Shaman DPS

[rjparker1 7]

I have been using Shaman (elemental specifically) since WoTLk exclusively.  Until patch 5.4 everything was great.  5.4 comes out, and all of a sudden my DPS takes a hit.  no new add-ons, nothing changed on my side.

 

Obviously something must be different.. I didn't really experiment with different builds, but I insist on using unleashed fury, because it's what I like.  Even before 5.4 was still using unleashed fury.

 

Other than that I follow the recommendations on this site for rotation and glyphs. 

 

My shaman is 550 (whoopee.. -snicker-) no set bonus but I do have the cloak.  Now I go to timeless isle, dinosaur isle, and PvP, I don't RAID.  I do however LFR for valor points and for fun.. That's when I notice my DPS is subpar.

 

I am barely able to maintain 160K DPS.. and I am lower than other similar gear, and lower geared toons.

 

What's interesting is I have a Frost Mage, I do similar things, and my burst and LFR damage is WAY higher, Simulationcraft has me at 200K (somewhere in there) on Ele Shaman.  My mage is 544, and Simulationcraft has the mage at 227K.  I am not near what SC says elemental  should be, but my mage is spot on.

 

My disparity isn't about 2 different classes, my problem is that I am FAR off my Ele Shaman SC mark, yet with my mage I can hit those simulation numbers pretty easily.  My mage is above most everyone for similar geared toons as well.

 

Has anyone else noticed the shaman has dropped in DPS at all?  I see similar posts on BNet (very few however) that complains about the same thing.

 

Just want to point out that this is the SAME computer, running the SAME wow game, only thing I do is log out, and log into the other character.  Same add-ons either way.

 

TL;DR:  elemental DPS is not achieved in game vs simulationcraft but frost mage DPS is almost dead on.  I have more experience with Shaman and notice 5.4 patch changed, but my rotation has not.  What could be the problem?  Before 5.4 everything was as it should be, after 5.4 DPS dropped significantly.

Edited March 4, 2014 by rjparker1

[SparkSovereign 61]

Can you link some logs?  Or at least your armory?  Those could help us identify the issue.

 

Without that, all I can do is guess.  If you were super-mega-haste-stacked (entirely reasonable) in 5.3, when 5.4 hit your RPPM trinkets would proc less frequently since they stopped scaling to haste.  (Cloak still scales to haste, though, since its a static effect that doesn't double-dip.)  Other than that, we got a minor nerf in 5.4, but have since been buffed.  Oh, and glyphed fire elemental de-synced from everything, that also happened.  (Unless you're an enhancement shaman with elemental mastery and HWF AoC, then it's the best thing ever.)

 

The spec overall isn't weak, I'm always fighting tooth and nail for top dps spot in my raid group, and win it with reasonable frequency.  (Any fight with AoE isn't even a contest, I burst well over a million dps on Dark Shamans as long as I don't pull aggro off the tanks, which actually happens quite a lot and is very painful.  That's without bloodlust, too.  Even without CDs just spamming chain lightning gets up to the 900k range on trash.)

 

I suspect part of the issue is that if you don't have tier bonuses, that means you don't have tier gear, which means you're probably using a lot of spirit-crit pieces (since that's basically every other piece available right now), which are awful.  However, simcraft should take that into account (likely why it thinks you'll only do 200k at 550, that's pretty low for a simcraft number).

 

The mage simcraft is... notorious... for being an extremely rough guess, due to the complicated interactions mostly revolving around Alter Time.  Check the mage forums for their suggested alternatives if you're interested.  Kinda like how Affliction warlocks can blow the pants off of simcraft numbers with decent RNG and proper snapshotting.  Elemental shaman is a lot more linear and has less wiggle room, so simcraft is a reasonably good tool for us.

 

Anyway, best guesses are:

• Poorly itemized gear.
• Delaying CDs.
• Priority screwiness.
• Idling?

That's really generic, but it's all I can do without further information.

 

Also, re: unleashed fury, that's fine, it's better at higher gear levels but it is not going to account for a 40k dps loss over Elemental Blast or Primal Elementalist.  Don't ever bother casting unleash elements without that talent, but talented it's at least competitive, if suboptimal.  You are making sure to consume Unleashed Flame with Lava Burst and not Flame Shock, right?  (Or preferably both, if you don't have a Lava Surge proc, or get one mid-cast.)  A talent (or spec, for dps pures) you know how to use is better than a theoretically better one you don't, but you do need to know how to use it.

Edited March 4, 2014 by SparkSovereign

[kitsu 55]

first lets go with armory. if you're in full spirit crit with like 20% hit chance and you have shadow pan badge trink paired with some timeless isle trink, 160k would be impressive. ilvl < itemization and your "sims" are meaningless. it's a guess tuned for current raiders only, it's got nothing to do with live gameplay.

 

even if youre in the gear that sims are in the ballpark for, its just to test theoretical gains relative to your current setup. sims are not goals and very few SoO fights provide an environment that resembles what the sim is executing. the fact taht your mage is dead on is just coincidental.