The Gear Issue

Something that has been bugging me a bit in LK is how they streamlined gear choices to simplify the loot tables. While this works pretty well in most cases, here comes ehn shamans and hunters

In the red corner! enhancement shaman! needing a full 17% hit ( assume 13% on gear for raiding draenei) and the full 6.5% dodge neglect from expertise. In addition to this, as a semi-spellcaster we scale fairly well with haste until we reach the dreaded WF chasm. ArP will only affect around 45-55% of damage depending on setup.

In the blue corner! the hunter! need 8% hit, and no expertise. BM hunters are already haste capped.

And these two classes "share" gear, no wonder the shaman Tier set is more or less BiS because there is exactly ONE mail item with expertise outside the shaman set (excluding a blue headpiece)

At least blizzard did a good job at itemizing our tier set, it fills all our needs :D


Now to weapons.. I've been horribly lucky on the drops and my opponents in said drops, and as such i've picked up some of the best weapons available in naxx (excluding Angry Dread, grr)

But with the upcoming changes in 3.1 i'll be back to using the FIRST weapon i got in naxx, The Stray. Mostly because of blizzards silly itemization.
After warriors started dual weilding phallic compensators, the only other user of one handed axes dissapeared (no death knights dont count) the result of this is that there is now ONE epic axe in all of LK, and its a tanking axe! what the hell?

As for maces and fist weapons, Shamans are now back to slow weapons, and rogues want their weapons as FAST as possible.. definite culture clash there...

I hope ulduar has some damn axes...

FEAR THE MIGHT OF THE ELEMENTS!

I thought my damage was a tad insane on Instructor Razuvious today.. i was MILES ahead of everyone else, which i first found very awesome, then very very very strange.. I also had somewhat of a "happening" where i kinda oneshot two of his adds with a chainlightning right after he died..

At first i thought they just died on their own now.. but then i looked at the wws logs

Random fluke? or SHEER AWESOME UBERNESS FINALLY COME TO FRUITION!

you decide

Thanks, i needed that

Well thats that, blizzard smacked us out of our flametongue delusion :P
Ofcourse, theyre doing that by reducing flametongue damage on fast weapons, not really the thing *I* would do as it'll probably just mean WF/WF will return.. but we shall see as more details emerge.

I did some real tests on sunday on 25 man malygos and sarth, and FT/FT didnt perform TOO well anyway.. with the current numbers it SHOULD outdo WF/FT on tank and spank fights but the bursty cooldowny nature of windfury gives it an advantage on fights with any sort of movement involved.

Result is that im probably going back to WF/FT, and we shall see what tomorrow brings

Also: Frostbrand hooooo!

Information OVERLOAD!

From Wow

By Request! My UI!

The Spellpower Conundrum

So okay.. did some more testing today.. and hoo-boy are the results craaaaazeeeehhh..

Warning! post may induce heaps of /care if you're not an enhancement shaman or at all interrested in theorycrafting

Starting with the following Sim.

simulation_time 1000
simulation_time_combatlog 30
combat_length 6
report_count 80
threads 2
min_lag 0
max_lag 0
simulate_mana 1

ep_precision 2
ep_base_stat ap
ep_ap 64
ep_crit_rating 46
ep_hit_rating 30
ep_expertise 4
ep_haste_rating 33
ep_armor_penetration_rating 15
ep_spellpower 28
ep_dps 10.0
ep_mana 200
ep_spirit 100
ep_mp5 20

mh_auto_attack 1
oh_auto_attack 1
wait_ss_with_wf_cd 0
cast_ll_only_if_wf_on_cd 0
bloodlust_casters 2
sync_bloodlust_with_trinkets 0
cast_lvb_only_if_ed_left 15
cast_lvb_only_if_fsdots_left 4
cast_lvb_only_if_fs_active 1
cast_fs_only_if_dots_left 0
cast_ls_only_if_charges_left 0
cast_sr_only_if_mana_left 700
use_mana_potion_if_mana_left 3000

rotation_priority_count 7
rotation_priority1 SR
rotation_priority2 MW5_LB
rotation_priority3 ES
rotation_priority4 SS
rotation_priority5 MT
rotation_priority6 LL
rotation_priority7 LS


miss 8.00
dodge 6.50
glancing 25.00
armor 13083
spell_miss 17.00
nature_resistance 0
fire_resistance 0
frost_resistance 0
arcane_resistance 0
shadow_resistance 0

