Angry and frustrated shaman sidelined, looking for help

[Dregtal 0]

I don't know what I'm doing wrong here, and I've been having issues finding reliable help. That said,

 

I'm an elemental shaman, and I have iLevel 543 gear. In SoO, the first part I seem to be doing just fine, somewhere around 125K DPS. When I get to the second area from Zaela to Nazgrim, I have been told that my DPS drops, most noticably on Nazgrim, where I have been told it is around 110K DPS.

 

I've fought hard to regain my raid slot, and after last night's flex raid, I've been told I'm not going to the regular runs again. I've lost my slot already. WTF

 

So, I need help. I've read numerous sites on rotation, speccing, glyphing, gemming, enchanting and all that stuff (and they don't even all agree), so I'm at a loss. I outgear another shaman in the guild, but he's going because he can somehow pull off much more DPS in most occasions (but not last night for whatever reason). I suspect that this is because he has that cloak and I don't. It seems to be a common factor among the ones at the top of the charts and myself.

 

Profile: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/moon-guard/Dregtal/simple

 

Log: (the 10 man run they let me in on) http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/3x7t890x2it5neqd/details/6/

Edited October 2, 2013 by Dregtal

[Stoove 347]

One thing that I hope will cheer you up is that you're correct. I ran your parses on Iron Juggernaut through Comparebot and found this comparison. Notice that the Legendairy proc "Flurry of Xuen" is worth about 4.5M damage. He did 51.8M total and you did 47.0M total - a difference of 4.8M damage over the fight. That leaves only a 0.3M damage difference between the two of you on that fight - easily RNG for an Enhancement Shaman.

 

One thing I find interesting about this breakdown is that the total effective damage he's doing is somewhat lower than the "raw" damage you see on WoL. I honestly don't know why.

 

When you look at the same breakdown for Kor'kron Dark Shaman, you see that if it weren't for the cloak you'd be better than equal (though take that with a pinch of salt - Dark Shaman is somewhat melee unfriendly!).

 

IF someone can link some WoL parses for those two fights for "successful" Elemental Shaman, you could probably gain a lot of information about what you might do to improve your game. In the mean time, get yourself that cloak asap =]

[fordfiesta 1]

start by hit capping.  Can't really not be hit capped for any caster class, but esp shaman cast times are so long if you miss ever it's a pretty big loss.  My ele sham is similarly geared to yours (a lot of timeless gear), but is a fair amount less, but I do at least 20k more than you do on all of these encounters and it's probably mostly due to hit cap.

[kitsu 55]

hit cap is an absolute for ele ^^

 

the final two attempts on Gen Naz, you appear to have died to aftershock. the raid leader may have been upset with you for that. its a big part of the fight to never get hit by that. other than that i dont know if you all had certain assignments, but you had a lot more damage on teh warshaman than the other shaman.

 

on nazgrim my group has good dps and we 2 heal the fight with one dps, a rogue, on boss. everyone else focus fires adds down, shaman => caster => assassin => ironblade

 

if theyre going to drop someone they should make the add priority clear and then review damage done to each add over the course of your attempts. and tell the bad warlock and disc priest to survive harder. then pick up a solid plate melee fro some closing talents and stun utility.

 

your timeless gear may have a high item level, but spending 3 weeks chasing burdens doesnt really gain too much raider street cred or decent gear. it says timeless in green type on it because, except for the helm, its only worth about 510 ilvl.

 

it is tough explaining to op classes that ppl who do 20% less damage on the max dps charts are still viable, so dont be discouraged easily. if you sit standby and are always ready when they need a sub, a good group will consider you for a consistant spot. although that group you were in may want to consider some tot (maybe even h tot) once a week to sharpen up while still having fun. an SoO ready group should be able to clear reg tot in less than 3 hours.

Edited October 3, 2013 by kitsu

[Stoove 347]

One thing that I'd definitely say is don't just give up! When I was raid leading, I always thought that the best players were the ones who worked extremely hard for their DPS gains.

[trieu 4]

As others have said you need hit cap. It may be a small percentage you ll miss but if you miss say a Lava Burst thats potential 200k damage you just missed out on or a fulmination, which you have from the logs ( 4 to be exact) that could have been 1m more damage on the boss or something else you were trying to dps. Flame shock also miss so you wasted 2 globals trying to refresh the duration.

 

Further down on your wol I saw you use lava Beam and it didnt do alot of total damage only 1.7m so it maybe have been a waste to use it there instead of spamming lava burst. May be there were 3+ targets grouped up, correct me on this.

