Best Raid DPS Elemental Shaman Build For T9
Posted on October 24th, 2009 by Lawbringer under Build, Dranei, Efficiency Tips, Expansion, Heroics, Horde, Instances, PVE, Raiding, Shaman, Tauren, Tips, World of Warcraft, WotLKBest DPS Raiding Spec For Elemental Shaman In Best In Slot T9 Level Gear
Last time we looked at the Ele Shaman in T8 gear, and this time we are turning up the heat all the way to true end game gear. Shaman itemization gets better in T9 gear, which means Blizz did a little better job at balancing things out a bit. T9 Shaman in Elemental spec with BiS gear still will not match the very best geared mages and rogues, but this spec will do just 300 DPS shy of even the most ridiculous cookie-cutter mage. And no, AoE on big gobs of trash doesn’t count – we’re talking single target boss fights, since they are the only things that count.
Profile
This time you’ll see all the epic gems and the Meta activated. We’re not sure about the glyph choice for the T8 set either, that’s just what the Simcraft engine says does the most DPS. You can expect about 9,500 DPS in an extended boss fight in perfect stand still and cast conditions. Since that hardly ever happens, at least you can expect to do a good, solid 5-7k depending on how much moving you have to do. For instance, you’ll do a lot more DPS on the Twin Valkyr than Beasts just because you move so much less in that fight and can just sit there and blast away. The toon in the sim also uses enchanting, but you could definitely get more mileage out of JC/BS, but that is just common knowledge right?
http://profiler.wowhead.com/?profile=14636542
Glyphs
- flame shock
- Lava
- lightning bolt
Priorities
As always, throw the idea of rotations out the window and look at priorities. You’ll return to more of a traditional cycle in T9 and use Chain Lightning, but you need to stick with Thunderstorm when it’s up (which means getting in range and can get tricky, but you’ll figure it out) as well as stay on top of searing totem drops.
- flask type = frost wyrm
- food type = fish feast
- flametongue weapon
- water shield
- mana spring totem
- wrath of air totem
- speed potion
- elemental mastery
- flame shock
- lava burst (only when flame shock is active)
- searing totem
- chain lightning
- lightning bolt
- thunderstorm
Damage Sources
Here you can see the graphs for how all of this works over the course of a fight. You’ll notice that although Searing Totem doesn’t do a huge percentage of overall damage, it does the most damage per execute time. This means that it does more damage for the time it takes to cast – you spend one global cooldown for 60 seconds of damage output. Pretty efficient if you ask me. Those two trinkets are seriously potent as well, but good luck getting your hands on even one of them since every PD spell-caster in the game would sell their mother to get them.
Pawn Scale
( Pawn: v1: "Shaman_T9_57_14_00_258": HitRating=3.94, SpellDamage=1.78, CritRating=1.42, HasteRating=1.28, Intellect=0.50, RedSocket=45.71, YellowSocket=62.97, BlueSocket=31.48 )
Hi,
I’m playing my elemental shaman now, up to level 76! I have a question about fire totems.
Why do you recommend searing totem and not totem of wrath?
Thanks!
-Me
I’m sorry this is a bit late, but I’ve been the top elemental shaman in about every guild I’ve been in since late last summer and I would always drop searing totem. The reason is that the secondary shaman will drop totem of wrath because its effect isn’t boosted the shaman’s stats but searing totem is, so the shaman with the most SP would have the stronger searing totem.
Can I get opinions on enhancement vs. elemental? I went enhancement just to try it out, seems decent in pvp, but if I want max dps, is elemental the best? I felt like a glass cannon when I was elemental…but thinking of going back….what do you guys think?
Very nice build. I’d love to see an affliction warlock build from you guys. There is an over abundance of warlocks in my guild and they are ALL Destro spec’d except for me. I can keep up with them quite easily even being less geared (except on trash pulls, haha) but I’d love to be able to DOMINATE them
Er, you say that we can “definately get more mileage out of JC/BS” and that this is common knowledge. Well, I agree that you get the most bonus out of JC, which will give you +48 SP (and I’ve no idea why this toon doesn’t have the 3 runed dragonseyes). However, there is no difference between BS, Ench, LW or Inscription at all. All these professions provide +46 SP. So there’s no particular reason to not take enchanting. Of course, I think that inscription is the easiest, since you don’t have to worry about Hodir rep and the enchant is very easy to do, whereas Enchanting mats for the ring enchants is a bit more expensive.
I don’t remember the bonus provided by skinning (70 crit?), but engineering will provide +45 haste -1SP which makes it an OK choice of profession if you really wanted to take it (for pvp purposes say), not to mention you get a parachute cloak out of the bargain. It can also convert 12 redundant hit into 6 crit while giving a speed boost, which isn’t a bad option if your itemisation puts you nearly half a percent over hit cap.
Oh, and I just noticed, the toon you linked had only the +20 SP enchant to gloves, instead of +28. Small things like this make me wonder and the process you use to create this ‘max dps’ build. I presume it’s mostly automated, and if so it seems that there’re a few kinks in it.
^ about the process … doh!
