Shaman: Simple Questions/Simple Answers - Page 57

MatsT · 02/08/10, 2:00 AM

Putting several spells on the same button with modifiers doesn't really help at all since the limiting factor is the number of easily pressed bindings and not the amount of available action bar buttons.

For your particular situation I would recommend binding Ventrilo to one of your mouse thumb buttons. Mouse button bindings are a precious resource but as a raid leader Ventrilo is probably your most important binding. This makes it easy to do at the same time as your normal abilities. Also buttons 6-8 are too far away to be usable since you really never want to lift your fingers from WASD. R, F, C, G and V are much easier to reach. Scroll wheel in combination with shift and control is also useful for abilities that are rarely spammed.

Rancor · 02/09/10, 5:42 PM

Is there viable macros for swapping a totem out then casting a spell?
The desired effect looks like this:
/Equip Steamcaller's totem
/Cast chain heal

When I use this macro, it seems like there is a lag, or it seems like I have to hit the macro twice, which is incredibly inefficient. Does swapping a totem use a GCD? The way I written these macros, it seems like there is...
is there a better way to write this type of macro? or am I going to have to give up on this idea?

PDXMarcos · 02/09/10, 6:06 PM

Originally Posted by Rancor

Is there viable macros for swapping a totem out then casting a spell?
The desired effect looks like this:
/Equip Steamcaller's totem
/Cast chain heal

When I use this macro, it seems like there is a lag, or it seems like I have to hit the macro twice, which is incredibly inefficient. Does swapping a totem use a GCD? The way I written these macros, it seems like there is...
is there a better way to write this type of macro? or am I going to have to give up on this idea?

Beyond the obvious question of why you would switch to the Steamcaller's Totem, the viability of relic (totem) swapping was eliminated in a TBC patch because it generates a GCD as well as interrupts casting. Any potential benefit that would be gained from attempting to do so is lost by doing so.

Grandaddy · 02/09/10, 6:07 PM

Swapping totems does indeed trigger a GCD. That's not to say that you should never change totem mid-combat if there's a phase change that requires a significantly different style of healing, but you aren't going to be able to macro each totem to the spell it benefits.

Zogar · 02/10/10, 10:48 AM

Has the glyph of earthliving weapon been fixed with 3.3 (25% instead of 21%) ?

• Jessamy · 02/10/10, 11:01 AM

Edit:

Thanks to Stassart's post below (link), Glyph of Earthliving Weapon appears to still have the same behavior as always. That is, it increases the base proc rate of 20% by 5% (of 20) to 21%, regardless of what the tooltip says.

I apologize for posting incorrect information with insufficient testing and data.

Rani · 02/10/10, 9:00 PM

Is it safe to use Magma Totem on Blood Prince Council? Will it cause Nucleus to attach to me?

Aeolian · 02/11/10, 12:17 AM

Originally Posted by Rani

Is it safe to use Magma Totem on Blood Prince Council? Will it cause Nucleus to attach to me?

I use magma totem and fire elemental and I haven't had issues with either pulling the nuclei. My understanding is that multi-target abilities (Cleave type mechanics) can pull them, but AoE will not. I do believe that AoE damage can kill them though, so if your Kelseth tank is nearby you may not want to use them.

Rouncer · 02/11/10, 12:27 AM

Magma totem doesn't generate any threat from it's damage so it won't pull anything from anyone.

Aeolian · 02/11/10, 10:14 AM

Nuclei 'threat' is based off last hit, but AoE doesn't count. He was concerned his Magma Totem would pull the nuclei off the Keleseth tank.

Zamir · 02/11/10, 4:39 PM

Originally Posted by Aeolian

I use magma totem and fire elemental and I haven't had issues with either pulling the nuclei. My understanding is that multi-target abilities (Cleave type mechanics) can pull them, but AoE will not. I do believe that AoE damage can kill them though, so if your Kelseth tank is nearby you may not want to use them.

I've seen a fire elemental pull aggro on a couple of nuclei, leading to the shaman having to drop a different totem. I guess it was just attacking the nuclei themselves as they were close, rather than attracting them with AoE.

lassenc · 02/12/10, 5:16 AM

Is our Fire Elemental and Feral Spirits affected for the full duration in synergy with 2pT10, or only the 15 seconds?

stassart · 02/12/10, 6:27 AM

Originally Posted by Zogar

Has the glyph of earthliving weapon been fixed with 3.3 (25% instead of 21%) ?

