2.1 Shaman idea

[VinnieJones]

Ok, I think I've finally found the solution to the potential shaman woes of 2.1. For those long fights (Maiden/Curator or longer) you take min/maxing literally. Starting with lb rank1, you alternate min rank lb with max rank. This gives you a lb that is essentially free and still does *some*damage, and has your base raid crit chance (should be around 40% or more with raid buffs and ToW) giving you a chance for the 60% (+10% from talents) discount from a clearcasting proc. The only thing you have to be a bit more heads up about is making sure that you pay attention which bolt you use when you pop elemental mastery.

I'm just not sure how big of a dps hit this will be. I think I'll go try and hit up dr.boom from the rocks and see how long I can manage to cast this was and then head back here to report in since I really don't know to run the math on it on paper.

[Tuftears]

Hmm, very clever idea! Until Clearcasting procs on the max-rank LB and you get a free LB1.:)

[Taelas]

What you want for long fights is a good balance of DPM and DPS. Using LB R1 is very DPM-efficient, but the DPS is paltry. It's essentially like wanding for shamans.

I'm not very experienced with regards to shamans, so I couldn't tell you which rank to use--but using R1 is way too low.

[Gregorius]

What you want for long fights is a good balance of DPM and DPS. Using LB R1 is very DPM-efficient, but the DPS is paltry. It's essentially like wanding for shamans.

I'm not very experienced with regards to shamans, so I couldn't tell you which rank to use--but using R1 is way too low.

Well, it's true that it leads to lousy DPS, but so does running out of mana, so I'm not sure what the lesser evil is here. Before you could use the rank 1 thing to keep casting free max rank LB's while essentially drained. It would be good to test which ranks give the "best" combination of damage vs. sustainability.

[Gregorius]

Since this thread exists anyway, I figure this is a similar issue with respect to Enhancement Shaman...the Windfury bug fix. Currently a lot of shaman are downranking WF on their OH to squeeze in more procs than the three-second cooldown is intended to allow, so naturally this is being fixed. I'm not some Shaman expert obviously, but I've been thinking about "real" alternatives to using WF on the weapons. Rockbiter doesn't scale at all, it's simply a fixed DPS upgrade to whichever weapon it's on, and Flametongue and Frostbrand are apparently based on +spell damage.

So, my crazy idea, which would almost certainly not work but I can't really test it to be sure (at the moment), would be to stack up a modest amount of +hit (because DW hit chances are bad enough) and then loads of +spell damage. Standard melee stats (strength, agility, ap) would be mostly ignored since the point would be to put out as much Flametongue damage as quickly as possible. I slopped this build together in a few seconds; it's certainly not optimal even if this isn't a terrible idea in the first place. ;) The point in Enhancing Totems is especially bad because I just couldn't figure out where else to put the thirtieth point. It could probably do with a couple of the Reverberation points spent elsewhere too...

[Taelas]

Well, it's true that it leads to lousy DPS, but so does running out of mana, so I'm not sure what the lesser evil is here. Before you could use the rank 1 thing to keep casting free max rank LB's while essentially drained. It would be good to test which ranks give the "best" combination of damage vs. sustainability.

Well, if you run out of mana, you can use the R1 thing.;)But if you're not making use of a full mana bar, what's it there for?

[Gregorius]

Well, if you run out of mana, you can use the R1 thing.;)But if you're not making use of a full mana bar, what's it there for?

Well right, you can do that right now. But from what I understand, 2.1 is going to require more proactive mana conservation for Elemental Shaman, because your DPS will *really* tank when you run out.

[VinnieJones]

- For Elem Shaman. The reason why I choose rank one was that it has a cast time of .5 seconds talented so if you were at max range you would actually have both a rank12 and a rank1 in the air. Clearcast doesn't proc until the bolt hits the target so basically you had 2 chances to queue up a clearcast. HOwever, they've added a gcd to rank1 now, so that's out. Alternating rank12 and rank4 on long fights has been suggested to me so I'm going to start crunching the viability o fthat one.

