Saturday, October 17, 2009 at 12:12PM | Llyra Thunderstruck: Major and Minor Intervals
Tristan “Trustyn” Johnson is actually a prototype for the first wave of sentient machines, using their knowledge of science and mathematics to undermine the entire foundations of mankind. Since he is a prototype they needed to test him out in a simpler environment. After the decision to make him into a master at computer chess, he was accidentally left to go wild on a computer with world of warcraft and a blogger account. What follows is the words of such a creature; more can be found at his own blog and podcast, The Elitists. He is here to give you powerful information from his android brain about the mighty elemental shaman.
So about a year ago now Blizzard decided that we really weren’t spending enough time theorycrafting pointless things, so a new form of character customization had to be added. For those who do not play wow (I am curious as to why you read this in that case), glyphs are a sort of enhancement for customizing or amplifying certain abilities and spells. This is going to be a shorter article taking on the glyphs, show the good ones and which situations they are used in. And also just to make this an article worth commenting on, I’ll respond to comments at the end of my posts.
Major:
Flame Shock: This was a staple of the 3 major elemental glyphs and as of 3.2.2 its old use of being extra seconds on flame shock and not being consumed by lava burst was baked in and the Flame Shock Glyph has been replaced with the bonus of the capability of Flame Shock to crit. This, however is also shared with the piece Tier-8 bonus, which many of you have. If you do, then this glyph does nothing and should be skipped. Don’t worry, there is an alternative.
Lightning Bolt: This is a pretty no-brainer. I mean it isn’t very interesting per se, but a 4% flat damage increase on lightning bolt is pretty damn good. If we only had a 4% increase in performance in other areas of the world…
Totem of Wrath: This is a good glyph, and again is a little big of a humdrum, an 84 Spell power buff whenever you cast Totem of Wrath. It’s a good little toy and does a lot of very nice damage, but again, not much to write home about.
Glyph of Lava: About the same effectiveness as Totem of Wrath all things being equal, but if you have your Tier 9 4-piece is a better choice than Totem of Wrath. Also, if you have 2-piece Tier-8, this is the best glyph to make up for the loss of your need for glyph of Flame Shock.
Let’s Conclude here with the bare basics of what you need for major glyphs:
- Starting out: Flame Shock, Totem of Wrath, Lightning Bolt
- With 2-Piece Tier 8: Totem of Wrath, Lightning Bolt, Glyph of Lava
- With 4-Piece Tier 9: Flame Shock, Lightning Bolt, Glyph of Lava
Minor:
Not a lot of great choices sitting in the minor slots, but there are a few good choices I like to pick up.
Water Shield: An extra charge on water shield is a stable choice for refreshing mana. Since there are so few good minor glyphs this is worth one.
Renewed Life: You will save a lot of money by no longer needing an ankh to… ankh.
Thunderstorm: Not just more mana back, you really need the take back of the knockback effect of this in PvE so you at least have a safe mana return and a functional AoE (you’ll be surprised how many times you can use it for mobile damage.)
Responding to Comments:
I thought since for some people I might be a single elemental resource and I would like that resource to talk back. So if there’s anything you want to know, I am reading the comments and by the way, I am very appreciative of the ones I’ve gotten so far. So let’s take a look at what people have been asking.
I’m surprised you went with convection — it’s hard for me to get through more than half my mana (granted I’m still in heroics/low level raid tiers) but that’s generally when mana problems occur as well.
Granted there’s not much better to take — I personally picked up Elemental Warding and Imp. Ghost Wolf — but they definitely provide more utility. -Windsoar
A good point that comes up in a couple other comments. I may have come off as a little too confident over that choice, but this also traces back to a fundamental disagreement I have with Binkenstein’s statement on 3.2.2 that I will explain in a moment. But right now I am testing the new heavier mana load of 3.2.2, but I would still be hesitant of taking all points out of Convection. It might be feasible to take 3/3 Elemental Warding and 2/5 Convection, but I would need to test it.
I use CL after LvB. I haven’t had to drop CL from my rotation due to mana issues or change my talents so far to account for greater mana cast (again, anecdotal, and in low ranking content, i.e. my haste is not high enough for 4 LB’s in new rotation yet).
