wasn't doing as good dps as i would like, somewhat lower than the sim. So i looked at what i was doing different, and did close to sim in LFR (where you can ignore mechanics and purely do your rotation for practice). It did changed a little. Maybe its worth looking at the simcraft rotation, if you feel that you're not doing the best you could with your gear in terms of dps. It would still be different from a human playing but i've got something from it.

[Nitwit]

I'm 521 ilvl, so a bit ahead of you on gear, but not so far that there should be huge swings. I was spec'd EM/PE, and didn't bother picking up the CL or fire nova glyphs (used fire ele, unleashed lightning, and healing storm). Like you, I dropped my 4p t14 for higher ilvl offset pieces, but I'm reforged haste > mastery instead of the reverse, which you seem to be favoring.

Comparing your 8:16 attempt to the first 8:16 of our kill this week...
http://raidbots.com/comparebot/51534...800044c#damage

You did 11,553,047 to Horridon and 39,852,280 to various adds vs. my 30,577,645 to Horridon and 38,590,587 to various adds. In other words, I wasn't nearly as optimized for add damage as you were, but I still did almost the same amount to them that you did while simultaneously managing to nearly triple your boss damage.

Some things that stand out:

You had way more chain lightning than me (partially expected, based on glyph, although your CL damage is more than 2x mine so the glyph alone doesn't account for that), and I had way more everything else damage (except for lightning shield, where you also beat me, although by a much smaller margin than I'd expect considering you were using UF - guessing it's because I got off way more stormstrikes and lava lashes (+20% and +41% more hits, respectively - I also got 6 stormblasts off to your 5, so you must have missed one somewhere)). That lava lash difference is kind of important, because it means my flame shock damage completely dwarfed yours (+67.8% more total damage / +58.1% more total ticks), which also translated into a modest advantage in fire nova damage (+17.6% more total damage / +12% more total hits - guessing I didn't hit the button as frequently as you did, but I had more flame shocks rolling to make up for that).

It's worth noting that fire nova and chain lightning aren't the most important means of delivering your damage on this fight, as each gate only has 1 or 2 mob types that you really need to focus down (the rest of them are typically inconsequential, and going out of your way to damage them too much basically amounts to padding (yes, they need to die, but they're not even close to a priority)).

[shokter]

Horridon is one of our worst fights this tier for overall DPS but probably the best suited to our strengths (in terms of helping the raid). You'll never be satisfied with your overall numbers here. Our AoE appears to scale pretty horribly and we don't really use EoE anymore. EoE makes AoE serviceable but, imo, not good enough to take at the expense of single target. Multi-dotters also get to dot the boss with its juicy damage buff.

What we do bring is:
1) Very awesome target specific DPS which helps you take down the deadly adds at each door rather than padding on trash mobs(especially if you take UF),
2) A ranged interrupt (amazing for a boss like this with shit on the ground and movement)
3) A curse dispel for the final door (which is the worst debuff imo)
4) Amazing CD burst for the war god (which is one of the most dangerous parts of the fight).

All you can do is take solace in the fact that you are helping kill the boss via your utility and burst damage even if it doesn't show on the meters. If you want to show your RL something cool, show him your War God damage skada link where you pop BL, EM, Primal FE, and Ascendance. He will love you long time.

While I am still on Normal modes I think the above advice rings very true (especially if you are in 10 mode). I am used to topping the charts for my group, however I struggled quite a bit with Horridon (although I had crept near to top by the ends of our kills my aoe door dps is lacking). The first point above is very, very important. When we were struggling through the fight and poring through logs my overall dps was never near top for doors , however my damage done to the highest priority target for each door was no1 usually). In addition the utility of 5MW HR, Earth Ele for 3rd door, interrupts (so so key for this fight, and people are not always able to be in melee range when the interrupts need to happen) and the decurse on Amani door cannot be overlooked (at least in 10man these things may not be present in abundance).

I understand that RL (and even ourselves) sometimes just look for damage done when a kill is not forthcoming, but these other things cannot be overlooked. In addition, when we were struggling (again..I only kill normal so far but I do think many of the challenges for Enh on this fight exist in both modes) I made the conscious decision to stop focusing on my shortfalls on the fight, rather focus on what I could do and do it very well. It does suck when the tanks are dragging the adds all over and you can't quite get your aoe going because of add deaths, or awkward spawn times, or that you had to target swap before your LL was back up tp spread your shock...but focus on your strengths.

[TecPontificates]

Purge-

Nice to see you on these forums. I played with a lot of the guys from Dread when they first started on Stormreaver.

I'd be curious to see what your Horridon kill actually looked like because our wipes look like giant clusterfucks. Our tank runs the adds all over the place and drags them through all the floor hazards so he can pick up each new one that spawns. I feel like I spend half the fight chasing the adds, avoiding shit, and not meleeing, so I definitely was not capitalizing on UF as much as I should.

We never got past the add phase on these wipes so my time on Horridon was basically whatever I could do on him before the first door and maybe 10 seconds between door 2 and 3. If that 8:16 of your parse was only add phases, how did you find time to do 40m damage to Horridon? Did you just target the important adds (e.g., venom priests) and then switch back on the boss and let the multidotters deal with the trash mobs?