On 2010/01/24 a non-main raider resto shaman ran the same raid as me with Glyph of Earthliving Weapon

Resto shaman with Glyph of Earthliving Weapon

Earthliving_hot Rank 6: hits: 2784, effective healing: 1612183 (10.33% of player's overall)
	Combat: hits: 2780, effective healing: 1612183 (10.35%), ehps: 427.95
	Total (raw) healing: 2524237 (8.66% of player's overall)
	Combat: Total healing: 2520764 (8.69%), hps: 669.13
	Crits: 0 (0.00%)
	Combat Crits: 0 (0.00%)
	Averages: (906)
		Non-crit: 906, crit: 0, effective: 579, overall: 906
		Combat: Non-crit: 906, crit: 0, effective: 579, overall: 906
	Overheals: (36.13%)
		Non-crit: count: 1107, total: 912054, ave: 823
		Crit: count: 0, total: 0, ave: 0
		Combat Non-crit: count: 1103, total: 908581, ave: 823
		Combat Crit: count: 0, total: 0, ave: 0
	Number of heals cast that did not land: 0, due to target death: 0
		Combat casts that did not land: 0, due to target death: 0
	Earthliving Weapon buff Combat uptime: 1 hour 13 mins 14 secs  (100.00%)
	Earthliving applied count: 672, refresh count: 152
	Earthliving proc rate when ELW is applied: 21.8220%
	Earthliving proc rate overall: 21.7989%
		Total Duration: 2 hours 23 mins 31 secs 
			Combat Duration: 3 hours 11 mins 20 secs 
	EHPS increased by:
		SP coefficient with current set/talents: 0.7524
		1 SP = 0.151291942446043
		1 crit rating = 0
		1 int = 0

Glyph of Earthliving Weapon:
	Note: Based on my testing Glyph of Earthliving Weapon increases
	the proc rate of Earthliving Weapon by 20% * 5% = 1%, not 5%
	Combat added effective: 73878
	Combat EHPS: 19.6110
	HEP: 37.7220

Me without the glyph:

Earthliving_hot Rank 6: hits: 3151, effective healing: 1922358 (7.63% of player's overall)
	Combat: hits: 2918, effective healing: 1871597 (7.92%), ehps: 480.35
	Total (raw) healing: 3214617 (7.58% of player's overall)
	Combat: Total healing: 3005959 (7.62%), hps: 771.48
	Crits: 0 (0.00%)
	Combat Crits: 0 (0.00%)
	Averages: (1020)
		Non-crit: 1020, crit: 0, effective: 610, overall: 1020
		Combat: Non-crit: 1030, crit: 0, effective: 641, overall: 1030
	Overheals: (40.20%)
		Non-crit: count: 1399, total: 1292259, ave: 923
		Crit: count: 0, total: 0, ave: 0
		Combat Non-crit: count: 1215, total: 1134362, ave: 933
		Combat Crit: count: 0, total: 0, ave: 0
	Number of heals cast that did not land: 0, due to target death: 0
		Combat casts that did not land: 0, due to target death: 0
	Earthliving Weapon buff Combat uptime: 1 hour 13 mins 19 secs  (100.00%)
	Earthliving applied count: 773, refresh count: 138
	Earthliving proc rate when ELW is applied: 21.2305%
	Earthliving proc rate overall: 21.2305%
		Total Duration: 2 hours 40 mins 27 secs 
			Combat Duration: 4 hours 20 mins 23 secs 
	EHPS increased by:
		SP coefficient with current set/talents: 0.7524
		1 SP = 0.146371624400274
		1 crit rating = 0
		1 int = 0

I would ignore the percentage of overall healing difference as we were working on blood queen and earth shield doesn't usually proc on off tanks that fight so he didn't get much healing from earth shield that raid.

The meaningful item to me is that he got a 21.8220% proc rate with the glyph (in combat) and I got 21.2305% without the glyph (in combat). So in this combatlog the glyph added a whole 0.6% to the proc rate.

Until I start actually seeing a 25%+ proc rate from the glyph I don't think it has been fixed.

This is not a bug in shaman_hep either as you can add up all the heals on World of Logs and check the number of earthliving buffs applied (shaman_hep counts refreshes too) and you get the same results that shaman_hep provides.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

heal	without glyph	with glyph
ch	3707	3614
riptide	422	134
lhw	160	26
hw	0	6
total heals	4289	3780
elw procs	911	824
proc %	21.24%	21.80%

The sample size is small looking at 1 raid here, however, it is sufficient data to test if the glyph is fixed. When I looked at a larger sample size of lots of raids the difference in procs between the unglyphed and glyphed worked out to a little under 1%.

