Maximum shaman dps analysed

Okay lets move to a more complicated class. Wait what am I saying? Shaman complicated? Pfffff. Well settle down. Playing the class might not be that complicated, but understanding the max potential of the class and programming the behavior of it on the other hand is a bit more complicated.

The overview of the class:

Talents
Okay lets see this insane complexity is all about. So what are the talents:
All left, mic drop xD
Soo, this is not the complex part yet. So lets get this out of the way, still giving a small mention of all talents even though everyone knows which talents are the best for dps:

  • Lvl 5: Stunning VS Stay Put. Stunning increases stun dps so that wins. Easy choice.
  • Lvl 10: Fire Consumes VS Blazing Speed. Again Fire Consumes adds a small DoT doing more damage. Only a few k dps though but still the better choice.
  • Lvl 15: Reach VS Longevity. Doesnā€™t really matter for max dps but Reach is used for convenience and better play.
  • Lvl 20: Strike Twice VS Totamic Recall. Well here is that son of a bā€¦ talent Strike Twice which is 100% the best of the two talents. Making Lightning Orb crits respawn immediately. Which causes all kind of RNG and tileset problems. But the talent choice is easy.
  • Lvl 30: All In VS Summon Orb. Again All In is better, because crit more = more dps. Add ā€œStrike Twiceā€ from the lvl 20 talent to it and the dps gets increased even more.

Ring affixes
Same as all classes +35 crit chance both rings and Empowered affix + Elite Hunter affix.

Armour affixes
Shaman is a special snowflake. It got me too complicated to show a simple formula what the difference in dps is for what armour affix. This is because crit chance and crit damage get influenced by the Lighting Orb respawning shenanigans, and the lvl 30 talent already auto critting. My end result was:
Projectile damage +4% = 3.8% dps boost
Crit Damage +8% = 3.2% dps boost
Crit Chance +4% = 2.6% dps boost
(I did check crit chance + crit damage helping each other out being better than projectile damage, it isnā€™t)

So the result is again to use Projectile damage and Crit damage as your armour affixes.

Weapon affixes
Because the Shaman likes to crit alot just like the scoundrel, you would assume that Charged Strikes is not worth it. But that is where you are wrong. Remember that lvl 20 talent ā€œStrike Twiceā€? Well if you crit your Lightning Orb it spawns a whole new orb. That sounds like critting lightning is alot more benefitial than just a plain 1.61x boost from lightning critting itself. It will also add a beautiful extra lighting orb to throw. But is it worth it? Well it will boost your shaman dps by a total of 3.4% with potions increasing your crit chance. Lets put the contestents on paper:

  • Bleed: 5.5% boost for shaman. The Shaman does very little DoT damage, so high dps boost with high crit chance from crit pot. Where bleed benefits from a higher crit chance.
  • Iceheart: 5%. But wait alot of fights without frosters, maybe not a good plan. Lets say that is 3% instead.
  • Charged Strikes: 3.4% with pots. This would be more without pots.
  • Giantkiller: 3% on only bosses (booooo)

Looking at it like that, the winners are:

  • Bleed
  • Charged Strikes when not a 24/7 froster. Iceheart with a constant froster.

The rotation
Okay can someone explain me how I am going to explain this? :joy: :
image

Welp I am not gonna. I am going to tell you what the icons mean and then explain you what I am doing with the rotation without explaining every single step exactly:

  • X = Just default class boost again
  • @ = I use this to wait and do nothing for 0.5 seconds.
  • # = same time spacing but only 0.1 seconds.
  • T = place totem tile trigger. Takes no time.
  • A = The lava pulse doing damage right after placing the lava pulse again. So less time before the next pulse. Normally a pulse is 3.15 seconds. But replacing a totem cuts off 1.3 seconds. So 3.15 - 1.3 seconds after the pulse happened.
  • P = lava pulse 3.15 seconds
  • S = First stun by totem replaced (crits automatically and -1.3 seconds)
  • s = A normal stun throw 3.15 seconds between hits
  • V = First fire after totem replacing (crits automatically and -1.3 seconds
  • F = Fire throw 3.15 seconds
  • I = First lighting (crits automatically and -1.3 seconds, ā€˜iā€™ will be always next to it)
  • i = Fast respawned lightning and thrown right after a crit. Used before ā€˜Iā€™ and also invisible in the rotation but will be automatically added when another lightning crits that has a a chance to crit.
  • L = Normal lighting throw that can crit (spawns invisible ā€˜iā€™-s if crits)

