Binkenstein

[MedicineMan]

Hey Bink (and anyone else with good know-how),

If you have a moment I was wondering if I could get some advice? My
guild is slugging it out in Sunwell at the moment and I've noticed
that I'm falling progressively further behind my comrades in DPS. I've
gone from being a reliable 8th-9th place attacker to being off the
top-10.

Worse still, my average DPS is well below what you have projected on
your theory crafting threads in EJ-land. I suspect I know what some of
the reasons are but I'd love to get a second opinion. Here's a
snapshot of my current elemental gear:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Tichondrius&n=Mooncalf

My personal best on Brutallus is 1764 dps sustained for 6 minutes.
Single bloodlust. Cycling tranquil air and wrath of air for thread-pig
warlocks. That seems to be my ceiling at present.

My thoughts on what the problem likely is:

1) I am overloaded on spell crit. 41.82% self buffed only.

2) I am not adhering rigorously to a LB/CL rotation.

3) I am short on spell haste. 5% with the gear I'm wearing on the
armory.

4) There may just be poor scaling for my class/spec.


Things I'm contemplating doing:

1) Swapping out one of my rings, probably the Ring of Captured Storms,
for a Ring of Ancient Knowledge.

2) When the gem vendor opens up next week on my server, I will swap
out some of my +sp damage/sp crit gems for +sp damage/sp haste gems.
Not sure how many I should swap.

3) Adopting a 4 x LB / 1 x CL rotation and sticking to it as much as
possible.

4) Dropping alchemy for enchanting and loading up +spell damage
enchants on my rings. Don't really want to do this as I'm one of my
guild's few potion masters, with important recipes like Haste and
Destruction.

Opinions and recommendations are highly desired.

I think I have diagnosed the problem(s) correctly. I am just not sure
how far to go when swapping crit for haste. I usually have no shadow
priest in my group and play conservatively with mana, so I am
concerned about the combination of a CL rotation and shedding of +crit
weakening my staying power; although to be honest, I retain mana
better than any caster in the raid atm.

Moving ahead, should I be concentrating on maintaining about 26% spell
crit from gear, whilst stacking up as much more spell damage and spell
haste as possible?

Thanks and cheers.

[Aaron]

Switch out all of your Potent Pyrestones. You'll lose a total of 29 critical strike rating, which is roughly 1.31% crit. In turn, you'll gain 30 spell haste. I'd also suggest the Hex Shrunken Head as a trinket. Spell damage is waaaaay greater than crit at this point. Try to hover around 40% crit if mana isn't much of an issue. When fully raid buffed you should be at about 42% with Int, Mark and Kings, as well as your totem. Just sac it all for haste at your gear level.

Also, put Sub on your cloak, spell pen makes me cry.

[Solwolf]

Doesn't the theorycrafting say that elemental shaman dps will start to
fall away once other casters get access to sunwell gear?

On May 3, 12:33 am, Aaron <ray...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Switch out all of your Potent Pyrestones. You'll lose a total of 29 critical
> strike rating, which is roughly 1.31% crit. In turn, you'll gain 30 spell
> haste. I'd also suggest the Hex Shrunken Head as a trinket. Spell damage is
> waaaaay greater than crit at this point. Try to hover around 40% crit if
> mana isn't much of an issue. When fully raid buffed you should be at about
> 42% with Int, Mark and Kings, as well as your totem. Just sac it all for
> haste at your gear level.
>
> Also, put Sub on your cloak, spell pen makes me cry.
>

[MedicineMan]

Yeah I think that is the case, Solwolf.

Regardless though, I need to keep stacking gear and pushing my dps. I
think in the short term, I may just swap my Ring of Captured Storms
out for a Ring of Ancestral Knowledge. It will have about the same
effect as all the extensive re-gemming Aaron recommends while leaving
me open to more tweaking as new socketed gear becomes available.

I'll also have to run some tests Hex Shrunken Head vs Sextant of
Unstable Currents.

[Binkenstein]

Actually, it should have fallen behind already, unless your "pure" dps
classes suck.

But yeah, what they said goes for me. I'm sitting around a similar
level of DPS atm, although I'm tending towards pure LB spam as I never
keep my CL rotations working propperly

[Solwolf]

You know, I'm pretty much where you are, Binkenstein. Not at the DPS
level (my gear is a mix of kara, t5, pvp, and badge/early t6 bosses)
so I'm theorycrafted at a max of 1279 dps (before elixirs and such).
I try to keep a 4/1 LB/CL rotation since I'm at a passive 100 haste or
so, but Quartz doesn't seem to be doing the job like it used to. I've
found I can press my LB or CL keybinding around 0.3-0.5 seconds before
my cast goes "into the red" in Quartz and not get the 'quit spamming'
WoW default error message.

It's taken me a bit to get the feel of it, and sometimes I click too
soon and lower my cast speed, but it really jacks me up when I try to
introduce CL into my rotation. That, and the site where I
theorycrafted max dps showed a lower total dps using either a 3/1 or
or 4/1 rotation over straight LB spam. I don't get it.

And yes, for the most part, a goodly chunk of my pure dps raid
partners suck. :) I'd be ripping them up if I could raid with my
warlock.

> > > > Thanks and cheers.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Farmacy]

Haha, I switched my raiding main to my warlock... man, it's easy being
green.

I don't know what the means... but I pushed 1400DPS in ZA with a
Shadow priest and not much else for group buffs...

The sad part is I rolled my lock for PvP/Farming... and as Destro, I
suck at both. Oh well.

I'm still trying to figure out if I should push haste gear or not...
I'm at 90 haste and at the hit cap, and with 70 badges and a Zuljin
drop could be pushing that much higher... but oh well.