nubb3y

I've been surprised by the lack of decent sources of information for Elemental Shaman PVP. Beyond Kollektiv's videos, it's tough to find good resources on high-level Elemental shaman play. Let's get a thread going about strategies employed by successful elemental shaman!

A few things to start off the discussion:

1 What do your keybindings look like?

2 What's the best variant of 40/0/21 for 5v5?

3 How do you prefer to gem your gear? What enchants do you use? What trinkets?

4 What spells do you downrank?

5 When is the best time to heal, and when is the best time to DPS at all costs?

6 If focused, what do you do to continue being productive?

7 What mods do you find helpful?

 

◊ Kasi

I started one a few months ago, but it really fell off the pages. Not a whole lot of elemental shamans posting here. I've watched his videos, and it is pretty good, but you have to watch pretty close to get a lot out of it. Also add in there that he is never focus fired, which I found odd. I think the only player on his team who got hit less than him was the pally. The priest, mage and warrior all took signifigantly more damage. This I find to be at odds with current 5v5 arena, where its my disc/holy priest getting it 70% of the time and me 20% and our warrior/rogue/mage the other 10% at best.

1. I use a mix of keys and mouse for turning. I use V for LB, shift v for purge, g for earth shock, shift g for frost shock, t for CL, shift t I think is flame shock. 3 I think is tremor totem. Probably should bind shift 3 to grounding. I usually click my other totems/heroism as well as my NS/EM/CL combo.

2. I use something like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

However it is complex and I'm not sure if I'm right. My issue is that now that I've phased out basically all my pve gear in my pvp set that I actually lack spell hit. All I have now is the spell hit from my helm plus the Spirit Shard ring if I choose to wear it (I don't generally, I use my revered MH ring there) Since I have no space in ele to take any of the spell hit talents, this has started to annoy me. Instead I might switch to something like

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I am also not sure what to do about the talents in the first 2 tiers of resto. I like the mana efficiency from heals/totems cost, but perhaps throughput should be more important and I should get 2.5 second healing waves and then the totems and don't care much about 5% mana cost on heals?

So perhaps this is what I should be using:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Fact is I don't think without regemming/gearing that I can get the spell hit, and there is almost no way I can get over 3 points in healing focus. So maybe just rely on eye of the storm for emergencies. Regardless if I try to spam heals while under pressure its pretty impossible for me to get them off. At least in 5s arenas. In bgs it would be a lot better, but I don't really care about bgs for specs.

There are options in elemental as well. I think eye of the storm is a must have, but you still have elemental warding, reverberation, unrelenting storms and elemental shields. US I think gives too little mp5 per point used, especially when this new water shield goes live. I like putting 1 in warding because its bigger than the next 2. Then I split the last points between reverb and shields. I like having huge resilience against melee, because it is them who shut me down most. But I can see the use of putting less in there and jacking up reverb. However I'm not sure how much an extra .2 to .4 seconds on shocks really matter. You won't be going against someone who uses a cast over 2.5 seconds anyway. I shock a heal, they are locked out for 2 seconds. They start casting again. They will be done by 4.5 seconds and my shock won't be up til 5 even in best cast. So hence I usually take 3 or 4 in reverb.

3. I gem towards dmg as much as I can, although I have 2 15 sta gems in my gear. Because of the nature of a couple BT fights, using pvp gear for the 4 piece bonus in a couple encounters raises my dps. So shoulders, head are gemmed offensively. I use the CSD meta. I do have a 15 sta gem in Vindicator's bracers plus my S3 chest is a 15 sta gem plus two 9 dmg gems. I sit around 350 resilience, and really against melee my resilience is a lot higher due to talents in elemental. I play with a priest. She gets focused. I am generally the highest dps'er on my team. I run now at 10.6k health unbuffed and with 350 resilience I feel I do pretty well.

4. Probably not as many as I should. Probably should downrank totems, well especially WF. Searing is pretty good dps so I tend to leave that full. Mana management is probably the weakest part of my game. Earth shock should be downranked if just being used to shock heals, although it is nice to put some pressure on healers with them.

5. Ugh, good question. Should I kill this guy at 30% health or try to save my priest? I think the smart idea is to be less focused on pumping out LBs but more focused on adapting, probing, purging and then at the right time coordinating with my mage and warrior/rogue to blow someone up.

