5 Shaman PvP Totem Sequence

[Thulos]

Ok, I've been rethinking my totem sequencing for running 5 shamans in BG's and wanted to get some feedback. The main benefit is staggering both the tremor and poison cleansing for maximum coverage.

Shaman 1: Tremor Totem, Grounding Totem, Poison Cleansing Totem, Searing Totem
Shaman 2: Grounding Totem, Tremor Totem, Searing Totem, Poison Cleansing Totem
Shaman 3: Grounding Totem, Poison Cleansing Totem, Tremor Totem, Searing Totem
Shaman 4: Poison Cleansing Totem, Grounding Totem, Searing Totem, Tremor Totem
Shaman 5: Wrath of Air Totem, Earthbind Totem, Mana Spring Totem, Searing Totem

Is there a way to put things in a table? I had this in google docs and it came over like crud.

Here is the link to the google doc to make it easier to read:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pWTKyA2AjTkC3lMSBmnGPKQ

[Dominian]

I always use tremors on round robin and they are the first totems i drop in 95% of the cases.

I use wrath of air on my main and grounding on the 4 others in normal bgs while i do arena i drop wrath totaly.

I drop 2 healing,1 mana,1 poison cleansing and 1 disease cleansing totem (Actually did put in the very early in the game due to some pve encounter and havent changed it back since i soon face DK anyway)

What if you only want your groundings renwed?

Dropping searings out randomly isnt always smart, atleast not in AV!

5 searings dropped by aid station actually pulls nearly all the npc's!

[Thulos]

Thanks for the feedback. Those are the totems in my castsequence alone that are bound to one key on all shamans. It allows me to just spam the key when I get to a new spot and have my farm down quickly. I have seperate keys for dropping all grounding, all searing, all magma, all fire nova. I also have a castsequence for tremor specifically as well as a castsequence for earthbind (great for kiting!). When i'm going into Aid station I run past the flag before dropping my full sequence. I ran this sequence last night in AV, EoTS and Arena's and I really liked it. May tweek it some but I really like having more than one poison cleansing although having 4 down staggered may be overkill.

[Hachoo]

I would never use a "general cast sequence" macro to drop totems for PvP. The main reason is, 99% of the time staggered tremor totems are what you NEED to drop immediately. If you don't, you'll get fear bombed by a priest lock or warrior and it will be all over for you.

Second, there are a LOT of situations in PvP where you will only have time to drop 1-2 sets of totems and you want to make SURE they're the right ones for the job (ie: tremor + grounding is a necessity against a priest or warlock, grounding at teh very least against other casters, you don't want to have to spam a button for 4 or 5 global cooldowns just to get 5 groundings or 5 tremor totems down).

I have individual totem macros bound to just a few keys and it gives me infinite more options.

FWIW my setup is:

R: specialty totems
ctrl+r is a cast sequence for tremor totems so I can hit ctrl+r 5x in approximately 2 seconds and get staggered tremor totems
shift+r drops 5x grounding totems
alt+r drops 5x stoneclaws for pve (probably need to change this one to a cast sequence as well since duration is so short)

shift+f drops 5x magma
alt+f drops 5x searing
ctrl+f drops 5x fire nova
ctrl+alt+f drops 5x totem of wrath

ctrl+1 drops a mix of earth totems (3 stoneclaw, a stoneskin, and an earthbind)
ctrl+alt+1 - cast sequence for earthbinds so i can stagger them/kite

ctrl+4 drops 1 mana stream and 4 healing stream
ctrl+5 drops one windwall, one wrath of air, one grace of air

Sounds complicated but honestly after a few hours you'll know instinctively which ones to hit and when, and it gives you MUCH finer control over what to drop.

[devilsome]

Ok, I've been rethinking my totem sequencing for running 5 shamans in BG's and wanted to get some feedback. The main benefit is staggering both the tremor and poison cleansing for maximum coverage.