Perhaps due to content (length of fights) or less than ideal gear setup — mine still has a lot of mp5 — I am not feeling the pain of the new rotation yet, and will need to make a talent change in the future. -Windsoar
The MP5 gear can be a large factor, but you did point out my issue with Binkenstein’s new statement on 3.2.2. Now I have nothing but respect for the guy. I think he is more or less the word when it comes to elemental, but this Chain Lightning statement seems a little too conservative. I present you some of my numbers from a Northrend beasts kill (the only ToC fight that doesn’t have a large Chain Lightning factor). Warning, the next section contains math.
Chain Lightning:
Avg Hit: 4045.5 Avg Crit: 9466.3 Cast Time: 1.13 4045.5/1.13=3579.9 damage per casting second 9466.3/1.13=8377.3 damage per casting second 47.7% crit
8377.30.477=3996 3579.90.523=1872.3 3996+1872.3=5868.3 damage per average casting second
Lightning Bolt:
Avg Hit: 5460.2 Avg Crit: 12003.3 Cast Time: 1.5 5460.2/1.5=3640.1 damage per casting second 12003.3/1.5=8002.2 47.7% crit
8002.20.477=3817 3640.10.523=1904 3817+1904=5721 damage per average casting second
So, even if it’s small Chain Lightning does more damage per casting second than Lightning Bolt and that means that if you can afford the mana for it, use CL as much as you possibly can rather than every lava burst. This might be the reason for my talents in convection and I got a lot of sexy parses to back it up if push comes to shove. I should mention that your mileage may vary due to haste and spell power, but run those numbers yourself.
Great timing on the post, I just respecced from enhance to elemental for my day to day spec (main spec is resto for instances/raids) and pulled that build off of the web, at least now I have a better idea of what the talents are good for. I’ve been running around in my full raid healing set (with the exception of the naxx 25 ele totem and the caster DPS trinket from regular TOC 5) and I’ve noticed a few things. First off after changing into elemental glyphs I was doing around 2500 DPS with hardly any hit rating, secondly was that I could not run out of mana. I know that my resto set is pretty mana heavy due to the drops that I’ve gotten but this was too much. I was wailing away at the raid boss dummy, not dropping thunderstorm or anything and I never saw my mana bar loose more than a millimetre of blue and it came right back to 100%.
So far the spec itself has been fun, I’ve only been hanging out on netherwing ledge grinding that rep (never had the chance to do it on my first main) for the netherdrake, but things are going down faster and easier than when I was enhancement. The only thing that I miss is some of the oh crap abilities I had as ehnancement. I’ve been having some trouble dealing with the roving elites on the ledge and I sure wish I could pop ghost wolves to regen health faster and not have to deal with having to stop DPS just to heal back up. Guess I could go back to frost shock kiting, but there must be another way. -Abruk
Nah you are correct, for sheer soloing enhancement has elemental hands down. The only advantage I can give you is that you don’t need two sets of gear to do elemental in soloing situations.
I haven’t changed my build at all with 3.2.2 - still have 2/5 in convection and 3/3 warding. I’ve been following the advice Binkenstein put out a few weeks ago where LvB is followed by a single LB then CL.
This makes certain that LvB has completed its travel-time to target and procs clearcasting before you cast CL. With my haste where it is I don’t really seem to benefit from more than 1 CL in my cycle anyway.
I tend to think the people saying they never dip below a full mana bar are probably carrying Mp5 on their gear (which you should lose as you gear-up). But that said, even with 0 mp5, it’s not unusual for me to end a long boss fight at 5-15% mana. And left-over mana in a raid is wasted mana, imo.
The important part is that I almost never actually OOM. Faction Champions once or twice when the fight ran long and I wasn’t attentive to keeping WS up full-time. Now, the downside is that if you do OOM and TS isn’t up, you’re pretty much staying that way for a while. So there is a risk, for sure.
If I get to the point where I’m regularly trying to squeeze 2 CLs into every LvB cycle (where 1 cast might be outside of clearcasting), then I’ll probably make the switch to 5/5 convection. For now I suspect my healers appreciate the incoming damage reduction and I don’t think I’m losing any dps from that allocation. -Coral
Most of this has been answered already, but I wanted to point out on the clearcasting thing. For the most part, once you get raid buffs and over a certain crit threshold (33% or so) I find that you will pretty much have clearcasting up nearly all the time if not all the time.
Again I thank you all for your wonderful comments and I am really enjoying my time here on Healing Way. If you have an idea for an article you’d like me to cover simply leave a comment and I will get it. Next week I’m going to try and make heads or tails of what we know from the PTR and Patch 3.3. Should be very exciting. Best of luck and happy raiding!
Elemental, Glyphs, Thunderstruck 