Shadowlands - Shaman Discussion

Serious discussion
1

We released a beta version of the simulator today and all three priest specs are fully functional including all Covenants, Conduits, and Legendary Effects.

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The rotations are not complete. And in case you were wondering, no, the rotations are not complete. This beta version is not sufficient for you to make detailed comparisons between covenants, conduits, and legendary effects. You can get a rough idea, but you will want to optimize the rotation more to get better comparisons. I will, of course, be doing my own round of rotation optimizations - but I will be doing that after all classes and specs are functioning in the simulator.
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For now, healers are using the same scripts we have been using in BfA. We do not plan to keep using those scripts as-is for gear optimization in Shadowlands. We may use them for initial gearing strategies at launch - but we will be quickly developing a new set of scripts for healer optimization. I will also be adding a pure DPS rotation for each healer spec, as we will be supporting a “slider” like we do for tanks that lets you balance how much you care about gearing for damage vs healing.

Feel free to post any thoughts/ideas you have in this thread!

Elemental and Enhance have gone through a lot of changes on beta. Restoration has remained largely unchanged, but it does feel a bit more powerful with some numbers tweaks they have made.

Enhancement is now using maelstrom weapon again. In general, this change feels good to me - building up charges to empower spells that normally have a cast time is pretty cool. The main disappointment so far is that the damage of lightning bolt and chain lightning haven’t been tuned up enough to make the maelstrom payoff feel good. Right now I’m just hoping/imagining that they will increase that damage. Get ready for all your friends who play melee specs to beg for you to be in their group - Windfury Totem is back and it only affects your party (it’s not a raid-wide buff).

Elemental had fulmination added back in, and then it became a lot like maelstrom… so they reverted the change and put maelstrom back in. I don’t know that elemental will feel much different to people, but there are a few changes. Echoing Shock is a new talent that is very fun to play around with. The necrolord covenant (Primoridial Wave) can be very fun if you set it up right - get a few flame shocks out and then see Lava Bursts flying all over! Some fan-favorite effects are back, like Echoes of the Great Sundering.

I’ll add more thoughts as I get into heavy rotation development in the weeks to come!

2 Likes
2

Hello !
I may take a look at enchancement Shaman because i like it very mutch in BFA, i was hype for it in SL and i think blizzard missed some things; as you said dmg from lightning bolt and chain lightning isn’t great, yet.

ALL OF THE COMMENT AFTER THIS POINT ARE FOR SINGLE TARGET ONLY, i will see multi target later

  1. Persistent Spells

One error occure if i tried to put “Weapon enchant” into the rotation. From my point of view, explicite them sound better ? Specially if you accept the lightning shield but not weapon enchant.

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this is a vierge rotation with only those 3 spells
Same if i add the “windfury totem”, except this one need to be cast every 2 min and cost a gcd so it have to be into the rotation at some point.

  1. Melee dmg
    Validated; gear is not the same but this picture show it’s close enough.

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  2. Lashing flames:

So i tried to play with the talent Lashing Flame in Single target. It seems like sometimes during the rotation the debuff Lashing Flame stayed on the target with Flame Shock disapearing. I tried to keep it always up by refreshing early flame shock.
Here is some simulation :
Improvement of 2.95% if the refresh is done within the 1 GCD before it desapear.
Improvement of 2.32% if the refresh is done within the 2 GCD before it desapear.
Based simulation with current rotation in

The rotation : Not Available
Disclamer : Tried with only 1 set of talent where i had lots of downtime

As Swol said this “improvement” are only comming from the missing crash Lightning in Single target

Small modification on the AMR rotation :
Default AMR Rotation with Crash Lightning at the end

AMR Changed rotation
Compare to try to Lashing Flame Optimisation

  1. Forcefull Winds

I have those two simulation :
Same rotation as Lashing Flames improvement
Base rotation
So here i dont think the use of “2” more stormstrike that change things here. But the use of crash lightning in single target is probably the most improvement here.

