Thanks for the community and DPS rotation?

Hello all

Great site, great community you have all been a great inspiration so much so I started up a 5 man team.

Reading (and searching) these forums a lot has been invaluable yet I have a couple of questions some one might be able to help with.

My shammys in PVE (Dungeons) when I DPS are oom so fast, I use a CL,LB,LB,LB,CL rotation.
Is there a better rotation? I have a lock who finishes the fight on ¾ mana full and my shammys were oom or nearly oom after trash pulls?

FYI:- Tankadin, Shammys x 3, Lock x 1 lvl 40. (took a lock because I wasn’t sure I wanted to raid end game with my guild with a shammy)
Am I missing so much by having the Lock? Is it worth power levelling a 4th shammy to fit the mix? As I will PVP with them as well as Heroics?

Thanks In advance.

Hello

I would go 5 shaman :D nah, i guess 1 pala 4 shaman is a great pve combo.

plus, dont worry about mana issues, thats COMPLETLY normal man. @60 and past it ull notice no more problems regarding mana, as u have greater mana pool, many mp5 mail ele gear, even mp5 on weapon. i can pretty much quest around without a single mana break on my shamans, just doing LB's, and without totems.

gl leveling, thats the hard part :P

Are you keeping Mana Stream totem and Blessing of Wisdom up? I don't usually have a problem with mana on a single group pull - and usually I can handle another group of adds when I start running low on mana. I tend to use this strat on pulls so far:
- Break follow with 4x shaman just out of aggro range, throw down healing/mana stream totems. Throw down totem buff set (windfury, strength of earth, stoneskin, tremor).
- Pally w/standard AoE prot spec - SoL, BoSanc, Ret Aura, Righteous Fury, Holy Shield - rushes the mob set. Pull them toward shaman group and lay down consecrate.
- Shaman throw down 4x magma totem (this is the reason for pulling the group toward shaman, my magmas are spec'd for less threat & more damage) to start wearing down all mobs.
- After 2-3 ticks of magma totems, for consecrate to build aggro, I usually start the CL -> LB -> LB -> LB/CH/CL rotation and toss in another consecrate. Usually the fight doesn't last much longer anyway, so I tend to not go all out on my dps to conserve mana.

All 4 shaman are full ele spec, and wear mostly cloth +spell dmg gear that I've found available. Sometimes I don't bother with the buff & stream totems if I know it'll be a quick pull.. then I'll just stick with the AoE from pally & magma totems, and CL/LB as needed.

Spec can make a pretty big difference in mana usage as well. Make sure you're taking the talents that reduce mana cost, reduce cost on crit and give mana back while casting.

I believe some of your oom problems are a result of low crit - as a ele shaman you become much more mana efficient once your buffed crit is above 40%

with 3 shamans you got 9% coming from totems and 10% coming from talents so you got 19 with no gear at all! If you are having that much trouble when leveling it wouldn't be a big deal to just spam lightning bolts. But, without any haste, 3/1 rotation will maximize your dps.

On another note just general ele information that could help you in the future.

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16947-s...lemental_shop/
Learn, read, understand how the class works. Your gear choices are vastly different then other classes and you have to balance your gear accordingly.


http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hEczq0MsAotZxbjz0x

This is your basic starter spec. The 1 point in reverb can be reassigned as you like, but ultimately its just one really questionable point to spend. As you gain more hit, you can move talents around in resto to max out totemic focus, tidal focus is not useful as you should not be healing unless it is an emergency in pve. Although, this is a raid spec so some of those points could be changed around as you will be using your shamans to dps and heal.


This how you should gem/gear yourself for best possible DPS as an elemental shaman, in a nutshell.


Step 1) Cap hit, its a joke to do at only 3%, but until you do its the worth about 2 spell damage per 1 hit rating, far more then equivalent pieces.

Step 2) Crit. You want 40% raid buffed crit before you start delving into haste. This reduces your dependence on a shadow priest so that you can dps for the entire duration of a fight while not having to drop chain from your rotation at any point. The other reason is DPS. A lot of your damage is dependent on you critting and to go any lower then that reduces how much damage you do overall in addition to fucking your mana.

Step 3) Haste. I don't remember the numbers offhand but you want about enough haste to get you a 1.5 lightning bolt to give you the cleanest possible 4/1 rotation. You don't want to be swapping to a 4/1 rotation until you get ~1.8 second lightning bolts. Keep in mind haste procs like the VERY VERY amazing Skycaller's Totem (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=33506) let you hit this cap so a lot of your play in a fight is paying attention to haste procs and where your lightning bolt cast time is at.

Step 4) Spell damage. Spell damage is not something you want to be gemming specifically for, it should be more of a natural side effect from your gear. In very end-game gear with all the best pieces in the game, you should be able to keep 40% raid buffed crit, a clean 4/1 rotation, and then have a couple of gem slots where you can put spinels.

Gemming
Though at lower gear levels, sometimes you have to use yellow gems to get your crit up, ultimately you want to be using mostly oranges whenever possible. In terms of your 2 blues to activate the meta, greens are much better then purples. Try to avoid yellow haste gems as you gear up, and stick to orange haste gems because of how our scaling works. Basically around the time you can start really looking at haste, your generally at a point in your spell damage where pushing too much of one stat (talking about haste vs damage) causes the other to become slightly more valuable, and by gemming oranges, your pushing them both up at closer to the same rate and ultimately leading to slightly more dps (though this is generally measured in 10's - 20's rather then hundreds) in the long run.

Hope this informations helps a lot - ele shamans are so different than ever other caster class and this should solve some problems you might be having.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'Mrbob',index.php?page=Thread&postID=82706#post827 06

Reading (and searching) these forums a lot has been invaluable yet I have a couple of questions some one might be able to help with.