I reforged mastery while experimenting with EOE/UF. I typically reforge haste.

Do you go EM/PE on every encounter? If not, which combos do you use for which bosses? My single target damage just doesn't seem to be keeping up with other specs that are reliant on 3 minute CDs. If the fight ends before another round of my big CDs, my overall damage is just much lower than other specs that are less reliant on them. We start out on top for the first 2, 2.5 minutes of the fight and then just start our descent. It's not very satisfying.

[Nitwit]

I'd be curious to see what your Horridon kill actually looked like because our wipes look like giant clusterfucks. Our tank runs the adds all over the place and drags them through all the floor hazards so he can pick up each new one that spawns. I feel like I spend half the fight chasing the adds, avoiding shit, and not meleeing, so I definitely was not capitalizing on UF as much as I should.

Yeah, basically it doesn't look anything like what you described. Add movement is controlled, the adds go to the tank instead of the other way around, and we only move in order to get out of the bad stuff (sand/poison/frozen orbs/totems).

We never got past the add phase on these wipes so my time on Horridon was basically whatever I could do on him before the first door and maybe 10 seconds between door 2 and 3. If that 8:16 of your parse was only add phases, how did you find time to do 40m damage to Horridon? Did you just target the important adds (e.g., venom priests) and then switch back on the boss and let the multidotters deal with the trash mobs?

That's all add phase (can tell because I haven't done any damage to the war god, yet). And yes, after the key mobs from each gate are dead, there is essentially no reason for us to stay on the mobs that aren't a threat to the raid. Since those key mobs continually spawn throughout each gate, this typically means there's time for us to get on the boss in between each gate.

I reforged mastery while experimenting with EOE/UF. I typically reforge haste.

Do you go EM/PE on every encounter? If not, which combos do you use for which bosses? My single target damage just doesn't seem to be keeping up with other specs that are reliant on 3 minute CDs. If the fight ends before another round of my big CDs, my overall damage is just much lower than other specs that are less reliant on them. We start out on top for the first 2, 2.5 minutes of the fight and then just start our descent. It's not very satisfying.

No to EM/PE for every encounter - I just figured we'd have a good enough control over the adds this week that I don't need to spec optimally for them anymore. Last week I was AS/UF with a heavier emphasis on mastery. During the same period (first 8:16 of the encounter), I did slightly more damage as a result (32.8 million damage to Horridon / 40.2 million damage done to adds)

[Razecog]

Wait you what? With those weapons you should be miles ahead. IDK what you're doing wrong. =|

[Thanntos]

No to EM/PE for every encounter - I just figured we'd have a good enough control over the adds this week that I don't need to spec optimally for them anymore. Last week I was AS/UF with a heavier emphasis on mastery. During the same period (first 8:16 of the encounter), I did slightly more damage as a result (32.8 million damage to Horridon / 40.2 million damage done to adds)

Hey Purge, I've seen a lot of conflicting reports as to figh-to-fight specing, and would like to get your take on it, as it seems you are one of the only top shamans I haven't seen post about that.

On TotemSpot and Wow Shaman Forums Chillbros and Ryethe had gone over some brainstorming about it, and I have been talking with Chillbros whenever I can. Seems like for Chills gear lvl, he said he is using EM/PE + Glyph on every fight. Is this what it will come to for all of us as we gear up? Or what kind of specs have you been running on each fight normal and heroic?

As to not derail this thread for my own questions, would be awesome if you could look at those posts on WoW forums and Totemspot

[Nitwit]

EM/PE with fire elemental glyph eventually takes over as the best talent combination, both for burst and for theoretical sustained patchwerk dps (at least in the average of cases done in the default SimC fight lengths). That's a little deceptive, though, because a lot of your damage is packed in those 3 minute bursts, and sometimes you need to bring a lot of damage to the table more often than once per 3 minutes. In those cases, AS/PE (no glyph) might be better - or, if you really need consistent DPS pressure - AS/UF.

(Somewhat related) Herbalism is very much so our strongest profession right now - being worth about as much as any other 2 professions combined (conditional upon the opening burst being valuable for a given fight). With the EM/PE + glyphed fire ele setup, it's actually a dps gain to only use lifeblood every 3 minutes (instead of on c/d, which is 2 mins).

[theCOLORtwelve]

513 ilevel, 2pc t15 - pulling nothing below 110k on any fight that we've killed and/or are progressing on (we've made it to Durumu).

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...rogen/advanced

[TecPontificates]

Wait you what? With those weapons you should be miles ahead. IDK what you're doing wrong. =|

Replacing a 496 (upgraded 2x) sha touched in my offhand is actually a minor damage loss, even after putting a prismatic 160agil in the 522. Very minor. I didn't switch back the claw because I'd feel like a dufus taking a 522 1h from a windwalker and dropping 3k on it for a prismatic socket and then disenchanting it. The difference is < 100.

