Elemental Haste vs. Mastery

[Eriatarka 0]

So I've been trying to work out some kinks with my ele sham's dps and, therefore, have been doing a bit of research. I was able to up my dps a bit by switching out some talents for ones that were recommended here (went to Echo from EM), but I have a slight issue with the fact that Mastery > Haste is what is suggested. I was going by noxxic before, where Haste > Mastery is suggested and I'm finding that reforging to haste is giving me higher numbers. But I'm not sure if Haste really is better, or if I'm straight doing something wrong or missing something. Should I go back to EM if I reforge to Mastery? And will it be better overall? I am generally in the top 5 for every lfr up through ToES, but I tend to be mid-bottom in ToT. If I can do anything (aside from better gear) to better my dps, I would like to.

Armory: http://us.battle.net...rìatarka/simple

Let me know if there's any thing I can do better here (I know, the pvp bracers have got to go >_>)

Edited May 19, 2013 by Eriatarka

[Stoove 347]

Good question. Sadly, I can't give you a satisfying answer for two reasons. 1) because I don't currently play Elemental (sorry) and 2) as follows;

I checked the Elitist Jerks guide for this kind of thing. Under stats and reforging they say the following;

Note: Crit/Haste/Mastery weights & priorities vary depending on glyphs & talents, so it's important to generate your own weights on a regular basis. Any basic suggestion such as this one can very easily be off for your particular circumstances. Some more detail on what circumstances can and will effect this and how will be in the Stats & Gearing sections of the guides.

So my conclusion would be a completely unsatisfying "you'd have to sim it". For this reason, and since I'd like to learn to sim myself too, I'm putting out a request for a basic guide to simming your Shaman for this forum. I'm sorry that I can't help more!

Update: call for help put up, hopefully we can attract somebody who'll explain to me how the whole thing works. :)

[Horcored 17]

Well, i have to agree with Stoove. As that being said, in average haste pulls above mastery at lower ilvls, at higher ilvls it seems that mastery becomes slightly stronger. As i see from armory of the top ele shamans in the game they tend to go 60 - 40 with mastery prio.

I might be completly wrong here, but thats how i see it.

- Horcored

[Adhemar 3]

I realize that this is very late, but it doesn't seem like it was ever answered very well. Binkenstein is one of the premier elemental theorycrafters and has a very good answer on his blog, here: http://www.totemspot.com/vb/entry.php?b=95

He also answers just about any other questions you might ever have about elemental shaman better than pretty much anyone else.

[Stoove 347]

That's good advice, thanks for the link. Bink is a nice person with some strong opinions, and I respect him.

However, please do take note of two things; 1) Bink does warn that the guidelines are rough, 2) There appears to be some disagreement in the comments; expect lots of variation. This would still lead me to deduce that you would need to sim it.

I repeat my call for people who are competent at simcraft to come forward and help me to write a guide on how to sim your shaman.

[Adhemar 3]

When Bink say they're rough guidelines, he means that if you play or theorycraft at a very elite level, you might be able to improve on them. For the rest of us, it's very good advice that will get you within a percentage or so of optimal stats. If you're capable of improving on those guidelines, you're probably not reading or posting on this forum and you certainly don't need basic guidelines.

As Bink points out, arriving at a more accurate conclusion would require a lot more labor than he's already done (which, knowing how he tends to operate, I am wiling to wager was already substantial).

It's also worth noting that what he suggests is not far off from what you can see many top elemental shaman doing. Leeds has more mastery than Bink recommends, but he's not stacking either to the exclusion of the other.

Of course, you could run sims with every possible combination of mastery and haste levels your gear permits, but it's very likely to be a colossal waste of time with an end result that be of less benefit to most of us than spending the same time practicing would have been.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Adhemar

[Stoove 347]

Let's not forget, though, that a top-tier raider like Leeds has a significantly higher ilvl than the one we're looking at in this thread. As I said earlier, the stat weights change a lot with gear level (thanks to EJ for backing me up there) so a rough guideline is a good start but not the final word.

