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Elemental stat weights (PvE)

Post by Poposhka

Looking around on the web it seems that people want to weigh the value of +hit and +crit, where hit is rated very very important, and crit not so much.

Why exactly is this? Blizzard stated that spell damage criticals do 200% damage in MoP, the Elemental Fury skill gives Elemental Shammies 250% critical spell damage. Just at an immediate glance, the equivalent number in +crit% and +hit% would produce higher damage for the crit.

any insight?

Post by brrobid

There's a bit of math that goes into figuring it out. And it turns out that for Elementals our exact stat weightings are ... flexible. Or more accurately, change based on the stats you're currently sporting. Which means with your current stats, you may value haste more than mastery, and once you've boosted your haste, mastery becomes more valueable (with your next upgrade) ... it's always a balancing act.

WIthout getting into the math, the reasoning is straight forward. If you miss, you do zero damage (and a crit makes no difference, because 250% of 0 is still 0). That's why hit is valued so high.

The reason crit is valued so low is that our primary nuke (Lava Burst) is always a crit (because you keep flameshock on your target 100%, right?). With Ascendance and Lava Surge procs, we have an even larger percentage of our casting being Lava Burst than in previous expansions.

That said, crit isn't useless, but you'll find haste, mastery and hit (up to the 15% cap) to be more valuable.

Post by Poposhka

quick question about haste. Would this only improve the cast speed of Lightning Bolt? All the other bread and butter spells for elemental seem to be 1.5s casts / 1.5s GCD anyway?

Post by brrobid

Haste also affects the GCD. You can cap haste and get down to a 1.0 sec GCD ... good luck with that though :)

Anyway, haste will affect everything. Lava Burst is a nice spell to track because it's exactly your GCD (1.5 sec base + haste = whatever it is now).

You'll find your stat priorities to be as follows ... roughly:

Intellect > Hit/Spirit (up to 15% cap) > Mastery ~= Haste > Crit

Basically, you get hit capped, then keep mastery and haste roughly in balance. If you're ever at the point that Crit sims out more valuable than Haste or Mastery, then there's either a bug in the simulator, or you're geared for bear.

We don't talk about spell power as an individual stat anymore. It's only available on weapons, any weapon with higher spell power will also have higher Int. But if you have to know, spell power is worth a little less than Int. Int translates directly to spell power + a tiny fraction of crit.

Elemental stat weights (PvE)

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