Shaman 1: Tremor Totem, Grounding Totem, Poison Cleansing Totem, Searing Totem
Shaman 2: Grounding Totem, Tremor Totem, Searing Totem, Poison Cleansing Totem
Shaman 3: Grounding Totem, Poison Cleansing Totem, Tremor Totem, Searing Totem
Shaman 4: Poison Cleansing Totem, Grounding Totem, Searing Totem, Tremor Totem
Shaman 5: Wrath of Air Totem, Earthbind Totem, Mana Spring Totem, Searing Totem

Is there a way to put things in a table? I had this in google docs and it came over like crud.

Here is the link to the google doc to make it easier to read:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pWTKyA2AjTkC3lMSBmnGPKQyou need only 3 TT and 3 PCT since they are on a 3 sec pulse and you can drop only 1 totem per second. so i suggest replacing TT 4 by another earth totem and PCT 4 by another water totem to get more benefit from your totem.

[asonimie]

I would never use a "general cast sequence" macro to drop totems for PvP. The main reason is, 99% of the time staggered tremor totems are what you NEED to drop immediately. If you don't, you'll get fear bombed by a priest lock or warrior and it will be all over for you.

Second, there are a LOT of situations in PvP where you will only have time to drop 1-2 sets of totems and you want to make SURE they're the right ones for the job (ie: tremor + grounding is a necessity against a priest or warlock, grounding at teh very least against other casters, you don't want to have to spam a button for 4 or 5 global cooldowns just to get 5 groundings or 5 tremor totems down).

I have individual totem macros bound to just a few keys and it gives me infinite more options.

FWIW my setup is:

R: specialty totems
ctrl+r is a cast sequence for tremor totems so I can hit ctrl+r 5x in approximately 2 seconds and get staggered tremor totems
shift+r drops 5x grounding totems
alt+r drops 5x stoneclaws for pve (probably need to change this one to a cast sequence as well since duration is so short)

shift+f drops 5x magma
alt+f drops 5x searing
ctrl+f drops 5x fire nova
ctrl+alt+f drops 5x totem of wrath

ctrl+1 drops a mix of earth totems (3 stoneclaw, a stoneskin, and an earthbind)
ctrl+alt+1 - cast sequence for earthbinds so i can stagger them/kite

ctrl+4 drops 1 mana stream and 4 healing stream
ctrl+5 drops one windwall, one wrath of air, one grace of air

Sounds complicated but honestly after a few hours you'll know instinctively which ones to hit and when, and it gives you MUCH finer control over what to drop.The OP DOES have staggered tremors built into the sequence above, and I completely agree with his sequencing, its almost identical to what i use. (Only differences is I use 1xManaSpring instead of that 4th poison. 3x cleansing has always been enough, even in arena. I also replace 1-2 of the searings with Magma - it will help pop Stealthies in open pvp and is at least a small threat to keep rogues at bay in arena).

Even in arena there is no harm in recasting the entire totem sequence, after 1 round of casting I'm still at 98% mana which tops off within seconds(Magma is a hog however, so plan accordingly, my magma shaman burns mana much faster recasting totem city).

Integrating staggered "round robin" totems into a general pvp macro is the best way to go imo. I use the castsequence first, and then I have my 5x Grounding, 5x Nova, 5x Stoneclaw, and EB sequence handy for special occasions or to refresh groundings. Hitting 4-5x tremor and then going BACK to cast the other totems is a waste of time.

I agree with having options and special bindings, but starting out with a general sequence is always a good idea for pvp in my opinion. PVE is different of course.

[Hachoo]

But if you have your tremor totems in a standard cast sequence macro you're only dropping 1 every global cooldown, correct? Whats the global cooldown again? 1s? 1.5s? Either way 1s is too long between tremor totems to avoid fears sometimes - 1s could be enough time for your guy(s) to get out of tremor's range before the next pulse, if you're unlucky, a little ways away from the totems, and the fear makes you run instead of walk (sometimes happens to me, not sure why).

Anyway, just a thought, I prefer the granular control of deciding exactly what to drop and when, and if I only have time to drop 1 set of totems I'd rather be able to KNOW i can have 5 tremors down then "oops I only have 1 tremor down and some other random totems I don't need right now".

