Elemental Shaman, Crit v Spell Damage

[deadward]

Hey so noob question.

I picked up a 2% spell crit trinket on the same night that I picked up a 29 spell damage trinket. (eye of the beast and briarwood reed)
From what I understand the 29 spell damage trinket is significantly better from what everyone says.

For an elemental build. Should I pick up the Royal Seal of Eldre'Thalas, which gives 23 spell damage, over the 2% spell crit?

Keep in mind I have Elemental Devastation which gives me an 100% chance to deal double damage on crit.

My friend who is a mage says that spell damage is always king, I just want to know how much crit is required before spell damage is dethroned for a shaman.

*Edit: Mind you this is for PVP

[DrearyYew]

For a Frost Mage with pretty much the same talent, the 2% Crit is better than 23 SP for PvE, so I would assume the same for an Elemental Shaman.

For PvP, it's up to personal preference. If you aren't an Engineer, I would take the 2% Spell Crit for the higher burst, and the increased crit chance on your heals. If you are an Engineer, grab that Gnomish Net-o-Matic Projector.

[Ana]

Crit scales with gear. 2 crit may be comparable / weaker than 23 SP at MC level gear but once you get decked out in BWL epics it becomes much more powerful. So whatever you pick, keep the Eye around, it will come in handy.

[deadward]

Good to know, thanks!

[justclassic]

Hey so noob question.

I picked up a 2% spell crit trinket on the same night that I picked up a 29 spell damage trinket. (eye of the beast and briarwood reed)
From what I understand the 29 spell damage trinket is significantly better from what everyone says.

For an elemental build. Should I pick up the Royal Seal of Eldre'Thalas, which gives 23 spell damage, over the 2% spell crit?

Keep in mind I have Elemental Devastation which gives me an 100% chance to deal double damage on crit.

My friend who is a mage says that spell damage is always king, I just want to know how much crit is required before spell damage is dethroned for a shaman.

*Edit: Mind you this is for PVP

Hey deadwood,

Like most of the others allready said it depends on the gear you currently wear. I'd like to give you some more numbers , so you can always check yourself what is better.

Lets look at lightning bolt:

Base Dmg: 419 - 468 (avg: 443,5)
Base Dmg with 5/5 concussion: 443,5 * 1,05 =~ 466 Dmg
SP base scaling: ~85% (read: 100 SP give 85 extra dmg on lightning bolt)
SP scaling with 5/5 concussion : 85% * 1,05 =~ 89%
Crit scaling: 1% crit means 1% more dmg after (base dmg + talent bonus + sp scaling) has been calculated

From this you can see that 1% crit becomes more valuable the more SP you have.


Lets make an example:

Stats: lvl 60 ele specced, 0% crit (also no base crit) , 0 spellpower

1% crit vs spellpower:

If we now increase our crit chance by 1% this would result in:

466 * 0,01 = 4,66 extra dmg on average

All we have to do now is find out how much sp would be needed to get 4,66 dmg as well.

4,66 / 89% = 5,2359

Conclusion:

At our example 1% crit would bring on average the same as 5,2359 Spell Power for lightning bolt.


Try to put in your gear and you will know what is better.
You could also just post your stats and I will calculate your crit/sp-ratio. As it becomes a little more complex, as soon as you have crit and sp allready on your gear, when adding more.

[sumail]

1% crit isn't 1% more damage unless you're going from 0% crit to 1% crit.

[justclassic]

1% crit isn't 1% more damage unless you're going from 0% crit to 1% crit.

1% crit is always a 1% dmg increase from base dmg.

If you look at total dmg it's true that the effectiveness of crit decreases with every additional point.

[Thatoneguy]

You have spell crit and you have melee crit. Shamans and even elemental shamans will be using both spells and melee to deal damage to their opponent.

Then you also have abilities that deal static damage such as Lightning Shield. No matter how much crit you get it won´t increase the damage done.

Not every spell has 100% damage increase. Shamans have to take a talent ´elemental fury´ for that. Without that talent a crit will only increase the damage done by +50%.

If you go full elemental with elemental mastery then that's going to favor spell damage over spell crit. Not by much since it has a long CD, but still a bit.

There's a lot to be said about crit vs spell damage, but 1% crit certainly doesn't increase your overall damage by 1%.

[deadward]

Hey so noob question.

I picked up a 2% spell crit trinket on the same night that I picked up a 29 spell damage trinket. (eye of the beast and briarwood reed)
From what I understand the 29 spell damage trinket is significantly better from what everyone says.

For an elemental build. Should I pick up the Royal Seal of Eldre'Thalas, which gives 23 spell damage, over the 2% spell crit?

Keep in mind I have Elemental Devastation which gives me an 100% chance to deal double damage on crit.

My friend who is a mage says that spell damage is always king, I just want to know how much crit is required before spell damage is dethroned for a shaman.

*Edit: Mind you this is for PVP

Hey deadwood,

Like most of the others allready said it depends on the gear you currently wear. I'd like to give you some more numbers , so you can always check yourself what is better.

Lets look at lightning bolt:

Base Dmg: 419 - 468 (avg: 443,5)
Base Dmg with 5/5 concussion: 443,5 * 1,05 =~ 466 Dmg
SP base scaling: ~85% (read: 100 SP give 85 extra dmg on lightning bolt)
SP scaling with 5/5 concussion : 85% * 1,05 =~ 89%
Crit scaling: 1% crit means 1% more dmg after (base dmg + talent bonus + sp scaling) has been calculated

From this you can see that 1% crit becomes more valuable the more SP you have.


Lets make an example:

Stats: lvl 60 ele specced, 0% crit (also no base crit) , 0 spellpower

1% crit vs spellpower:

If we now increase our crit chance by 1% this would result in:

466 * 0,01 = 4,66 extra dmg on average

All we have to do now is find out how much sp would be needed to get 4,66 dmg as well.

4,66 / 89% = 5,2359

Conclusion:

At our example 1% crit would bring on average the same as 5,2359 Spell Power for lightning bolt.


Try to put in your gear and you will know what is better.
You could also just post your stats and I will calculate your crit/sp-ratio. As it becomes a little more complex, as soon as you have crit and sp allready on your gear, when adding more.

Oh ok, thanks a lot for this breakdown. Also thanks to everyone else's input.

So are we calculating this based on like the amount of damage crit would increase over 100 lightning bolts, or like over how many lightning bolts on average you can cast before going oom, or are we calculating the damage increase of crit based on the average amount of lightning bolts you'll release in a pvp fight?

Doesn't how many lightning bolts are cast affect the amount of damage crit and or spellpower can increase the damage? I'm not amazing at math. How are we getting the potential amount of damage added per lightning bolt? How do we get the number of 1% damage equaling 1% crit?

[Ana]

Assuming you:
- shoot 100 lightning bolts
- have 1% crit chance

You will end up critting once for double damage, which is the equivalent of hitting 2 lightning bolts for normal damage. So in total you've shot 100 lightning bolts and did the damage equivalent to having shot 101 lightning bolts. So 1% total damage increase.

This of course mostly makes sense in PvE where the primary job of a caster dps is sitting there and pressing their damage button for long periods of time (assuming they let you into raids as ele shaman). In PvP more crit amounts to better RNG potential for having huge burst damage, and doesn't really translate well into neat numbers.