- For Enh Shaman. 2.1 changed the offranking bug, but it also intruduced a new element to basically guarantee a 20% proc rate on dw wf. The three second rule is in place, but the combat mechanics correct for a lower proc rate so as long as you are close to 1k ap or better wf5/wf5 is still the best option. Rockbiter suffers from armor mitigation so it's nowhere near as powerful. For the most part your +spel stuff just doesn't itemize well with an enhancement build so you end up gimping your main damage (white) to try and boost your yellow. Windfury is still king.:)

[Sinomin]

Some info on down ranked spell usage from Wowwiki related to +damage and healing. You can use the formula there to find a nice medium, something that doesnt cost as much mana and doesnt get penalized too bad.

Seems spells under lvl 20 take a penalty from the difference between the highest spell lvl, a penalty just from being under lvl 20 and a penalty from a lower cast time. Clipped a section related to spells under lvl 20:

Penalty Rules
[edit] Spells learned before level 20

Many spells have multiple ranks. To avoid abuse of lower ranks to have a similar effect at a negligible mana cost, any spell learned below level 20 receives a large penalty. If such a spell has a shorter cast time than a higher rank, this is also taken in to account. This penalty can be calculated by subtracting 3.75% for each level lower than 20.

(20 - Level Spell is Learned) * .0375 = Penalty

[edit] Downranked spells

On 23-Oct-2006, Drysc posted this to the General forums:

"In the Burning Crusade, we’ve decided to make a fundamental change to the way spells calculate the bonus they receive from +healing and +spell damage effects and items. This is because we have seen a growing trend in using “downranking” and large amounts of +healing items, which we feel negatively impacts game balance. Downranking involves high-level players using lower level spell ranks and +healing gear to conserve mana, but maintain a high rate of healing done. Through this method, it has become possible in the live game for healing characters to heal large amounts of damage indefinitely without running out of mana. To maintain progression of use through spell ranks, we are changing how lower ranked spells relate to characters of higher level.

Spells will now receive a smaller bonus from +healing and +spell damage based on a comparison of the level at which the spell was learned and the caster’s current level. Take the Priest spell Heal 2 as an example:

The spell is learned at level 22, and the base points for healing on the spell keep increasing until level 27. So, level 27 is considered the spell’s max level in our calculation.

This system gives an additional 6 levels of slack before applying any penalty to casting Heal 2; so, players up to level 33 can cast it with no penalty.

In this example, we will use level 34 (one level past the cast level of the spell) as a starting point.

The bonus from +healing is multiplied by this ratio:

((spell level)+6) / (player level)

That means the level 34 player only gets 97% of the normal bonus from +healing items when casting Heal 2. A level 60 player would only get 55% of the bonus, while a level 70 would get 47%.

The exact same system will also apply to damage spells. However, as healing classes tend to use downranking more often than others, healers are likely to see more effect from this change than other classes. As a general rule, players will be able to use the top 2 or 3 ranks of each spell before receiving any penalty. All of the existing ratios for the +healing and +spell damage bonuses on spells are also still in effect; so spells with a short casting time will continue to receive a smaller bonus than spells with a longer casting time. Spells learned below level 20 will still receive substantially smaller bonuses."

As of patch 2.0.1, this reduction in the effectiveness of +damage/+healing has gone live.

The above text has some confusion about the "spell level" that appears in the ratio. At one point, it says that the penalty is "based on a comparison of the level at which the spell was learned and the caster’s current level." In the example with Heal (Rank 2), though, the level used in the calculation is not the level at which Heal (Rank 2) is learned, but rather the level at which, quote, "the base points for healing on the spell keep increasing until".

What Drysic almost certainly meant was that the "spell level" that appears in the ratio is one level below whenever the next higher rank of the spell is trainable. Since Heal (Rank 3) is trainable at level 28, the "spell level" of Heal (Rank 2) is considered to be level 27. Hence, the formula for the penalty becomes:

1 - (((Level at which next higher rank of Spell is Learned) + 5) / (Player's Level)) = Penalty

For example, druids first learn the spell Healing Touch (Rank 6) at level 32. For a level 60 Druid, the Downranked penalty for casting Healing Touch (Rank 5) will be 38.3%, so the spell will only get 61.7% of the druid's +healing bonus.

Drysc's last sentence implies that the "Spells learned before level 20" penalty described above is still in effect, and in fact is multiplicatively cumulative with the downranked spell penalty.

[VinnieJones]

Thanks Sin. I'll see what I can do with this.