Comments on: Best Raid DPS Elemental Shaman Build For T9

By: Shaman Elemental Raiding Build - WoW

Shaman Elemental Raiding Build - WoW — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 03:19:57 +0000

[...] Best Raid DPS Elemental Shaman Build For T9 | Dominate Your Server [...]

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:44:36 +0000

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.

By: Ed

Ed — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:10:05 +0000

Is this still the case St over ToW?

By: shocksya

shocksya — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:23:02 +0000

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.

By: Lawbringer

Lawbringer — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:32:19 +0000

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.

By: jesse

jesse — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:55:58 +0000

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.

By: Shadowcaster

Shadowcaster — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:24:15 +0000

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.

By: Sigoroth

Sigoroth — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:31:13 +0000

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.

By: shadowcaster

shadowcaster — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:48:15 +0000

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.

By: shadowcaster

shadowcaster — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:32:59 +0000

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.