Elemental shaman dps tests.

[Kaynin]

I'm currently sitting at these stats.

1830 spellpower selfbuffed (flametongue + ToW)
240 haste rating
34% crit chance (ToW, Elemental Oath, Talents)

I've started to do unbloodlusted sequences and I've noticed one particular thing. It's important to not even waste a second on the Lava Burst CD. Also, Flame Shock Glyph is a must for maximum dps. Also, despite I made different castsequences to best fit bloodlusted sequences, my dps hardly improves when bloodlusted. Which makes me doubt usefulness of haste in general. Here's the stats I recorded:

Trash DPS macro:
Unbloodlusted, optimal Lavaburst Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt rotation on multiple targets (L70 dummies in TB)
2400 dps average

Single target DPS macro:
Lava Burst/Lightning Bolt Mana conservative rotation:
2000 dps average

Altered macro's for when bloodlusted to fit in more Lightning Bolts. (The only non-cd using filler we can use in our rotation to cope with haste)
2500 dps average on multi
2100 dps average on single

I'm not joking here. I seriously only had about a 100dps increase when using bloodlust. I'm continueing my search for possible error in macro's on my side tonight, see if I can fit the castsequences better even. But in both situations I didn't have a moments pause in the rotation and lava burst always casts right when the cd is up.

I expected bloodlust, which counts as a whopping 30% haste, to have a serious impact on my dps. This however is not the case. So truly, is there a point for us to get haste gear, when spelldamage scales our dps much much more then haste?

PS, tests based on 3 hours long of bursting through mana pools and nting figures while trying out different castsequences, trying to fit all the cd's in place to not have a single one wasted.

(Also, this was all recorded on 70 dummies, so I did not take hit into account, effective dps in heroics would probably be ~500 lower. As I only have 44 hit rating or so at the moment and 3% from talents.)

[pinotnoir]

It's sad to see how bad our dps is. People at 70 were hitting numbers similar to your test. The bloodlust issue is something I have been trying to figure out. If you put 3 LB in between the Lava burst cooldown that works great. If you are bloodlust you may need a 4th LB or your Lava cooldown wont be ready. So far I have not come up with a good way to macro it.

[Schwarz]

Any Idea what the numbers are for just lightning bolt spam?

Is there a hard cap on how low the gcd can go down? With a 30% haste boost we have to be getting close to 1 second gcd. Really sucks that bloodlusted only increases your dps by ~100.

Well with this patch magma totem is getting buffed!!!!!!!!! This could seriously be pretty good a small buff turns into a pretty big buff if you take it *4 or *5. And a big buff will be freakin huge when you take it *4 or *5.

[Kaynin]

Lb spam I'm sitting around 1300-1400 dps. Lava burst and flame shock glyph is the way to go.

My main concern is the minimal effect bloodlust has on my dps. As it is now I have 250 haste rating on gear.

It seems that roughly, 1 spellpower equals 1 dps for elemental shamans, obviously it scales and this isn't exact. But 250 more spellpower would possible give me 200-300 more dps. Whilest a 30% hste buff gives me 100dps, and thus 250 haste rating will be around 20-30 more dps which isn't noteworthy.

I'm going to test how much crit rating influence our dps tonight and see if I should just stick with crit. Which seems likely.

[Creazil]

About haste and rotations ..

http://elitistjerks.com/f79/t37210-elemental_rotations/

[pinotnoir]

Something I found while playing with target dummies in Irnoforge.

I could not get any castsequence macro to perform as well as a castrandom macro when bloodlust/heroism was up.

With Lava Burst, I'd be tempted to try:

Button 1 (opener)
/cast Flame Shock

Button 2 (main dps)
/cast Lava Burst
/castrandom lightning bolt, chain lightning

And throw in trinkets or whatever.


This is what I will prob change my macro to. I think its the only way around the 8 second cooldown and bloodlust.

[Ellay]

Hmm, does

/cast Lava Burst
/cast Lightning Bolt

work as you would think it does? whenever Lava Burst is up it will cast, else LB will go off?

[Kaynin]

Basicly, we are stuck with an 8 second cooldown on Lava Burst and we have to fit inside whatever possible.

I don't think /castrandom is good by the way. Here's a little example, fgures not exact.

Suppose these cast times are correct

Lava Burst 1.5 sec
Lightning Bolt 2.5 sec
Chain Lightning 2 sec
Earth Shock instant
GCD 1 sec

You start off with Flame Shock and Lava Burst, then the CD starts running.

