Quote Originally Posted by Meshuggenah View Post
If you actually go through world of logs and look at the the damage split between targets on each fight, the single target damage done to focus targets (the boss) is competetive. The inflated numbers other classes get are, in most cases, caused by cleave. There's no way a Shaman of any spec can keep up with Rogue cleave on Heroic Magmaw, Warlocks on Maloriak, Mages on Halfus. It's just the way classes interact with cleave.
Top 200 parses are no evidence at all to prove the viability of a spec, because they are either the parses were rng was on your side, or they got dark intend / focus magic. They prove nothing. The only way that they are useful is to prove a spec is not viable: if you have #70 parse on fight A for your spec, and you are 6th on damage done in your raid, while others are nowhere near a ranked parse for their spec, it gives an indication.

The only viable data available are the simcraft results, which are theoretic numbers, and the collection of ALL world of logs parses, including the non ranked ones.

Like I said, on all single target encounters, ele shamans are near the bottom or at the bottom. It has nothing to do with cleave, since they are single target. I linked the data in question, so your claim that there is plenty of proof that ele is viable single target is simply crap (the more cause you use chimaeron, where there is a hit debuff). Maybe in your raid you are top single target, but that tells more about the others in your raid. (talking 4.1 btw). Just go to the site I linked and spend a few minutes browsing through the fights one by one, then come back and tell me again ele is competitive single target. Again, they contain ALL parses. And there are different ways to look at the data (all, medium, etc). They all give more or less the same result.