6. Depends what you mean by being focused. If one guy on me to annoy me, due to EotS/4 piece I can still dps. If I am the main target and have 2-3+ on me, well then I drop earthbind, drop grounding, jump around a lot and purge as many people as I can. Dropping a fire nova can be fun too.

7. Proximo, any cooldown timers, bongos, sct. What I really want though is that mod Kollektiv used. The one that had big messages at the top of the screen telling what people are starting to cast. I can keep my eye on my main target, and usually on my focus target. But other than that it gets a bit hard to process it all.

 

mad-doc

1. Playing either heal or melee pre arena (resto until mid of s1), i never really binded lb and cl, so i had to rebind nearly everything.

Just bind everything around your movement stuff, and move stuff like sit, put out weapon, talk back on tells, look at char screen somewhere else to get enough buttons. Also bind stuff together that you use together.
Example:
T = battlemaster trinket
ctrl + t = healthstone
g = pvp trinket

2. Depends on your setup, as 4dps you want lo, as 2345 you want to to have the manareg and improved shock cd.
I am still trying to find out my new spec for s3.

3. As of season 3 in a 2345, 90% stam/resil. I also have the gladiators shield wall bound to switch to it.
I am the target for constant pressure of the other team because i get rather useless when under pressure.
Trinkets i use battlemaster(spelldamage) + pvp trinket. I used to use the badge spelldmg trinket and also tried out stacking spellhaste(meta gem, totem slot, quaqmirrans eye), which is what i would use for 4dps i think.

4. I only have rank1 lb bound for harrsing, killing totems and keeping people in combat other than that no downranking.

5. When your healers get cced or the team is starting to burst. I use ns + heal quite alot. You need either a good feeling for when heal (playing nearly only resto pre tbc helped alot), or having good communication with your team mates. When your paladin gets CS'ed and your priest is under focus it is good to heal.
Healing is need sometimes but i should not be normal for you to throw arround heals every game, that i would reconsider tactics to either cc more or put presure on the enemy to have them play defense.

Dps at all costs is rarely good, our longlivity isnt that great, so carefull planed burst is way to got. Purge and shock, drop totems if you cant find a good target/opperturnity to dps/burst.
Remember a rank 1 shock cost nearly nothing, but could stop heals in the range of 5k-7k from hitting a target.
Also know when to purge, getting the BoP of not only means the warriror can dps, but also can keep up ms, what will ensure that you keep the momentum.

6. Most important: Break LoS to the enemy. Then heal if possible/necessary.
Besides that keep watershield up = alot mana.
Shock either cc heals or damage, depending of what your team is trying to do.
When your team is fighting to get control of the fight shock cyclones, sheeps that go to your warriror helps alot.
Shock the damage dealer when you are cant get fast enough into cover or heal your self(rogues, warriror on you).
Shock heal if your team wants to burst. Example, shock long heal from healer, get BoP to start bursting yourself.

7.
Witchhunt to see, manaburns and cooldowns from the other team.
Proximo for target swaping.
Shamanfriend is just godlike for alot of things.
Quartz for extra big focus casting bar, to see long casts (rez, big heals).

 

Casstor

I guess I could throw something together for the pvp elemental shaman thread, since that's what I've been playing as of late.

To answer your questions:

My keybindings are what I've learned. Unless you need to incorporate new keybindings into your setup, don't change what you've learned, or classical conditioning will come for you.

In my experience, there isn't even a question about your tier 1 resto talent. Do the HPS numbers sometime with 2.5 sec HW and without, you'll see why. I agree with the idea of not spamming heals while focused, but that isn't really what you're healing is for. Your healing is for when one healer is being focused and another needs support while he's spell-locked/CCed/oom.

As far as elemental goes, I most often find myself thinking in terms of GCDs and 2 second cast-time spells, in which case, 6-second shocks are fine.

I gem mostly for offensive ability. I go for spell damage enchants.

I have 1 spell I downrank in pvp, and that's lightning bolt, and only for using rank 1 on totems. IMO if someone doesn't need a heal badly enough to need a max rank heal, they don't need a heal badly enough for you to be diverting your offensive/utility spells for their healing.

I generally try not to heal, as my healing is inefficient mana-wise and from a HPS standpoint. I spend the beginning of the match purging, and once my target is purged clean, I start spamming LBs, while keeping an eye on my ally's CC/life totals to see if I need to heal. I tend to blow heroism and my NS+EM combo early on, as the pressure usually leads either to an early kill, or to a team that's been mana burned to oblivion, depending on how much time they spend trying to burst down the priest. Of course, if your teams dps is interrupted or healed through, it's usually best to find an opening to drink, and be prepared for that dreadful time when your paladin is out of mana, as you'll then be the one people turn to for healing.

