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[Archived] Elemental Shaman 5.4

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Guest Bogdan89

In 5.4 the Unleased Fury talent got significantly buffed, and the damage Lightning Bolt deals also got buffed - and yet you still rank UF as a non-viable talent for single target dps.

 

To me it seems that the UF part of this guide did not get a proper 5.4 update.

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In 5.4 the Unleased Fury talent got significantly buffed, and the damage Lightning Bolt deals also got buffed - and yet you still rank UF as a non-viable talent for single target dps.

 

To me it seems that the UF part of this guide did not get a proper 5.4 update.

These are the words of Leeds, our reviewer:

With the changes to it 'Unleashed Fury' became a viable endgame talent. The better your gear becomes the less effective is the stat gain of your elemental blast and the better becomes your unleashed fury as it ist a +X%dmg modifier. Well timed and on a singletarget fight this is very likely the best talent. (With endgame gear i mean ~570)

The guide says exactly that.

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Guest Renai

Hey guys!
Why there is no information about haste breakpoints?
for Flame Shock for example

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Hey guys!

Why there is no information about haste breakpoints?

for Flame Shock for example

 

Because they're not a significant enough DPS boost. AFAIK Haste is such a good stat for Elemental that when you have it, you just stack it anyway.

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Guest Guest

Okay Mastery above Haste may be good in slight Movement Fights, BUT in Heavy Movement Haste may be the better way.

I think Thok, The Siegecrafter (the ... Line) and the Paragons have big Movement parts, so I for my self decided to go back on Haste.

In a Test Haste got me better DPS in this Bosses than Mastery. 

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Guest St0nemender

SimCraft with my Shaman gave  int:crit:haste:mastery - 1 : 0.44 : 0.51 : 0.48

 

Which means at the current raid tier haste is better than mastery anyway.

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http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/twisting-nether/Leeds/advanced

Leeds from Method seems to disagree about Haste being better than Mastery.

SimCraft with my Shaman gave  int:crit:haste:mastery - 1 : 0.44 : 0.51 : 0.48

 

Which means at the current raid tier haste is better than mastery anyway.

Could I please have a link to your armory?

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Guest msquel

If you would please check into the mouseover description of 

Stone Bulwark Totemhttp://www.wowhead.com/spell=108270#comments

the link to WowDB must be bad, or the info therein is bad (you read an error message when you mouseover the Stone Bulwark Totem's icon).  

 

Even if that language is not specifically in your guide, as it is simply a link to the bad info on WowDB, you might want to at least write a tiny description on the Stone Bulwark Totem, as description is a little skimpy.  Yes it is an Absorb but according to the minimal research I've done on Wowhead, the Absorb is not valuable, despite an increase (now 10% of Shaman's health) because the better Earth totem might be Earthgrab.  Also there is a problem with the Stone Bulwark's ability to be macroed.  I don't use it, so there are better people than me out there to write about it but I wanted you to be aware of the bad info which you'll see if you just hover over the SBT's icon.

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If you would please check into the mouseover description of 

Stone Bulwark Totemhttp://www.wowhead.com/spell=108270#comments
the link to WowDB must be bad, or the info therein is bad (you read an error message when you mouseover the Stone Bulwark Totem's icon).  

 

Even if that language is not specifically in your guide, as it is simply a link to the bad info on WowDB, you might want to at least write a tiny description on the Stone Bulwark Totem, as description is a little skimpy.  Yes it is an Absorb but according to the minimal research I've done on Wowhead, the Absorb is not valuable, despite an increase (now 10% of Shaman's health) because the better Earth totem might be Earthgrab.  Also there is a problem with the Stone Bulwark's ability to be macroed.  I don't use it, so there are better people than me out there to write about it but I wanted you to be aware of the bad info which you'll see if you just hover over the SBT's icon.

Surely, they will fix it shortly smile.png

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Guest Tickletotem

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/twisting-nether/Leeds/advanced

Leeds from Method seems to disagree about Haste being better than Mastery.

