The DPS experiment

I am, as most know, a huge advocate of high crit ratings in Elemental Shammies. With good reason, crits like our blood. Too little crit, mana efficiency goes down the tube. Unfortunately, with any class/spec, there comes a point where you hit a brick wall with crit. Crit stops giving you as much DPS as it did. There is an actual formula someplace out there. I'll find it tomorrow. For right now, lets use this pretend one.

This is fake!! Just an example!! Do not use for actual DPS calculations!

Lets say, below 40% crit, 1 point of crit rating gave you 10 dps. 1 point of spell damage gives you 5 dps. Once you "top out" at 40% crit, it starts to take more and more crit to give you that same added 10 dps. Now 1 crit is only giving you 5 dps, and that same 1 spell damage is giving you the same 5 dps. 43%? Maybe that point of crit is only 2 dps. 1 spell damage is still 5. Suddenly spell damage has out valued crit for pure DPS. And the ele shammy hits our problem. That crit is still making you mildly more mana efficient. We're mana whores, simple enough. Every smidgen of crit is valuable. But we're also expected to put out alot of DPS. What to do, what to do...

This has been my problem for the last couple weeks. I've been blessed with amazing tanks, so aggro isn't even an issue to consider. All I have to worry about is maxing my DPS.

The simplest solution looks like, lose a certain percent of crit. Just throw it away. replace it with spell damage. Victory. But like I've been whining about on my guild forums, I'm still having some mana issues. At 43% crit! My first though is my mana pool. Its a little wee, about 9200 mana unbuffed. That brings me to just over 10k mana in a raid. Maybe I need more? Int is a wonderful solution to my problems. Int can makes my kiddy pool sized mana bar into an Olympic sized body of wet casting goodness. Int is mana per 5.

Elemental Shamans with Unrelenting Storm get .02MP5 per point of int.
80 Int = 1% crit
1 Int = 15 Mana
~3 Int = 1 spell crit rating
1 Int = .0125% crit


The above number are true. 100% I promise. So yeah! Int looks like a great solution! More mana, mp5, some crit to keep clear casting up. If int didn't seem to be balls hard to find! Other then my next belt upgrade (from the Belt of Blasting to Anetheron's Noose), I can't seem to find any major int upgrades. I got a small upgrade, int wise, today in gloves. The Gauntlets of the Ancient Shadowmoon dropped for me off Sunwell trash. 5 more int, 5 less crit, but a 8 or 10 spell damage, if I remember right. They'll be more dps for sure. I don't think I'll notice the crit.

Speaking of, I tried a few other things today. I switched some of my gems. Mainly, the 2 green Spell Crit/Spell Pen gems I had smashed into my belt and hat were replaces with spell damage/stam gems. The old green colored ones had dropped in heroics, but it was time to move on. I replaced a potent pyrestone in my hat with a runed crimson spinel, replaced the gleaming lionseye in my shoulders with a potent pyrestone, and gemmed the new gloves for a runed and a glowing (spell damage and a dam/stam). overall I gained about 30 spell damage, and lost ~.75% crit. We'll see once I can get my hands on a boss fight if I notice the crit loss or see the damage gain.

A friend suggested 35% crit today, due to the mechanics of clear casting. Blizz was "kind" enough to make it 40% off the next 2 spells, rather then 100%, or even 50%, off the next spell, in hopes of culling down the need for crit in ele shammies. It didn't work, we're still the mana guzzling SUV's of the caster word, only to be surpassed by the four door extended cab heavy duty duely truck, the Arcane Mage. 35% crit would see the most use of both charges of clear casting. More crit (like my happy 42%) Sees less use of the actual second charge, but sees clear casting up more of the time. the idea is rolling around in my head. Using the spell more efficiently, by making sure to use every charge, or ensuring the spell is up 100% of the time to be used?

Coming full circle, the question still is not what came first, the chicken or the egg? to be, or not to be? Or even how much wood could the woodchuck really chuck? DPM. Damage Per Mana. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

BTW. I found myself running about 1200 DPS today on Al'ar (my favorite DPS test fight). I was spiking up to 1600 dps for short bursts when i was using CL to good effect, but down to 1100 when my mana was low and I was LBing it back to full (Kiomi fact, I can regen more mana then i use spamming only LB. I'll most on the phenomenon soon.) during Phase 1. Phase 2 is balls for ranged dips, evening my out to a median of about 1250 dps for the fight. Whic, oddly enough, landed my first in Damage Done for Al'ar. Third in overall damage done for the night after FLK went down, 4 bosses later. I can do better. If I could sustain even those 1400 DPS 2 minute long bursts, or the 30 second 1600 dps bursts for longer, it would show aLOT. Fecking mana...