Level 80 elemental shaman, crit or spell power?

As I was making new macros for Flame Shock and Lava Burst, I began thinking about crits...

And the thing is.. at level 75, elemental shaman have 2 crit guarantees that are chainable:

• Flame Shock + Lava Burst
• EM + Spell

This combo has the potential to kill anything - it sums up to about 30-40k damage I think.



Anyway.. this leads to the old discussion of crit vs spell power. Since we now have 2 crit-guaranteeable (with one being very repeatable..) spells, would it favor spell power over crit rating?
Basically, crit rating does NOTHING for my lava burst, which will probably be the main killing spell for shaman teams.

Is it reasonable to maximize spell power to go for huge lava bursts?

You got me thinking there :D becuase in 5v5 u want to kill someone really fast pop flameshock then lava burst and 100% crit + 6-7k crits x4 = instant death

Crit does nothing for lava burst or anything under Elemental Mastery, yeah. But even for PVP you want something punchy to follow that up with or you'll be killing the first opponent then be weaker to the others until your cooldowns are up again. So it's still something of a balancing act. But if you have two choices of which one gives much more spell power, it might be worth getting the increased spell power. I would consider that as the main guideline.

For PVE, you just turn your intended rotation into a formula in terms of +dmg & +crit to see what will give you the best damage.

Crit does nothing for Lava Burst, which is 35-40% of our damage. In addition, it does nothing for the dot component of the Flame Shock. It does help with Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and the initial hit of Flame Shock or our Earth Shocks, so basically the stat is useful for half of our damage and useless for the other half.

Haste is similar. Lava Burst has a fixed cooldown period no matter what our haste is. Our Thunderstorm and Shock spells are all instant cast, and haste does not improve the dot portion of the Flame Shock. Haste is still a good stat for Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning, but its probably less useful at level 80 then it was at level 70.

Spell Power is our primary dps stat for pvp. For pve, once we're hit capped it's our primary stat, but until we're hit capped its our second stat.

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Originally Posted by 'Ualaa',index.php?page=Thread&postID=151404#post15 1404

Crit does nothing for Lava Burst, which is 35-40% of our damage. In addition, it does nothing for the dot component of the Flame Shock. It does help with Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and the initial hit of Flame Shock or our Earth Shocks, so basically the stat is useful for half of our damage and useless for the other half.

Haste is similar. Lava Burst has a fixed cooldown period no matter what our haste is. Our Thunderstorm and Shock spells are all instant cast, and haste does not improve the dot portion of the Flame Shock. Haste is still a good stat for Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning, but its probably less useful at level 80 then it was at level 70.

Spell Power is our primary dps stat for pvp. For pve, once we're hit capped it's our primary stat, but until we're hit capped its our second stat.

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Pretty much my thinking. Flame Shock + Lava Burst is so repeatable for making kills, it should be quite favorable to get high spell damage.

Edit: Lava Burst is also MUCH more mana efficient dps on single targets than bolt+CL...

But DAAAMN it's annoying that we can not hide our nuke with focus targets any more... damn damn damn...

Well with Reverbation we can shock every 5 seconds, or 6 seconds without this talent.

We can Flame Shock one target and then Flame Shock a second target.
Then Lava Burst either target and follow that up with an instant cast Earth Shock.

It is not optimal, because they can decurse our Flame Shock which then removes the auto-crit on the following Lava Burst.

Alternatively, you can rely on Flame Shock - Lava Burst - Earth Shock - Lightning Stuff to be more burst then they can heal through, even knowing it is coming.
The drawback will be immunity effects such as Bubble or perhaps Pain Suppression on the target for half damage.

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Originally Posted by 'Ualaa',index.php?page=Thread&postID=151685#post15 1685

The drawback will be immunity effects such as Bubble or perhaps Pain Suppression on the target for half damage.

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We have allways had that problem we get thru it.:D

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Originally Posted by 'magwo',index.php?page=Thread&postID=151412#post15 1412

But DAAAMN it's annoying that we can not hide our nuke with focus targets any more... damn damn damn...

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I think i missed something ...what?! :/

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Originally Posted by 'Tizer',index.php?page=Thread&postID=152697#post15 2697

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Originally Posted by 'magwo',index.php?page=Thread&postID=151412#post15 1412

But DAAAMN it's annoying that we can not hide our nuke with focus targets any more... damn damn damn...