 

Just FYI, giving people advice based on Leeds' armory is unhelpful and misleading. Most people will never be in world first raids like Leeds, and he has never followed the strictly optimal build (for example, he went full mastery in ToT, even though haste technically won because of rppm). Haste vs. mastery for elemental is entirely gear and fight dependent, so the only real answer is to sim yourself, like that person did - his weights show haste ahead, so that's what he should do. 

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Just FYI, giving people advice based on Leeds' armory is unhelpful and misleading. Most people will never be in world first raids like Leeds, and he has never followed the strictly optimal build (for example, he went full mastery in ToT, even though haste technically won because of rppm). Haste vs. mastery for elemental is entirely gear and fight dependent, so the only real answer is to sim yourself, like that person did - his weights show haste ahead, so that's what he should do. 

 

I want to hug you right now - this is what we tell people very often.

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Guest Wellwow

As someone who is trying to help an elemental shaman improve performance but doesn't know the class well myself, I REALLY wish the stats section said more about the debate between haste and mastery. I usually trust Icy Veins to have good information, so when the section says Mastery is better than Haste, without any caveats like "they are close in value" or "there may be haste breakpoints to pay attention to", I had my friend go mastery heavy. Since the results weren't as good as we expected, we did more digging and found, like posters on this forum are saying, mastery isn't always better than haste. That should be explicitly stated there; one shouldn't need to go to the forums to get the full information.

 

Regarding haste breakpoints, it seems that they aren't important goals like for some classes but if a player is near getting an extra tick, they should get it. For instance, if my friend is at 34.6% haste, she should get to 34.99% so she gets an extra tick on flame shock for lava surge. I think that should also be mentioned in that section.

 

I'm used to Noxxic being overly simplistic so I come, and direct people to, Icy Veins for more indepth explanations. I think that is missing in this case.

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Guest Tickletotem

Few content comments:

"wow_icon_shaman_talent_unleashedfury.jpg Unleashed Fury is currently not performing as well as any of the other two talents and should never be used. That said, it scales very well with gear and will be the talent of choice for single-target fights at Tier 16 Heroic gear levels." 
 
That's a bit confusing and misleading. UF is performing extremely well in T16H gear, but it's not  bad in lower gear either since it was buffed in 5.4. The first sentence gives people the impression they should never use it, which is just simply not true.  
 
On top of that, having said even that it performs at T16H levels, it is never once mentioned in the rotation section, aside from the flame shock/lava burst trick. You mention using EB after LvB on single target, but don't say when to use UE if you have UF talented (the correct answer being before LvB).
 
You completely neglect any discussion of NG in tier 1 - there are definitely moments where it shines, as it heals you for the increased health.
 
I would argue that Projection is the default choice in tier 3, particularly any time your raid is spread, as projecting Stormlash is important. You only mention its use for magma/searing, which obviously are times you'd want to use it, but projecting Stormlash or even Healing Tide when the raid is spread is a pretty big deal, and will often be more important on more fights than Call of the Elements.
 
You mention an opener in other class guides, but not for ele. Our opener is typically going to be:

  • 2-3 seconds before the pull, prepot and drop fire ele.
  • 1-2 seconds before the pull, Lightning Bolt or EB if talented into it
  • UE as the pull happens to proc your meta gem and buff flame shock (works fine without the meta too, but is more important with it)
  • Flame Shock (can also do the lava burst/FS trick to buff both)
  • Lava Burst
  • Ascendance
  • Hero/bloodlust and Stormlash are also in there depending on when your raid uses them. If it's your job to stormlash first, it is technically better for your personal dps to drop it immediately prior to Ascendance, but your raid may prefer you drop it as the pull happens. 

You should probably discuss glyphing/not glyphing Chain Lightning and Thunderstorm in your multi-target rotation section. You don't want CL glyphed at <=3 targets, but you do above that. You also want to make sure you're not knocking back targets with Thunderstorm if you're using it when adds need to stay together.

 

The mastery and haste discussion in stat priorities could use some more fleshing out. Leeds likes mastery, which is why he would have approved that, but it's not as simple as mastery > haste. Really, it's more mastery = haste, with mastery > haste for cleave, and haste > mastery for single target. Mastery > haste is the simple answer, sure, and people will do fine with it on most fights, but it's a bit misleading especially for those gearing up. For example, without the meta gem, haste is way more important than mastery, but you don't mention that at all. I had a very long discussion with AMR about this, and they have since updated their default build options accordingly. 