[gobtol]

The Shaman GCD is 1.5 seconds, but totems are on a 1 second GCD. It sounds like you're suggesting dropping 4 or 5 tremor totems at one time. The problem with this is that they would all pulse at the same time, and therefore wouldn't be much more effective than one single totem. Since they pulse once every 3 seconds, most people drop 3 totems at one second intervals, then an earthbind or something. I use my big totem macro for tremor totems, but I also have them on a separate key for when my totems are being targeted.

[Kyudo]

Well I've BG'd a hell of a lot too, and I have no problems with cast sequences. I just have separate buttons for the less used totems like searing, fire nova etc for situational circumstances. Instead I have 3 different sequences that i mainly use:

1) General PVE, drops wrath early, a couple of grounding and 4x Tow
2) General PvP, drops 1 tremor and 3 grounding in the 1st cycle (I consider these to be THE most important for general pvp, one grounding is often not enough, a quick ice lance can leave your guys open to a polymorph or whatever). The rest is very similar to that you've listed.
3) Melee PvP, when I have rogues and warriors, ferals etc in my face I have a different cycle that throws in a few fire novas, an early earthbind, poison cleanse, stoneskin etc.

[Dominian]

The OP DOES have staggered tremors built into the sequence above, and I completely agree with his sequencing, its almost identical to what i use. (Only differences is I use 1xManaSpring instead of that 4th poison. 3x cleansing has always been enough, even in arena. I also replace 1-2 of the searings with Magma - it will help pop Stealthies in open pvp and is at least a small threat to keep rogues at bay in arena).

Even in arena there is no harm in recasting the entire totem sequence, after 1 round of casting I'm still at 98% mana which tops off within seconds(Magma is a hog however, so plan accordingly, my magma shaman burns mana much faster recasting totem city).


Its not a problem to use 4 seconds to refresh 4 grounding totems?

Have you even played arena when you state that casting all your totems over when your zeged aint a problem...

A warlock+mage will bring down the totems faster then you can cast them.

Ofc its alot easier if you cant manage the stress to drop right totems at the right time.

Major pain in the ass would be if you wanted to do arena with a healer and had to rotate on your shamans..

I can easily do that since my fourth and fifth shaman drops the same totems while someone with a premade sequence most likley would have to rewrite it.

[Hachoo]

The Shaman GCD is 1.5 seconds, but totems are on a 1 second GCD. It sounds like you're suggesting dropping 4 or 5 tremor totems at one time. The problem with this is that they would all pulse at the same time, and therefore wouldn't be much more effective than one single totem. Since they pulse once every 3 seconds, most people drop 3 totems at one second intervals, then an earthbind or something. I use my big totem macro for tremor totems, but I also have them on a separate key for when my totems are being targeted.Thats the exact opposite of what I'm saying. The tremor totem pulse is 2s. If you're dropping all of them in 4 or 5 seconds, you're wasting valuable seconds of not being able to control fear. Ideally however many tremors you have should be staggered so that they all land evenly spaced within 2s or so. This way the pulses are every .4 seconds. If you're dropping 4 in 4s, your pulses are once every second. Thats extra time for your clones to run away further before a tremor totem pulses, or maybe even get completely out of range of the totems.

This is why I have a separate cast sequence just for tremor totems, the FIRST thing I do in pvp, even if its not a fearing class, is stagger 5 tremor totems approximately every 0.4s. This way if their friend comes to help that CAN fear, I already have the tremors down.

With a "master castsequence" this is effectly impossible, and if you have a separate macro for important totems like tremor/grounding anyway, you might as well just keep them all separate.

The difference between using a giant cast sequence for totems for pvp and separate macros for each type of totem, is the same as using the keyboard to turn instead of the mouse. It WILL make you much less effective.

[aNiMaL]

I've been pondering about the best of 2 worlds for a while,
In the end I rather keep mine seperate.