TLDR: The Glyph of Earthliving Weapon is still broken (working as intended?) as of a raid on January 24, 2010.

stassart · 02/12/10, 6:51 AM

Originally Posted by Rouncer

There is no macro that fires Earth Shock if Flame Shock's DoT is already on the target. That level of if/then scripting, while in combat, has not been possible since they killed off decursive.

Sort of, in practice in PvE the following accomplishes it well enough that I use it:

/castsequence reset=combat/target/18 Flame Shock, Earth Shock, Earth Shock

(Add a third Earth Shock if you have 4/5 reverb)

Any time you switch targets it starts back off with flame shock or if the flame shock duration expires.

Times it doesn't work:
1) If you switch targets and switch back
2) If flame shock misses (should be a non-issue raiding)
3) If flame shock is dispelled (should be a non-issue raiding)

I use the castquence macro any time the mob is going to live 18 seconds, otherwise I just hit earth shock.

Rouncer · 02/12/10, 9:19 AM

Originally Posted by stassart

Sort of, in practice in PvE the following accomplishes it well enough that I use it:

/castsequence reset=combat/target/18 Flame Shock, Earth Shock, Earth Shock, Earth Shock

Any time you switch targets it starts back off with flame shock or if the flame shock duration expires.

Times it doesn't work:
1) If you switch targets and switch back
2) If flame shock misses (should be a non-issue raiding)
3) If flame shock is dispelled (should be a non-issue raiding)

I use the castquence macro any time the mob is going to live 18 seconds, otherwise I just hit earth shock.

Drop an Earth Shock from the Macro if you are trying to maintain maximum uptime of the DoT.

0 - Flame Shock
6 - Earth Shock
12 - Earth Shock
18 - DoTs Done - Flame Shock again

Only use 3xES if you have 4/5 points in Reverb. Something which doesn't really fit with our current builds anyway as Imp Fire Nova is more of a dps gain per point. With 1/2 points in Reverb it would be possible to clip your DoT but unlikely due to GCD blockage preventing you from casting all the shocks exactly on cooldown.

• Jessamy · 02/12/10, 10:52 AM

Originally Posted by stassart

I would ignore the percentage of overall healing difference as we were working on blood queen and earth shield doesn't usually proc on off tanks that fight so he didn't get much healing from earth shield that raid.

I noticed the same thing -- but the first week we were fighting her I could barely keep ES on the tank before needing to refresh it. The same thing was happening with my own water shield (infinite mana), reflecting the behavior enhance shamans noticed with lightning shield proccing from raid wide damage. Is it an intended mechanic that all 3 shields don't proc as much from damage on BQL as on other fights, or is this an encounter specific bug caused by the fix? (Note that I'm not complaining about the fix, the initial behavior was clearly broken and unintended, albeit silly and fun.)

kinghappo · 02/12/10, 11:21 AM

i know that best elemental glyph order goes Glyph of LB, Glyph of FS, then ToW/Lava depending on your set bonus,
but if you have the 4p T9 bonus, wouldn't it be more beneficial to go with LB, ToW, and Lava so that the lvb's get the best damage possible?

♦ masanbol · 02/12/10, 1:24 PM

Originally Posted by kinghappo

i know that best elemental glyph order goes Glyph of LB, Glyph of FS, then ToW/Lava depending on your set bonus,
but if you have the 4p T9 bonus, wouldn't it be more beneficial to go with LB, ToW, and Lava so that the lvb's get the best damage possible?

In short, no. FS is far and away better than either ToW or Lava and has been for some time.

Maltese · 02/13/10, 7:47 AM

CH fully benefits from haste past GCD cap so there is no reason to not continue gemming haste. If you decide to start gemming out of some haste and into SP it actually makes more sense to use 12SP/10 haste gems instead as you are gaining 1 "free" SP for every two gems you replace.

On the Earthliving Topic:

Raid on 1-24-10 without ELW glyph

Earthliving_hot Rank 6: hits: 11810, effective healing: 5254259 (5.43% of player's overall)
	Combat: hits: 10750, effective healing: 4943324 (5.46%), ehps: 166.67
	Total (raw) healing: 11672641 (5.85% of player's overall)
	Combat: Total healing: 10704103 (5.73%), hps: 360.90
	Crits: 0 (0.00%)
	Combat Crits: 0 (0.00%)
	Averages: (988)
		Non-crit: 988, crit: 0, effective: 444, overall: 988
		Combat: Non-crit: 995, crit: 0, effective: 459, overall: 995
	Overheals: (54.99%)
		Non-crit: count: 6978, total: 6418382, ave: 919
		Crit: count: 0, total: 0, ave: 0
		Combat Non-crit: count: 6247, total: 5760779, ave: 922
		Combat Crit: count: 0, total: 0, ave: 0
	Number of heals cast that did not land: 0, due to target death: 0
		Combat casts that did not land: 0, due to target death: 0
	Earthliving Weapon buff Combat uptime: 7 hours 42 mins 4 secs  (87.77%)
	Earthliving applied count: 2850, refresh count: 601
	Earthliving proc rate when ELW is applied: 20.7754%
	Earthliving proc rate overall: 18.7137%
		Total Duration: 10 hours 12 mins 1 sec 
			Combat Duration: 10 hours 12 mins 40 secs 
	EHPS increased by:
		SP coefficient with current set/talents: 0.7524
		1 SP = 0.105056037209302
		1 crit rating = 0
		1 int = 0

