EDIT 2: Resto UI Question
Is there a mod out there that can keep track of where other restos toss their Earth Shield so you don't stomp on their cast and you can yell at them when they stomp on yours? As a nice side benefit, it'd be nice if it watched the charges on your target and watched when the shield expires off the other targets in the raid.
Seems like something that could be watched for via a combatlog sniffer. I use Shamanfriend for this now, but it doesn't always update the charges when I refresh and doesn't, as far as I know, let me know where other Earthshields are active. (Even knowing when they are /applied/ would be useful, if tracking the duration was impossible because of UI restrictions.
I use this in conjunction with setting up a buff aura in Grid to show me who has EarthShield up on them. This way I can yell at other shaman if their ES isn't up on someone useful.
I use this in conjunction with setting up a buff aura in Grid to show me who has EarthShield up on them. This way I can yell at other shaman if their ES isn't up on someone useful.
I also do an ES buff aura on Grid for this and I just guess when it's about to run out. I used to check but it was always 1 or 2 left, so I don't really worry about it anymore. I use a pair of power auras for water shield, one for one charge, one for missing.
I'm not quite sure how you are getting 40% crit from int+items alone. Your armory shows you as elemental spec and virtually naked, but even if we assume that you are getting 10% crit from int (i.e. you have 1666 int fully buffed - not a trivial number by any stretch of the imagination) then you still have to get approximately 1377 crit rating to hit 40%. Are you sure you don't mean 40% crit in the character panel?
If so, remember that the displayed crit chance takes into account int, crit rating, Thundering Strikes, and Blessing of the Eternals. These two talents are counted because they affect all spells, whereas Tidal Mastery is not because it only affects lightning and healing spells (Tidal mastery doesn't even show up in the detailed breakdown by school because it doesn't affect all nature spells.) You can test this yourself by respeccing and watching your displayed crit percentage drop.
I am going to assume that your character panel is showing 40% crit rating. Therefore, assuming you have our 3 critical talents in your resto spec, the character panel will underestimate your actual crit chance with healing spells by 5% (not by 14%) and you should be seeing a critical strike chance of 45% (not 54%).
I understand why the choice of similar words would bother you, but I wouldn't rely on tooltip wordings that have been inconsistent at best. But if you must do so, I would point out that the elemental talent Elemental Focus specifically states "damage spells", while Thundering Strikes states "all spells".
There is only 2 other things to keep in mind before shifting to a "face-roll" one button macro.
1. You are expected to interrupt spellcasts and interrupting at the right time is more valuable then your position on the meters.*
2. Maelstrom Weapon can be used to heal as easily as it is used to damage. Saving a raidmember's life is more important then your position on the meters.
This is basically what I've been doing. I have two macros I use, one with ES, one without. If I know a fight has a need for interrupts, I just switch them out on my hotbar, and I keep a stopcasting ES macro on my hotbars at all times anyway (never got around to changing it since I switched from Resto and the /stopcasting part was needed). Maelstrom Weapon procs I handle by hand, for precisely the reason you mention in #2; our first Patchwerk downing our healers were running low on mana, and if I hadn't started offhealing with every proc, we would've had another wipe. My healing wasn't much, but it was enough to make the difference; I got heals off on the tank for just enough for them to take a hit before the big heal landed. I also like having the flexibility to toss out a Chain Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt if we have at least three trash we're killing.
I agree entirely with the "human latency" part of things, though. I'd rather spend my focus making sure the healers are on top of things, correcting my positioning, watching for interrupts if required, adjusting totems if the situation calls for it, etc. Managing my rotation is pretty grunt work, and since the sims show rotation practically doesn't matter, I'd rather just faceroll macro as much as I can so I can concentrate on the other stuff.
Last night on Grob (Heroic) the poison clouds were killing my totems. Is this something new? I can't think of another encounter where one attack kills all 4 totems at once.
Last night on Grob (Heroic) the poison clouds were killing my totems. Is this something new?
Not new in WOLK at least. Kills my totems as well. You're most likely moving a lot anyway so you might want to try dropping them in the dead center with the ranged, or just keep spamming them. I find the fight way to short to have mana concerns.