Having one big sequence will require a reset option aswell in the macro, (most probably a modifier key)
since after a few fights where 1 shaman missed a gcd a few times you'll have a completely different castsequence
and you might screw up the staggering tremors completely by dropping a few at the same keypress.

I was already to much used to dropping them seperate,
so I went back to it when they messed up the castsequnece farm a few times.

[Thulos]

Lots of info to ponder here and I really appreciate all the info. To be clear I do have the ability to stagger drop just tremors and the ability to drop any of my totems that I need individually. The idea behind the castsequence is to be able to drop an entire farm with one key. I can't imagine that it's a bad idea because if you watch Ellay's pvp videos this is exactly what he does. Of course he could have changed that by now.

[asonimie]

The OP DOES have staggered tremors built into the sequence above, and I completely agree with his sequencing, its almost identical to what i use. (Only differences is I use 1xManaSpring instead of that 4th poison. 3x cleansing has always been enough, even in arena. I also replace 1-2 of the searings with Magma - it will help pop Stealthies in open pvp and is at least a small threat to keep rogues at bay in arena).

Even in arena there is no harm in recasting the entire totem sequence, after 1 round of casting I'm still at 98% mana which tops off within seconds(Magma is a hog however, so plan accordingly, my magma shaman burns mana much faster recasting totem city).


Its not a problem to use 4 seconds to refresh 4 grounding totems?

Have you even played arena when you state that casting all your totems over when your zeged aint a problem...

A warlock+mage will bring down the totems faster then you can cast them.

Ofc its alot easier if you cant manage the stress to drop right totems at the right time.

Major pain in the ass would be if you wanted to do arena with a healer and had to rotate on your shamans..

I can easily do that since my fourth and fifth shaman drops the same totems while someone with a premade sequence most likley would have to rewrite it.Not sure what you're trying to dispute here, but yes I do tons of arena and am pretty successful. I never said take 4 secs to refresh groundings... and the quote you chose makes no sense. I'm not going to restate, go back and read correctly this time. The first cast of my PVPsequence includes 3-4x groundings, and the rest in cast 2. Then I can refresh all 4-5 at once with a keyclick once my base totems are down.

Attention to detail.

[asonimie]

The Shaman GCD is 1.5 seconds, but totems are on a 1 second GCD. It sounds like you're suggesting dropping 4 or 5 tremor totems at one time. The problem with this is that they would all pulse at the same time, and therefore wouldn't be much more effective than one single totem. Since they pulse once every 3 seconds, most people drop 3 totems at one second intervals, then an earthbind or something. I use my big totem macro for tremor totems, but I also have them on a separate key for when my totems are being targeted.Thats the exact opposite of what I'm saying. The tremor totem pulse is 2s. If you're dropping all of them in 4 or 5 seconds, you're wasting valuable seconds of not being able to control fear. Ideally however many tremors you have should be staggered so that they all land evenly spaced within 2s or so. This way the pulses are every .4 seconds. If you're dropping 4 in 4s, your pulses are once every second. Thats extra time for your clones to run away further before a tremor totem pulses, or maybe even get completely out of range of the totems.

This is why I have a separate cast sequence just for tremor totems, the FIRST thing I do in pvp, even if its not a fearing class, is stagger 5 tremor totems approximately every 0.4s. This way if their friend comes to help that CAN fear, I already have the tremors down.

With a "master castsequence" this is effectly impossible, and if you have a separate macro for important totems like tremor/grounding anyway, you might as well just keep them all separate.

The difference between using a giant cast sequence for totems for pvp and separate macros for each type of totem, is the same as using the keyboard to turn instead of the mouse. It WILL make you much less effective.To each his own. IMO taking 5-8 seconds to achieve a .4 sec pulse interval is a death sentence. All 20 totems of mine are down within 3-4 seconds and I'm blasting, .5 sec pulse vs 1 sec pulse is trivial compared to 3-4 seconds of blasting away.

[asonimie]

I've been pondering about the best of 2 worlds for a while,
In the end I rather keep mine seperate.

