If you don't want any input from Icecrown's ele shamans in the guide, then rename it to a Lordaeron guide and let's get it over with.
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If you don't want any input from Icecrown's ele shamans in the guide, then rename it to a Lordaeron guide and let's get it over with.
What input? You came here trying to discredit me, not mentioning anything about elemental shaman in those posts and without ever being with me in a raid or knowing who I am. I don't judge your skill because I have no idea who you are, neither I've seen any argument from your side. If you're here only to be edgy, you're really not helping the ongoing stereotypes of Icecrown people circling around Lordaeron.
2 people from Lordaeron (pretty much only 2 ms elemental shamans in top guilds) saw a guide that would work on Icecrown, but would need some additional input if you want it to make it work better on Lordaeron because of various differences, but I guess I'm sorry for trying to contribute in any way. Won't happen again.
Sure. I’m not an active wow player currently, but I’m interested to update and improve this guide. I see new possible concepts of playstyle in 2020, including software and hardware improvements, which were missed before, I see new another kind of mechanics available on Lordaeron, which I’d like to mark in my guide. Therefore, my Discord server is offline mainly as other walkie-talkie accessories and I can’t maintain any sort of social media related to WoW and video games entirely. An exception is my Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF7...-VZcITvlZE1bw/ .
So, you can post a message on my Youtube channel in Discussion tab, you can send a Private Message by using this forum UI, you can send an in game mail (just log in on Icecrown) or, which is better, use the Google docs to share your opinions and send me the link to those open (shareable) docs. I prefer Google docs (Excel or RTF/XML), because they have a respective level of security and you can put there any kind of information: images, links, files, diagrams and etc.
P.S. I'm going to update this guide soon - to clean outdated ideas, to fix some grammar mistakes and so on. I think, I'll be able to log in more frequently during these Christmas holidays, like twice per week. Your opinions will be very valuable. Thx.
Edited: December 18, 2019
Well, I logged in like once or twice during the last 3 years since 2016. The return of Classic WoW just inspired me to log in again and perform some random stuff. It’s so nostalgic. It still a very good expansion (Wotlk), especially after all those massive fixes, and no matter these PtW and microtransactions stuff exists on Icecrown. Well, as it was promised, Warmane built a Blizzlike server, but like any retail expansions - it contains the same curse. It’s a very big gap between low skilled and high skilled players, like never before, - the Colorado Canyon between them. It has a “burned content” concept - when a new feature appears available like the entire server just pew-pew it all day every day and, after a week or two, the server turns into a dead server for months. No matter that there are like 12000 players online.
Since May 2019 I logged in like once per week or once per two weeks. I performed a range of random PVP activities, PVE raids, even leveled a Draenei shaman, and didn’t noticed any major changes compared to what were in 2016. There are some changes to NPC in leveling areas, some minor changes to primary and secondary character stats - the character’s play style feels differently (for example, now shamans are ooming faster), some minor changes to trash minions in dungeon encounters (including their positions)...
Well, I can’t maintain a scheduled week in WoW anymore, I can’t do LoD until 1:00 - 2:00 AM anymore on a regular basis. I have to do, and watch over, a lot of mature stuff now. Btw, I played ES: Skyrim, Dark Souls I and Dark Souls III and a couple of random MMO/RPG. Most of them are PTW microtransaction online beings, like the current retail WoW is, which is called frequently World of Loot Boxes. But I’ll suggest you to try Dark Souls III if didn’t yet - it’s cool and challenging hard without co-ops.
Something I keep getting confused with... what is the haste i'm supposed to reach unbuffed out of combat?
The reason for the confusion.. Bizuri's totem of shattered ice has 0 haste out of combat so once you get in combat that will give you extra 220. The magic number i've heard is 1269 haste however is that AFTER the totem grants 220 haste or out of combat with no buffs? What about haste totem?
1269 total haste raiting (with Bizurru) is soft haste cap required for Lava Burst and Chain Lightning to drop to 1 sec. (according that you are affected by spell haste totem and moonkin aura or swift retribution). This means you need just 1049 haste from gear and gems to reach this value. However since Lightning Bolt does around 70% from your total damage done, going past this haste value is actually damage increase.
I HIGHLY suggest you to visit and read this articles:
https://wowhats.wordpress.com/2010/0...pell-rotation/
https://wowhats.wordpress.com/2010/0...nd-relativity/
https://wowhats.wordpress.com/2010/0...al-stats-crit/
https://wowhats.wordpress.com/2010/0...oking-forward/
https://wowhats.wordpress.com/2010/0...s-flametongue/
However on Warmane there is currently bug with 4pT10 causing Lava Burst to increase the duration of Flame Shock with only 2 additional ticks and no chance for more. Since Flame Shock scales with haste raiting probably it's better to keep your haste value as close to soft haste cap which will let you cast 3rd Lava Burst before casting new Flame Shock for 4th Lava Burst.