As for the "IWIN" macro discussion. last night i spent 2 hours on the 80 boss dummy in ironforge. The idea was to have a contest between faceroll and manually triggering each spell. So, I had 10 five minute trials using the faceroll technique, and 10 five minute trials using the manual technique. The results below are quite informal, using recount.
Faceroll: 1 macro for SS, LL, ES and hold shift to shoot MW5_LB. I bound this to my Logitech precision mouse wheel down (it spins on its own for a long time when 'flicked').
Manual: 1 macro for /castrandom between LL and SS. Seperate keybinds for ES and MW5_LB.
NOTE: No searing totem, lightning shield or feral spirits were used to make concentrating on dps more consistent between attempts. No other person was on the dummy at any point so debuffs are not a concern. Attempts sometimes went over or under by 10-15 seconds. I used water shield and potted on all 20 attempts in order to bridge SR uses to stretch 5 minute trials.
Faceroll:
2384
2364
2214
2477
2491
2352
2337
2456
2402
2383
Manual:
2183
2380
2496
2519
2376
2451
2488
2282
2370
2410
Conclusion: Just about all fights in the game currently are 5 mins or less. You can see that dps was all over the place, varying by as much as 350 dps between otherwise identical attempts. The difference between all of these attempts after inspecting recount was basically RNG, specifically high LB and ES crits.
According to my informal experiment here, if you get lucky with nukes, you will overcome and difference between manually choosing priorities and letting your mousewheel do it for you.
Sorry if this is a waste of a post. I thought it was interesting that a) the dps numbers were all over the place and b) the high outliers all were caused by abnormally high ("lucky") crit streaks on LB and/or ES.
* Shaman: Lava Lash - Fixed a bug which allowed you to use the ability even if you had a shield in offhand. Now requires a 1hand axe, fist or dagger to be able to be used. Bug #147699.
I wonder, what % of total dps does your reaction time contribute? If pausing for 0.2 seconds to glance at SS debuff bar, and make a decision between SS and LL would cost you more than ~0.25% dps overall, then it seems the "facerolling" macro is indeed superior.
How fast can you press a button multiple times, and how long do you want to jam buttons at that speed?
Let's say you have one of your 4 spells off cooldown and ready to go.
A /castrandom could cast any of the spells listed each time you press it, and there isn't a guarantee that it will get a given spell within 4 presses. On average, you'd get the right one within 4 tries...but you're going to be hitting that button a lot.
How many times can you press a button in one second?
Are you prepared to press the button that fast the entire fight? If not, you're going to need to watch cooldowns regardless.
You could obviously use some kind of external control repeater to press it for you, but this seems really close to violating the ToS.
Is it worth it? Accepting a 1% loss in DPS, accepting the inflexibility of playing like an idiot, accepting that you're basically creating a 300 bpm techno beat in between GCDs and giving yourself carpal tunnel, all so you can "pay better attention to the environment?"
Last night on Grob (Heroic) the poison clouds were killing my totems. Is this something new? I can't think of another encounter where one attack kills all 4 totems at once.
Much like Doomfire, those poison clouds are actually a mob. You can see the 'Attacking you' etc. float over them if you have that enabled. Doomfire, however, did not eat totems.
Is it worth it? Accepting a 1% loss in DPS, accepting the inflexibility of playing like an idiot, accepting that you're basically creating a 300 bpm techno beat in between GCDs and giving yourself carpal tunnel, all so you can "pay better attention to the environment?"
haha, well said! My highly subjective dummy experiment proved (to myself of course) that not only is the manual method more fun (and helps one in the boudoir as said before) but it also gives you flexibility and essentially equal dps.
The IWIN macro has been thwarted for now, thank god.
Can't wait to get on the PTR to test this spellpower nerf, as well as if one can lash with a mace.
How fast can you press a button multiple times, and how long do you want to jam buttons at that speed?
...
You could obviously use some kind of external control repeater to press it for you, but this seems really close to violating the ToS.
Is it worth it? Accepting a 1% loss in DPS, accepting the inflexibility of playing like an idiot, accepting that you're basically creating a 300 bpm techno beat in between GCDs and giving yourself carpal tunnel, all so you can "pay better attention to the environment?"
I'm not going to comment on the laziness aspect, I think it's clear.
I don't think it would violate TOS to use the mouse wheel button though. You achieve exactly what you are looking for with that. Plus the added benefit of being less annoying to your family, pets, children.
