Shamans Underpowered?

[Hor]

http://srsbusiness.org/horspot/DAMNage.jpg

Click for fullsize

[emesis]

Nope, they're not :-)

Actually, what the screenshot best demonstrates is actually how unreliable short term DPS numbers are because of crits. You have nearly identically geared elemental shammies and their DPS on a single boss fight ranges from 2200 to 4000 (!). Presumably they were all spam casting and no-one was out of the fight (hard to imagine anyone but the tank getting snake wrapped if you know this fight). I guess some of the variation might be due to heals depending on how you macros are set up, though I don't need to heal at all on Slad'ran anymore myself.

This drives me crazy about the target dummies as well, identically geared or repeat runs see a variation of up to 10-20% in DPS numbers due to variability in crits. Very hard to tune your macros/gear when RNG dependent crits have a much bigger impact than most minor (e.g. single slot) changes.

[Hor]

Yeah, actually I didn't heal once the entire fight. My tank finished at a little over 90% and the healing totems topped everyone off. I'm using a castsequence macro similar to the one Fursphere posted a while back on the Shamans. Lead off with Flame Shock and then spam the hell out of the DPS macro.

The Macro:
#showtooltip Lightning Bolt
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Elemental Mastery
/castrandom Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, Lava Burst, Chain Lightning, Flame Shock

[X-Ifist]

Yeah, actually I didn't heal once the entire fight. My tank finished at a little over 90% and the healing totems topped everyone off. I'm using a castsequence macro similar to the one Fursphere posted a while back on the Shamans. Lead off with Flame Shock and then spam the hell out of the DPS macro.

The Macro:
#showtooltip Lightning Bolt
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Elemental Mastery
/castrandom Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, Lava Burst, Chain Lightning, Flame Shock

Try out this macro should give a even dps


#showtooltip Lightning Bolt
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Elemental Mastery
/castsequence reset=combat/12 Lava Burst, Flame Shock, Chain Lightning, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt



if youre moving alot in a fight i would use this macro and use elemental mastery manualy



#showtooltip Lava Burst
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Blood Fury
/castsequence reset=combat/12 Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Chain Lightning, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt

[Hor]

I tried castsequence for my DPS. I had almost that exact macro before I switched to this random macro. I like the castrandom macro a lot better.

[X-Ifist]

I agree its alot easyer to play whit but the problem is that 1 of youre chars may only stand there casting lighting bolt, or in worst case not do annything becuse its random:\

and the reset=combat/12 changes evrything :P

[Thomaseh]

and the reset=combat/12 changes evrything :P

Not realy, since the reset=combat only will reset the macro when you get out of combat, and the /12 only will reset the macro if you havent mashed the button for 12 seconds.
BUT one thing it will do is start the sequence over again when you have completed it. Thats why a castsequence isnt as random as a castrandom.
For perfect timing and execution set up a list with GCD's
0.0 - FS
1.5 - Lava Burst
3. 0 - Chain Lightning
4.5 - Lightning Bolt

etc. and see how many times you will have to cast Lightning Bolt until your Lava Burst is off CD, then we can talk about a perfect macro But then again, it gets random when you miss on FS f.ex.

[Kaynin]

imo dont use castrandom or castsequences and just keymap all gthe shaman dps buttons to one button for the tank to tank with.

That would give a high and reliable stable dps. :P

If you insist on using one button for elemental shaman dps you will always have up and down numbers. Castsequences doesn't queue spells and have latency issues, castrandom is the best option for sinlge button dps, but well, random is random. :P

At the very least do flame shock seperate tho imo :P

[Hor]

Fur: I use Recount on all of them as you say to keep things synced, and yeah the numbers matched.
Kar: I have a seperate button to cast Flame Shock at the beginning of the fight (actually a macro that has a modifier for Earth Shock or without a mod to cast Flame Shock). I lead with that then spam 1 to nuke and do my normal tank rotation.

It should be noted however, that overall DPS was about 1800 for the entire instance VS these spread numbers on one boss. Everyone, even the DK did approx 20% of the total damage dealt (give or take 0.2%) at the end of the run.

[Bovidae]

It shouldn't be necessary to install Recount on all toons. When Blizz redid the combat log, synch issues were eliminated. In my experience, my meter has always matched that of others using recount, exactly.

Try it out across your multiple toons, hopefully you will find them consistent. Once I did, I turned it off on all but one of my toons.