 

- Tickle (of Totemspot.com)

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Tickle, thank you for your contribution. As a point of note, please do not re-post comments to this thread as a guest. Guest posts must be approved before they can be viewed, and duplicate posts are frustrating. Nevertheless, the post is very useful and I thank you again. :)

 

I especially find this interesting because I've just switched my offspec to Elemental. Anyway, I will see what I can do about proposing changes to the guide internally, as a proactive alternative to waiting for the next major round of updates.

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Guest extrimity

ok i wonder about 2 things.

 

Has for stats i tried this alot on our hc raids, and i always turn out to get more out of mastery then haste.

Reason for this beeing when legendary meta gem proc's i am rly close to GCD cast's, whit mastery beeing focused.

And some fights u BL at start, whit the meta gem proc then i get 0.8 cast's.

i dont have more then 565 ilvl and i think that in higher gear this will even go more down.

 

Stats on bis items. Some of the items showed has top BiS has crit/haste on it, i mean crit is out least favored stat so i wonder why the list is like this.and tier bonus should also be considered in this bis list i think, aldo the 4 set dont provide so much dps. and the elemental that spawns moves when u move and stop casting. so BS that 4 set!!

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Stats on bis items. Some of the items showed has top BiS has crit/haste on it, i mean crit is out least favored stat so i wonder why the list is like this.and tier bonus should also be considered in this bis list i think, aldo the 4 set dont provide so much dps. and the elemental that spawns moves when u move and stop casting. so BS that 4 set!!

 

I would suggest that the Crit/Haste choice has more to do with the Haste and less to do with the Crit, but I will check this when I put together an update for the page. Thanks for your contribution! :)

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Just FYI, giving people advice based on Leeds' armory is unhelpful and misleading. Most people will never be in world first raids like Leeds, and he has never followed the strictly optimal build (for example, he went full mastery in ToT, even though haste technically won because of rppm). Haste vs. mastery for elemental is entirely gear and fight dependent, so the only real answer is to sim yourself, like that person did - his weights show haste ahead, so that's what he should do.

I still have Leeds' review from April last year when he read our guide for the first time and the stat priority he advised me to use in the guide was Mastery > Haste, which means that he did follow what was, for him, the optimal build.

The sims results from this person barely show anything, except that Intellect is vastly superior to the other 3 stats, which are all very close. SimC is a great tool for setting general trends, but one cannot simply run the tool on their character and decide that one stat is 5% better than another stat. So, having someone who has progressed through Siege of Orgrimmar at the highest level of difficulty with Mastery > Haste, without ever changing, is a pretty good indication that we are giving the right advice to people.

 

As someone who is trying to help an elemental shaman improve performance but doesn't know the class well myself, I REALLY wish the stats section said more about the debate between haste and mastery. I usually trust Icy Veins to have good information, so when the section says Mastery is better than Haste, without any caveats like "they are close in value" or "there may be haste breakpoints to pay attention to", I had my friend go mastery heavy. Since the results weren't as good as we expected, we did more digging and found, like posters on this forum are saying, mastery isn't always better than haste. That should be explicitly stated there; one shouldn't need to go to the forums to get the full information.

 

Regarding haste breakpoints, it seems that they aren't important goals like for some classes but if a player is near getting an extra tick, they should get it. For instance, if my friend is at 34.6% haste, she should get to 34.99% so she gets an extra tick on flame shock for lava surge. I think that should also be mentioned in that section.

 

I'm used to Noxxic being overly simplistic so I come, and direct people to, Icy Veins for more indepth explanations. I think that is missing in this case.

You need to realize that even if your friend gemmed and reforged all wrong, with respect to Mastery/Haste/Crit, they could still perform really well. So, if going for Mastery over Haste has not solved anything, no amount of tweaking your friend's armory is going to do anything. The problem probably lies in the way they perform their rotation or the way they behave in a raiding environment (not enough time spent casting).