[Embermoon]

513 ilevel, 2pc t15 - pulling nothing below 110k on any fight that we've killed and/or are progressing on (we've made it to Durumu).

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...rogen/advanced

I'm guessing the T15 2-pc (which Tec doesn't have) is helping you a great deal. If you could post a parse link, I'd love to take a look at it.

Also, I get why you're ignoring the +120 hit rating socket bonus, on your belt, but why would you ignore the +120 agility socket bonus, on your legs? Was that an oversight, by chance? Or, did you mean to add a 2nd 320 Agi in that spot? I'd put the 2nd 320 Agi gem in your gloves, and an Agi/Haste in the yellow socket on the legs.

[Ryethe]

I agree we bring a lot of utilities for this encounter but theres nothing listed an elemental shaman/mage can't do
without specifically saving cd's war god already die in 30s for us, and we had no issue at all with that, so i'm not sure if its beneficial for me to save all cds for that, compared to using it on the 3rd/4th door. My plan for tonight is to use some of those cds in the 3rd/4th door which we have issue with if they dont die fast enough. They wont be up for jalak but will be on horridon.

Mainly talking about HM but for us 5 mins definitely were up for Jalak.

Top address some other points:
Our Jalak burst and single add burst is better than ele
Ele's cleave is better, but as noted that isn't a huge advantage on this fight since you will have short periods of time with 2 priority adds up.
Mage's interrupts are on a longer CD.

I agree that that doesn't make us a no brainer go to over mages and eles but it does give us some nice pluses that don't make it a real negative to slot us.

[Thanntos]

EM/PE with fire elemental glyph eventually takes over as the best talent combination, both for burst and for theoretical sustained patchwerk dps (at least in the average of cases done in the default SimC fight lengths). That's a little deceptive, though, because a lot of your damage is packed in those 3 minute bursts, and sometimes you need to bring a lot of damage to the table more often than once per 3 minutes. In those cases, AS/PE (no glyph) might be better - or, if you really need consistent DPS pressure - AS/UF.

Yea I figured with what Chill was saying and his theory's and my own testing/sims that EM/PE Glyphed with a heavier focus on haste reforging was going to be the way to go for enhance this tier, or in other words the end game 'cookie cutter spec' as EoE/UF was last tier. For what you're saying about AS/UF and AS/PE, what specific fights do you think this with benefit us most on, not necessarily on normal modes anymore, but mainly heroics.
With what you and Ryethe have described, I figure fights like Council might be a great fight for that type of sustained high dmg. The other heroics I don't know too much about yet to make any other assumptions, as my guild is just now working on Horridon/Tortos.

[Corixa]

Mainly talking about HM but for us 5 mins definitely were up for Jalak.

We haven't killed horridon HM yet but we've been on it for 2 nights, looking at our best attempts the timeline goes
first door - 00:37
second door - 02:30
third door - 04:25
Fourth door - 06:07
Jalak - 08:21
Jalak Dead - 08:55
Enrage - 12:00

Looking at that, the only way to have 5min up for jalak is to save if till 8:21 or so, but then you'll missed a 3rd cast. If i use it at the 4th door, i can use it again on horridon at around 11:00. How long into the fight did Jalak come down for you? For us, because we've hitting enrage I feel that putting major cds on horridon with 200% buff will benefit more esp we didn't have issues with Jalak at all.

Top address some other points:
Our Jalak burst and single add burst is better than ele
Ele's cleave is better, but as noted that isn't a huge advantage on this fight since you will have short periods of time with 2 priority adds up.
Mage's interrupts are on a longer CD.

I agree that that doesn't make us a no brainer go to over mages and eles but it does give us some nice pluses that don't make it a real negative to slot us.

I agree on these. Unfortunately I didn't look at way on logs as we do have a lot of priority adds up most of the time. I know this is where we need to improve but people were focusing a lot on meters and aoeing.

[Orrion]

Personally I'm disliking 5.2 because I just hate some of our talents. I hate Ancestral Swiftness because it's just passive Haste, nothing interesting. I hate Elemental Blast because it makes the rotation hell and needing to cast a cast-time spell every 12 seconds is just lame as melee. Lightning Bolt's fine, EB just pushes that scenario over the edge for me. And I hate Primal Elementalist because I don't like having so much damage rolled into a 5 minute CD. I liked Echo because the proc rate was good enough to notice it a lot and I liked Unleashed Fury because I saw all the Lightning Shield damage. Talents like that make dpsing more interesting and entertaining. Passives like AS or hit-and-forget buttons like Primal Elementalist don't.

We'll begin to look better (at least on Normal modes) on a lot of fights because as people gear up they'll kill bosses quicker, which means our uptime on PE is a larger % of of the fight and makes our numbers inflate.

We'll never look good on fights like Horridon, Megaera, or Council though. Cleave and multi-dot target fights just aren't things Enhancement is good at.

Most fights this tier have gone like this:

1) The Pull And The First Minute - Top the charts.

2) Spend the next 4 minutes slowly sinking.

3) Spent the 5th minute climbing back up a few spots.

4) End the fight slowly sinking again.