 

Other than that I personally do not think going mastery from haste will benefit you YET until you get a high item level. I think the guides are saying mastery because their are top raiders who have all this gear where they have too much haste where it wont benefit them anymore and swap to mastery in which they have 80% mastery or higher. The elemental shaman mastery only gives you a chance to do damage with the same ability for 75% of the original spell's damage which your mastery is 60% chance to cause that effect. I may be completely wrong and mastery is the way to go but thats just my thoughts on it.

 

I hope I helped somewhat even if just a little. good luck.

Edited October 3, 2013 by trieu

[Dregtal 0]

Thank you all for the uplifting advice. Thank you also for the constructive criticisms on what was going wrong.

 

One of these days I will have to figure out how to make heads or tails of the reports given by WoL. It isn't very friendly to those who don't read charts regularly.

[Krakir 28]

Regarding you
-----------------

1. Haste is better at low levels, mastery at high levels around 545. So you're somewhere on the margin.  Best way to find out is to simulate it. Get SimCraft 5.4 load you character then scale int mastery and haste to find your stat weights.
 

2. That cloak is a around 5% extra dps gain, so you're loosing out on that. Only way to get that is to start ToT LFR on last 6 bosses and run SoO LFR. I don't know how far behind you are on that quest. But you're also loosing out on legendary metagem. These things count.
 

3. You're gonna be lower than enhance on single target fights  like Juggernut and Nazgrim. No way around it.
 

4. You're gonna be higher than enhance on AoE fights like Galakras and Garrosh, maybe Sha of Pride even. Bringing range cleave is also a must for fights like Dark Shaman to handle the poison adds.
 

5. I'm not sure for an Elemental but I would think the same goes for them as enhancement. Talents change between fights. You're gonna have to find out what talent setup suits each fight.

For example on fights like Immerseus and Thok you want burst so EM is probably better. E.g Getting as many casts in as you can in before Immerseus submerges. On Thok the same goes for EM plus maybe PE since Fire elemental won't get interrupted and you want quicker casts. You can practice with different setups in LFR.

The same goes for fight mechanics. For example on Nazgrim you DON'T want to blow your cooldowns at the start but when he's in Berskerking Stance, when he takes 25% more damage.

Little things like pre-potting before a pull and then again with Bloodlust and cooldowns can increase your dps significally.

 

Regarding the raidleader
------------------------------------

1. How can you be benched on Flex? It scales. He can bring as many people as he wants, making a perfect place to
a] Gear everybody up, including those who are sometimes benched and are lacking gear. 
b] Evaluate the player as a whole (is he late? is he often afk? did he forget to flask? does he bring his own food? did he study the fight before? Can he follow directions and execute? Can you trust him to always show up for raids?)

2.  Nitpicking over some spec in flex is silly. If he thinks elemental shaman is gonna be holding the group from clearing then he needs to re-evaluate his raid leading skills. You can clear flex pretty much with any kind of setup.

Given point 1 and 2 there's more to filling a raid spot than just pure dps numbers.

Edited October 6, 2013 by Krakir

[Krakir 28]

Also, running you through askmrrobot (http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/usa/moon_guard/dregtal) I notced few things that you can fix.

The stat weights are not maybe 100% right for you but the math around min/maxing your stats around those stat weights is correct. So lets say you go all out mastery. AskMrRobot can help you do that. For example by pressing Optimize you can see it increases your mastery by 5%.

 

It also helps you with basic things like:

You're not hit capped and crit is your worst stat. One simple solution is to replace the leg enchant from int+crit to int+spirit.

 

AskMrRobot puts hit at 6.5 and Crit at 2.3. So your leg enchanting is returning you

2.3 * 165 = 379.5 stat weights while you could have

6.5 * 165 = 1072.5 making that enchant almost 3 times better.

These stat weights are not necessarily the right ones for you, only SimCraft can give you those but it shows you how much a difference simple things can fix.
 

Getting hit capped is nr 1 prio! On Iron Juggernut you lost 5% dps because of misses.

 

Another hint, if you can't get into your guild flex raid, then try using OQ so you won't loose gear that week. Every week you're benched the others are gonna get more gear and you're not. Meaning when the RL decides to use you, the gear difference is gonna be larger and larger and the dps gap is gonna increase. You wan't to try to close that gap as much as you do.

Working hard, gearing up, showing initiative, show a team effert can give you that raidspot even though you're gonna be low on some fights.

Edited October 6, 2013 by Krakir

[Minx 0]

Do you find yourself running out of mana?  I see you have telluric currents glyphed but Rolling Thunder should cover that.

[Minx 0]

Also just a curiosity thing: what's the deal with the exp/mastery gems?  I thought I remembered something about casters and expertise a while ago but I never personally worried about it.  Do you have some reason for doing so?

[Stoove 347]

Exp = Hit for casters I think.