armor_debuff_major 3925/3925
armor_debuff_minor 1260/1260
physical_vulnerability_debuff 2.0/2.0
melee_haste_buff 20.0/20.0
melee_crit_chance_buff 5.0/5.0
attack_power_buff_flat 688/688
attack_power_buff_multiplier 100/99.7
spell_haste_buff 5.0/5.0
spell_crit_chance_buff 5.0/5.0
spell_crit_chance_debuff 10.0/10.0
spell_damage_debuff 13.0/13.0
spellpower_buff 280/280
spell_hit_chance_debuff 3.0/3.0
haste_buff 3.0/3.0
percentage_damage_increase 3.0/3.0
crit_chance_debuff 3.0/3.0
stat_multiplier 10.0/10.0
stat_add_buff 52/52
agi_and_strength_buff 178/178
intellect_buff 60/60

replenishment 1
water_shield 0
mana_spring_totem 1
blessing_of_wisdom 1
judgement_of_wisdom 1

flask_elixir flask_of_the_frost_wyrm
guardian_elixir
potion
food fish_feast
misc_item

I then exported Three different sets of player stats, only difference was the mainhand:

Kel Thusad's Reach

DPS PPM MPS
white 1560.80 29.01% 108.39
flametongue 1158.38 21.53% 114.27
stormstrike 231.23 4.3% 5.99
lava lash 171.72 3.19% 8.81
magma totem 587.80 10.92% 2.87
earth shock 665.87 12.38% 9.13
lightning bolt 734.55 13.65% 7.02
lightning shield 269.99 5.02% 0.84
DPS 5380.33

Anarchy

DPS PPM
white 1569.54 28.54% 125.79
flametongue 1282.63 23.32% 131.46
stormstrike 176.90 3.22% 5.98
lava lash 170.91 3.11% 8.80
magma totem 590.85 10.74% 2.86
earth shock 670.03 12.18% 9.11
lightning bolt 730.32 13.28% 6.93
lightning shield 308.07 5.6% 0.95

DPS 5499.24

Gavel of the Brewing Storm (leik seriously! wtf?)

DPS PPM
white 1374.76 25.47% 113.63
flametongue 1271.13 23.55% 118.83
stormstrike 184.00 3.41% 5.99
lava lash 167.35 3.1% 8.82
magma totem 613.80 11.37% 2.87
earth shock 704.81 13.06% 9.13
lightning bolt 782.54 14.5% 6.95
lightning shield 298.35 5.53% 0.87

DPS 5396.76

So with FT/FT a lousy vendor ilevel 200 spelldamage mace actually beats KT's Reach, an ilevel 215 epic melee weapon O_O i mean.. come on!

Edit: posted the wrong numbers for Kel Thusads.. its correct now

The Mysterious World of Shamanism!

Windfury glyph was changed back in 3.0.8 to give a 5% (later reduced to 2%) increased proc chanse on windfury, while forgetting to actually remove the attack power buff..

Well they cought it now, and removed the AP buff, a change which has set the shaman world on its head! Because without the windfury glyph, dual flametongue is slowly climbing on the powerscale, even to the point that some shamans are considering swapping out their mainhand weaopons for spellpower gear!

I did some sims on it, and while the numbers dont quite add up to windfury yet, they're so close i just might try it.. i have two fast weapons of different speeds (to circumvent the apperent internal cooldown added to fix the brunnhildar waraxe expoit)

Ill post some WWS logs after todays raid.. should be interresting to see :P

The REbalance point

Fuck yes! got me some new swag today! Got hold of Soul Edge (okay not really, but looks like nightmares right arm)which replaced my ever so slightly worse Anarchy(arp, yeeech.. also: dagger)
I also got an awesome new helm! mostly due to Grim taking pity on me and my blue hat and not rolling after i did an awesome 12!

These new procurations ofcourse, utterly messed up my previous work in gemming and enchanting :( I did however get my new offhand enchanted with berserker, something i had decided against for anarchy since there were still potential upgrades at the end of naxx25.

Depending on who you ask the hand is the second best item in slot for flametongue, webbed death being the only better one, and frankly, I am NOT taking that over a rogue :P

Today also marks the first raid that our awesomely slacky guild has cleared Naxx25, mostly due to not bothering recruiting people for full raids.. we've been clearing two wings with 16-20 ever since... right before christmas according to my achievements. It feels good to finally clear it, even tho it was always really only about the numbers and the /care :P