I don't use many mods, but I'm pretty worthless without my focus window these days. Proximo is pretty much absolutely necessary in arenas. And, of course, spellalert and cooldown timers are always handy.

Basically, the way I see it, there are two types of 5s teams for an elemental shaman: 2345 and a 4-dps caster team.

The nice part about being on a 2345 team is that your WF totem is fully utilized, and you can successfully play either an outlast or a gib approach, depending on who you're against. Also, you're rarely focused, so you're free to use all of your potential, which is always more fun than just getting hit.

The nice part about being on a 4-dps team is that, if burst is coordinated well, being oom is the least of your concerns. This certainly isn't the case in 2345 teams, where I'm often looking to take a few quick sips even early in the game if their team is playing really defensively.

Overall, I think the 2345 team is the better fit for an elemental shaman, mainly because 4-dps plays out so quickly that often times I feel the need to purge spam, interrupt heals, and keep LBs all at the same time (hence all the talk about GCD management), whereas if you need a few seconds to heal, purge or take a drink (all of which is common for me), you don't feel like you're gimping your teams overall output (which is mainly just flat damage for 4-dps, but more like overall contributive play in 2345).

Just a few thoughts.

Anyone know of any 2s/3s teams that are pretty good for elemental? I know Warrior/Pal/Ele Sham is pretty ok, but I really don't see it beating any of the mainstream comps people run into these days.

 

kingkaos

1>My keybindings dont change from PVE, gotta stick with what comes natural.

2>Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft I dont bother with Reverb, I have enough to do with my GCD's as is. I skip US cause it just doesnt return enough per point investment for me. I grab 1 point in Ele Precision cause in full pvp gear my hit isnt so hot.

3>I gem for dmg and crit, favoring dmg. Likewise for enchants, other than 15resil to chest everything is damage. I use 2 stam/resil talasites purely to make my meta work(Chaotic Skyfire). As for trinkets I use the Hex Shrunken Head and the Battlemaster Audacity(dmg badge) for 5v5. We play a burn setup, I find that most of the time I dont miss my Medallion of the Horde, but of course theres those times where I kick myself cause of how clutch its use could have been.

4> Rank 1 LB's for harassment and totem killing. As well I keep a few down ranked totems for teams that reliably kill my totems, rank1 Searing, Healing/Mana stream.

5>This will always have to be a judgment call on youre part. Good communication is key because sometimes there just isnt an option during a proper healer lock down where you heal or someone dies. Otherwise its damage at all costs.

6>Depends on who/what/where is focusing me, but mainly im purging and dropping totems to the best of my ability.

7> I use Gladiator and aside from that its all my normal pve mods, Witchhunt(spellalert), Bartender, Antagonist etc.

Something that hasnt been addressed that I am curious about is stats. How much Resil, HP, DMG and crit in pvp gear mostly. I run 376resil, 10.7k, 983dmg 304 crit rating. Ive got 1pc of s3 arena,full s3 honor crap, everything else is s2. What are youre experiences on balancing resil vs dmg?

Late last season I made a war/pal/ele 3v3 and we ran like 48-0 to like 1850, and finished the season around 2050. This season we havent been able to get past 1800 and spent alot of time floating below 1750. There's just too much god damn CC out there, seems like theres an infinite supply of PMR teams. Our complete weakness to CC with minimal recourse available just dominates me in the smaller brackets.

 

AznPlayR99

I basically do what the other 4 have posted from questions 1-7.

But as everyone said arena is built on commincation and coordination. If you dont have that then you wont go very far as a team. (on a side not i'd rather heal a teammate then spam LB)

I also would like to know a good elemental shaman team for 2v2 (im sure we are screwed here), 3v3, 5v5 as im in the process from going duelist resto shaman to newly elemental for s3.

 

Nutsymptom

Our Ele Shaman is also a former Resto Shaman on our 3's team.

We haven't had much success at all with Warr/Ele Sham/Pally this season and haven't really been doing all that well with the resto version either. I read this thread looking for something I might be missing about shaman play but it seems that at the moment Shamans (particularly Ele) are weak in anything but 5's.