Having one big sequence will require a reset option aswell in the macro, (most probably a modifier key)
since after a few fights where 1 shaman missed a gcd a few times you'll have a completely different castsequence
and you might screw up the staggering tremors completely by dropping a few at the same keypress.

I was already to much used to dropping them seperate,
so I went back to it when they messed up the castsequnece farm a few times.Not at all. Set the reset to equal your largest cooldown (that you care about) in the sequence. My PVP sequence reset is set to 15secs, because thats when Grounding is back up. It works beautifully. In between I can recast EB, Nova, Stoneclaw, or even another set of groundings if it goes on for long enough. 15 sec reset also clears any sequencing mistakes caused by 1 sham being CC'd or what have you.

Go try it before you assume too much. It has been flawless for me. In real PVP you don't want focus on your totem casting... you want focus on the battlefield. A master macro with a little logic built in that you can mash in times of crysis > all.

[Thulos]

Can we get this thread a bit back on topic and focus on feedback of the farm itself and not the merits of castsequence vs individually dropping the totems.

[Kaynin]

I'd drop one frost resistance totem instead of a searing, by the way.

[Dominian]

The OP DOES have staggered tremors built into the sequence above, and I completely agree with his sequencing, its almost identical to what i use. (Only differences is I use 1xManaSpring instead of that 4th poison. 3x cleansing has always been enough, even in arena. I also replace 1-2 of the searings with Magma - it will help pop Stealthies in open pvp and is at least a small threat to keep rogues at bay in arena).

Even in arena there is no harm in recasting the entire totem sequence, after 1 round of casting I'm still at 98% mana which tops off within seconds(Magma is a hog however, so plan accordingly, my magma shaman burns mana much faster recasting totem city).


Its not a problem to use 4 seconds to refresh 4 grounding totems?

Have you even played arena when you state that casting all your totems over when your zeged aint a problem...

A warlock+mage will bring down the totems faster then you can cast them.

Ofc its alot easier if you cant manage the stress to drop right totems at the right time.

Major pain in the ass would be if you wanted to do arena with a healer and had to rotate on your shamans..

I can easily do that since my fourth and fifth shaman drops the same totems while someone with a premade sequence most likley would have to rewrite it.Not sure what you're trying to dispute here, but yes I do tons of arena and am pretty successful. I never said take 4 secs to refresh groundings... and the quote you chose makes no sense. I'm not going to restate, go back and read correctly this time. The first cast of my PVPsequence includes 3-4x groundings, and the rest in cast 2. Then I can refresh all 4-5 at once with a keyclick once my base totems are down.

Attention to detail.

Im sorry if i was unclear and i saw atleast one TYPO on (zeged=zerged)

What i mean is that there aint time for me atleast to use 2 Global cooldowns to refresh my grounding totems. My other totems rarley get touched so why would i want to refresh all other totems?

So if i understand you right you got one spam button? Then a seperate button to only refresh groundings?

[Thulos]

I'd drop one frost resistance totem instead of a searing, by the way.Thanks for this feedback. I like this idea.

So if i understand you right you got one spam button? Then a seperate button to only refresh groundings? I'm not sure about Asonimie but that is exactly how I handle things. Not only that but I have seperate buttons for refreshing Searing, Magma, FireNova, Grounding, Elies, a tremor sequence, and pretty much every other totem in the game. The spam button is just for getting a farm down quickly, without thought. After I'm in position everything is situational and I have my on demand totems ready to go. Which is why I'd like to keep this thread on topic and discuss the Sequence itself and NOT the merits of a Spam vs individual drop system.