Can someone that's good with coefficients help me figure out what is the bug? I'm experiencing some problems with my LHW, and I've seen no reports on any bugs here or on the official boards related to the LHW Glyph (which I'm guessing is the cause).
This is with 2051 spellpower and a standard 0/14/57 build.
I heal myself with ES on:
5,6k, 8,6k (crit), 5,7k, 5,5k.
I heal myself without ES:
4,7k, 4,8k, 4,8k.
I heal Yei with ES on:
4,9k, 4,7k, 4,7k.
I heal Yei without ES:
4k, 4k, 4,1k.
Did a search through this thread for "totem bar" and didn't see anything, so I figured I'd put this up here.
Pre-WotLK I used to really like using Numen as it provided a clean and easy way of accessing all of your totems (the bar showed one totem from each school and mousing over each of the totems expanded them to show all of the totems from that school). Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Numen is being updated for WotLK. Does anyone have any suggestions for a totem bar mod?
Did a search through this thread for "totem bar" and didn't see anything, so I figured I'd put this up here.
Pre-WotLK I used to really like using Numen as it provided a clean and easy way of accessing all of your totems (the bar showed one totem from each school and mousing over each of the totems expanded them to show all of the totems from that school). Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Numen is being updated for WotLK. Does anyone have any suggestions for a totem bar mod?
I've been using TotemTimers for that, and I've been pretty happy with it.
Anyone know which fire totem produces more damage in a single target boss fights such as Patchwerk - Searing or Fire Elemental? I'm enhance, and trying to maximize dps for some achievment fights.
Has anyone found conclusive information regarding how much the talents in the ptr build increase elemental dps? I have heard numbers like 10% which is quite pitiful, but I'm naively hopeful that it's more.
Did a search through this thread for "totem bar" and didn't see anything, so I figured I'd put this up here.
Pre-WotLK I used to really like using Numen as it provided a clean and easy way of accessing all of your totems (the bar showed one totem from each school and mousing over each of the totems expanded them to show all of the totems from that school). Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Numen is being updated for WotLK. Does anyone have any suggestions for a totem bar mod?
Yata has taken over most of the functionality of Numen, I really recommend it.
Is it just my gear or inability to use EnhSim that Totem of Hex is showing up as good as Hateful Gladiators Totem of Indomitability? It's strange because there isn't a single word about Totem of Hex in the thearocrafting thread.
Is it worth it? Accepting a 1% loss in DPS, accepting the inflexibility of playing like an idiot, accepting that you're basically creating a 300 bpm techno beat in between GCDs and giving yourself carpal tunnel, all so you can "pay better attention to the environment?"
I sure can flick my mouse wheel so it registers quite a few times a second, without risking carpal tunnel.
Also, it's a 1% loss in theoried DPS, which is only relevant if, in an actual fight, you're never ever late on a cooldown, never use the wrong priority abilitiy, are never off target, etc.
The "inflexibility of playing like an idiot" just sounds like yet another version of the "In my day, uphill both ways, in the SNOW!" Yes, macros were a bad idea. That doesn't make them inherently bad now.
I really, really don't understand the hostility to a little automation of some grunt work, here. There's no evidence it hurts DPS in any significant way. Is it lazy? Maybe, but lazy is another word for "efficient". Doing things the hard way just because you can and insisting that anyone who does it the more efficient way is *wrong* seems pretty damn silly. By all means, let's keep discussing this, but let's do it with rational arguments and valid points, rather than turning into crotchety old men who don't like anything different.
Did a search through this thread for "totem bar" and didn't see anything, so I figured I'd put this up here.
Pre-WotLK I used to really like using Numen as it provided a clean and easy way of accessing all of your totems (the bar showed one totem from each school and mousing over each of the totems expanded them to show all of the totems from that school). Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Numen is being updated for WotLK. Does anyone have any suggestions for a totem bar mod?
I'm using FloTotemBar. It doesn't expand on mouseover; it has movable and scalable bars of each element, and you can remove specific totems if you never use them. I prefer it because clicking or waiting for it to expand before selecting a totem seems like lost time, to me. If I need to change my totems mid-fight, it usually needs to be done ASAP.
12/09/08, 6:36 PM
