Wondering why shammies DPS is so damn low

Hi All,

I'm wondering why my dps is low on the shamanteam.
Current item level is around 360-362, DPS in Zul Aman on the trash was around 7500-9000k.
Trash in for example VP HC gets to 11k - 15k , which is more on par as far as i know, but still low.
Last week i did 30-40k (!!!!!) on the croc in Lost City HC, he went down really , really fast (I suspect the little crocs hat their part in it). After that is was back to 12k or something, even on him.

I am using Mercurio's macros (2step) on the shaman.
Link to shaman 1
Link to shaman 2
Link to shaman 3

Someone got any ideas what the hell i'm doing wrong?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pallarfo

Hi All,

I'm wondering why my dps is low on the shamanteam.
Current item level is around 360-362, DPS in Zul Aman on the trash was around 7500-9000k.
Trash in for example VP HC gets to 11k - 15k , which is more on par as far as i know, but still low.
Last week i did 30-40k (!!!!!) on the croc in Lost City HC, he went down really , really fast (I suspect the little crocs hat their part in it). After that is was back to 12k or something, even on him.

I am using Mercurio's macros (2step) on the shaman.
Link to shaman 1
Link to shaman 2
Link to shaman 3

Someone got any ideas what the hell i'm doing wrong?

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Your helm has a crit cogwheel ..change it to haste.. NEVER enchant..gem for CRIt..never! always reforge crit into haste first or mastery if you cant make it haste.

On your shoulders you reforged haste into hit.. you should have reforged CRIt into hit. Your chest you reforged haste into spirit and you should have reforged CRIT into spirit. you get the idea? never BUFF your crit.. you want these stats as priority in this order HIT until capped>>HASTE>.MASTERY then crit.

you follow that rule and you will see a very large increase in your dps

Thanks, gonna give it a try. It's what several (rawr) sites/addons came up with.

Unless the new thing is just to spam lightning bolt.. crit is the least valuable stat for ele atm. IF this has changed I'm un aware of it. My guys are only 340ish gear and do 12k average dps. Ill see if i can link their gear later. I also use mercs 2 step macros.

That's the thing, the 12k dps is what they're pulling for ages now. Did try the reforge on the one with engineering, she was 2nd with 14k on Asaad.

Keep in mind also that Elemental Shaman DPS blows right now. Nearly every other class/spec has higher DPS from my experience.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bollwerk

Keep in mind also that Elemental Shaman DPS blows right now. Nearly every other class/spec has higher DPS from my experience.

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Ele shaman dps is among the top right now, bar a couple of fights with low hp add phases.

@ Pallarfo

Get rid of glyph of Flametongue weapon. Flameshock > unleashed lightning > lightning bolt until 4 pieces T12 > lava burst. I can see a boxer benefiting less from unleashed lightning so fs, lb & lvb is the way to go.

Grab 3x darkmoon card volcano, they are still best in slot, and on your server you can pick them up for less than 5k each.

Get the power torrent enchant instead of hurricane on your weapons.

Get an addon like tinycaster stats or powerauras. The first one shows your spellpower with procs, etc. the 2nd one can do basically everything. Pop your firelemental when dmc volcano, racial, engineering enchant, & powertorrent procs. The fire elemental takes a snapshot of your spellpower value and retains that for the entire duration it's up, even if your spellpower drops with 3-4k during the fight, the FE will act & dps as if you still had those procs up.

Why on earth do you have glyph of shamanistic rage? It has zero effect on elemental shamans. The mandatory major glyph you need is glyph of lightning shield. This way you can't drop below 3 stacks when you take damage.

Grab INT enchant on your bracers. or put the LW one on your shaman that has LW.

You reforging is really weired, on miroyara you reforge 75 crit -> spirit on the belt and on the legs you reforge 75 spirit tto 75 mastery.. Depending on your gear haste has a slighter higher value than mastery. Since you use a mastery trinket and don't need to be hit capped for raids, you can reforge all crit + mastery into haste.

Try to gem INT only, unless socket bonus makes up for that. INT is by miles the best stat for ele, so having a 40 spirit gem and then reforge 40 spirit away is stupid, since you gain way more by not reforging the spirit away and grab a 40 int gem into that slot.

Make these changes and I guarantee you'll be surprised about your dps :)

Thanks for all the replies.
Now I'm looking at some things....wth have I done :)
Gonna give it a shot.

Hi,

With all the tips it's going much better now.
The fights where the dps was already high, went up quite some bit.
The fights where it was low, have gone up a little bit. (movement heavy stuff)

Weird thing is, I've used RAWR to reforge some chars (miroyara for example), while I used a reforge addon for the others. Think still something went wrong there.
Anyhow, its much better now!
Thanks!