Blessing of the Eternals talent points: 2
	Increased Crit HEP per point: 74.6096
	Blessing of Eternals earthliving weapon proc rate: 0.7754%
	Increased earthliving HEP per point: 6.8431
	Total HEP per point: 81.4527
	Total HEP: 162.9054

Glyph of Riptide:
	Extra riptide time: 2 hours 26 mins 24 secs 
		Combat Extra time: 1 hour 48 mins 7 secs 
	Riptide lasted into glyph time 1541 times (69.5397%)
	Count: 2819, effective: 1382514 (1.43%), total: 4131840 (2.07%)
		Combat count: 2182, effective: 1250764 (1.38%),
		  total: 3253831 (1.74%)
	Total hot healing w/ overheal ticks: 4131840 (2.07%)
		Combat: 3253831 (1.74%)
	Total hot Overhealing w/ overheal ticks: 2749326 (66.54%)
		Combat: 2003067 (61.56%)
	Combat EHPS increase: 42.1713
	HEP: 92.7831

Raid on 2-8-10 Replacing Riptide With ELW Glyph

Earthliving_hot Rank 6: hits: 3121, effective healing: 1942733 (5.69% of player's overall)
	Combat: hits: 2520, effective healing: 1725917 (5.40%), ehps: 519.68
	Total (raw) healing: 3184627 (6.11% of player's overall)
	Combat: Total healing: 2639801 (5.53%), hps: 794.85
	Crits: 0 (0.00%)
	Combat Crits: 0 (0.00%)
	Averages: (1020)
		Non-crit: 1020, crit: 0, effective: 622, overall: 1020
		Combat: Non-crit: 1047, crit: 0, effective: 684, overall: 1047
	Overheals: (39.00%)
		Non-crit: count: 1350, total: 1241894, ave: 919
		Crit: count: 0, total: 0, ave: 0
		Combat Non-crit: count: 977, total: 913884, ave: 935
		Combat Crit: count: 0, total: 0, ave: 0
	Number of heals cast that did not land: 0, due to target death: 0
		Combat casts that did not land: 0, due to target death: 0
	Earthliving Weapon buff Combat uptime: 59 mins 32 secs  (100.00%)
	Earthliving applied count: 764, refresh count: 182
	Earthliving proc rate when ELW is applied: 23.4681%
	Earthliving proc rate overall: 23.4390%
		Total Duration: 2 hours 40 mins 53 secs 
			Combat Duration: 3 hours 7 mins 50 secs 
	EHPS increased by:
		SP coefficient with current set/talents: 0.7524
		1 SP = 0.153565238095238
		1 crit rating = 0
		1 int = 0

Blessing of the Eternals talent points: 2
	Increased Crit HEP per point: 173.2714
	Note: Based on my testing Glyph of Earthliving Weapon increases
	the proc rate of Earthliving Weapon by 20% * 5% = 1%, not 5%
	Blessing of Eternals earthliving weapon proc rate: 2.4681%
	Increased earthliving HEP per point: 23.6017
	Total HEP per point: 196.8731
	Total HEP: 393.7462

Glyph of Earthliving Weapon:
	Note: Based on my testing Glyph of Earthliving Weapon increases
	the proc rate of Earthliving Weapon by 20% * 5% = 1%, not 5%
	Combat added effective: 73543
	Combat EHPS: 22.1441
	HEP: 19.1253

First Parse's ELW subtracting BoE's additional procs is = 20%
Second Parse's ELW subtracting BoE's additional procs is = 21%

The Glyph is still only providing exactly 1%. I've submitted a bug report via official forums in hopes of them fixing it.

EDIT: In game tooltip claims 25% proc chance. So in 3.3 they fixed the tooltip issue but failed to fix the actual proc chance.
Looking further at the data, if they do fix the issue the glyph will be worth roughly:

Blessing of Eternals earthliving weapon proc rate: 2.4681%
Increased earthliving HEP per point: 23.6017

2 talent points * 23.6017 Earthliving HEP = 47.2034 HEP
47.2034HEP / 2.4681% additional proc chance = 19.1254 HEP per 1% ELW proc chance
19.1254HEP * 5% ELW Glyph = 95.627 HEP

95.627 HEP is slightly higher than the Riptide glyphs value and has the added benefit of spreading the healing out over several people instead of one target.