I might also add that Adhemar's definition of "rough" is a lot smaller variation than is described in the thread underneath. I quote;

I know Corn and my statweights differed dramatically at a much earlier point (around 13-14k ish, his mastery is around .1-.3 higher then his haste, which is the opposite for me). Only thing I could think of was berserking causing it.

To which Bink replies that yes, it's a rough guideline. It's a good guideline, but I'd like to think we can do better than that in a personal help thread. Again, we need a simming guide for Shaman. Anyone who is comfortable with this please pm me if you're willing to help on a guide.

[Chivalry 1]

I would say Haste > Mastery > Crit until you get heroic gear. Then maybe Mastery will get more value, but then again, blizzard might change the way Lava Surge procs, so Crit will become more valuable. Here's my Armory, I do fairly good DPS on my raid, topping some encounters. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/Azralon/Chivalry/advanced

Your trinkets do not proc haste so I suggest gemming/reforging to it since Lava Burst now has a 2 sec cast, so you need haste to hit more of those trinket/jade spirit proc'd without buffs 400k lava bursts.

[rjparker1 7]

Well, i have to agree with Stoove. As that being said, in average haste pulls above mastery at lower ilvls, at higher ilvls it seems that mastery becomes slightly stronger. As i see from armory of the top ele shamans in the game they tend to go 60 - 40 with mastery prio.

I might be completly wrong here, but thats how i see it.

- Horcored

Depends if you choose echo of the elements vs Ancestral swiftness and you hit the "soft cap" for haste.. that ALSO is key. there is a sweet spot for haste... 12 %, 25%, 33%..

There is also a rotation overload.. if we have to remember to hit Elemental Mastery when it's off CD, and time it with Ascendance, then use the Fire Elemental.. blah blah blah..it gets complicated especially if the RAID gets interrupted by damage or movement.

I prefer to keep it simple, less buttons, more consistency.. and for me at least haste as been VERY good, I did push it to over 30% but there is also a such thing as "too" fast because I can't activate my abilities that fast.. it was getting nuts.

Once I achieved the haste break point (currently at 25%) my DPS is better than what Simulation Craft says it should be.. so I consider that a good sign. I also note that I am pretty much top 5 in ever RAID I go into, so my build must be pretty good...

[Adhemar 3]

Depends if you choose echo of the elements vs Ancestral swiftness and you hit the "soft cap" for haste.. that ALSO is key. there is a sweet spot for haste... 12 %, 25%, 33%.

There are no meaningful haste soft caps for Elemental. The only cap that matters to us is the GCD cap which is a very hard cap.

Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst both have a 2 second cast time. My shaman (without heroic gear) is sitting at 30.65% passive haste and with a proc from the legendary meta during heroism, I exceed 120% haste. Essentially, the haste cap for Elemental is 100%.

New Casting Time = Base Casting Time / (1 + (% Spell Haste / 100))

2 seconds / (1 + 120/100) = 2 / (1 + 1.2) = 2/2.2 = 0.909 second cast time for my primary damage abilities.

The global cooldown for most specs and classes (Elemental Shaman included) is 1.5 seconds and can be reduced by haste to 1 second but no further than that. This means that when I have heroism active and my legendary meta procs, even though my cast times are .9 seconds, I have to actually spend a full second per cast. So the haste rating on my gear that lowers me from 1.0 to 0.9 is essentially worthless at those times.

This is greatly exacerbated if you're using a haste proc trinket (like the Shado-Pan Assault one, which I was using until last night) or if you take either Elemental Mastery or Ancestral Swiftness as your fourth tier talent. It's also much worse than this during AoE spam, as Chain Lightning starts with a 1.5 second base cast time (I GCD cap on Chain Lightning with just the legendary meta proc or just heroism, both of them together makes it a 0.68 second cast time which is an awful lot of wasted time).

[Stoove 347]

There are no meaningful haste soft caps for Elemental. The only cap that matters to us is the GCD cap which is a very hard cap.

I saw that Binkenstein said this somewhere, too. He might even have said as much to me at some point :)