Gonna eat ! So be back soon :stuck_out_tongue:

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This part is Done
After adding the Crash lightning into the AMR rotation i’m now trying to dig the point below to improve the current rotation :

Default rotation used : Default Rotation AMR + Crash Lightning as filler

  1. Elemental blast :
    The Coldown of Elemental Blast seems to be very close to the time i need to get 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon (to make it instant).
    It seems like i can try to not use Lightning Bolt in single target over the Elemental Blast. The improvement is very very small but i bet this build will gain in strengh when stats will increase too.
    Default Simulation
    Improve uptime on Elemental Blast
    This is for only one setup (3111111) but after testing 3-4 combinaison of talent it seems like an improvement accross the board.
    The Rotation : Improvement on Elemental Blast Uptime
    Very small improvement; possibly margin of error

  2. Use lava lash with hot hand procs (talent level 25) is better if it’s on highter priority compare to stormstrike.
    Already in the AMR’s rotation

  3. Ice Strike… It’s a complicated subject. if i “just” add it to the rotation it seems like i’m missing a huge part of it. When playing it i was often doing somethings like : “Flameshock” => “Ice Strike” => “Frost Shock” while other abilities like storm strike where in cooldown. (or Frostshock => ice Strike => Frost shock with Flame shock refresh upfront this)
    Not an improvement

  4. Hailstrom : So to get the most of this one you need to get the most maelstorm weapon as possible. So because the maelstrom you get is “constant” (except during wolf windows) to improve dmg from this talent it’s mostly due to the number of target hit. So i see nothing that can improve this talent in the current rotation. Maybe in a multi target rotation this could be improve by moving it up in the priority list or even wait ? to get at least 2 targets hits.
    One more thing about this talent, it isn’t trigger if you use the venthyr’s ability Chain Haverst but is trigger with the necrolord ability.
    Not an improvement
    Couldn’t make it better. Waiting for this buff to stack only refresh it so no 10 targets hit.

  5. Fire nova: It’s purely a AOE spell difficult to use in single target and for a very low amount of dps so… Can make mutch more yet.
    So i’ve done very little to this; i’ve added it as a filler and it seems like keeping it for 3 target at least seems better.
    The rotation with Fire Nova improvement
    Very small increase

  6. Stormkeeper : seems to be an increase if cast on cd but as you probably saw it has a nice interaction with Necrolord ability and earthen spike.
    Small Increase
    In the current rotation; the buff “stormkeeper” isn’t used to his full potential, sometimes the buff is just lose (or 1 stacks is consumed).
    Here is a comparaison :
    3,243 DPS without the improvement of Stormkeeper
    3,293 DPS with improvement of stormkeeper
    In case you wonder, this improvement isn’t worth using Chain Lightning on multi target with the buff, it’s better use it on single target LOL Blizzard need to fix this

  7. Elemental Spirit: could be improve to use the buff from the wolf but it does so little dmg it’s not interesting from my perspectve.

  8. Earthn Spike : Can improve dmg from Sundering, Ligtning Bolt, Elemental Blast, Chain Lightning. I’ve added the spell so we use it before any of them and you can get a huge combo with stormkeeper. I need more time to dig into this part.
    It Seems like the dmg increase from nature dmg in the simulator isn’t actually increasing the dmg from Elemental Blast. when it does in game
    dmg from Elemental Blast without Earthen Spike
    dmg from Elemental Blast with Earthen Spike debuff
    or maybe it’s a bug from blizzard perspectives ?
    image
    Swol may be able to do a small modification on this
    After trying to improve dmg from Sundering, using Earthen Spike FOR Sundering doesn’t seems good enough to do a modification on the rotation.
    Here is my try to do so. I keep this in mind to test it again as soon as swol update the Ememental Blast dmg increase from earthen Spike

4

The differences in these simulations is mainly from making use of crashing storm. The flame shock refresh has no impact really, just FYI. It already has 96%+ uptime with default rotation.

1 Like
5

I’m trying to finish the few point i have on the todo list above.
I’m having trouble to make Sundering work.
Without condition or anythings, having sundering in the rotation just wont work.
Can you help ?

The Simulation

The Rotation

I guess it has to do with the “is a coldown saved for aoe” but with this part in the rotation, the spell isn’t used when i want it what ever position i’m putting it in the list it just lunch when he want.

6

If you expand the “metadata” for your Sundering action, you will see that there is a tag for “Boss Modes”. You have chosen AoE. That will make this action be ignored for any script that does not have a section flagged as AoE.

Those metadata tags are not necessary for your own rotation development, although you can make use of them instead of having conditions like HasTalent(X) or HasConduit(Y), etc. The main function of the metadata tags is to make the rotation display correctly in the rotation viewer on the guide pages.

1 Like
7

Thanks !
I was able to do the test i was looking for; not an improvement sadly :’(

8

Now that i have “finish” my pass on the rotation.
I’m gonna focus on legendary and how to optimize them into the rotation.