 

Mox

I would say elemental is one of the weakest classes in 2v2/3v3, any team with a rogue (pretty much every single team) will totally lock us down with stuns/kicks/poisons, same could be said for warlocks who chain fear or mana drain, once you get mana drained in a 2v2/3v3 its game over as you arent gonna get away with drinking.

In comparison 5v5 we are one of the strongest classes, very good survivability + high dmg output. But that's generally because you will have more freedom to cast, I still get completely locked down by good teams with rogues or hunters but I'd rather have them hitting me than the clothies :P

 

Nutsymptom

Our available team setups are:
Warrior/Ret Pally/Holy Pally
Warrior/Ret Pally/Resto Shaman
Warrior/Ele Shaman/Holy Pally
Warrior/Warlock/Holy Pally

Most of these players are my close pvp friends in game and would prefer not to split up from them just to actually win games. It seems like with all the CC teams running now warriors, paladins, shamans, and warlocks seem to suck in 3's. Maybe if we could get everyone on at once we could try 5's. Its been very rough going this season and 3's is easily my favorite bracket. Somehow warrior/ret pally/holy pally has been our strongest composition : \

 

Rabidclownz

We've been running a Elemental Shaman, Holy Paladin and Warrior setup. We're all fairly geared and have significant rating gain for the two weeks we played.

Our warrior uses S3 Shoulders/Sword and rest S2 with all S3 Honor gear
Our pally uses S3 Helm/Weapon and rest S2 with most S3 Honor gear

You can run my armory (Rabidclownz) to get gear specifics but I'm in the range of 919 +dmg and 410 resilience. I'm working on my Icon/Hex and a BM Trinket and might actually consider running without a Medallion in the future. We find that our longetivity is decent. I've moved away from my crit-heavy gemming during S2 towards +Dmg favored gems/enchants due to the prolific nature of resilience. With 400 being the minimum resilience on any healers, I find that my steady consistent DPS from +dmg proves to be a more reliable source. With the water shield changes, the gains from EF by stacking crit just aren't worth the effort. I've found that moving out of the mana cost reduction and instead into Mana/5 has also proven useful. I play a lot of kite game on rogues and warriors interacting significantly with my paladin via ventrilo. I focus target macro rank 1 ES onto the healer, spend most of my time redropping totems and call for BoP and burst to bring down targets when they are low. I generally save bloodlust for mid to late fight. We hit 1895 but with Finals were unable to play during the previous week or would surely be over 2k and in the top 25 on the Battlegroup by now. The real challenges we run into are from Rogue/Mage setups and Dual-Healer/Warrior teams. Generally when a similarly ranked good setup of either is queueing we lose a few then call it for the night. There is little you can do against a quality Rogue/Mage setup and if the Dual-Healer teams have druids they are able to outlast us due to Cc/drink. All told, I'd probably run this setup over a Ret Pally setup, but if I had to run a Ret pally I'd be pushing for a restoration shaman backing. You have no need for a 2ndary dispeller in my opinion and the scaling with WF is incredibly potent for your dual-2her attack. We attempted a warrior/lock/pally setup and it bombed terribly but that may be because of the quality of the warlock.

 

Nutsymptom

2 dispels and bof's seems to work the best for us. With the shaman we run into mobility problems. He ends up snared and CC'd so often that sometimes he can't even keep the FF target purged and BoP or PW:S will stay on for too long. It may be the fault of our shaman but it just seems he can't fill his role well enough. He can't keep up on heals because of how easy it is to interrupt him. I'm not sure if hes always dropping the proper totems either but I'd need to get him to post to find out what specifically the issue is.

Also, running with a Ret Pally we often manage to destroy druids due to JoJ, HoJ, repentance, and massive melee burst.

 

Artaxz

Does elemental shields (6% crit reduction) take us beyond the 12.5% cap? If it does, is it worth it?

What does the community feel about Eye of the Storm? I feel with all the resilience and elemental shields talent, that 1) its a waste and 2) never goes off.

http://plaguelands.com/?page_id=298

 

◊ Kasi

Eye of the storm (and any other effects that occur off being crit) has a percent chance to proc when you're not crit. So theoretically if you had no resilience the chance of it proccing should be the same if you were uncrittable by anyone. I'd say its pretty important and has helped me a lot at times. the PVP set LB bonus is great, but when you can get that to go off, it is really nice. Then again if you are being hit on so much, you probably shouldn't be standing still and casting LB. It has saved me a couple times though when it has procced and I was able to get a CL off on the MA target even while being focused myself before going back to running for my life.

