Level 80 elemental shaman, crit or spell power?

[magwo]

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?

[Meathead]

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

[algol]

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.

[Ualaa]

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.

[magwo]

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.

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...

[magwo]

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

[Ualaa]

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.

[Meathead]

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

We have allways had that problem we get thru it.

[Tizer]

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

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

[Kaynin]

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

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

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.