FS->LvB->CL->LB->LB->LB->LvB continue rotation

Ok, so after your first LvB, you casted 2 sec cl, 2.5 sec lb, 2.5 sec lb After these three there is still 1 sec until LvB is up, the only spell you should use then should be earth shock, 1 sec gcd and then right after that, LvB is up again and you use that. Using castrandom could very well pick Lightning Bolt instead of Earth Shock and suddenly your second Lava Burst will start after 9.5 seconds, instead of the 8 second cooldown. In a long fight, your loss of dps for using LB instead of ES here, would be immense.




To run this down, ideally you want to spam LvB always right when the cd is back again, and with the other spells you have, you want to best fill the time inbetween with the casts you have. So if above figures were correct (which they arent but I'm just example while being at work. :P ) you should do CL->LB->LB->ES inbetween the first two LvB's Then you would put the max possible inbetween without delaying your next LvB spell.

Which is why I think it is essential to come up with a fixed rotation based on your haste, and a seperate rotation for when bloodlusted. Instead of using a /castrandom which might add extra delays on Lava Bursts

[Tdog]

Curious, Could you type out the different /castsequence macros you used for your initial testing? I'd like to look them over, perhaps I can offer some thoughts.


It's sad to see how bad our dps is. People at 70 were hitting numbers similar to your test. The bloodlust issue is something I have been trying to figure out. If you put 3 LB in between the Lava burst cooldown that works great. If you are bloodlust you may need a 4th LB or your Lava cooldown wont be ready. So far I have not come up with a good way to macro it. 2100-2400 dps non-raid buffed at level 70 was only being acheived by rather decked out toons. I'm assuming Kaynin is still largely in quest gear with a few normal instance drops and a few heroic drops. Which actually brings up the question Kaynin, what's your gear look like? Could I see an amory link please?

Edit: Just noticed Kaynin's sig with links to her armories. Basically a mix of quest blues and crafted blues with a instance drop and a couple of level 70 pieces. My point isn't to rag on gear (as it looks fine considering how long wotlk has been out) but to point out that it's still early on in the expac. I'm not saying shaman dps didn't take a hit but this dps range doesnt seem that awful to me. Maybe I'll have a better understanding at 80.

[Schwarz]

I was only able to achieve 2100-2400dps for short bursts by poping trinkets and bloodlust pre wotlk. And I think my gear is pretty damn good.

One thing that I would take into effect with a cast sequence macro is you are never going to start out with a flameshock. If you cast this then the mob/boss is instantly going to come running after you. I would think almost always you would start with a lightning bolt followed by a chain lightning then get into your cast sequence.

Also if you have a flameshock that is going to stay up there for ~18seconds doesn't this allow you to throw another shock in there at some point?

[pinotnoir]

Button 2 (main dps)
/cast Lava Burst
/castrandom lightning bolt, chain lightning

This does not work. All it will do is cast lava burst.

If you change it to

/castrandom lava burst
/castsequence lightning bolt, chain lightning

It works.. But still its not good. Its acting strange. We need to figure out a good way to do this. I will try the double cast after auctioneer is finished.

The double cast didnt work. It just wants to cast lava burst.

[Meathead]

Yea its Fairly stupied Jsut got lavaburst as a diffrent button and would love a macro that works together!

[Kaynin]

Curious, Could you type out the different /castsequence macros you used for your initial testing? I'd like to look them over, perhaps I can offer some thoughts.


It's sad to see how bad our dps is. People at 70 were hitting numbers similar to your test. The bloodlust issue is something I have been trying to figure out. If you put 3 LB in between the Lava burst cooldown that works great. If you are bloodlust you may need a 4th LB or your Lava cooldown wont be ready. So far I have not come up with a good way to macro it. 2100-2400 dps non-raid buffed at level 70 was only being acheived by rather decked out toons. I'm assuming Kaynin is still largely in quest gear with a few normal instance drops and a few heroic drops. Which actually brings up the question Kaynin, what's your gear look like? Could I see an amory link please?

Edit: Just noticed Kaynin's sig with links to her armories. Basically a mix of quest blues and crafted blues with a instance drop and a couple of level 70 pieces. My point isn't to rag on gear (as it looks fine considering how long wotlk has been out) but to point out that it's still early on in the expac. I'm not saying shaman dps didn't take a hit but this dps range doesnt seem that awful to me. Maybe I'll have a better understanding at 80.

Bare with me, tiny figures that might seem meaningless incoming.

I just did some tests, however this time without elemental oath. Where I was in high 1900's early 2000 with dps with those 6% extra crit, I'm not early 1900's. (I'm messsing about with talents a bit to see how much certain things do for me. :p )

My exact stats

1855 spellpower
19.07 crit on tab + lots from talents (without Elemental Oath this time however)
285 haste rating
78 hit rating

For single target dps without cl, this is the highest dps I can do with my haste according to figures, My lava bursts cast the instant they are ready again this way.