While the normal stats priority for Elemental Shaman after Hit raiting are: Spell Power > Haste > Crit
My tests and experience on Warmane shows Spell Power > Haste = Crit.
For retail Fester Pants + T10 Shoulders would be bis while for Warmane T10 legs + Fester Shoulders is better option until they fix 4pT10
Edited: June 1, 2020
OMG, guys!... Due to recent changes to Wotlk servers and many real life reasons, I was unable to finish the guide for a long time period earlier. Now when I decided to do it, I almost forgot how much time it requires to write a well designed and formatted bb-codes guide. Thanks there are different online bb code editors and sadly not all bb-code formats are supported by Warmane forum.
I’m glad to present the Final Edition of my guide, considering the recent changes to Wotlk servers. Almost every previous section of this guide was reworked. Few sections were changed completely. In addition there are few new sections in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. Previously I wasn’t sure if it’s worth adding them, but finally I decided to do it. Among new sections are:
- 3.6. BiS Lists Overview for 25 Man Raids
- 3.7. Deep Analysis of Stats
- 3.8. The Client-Server Model of MMOs
- 3.9. Blizzard's Imbalanced Draft of Patch 3.3.5a
- 4.1. Rexar Jr’ Youtube Channel
- 4.2. Rexarjr’s Training Guide Channel
- 4.2. Screenshots
Section 3.7. Deep Analysis of Stats is huge and it will let you understand the essentials of Elemental Shaman in game design better. There, you’ll find a subsection 3.7.6. Resistances, where you’ll find my arguments probably strange. Anyway, I’d like to see your feedback and assumptions about how the Partial Resistances (explained in subsection 3.7.6) are working on Warmane.
Finally, you have to take a look at section 2.5. DPS Trainer, where you’ll find a completely new method to analyze the spell damage and spell rotation DPS of an Elemental Shaman.
I can but I’m not in the mood to do that. To make an informative and interesting to read guide is harder than it looks like to be. It requires decent research, testing and time which I can’t afford now due to IRL reasons.
BTW, there are enough well written Resto Shaman guides around. Just pick one. Here’s one from my old bookmarks http://forum.warmane.com/showthread.php?t=271702. As I remember, that guy was pretty good at it.
The problem of most modern guides is that they are developed and completely optimised for BiS 25man raids, especially for Heroic Mode in ICC (aka vs LK). And there’s a problem, because there are many small guilds which are doing only 10man raids. There are many leveling guilds with no gear and skills. For example, before the Warmane era on this server (on Molten) I was in such a guild called Lethality. That was my best Wotlk experience in WoW, - when a small guild (with under 6kGS characters) progressed from normal10 man ICC raids per week up to 2 and/or 3 Bane and LoD raids per week. Like the current Lordaeron and Frostmourne servers have maybe. The ICC and RS progression is much more interesting and dramatic being in an undergeared raid. You have to rely on more healers, there's a higher chance that more characters will randomly die during encounters and you have to try really hard to kill a boss before his enrage timer. That was not that kind of experience when you are just doing "phase tanking" raids - aka pushing a boss from phase to phase before he will even use a decent amount of his abilities on raids members.
I would like to ask fellow Elemental Shaman players (and all readers of this forum) to upvote this bug report:
https://www.warmane.com/bugtracker/report/99293
I hope with more visibility, this will get fixed sooner.
I recently posted on the bug report additional evidence of the correct, original 2010 working of t10 4piece bonus:
>>
I played an Elemental Shaman in 2009-2010, and I remember that theorycrafting pages tested the t10 4piece bonus, to uncover how it's working and get an estimate of the dps increase it gives.
I searched and found those theorycrafting pages and present them here, as Evidence, that the bug is real and how it worked in 2010:
1.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20100428...man_elemental/
subsection: Stats and Gearing -> Stats -> Haste -> Haste and Flame Shock (and 4t10)
"As of 3.3.3, haste now benefits Flame Shock, our core DoT spell. This is great news for Elemental shamans, as the uptime of this spell should be very close to 100%, and it now scales with one of our best DPS stats. The downside is that haste scaling's current implementation shortens the total duration of the spell, which can be a problem for us since we must always have FS on the target when Lava Burst finishes casting. However, though the duration gets increasingly shorter with the addition of more haste (and we must spend more GCDs on recasting FS), the DPS gained from the ticks being hasted is more than enough to outweigh any potential loss from casting the spell more frequently, as illustrated in this graph:
[picture in linked post]
Note that FS's hasted ticks are not limited by the GCD cap that our casted spells are, and so FS will continue to gain value from haste well after other spells are capped on it.
