Shaman Tier 16 Set Bonuses

[Stoove 347]

A new tier approaches, and with it a new set of tier gear. If you're not interested in reading it all, you can skip ahead a little;

 

1. Pretty Pictures
2. Enhancement Set Bonuses
3. Elemental Set Bonuses
4. Restoration Set Bonuses

 

So Sparkly!

 

I think these look pretty awesome, I'll definitely be keeping a set for transmogging next expansion. I guess the Heroic mode version is coolest for once, so yet another reason to push Hardmode progression next patch...

 

 

However, the most important thing (for now) is the set bonuses! Below I'll list all the set bonuses for each spec and any notes/discussion that have been put forth in the thread below.

 

 

Enhancement

 

The Enhancement 2-piece bonus will give you a chance to unleash a random weapon imbue for 10s after you use Unleash Elements.

 

The 4-piece Bonus gives you a 5% chance upon Flame Shock ticks to get you an instant, full-damage Lava Lash.

 

For a good discussion on the set bonuses, check out the discussion later in the thread.

 

 

 

Elemental

 

The Elemental 2-piece Bonus will increase the amount of fire and nature damage done by you to the target each time you cast Fulmination. The duration of the increase is 2 seconds for each stack of Lightning Shield which you used up.

 

Your 4-piece Bonus summons a freaking lightning elemental for you. A lightning elemental. It acts as a guardian and procs from only Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt.

 

For a good discussion on the set bonuses, check out the discussion later in the thread.

 

 

 

Restoration

 

Restoration's 2-piece Bonus puts a damage shield on your Earth Shield target for 300% of the healing done every time Earth Shield procs. Earth Shield does not proc while the buff is active.

 

The 4-piece Bonus summons a spirit-like copy of you which mimics all your cast time single target healing, every time you use Spiritwalker's Grace.

 

Further Information and Discussion

There is a lot of information on Dayani's blog post about changes to Shaman in patch 5.4. Here is what we know;

• The 2-piece's Earth Shield proc does a fairly large amount of healing, especially in high-damage situations.
• It also has the benefit that Earth Shield won't proc until the shield has been used, potentially extending the time your Earth Shield is active for.
• The healing done from the Earth Shield proc is not counted as "yours" - it will show up as being done by the tank.
• Either way, it's worth "about a 7% throughput increase".

 

• The 4-piece only casts the heals you have to spend time casting (no instants) and only single-target heals (Chain Heal counts as single-target).
• The Spirit Champion will target whoever is on the lowest health regardless of who they are or where they are, which has implications for Chain Heal.
• The heals that your Spirit Champion casts do not scale with Spell Power (well they do, but very weakly) so it's not worth waiting for procs to increase it's healing done.
• The length of the Spirit Champion's "life" is extended by Glyph of Spiritwalker's Grace.
• The bonus can make up approximately 30k healing per second while it's active, which might work out to up to 10% of our total healing done. It is definitely worth giving up Warforged gear for.

 

 

 

Discussion

 

What's your opinion of the new tier set bonuses? Are they awesome? Boring? Speculate in the comments, and good points will be added to the first post with named credit.

[Draewind 2]

I find the 4pc bonus lackluster.  With the glyph and using Spiritwalker's Grace on cooldown, it accounts for less than one percent of my healing.  I went warforged gear and kept the two piece bonus, even though the healing is attributed to the character wearing the Earth Shield.  Earth Shield does become a tank savior and give you that extra time to get a big heal on him.  The piece of the tier that is on par with warforged is the hands.

[Stoove 347]

Dayani posted a good analysis of the T16 4pc Resto set bonus, which basically says it's probably better than taking the warforged off-items. While I agree that it's difficult to use, it has saved raids for me.

[kitsu 55]

life saving burst vs quantifiable numbers boost.

[Stoove 347]

life saving burst vs quantifiable numbers boost.

 

Quantifiable but insignificant, i.e. under 0.5% according to Dayani. I'd take the raid saving burst any day.

[Cenerae 1]

Is it even 'raid saving burst' though? When I go into chain heal spam mode with it running, over the course of the 15 second duration it does about as much healing as one crit healing surge on a low hp target.

 

It's certainly not changed how I use Spiritwalker's Grace at least. And I can't see it saving my raid. It doesn't do nearly enough for that. But, throughput is throughput, and it's more than I'd see by breaking the 4 piece. So.