I’m not certain that the “common knowledge” that JC is the best profession for casters and perhaps also healers is true. I think it is somewhat debatable depending on your preferences. For example, lightweave to cloak available to tailors provides 295SP for 15 seconds. However, the uptime is actually quite high and it seems to proc a lot based on my (warlock) logs and a mage tailor often in my raid with similar professions. The uptime seems to be about 25%. In other words, on average lightweave seems to be giving about 74SP versus 48 for JC. (Not to mention how much easier it is to level tailoring over JC.) Naturally, that’s variable spellpower depending on procs. For DPS I’m not sure it makes much difference, I would go for the best average. For healers, one could argue that the static uptime is important to get as big a heal as possible when they need it most.
I’d be curious to hear what other folks are seeing in their combat log parses for tailoring.
Did forget to mention one thing. You are replacing, presumably, the haste enchant to cloak when using Lightweave as a tailor. So you do need to consider the scaling of haste versus spellpower for your class when choosing between tailoring and other professions. For many, additional spell power far outpaces haste I believe.
The weight of haste vs spell power depends upon how much of each you have. For example, on one of my destrolocks I have a little over 3k spell power but only some 350 odd haste. Even without raid buffs 1 haste is worth 1.03 SP on my spam nuke and more on my immolates and Chaos Bolts (1 haste = 0.99 SP on conflagrate). However, when you take into account raid buffs like flasks, feasts, ToW/A, Moonkin Aura, etc it actually jumps up so 1 haste = 1.21 spell power on my incinerates.
Obviously I have a pretty low haste value compared to most other classes, but this is with 3 pieces of t9/t9.5 and 2 pieces of t8.5, good trinks and rings and a fairly common assortment of other gear. So a good deal of the dearth of haste is due to current itemisation on tier gear, and I can imagine quite a few destrolocks being low enough on haste to make the 48 SP + 23 haste from JC a better deal than the roughly 74 SP of tailoring, though maybe the 46 SP + 23 haste from enchanting or inscription would not be such a good trade. To be able to make an informed decision we’d need to know with some certainty the actual uptime of the lightweave proc.
The uptime on over a dozen fights in Ulduar and ToC on my lock that I just looked at was 23-25% for the lightweave embroidery. Usually 25%.
It seems to proc on just about anything. I haven’t tried to see if it procs on /nosepick, but it seems to proc on just about everything else.
True if you really want to know for certain you have to run sims on your gear set at the time with the different profession buffs. (btw, wow, your haste is low and the sims would be interesting)
In the end we are talking about pretty meager differences probably on the order of 1 or low 2 digit DPS differences out of thousands. I personally wouldn’t advise switching professions because this one seems 10 DPS higher in Patch 3.2 because you better be prepared to switch back in Patch 3.3 when whatever changes are made.
Currently, I think tailoring IS the best DPS caster profession by a small margin. However, if Blizz comes out with a better cloak enchant in Patch 3.3, for example, without increasing the lightweave proc then it would be an indirect nerf to tailoring. (I haven’t heard about any such thing, just an example.)
In general Alchemy (Mixology gives an extra 46SP on your flask and double duration), BS(46SP), Enchanting(46SP), Inscription(46SP), Tailoring(~74SP – 23Haste), and JC(48SP) are all fine professions for DPS casters. Mining (60stam which is fine for prot anything), herbalism (instant cast heal), and skinning(40crit) are obviously worse for DPS casters. Unless your Ele Shammy is mining, herbalism, or skinning I would carefully consider whether a switch to some other profession is worth the gold and effort…unless you really are trying to min/max your DPS past the decimal point.
Well for one this is a silly talent build! One extra talent point and no Totem of Wrath! 280 sp and 3% crit is way better than searing totem.
Sorry Jesse, but the numbers just don’t back that up. Searing totem just does more damage than ToW in every single case. You get your crit from gear and it turns out that sT is way better than ToW. You can run the numbers yourself, of course, and try to prove your point, but since the information about those numbers look like this:
BiS T8 57/14/0 sT = 7468 DPS
BiS T8 57/14/0 ToW = 7013 DPS (-455 DPS)
BiS T9 57/14/0 sT = 9728 DPS
BiS t9 57/14/0 ToW = 9256 DPS (-472 DPS)
there really is no way to argue for ToW over sT. Searing Totem will add about 500 DPS to your total almost no matter what your gear. You MIGHT argue that ToW buffs the raid – but not so fast.
Keep in mind that the thing ToW actually does is a debuff, not a buff. It affects the mobs, not the raid members. It does not stack with several other buffs, such as demonic pact and divine spirit – so if you have a lock or priest giving those out the totem is pretty worthless. It also has a tricky range thing going on. The totem has to be in range of the boss and all of the raid members, which is hardly ever possible. You are assuming that the totem always works in every situation as stated in the tooltip, but that’s just not true. But sT always does its thing and the only bit you have to watch is that it is close enough to the boss.
What the simulator shows is that an elemental shaman with ToW will always do less damage than any other build either elemental or enhancement. And the stats for all other caster classes just do not seem to benefit from the ToW debuff on the boss enough to change the numbers. Blizz may change this at some point, of course. But as it stands now, ToW just doesn’t work like the tooltip says it should. Demonic pact and divine spirit make it pretty pointless.
Lawbringer,
I have to agree with you on the ToW vs the ST. unfortunatly I always feel bad if I dont drop ToW. As my DPS tops the charts I feel its due to me not dropping the ToW. But as you stated it doesn’t stack with Demonic pact or divine spirit…there’s no reason for the ToW. I think I’ll run tonight w/o ToW at all and see how it compares to the parses I have with ToW.
Is this still the case St over ToW?