 

Bagginses

The question, though, is if you're not going to take EotS, then what else are you going to take as an alternative? Personally I don't think Reverberation is worth it because I don't ever find myself having to shock as soon as it comes off the 6 second cooldown. Earth's Grasp is the only other talent I can even conceive of taking to get yourself to the 5th tier, but that's really pushing it. All in all, I think it's a good talent.

I've found that it really helps best against hunters when they send their pet after you. Between the pet attacks and their arrows, you're bound to get crit, and once you have the full pushback resistance, you'll be able to out damage them pretty much every time.

 

• Juice

My understanding is that the 12.5% cap is final, and cannot be exceeded by a combination of resilience and talents. Thus, once you have 6.5% crit reduction with resilience and 3/3 in Elemental Shields, you are maxed in crit reduction for melee and ranged physical attacks. As resilience goes up, reduce your talent point investiment in Elemental Shields.

 

Malinor

Until now it has been tested that the 25% critdmg reduction is the cap. As far as I know noone could prove that 12,5% chance to crit is the cap, because it is much harder to test. I believe that you can reduce the chance of being crit further beyond 12,5% (However, going beyond 493 Res does not make any sence, since you do not get enough benefit for the invested item budget) and I still go with 3/3 Elemental Shields.

 

xarg

Here's a screenshot which shows all my bindings and the majority of my interface, I figured this should help. I have my target to the right of my self, and focus and focus' target is below that. I do normally play with the 3 bars of bound buttons hidden, but had them on for this screenshot.

The mod you can see spamming my party chat (and have a read of the party chat for a laugh) is called shaman friend. It also writes to the announce area in the middle of your screen towards the top. The bar under my cooldowns bar is TotemTimers which is a must for pvp on a shaman.
ImageShack - Hosting :: wowscrnshot122207190107ki3.jpg

I'm going to assume 5v5 when I mention all of these, since this is the bracket where the elemental shaman excels, and also happens to be the bracket I have the most experience in

When gemming gear, you have to make a choice between going for sta/resilience, or going for dmg/crit. I generally focus on damage over crit simply because resilience reduces the effectiveness of spellcrit. All of my season 3 gear has either potent pyrestones (dmg/crit) or glowing shadowsong amethysts (dmg/sta) in it. If you're fully geared in pvp gear then you'll want to gem offensively. If you're still gearing up you might want to put 8 resil and 12 stam gems in. You can replace these once you have enough survivability. As for the meta gem, I still favour the mystical skyfire diamond over the new crit damage meta. It has far more potential to make a big difference in the outcome of a game, rather than doing very slightly more damage every time.

For enchants, once again you generally want to enchant your gear offensively unless you are still gearing up. Damage enchants on helm/shoulders/bracers/weapon/gloves/pants. Stam or resil enchant on shield and chest as there is nothing offensive here. I'll always pick resil enchants over stam enchants, because resilience is generally harder to come by, point for point. It's unlikely that you'll ever have maxed resilience as a shaman. Most top level players sit around the 400 mark.

On trinkets, pvp trinket is a no brainer for the first slot. The other slot for 5v5 I highly recommend the new "last stand" trinkets, not being affected by MS this can be the difference between living and dying in a game that is all about burst. If you don't have the honor or badges to get it, go for one of the standard passive+activatable trinkets. Xi'ri's gift is easy to get, or icon of the silver crescent. This way you can macro it in with your EM+NS+CL macro.

I downrank earth shocks, frost shocks, and lightning bolts generally. You'll want your focus macro to use rank 1 earth shock, because you don't want it to do nothing when you're low on mana. It's also not the target taking damage so it's wasted mana. Of course, there are plenty of opportunities to still use max rank earth shock. Frost shock is a lot less used in arena but on occasions where you need to stop someone getting away, generally a rank 1 will do the trick. And rank 1 lightning bolts are good, though they used to be a .5 second cast where it's now 1 second. Any time you need to do a small bit of damage to hit something, eg enemy's totems, keeping someone in combat, stopping a drinker. This comes in handy.

As for when to dps and when to heal.. this all comes down to communication. Assuming a 2 healer team, if your priest is getting trained on and your paladin gets locked, this is when you heal. When to DPS is all about communication too. You pick a target in a convenient spot, and you and the other caster in your team starts casting on him. Your warrior intercepts across and gets mortal strike up, and you take him down.