[kitsu 55]

exp does = hit and since it's red you dont have to gem int, but for ele int is almost as good as secondary and certainly isnt worth dropping for hit. if youre trying to get an edge on the cool new gearing system to get into a 25, that's cool, but ele want int more than hit in gems.

[Minx 0]

Hmmm...well, live and learn.  I just use spirit for hit since some pieces double for my resto set.  Thanks for the information.

[Tarazet 144]

Hmmm...well, live and learn.  I just use spirit for hit since some pieces double for my resto set.  Thanks for the information.

 

The first thing I did as a fresh 90 Shadow Priest was to get a Ghost Iron Dragonling and put three gems in it: Spirit, Hit, Expertise. They all serve to increase hit chance at the same rate so they are essentially interchangeable, but for Shadow, Spirit is preferred because you can actually run yourself out of mana. For Ele, mana is never really an issue so it doesn't matter.

 

Depending on how it sims out it may be better for the OP to gem for Int and reforge for Spirit.

Edited October 15, 2013 by Tarazet

[Minx 0]

Depending on how it sims out it may be better for the OP to gem for Int and reforge for Spirit.

 

That's what I do.  I am currently gemming Artful for the int/mastery and reforging spirit as needed.  I tend to stay away from straight hit and obviously expertise since I am the extra healer for my raid.

[Larnot 0]

I'm an elemental shaman, and I have iLevel 543 gear. In SoO, the first part I seem to be doing just fine, somewhere around 125K DPS. When I get to the second area from Zaela to Nazgrim, I have been told that my DPS drops, most noticably on Nazgrim, where I have been told it is around 110K DPS.

 

I've fought hard to regain my raid slot, and after last night's flex raid, I've been told I'm not going to the regular runs again. I've lost my slot already. WTF

 

I outgear another shaman in the guild, but he's going because he can somehow pull off much more DPS in most occasions (but not last night for whatever reason). 

 

Just a few things here....  If you do not already have a damage meter, get one.  Recount is good, or Skada.  That way you'll be able to know what your dps is AND overall damage and not have to rely on somebody to tell you.  It will also let you break down not only your stats (which spells are doing the most damage, crit and etc.), but it will let you see what other players (Shamans in your particular case) are doing; what spells they use to get good dps.  You can tell a lot by hovering over/clicking a name on recount's window.  A nice little pie chart pops up by default.  Compare what you do with other Shammy's.  Look for one doing good damage in LFR and analyze his behavior in this manner.  You will be able to tell a lot.  Sorry to go on about that, but it sounded like you don't have a meter, the way you explained it.

 

The other thing...  Don't take it too personally.  I know how hard that can be and how bad you can feel.  It doesn't help for someone to say "it's just a game" because apparently we all enjoy what we do in WoW and try to do it well.  Just as one would in any sporting activity/competition IRL.  The feeling of loss/losing is never fun, especially when someone rubs your nose in it.  And don't think they don't know what they are doing, they do.  Some do it to get what they want from you (better dps, commitment to the guild/raids or whatever).  Some do it because they just don't know how to tell you that they like the other guy better.  Maybe he's a friend IRL or has bent over backward to help/suck up to the raid/guild leader.  All I am saying is, it is possible that the reasons behind your replacement could very well be for things other than just dps; something not so quantifiable.  I am not saying I know about your situation and you sound like a good guy.  Your concern over this shows you work hard and care.  Just remember that dps/hps/etc. may just be a small (or large) smokescreen, masking their true motives and reasoning.

 

Way back in the early days of WoW I remember running my first dungeon, Scarlet Monastery with a pug group from trade chat.  We got to the last boss, downed him and I had no idea what Need or Greed meant, I just knew that in general, in life GREED was a bad thing.  I hit NEED on a wand (I was a hunter), thinking it would give it to whoever NEEDED it the most...  Well, in those days loot wasn't tradeable once it hit your bag.  They kicked me almost immediately and I felt SO bad (I won the roll, of course).  I ended up sending all the gold I had (like 5g, but that was a lot back then, with a new/only toon!) to the mage who lost the roll to me.  I felt SO bad for days, literally and couldn't even sleep.

 

All I am saying is most of us feel what your are going through and sympathize.  You'll find a better group of people.  

 

Good Hunting!

[Stoove 347]

I'd love to see a forum thread entitled "Shit you did as a noob in vanilla" and see how many entries we get <3

[Krakir 28]

I'd love to see a forum thread entitled "Shit you did as a noob in vanilla" and see how many entries we get <3

Off-topic Hijacking:

One guildie finally learned late WotK that he could shift-click to buy different amounts. You can imagine the guild-chat when he, out of his pure kindness, decided to share this enlightening discovery with us.