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I think i missed something ...what?! :/

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Adding a [target=focus] in all dps macro's and when in arena, focus the first target you'll burn and select the second target. Basicly healers wont anticipate the fact you're blowing up the first one and by the time they try to heal the first one you're already on the second one. With focus used for hex, this won't work anymore. :p

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Originally Posted by 'Kaynin',index.php?page=Thread&postID=152699#post1 52699

With focus used for hex, this won't work anymore. :p

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Thats all you had to say ! Forgot about hex :/

bugger :/

I best be taking out my target focus shizzle in my damage macros and free up F1-F4 for individual focus buttons!

Dunno about you guys but i cant wait to get rolling in arena, its going to be....interesting :D

The more i sit here and think about it, its not just going to be interesting....its going to be insane :D

The problem with Lava Burst as our main dps tool in Wrath, is for it to auto-crit we need to preface it with Flame Shock.

The healer will know that you are bursting target "X" because they have a flame shock per shaman burning on them.
When lightning was the default attack, it hit as hard with or without other spells already on the target.

In previous seasons of arena/pvp, we could have a macro which would "/cast [target=focus] Big Nuke" and another for "/castsequence [target=focus] Nature's Swiftness, Big Nuke, Earth Shock" or whatever the rotation was.
The healers would be watching your toon target another toon, and not even see the damage coming.
So the annoying <insert class> would be made your focus, and then not targeted as you did dps on another toon, saving the big nukes and cooldowns for when they stood in the open.
And when they see you throwing volley after volley at the warrior, with all of your toons targeting the warrior, they would feel they were safe to come out and cast <insert annoying effect>.
At which point, you'd quickly burst them down, via a [target=focus] macro, and they'd be dead before the healer could react.

Now, we have the choice of hidden focus target, with Lava Burst that is not guaranteed to crit, followed by other spells with cast times and/or Earth Shock.
We do not have Nature's Swiftness in the best Elemental builds. Non-crit Lava Burst (granted some of them might crit) is not optimal, when you can have an auto crit via Flame Shock.
But if you Flame Shock the <insert annoying class> and then start to burn the warrior, its fairly obvious the focus target might be burnt down.
If they have a pally/disc priest on their team, not only can they dispel the Flame Shocks (magic based) but they could bubble/pain suppression the Flame Shocked target, as they see your toons casting Lava Burst.

The best I can see is... focus your true target, and then have Flame Shock working on them and another target, so the healer does not know where your burst will be.
Or, burst your focus without a Flame Shock opener, and hope the not-guaranteed-to-crit spells will add up to enough burst damage to kill it.

Does anyone know if Nature's Swiftness works on Lava Burst? I would assume not since it doesn't look like a nature spell.

With target=targettarget macro setups and the FTL system, I just use the toons target as the "focus" for stuff like hex then focus is a DPS target and the main selects any other fast action target. Don't forget you can use EM with lava burst, and get that hidden crit you were looking for. I use CL EM trinket lava burst on the first DPS target (usually the soft target ie something without immunity) then flameshock CL Lava Burst on the second, seems to kill most people right now.

NS does NOT work with fire spells, so it's a no for NS lava burst :(

I've been going with spell damage for my shamans, but currently most of the gear looks like it has either crit or haste and cant really choose between either because the gear comes with the stuff on it. bleh.

Also on the note of hex, how are people doing hex? I did a bandaid fix of y+modifer set up focus on each shaman and shift+e to target focus and hex. Anyone else have a smoother hex system set up? mines a bit clumsy still.

I'd pretty much set it up the same as CC's for a mixed group.
As in, bind to something you don't use often like your numpad keys.
One bind per Shaman in the group.

/assist [target=party1] -or- /assist Leader
/focus
/targetlastenemy

Then have another macro..
/cast [target=focus] Hex

I personally have the acquire focus to CC on Numpad 1, 2 and 3.
With the use the CC on focus directly above, so Shaman 1 uses 1 to acquire and 4 to use; Shaman 2 uses 2/5; Shaman 3 uses 3/6.

I'm personally using focus more for my surprise burst target rather then CC.
Hex is basically a glorified silence/disarm..
The toon can still run around a pillar to break line of sight.
They can still chase you to be in melee when the Hex breaks.
Not sure that its worth losing the ability to use focus, for a 6 second per shaman (probably only once per typical arena) silence/disarm effect.