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Originally Posted by zenga

Ele shaman dps is among the top right now, bar a couple of fights with low hp add phases.

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I dunno WTF I'm doing wrong then in raids. I'm barely out-DPSing the tanks in 25 man raids. I've already spent hours perfecting my spell rotations and macro settings on dummies, but in Firelands, my DPS BLOWS.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bollwerk

I dunno WTF I'm doing wrong then in raids. I'm barely out-DPSing the tanks in 25 man raids. I've already spent hours perfecting my spell rotations and macro settings on dummies, but in Firelands, my DPS BLOWS.

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You must be doing something seriously wrong then, in your rotation, gearwise or with stat priority. On tank/spankt fights like baleroc and shannox hc I can easily go over 30k (that is even without keeping flame shock up on dogs for cheating the meters). On most fights I'm #1 or #2, except the gimmic fights like the bird boss and the legs dude. Even on ragnaros 25k+ is pretty doable.

Our other elemental shaman was in T11 4-6k behind me on several fights, and she often is among top 5 now in our 25m raids.

Ele shaman is in one of the best conditions it ever was in pve.

With all the hints, tips and corrections posted above, I've been able to down more heroics.
Only grim batol last boss and deadmines (haven;t tried yet) are to be downed.
Zul Gurub i'm pulling between 18k and 22k, only last boss left to be killed.
The big guys in FL are going down most of the time too when I 5box it.
My trust in ele shamans has returned.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pallarfo

With all the hints, tips and corrections posted above, I've been able to down more heroics.
Only grim batol last boss and deadmines (haven;t tried yet) are to be downed.
Zul Gurub i'm pulling between 18k and 22k, only last boss left to be killed.
The big guys in FL are going down most of the time too when I 5box it.
My trust in ele shamans has returned.

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Thats good news!

I use the addon "reforgenator" to help reforge particular items.
....anyone else had any experience with this addon?

NS

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zenga

You must be doing something seriously wrong then, in your rotation, gearwise or with stat priority. On tank/spankt fights like baleroc and shannox hc I can easily go over 30k (that is even without keeping flame shock up on dogs for cheating the meters). On most fights I'm #1 or #2, except the gimmic fights like the bird boss and the legs dude. Even on ragnaros 25k+ is pretty doable.

Our other elemental shaman was in T11 4-6k behind me on several fights, and she often is among top 5 now in our 25m raids.

Ele shaman is in one of the best conditions it ever was in pve.

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If you're inclined to take a look, here is our WoL log from last night's kill of Shannox - http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=3863&e=4305
I didn't do quite as bad as I'd thought. I was #11. It bugs me though that an Enhance shaman in worse gear did more dps by a decent margin.

My gear is still mostly ilvl 359, with 4 ilvl 378 items. I reforge crit into mastery and gem for int, int/mastery and int/spirit.

Enchants are usually int when possible, then mastery or haste.
Armory - Note that I logged out in pvp gear, but I'll take any advice on talents and glyphs (primary is my pve talent set, secondary is for pvp)

My rotation priority is standard, as far as I know. FS >> LvB >> CL/LB (depending on fight) >> ES at 8/9 stacks.

The only thing I can think of that I need to work on is making sure my Fire Elemental is up when possible. I tend to forget about it a lot.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bollwerk

If you're inclined to take a look, here is our WoL log from last night's kill of Shannox - http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=3863&e=4305
I didn't do quite as bad as I'd thought. I was #11. It bugs me though that an Enhance shaman in worse gear did more dps by a decent margin.

My gear is still mostly ilvl 359, with 4 ilvl 378 items. I reforge crit into mastery and gem for int, int/mastery and int/spirit.

Enchants are usually int when possible, then mastery or haste.
Armory - Note that I logged out in pvp gear, but I'll take any advice on talents and glyphs (primary is my pve talent set, secondary is for pvp)

My rotation priority is standard, as far as I know. FS >> LvB >> CL/LB (depending on fight) >> ES at 8/9 stacks.

The only thing I can think of that I need to work on is making sure my Fire Elemental is up when possible. I tend to forget about it a lot.

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Couple of quick things -

4 Lava Burst non-crits? Which leads to your Clearcasting uptime, which is 55%... that means you're dealing 10% less damage 45% of the time. Looking at totemic wrath (and the time at which Demonic Pact was in place of it), I'm assuming you didn't have a fire totem up, at all, during 40% of the fight?