When you're getting focused, you switch to instant casts. If there's a warrior on you he can pummel you and you're not going to be able to do anything for the next 4 seconds (except frost shock). Find useful things to purge. Strip any targets you haven't already stripped. Keep a constant track of where your healers are, and run to somewhere that's in los of your healers and out of los of their ranged dps. Chuck any useful totems - tremor, or if you have freedom toss an earthbind and kite. Grounding totem till it eats something, then windfury back down (this is something you should do any time anyone in your team is being trained on and looks in danger). Mana spring, or poison cleansing if there's a rogue or hunter around. Frost resist if they have a mage.

The main mods I use are:
- Shaman friend. Shows all shocks, purges and grounds in the alert area of the screen, and can report to party chat too. Also alerts when you don't have an elemental shield on.
- Totem timers. Shows time remaining on totems down, which totems you have down, and when tremor/earthbind tick. Also can show in SCT when totems are expiring/destroyed.
- Pitbull. Good unit frames, takes a while to set up, well worth the effort. Party targets, focus frames, the whole works.
- NECB, or witch hunt. As an offensive dispelling class, you want to see when people gain things. I find the advantage of NECB is that you can filter things pretty easily. Keep the enemy gains bars nice and big, and ignore anything minor that you don't want to see. So when the druid gains innervate you get it off quickly.
- Quartz cast bar. Useful cast bar to have, i use it for my focus cast bar too.
- Proximo. A must for anyone doing any arena in any way, shape or form.

As for talents, this is what I think is ideal:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
The main points of this spec:
- Only 2/5 convection. These are just fillers. Point for point, unrelenting storm is worth more mana. As an elemental shaman you really shouldn't be sitting around chaining lightning bolts. You spend a lot of your time purging and shocking and tossing totems.
- Reverberation. Personally I rate this as a lot better than eye of the storm. Especially since we got the new 4 piece set bonus, which makes incidental damage very rarely interrupt you (assuming you have a paladin). Even if you don't have the 4 piece bonus I don't see it worth getting for 5s, as if you're getting interrupted you can get kicked/pummeled and you're not going to be able to cast anyway. You really don't want to cast with someone on you like that. Disrupting the other team's either dps, or more commonly these days, drains (mana burn / mana drain) is extremely useful, and you need to prioritise it pretty highly.
- Elemental precision. Stick a point in it if you're short of 3%, and drop one from unrelenting storm.
- Elemental shields. Any shaman who is resilience capped is really selling themselves short damage wise. As such I think it's a talent worth getting. I haven't tested if it stacks with resilience and thus how many points it's worth putting in, but you want at least one here.
- Imp healing wave. When I need to heal while a paladin or priest drinks, I'm going to be using healing wave. The half second off it is pretty vital.
- Totemic focus. I toss a lot more totems than I heal in an arena. Pretty self-explanatory.

 

Mox

Just a quick question, how much spell hit should an elemental shaman have for pvp? 3%?

 

xarg

Yes, 3% is the cap. You have a 4% base chance to be resisted, 1% of which is unavoidable.

 

Lumani

I got my friend's hunter alt to gear down to 15.33% crit against my (9.49% resil + 6% ele shields) = 15.49% crit reduction and shoot me in the face for 4 minutes. I failed to capture the log for better number crunching (turning it on mid-battle didn't take effect), but during that time I was not crit. Assuming he was hitting me every 1.5 seconds (it was a bit faster than that on one 30-second sample I looked at), if ele shields plus resil capped at 12.5% then there would have been a (1-(.1533-.125))**(5*60/1.5)=0.0032 (.3%) chance of this failure to crit happening. Restated, I am 99.7% sure that elemental shields allows you to push your crit chance reduction above 12.5%.

Also, during that time the remaining 4 minutes of log scrollback I have shows Focused Casting having procced at least 15 times (counting ++Focused casting plus times where the duration required another proc to have happened), for around 9% that I could count. So it looks like the EOTS talent works off of the opponent's roll before crit-reduction , confirming the anecdotal evidence I'd seen in PVE grinding.

 

• Calantus

As far as I'm aware there is no cap whatsoever on -crit chance and the softcap only applies to -crit damge. This is not necessarily relevant because the character sheet is not above bugs but in 505 resil I have something like 12.8% crit chance reduction which is above the number you hit on the softcap. So I would say it's very likely elemental shields would not have a capping problem.