Thread: Explanation as to low Enh DPS in 4.0.1

Ok, this was posted in another thread and has since been forgotten, but given that apparently 90% of people around here didn't read it and continue to call the end of the world for Enh Shamans, here it is again. For those that don't read EJ, this comes from Rouncer, one of the top Enh Shaman theorycrafters in the world (along with Levva <3).

PS - as an aside that armor DR aspect is why we are doing so badly on the meters in 4.0.1. All melee was low because the armor constant will be changing for 81+ so bosses will have less DR then they do currently but that isn't in effect now. So how low the melee specs ended up was very dependent on their ratio of physical versus magic damage. Problem is that instead of reworking the armor constant to take the Bosses DR to the new lower levels they (for whatever reason) decided to do base damage increases on the classes/specs that they thought were too low. So the buffs are uneven which has thrown us under the bus since we weren't horrible looking initially since we are only about 50% physical so we didn't get any buffs but still our physical is lagging behind because we didn't get any buffs.

For anyone who is not 100% sure what that means, this essentially means all boss armour values in Cataclysm will be lower than they currently are on live. Now, the reason Blizzard buffed seemingly every melee class except Enh Shaman, was the fact we do 50% magic damage and therefore did not look quite so bad compared to other melee classes (Warriors losing 10k DPS, etc). Yes, some classes/specs now might be considered 'OP' compared to us now, but this is all being balanced out in Beta for level 85. If your biggest complaints are the gaps in the rotation, then this is a separate issue, but personally I find it refreshing not being GCD capped (then again I'm a raid leader so maybe more appreciative of gaps than others).

It would be nice if the above information is not forgotten within the hour and we could see a stop to the "OMFG ENH SHAMAN ARE DEAD RE-ROLL" threads.

Originally Posted by Mordenrox

Enhancement in beta isn't that good compared to other classes.

Why they buffed all melees when they could nerf bosses armor? Wouldn't it be fair if its just armor DR problem?

That is a question for Blizzard my good man! A better approach, in my opinion, would have been to tweak boss armour on Live, however none of us have any idea on what that may have caused.

I'm enjoying Enhancement in Beta mind you though, especially in PvP, which I am genuinely suprised about.

Ret was not performing as well and Enhancement, prior to the buffs they received. Warriors were even worse off, with our Shadowmourne BiS Fury Warrior doing ~3k DPS less on every fight in ICC than myself. The issue is they are now above us again, but it is not that Blizzard have purposefully ignored us, as many people here imagine.

@Mordenrox - I haven't had a chance to raid since their tweaks, will see in the coming reset.

ok I su and I hope it will be all fine in 2 months (85 lvl) though I haven't seen solid facts that will balance our dps with the rest of dps classes

For anyone who is not 100% sure what that means, this essentially means all boss armour values in Cataclysm will be lower than they currently are on live. Now, the reason Blizzard buffed seemingly every melee class except Enh Shaman, was the fact we do 50% magic damage and therefore did not look quite so bad compared to other melee classes (Warriors losing 10k DPS, etc).

this will benefit the others aswell so if they are ahead of us now they will be ahead of us then. Explain it better so we less intelligent primitive being can understand it plz.

BUT if it's not nice in cata, I am going to visit you Lylz and steal all ur food supplies, cakes and pies just to make me feel better. I will even have you buy me a cold beer
/qq end

(ps. get over with qqs and such. It's not qq, it's more of what the hell is going on. Action = reaction. I get a punch I give a punch. What did u expect? Sit back and enjoy? That's for healers
(ps2. and tbh I will express my opinion however I like as long as it does not offend anyone. If you think it's qq, then don't bother)

I did a raid after the hotfix patch, also a small test right after the patch wednessday and rets were not on par with us so far i've seen.

But yes the classes that got buffed or hotfixed like some like to call it, especially ferals and retribution paladins made me go "w.t.f".

As i mentioned before elsewhere if we compare the ratios pre and post patch 4, the sum of all physical damage dealing abilities (in procentages) is now equal to what we used to get from windfury and white melee hits alone.

The only fight yesterday night where i hit more then 14K+ was BQL where i hit 16K dps, even with having to move reguarly i was bitten there second i believe, that's still down from like i believe my top 18-20K or so when i was bitten there first once.

Everything else going over the log i'm fairly ashamed to be honest, going to ignore council as i had to go afk then mid-fight.

BQL, 8th, 16658.2 DPS. Beaten by several classes that weren't bitten.
Festergut, 13th, 13090.5 DPS. only managed to beat 2 OS's and 1 new Hunter recruit.
Rotface, only 10K but ignoring as vile gas in melee wiped out pretty much all melee, can assume otherwise similair numbers as festergut.
PP, 10,6k, sigh.

General conclusion, unless it's an OS or a fresh person in the raid team, while i don't know where hunters stand now my dps is shit, going over the logs now i do see i'm still stuck in old habits of responding too fast and spammy aswel as using flame shock too often.
So there are things i personally can do to improve my dps somewhat more, but i don't see myself gaining more then 1K dps let alone if it even is 1K.

Now taking a deeper look into how my damage was split up for that using the festergut fight.
Melee (white hits) from making up more then 40% of my damage to 22,5%, Stormstrike saw a small increase.
Windfury lost about a percentage.
Lightning bolt stayed about the same surprisingly enough, would've assumed it to be less procs now,
With the exception of Lava lash the ratios stayed more or less the same. 1-2% difference so my conclusion is our major damage loss does not come from damage lost on abilities but damage lost on white swings, but this could indicate why they didn't act as we didn't lose a lot of damage on abilities purely on white swings and how can they really fix that without changing the armor DR of all bosses in WoTLK?

I could be totally wrong on this and feel free to correct me if your findings are completely different,