EDIT #2: I have received a response from my in game ticket regarding the bugged proc chance of ELW glyph. The GM said that after looking over the data it does indeed appear to not be functioning as intended and he forwarded it to the Development and Quality Assurance teams to get it fixed. Looks like we'll have another potentially viable resto glyph soon.

namdnas · 02/17/10, 5:38 AM

This is a pretty simple question but I've had trouble finding an answer after searching through some of the other threads. Anyway I normally heal on my shaman or go enhancement for dps but I've been asked to go elemental for dps as an offspec. The last time I played elemental was around ulduar. At the time the rotation was simply keep lava burst on cd and spamming lightning bolt. However, combing through logs of some top dps parses I see chain lightning to be consistently used even on single target encounters.

So are people using chain lightning on cooldown or are they weaving the spell in at specific times? Just curious as to what's the best way to use the spell. Obviously on fights that it can bounce you'll generally use it on cd but what about straight single target fights such as festergut?

kinghappo · 02/17/10, 9:45 AM

Originally Posted by namdnas

This is a pretty simple question but I've had trouble finding an answer after searching through some of the other threads. Anyway I normally heal on my shaman or go enhancement for dps but I've been asked to go elemental for dps as an offspec. The last time I played elemental was around ulduar. At the time the rotation was simply keep lava burst on cd and spamming lightning bolt. However, combing through logs of some top dps parses I see chain lightning to be consistently used even on single target encounters.

So are people using chain lightning on cooldown or are they weaving the spell in at specific times? Just curious as to what's the best way to use the spell. Obviously on fights that it can bounce you'll generally use it on cd but what about straight single target fights such as festergut?

It will basicly depend on your mana pool. If you seem to be having problems in longer fights, it's better to follow up LvB with your CL and then continue to spam LB. If your mana pool can handle it then by all means fire away when avalible. CL will be more beneficial when theres multiple targets to hit but even on a single target it does more damage than a single LB even at cost so choose wisely young one.

Kalarm · 02/20/10, 10:32 PM

When on bosses, is it better to use fire elemental or magma totem?

Skajin · 02/21/10, 11:10 AM

Elemental is always way better than magma totem, especially if you compare damage per cast time.

Does anyone know the correlation between Glyph of Chain Lightning and Lightning Overload? I assume I will end up with a 44% to proc it when I actually hit 4 targets? (gonny give the glyph a chance today at saurfang hard)

Acks · 02/21/10, 12:50 PM

I am confused about the Enhancement shaman crit cap. I've read through the crit thread a number of times, downloaded the Crit spreadsheet, added the crit macros to my toolbar, etc, but my confusion remains.

- What about Elemental Devastation? Do we want to achieve a fully raid buffed crit value such that we're 9% under the cap? The crit spreadsheet doesnt seem to mention ED at all, and I dont see any 1.09 values in the crit macros

- Im confused as to why we need spreadsheets and macros in general. Why isn't there a specific crit 'soft cap' we should aim to stay under? Why is it different from Enh shaman to shaman?

(posted here as I didnt want to muck up the crit analysis thread with my dumb questions

Rouncer · 02/21/10, 9:28 PM

Originally Posted by Acks

I am confused about the Enhancement shaman crit cap. I've read through the crit thread a number of times, downloaded the Crit spreadsheet, added the crit macros to my toolbar, etc, but my confusion remains.

- What about Elemental Devastation? Do we want to achieve a fully raid buffed crit value such that we're 9% under the cap? The crit spreadsheet doesnt seem to mention ED at all, and I dont see any 1.09 values in the crit macros

- Im confused as to why we need spreadsheets and macros in general. Why isn't there a specific crit 'soft cap' we should aim to stay under? Why is it different from Enh shaman to shaman?

(posted here as I didnt want to muck up the crit analysis thread with my dumb questions

The crit "softcap" that you want to stay under is the following equation:

100% - 24% (glancing) - miss rate - dodge (should be removed by your expertise) + 4.8% (crit depression) - 9% (elemental devastation) - (all raid buffs and debuffs) = crit cap

If you just want a "number" use the spreadsheet at the end of that thread.

Trinket procs are the only things you should probably ignore due to their limited up-times but you should keep in mind that, if you are right at the crit cap without them, they will lose a significant portion of their value when they take you over that cap.