[quote='Fursphere',index.php?page=Thread&postID=331 72#post33172]From everything I've read, the high end of arenas revolve around stategies more than anything else. With that said, I beleive Ellay's strat. largely depends on NS + EM + CL = one player is dead, instantly. He drops somebody right off the bat, or severely damages three, making there healer work while he selects somebody else to drop.

With 4x ToW, sure, he could pump out a lot more damage, but the element of[b] BOOM - YOU ARE DEAD [/b]is gone.[/quote]To be precise, the combo of Trinkets + EM + CL is very brutal. If you run Monte Carlo simulations on your expected damage with various spell combinations (again, math/statistics, I know), you'll find that the MINIMUM damage you can deal with a Lightning Bolt+Chain Lightning combo goes up through the roof when you add the trinkets and Elemental Mastery to the CL cast. Nature's swiftness allows this spell combo to happen 1.5sec sooner and with no spell pushback problems.

It is Elemental Mastery guaranteeing critical hits with a lot of +SpellDmg that is the big thing to getting the first kill. Granted, it's nice to have it instant... Here's a different kind of math.

1000 runs of LB+CL+ an earth shock followup (Assumed normal non-crit hits of LB=1350, CL=1450, ES=550 and 15% effective crit rate):

[b]No EM used for Chain Lightning:[/b]
[font='Courier New, Courier, mono']Average LB+CL Total 12,958
Average LB+CL+ES Total 15,491
Minimum LB+CL Total 11,200
Minimum LB+CL+ES Total 13,400

[/font]EM popped for Chain Lightning:
Average LB+CL Total 17,786
Average LB+CL+ES Total 20,320
Minimum LB+CL Total 17,000
Minimum LB+CL+ES Total 19,200

(I won't post the full numbers, but for this example throwing ToW into the mix would increase the average LB+CL and LB+CL+ES combos by about 1800-2000 points without EM used and 600-750 for the EM+CL case.)

In any event, the magic of the OMGWTFBBQ! kills is 4xEM+CL. Nature's swiftness allows that to happen on insta-cast, but even a 41/0/20 Shaman has EM at their disposal for a huge chunk of damage in ~4sec.