As a default; here is the rotation i’m gonna use (result of the rechearch above).
https://beta.askmrrobot.com/wow/theory/rotation/03894454e4774106aeac86e76ce468d3?spec=ShamanEnhancement&version=live&share=true

  1. Chains of Devastation
    Casting chain heal makes your next chain lightning instant cast. Castin Chain Lightning Makes Your next Chain Heal instant Cast.
    This is a 20s buff during the time you can use one or the other alternatively.
    I wonder if this legendary can allow less downtime and more chain lightning overall (chain lightning boost Crash Lightning; our main dps in multi target)
    Using it in multitarget could better compare to frost shock unbuff or crash Lightning.
    I’m missing the Chain Heal spell in enchancement spec to make it work and i can’t create spell in the beta currently.
    Missing Spell; Chain Heal

  2. Deeptremor Stonetreads
    Earth Elemental has a permanent Earthquake attached to it
    Already in the rotation; nothing to do.

  3. Primal Lava Actuators
    Each time Flame Shock deals Periodic damage, increase the damage of your next Lava Lash by 10% and reduce the cooldown of Lava Lash by 0.5s.
    What this does ; improve dmg from Lava and increasing the number of time we can use lava lash.
    How can we get more output from it; get bigger hit from lava lash… but more often ? so we would need to not use the spell which is generally not a good use of the spell except pvp maybe.
    So i guess it a passif one that dont need a specific work

  4. Hel of Deep Elements
    Using Stormstrike has 5% chance to activate Ascendance for 6s
    How can we get more out of it; use more stormstrike.
    Totally passive one. The Ascendance buff is already hight in priority list so nothing to change here.

  5. Witch Doctor’s Wolf Bones
    Increase the chance to gain a stack of Maelstrom Weapon by 5% and whenevr you gai na stack of Maelstrom Weapon, the cooldown of Feral Spirits is reduced by 2s
    Fully passive one. Nothing to do here.

  6. Doom winds
    Dropping windfury Totem grants 100% increase chance to gain windfury Weapon for 8s. Occur once every 1min
    This mean we need to add Windfury totem in the rotation.
    Again we can’t put wind fury totem in the rotation because it’s considerer as “persistent”.

  7. Wristwraps of the Ancestors
    Bloodlust or any similar effects last and addictionnal 20s on you, and you gain an extra 10% Haste from any bloodlust type effect.
    Fully passive one, nothing to do.

  8. Legacy of the Frost Witch
    Consuming 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon will reset the cooldown of Stormstrike and cause your next Stromstrike to deal 100% increase damage
    This mean we need to time “make sure” stormstrike is on cooldown before consuming Maelstrom Weapon.
    I’ve edit the rotation to match this on got a nice improvement for one setup of talent

To summarize:
Here is the rotation taking all modification from top to finish (from talent to Legendary)
https://beta.askmrrobot.com/wow/theory/rotation/1ff819b04b7643d6a15ac3e10d0c5577?spec=ShamanEnhancement&version=live&share=true

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Hoy !
So i was looking some videos :

He is speaking about a combo using an elemental legendary the pants “Footpads of Elementa Equilibirum” wich could be very good for enhancement.
The buff isn’t consumed for everythings apprently.

Here is what i’ve found that “proc” the buff and what consumes it on the beta the 29-09-2020 @13h54

Flame shock - proc the buff for frost dmg - consume the buff on fire dmg
Frost shock - proc the buff fro nature dmg - consume the buff for frost dmg
Ice Strike - proc the buff for nature dmg - doesnt’ consume the buff for frost dmg
Sundering - proc the buff for frost dmg - doesn’t consume the buff for nature dmg
Earthen Spike - Doesn’t proc the buff for frost dmg - doesn’t consume the buff for nature dmg
Crash lightning - proc the buff for fire dmg - doesn’t consume the buff for nature dmg
stormstrike - doesn’t proc the buff - doesn’t consume the buff
Lava Lash - proc the buff for frost dmg - doesn’t consume the buff for fire dmg
Lightning bolt - proc the buff for fire dmg - consume the nature buff
Elemetal Blast - doesn’t proc any buff after the cast - consume all buff - does procs the increase dmg but it consume itself
Chain lightning - proc the buff for fire dmg - consume the nature buff - increase the dmg on all target

From my last testing Elemental Bast was already very close to be a good talent of maybe the best. with this legendary it could be the best overall. I’ve reported to blizzard about this legendary or make it general or make it so it doesn’t work at all for enhancement.

