Enh - Log analysis

[Deleted]

Now that I've finally spent enough posts arguing with idiots who don't understand basic statistics to post a link, I'd appreciate it if a high-end enh player could critique a log of the closest thing I could get to a patchwerk kill. I've been playing enhancement for about a week now and I feel I'm at a point where I can meaningfully act on advice. I was 550 ilvl when this was recorded, but that's understated due to my weapon, trinket(s) and cloak.

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/6nN7kyFG29HXJVgz
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...tning/advanced

Mistakes that I'm aware of are a few basic priority fumbles from lack of experience and forgetting to use Rocky. Specific points I'd like advice on, on top of everything anyone catches out, are as follows:

Should I be using flame shock in place of earth shock with an unleash flame up even if flame shock does not need to be refreshed until the next unleash?

Is it worth delaying wolves for a guaranteed proc or does their long duration mean they're safe to just yolo in hope your trinket cooperating?

Is the 1:1 mastery:haste build worth pursuing with only a 540 AoC? If not, at what point would it be worth it and does haste ever exceed mastery in value?

[Kelonaar]

Hey there Monkey,
To answer your questions:

1. In order to maximize your DPS, you want to snapshot your flame shocks with not only unleash flame, but also trinkets procs, dancing steel procs, and pretty much any other short duration buff that would increase it's damage. So more specifically, the only times you want to use flame shock>earth shock is when it'll put a higher damage dot up, it's about to fall off, you're about to have a long period of aoe that the current flame shock won't stay up long enough for, or to just update the dot with an equally empowered FS since FS+UF buff I believe does slightly more damage than an average earth shock and a longer duration can't hurt. Otherwise, shock them in the face with some earth.

2. Use wolves on CD

3. Never heard of the "1:1 mastery:haste" build but as far as stats are concerned: For single target, haste and mastery come fairly close. Haste because it affects MW generation, melee swings, and the burst from your fire ele and probably other stuff I'm forgetting. But pretty much all enhance shamans stack mastery as hard as possible>haste because mastery is good for single target but also affects all of your AoE damage. If you're looking for non-second hand reasoning behind it, Purge posted a bunch of info on Totemspot for 5.4, but basically mastery is king.

I just got home from work so I'm feeling too lazy to check out logs in depth, but those few things should be enough to get you started on improving as enhance.

[Deleted]

Sweet, thanks. That was pretty useful. I'll post any further questions that come up in this thread for now.

[Pobar]

Building on the earlier answers, I have some additional advice:

1. Snapshotting Flame Shock optimally will contribute significant dps, even for enhancement, but frankly it's a pain in the ass as there are so many procs/actives affecting the relative strength of the DoT. I'd highly recommend downloading the Affdots addon with the shaman extension, it'll track the power of a potentially refreshed dot against the one currently active to make snapshotting far simpler. As a bonus you can also set it up to track maelstrom procs to help manage those which is handy as well.

2. Wolves contribute such shit dps that you're frankly best off using them on cd (If you absolutely need them in the thick of progression you can even save them as a defensive if you glyph them, that's how shit they are). That said, the same doesn't hold true for Fire Elemental Totem. You want to get as many self buffs/procs/actives up as possible before you pop him. Your armory shows you using the glyph for Fire Elemental Totem, and admittedly it has some situational uses, which perhaps is what you put it on for, but generally you want Fire Elemental Totem unglyphed so that you can essentially snapshot him on the initial pull with Trinkets/Racial/EM/Lust etc so that he can beat on shit for a full minute under the influence of those buffs (this holds especially true with the use of Primal Elementalist). Also as the ilvl on your Assurance increases, and the cooldowns of the elemental totems decreases, the Fire Elemental Totem will have an adverse effect on Earth Elemental Totem's uptime, which, despite the earth totem not offering any sizable contribution, still feels bad.

3. As for stats, most sources will say either mastery>haste or mastery=haste. I tend to gem and reforge for mastery, but I would reference Purge's theorycrafting like the above poster mentioned. I vaguely remember a post saying his best sims were with mastery as close to haste as possible, but then his armory is blatantly mastery>haste. If you want the absolute correct answer just sim your character with the understanding that item level, replacing/upgrading that Assurance is going to affect your sims.

Other Miscellaneous Advice:

-Take Elemental Mastery (referenced as EM above) over Ancestral Swiftness. EM will damn near always outperform AS with PE because of how Ascendance and Fire Elemental work, and by the time you reach your ilvl, EM/PE should really be the best build for almost every fight (exceptions being arguably Galakras, maybe Spoils).

-Your mastery has your hit and expertise very high, consider using askmrrobot if you aren't already. I find it regularly giving me expertise/hit gems and enchants to get the values closest to cap with the least crit possible.

-I don't know how hard you're trying to go on 5.4 progression, 12 months or whatever in, with the new expansion on the way as an enhancement dps, BUT tauren is a terrible dps race and will continue to suck for enhancement in WoD as their dps bonus will involve crit IIRC. My shaman used to be a cow, and i hate being an orc but such is the min max life. Obviously if you aren't pushing hardcore progression this is not an issue of any pertinence.

-The lightning shield glyph is really damn good.

I apologize in advance for errors in formatting, spelling, grammar, syntax etc. I'm sleepy, and when i make posts like this it tends to end up like vomit on a page. Hope you found something in there useful!

[Deleted]

With the exception of lightning shield, since I wasn't aware of it working against most raid mechanics, I normally take optimal glyphs. I had fire ele glyphed for scenarios earlier but I almost never take it in raids.

Rest of the advice is very much appreciated. I'll give EM a shot but I won't be using robot any time soon. I'm not a huge fan of regemming/forging everything every time I get an upgrade just to squeeze out an extra 150-200 secondary stats from my entire set.

[Deleted]

Building on the earlier answers, I have some additional advice:


2. but generally you want Fire Elemental Totem unglyphed so that you can essentially snapshot him on the initial pull with Trinkets/Racial/EM/Lust etc so that he can beat on shit for a full minute under the influence of those buffs (this holds especially true with the use of Primal Elementalist).

Maybe I have read this part of the post wrong, but Fire Ele does not snapshot stats (anymore). Rather, it scales dynamically with your buffs as you gain or lose them. Where I may have misinterpreted the post is with the "essentially snapshot" part. I agree it's always good to pop your ele when your procs and lust are up, but those will only impact your elemental for the duration of the buff(s), and not the full minute of your elemental.

This is likely what you meant, but just worth clarifying for the OP as a new player to the spec

[Deleted]

With the exception of lightning shield, since I wasn't aware of it working against most raid mechanics, I normally take optimal glyphs. I had fire ele glyphed for scenarios earlier but I almost never take it in raids.

If you manage to get a HC assurance trinket, glyphing fire ele is the way to go. (it lines up with EM every time if you wait a few seconds)

[shammypie]

Maybe I have read this part of the post wrong, but Fire Ele does not snapshot stats (anymore). Rather, it scales dynamically with your buffs as you gain or lose them. Where I may have misinterpreted the post is with the "essentially snapshot" part. I agree it's always good to pop your ele when your procs and lust are up, but those will only impact your elemental for the duration of the buff(s), and not the full minute of your elemental.

This is likely what you meant, but just worth clarifying for the OP as a new player to the spec

i was under the same impression as well also for flame shock minus the UE buff.

[evansenter]

Pets haven't snapshotted for a long time.