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I <3 you already :) Thanks for helping make our lives easier and our patience last longer for the people who don't read before posting. Much love. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'Mrbob',index.php?page=Thread&postID=82706#post827 06

My shammys in PVE (Dungeons) when I DPS are oom so fast, I use a CL,LB,LB,LB,CL rotation.
Is there a better rotation? I have a lock who finishes the fight on ¾ mana full and my shammys were oom or nearly oom after trash pulls?

FYI:- Tankadin, Shammys x 3, Lock x 1 lvl 40. (took a lock because I wasn’t sure I wanted to raid end game with my guild with a shammy)
Am I missing so much by having the Lock? Is it worth power levelling a 4th shammy to fit the mix? As I will PVP with them as well as Heroics?

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For an elemental shammy PvE dps, chain lightning is never effective. Just spam lightning bolt unless you are doing an AoE pull (in which case you lay AoE totems and chain lightning when available).

Make sure water shield is always up, mana spring totem, high lightning bolt crit rate (shoot for 30% after talents to start with).

Don't compare the shammy to a lock -- shammies are more like a mage without mana gems/evocate. You will need to bring mana pots if you're undergeared for your instance (I typically use the combat mana pots with the BG tokens that I have extra of. You can carry a stack of combat mana pots per BG token type). If your resto shammy is the healer, use mana tides early enough in the fight so that you could potentially use two of them in long fights.

The lock should do fine, but remember that locks are dot classes and shammies are burst classes. They don't exactly have the same role. So either one or the other will likely suffer a bit in dps since lots like to dot up all targets and shammies typically focus fire them down one at a time.

Just an FYI -- take a look at some of my pally + 4 shammy videos around level 40. You'll notice most of them I'm going OOM. This is common. Shammies at low levels just don't have any good way to regen mana. Things change with water shield -- they change TREMENDOUSLY. Just hang in there, you're at the rough spot (pre-60) for ele shammies.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'Vyndree',index.php?page=Thread&postID=82887#post8 2887

For an elemental shammy PvE dps, chain lightning is never effective.

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Chain lightning is the reason you use a 3/1 rotation and 4/1 when you get the haste. It is a very effective spell and adds a "substantial" amount of dps to your shaman. Now, as far as mana efficiency is concerned, no - it is not as efficient as lightning bolt spam but it is definitely effective in increasing your damage.

Other than that comment I agree with most of what you said - except comparing shamans to mages.

You're getting close to my Pally/4xShaman team in level, so here's my Shaman spec for comparison..
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-t...&n=Zandantilis
I usually save Elemental Mastery for the cases when I may be getting low on mana and need to end the fight soon, and I'll probably end up redistributing points a little when I hit 70.. like removing 2 points from Improved Fire Nova Totem and 1 from Call of Flame to put them in Unrelenting Storm.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'vindicated',index.php?page=Thread&postID=82894#po st82894

except comparing shamans to mages.

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The closest comparison to elemental shaman is mages. The only other caster DPS is warlock or priest, which means DoT classes.

Priest is to warlock what ele shammy is to mage.

I still disagree on chain lightning being > lightning bolt -- chain lightning has a lower +spelldamage coefficient and scales worse than lightning bolt.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'Vyndree',index.php?page=Thread&postID=82919#post8 2919

The closest comparison to elemental shaman is mages. The only other caster DPS is warlock or priest, which means DoT classes.

Priest is to warlock what ele shammy is to mage.

I still disagree on chain lightning being > lightning bolt -- chain lightning has a lower +spelldamage coefficient and scales worse than lightning bolt.

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Generally accepted rotations

• Lightning Bolt Spam
  Lightning bolt spam is the most mana efficient rotation, but lower in terms of damage output. Best used in mana sensitive situations. Requires less spell crit, as it has lower mana use.
• 3 Lightning Bolt/1 Chain Lightning
  The 3/1 rotation is three Lightning Bolts and one Chain Lightning. This is the most practical of the high (non-hasted) DPS rotations. It uses three bolt casts while waiting for the 6 second chain cooldown to finish. Can also be used for short fights/trash pulls where it is possible to drink often.
• 4 Lightning Bolt/1 Chain Lightning
  4/1 is the hasted Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning rotation, as once your bolt cast time drops bellow 2 seconds an additional bolt cast is used to allow Chain Lightning to finish its cooldown.

First, chain lightning > lightning bolt issue
Chain Lightning has a higher damage/cast ratio. And the 3/1 rotation provides much higher dps because you can cast more spells than a shorter amount of time, and there are usually more than 1 mob per pull increasing the viability of chain lightning even furthur. Not to mention spell damage is NOT a primary stat of ele shamans, crit/haste is. However, it uses more mana on a per damage basis, so may not be used when mana is an issue, either at low gear levels, buff availability, or encounter mechanics. Which is why i recommended him the lightning bolt spam "rotation" if he is having these problems pre-water shield.

As far as comparing other classes to a shaman, idk there are minor aspects of the mage/warlock classes that could compare to shamans. Neither classes have as much mana concerns, neither class relies on critting for mana effeciency - exluding fire mages. Shamans have no cc, no agro wipe/reduction, not barely similar itemization. I guess your arguement is hinging on the spell rotation of spamming frost bolt - or coa, immolate, shadow bolt spam, refresh dot/immolate, shadow bolt spam(refering to destruction locks) or that they all use ranged mana spells. Other than that there are hardly any similarities between shamans and other caster classes and I would feel uncomfortable comparing them to the others. Not to mention how much better off they are in every aspect of the game- shamans need a major overhaul and I believe where they will be in wotlk is where they should be now.

Idk how i am coming off in these post, but i assure you i am not trying to sound angry or come off as rude - quite the contrary i am really enjoying our theorycrafting battle :D