Edited November 28, 2013 by Cenerae

[Stoove 347]

I can guarantee you that the extra healing it output on our new Norushen HC kill tonight definitely kept the raid stable when it was needed. Say what you like, using the 4-set ensured our raid stayed alive long enough to kill the boss. :)

[kitsu 55]

It's not going to save the raid every time you use it, but when it does you'll be glad you have it.

[Drafty53 17]

I think it's best to keep both.  On most fights I prefer the better "crit" itemized pieces but keeping the 4pc set in the bag is a great idea to help with progression fights or fights that are seeming to need that extra CD during a hairy phase.

[Stoove 347]

The better itemized pieces is a really tiny gain in the scheme of things, especially if you have to reforge differently depending on whether you're using the set.

[SparkSovereign 61]

As requested:

 

Elemental set bonuses:

• 2pc maximum damage increase is 4%, but realistically uptime isn't 100%.  Don't worry about managing it.
• The 4pc can't have more than one elemental running at a time, and the elemental interrupts his own casts if you move.  Its dps contribution is a few percent, varying from 2% to about 5% from fight to fight, depending on AoE/movement/luck/etc.
• While the tier bonuses are independently lackluster, you want to prioritize tier gear because they have non-terrible itemization and everything else does.  On the off chance you aren't reforging out of spirit on everything and still over hit cap, you could replace the crit-mastery tier chest with the spirit-haste one from Paragons, but chances are you have way too much spirit already.
• If you are already over hit cap, a flex haste-mastery tier piece is better than an Ordos spirit-crit piece.  Getting tier pieces is one of your highest gearing priorities.

Enhancement set bonuses:

• 2pc bonus is tricky to calculate, but the guys over at Totemspot say it's about 4-6% overall dps increase, and strongest if you take Unleashed Fury.  They also suggest casting UE as your top priority regardless of talent selection if you have this bonus, to maximize uptime.  It does approximately nothing for your AoE, but is quite strong for single-target.
• 4pc bonus does approximately nothing when you only have one flame shock rolling (Totemspot has it at 1-2% dps increase).  Its effectiveness, however, is directly proportional to how many flame shocks you have running, until such a point where you are GCD capping with constant Lava Lashes.  And yes, that actually happens.  It is absolute madness on AoE fights, cleave scenarios, and still powerful in situations like Paragons where you can roll multiple flame shocks even if their damage doesn't contribute.
• Enhancement gear is vastly better itemized than elemental gear, so you can safely drop the 4pc for better itemized pieces or warforged pieces on single target fights (or fights like Garrosh where the 4pc is only useful on a phase with no dps requirement).  On fights where cleave targets are regularly present, or where AoE dps is meaningful, the 4pc will outclass the benefit of switching to warforged pieces.

[Hybrys 199]

Enhancement set bonuses:

• 2pc bonus is tricky to calculate, but the guys over at Totemspot say it's about 4-6% overall dps increase, and strongest if you take Unleashed Fury.  They also suggest casting UE as your top priority regardless of talent selection if you have this bonus, to maximize uptime.  It does approximately nothing for your AoE, but is quite strong for single-target.
• 4pc bonus does approximately nothing when you only have one flame shock rolling (Totemspot has it at 1-2% dps increase).  Its effectiveness, however, is directly proportional to how many flame shocks you have running, until such a point where you are GCD capping with constant Lava Lashes.  And yes, that actually happens.  It is absolute madness on AoE fights, cleave scenarios, and still powerful in situations like Paragons where you can roll multiple flame shocks even if their damage doesn't contribute.
• Enhancement gear is vastly better itemized than elemental gear, so you can safely drop the 4pc for better itemized pieces or warforged pieces on single target fights (or fights like Garrosh where the 4pc is only useful on a phase with no dps requirement).  On fights where cleave targets are regularly present, or where AoE dps is meaningful, the 4pc will outclass the benefit of switching to warforged pieces

You beat me to the punch!

 

I did want to note that for Enhancement, your best two set pieces are the pants and gloves, due to the pants having dual yellow sockets and the gloves for having the lowest stat/ilvl weight.  The rest are better off being WF pieces.

[Stoove 347]

Fantastic response, thanks guys! I updated the OP to link to your post :)