You may notice that at high haste values, the duration of Flame Shock can seem alarmingly short considering our need to keep the debuff up to guarantee Lava Burst crits. Fortunately, the 4pc t10 setbonus can help us get around this by extending the duration of the DoT. This bonus adds a set number of ticks to the duration of FS when Lava Burst is cast, based on your current level of haste. That means the set bonus scales nicely with haste as well, which is great news for us.
[picture in linked post]
Simply put this setbonus adds to FS the closest number of ticks to 6 seconds always. This means at higher haste levels, more ticks will be added, but you can expect that the duration added will be pretty much the same every time you cast Lava Burst."
2.)
https://wowhats.wordpress.com/2010/0...hock-in-3-3-3/
Set bonus changes part:
"4-piece tier 10: This is slightly more confusing. Presently, 4t10 adds precisely 6 seconds to the Flame Shock DoT timer every time we cast Lava Burst. In 3.3.3, it will instead add however many ticks give an extra duration closest to 6 seconds (source). You would work this out by dividing 6 by the tick timer, e.g. for our example above:
6 / 2.13 = 2.82
Then round the result to the nearest integer, which in our case is 3. So 3 ticks would be added for a total of 3 * 2.13 seconds = 6.38 seconds total per LvB.
The DPS value of this set bonus will actually increase quite a bit in 3.3.3 – it’s worth maybe 200 DPS at present, but in 3.3.3 it could be worth anywhere between 250 and 350 DPS. What’s more, the set value really skyrockets with high haste, so it’s pretty future-proof. This is because as haste gets higher and higher, more and more ticks fit into that ~6 second extension, and so the DPET of Flame Shock goes nuts. We can end up getting ridiculous numbers of total ticks even though the DoT duration remains fairly short."
Please fix the bug, this would greatly improve Elemental Shaman.
Thank you
<<
I know about the 4T10 ES bonus controversial arguments. It works the way it’s displayed in the gear description. I’m not sure if that is a bug or not. As I remember, between patches 3.3.2 and 3.3.5, Blizzard released a lot of patch changes, bug fixes, hotfixes towards in game mechanics, not just environmental and visual changes. Even ICC wing encounters were released one by one until the Lich King was available and after that they implemented ICC buff in phases.
The only two good WoW sites available, after Elitist Jerks, are Icy Veins (mostly focused on modern WoW expansions) and MMO-Champion (old archives). I’ll suggest you look at the second one, as one who has more original Wotlk records. Here are some of them:
That’s already UPDATED! Now take a look at Icy Veins about current classic Wotlk expansion:2009-10-09
2 Pieces (Elemental): Your Lightning Bolt spell reduces the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 1 second.
4 Pieces (Elemental): (Updated) The cooldown on your Lava Burst ability is reduced by 1.5 seconds.
This states: “adds two ticks”, which is very different from the statement “adds precisely 6 seconds to the Flame Shock DoT timer every time we cast Lava Burst”. Based on your HR, you can have two, three, five FS DoT ticks in that time interval, you know. The Icy Veins 4T10 we see on our gear on this server. You can log into the Blizzard server and check that by yourself.2023-10-01
2 pieces — causes your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells to reduce the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 2 seconds per cast. This bonus allows you to use one of your major cooldowns more often, which is a direct DPS increase and also increase in burst damage capabilities;
4 pieces — causes your Lava Burst spell to extend your Flame Shock effect on the target by two ticks. This effect allows you to skip recasting some Flame Shocks, allowing you to fit in more damage casts, such as Lightning Bolt.
About FS and how it’s scaling with HR I write a lot in this guide. You are right, it’s scaling nasty! While talking about DPS issues, we shouldn’t pay attention only to 4T10 but on how the server formulas are working overall and the current latency and lag issues. The current like 300-600 ms random lag spikes are way too bad and that affects all complex or accurate spell rotations. I wrote about it a lot in section 3.7 Deep Analysis of Stats and especially in subsection 3.7.6 Resistances. What about FS DoT issues with SH, just take a look at 3.9. Blizzard’s Imbalanced Draft of Patch 3.3.5a - The PVE Balance Concepts - 5. FS DoT. That was my suggestion to fix this not only for PVE but for PVP also.