Again, just a cursory look - and world of logs can interpret things weirdly).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bollwerk

If you're inclined to take a look, here is our WoL log from last night's kill of Shannox - http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=3863&e=4305
I didn't do quite as bad as I'd thought. I was #11. It bugs me though that an Enhance shaman in worse gear did more dps by a decent margin.

My gear is still mostly ilvl 359, with 4 ilvl 378 items. I reforge crit into mastery and gem for int, int/mastery and int/spirit.

Enchants are usually int when possible, then mastery or haste.
Armory - Note that I logged out in pvp gear, but I'll take any advice on talents and glyphs (primary is my pve talent set, secondary is for pvp)

My rotation priority is standard, as far as I know. FS >> LvB >> CL/LB (depending on fight) >> ES at 8/9 stacks.

The only thing I can think of that I need to work on is making sure my Fire Elemental is up when possible. I tend to forget about it a lot.

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Hey man,

1) You miss 2 very important glyphs:

Glyph of Unleashed lightning (prime)

This one basically allows you to keep casting whenever you have to move. Even on fights where you never have to move it has its value since you don't have to interrupt a cast to move out. It's an amazing glyph, and contrary to the previous tier where you had to cast shit while moving just to cast something, this simplifies the rotation a lot.

You want flame shock, unleashed lightning and lightning bolt glyph. Once you have 4 pieces of T12, you should swap out the lightning bolt for the lava burst glyph, though both are really close.

Glyph of Lightning shield (major)

This glyph basically prevents you from dropping below 3 lightning shield stacks. See it like this: you start the fight with 3, some aoe damage resets you to 0 w/o the glyph, with the glyph you stay at 3. You gain 4 orbs, without the glyph you are still at 4 stacks, with the glyph you are at 7 now and ready to cast fulmination after which you drop back to 3 (and without the glyph you'd be still at 4! ). This glyph is absolutely mandatory for an elemental shaman in pve.

2) From your log: I compared yours with our latest kill, which is on heroic though. Your kill took 7m22s, ours 5m42. In this time frame you cast 64 lightning bolts, whereas I cast 114 while our fight lasted 100s less. The glyph of unleashed lightning makes a huge difference here.

You missed 4 lava burst crits + 2 overloads, Those 4 casts alone account for 300 less dps over the entire fight. But it also means that your flame shock wasn't on the target ... and flame shock is an elemental highest damage per execute spell. (same is true for your lord ryolith log btw). I couldn't play without an addon that keeps track of my flame shock on the target. I use chronobars and have a bar timer that basically shows how long my FS is up on the target. But there are plenty of addons that can do the same (dotimer, quartz, etc).

There is no need to cast chain lightning on shannox fight. Unless you would use a strategy where you tank the dog + boss on top of eachother. Your average chain lightning hit is 13.5k, your average lightning bolt hit is 15.6k ... Never ever use chain lightning on a single target encounter.

There is no need to use unleash elements since we have the unleashed lightning glyph. It's a dps loss in every single case.

And now the shocking number: your fight was 100 seconds longer than mine, yet my fire elemental did 1.565.000 total damage (5k dps over then entire fight), yours did 500k or 1100 effective dps, but 4.2k for the time it was up (compared to 2k with searing totem). In other words, you'd gain 3k dps from just managing your fire elemental the way you 'should'. This assuming you have 2x T12 by now since the bonus is insane (if not after nearly 2 months you are a lazy punk :p ).

3) As for trinkets, you should really pick up dmc volcano if you haven't yet. This is still the best trinket for heroic firelands raids. And it's awesome with our fire elemental. I use tiny caster stats, which displays my spellpower in my UI, every time it's high (cause of trinket proc, power torrent, etc) I know it's a good time to cast/renew my fire elemental.

4) Can't stress the importance of tools like power auras, ... to track procs, cooldowns, buffs, etc. Over the course of a few weeks using it you'll develop like a second nature to manage procs and cooldowns much better.

As for your rotation, you should already cast fulmination at 7 stacks rather than delaying tiil 8/9 (as you'll waste more due to 'unexpected' overload procs).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alemi

Couple of quick things -

4 Lava Burst non-crits? Which leads to your Clearcasting uptime, which is 55%... that means you're dealing 10% less damage 45% of the time..

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So how exactly are you supposed to keep clearcasting up then? On our last shannox hc kill (for which I got ranked #90 on worldoflogs) I got 58% clearcasting uptime over the course of the fight. If you check some of the absolute top parses you see comparable numbers (50%-ish). The only influence you have on keeping clearcasting up is by means of lava burst. Which is on an 8s cd, and can be reset by lava surge procs which are totally random. You have zero influence on crits whatsoever beyond lava burst, not to mention that crit is ele's worst stat. Playing to keep clearcasting up would be pretty dumb tbh as you would have to deliberately postpone our hardest hitting spell (lava burst) just to keep the proc going and favor lightning bolt. Obviously all lava bursts should crit, but the 4 he missed won't influence his clearcasting uptime a lot.