/castsequence [nomod] reset=combat Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Lightning bolt, Lightning Bolt, Earth Shock, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt

Here are the recount statistics on my last go rotating the castsequence three times.:

23 Lightning bolts (2x overload) 53% of damage done 7 crits
6 Lava Bursts 31% damage done 6 crits
3 Earth Shocks 4% damage done 0 crits
3 Flame Shocks 11% damage done 1 crit

119738 damage done, 1915 DPS

- Using a Lightning Bolt instead of an Earth Shock lowers my dps by 100-150 DPS Since my lava burst won't be ready until 1 second later, I am losing that time each rotation. Though Lb damage is higher then ES, the fact my whole rotation takes longer, so like, 15 instead of 14 seconds, I am loosing about 4% of dps time, which is about 3$ effective loss of DPS despite trading ES for LB.
- Not using anything on the place also lowers my dps roughly 100. Since Instead of ES, you just wait for LB to be reasy, and my es is aroung 100dps. The last go it was 75, but it hit 3 times and crit 0 times, with 30% crit I would have an average of 100 dps.

Should I replace the ES for a CL which has a shorter cast (about 0.5 sec faster) I do the same dps as with ES, but use more mana on single target dps.

My talents include all but elemental oath in terms of dps. I got the 6^increase of Lavaburst. I got the lavaburst glyph even.



As for ES having 20 yard range. In boss fights where I have to move, I dont use a castsequence at all and just 'make it up along the way'. whatever is ready without any castsequences. What I'm trying to accomplish with these cast sequence is to find out how to get the max out of uninterupted nukage dps. But also to learn how much of what influences our dps, so I can gear up the best way. Ideally I want to reach a certain haste that I can fit in lb's without losing time on LvB cooldown, nor have to wait for it. However with my current haste, earthshock is best. Through trial and error I will find a haste rating that would suit me however!

And like I said, my effective average heroic dps is only about 1200-1500. This due to interrupts, heals, moving, etc. So I'm not epeening here with 2k+ dps, Im just showing dummy figures and Im sure every other dps class that does the same could probably get 1000 dps more then me in similar gear. Unfortunatly!

So though 2k might seem nice to you, its the dummy dps, not the effective dps. Just for testing purposes. We are still a long way behind other classes.

[Niley]

We are making some upcoming changes to the Elemental shaman tree. Our goal was to streamline a few of the utility-based talents while giving shamans a little more damage scaling in later tiers of gear.

* Unrelenting Storm – reduced from 5 points to 3 points. Bonus is 4/8/12% of your Intellect returned as mana.
* Elemental Warding – now reduces all damage (not just Nature, Fire and Frost) taken by 2/4/6%
* Elemental Shields – this talent has been removed, since its effects were combined with Elemental Warding.
* Storm, Earth and Fire – reduced from 5 points to 3 points, but keeps around the same net benefit. In addition to current effects, also increases Wind Shock range. The damage bonus to Flame Shock has increased to 60% at 3 ranks. Storm, Earth and Fire has been moved up the tree as well.
* Shamanism – this is a new 5 point talent in the old Storm, Earth and Fire position. Your Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst gain an additional percentage of your bonus damage. We have not finalized the numbers, but it will probably be something like 10% for Lightning Bolt and 20% for Lava Burst at max ranks.


These changes will be available in the next minor content patch, and are in addition to the AE changes mentioned previously.


Life of ele shaman is about to get a bit better :D

[Kaynin]

Omg.

Shamanism – this is a new 5 point talent in the old Storm, Earth and Fire position. Your Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst gain an additional percentage of your bonus damage. We have not finalized the numbers, but it will probably be something like 10% for Lightning Bolt and 20% for Lava Burst at max ranks.


That is -exactly- what we need. PvE dps wise anyhow.

bonus damage is spellpower I assume? So with 1800 spellpower, Lightning Bolt will get 180 spellpower and Lava Burst 360 spellpower bonus? That will up our dps easily another 200-250 dps. True enough it wont be op, but we're much closer to other classes then anyhow. :)

[Ualaa]

Like BC, in the first tier of Wrath gear, we'll be close enough to others to be competitive.
With this change, we won't be the highest dps casters, but still in there with the others.
And bring a fair bit of utility to our raids, two shammies in 25-man's or one shammy in 10-man's.

The best part is built in scaling. In BC, somewhere mid T5 we slipped from upper caster dps to middle-lower caster dps.
It looked like this would repeat in Wrath.
With a scaling talent, we should remain competitive at any level of gear.

And if we don't, it's very easy for Blizzard to adjust our scaling talent rather then the base spell.
Adjusting the scaling keeps us competitive at all levels of gear.
Adjusting the base spell overpowers us at lower levels of gear and underpowers us at higher levels.