 

If we do not give additional information over the stat priority, it usually means that there is nothing else of interest to say.

Few content comments:

"wow_icon_shaman_talent_unleashedfury.jpg Unleashed Fury is currently not performing as well as any of the other two talents and should never be used. That said, it scales very well with gear and will be the talent of choice for single-target fights at Tier 16 Heroic gear levels." 

 

That's a bit confusing and misleading. UF is performing extremely well in T16H gear, but it's not  bad in lower gear either since it was buffed in 5.4. The first sentence gives people the impression they should never use it, which is just simply not true.  

 

On top of that, having said even that it performs at T16H levels, it is never once mentioned in the rotation section, aside from the flame shock/lava burst trick. You mention using EB after LvB on single target, but don't say when to use UE if you have UF talented (the correct answer being before LvB).

 

You completely neglect any discussion of NG in tier 1 - there are definitely moments where it shines, as it heals you for the increased health.

 

I would argue that Projection is the default choice in tier 3, particularly any time your raid is spread, as projecting Stormlash is important. You only mention its use for magma/searing, which obviously are times you'd want to use it, but projecting Stormlash or even Healing Tide when the raid is spread is a pretty big deal, and will often be more important on more fights than Call of the Elements.

 

You mention an opener in other class guides, but not for ele. Our opener is typically going to be:

  • 2-3 seconds before the pull, prepot and drop fire ele.
  • 1-2 seconds before the pull, Lightning Bolt or EB if talented into it
  • UE as the pull happens to proc your meta gem and buff flame shock (works fine without the meta too, but is more important with it)
  • Flame Shock (can also do the lava burst/FS trick to buff both)
  • Lava Burst
  • Ascendance
  • Hero/bloodlust and Stormlash are also in there depending on when your raid uses them. If it's your job to stormlash first, it is technically better for your personal dps to drop it immediately prior to Ascendance, but your raid may prefer you drop it as the pull happens. 
You should probably discuss glyphing/not glyphing Chain Lightning and Thunderstorm in your multi-target rotation section. You don't want CL glyphed at <=3 targets, but you do above that. You also want to make sure you're not knocking back targets with Thunderstorm if you're using it when adds need to stay together.

 

The mastery and haste discussion in stat priorities could use some more fleshing out. Leeds likes mastery, which is why he would have approved that, but it's not as simple as mastery > haste. Really, it's more mastery = haste, with mastery > haste for cleave, and haste > mastery for single target. Mastery > haste is the simple answer, sure, and people will do fine with it on most fights, but it's a bit misleading especially for those gearing up. For example, without the meta gem, haste is way more important than mastery, but you don't mention that at all. I had a very long discussion with AMR about this, and they have since updated their default build options accordingly. 

 

- Tickle (of Totemspot.com)

Many thanks for the suggestions. I implemented most of what you said, except for the glyph stuff, which was already present in the talent/glyph page and the stats.

The reason why I am not going to change anything regarding stats is because I feel that the stat priority is great as it is and that there is nothing of interest to add. To me, Mastery > Haste is the simple and correct answer. The idea is to give a trend that people can trust and follow. If things change drastically between normal and heroic gear levels in a given tier, we usually mention it.

For some classes, like Destruction Warlocks, one of the secondary statistics will scale up extremely quickly for AoE damage, so we mention it because it is relevant, especially since all secondary statistics are very close in single-target situations.

In the case of Elemental Shamans, I am not convinced that we are in a similar situation. You mentioned the example of players gearing up, but I do not think that such players are going to bother with such considerations. Someone that does not have a legendary meta-gem or that did not have one when 5.4 was released is unlikely to see their performance change according to what stat priority they use, because they will not be attempting content where their DPS really matters.

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Guest Tickle

In the case of Elemental Shamans, I am not convinced that we are in a similar situation. You mentioned the example of players gearing up, but I do not think that such players are going to bother with such considerations. Someone that does not have a legendary meta-gem or that did not have one when 5.4 was released is unlikely to see their performance change according to what stat priority they use, because they will not be attempting content where their DPS really matters.