@Swol if you come back to this spec at some point, can you allow the legendary to be picked for enhancement ?

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Yeah I will make sure you can equip it in the simulator - I’ll probably have to implement it first.

I’m guessing it is not intended to behave like this… we’ll see where it ends up down the line.

In just a few days I’ll be done with my first pass of each spec and then be swinging back around to work on the rotations for the ones that need it. Enhance certainly needs it :wink:

I really like the burst combo you can do on enhance with stormkeeper and primordial wave, I think I put that into the rotation just to mess around with it.

11

No problemo !

Yeah this legendary doesn’t seems intended that why i’ve reported it to blizzard ingame so they make it totally usable or just not at all.

Great job for doing all the specs in few time ! xD

The gameplay from Stormkeeper is interesting but very difficult to use in multi target, i would like somethings to spread flame shock easly :confused:

12

Hi !
I’ve update this WA group with the rotation i’m speaking about in this in case you want to look at it.
https://wago.io/Bkofw8j4Q

It’s a good way to see their is a problem with some abilities. Not everythings works perfectly (haven’t tried necrolord or even fire nova)

13

I posted an updated rotation for enhance. I don’t have time to answer your posts point by point, but try out the new one - I think I hit all the areas you talked about.

For using the Doom Winds legendary - use the Doom Winds spell in simulator - Windfury Totem is reserved for the raid buff. I can probably put the weapon imbues in the rotation at the start without being a problem, but haven’t done it yet.

1 Like
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I’m really happy with all you did ! Way cleaner than my work but hey i tried at least ! I hope the work i did was usefull and allow you to go faster on this spec.

Two things are missing:

  • The implementation of the chain heal as spell usable by Enhancement for the legendary “Chains of Devastation”. (The point is to use Chain Heal as a filer to get more Chain lightning)

  • The implementation of the legendary “Footpads of Elementa Equilibirum” but as you said this elemental legendary may not be usable by enhancement in the end.

15

In the next update I’ll have a version that includes Chain Heal as a useable spell for all shaman specs. I tried putting it in the rotation with the legendary, but it didn’t increase DPS. I think it would only have utility if your group actually needed the heals.

I’m waiting on the Footpads for a while until I can confirm if blizzard intends for them to be used by Enhance or not - I’m trying to be efficient with my time :wink:

Your posts were interesting and helpful - anytime you want to poke holes in my rotations, I welcome it!

1 Like
16

After playing on some MM+ key on the beta, i wanted to share my point of view
I feel like their is somethings that i’m missing on the rotation or how i execute it because sometimes i’m very low compare to other player. In Single target seems fine, not top dps but fine.
In Multitarget, i’m often consumming Maelstrom stacks only to get a hailstorm buff faster. It’s result into more FrostShock are showed below.

Their is a difference between the simulator for MM+ and an overall spellbreakdown from details on the beta. My hypothesis is it’s due to the script most likely and the number of target (dmg per hit are really close).
I’m looking specially at Frost Shock beeing really high in the beta where it’s not in the simulator. Most of the pulls where 4+ on this dj sometimes even 6 or 7.

Can i have your point of view on this ?

This is the spell breakdown after a MM+:

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This is what it’s look like on the simulator:
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https://beta.askmrrobot.com/wow/simulator/report/60a3242ed9284c29bb1bc6dc41272596

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We’ve been doing some work on the targeting code - looks like the hailstorm talent got a little messed up as a result and it isn’t hitting multiple targets. We’ll post a fix for it in the next update.

1 Like
18

For later :

long story short :
If you use stormkeeper, and have stacks of maelstrom weapon. Currently using lightning bolt or chain lightning doesn’t use the maelstrom stacks and the lightning bolt is buff by them. Maybe it’s a bug maybe not.

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I don’t think it is a bug (this is part of why I’ve been saying that I think this talent is over-looked right now).

If it used up maelstrom, it would not get full benefit since stormkeeper already makes lightning bolt instant cast. I think it does not consume the charges by design.

20

After looking into a log of a simulation indeed it’s working like that at least for the start.
Idk i dont like this talent because i feel like it’s complicated to use.

P.S: after using it in dj it not that difficult but it showed me that my WA rotation is broken let’s fix this :stuck_out_tongue:

After fixing my Weak Aura and now i’m doing a mutch more smooth rotation with hailstorm and Storm keeper It is very nice !! You did a great job Swol once again !