Okay well what is happening here? This specific rotation is all needed for tilesets. I will tell you the rules of the rotation:

  • Start with lava pulse placement
  • Place Stun followed by Fire followed by lighting really fast on the ground. But only with a bit of time after lava place movement. Not directly after.
  • Now there will be 3 rotations playing seperate from each other and dancing with each other. The Stun + Fire rotation. The Lightning rotation and the lava pulse rotation.
  • The easiest is the Stun + Fire rotation. It is simple, place them both and throw them 3x. On the 3th throw you want to place down the stun and fire totem the millisecond you see them. Donā€™t hesitate and wait for the 3rth throw of those orbs. Before the totems hit the ground you have hit the target with the 3th Stun and Fire orb. This is to cut off that -1.3 seconds from your timing.
  • The second rotation which would be completely separate will be the Lightning critting around. You will just keep throwing lighting and only replace the totem when you can replace it AND you are just about to throw a new lightning orb. So have patience replacing the totem till you are throwing a new lightning. This rotation will get offset from the stun + fire because of all the critting that gives new lightning taking up time.
  • Lastly, the lava pulse is a complicated dance. Lava needs to be placed on specific timings or you will lose out on your sweat tilesets. The basic rule is: Replace lava right after you have thrown a set of Stun + Fire orbs. This will make sure that at-least one lava pulse is between every Stun+Fire throw. That crazy timing in my rotation is all to make sure that lava will be spaced out between the stun and fire throws.
  • You will notice for lava though that the rotation will reach an equilibrium. What will happen? Well you will notice that right when your lava pulse totem gets back on the belt the next throw of Stun + Fire will need you to replace the Stun + Fire totem. Welp you donā€™t have 3 hands soooo, to fix that you have to be patient with replacing the lava totem again and replace the stun + fire first, wait for stun + fire to be thrown again after the replace and ONLY THEN you replace the lava pulse. This is basically the repeated pattern you see in my program at the end of the lava rotation.

Tilesets
Okay we survived the difficult part. The tilesets you will see are familiar in the community, but without using the above rotation they are not optimally used:

  • S = Stun orb hit
  • B = Firebal orb hit
  • P = Lava pulse hit
  • X = Lightning orb hit
  • 0 = Start of combat

You notice that the dps boost is not even close to 30% Although shaman keeps their tilesets up all the time, sadly the interference is a beast. Lowering the dps significantly. I could not find a better method so far. With the current rotation these are the best tilesets. I can only imagine another way of attacking to fix this problem.

Extra
Now lastly we have of-course Rupert. Where is Rupert? Well here is the thing. Rupert will always do about the same dps no matter what armour or weapons, so its contribution dps wise is very weak. I lost the stats apparently but it was something like 6300 damage 8x before it disappears. But I would have still included him if he was part of the player. Sadly no dps meter will ever be able to detect which Rupert belongs to which player, so this does not add to the dps of the Shaman in question. So I did not find it necessary.

Opinion
The shaman as it is dps wise to skill ratio is fine where it is. But fix the totem breaking please :expressionless:

Al-tough it seems like shaman has a complicated method of playing, the reward from it is very minimal. Not try-harding like I did and not understanding the class well would remove maybe 10k dps from what I did. The skill is lacking in a way, and the reward from smarter play is minimal. Maybe that can be changed in the future? More reward for shaman tilesets? :thinking: Or another mechanic added?

Another note: not being able to throwing the orbs themselves on cooldown exactly is one of the few things preventing shamans from actually reaching the theoretical max dps. And also the delay that lightning re-spawns can vary for buggy reasons.

Link to main post: Max dps of all 4 classes

7 Likes

get to ranger already!!!
lmao

But but but its shard time, ranger has to wait a few hours. :upside_down_face:

4 Likes

ā€œgod_rangerā€ā€¦ hmmm interesting

1 Like

Get out of my code :joy:

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