 

You must have zero understanding of who uses your guide, then. People want to know, even at lower gear levels, what is best for them. Maybe they are not progressing on fights where their dps really matters, but it is insulting to those people to suggest that they don't need to know because of that. 

 

As for Leeds using mastery all the way through progression - as a troll with berserking, it's a lot easier to do that. Haste is less valuable when you have a reliable mini-lust to line up with every Ascendance.

 

-Tickle 

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Guest Tickle

Also, you mixed up the order in the opening sequence section. Do NOT cast Bloodlust/Stormlash AFTER Ascendance, cast them BEFORE. Otherwise, you waste GCDs on them during ascendance, which would be much better used on Lava Bursts. 

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Bloodlust doesn't proc GCD, but I do aggree on using Stormlash before any DPS CD popping.

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You must have zero understanding of who uses your guide, then. People want to know, even at lower gear levels, what is best for them. Maybe they are not progressing on fights where their dps really matters, but it is insulting to those people to suggest that they don't need to know because of that. 

 

As for Leeds using mastery all the way through progression - as a troll with berserking, it's a lot easier to do that. Haste is less valuable when you have a reliable mini-lust to line up with every Ascendance.

 

-Tickle

I do have a very good understanding of who uses our guides. I think that I am very good at figuring out what people want to know and how they want the information to be presented. And I also think that this particular skill of mine is one of the main reasons why Icy Veins has been so successful (and not because we have been plagiarizing stuff, as Binkenstein would have people believe). I discussed the matter with Leeds again and we are going to leave the stat priority unchanged. I also listened to the discussion you had on Final Boss #25 about this very same issue and I think Leeds used a number of sensible arguments to explain why Mastery is better.

 

Also, you mixed up the order in the opening sequence section. Do NOT cast Bloodlust/Stormlash AFTER Ascendance, cast them BEFORE. Otherwise, you waste GCDs on them during ascendance, which would be much better used on Lava Bursts.

Thank you for clearing that up. I got confused by the last item in your list for the Opening Rotation. I thought it was the last action to perform, when it was additional explanations.

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Guest Tickle

I give up. Do what you want. I'll keep helping people who ask why their dps is worse with mastery than with haste at lower gear levels, when they don't have the meta, when they're not trolls, etc. Those things DO impact stat priorities. And Leeds did make good arguments, but he seems to forget that not everyone is in his shoes. As do you.

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I will endeavour to settle this debate in one way or another. As the Shaman expert resident at Icy Veins, I'm invested heavily in getting the appropriate and accurate information to people of all levels. I say this in both an official and personal capacity.

 

In this respect, I want to support the sentiment which Tickle has expressed. Giving accurate and tailored information to all levels is very much at the heart of what I do here at Icy Veins, and I will continue to do so.

 

However, in the interests of neutrality I think that both sides here have shown some degree of accusation. This upsets me greatly, and I think it is unconstructive. I hope to see no more of it.

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Guest Volverjaan

I can't help but wonder about critical strike being not recommended as a talent. Wouldn't critical strike be good for elemental shamans since they get elemental focus every time they land a critical strike increasing damage the shaman does by 15% for the next 2 spells.  Wouldn't this make for an alternative build at all or is placing statistics into haste more beneficial?

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Guest Tickle

I can't help but wonder about critical strike being not recommended as a talent. Wouldn't critical strike be good for elemental shamans since they get elemental focus every time they land a critical strike increasing damage the shaman does by 15% for the next 2 spells.  Wouldn't this make for an alternative build at all or is placing statistics into haste more beneficial?

 

Crit is much less useful for single target because lava burst auto crits - and lava burst is typically 30% or more of your damage. However, it is still very useful on cleave-style fights. The problem with recommending it for that, though, is that people generally don't want to regem/reforge between fights, and going full crit/mastery for cleave would mean single target would suffer a lot more.

 

Personally, I have two gear "sets" saved, which use different pieces in a few slots (not all) - for example, on heavy cleave fights I switch to a mastery/crit weapon instead of mastery/haste, swap my tier gloves for Grips of Tidal Force (which have crit on them), and swap my Kardris for Frenzied. 

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