In All Reality - I can’t be a rockstar…so I do this instead.

I’m a smart guy, and I say that from an honest point of view. I have things I am not good at… a lot of them. But I’m generally very quick on the uptake with anything that I take an interest in, and this is especially true in the gaming realm. I love World of Warcraft – it has so many facets, challenges, so much humor, and an endless sphere of possible exploration. So, it’s no real surprise that I’ve taken to it like a fish in water, learning all I can about the game and having a blast while doing it.

Yet, I encountered a problem that I could find no solution for, which plagued my nerves for weeks on end. I finally figured out the problem (with a hint from a dry-humored tech support rep), so I thought I’d share it here in case anyone else was having the same issue. However, to get the full feel for the frustration (and ultimate hilarity) of the situation I need to share the story in full:

(Hopefully research and options that I hit along the way may be helpful to others with the same issue, but with a different cause.)

Background, technical Info, etc.

I’m not going to explain a lot of the basic of the game in detail. If you’re reading this and don’t know what WoW is… well, hit my archives for some other posts that might better tickle your fancy. The setup is this:

• I’m a level 80 Tauren Shaman, with dual-spec Elemental and Enhancement

• The majority of my Elemental gear is level 213+; my Enhancement gear is mostly 200+

• In full 25-man raids with all buffs and the appropriate talents, I’m doing about 1700 DPS.

For the uninitiated, 1700 DPS for my gear (at the time) was exceedingly low. The Off Tank typically was doing more damage than I was in raids, and even in Heroics I could get bypassed by the tank. This is slightly embarrassing for a class that is supposed to be one of the most versatile in the game while still dealing very high damage. My gear was by no means the best possible, but it should be churning out waaaaaay more performance than what I was getting.

So, I started my research.

Fact-finding

There are a lot of things that impact the amount of damage that you deal, especially when playing a caster class (I was playing as Elemental primarily, but Enhancement also depends a lot on spell damage). While I knew the basics of a lot of this, I hadn’t been dedicating much time previously to raiding, so I had to delve into the murky realm of theorycrafting to acquire some info:

(all this info is current as of Patch 3.1.x)

• Hit:

Your hit rating determines your probability for actually connecting with whatever attack you’re trying to do against your enemy. Hit is key. This stat more than anything else will make your DPS soar or sink it like a soggy towel in a pool. If you’re missing, you aren’t doing damage. The people-with-too-much-time-on-their-hands at Elitst Jerks (to whom I am very thankful) sum it up thusly:

• Spell Power:

This number increases the bonus damage applied to the base amount caused by any given spell. This is the caster equivalent to attack power in melee. The more spell power, the more damage caused by each spell. Some hybrid classes like Enhancement shaman and Retribution paladins can make use of this stat as well. This is typically the most important stat for casters, especially once the hit rating maximum has been achieved.

• Critical Strike Rating:

This rating determines the percentage of times that a connecting damage spell or melee attack with score a critical strike and cause XXX damage. This stat is important for all classes, especially ones that have special spells or abilities that only occur on or after a critical strike. For shaman however, the importance is diminished as we have talent skills that give us plenty of crit and our Lava Burst spell crits automatically on any target that we have applied Flame Shock to – 100% of the time.

• Haste:

This is a close second with spell power. While SP determines base damage increase, haste determines how fast you can fling your spells (or swing your axe). A 1% increase in haste can equate to a 1% increase in DPS. For shaman, haste is preferable over critical rating (see critical explanation above), especially in reference to spells like Lightning Bolt that have no cooldown.

An important note: haste does not lower the cooldown on spells.

• Attack Rotation:

This is almost more important than your stats. Having down the order in which you fire off your attacks can be the biggest determining factor in maximizing damage output. If the attack rotation doesn’t make the most of any interplay that exists between spells, that’s damage (and time) wasted.

For Elemental shaman, the rotation is relatively simple. Glyph of Flame Shock is required (REQUIRED) for making the most of your damage. The rotation goes like this: Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt.

Lava Burst has a long cooldown, so Lightning Bolt (LB) should be fired non-stop until it’s cooldown is up. Depending on haste rating, a complete rotation before Flame Shock expires on the target will look something like this:

Flame Shock, Lava Burst, LB, LB, LB, LB, Lava Burst, LB, LB.

If you’re attacking a group of creatures, you can interject a Chain Lightning here and there to provide more area of effect damage.

Applying what I learned

In every capital city, there is a section that contains immobile training dummies for players to whack away on. These exist solely for the purpose of recording data, using an addon like Recount or Damage Meters. I piled all my different gear pieces into my bags and headed for the Valley of Honor in Orgrimmar.

I started by first stacking all the gear that contained hit rating, giving preference to it above all other stats. I dropped my totems, hit Flametongue and let loose. I followed the rotation, and even used some of my trinket abilities to lead off. Lava Burst was hitting for around 6,000 from its automatic critical strikes. The damage meter?: 1500 DPS.

Ok, so maybe it’s not my hit rating. Looking at Recount showed I never missed a shot, so I decided to sacrifice a chunk of hit for spell power and give it another go. DPS: 1700. Spell power made a difference, but not a lot. Interchanging spell power with haste yielded similar results.

What was the deal? By all rights I should be doing waaaay more damage. During my testing period, another Elemental shaman had come up beside me to test his damage. Comparing our gear, I found mine was better but that he was doing roughly 2700 DPS. That’s almost twice as much damage as I could sustain – with a lower gear rating!

The “ah ha!” moment

Something I took notice of during my research through forums and blogs were several references to the crit amount on Lightning Bolt spells – somewhere in the range of 8,000 – 10,000. My Lava Burst was getting close to this amount, but my LB shots were getting critical hits of around 1,000. That’s a far cry from 8,000… so I thought I’d found my culprit.

There is a talent called Shamanism in the shaman Elemental talent tree that gives your LB spell an additional bonus from your spell power. My theory was that, for whatever reason, my talent was broken and wasn’t applying this bonus. I submitted a ticket to game support, briefly outlining my research and what my hypothesis was.

Roughly a day later I received a reply message stating (and I’m paraphrasing here):

“Hello! We’ve checked and do not believe there are any bugs in the talent you referenced. You might check and make sure that you are using all of your highest level spells when you’re doing your testing”

Well of course I was… wasn’t I? I looked at my status bar. Lightning Bolt – Rank 9: XXX – XXX nature damage. Hmm… that did seem a bit low. I checked my spell book and *BAM* I’m an idiot. My highest ranking of LB was actually Rank 14, which does a base damage of XXX – XXX. I equipped it to my action key, fired off my anger at a target dummy: 2900 DPS.

The culprit (apart from my own blindness) turned out to be Dominos, the action bar addon I had taken to using. The default action bar interface automatically updates any spells you have assigned to it to their highest rank. Dominos doesn’t do that, apparently.

I hope this has all been helpful, and that you will learn from my journey of knowledge to better inform yourself on the mechanics of your classes. And remember: always check your spells :)