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Originally Posted by zenga

So how exactly are you supposed to keep clearcasting up then? On our last shannox hc kill (for which I got ranked #90 on worldoflogs) I got 58% clearcasting uptime over the course of the fight. If you check some of the absolute top parses you see comparable numbers (50%-ish). The only influence you have on keeping clearcasting up is by means of lava burst. Which is on an 8s cd, and can be reset by lava surge procs which are totally random. You have zero influence on crits whatsoever beyond lava burst, not to mention that crit is ele's worst stat. Playing to keep clearcasting up would be pretty dumb tbh as you would have to deliberately postpone our hardest hitting spell (lava burst) just to keep the proc going and favor lightning bolt. Obviously all lava bursts should crit, but the 4 he missed won't influence his clearcasting uptime a lot.

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I wasn't implying to manage clearcasting. I was pointing out the non-crit lava burst crits, and relaying that to clearcasting.

Way to read too much into it.

Quote "My gear is still mostly ilvl 359, with 4 ilvl 378 items. I reforge crit into mastery and gem for int, int/mastery and int/spirit."




also.. reforge crit into HASTE not mastery. the stat priority for reforging is hit/spirit until capped..haste>mastery>crit

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lyonheart

Quote "My gear is still mostly ilvl 359, with 4 ilvl 378 items. I reforge crit into mastery and gem for int, int/mastery and int/spirit."




also.. reforge crit into HASTE not mastery. the stat priority for reforging is hit/spirit until capped..haste>mastery>crit

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that totally depends on your gear, your trinkets and playstyle/encounter
haste and mastery are so close to eachother in value that simcraft might prio haste and when you swap a piece around it will prio mastery

on my 1 shaman i use necromantic focus, which gives me around 35% mastery during the fight in total, therefore i reforge all mastery to haste on my current gear. (2700 haste)

on my other shaman i use theralion's mirror hc and I have more pieces with haste on, and there it's more beneficial to reforge into mastery

simcraft with chardev makes the job really easy to discover your statweight

Thanks very much for the advice. Definitely some good things to work on!

Thanks for this very detailed explanations Zenga, this gonna be very useful to me as well

Ele Shammys DPS now is amazing they got a boost they needed and its working well.

Our shammy in our core raid does around 27k out dpses my main hunter which pisses me right off now :P

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Originally Posted by Shania

Ele Shammys DPS now is amazing they got a boost they needed and its working well.

Our shammy in our core raid does around 27k out dpses my main hunter which pisses me right off now :P

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Indeed, can do easily 28/29k vs dummy without any buffs for 5-6m damage. Single target ele shaman is among the top of the spectrum. But it obviously requires you to have 2x T12 pieces. And the 4x T12 with instant lava burst is quite a gain for ele's that were not good at catching lava surge procs.

How do you get the fire elemental to attack the dummy?
I dropped it and it didn't "autoassist" me. It just stood there.

It follows your flame shock. So put flame shock on target, then cast fire elemental or searing totem. That's the theory that works most of the time, they still act like dicks though now and then wondering around wtf he is supposed to do.

What is better stat for ele shammys in pve is it haste all the way or mastery ?
My pvp shammys are stacking mastery atm, and wanted to try haste instead, my guildie who raids with us stacks pure haste for PVE tho I heard mastery is/can be good too.

I love my ele shammys atm in pvp, they havent seen much pve yet, tho plan too pve them more as well, took them into ZG with my fiance on his tank and a pug healer, healer was great he understood it might fail 3 boxing ZG but we actually got it all down, only 1 toon died on first boss, was fun.

For pve haste>mastery>crit. PvP is a tossup in playstyle. Some recommend haste and some recommend mastery. Don't ever reforge to crit.

1. Get hit capped for content you run. Once you are 0,01% over hitcap, any additional point becomes totally useless.
2. Intellect is always much better than any other stat.
3. Haste is very close to mastery, and depending on your gear one will top the other. It's even encounter dependant. A general rule of thumb is that haste is always better than mastery, but that is not always true.
4. Crit should always be reforged away.

Gemming should be pure int, unless a socket bonus is worth it. (red/blue socket with 20+ int socket bonus should of course use an orange gem in blue cause net int result is the same).

Best way is to use chardev and then simcraft the profile to see your statsweight for your own gear.