[Hachoo]

The Shaman GCD is 1.5 seconds, but totems are on a 1 second GCD. It sounds like you're suggesting dropping 4 or 5 tremor totems at one time. The problem with this is that they would all pulse at the same time, and therefore wouldn't be much more effective than one single totem. Since they pulse once every 3 seconds, most people drop 3 totems at one second intervals, then an earthbind or something. I use my big totem macro for tremor totems, but I also have them on a separate key for when my totems are being targeted.Thats the exact opposite of what I'm saying. The tremor totem pulse is 2s. If you're dropping all of them in 4 or 5 seconds, you're wasting valuable seconds of not being able to control fear. Ideally however many tremors you have should be staggered so that they all land evenly spaced within 2s or so. This way the pulses are every .4 seconds. If you're dropping 4 in 4s, your pulses are once every second. Thats extra time for your clones to run away further before a tremor totem pulses, or maybe even get completely out of range of the totems.

This is why I have a separate cast sequence just for tremor totems, the FIRST thing I do in pvp, even if its not a fearing class, is stagger 5 tremor totems approximately every 0.4s. This way if their friend comes to help that CAN fear, I already have the tremors down.

With a "master castsequence" this is effectly impossible, and if you have a separate macro for important totems like tremor/grounding anyway, you might as well just keep them all separate.

The difference between using a giant cast sequence for totems for pvp and separate macros for each type of totem, is the same as using the keyboard to turn instead of the mouse. It WILL make you much less effective.To each his own. IMO taking 5-8 seconds to achieve a .4 sec pulse interval is a death sentence. All 20 totems of mine are down within 3-4 seconds and I'm blasting, .5 sec pulse vs 1 sec pulse is trivial compared to 3-4 seconds of blasting away.Last off-topic post before I'm done in this thread. I have no idea where you came up with 5-8 seconds to drop a .4sec pulse interval grounding totems. I think you're bad at math and therefore you're making up numbers to try to convince us your way is not inferior in PvP.

Hint: .4s per tremor totem x 5 = 2 seconds. The FASTEST you could possibly drop your totem set is 4 seconds, with 0 lag, and that wouldn't even come close to giving you an optimal Tremor Totem stagger. Thats 2 seconds of you getting blasted while I'm already in the middle of fighting back.

It sounds to me like you're just set in your ways and you don't want to even see if something could be better. If I do decide to drop an entire totem set its very easy for me to do it within ~1 second of how long it takes you to do yours, but mine is also infinitely more flexible (can drop any combination of sets - whatever is needed at the time that I have time for).

I was just trying to give some good advice - this IS the PvP forum after all, I would assume most people in here want suggestions that will make them better at PvP, not worse at it. Thats the only reason I posted in this thread in the first place.

Anyway, as I said this is off topic so I will stop posting in this thread.

[Ualaa]

For those using a cast sequence... /castsequence reset=7/combat Totem 1, Totem 2, Totem 3, Totem 4.
That way, even if they get out of sequence due to latency or whatever, the sequence resets fairly quickly.

I'd imagine, using a sequence to drop common totems will be an advantage.
For example:
- Stoneclaw, Grounding, Totem of Wrath, Poison Cleansing
- Tremor, Grounding, Frost Resistance, Disease Cleansing
- Grounding, Tremor, Searing, Healing Stream
- Grounding, Searing, Tremor, Fire Resistance
- Grounding, Searing, Mana Spring, Tremor

Mash your cast sequence macro, and you'll drop your commonly used totems as fast as possible.

Certain totems, will likely be dropped individually or in addition to the cast sequence.
I'd imagine a key for all shaman's to drop Grounding, Fire Nova, Fire Elemental and Tremor would be useful too.
For Grounding, they'd just all drop it on the one click.
For Tremor it would be a cast sequence:

Tremor,,,,
,Tremor,,,
,,Tremor,,
,,,Tremor,
,,,,Tremor

So you mash the same button, as many presses as you have shaman's. Ideally pressing the button evenly spaced over the duration of a Tremor pulse.
I though Tremor pulsed every 3 seconds, but someone in this thread said every 2 seconds.
If its two seconds, you'd want to press every .40 seconds, if its every 3 seconds then every .60 seconds. One press every half second is pretty close.

So there are advantages to cast sequence for large numbers of totems, especially at the opening when you don't want to be trained/zerged.
But you'll also want to have key totems available without being part of any sequence.